April R. Haynes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226284590
- eISBN:
- 9780226284767
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226284767.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
“Making the Conversation General” accounts for the end of the interracial moment in moral reform and documents women’s spreading campaign against the solitary vice. The Ladies Physiological Society ...
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“Making the Conversation General” accounts for the end of the interracial moment in moral reform and documents women’s spreading campaign against the solitary vice. The Ladies Physiological Society of Boston, led by white reform women, sponsored Mary Gove to teach women about sex and the solitary vice. Soon, members trained each other to speak publicly about the body. Traveling throughout rural New England, they lectured to hundreds of small moral reform societies making antimasturbation physiology central to Protestant white women’s sexual discourse. Members exchanged testimonials in intimate meetings that resembled twentieth-century consciousness-raising and elaborated a notion of sexual citizenship that influenced the early women’s rights movement. By 1845, however, the movement had fractured over the politics of virtue and purity. African Americans left to create autonomous black institutions like the Moral Reform Retreat; liberal white women embraced individualism and agitated for legal rights. The remaining white reformers returned to an ideology of sexual purity and protection. These “moral guardians” continued to spread the word against the solitary vice but no longer applied its logic to themselves. As missionaries of the new sexual ideology, they used antimasturbation physiology to protect children, discipline men, and convert Indigenous people to Christianity.Less
“Making the Conversation General” accounts for the end of the interracial moment in moral reform and documents women’s spreading campaign against the solitary vice. The Ladies Physiological Society of Boston, led by white reform women, sponsored Mary Gove to teach women about sex and the solitary vice. Soon, members trained each other to speak publicly about the body. Traveling throughout rural New England, they lectured to hundreds of small moral reform societies making antimasturbation physiology central to Protestant white women’s sexual discourse. Members exchanged testimonials in intimate meetings that resembled twentieth-century consciousness-raising and elaborated a notion of sexual citizenship that influenced the early women’s rights movement. By 1845, however, the movement had fractured over the politics of virtue and purity. African Americans left to create autonomous black institutions like the Moral Reform Retreat; liberal white women embraced individualism and agitated for legal rights. The remaining white reformers returned to an ideology of sexual purity and protection. These “moral guardians” continued to spread the word against the solitary vice but no longer applied its logic to themselves. As missionaries of the new sexual ideology, they used antimasturbation physiology to protect children, discipline men, and convert Indigenous people to Christianity.
Lewis V. Baldwin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195380316
- eISBN:
- 9780199869299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195380316.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The emphasis is on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s struggle to define the church in intellectual and theoretical terms, a struggle that began with and extended through his academic training at Morehouse, ...
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The emphasis is on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s struggle to define the church in intellectual and theoretical terms, a struggle that began with and extended through his academic training at Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston (1944–54). King’s student papers are examined for what they reveal concerning his views on church history and images of the church as authority, tradition, hierarchy, and institution. The claim is that King’s academic years afforded the initial context for the working out of his understanding of various images of the church (i.e., body of Christ, household of God, fellowship of believers, conscience of the state, chief moral guardian of society, symbol of the beloved community) in theoretical terms. The chapter ends with an analysis of King’s sermons, speeches, interviews, and writings concerning the church and its role in society.Less
The emphasis is on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s struggle to define the church in intellectual and theoretical terms, a struggle that began with and extended through his academic training at Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston (1944–54). King’s student papers are examined for what they reveal concerning his views on church history and images of the church as authority, tradition, hierarchy, and institution. The claim is that King’s academic years afforded the initial context for the working out of his understanding of various images of the church (i.e., body of Christ, household of God, fellowship of believers, conscience of the state, chief moral guardian of society, symbol of the beloved community) in theoretical terms. The chapter ends with an analysis of King’s sermons, speeches, interviews, and writings concerning the church and its role in society.
Heloise Brown
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719065309
- eISBN:
- 9781781700457
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719065309.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
This book explores the pervasive influence of pacifism on Victorian feminism. It provides an account of Victorian women who campaigned for peace, and of the many feminists who incorporated pacifist ...
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This book explores the pervasive influence of pacifism on Victorian feminism. It provides an account of Victorian women who campaigned for peace, and of the many feminists who incorporated pacifist ideas into their writing on women and gender. The book explores feminists' ideas about the role of women within the empire, their eligibility for citizenship, and their ability to act as moral guardians in public life. It shows that such ideas made use – in varying ways – of gendered understandings of the role of force and the relevance of arbitration and other pacifist strategies. The book examines the work of a wide range of individuals and organisations, from well-known feminists such as Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler and Millicent Garrett Fawcett to lesser-known figures such as the Quaker pacifists Ellen Robinson and Priscilla Peckover.Less
This book explores the pervasive influence of pacifism on Victorian feminism. It provides an account of Victorian women who campaigned for peace, and of the many feminists who incorporated pacifist ideas into their writing on women and gender. The book explores feminists' ideas about the role of women within the empire, their eligibility for citizenship, and their ability to act as moral guardians in public life. It shows that such ideas made use – in varying ways – of gendered understandings of the role of force and the relevance of arbitration and other pacifist strategies. The book examines the work of a wide range of individuals and organisations, from well-known feminists such as Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler and Millicent Garrett Fawcett to lesser-known figures such as the Quaker pacifists Ellen Robinson and Priscilla Peckover.
