"A home without walls": WMU and the reinterpretation of gender ideology.

Holcomb, Carol Crawford

In 1913 Fannie E. S. Heck, a long-time president of Woman's Missionary Union (WMU), wrote a history of the Protestant women's missionary movement titled In Royal Service. (1) In this work Heck compared a woman of the antebellum South to a woman of her own generation.

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She began her study with a description of a "typical" southern woman in the 1830s. "To be a girl was to have the best of everything; to be the pet whose beauty was admired, whose accomplishments were extolled, whose favor was sought," explained Heck. Heck's model antebellum woman was "mistress of a large household, rising early, directing every detail of a family of many members and many servants." The role of this southern woman was "to be mother to her own large flock; model, guide, physician, provider, teacher, priestess to the slaves on the plantation or around the big city home." (2)

The woman Fannie Heck described led her entire life within the domestic sphere, under the authority of the male members of her family: "Though full of care she would always be protected and admired; shielded from the rough winds of business, all contact with any but those chosen for her friends, her father, brothers, husband standing between her and the big world of which she must only know the beauty and to whose rude side she must be blind. Such, she had been taught, was the birth-right of southern women." (3)

Heck deliberately emphasized the role of the southern belle as the beautiful, sheltered woman with little access to education, limited knowledge of the world at large, few professional options, and no access to business. She painted this portrait as a foil for the "modern" woman of her own generation in the second decade of the twentieth century. Heck's modern woman could be found well outside of the typical domestic realm. In the last chapter of her history Fannie Heck wrote: "How shall we sketch the woman of today? Shall we typify her in cap and gown; with the thermometer and scalpel; with book and globe; with ledger and adding machine; with cuffs and apron; with notebook and typewriter; before a flying loom; or both mistress and maid at home?" (4)

This modern woman possessed an "outspoken reliance on herself," Heck wrote, and was prepared to "make that reliance good by incursions into any honorable profession, all of which have been forced open at her demand." Heck believed that the accomplishments of her generation marked a new day for southern women. They boldly entered a new century as college graduates, doctors, teachers, businesswomen, and writers. Moreover, Heck believed that women's missionary societies had facilitated this transformation from true womanhood to new womanhood. Twenty-first century women may view Heck's optimistic portrait of the "modern woman" with a great deal of skepticism. Nevertheless, Heck and her colleagues at the turn of the twentieth century touted their progress--not only as Christians, but also as women--and were conscious that they were moving beyond the earlier accepted boundaries of domesticity. Baptist women took the basic assumptions of antebellum domesticity and reconstructed them into a New South "lady" who would, according to Heck, "demand ... recognition in all walks of life." (5)

A cursory reading of Baptist women's literature may lead one to doubt that WMU leaders were interested in expanding women's roles because there are so few overt challenges to the status quo. (6) However, a careful study of the literature reveals a more nuanced portrait of women who quietly sought to broaden their influence. (7) It is true that WMU leadership did not publicly endorse the suffrage movement. WMU historian Catherine Allen states that WMU's commitment to missions overrode every other allegiance: "No national WMU officer is known ever to have expressed an opinion," reports Allen, "much less campaigned in public, for suffrage." (8)

In order to engage in missionary work, Southern Baptist women were forced to eschew any connection to the suffrage movement. Antagonism toward women's rights in their denomination bolstered resistance to the efforts of women to organize a national missionary society. Their mission activities were sharply curtailed at times by the fear of "women's rights" among male leaders. Any expansion of women's sphere--even into missions--was perceived as a move toward the dreaded emancipation. That is why Fannie Heck made no reference to the women's rights movement in her book, In Royal Service, whereas northern Baptist writer Helen Barrett Montgomery featured it prominently in Western Women in Eastern Lands. The presence of women lecturing about the South raised a specter in the hearts of many Southern Baptists that remains a source of contention within the denomination to this day: female preachers. The women's rights movement placed Baptist women on the defensive. Those who wished to expand their influence studiously avoided references to "rights" and continued to promote attitudes about women that were common in the Victorian era.

