Leah Payne.Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century.

Abstract

The turn of the century was a banner time for women in American Protestantism. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was in full swing, dwarfing the numbers, influence, and financial clout of other causes, including the suffrage movement. Independent women’s organizations for home and foreign missions were likewise outstripping their denominational “parent” societies, marshaling the energy of thousands upon thousands of women in local societies, training and supervising their recruits for the mission field, and raising money by the millions. Perhaps, not surprisingly, during this time the major Protestant denominations came as close to approving women’s ordination as they would until the mid-twentieth century. The era also produced female celebrities on the revival circuit, no longer the moral paragons of nineteenth-century sentimentality, but famous in their own right, with stories as compelling as their pulpit-pounding male counterparts. Two of the best-known women of this era were Maria Woodworth-Etter and Aimee Semple McPherson, both Pentecostals with colorful backstories. They are the focus of Leah Payne’s thoughtfully conceived and well-researched study.