Redeeming the southern family : evangelical women and domestic devotion in the Antebellum South / Scott Stephan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stephan, Scott, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christian women--Religious life.

Christian women.

Evangelicalism--Southern States--History--19th century.

Evangelicalism.

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

Southern States.

Southern States--Religious life and customs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the years leading up to the Civil War, southern evangelical denominations moved from the fringes to the mainstream of the American South. Scott Stephan argues that female Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians played a crucial role in this transformation. While other scholars have pursued studies of southern evangelicalism in the context of churches, meetinghouses, and revivals, Stephan looks at the domestic rituals over which southern women had increasing authority-from consecrating newborns to God's care to ushering dying kin through life's final stages. Laymen and clergymen alike celebrated the contributions of these pious women to the experience and expansion of evangelicalism across the South. This acknowledged domestic authority allowed some women to take on more public roles in the conversion and education of southern youth within churches and academies, although always in the name of family and always cloaked in the language of Christian self-abnegation. At the same time, however, women's work in the name of domestic devotion often put them at odds with slaves, children, or husbands in their households who failed to meet their religious expectations and thereby jeopardized evangelical hopes of heavenly reunification of the family. Stephan uses the journals and correspondence of evangelical women from across the South to understand the interconnectedness of women's personal, family, and public piety. Rather than seeing evangelical women as entirely oppressed or resigned to the limits of their position in a patriarchal slave society, Stephan seeks to capture a sense of what agency was available to women through their moral authority.

Contents:

Introduction: From Cane Ridge to the Bible Belt : evangelicalism, gender, and the southern household in the Antebellum era

Taming the second great awakening : evangelical identity and worship patterns in the Antebellum South

Courting women, courting God : strenuous courtships and holy unions

Improvising on the ideal : evangelical marriages in the Antebellum South

"Unto whom much is given" : childbirth, child rearing, and coming of age in the evangelical home

Authoring the good death : illness, deathbed narratives, and women's authority

Epilogue: "We walk by faith and not by sight" : Evangelicals and the Civil War-era South.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-293) and index.

ISBN:

9781282553484

1282553488

9780820336411

0820336416

OCLC:

593297311