Victorian domestic ideology (variously called the "Cult of True Womanhood" or the "Cult of Domesticity") describes the constellation of middle-class gender assumptions that emerged in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The language of "true womanhood" punctuated the discourse of the period. (9) Women's magazines, religious literature, novels, etiquette books, professors, and preachers alike described the ideal woman in terms of piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Victorian ideology divided the world into separate spheres. The public sphere of economics and politics belonged to men. Women were assigned to the private, domestic sphere of the home. Baptist periodicals, like others of the time, were filled with admonitions for women to excel in domestic skills. One article insisted that all young girls be able to "make a cup of coffee; to draw a dish of tea; to bake a loaf of bread ... to cut, fit, and make a dress; and to set a table." (10) In another example, a mother lectured her daughter about domestic responsibilities as they repaired a torn dress together. "May it be your sincere desire," explained the mother, "to persevere in the path of duty, which He has marked for all that love Him." (11)

The leaders of WMU fully embraced Victorian views of women. They believed that the ideal woman would be pious, pure, submissive, and responsible for the home. Even though leaders of WMU affirmed these virtues, they often interpreted them in ways that gave women more freedom. Half a century ago Barbara Welter noted that this gender ideology, which she called "The Cult of True Womanhood," carried within itself the "seeds of its own destruction." If women took seriously the virtues of the Cult of True Womanhood, the virtues themselves would undermine separate spheres. "For if woman was so very little less than the angels," explained Welter, "she should surely take a more active part in running the world." (12)

WMU leaders illustrated this concept in their writings. They appropriated the language of piety to defend their missionary organizations. God had called women to improve the spiritual conditions of their homes and the whole world. Baptist women utilized domesticity to justify their social ministries, calling them "homes without walls." Southern Baptist women insisted that when they organized missionary societies, worked in the inner city social ministries, or even trained as doctors, they were being submissive to the preachers who urged them to obey the gospel. All of the accomplishments of Fannie Heck's "modern woman" originated with the preaching of the gospel.

The Southern Lady

Southern women were encouraged to find their primary identity in family relationships--as daughters, wives, and mothers. (13) Southern culture held marriage to he the apogee of a young woman's ambitions. The virtues of domesticity placed tremendous pressure on a young woman to marry--and marry early. Fannie Heck affirmed this in her description of a typical 1830s girl: "Already though but seventeen she [the typical girl] was quite old enough to he thinking of marriage. Indeed her older sister had been married on her seventeenth birthday and her mother a little earlier still." After finishing school, what hut marriage "was left for a girl of 1830 to desire?" (14) The accuracy of Heck's general description is borne out in women's journals of the period. (15) Southern women learned quickly that the goal of their lives was marriage, and marriage meant submission.

Married women relinquished not only their hearts and their trust, but also surrendered their property, monetary assets, and wages. Most southern states operated on the basis of common law until well into the twentieth century. Indeed, wives in Georgia were not granted control of their earnings until 1943. (16) Married women in some states could legally engage in business with their husband's consent, but this was not considered "proper" behavior for a lady. In truth, there was no "place" for southern women beyond the sphere of domesticity. The South provided no culturally accepted role for unmarried daughters. "Old maids" were looked upon with pity, depicted as "forlorn damsels who make the midnight air echo with plaintive bewailings." (17)

The southern plantation system shaped "southern lady" ideology profoundly. (18) Patriarchal authority necessitated the subordination of women along with the subjugation of slaves. After 1831, apologists for slavery increasingly based their arguments on the "positive" effects of slavery, including its effect on white women. Writers alleged that slavery relieved white women from strenuous work, protected their purity, and contributed to a harmonious social order. (19) Whether "protected" or subordinated, women were central to the patriarchal defense of slavery. Rev. Frederick A. Ross, writing before the Civil War, put the matter very succinctly: "The slave stands in relation to his master precisely as the wife stands in relation to her husband." (20)

Southern writers took for granted the subjugation of both women and slaves to white men. The rebellion of either women or slaves would pervert the natural order. "Each planter is in fact a patriarch--his position compels him to be ruler in his household," explained a lecturer in 1851. "From early youth, his children and servants look up to him as the head, and obedience and subordination become important elements of education." (21) The patriarch offered "protection" in exchange for obedience. One southern matriarch explained to her granddaughter that in return for "meek, quiet, obliging, affectionate, and virtuous conduct" women retain "the love and esteem of our husbands, when youth and beauty are fled." (22) William Harper stated the exchange more bluntly: "Women, like children, have but one right, and that is the right to protection. The right to protection involves the obligation to obey. A husband, a lord and master, whom she should love, honor and obey, nature designed for every woman." (23) Harper's sentiments lend credence to the assertions of historians that true womanhood ideology "was self-consciously used to justify the domination of both Southern Ladies and slaves by elite white men." (24)

