Without benefit of clergy : women and the pastoral relationship in nineteenth-century American culture
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Without benefit of clergy : women and the pastoral relationship in nineteenth-century American culture
(Religion in America series)
Oxford University Press, 2003
Available at / 3 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-283) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The common view of the nineteenth-century pastoral relationship-found in both contemporary popular accounts and 20th-century scholarship-was that women and clergymen formed a natural alliance and enjoyed a particular influence over each other. In Without Benefit of Clergy, Karin Gedge tests this thesis by examining the pastoral relationship from the perspective of the minister, the female parishioner, and the larger culture. The question that troubled
religious women seeking counsel, says Gedge, was: would their minister respect them, help them, honor them? Surprisingly, she finds, the answer was frequently negative. Gedge supports her conclusion with evidence from a wide range of previously untapped primary sources including pastoral manuals, seminary
students' and pastors' journals, women's diaries and letters, pamphlets, sentimental and sensational novels, and The Scarlet Letter.
by "Nielsen BookData"