Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire

As the title of the anthology Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire (1800-1920) indicates, the contributions in this book are concerned with a depiction of the relationship between women, Christianity, and the imperial context of the long nineteenth century. Edited by Janet Wootton, this volume part of a series covering the Cultural History of Women in Christianity and ought to focus “on one of the most dynamic, exciting, and destructive periods in human history” (xii) – the first time in human history that people started to act and think truly globally. As it set outs to write a new history in light of postcolonial theory, it reflects upon the actions of mainly British and US-American Christian women and their relationship with the empire(s) with some small examples of how female missionaries impacted the lives of other women around the globe. However, it fails to truly engage with postcolonial theory because it continues to write a linear history of Euro-American-Christianity, the Western expansion of idea(l)s and the emancipatory effects of Christianity in the domestic sphere and its spread worldwide while mere acknowledging the racialized and classist hierarchizations that structured these intercultural and interreligious encounters.

To illustrate the issues with this linear history, I have divided the review into three parts. Firstly, my review will focus on the chapters that acknowledge the issues of colonialism and the imperialist approach to feminism, yet inadvertently generalize the liberating impact of Christianity on women. Secondly, I will focus on those chapters that try to bring in differing voices, either from other parts of the world or from different perspectives that do not focus on the question of agency. Lastly, I argue that it is the composition of both that forecloses any critical and new engagement with common tropes and narratives of the history of women in Christianity. This is to the detriment of those individual chapters of the anthology that provide laudable and substantial engagement with their source material and with the leading theoretical questions of scholarship on the history of gender, colonialism, and religion.

The contributions by Julie Melnyk, Carol Engelhardt Herringer, Cynthia Aalders and Angharad Eyre make up one half of the book and mainly deal with the possibility of empowerment that Christianity offered for women in various part of 19^th century society: in the domestic sphere, as saints, in new theological conceptions and in education. The changes that occurred in these spheres were dependent on the changes that happened in the global context of colonialism and missionary enterprises. As such – and this is shown by Jonathan Kangwa, Kuzipa Nalwamba, Seonyi Lee, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Tamara Cooper, Wong Wai-Yin Christina, Chiu Kai-Li, and Louise Gamble, as well as Peggy Jackson and Janet Wootton – these transformations considering women, power, and Christianity in the USA and Britain, also touched upon the lives of other women in the world, in Korea, Southern Africa, Northern Rhodesia, China, and Taiwan. However, these contributions are unfortunately considerably shorter than the lengthy chapters mentioned before.

Lastly, the essay by Jill Peterfeso on the popular image of Christian domesticity and how this did not align with all Christian women (e.g. Shakers and Catholic nuns), but could still be used by them to gain power, and the work by Jacqueline R. Devries on the relationship between religion, science, and gender need to be mentioned separately, as they are bending the structure of the anthology. They bring in fresh perspectives from disciplines other than just the history of Christianity and innovatively ask for new conceptualizations and configurations within an interdisciplinary scholarship on this period.

As argued before, there are two major problems with this edited volume, despite the great work done in the individual chapters: in general, all contributions agree with the presumption that Christianity held the possibility for empowering women or for women gaining agency  in the long 19^th century. This power was inherently connected to the imperial forces and missionary enterprises. This, by itself, is not a novel conclusion, even though it cannot be claimed loudly enough. However, this leads to the perception that the lives and impacts of Christian women on the other side of imperial power is not considered worthy of scholarship (even the chapters that focus on non-Euro-American contexts, do not consider these women in detail). Furthermore, in effect the anthology continues to write histories that confirm the colonial binary of power between the colonizer and the colonized. This results in the concealment of global women’s agency in Christianity during this era.

In an anthology that sets out to deal with women in Christianity in the Age of Empire from a postcolonial perspective, the effect that a specific composition will have for the readers needs to be considered and evaluated. When the lengthy articles only deal with the power of Euro-American women and the short contributions on other women only mention how missionaries influenced their lives, the colonial matrix of power that is embedded in the history of Christianity continues to permeate scholarship, influencing the teaching of that history, and preventing any postcolonial engagement with the source material. Such should go beyond an appraisal of Christianity for giving Anglo-American women power that then could extend to other women in the Empire because of the benefitting effects of the missionary enterprise. A few brief references to the other side of the story, namely the brutal extinction of indigenous knowledge (mentioned in a handful of the contributions), cannot break the hierarchical binary of colonial power that is perpetuated through this scholarship. This, despite the many examples of indigenous Christianities worldwide where women’s engagement remains very relevant up to this day.

Nevertheless, the authors of the individual chapters must be highly praised for their in-depth analyses, which will be useful for students, early-career researchers and established scholars in the field who are looking for some general overview into the lives of women in Christianity during the 19^th century. It will also be of value to those who are interested in particular case studies, as the source materials used in the chapters are extensive. However, the readers must remain critical of some of the assumptions and homogenizing conclusions of the volume.

Jessica A. Albrecht is a teaching fellow in religious studies at the University of Bonn.

Jessica Albrecht

Date Of Review:

November 29, 2023