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, southern women experienced increasing pressure from every cultural institution to adhere to a very narrow definition of womanhood. Southern slave culture combined with southern religion to reinforce the hierarchical social order. In the rising tide of southern nationalism prior to the Civil War, the ideal of the southern lady became more intense, fanned by the flames of sectional pride. The external threats to the South heightened the need to diminish internal threats to social stability. Southerners often equated any change in the role of women or in the institution of slavery with the downfall of the family and the consequent demise of society. (25) Southern men rallied to the aid of the Confederacy to defend hearth and home and to accomplish their "protection" of women on the battlefield.

In southern mythology, southern belles were depicted as the fulcrum of hearth and home, the inspiration for a confederate knight's quest. The Baptist minister Rev. Henry H. Tucker preached a fast day sermon in 1861 and referenced this commonly held view that the virtue of white women was at stake in the war: "[W]hen [a soldier] remembers that he is fighting for the honor of his father, and for the purity of his mother and sisters, and for all that is worth having in the world, he may cheerfully brave the terrors of a winter campaign." (26)

After the war ended, southern mythmakers imprinted the image of the southern belle into the religion of the "lost cause." Ministers regaled their congregations with the heroic deeds of southern women during the war, carving the mystical "pedestal" with flowery rhetoric. "Her life was one long act of devotion," wrote Thomas Nelson Page in 1897, "devotion to God, devotion to her husband, devotion to her children, devotion to her servants, to the poor, to humanity." In short she was a saint, indispensable to her family and her church. "Her word" to both her children and her servants "was law ... and they worshipped her." (27) Protecting the "lily white" purity of their women became the symbolic means of restoring a southern manhood emasculated by military defeat. (28)

Ironically, it was the Civil War that interrupted and altered the roles of women in the South. The death of thousands of Confederate soldiers left families decimated and a generation of single women without marriage partners. Women moved outside their sphere to survive during the Civil War, assuming the roles men had vacated. A Tennessee Baptist newspaper described a conversation between a man and his wife as he was planning to join the Confederate army. Although he was hesitant at first to leave her alone, "after some deliberation and consultation with friends, however, she said she earnestly desired him to go." Her husband asked her:

"But who will take care of the plantation?"

"I can do it myself."

"You will need at least an overseer?"

"No, I can manage better than any overseer we are likely to procure."

"You must not be left alone."

"No, I will get some sensible woman for a companion. That is all I need or wish."

"What if you are disturbed or insulted?"

"I can shoot as well as my husband." (29)

The Baptist writer celebrated this "noble woman" who was willing to carry the weight of the plantation on her own.

The war years loosened social constraints on southern women, giving them slightly more access to centers of male power. Necessity required women to address economic issues such as high wartime prices. In her letter to the editor of the Biblical Recorder in 1862, "Stella" lamented high prices and the merchant's refusal to accept credit.

   By the way, Mr. Editor, wouldn't it be a good idea for some friend
   to soldiers, to write a petition to our merchants entreating them
   not to ask such exorbitant prices for their goods? For at present
   rates, we who are not farmers' wives and daughters, will soon
   have to suspend operations. The almighty dollar is provokingly
   scarce, and we can't get credit, or at least, we are afraid to ask
   for it, for every store you enter, a placard stares you in the face
   with the words, Terms Cash, written wonderfully plain, as if the
   merchant feared you might mistake the meaning. Do, some good
   Christian, try your hand at the business of softening the hearts of
   our knights of the yard stick. They may not all prove Pharaohs.
   (30)

Confederate sympathies also raised women's interest and acumen in politics. In a Confederate tract called "A Mother's Parting Words to Her Soldier Boy," the southern mother explained the political situation as she saw it:

   The war in which we are unfortunately involved, has been forced
   upon us. We have asked for nothing but to be let alone. We are
   contending for the great fundamental principle of the American
   Revolution that all authority is derived from the consent of the
   governed. The attempt on the part of the Federal Government to
   coerce, not, as it is falsely pretended, a factious party, but free
   and independent states, governed by unprecedented majorities, is
   utterly subversive of republican government." (31)

It is possible that this Confederate propaganda tract was not written by a woman. The fact that it is attributed to a woman reveals the change that necessity wrought. It was acceptable in wartime for women to have strong political opinions. Slowly the assumptions regarding the "Southern Lady" were being challenged. The New South dawned upon women trapped in many of the same cultural expectations as before, but the seeds of change were being sown. (32) Domestic ideology did not disappear overnight; on the contrary, vestiges of true womanhood still cling to the hems of many southern women's garments even today. (33) But, the weight of the plantation system was lifted from women's shoulders and all the "Lost Causism," and other ideologies of the postwar era, could not entirely replace it.

