Women, Gender, and Religion in the Early Americas

Abstract

AbstractThe historical study of women and religion in the early Americas has garnered substantial scholarship in the last 30 years. The influence of women’s history and feminist studies has generated great interest on the topic of gender and religion. Scholars have analyzed women’s religious history using indices of race, class, and gender to produce nuanced histories. This work has shown the complex contours of female spirituality in the early Americas. Female laity both accepted and questioned male religious leadership and sought meaningful spiritual experiences in myriad contexts, such as the sanctuary, household, and community. Studies have been done on a wide range of topics relating to women and religion, such as conversion, preaching, mysticism, speech, healing, domesticity, monasticism, witchcraft, sexuality, and the body. Women in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish traditions have been examined, as have Native American, African American, and mixed race women in Spanish, French, and British America. Their historical experience reveals an ongoing tension between religious hierarchy and female pursuits of piety. Scholarly literature on ‘women religious’, that is, Catholic nuns, demonstrates that they exercised power, even while working under a male‐dominated ecclesiastical authority, in both North and South American settlements from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Female members of radical Protestant groups, such as the Quakers, Shakers, and Moravians, participated in communities that promoted gender ideologies divergent from the dominant culture. The study of women’s religious history will continue to ponder the multiple meanings and interactions of spirituality, gender, and power within early American societies.