Mothers, Angels, Authors, and Preachers:
Women in 19th Century American Protestantism
Jamie L. Brummitt
Ph.D Student, American Religion, Duke University
February 1, 2015
Participation in American Churches
- Protestant women outnumbered men in churches.
- BUT, women were not allowed to preach or hold offices:
- Men looked to the Bible to define women's roles in churches:
- In 1832, the General Assembly of the Presbyterians declared, "to teach and exhort, or to lead in prayer, in public and promiscuous assemblies, is clearly forbidden to women in the Holy Oracles."
- "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saiththe law" (1 Corinthians 14:34-35, KJV).
- Before 1800, preachers were supposed to be educated at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Women were not allowed to attend colleges for professional or pastoral training.
- Men looked to the Bible to define women's roles in churches:
- Most men recognized women as subordinates in church life.
Religion Outside of Churches
- Religion was not confined to the church.
- Children were taught to read at home using the Bible.
- Families worshipped together at home during the week.
- Second Great Awakening = the revival of evangelical Protestantism (1790s to 1830s).

Family at Worship. Image from the tract "Family Worship," No. 18 (New York: American Tract Society, 1826).
Camp Meetings
- From the 1790s to 1840s, itinerant Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian preachers took sermons and worship services into fields and forests.
- This period is known in scholarship as the Second Great Awakening

Religious Camp Meeting, c. 1839. Watercolor by J. Maze Burbank.
Camp Meetings

Plan of the Camp. August 1809.
For a Methodist camp meeting in Fairfax, Va.
From the journal of Benjamin Latrobe.
Religion Outside of Churches
- Laypeople published Protestant sermons, tracts, cookbooks, advice manuals, and periodicals for the unchurched.
- Protestant print culture provided one of the primary means by which Americans received religious instruction.
- The Second Great Awakening brought religion outside of the churches and in many ways helped democratize American Protestantism by bringing more white and black women into positions of religious authority.
Moral Mothers

From the tract "On Early Religious Education," No. 143.
In Publications of the American Tract Society (New York: ATS, 1842.)
Image engraved by Alexander Anderson.
Moral Mothers

From the tract "Letters on Christian Education," No. 197.
In Publications of the American Tract Society (New York: ATS, 1849.)
Image engraved by Robert Roberts.
Moral Mothers

"A Christian House," c. 1869, p. 23.
From The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science by Catharine Esther Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York: J.B. Ford, 1869).
Parlor converted to a church.
From The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science by Catharine Esther Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York: J.B. Ford, 1869).

Moral Mothers

Left: "Christ Blessing the Little Children."
Right: Mother Instructing Children.
Both images from The Tract Primer (New York: American Tract Society, 1856).
Guardian Angel

"Hope Departing." From tract Disappointed Hope, No. 238. (New York: American Tract Society, 1832.
Republican Motherhood
Image of an American Woman's Home.
From The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science by Catharine Esther Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York: J.B. Ford, 1869), frontispiece.

Authors
Portrait of "Sarah Josepha Hale," in Godey's Lady's Book 41 (1850): 326, frontispiece.

Authors
Drawing of Catherine Beecher from Sarah J. Hale, ed. Woman's Record (1853), p. 578.

Challenging Republican Motherhood
Image of an American Woman's Home.
From The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science by Catharine Esther Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York: J.B. Ford, 1869), frontispiece.

- FROM SARAH J. HALE, GODEY'S LADIES' MAGAZINE, NOVEMBER 1837
Extending the Domestic Sphere
Preachers
Jarena Lee, Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee (Philadelphia, 1849), frontispiece. First published in 1836.

Preachers
Sojourner Truth, carte de visite, 1864.

Muscular Christianity
Dwight L. Moody, photograph, 1900.
