Mothers in Israel: Methodist Beginnings Through the Eyes of Women

Abstract

Biographical sketches and anecdotes curating exceptional women in early Methodism, those whom Fowler-Marchant considers to be ‘Mothers in Israel’, fill the book's pages. Readers will encounter the most familiar among them, Susanna Wesley, along with lesser-known women, like Mary Barritt Taft and Elizabeth Collett, who were mentored by Mary Bosanquet Fletcher. Fletcher stands tall in her cultivation of female friendship with and mentoring of Methodism's early women leaders, all of which Fowler-Marchant presents as highly influential in early Methodism's development. The various roles women played, such as housekeeper, class and band leader, writer, visitor of the sick, and public speaker, are dubbed by the author as ‘the backbone of early Methodism’. The book's stated purpose, in keeping with the Wesley's Foundery Books imprint to publish books ‘with an emphasis on church life and ministry’, is to present these women so that laypeople and clergy will engage them as mentors and spiritual guides. Still, readers should come prepared with familiarity of eighteenth-century religious groups (e.g. Puritans and Moravians), as well as contemporary scholars, like Samuel J. Rogal and others, who pop up now and then to play a part in the author's presentation.