From Preachers to Suffragists: Woman's Rights and Religious Conviction in the Lives of Three Nineteenth-Century

by Beverly Zink-Sawyer

The women's rights movement in nineteenth-century America has primarily been interpreted as a secular movement. However, in From Preachers to Suffragists , Beverly Zink-Sawyer examines the lives of three nineteenth-century clergywomen--Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Olympia Brown, and Anna Howard Shaw--who, seeing their calling to the suffrage movement as an extension of their call to ministry, left the parish to join and become leaders in the movement. Zink-Sawyer tells the stories of their courageous lives, quoting their sermons and writings and tracing their struggles before and after ordination. In doing so, she persuasively demonstrates the vital importance of these leaders--of their religious rhetoric and their theological leadership--in shaping the movement as a whole, reclaiming its religious roots and making a major, even corrective, contribution to American history.

200 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2003

Reviews

[Catherine Belles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title may lead you to think this is only for Pastors or preachers. Far from it, this is a book of "permanent revolution" to quote Mao and West Wing. It is about the never ending struggle for women to belong to themselves. In the description of three women leaving their pulpits and criss-cross the country working for a very difficult political change, we see a personal reinterpreting of their call from God.
History repeats itself. Man had "usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for [woman] a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God."(PG 7 - 8) Have we not hear this again and again? In the past 100+ years, it surfaced during the first debate of birth control (1910 - 1956), the ERA debates (1923 to current) and again in the current election cycle, that many men want to control women's lives, our choices and our theology.
The description the philosophy "True Womanhood" and "plenary inspiration" of the Bible are helpful historical contexts. "Woman in the cult of True Womanhood presented by women's magazines, gift annuals and religious literature of the nineteenth century, was the hostage in the home...If anyone dared tamper with the complex of virtues...he was damned immediately as an enemy of God, of civilization and of the Republic."
At this time, many women no longer see the need for a theological justification of their independence. The Christian Church has repeatedly declared goodly chunks of humans as unworthy of independence, for their gender, race, physical or mental abilities,or sexuality. So many people have said "good-bye" to the Christian Church. For those of us who believe God's Word is true for all people and the Christian church is worth working for, this historical description may provide strength for the daily battles we face.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biographies of three female preachers ordained in the US in the 19th century, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first known woman fully ordained as a Christian minister (in 1853). All three went on to work for women's enfranchisement. The book's argument becomes repetitive at times, but on the whole this is an interesting and useful depiction of three remarkable people whose faith drove their political activism.