Divine destiny : gender and race in nineteenth-century Protestantism / Carolyn A. Haynes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Haynes, Carolyn A., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex role--Religious aspects--Christianity--History--19th century.

Sex role.

Protestant churches--United States--History--19th century.

Protestant churches.

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

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxi, 190 pages)

Other Title:

Divine Destiny

Place of Publication:

Jackson, Mississippi : University Press of Mississippi, 2022.

Summary:

American culture was firmly undergirded by two dominant rhetorics during the nineteenth century: manifest destiny and domesticity. The first celebrated a divinely ordained spread of democracy, individualism, capitalism, and civilization throughout the North American continent. The second codified "natural" differences and duties of American men and women. While the two rhetorics were touted as "universal" in their application and appeal, in actuality both assumed a belief in masculine Anglo-Saxon American superiority. The triumph of the nation could be accomplished only through the concomitant removal, acculturation, or elimination of nonwhite peoples and through a careful circumscription of white women. The rhetorics not only were linked through a virulent ethnocentrism and misogyny but also were connected through their reliance on the Protestant belief system and on the church itself. Yet, curiously, despite their exclusion from the Protestant rhetorics of manifest destiny and domesticity, the nineteenth century featured a remarkable growth in the conversion of women and nonwhite men to the Protestant faith. Why did women and nonwhite men seek to join a dominant religion that in many ways set out to limit and oppress them? This book responds to that question by exploring the actual words and rhetorical choices made by some of the most progressive Protestant white, African-American, and Native American thinkers of the era: Olaudah Equiano, William Apess, Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, and Amanda Berry Smith. It argues that American Protestantism was both prohibitive and constitutive, offering its followers an expedient, acceptable but limited means for assuming social and political power and for forming a mutually empathetic, relational notion of self while at the same time foreclosing the possibility for more radical roles and social change. At Miami University of Ohio Carolyn A. Haynes is an assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies and director of Windate Writing Center.

Contents:

'From conquering to conquer' : Olaudah Equiano, George Whitefield, and a new Christian masculinity

'A mark for them all to ... hiss at' : the formation of Methodist and Pequot identity in the conversion narrative of William Apess

Ladders and quilts : Catharine Beecher's and Harriet Beecher Stowe's visions of the Christian subject and nation

Uncovering the 'mother-heart of God' : the cultural performance of the Christian feminists

Untangling the biblical knot : reconsidering Elizabeth Cady Stanton and The woman's Bible.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Includes bibliographical references and index.