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The Making of Bible Women in the Fujian Zenana Mission from the 1880s to the 1950s

Zhou Yun

in Christian Women in Chinese Society: The Anglican Story

This chapter explores women missionaries from the Church of England Zenana Mission Society and their Bible women in Fujian. It focuses on the intercultural exchange between these two groups of women ... More

This chapter explores women missionaries from the Church of England Zenana Mission Society and their Bible women in Fujian. It focuses on the intercultural exchange between these two groups of women from entirely different backgrounds from the 1880s to the 1950s, with an aim to address Chinese experience from a transnational perspective. It shows that Bible women were central figures in a process of proselytizing local women and were formed mainly through a series of intercultural communications with their Western mission workers. The author argues that Bible women were the combined historic product of a particular Chinese historical and cultural context and a worldwide evangelical workforce by Western women, developed through transnational interactions and nurtured in a relationship of sisterhood and friendship.Less

Eve’s Curse

Kimberly A. Hamlin

in From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America

Chapter One argues that the Genesis creation story played a defining role in debates about women’s rights for generations and that this is why so many women responded enthusiastically to Darwinian ... More

Chapter One argues that the Genesis creation story played a defining role in debates about women’s rights for generations and that this is why so many women responded enthusiastically to Darwinian evolutionary theory in the second half of the nineteenth century. By refuting special creation and asserting human-animal kinship, Darwin offered attentive readers with a new way to think about the differences between women and men and an alternative, naturalistic creation story. Ultimately, Darwinian evolution inspired some freethinking (a nineteenth-century term referring to agnostics and atheists) feminists to renounce Christianity all together, forcing a split in the women’s rights movement. After 1890, in the wake of the controversy caused by Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, the women most influenced by Darwinian evolution were ousted from the largest suffrage organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). This chapter establishes the enthusiasm that a variety of women had for evolutionary theory in the 1870s and 1880s and why, after the 1890 merger of NAWSA, the women who continued to speak and write about the feminist applications of evolutionary theory did so in free thought, sex reform, and socialist venues, rather than within the suffrage movement.Less

The Fourth Wave: Reimagining the German Jewish Bible

Abigail Gillman

in A History of German Jewish Bible Translation

The three translators of the fourth wave believed that modern people’s relationship to the Bible, and to religion, had become reified, and that translation, undertaken in a modernist vein, could ... More

The three translators of the fourth wave believed that modern people’s relationship to the Bible, and to religion, had become reified, and that translation, undertaken in a modernist vein, could provoke new religiosity. They rejected the scholarly methods of their forerunners and also the axiom that a German Jewish translation had to be clear, correct, and beautiful. In Die fünf Bücher der Weisung, Buber and Rosenzweig deployed German to defamiliarize Hebrew scripture; to channel the voice beneath the written text; and to facilitate an intimate theological encounter. Bertha Pappenheim, social activist, pedagogue, and writer, began translating the Tsene-Rene, the medieval Yiddish Women’s Bible, into a folksy, Yiddish-inflected German. Pappenheim believed that the Bible ought to promote simple piety and ethical practice. Pappenheim was Buber's student and friend; she also lectured at Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus. Proponents of the Jewish cultural renaissance, all three produced groundbreaking translations before turning to the Bible: The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln (Pappenheim); The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (Buber); and Ninety-Two Poems of Judah Halevi (Rosenzweig). In the face of manifold crises of the early twentieth century, these three thinkers took radical measures to insure Jewish survival and renewal.Less

Raising “Our Girls”

Tracy A. Thomas

in Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law

This chapter addresses Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s feminist views on maternal custody and parenting. She advocated granting legal rights of child custody to mothers in the event of separation or ... More

This chapter addresses Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s feminist views on maternal custody and parenting. She advocated granting legal rights of child custody to mothers in the event of separation or divorce. Stanton challenged the separate spheres ideology and argued for women to work in paid employment as well as to have pecuniary and social power in the home. To bring about this transformation of gender roles, Stanton articulated feminist parenting ideals of reconstructing gender by raising the next generation of boys and girls in equal moral, educational, and social ways. She took this message to the populace in speeches on the Lyceum tour over eleven years. Ultimately, as this chapter concludes, Stanton argued that religious doctrine must be reformed in order to transform the gendered social roles of women and men, as she articulated in the feminist theology of her Woman’s Bible.Less

Theosophical Luciferianism and Feminist Celebrations of Eve

Per Faxneld

in Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture

Chapter 4 deals with Theosophical Lucifierianism and its feminist implications. The argument is that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s explicit sympathy for the Devil should be understood not only as part ... More

