Beyond the pulpit : women's rhetorical roles in the antebellum religious press / Lisa J. Shaver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shaver, Lisa J.

Series:

Pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women in the Methodist Church--United States--History--19th century.

Women in the Methodist Church.

Methodist women--Religious life--United States--History--19th century.

Methodist women.

Methodist Church--United States--Periodicals--History--19th century.

Methodist Church.

Methodist women--Press coverage--United States--History--19th century.

Women and journalism--United States--History--19th century.

Women and journalism.

History.

Press coverage.

Periodicals.

Religious life.

United States--Church history--19th century.

United States.

Church history.

Physical Description:

x, 169 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2012]

Summary:

Women played a significant role in helping the Methodist Church become America's largest denomination by the mid-nineteenth century, yet, women's official roles diminished during that time. In Beyond the Pulpit, Lisa Shaver examines Methodist periodicals as a rhetorical space to which women turned to find and make self-meaning.

In 1818, Methodist Magazine first published "memoirs" that eulogized women as powerful witnesses for their faith on their deathbeds. As Shaver observes, it was only in death that a woman could achieve the status of minister. Another Methodist publication, the Christian Advocate, became America's largest circulated weekly by the mid-1830s. It featured the Ladies' Department, a column that reinforced the canon of women as dutiful wives, mothers, and household managers. Here, the church also affirmed women in the important rhetorical and evangelical role of domestic preacher. Outside the Ladies'. Department, women were increasingly portrayed as models of piety and charity, benefactors, organizers, Sunday school administrators and teachers, missionaries, and ministers' assistants. These texts cast women into nondomestic roles that were institutionally sanctioned and widely disseminated.

By 1841, the Ladies' Repository and Gatherings of the West was engaging women in discussions of religion, politics, education, science, and a variety of intellectual debates. By providing a forum for women writers and readers, the church gave them an official rhetorical space and the license to define their own roles and spheres of influence. As such, the periodicals of the Methodist Church became an important public venue in which women's voices were heard and their identities explored. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: looking beyond the pulpit

Dying well

Women's deathbed pulpits

Contained inside the ladies' department

Stepping outside the ladies' department

A magazine of their own

Epilogue: ambiguous and liminal spaces.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822961697

0822961695

OCLC:

729341803