Strangers and Pilgrims

Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845

Catherine A. Brekus

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN:
  9780807847459
  9780807824412
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807866542
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Margaret Meuse Clay, who barely escaped a public whipping in the 1760s for preaching without a license; “Old Elizabeth,” an ex-slave who courageously traveled to the South to preach against slavery in the early nineteenth century; Harriet Livermore, who spoke in front of Congress four times between 1827 and 1844 — these are just a few of the extraordinary women profiled in this, the first comprehensive history of female preaching in early America.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, Catherine Brekus examines the lives of more than a hundred female preachers — both white and African American — who crisscrossed the country between 1740 and 1845. Outspoken, visionary, and sometimes contentious, these women stepped into the pulpit long before twentieth-century battles over female ordination began. They were charismatic, popular preachers, who spoke to hundreds and even thousands of people at camp and revival meetings, and yet with but a few notable exceptions — such as Sojourner Truth — these women have essentially vanished from our history. Recovering their stories, Brekus shows, forces us to rethink many of our common assumptions about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American culture.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction. Recovering the History of Female Preaching in America
• PART ONE. THERE IS NEITHER MALE NOR FEMALE
• 1 Caught Up in God: Female Evangelism in the Eighteenth-Century Revivals
• 2 Women in the Wilderness: Female Religious Leadership in the Age of Revolution
• PART TWO. SISTERS IN CHRIST, MOTHERS IN ISRAEL
• 3 Female Laborers in the Harvest: Female Preaching in the Early Nineteenth Century
• 4 The Last Shall Be First: Conversion and the Call to Preach
• 5 Lift Up Thy Voice Like a Trumpet: Evangelical Women in the Pulpit
• 6 God and Mammon: Female Peddlers of the Word
• PART THREE. LET YOUR WOMEN KEEP SILENCE
• 7 Suffer Not a Woman to Teach: The Battle over Female Preaching
• 8 Your Sons and Daughters Shall Prophesy: Female Preaching in the Millerite Movement
• Epilogue. Write the Vision
• Appendix. Female Preachers and Exhorters in America, 1740–1845
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index