Chapter 4 deals with Theosophical Lucifierianism and its feminist implications. The argument is that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s explicit sympathy for the Devil should be understood not only as part of an esoteric world view, but that we must also consider the political—primarily feminist—implications of such ideas. Several feminists, it would appear, drew on Blavatsky’s Satanic counter-myth to attack the patriarchal use of traditional Bible readings to keep women in their place. Blavatsky’s counter-reading of the Bible is here related to a selection of nineteenth-century feminist texts treating Genesis 3, in particular those from The Woman’s Bible (2 vols., 1895, 1898), edited by the leading American suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), a project on which several female Theosophists were among the collaborators.Less

The Bible and the Legacy of First Wave Feminism

Claudia Setzer

in The Bible in American Life

In its arguments for women’s rights and the vote, first wave feminism showed a variety of attitudes toward the Bible and its authority. Sarah Grimké and Frances Willard argued that the biblical text ... More

In its arguments for women’s rights and the vote, first wave feminism showed a variety of attitudes toward the Bible and its authority. Sarah Grimké and Frances Willard argued that the biblical text endorsed women’s equality and only misinterpretation and outright manipulation could make it say otherwise. Sojourner Truth and Anna Julia Cooper saw the Bible as the ally of African-American women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, editor of The Woman’s Bible, and others saw the Bible as a tool in women’s oppression. Ernestine Rose maintained that women’s rights stemmed from human rights and natural law alone. Lucretia Mott suggested the text had lost its utility, as it had in abolitionism. The Bible lost much of its authority in the struggle for women’s rights as the twentieth century dawned, but elements of the three stances toward the Bible and women’s rights continue to be visible in second wave and third wave feminism.Less

She Painted Her Eyes and Looked Out of the Window (2 Kgs 9:30): Cosmetics and the Other

Laura Quick

in Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible

Evidence for the production and application of perfumed oil and cosmetics is found throughout the ancient world. In contrast to the wider ancient Near East, where both men and women utilize ... More

Evidence for the production and application of perfumed oil and cosmetics is found throughout the ancient world. In contrast to the wider ancient Near East, where both men and women utilize cosmetics, in the Hebrew Bible cosmetics were associated with women in general—and with a certain type of woman in particular. Cosmetics are connected with immoral behaviour and deviant sexual practices. Yet certain biblical texts feature a female character applying perfumed oils without censure. This chapter considers these women and their application of perfumed oils in the books of Esther and Ruth from the Hebrew Bible, and the book of Judith and the story of Susanna from the Greek Bible. Turning from perfume to eye kohl, I then explore Jezebel’s application of eye pigment in the books of Kings. Examining evidence from the wider ancient world, we can uncover dimensions of how the painted eye communicated status and identity, anxiety and power, with implications for the relationship between self and other in the world of the Hebrew Bible.Less

“But He Indeed Will Rule Over You”: Violence and the Personhood of Women in Ancient Israel

T. M. Lemos

in Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts

This chapter argues that women, like foreigners, were subject to having their personhood erased by those who were dominant over them. The chapter begins with an assessment of whether women were ... More

This chapter argues that women, like foreigners, were subject to having their personhood erased by those who were dominant over them. The chapter begins with an assessment of whether women were considered persons in ancient Israel, addressing in detail the issue of whether they were considered to be property. Responding to previous research on this question, the chapter contends that women were treated in the ways they were not because they were the property of their husbands but because they were subordinates, and their subordination had clear physical dimensions. Just as subordinate men were liable to having their personhood erased in certain situations, the position of having dominance over women as husbands and fathers also entailed the ability to erase women’s personhood through violence in cases of transgression.Less

He Will Wash His Garments in Wine (Gen 49:11): Dress and Ritual

Laura Quick

in Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible

This chapter takes its starting point from the notion that, for the biblical authors, clothing and jewellery symbolically encoded the personhood of its wearer. These items could thus manifest and ... More

This chapter takes its starting point from the notion that, for the biblical authors, clothing and jewellery symbolically encoded the personhood of its wearer. These items could thus manifest and modify the body in ritual contexts. As such, the manipulation and destruction of clothing items in the ritual context took on a heavy symbolic value. After the ritual use of textiles in the wider ancient Near East is explored, this insight is shown to explicate a number of the more difficult references to clothing in biblical literature. Moreover, since the production of textiles was gendered in the ancient world, this special function of clothing provided women with agency in ritual and religious settings. In these texts, textiles afford women with the means to become experts in rituals associated with life and death. These references therefore attest to the use of clothing and textiles in an important but largely unacknowledged aspect of female ritual expertise.Less

