Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England

by Susan Juster

Throughout most of the eighteenth century and particularly during the religious revivals of the Great Awakening, evangelical women in colonial New England participated vigorously in major church decisions, from electing pastors to disciplining backsliding members. After the Revolutionary War, however, women were excluded from political life, not only in their churches but in the new republic as well. Reconstructing the history of this change, Susan Juster shows how a common view of masculinity and femininity shaped both radical religion and revolutionary politics in America. Juster compares contemporary accounts of Baptist women and men who voice their conversion experiences, theological opinions, and proccupation with personal conflicts and pastoral controversies. At times, the ardent revivalist message of spiritual individualism appeared to sanction sexual anarchy. According to one contemporary, revival attempted "to make all things common, wives as well as goods ." The place of women at the center of evangelical life in the mid-eighteenth century, Juster finds, reflected the extent to which evangelical religion itself was perceived as "feminine"―emotional, sensional, and ultimately marginal. In the 1760s, the Baptist order began to refashion its mission, and what had once been a community of saints―often indifferent to conventional moral or legal constraints―was transformed into a society of churchgoers with a concern for legitimacy. As the church was reconceptualized as a "household" ruled by "father" figures, "feminine" qualities came to define the very essence of sin. Juster observes that an image of benevolent patriarchy threatened by the specter of female power was a central motif of the wider political culture during the age of democratic revolutions.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, 18th Century, American History, 19th Century

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Sam Newton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thesis: Juster’s main thesis is that the Great Awakening, particularly among Baptist congregations, brokered a new egalitarianism for women. They were allowed to preach and participate in congregational decision-making. This congregational style contributed to difficulties in cohesion and the church disciplined those who emphasized individualism over communitarianism. However, by the time of the American Revolution, evangelicalism desperately wanted formal recognition and so it sided with the revolutionary movement’s definitions of masculinity. In order to gain legitimacy, evangelicals sacrificed female equality and substituted a patriarchal and bureaucratic structure. Women who refused to conform to this new identity were labeled as “disorderly” and subject to church discipline. Increasingly, femininity became associated with sinfulness and women became subjugated to male ecclesiastical authority.

Methods: She uses a sample of congregational records from Baptists. She focuses on church disciplinary records, journals, and congregational statistics. She does acknowledge that her argument “is elusive and difficult to document” and that it requires a bit of conjecture (p. 8).

Strengths: Strong use of historiography and primary sources, particularly the conversion experiences of evangelicals and evangelical records. Also, the book contains a very strong gender analysis of the revolution, which as she points out, has been drastically neglected in the historiography.

Weaknesses: Unfortunately, most of her thesis remains entirely conjecture. She admits as much, saying frequently that she was forced to “read between the lines” of the historical record. She seems to have a strong need to pull sexual meaning out of people’s religious experiences. For example, a person who “loves” Christ has a sort of homoerotic desire to feminize himself as part of the religious experience. The revolution, she contends, caused evangelical men to seek to masculinize the theology. She really lacks direct evidence for any of these contentions and seems to make grand speculative analogies. Additionally, she cannot concretely account for the theological change other than to say that the Revolution must have caused it.

[Andee Nero · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, which is heavily steeped in gender theory, offers an interdisciplinary approach that brings a lot of underdeveloped aspects of colonial American religion to light. Sometimes, particularly where psychology is concerned, the author is purely speculative and some of the quantitative analysis is questionable, but, overall, Juster makes important points about the changing relationship between men, women, the Baptist church and the secular world into the nineteenth century.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn, I think I know what I'm writing my master's thesis on!