Introduction

Kristin Kobes Du Mez

in A New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism

Holy Garments for Glory and for Beauty (Exod 28:2): Dress and Identity

Laura Quick

in Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible

In this chapter, I explore the function of dress in its wider social context, informed by anthropological and sociological approaches to the body. I consider the role of clothing as a disguise in the ... More

In this chapter, I explore the function of dress in its wider social context, informed by anthropological and sociological approaches to the body. I consider the role of clothing as a disguise in the stories of Pughat, from the Ugaritic epic of Aqhat, and Tamar, from the book of Genesis. These stories reveal the gendered dimensions of clothing. At the same time, as something which can be changed at will, clothing allows these female characters to adopt and discard various personas, and in so doing to affect a change in their social status and positioning. Moving from female bodies to male bodies, I then consider the dress of the High Priest prescribed by the book of Exodus. The elaborate and ornate clothing worn by the High Priest manifests his liturgical power. But beyond this, these garments are what mark individuals as priests, granting them privileged access to the divine. We will see that clothing is central to the construction of identity—and the articulation of power.Less

A Gold Ring in a Swine’s Snout (Prov 11:22): Jewellery and Personal Religion

Laura Quick

in Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible

This chapter explores jewellery in the Hebrew Bible in light of the material evidence from the ancient Levant. I consider the function of jewellery in biblical texts, focused upon how these objects ... More

This chapter explores jewellery in the Hebrew Bible in light of the material evidence from the ancient Levant. I consider the function of jewellery in biblical texts, focused upon how these objects modify and ritualize the body. The ability of jewellery to index personhood is utilized in order to explore and unpack the use of jewellery in votive offerings. Moving beyond these insights, I then turn to the recovery of amulets inscribed with biblical passages—the earliest written evidence for biblical literature. As amulets, these objects served an apotropaic, ritual function. In biblical texts, we see this in action in the production of the golden calf, which is made from the jewellery of the Israelites. Such items therefore provide access to dimensions of personal religion and religious worship carried out outside of the official sphere. But by making sure that jewellery was utilized in the furnishing of the Temple, the biblical writers circumscribe this personal piety, making it compliant to the larger dominant model of the official Temple cult.Less

Protestant Entrance and Christian Expansion (1840–1950)

David W. Kling

in A History of Christian Conversion

Beginning in the 1840s, Anglo-French gunboat diplomacy and “unequal treaties” forcibly opened China to European economic interests and, in so doing, introduced unprecedented opportunities for ... More

Beginning in the 1840s, Anglo-French gunboat diplomacy and “unequal treaties” forcibly opened China to European economic interests and, in so doing, introduced unprecedented opportunities for Christian expansion. Catholic missionaries and priests returned to nurture “Old Catholics” and plant new missions, and for the first time Protestants appeared on the scene with millennial hopes of reaching “China’s millions.” This chapter begins by giving general attention to reasons for the Chinese to reject or accept the Christian message. It then turns to specific discussions of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the China Inland Mission, “Pastor Xi” (Xi Liaozhi), and first-generation Fuzhou Protestants. It concludes with an examination of the views of American theological liberals who, beginning in the late nineteenth century, rejected the traditional Christian emphasis on the necessity of conversion.Less

Peaceful Contact

Kathryn T. Long

in God in the Rainforest: Missionaries and the Waorani in Amazonian Ecuador

This chapter describes the trek into Wao territory in the Ecuadorian rainforest, the peaceful encounter in October 1958 between evangelical missionaries Rachel Saint and Elisabeth Elliot and Dayomæ’s ... More

This chapter describes the trek into Wao territory in the Ecuadorian rainforest, the peaceful encounter in October 1958 between evangelical missionaries Rachel Saint and Elisabeth Elliot and Dayomæ’s kin, and the missionaries’ early days living in the small Wao clearing that came to be named Tewæno. Saint and Elliot encountered a group of fifty-six Waorani, including the men who had killed their loved ones. Dayomæ continued her leadership role both as a cultural broker, giving the Wao men short haircuts and encouraging the use of clothing, and an indigenous Bible woman, telling her kin through stories that God wanted them to stop their violent spearing vendettas. Saint and Elliot tried to adapt to Wao culture while continuing to learn the language. American evangelicals were thrilled at an apparent answer to prayer. Media outlets publicized the story, and each of the missionary women signed her own book contract.Less