Evangelical Religion and True Womanhood

Nineteenth-century religion undergirded the emerging true womanhood ideology by sanctifying both the home and the woman's role in it. (34) Fannie Heck alludes to this when she referred to her "southern lady" as a "priestess to the slaves." (35) However, the emphasis on women's role as spiritual leader did not negate submissiveness to male authority. (36) Responding perhaps to the overwhelming majority of female congregants, southern Protestant ministers emphasized domesticity and piety as the feminine contributions to the cause of Christ. Pious mothers shaped the faith of their children and held the potential to transform their husbands through quiet submission. Rev. Richard Allestree, in one of the most widely read collections of sermons in the South, advised women: "the worse the Husband is, the more Need there is for the wife to carry herself with that Gentleness and Sweetness that may be most likely to win him."[sic] (37)

Southern Baptists marched in lock step with their evangelical counterparts in embracing true womanhood ideology. Preachers and editors alike argued that God had designed women to operate in a separate sphere. "We have profound respect for woman," asserted the Virginia Baptist Religious Herald, "and it is because we have, that we desire to see her moving in the sphere to which her Creator has assigned her, and for which her physical, intellectual and moral qualities eminently fit her. As the friend, companion and solace of man all her rights and interests are secure." (38)

Conversely, women who rejected domesticity and obedience were tainted as impure and impious: "As the rival of man, in the struggle for place, power and prominence, she as the 'weaker vessel' is doomed to defeat." The woman who dared challenge traditional roles would emerge from the fray, "not with modesty, delicacy and loveliness which impart a charm and influence to her sex, but soiled, dishonored and disappointed." (39)

Baptist men repeatedly recorded their disapproval of women who strayed from the domestic sphere and expressed pointed distaste for the woman's movement. Because they viewed true womanhood as a divine imperative, Baptists viewed the rejection of domesticity as a transgression against God: "When ... woman becomes emancipated from the care of the young and the making of the home, she has entered into the worst of all bondage, which comes always to every one who disregards the law of his life. They only 'walk in liberty' who have learned to obey the divine precepts, as written in their being." (40)

Not only did women who demanded their rights transgress "divine precepts," but Baptist editors also maintained that such women encroached upon the rights of men. "There is no genuine assertion for woman's rights; there is actually abandonment of these, with an unseemly claim for man's rights." (41) Baptist men opposed any formal organization for women's rights and were highly suspicious of any change in the traditional role of women. For an activity to be approved by the male-dominated culture, it had to be clothed in the garb of domesticity.

J. T. Zealy, in a sermon published in May of 1871, compared the private sphere that women inhabited with the public realm occupied by men. He assigned women unlimited power within the confines of the home:

   And now look at this influence in the homestead. Home! This is
   woman's kingdom. Here she sits upon the throne of empire. Man's
   sphere--by the rougher constitution of his nature--is the more
   public one; that of woman--by her delicate organization--the more
   private, but not the less honorable, or requiring the less ability.
   Yes, her home, is woman's place of duty and power--that sweet realm
   still spared of man's forfeited paradise, out of which go
   influences that govern the world.

He seems to indicate that the home is an Eden, a paradise of virtue and peace. Although women should have absolute control over the home, the purpose of this "sweet realm" was to make life easier for men: "In that sweet empire, in the sanctuary of domestic life, amid the tender devotion and gushing sympathies of home, man finds repose from his tormenting cares, his feverish anxiety for wealth, his restless ambition for distinction, and from all the excesses of human passions. Woman is the presiding spirit in this dearest spot on earth." (42) In Zealy's view, the power that women could rightfully wield was designed to benefit husbands who would find respite from the "tormenting," "feverish," "restless," and ambitious world of business.

Not only was the home the domain of women; it was a sacred place where woman reigned as pri estess and queen. "Woman from her throne in the Christian home has made Christ the king of her husband and children and servants." (43) Zealy insisted that women had unique power to influence the family. Whether "malignant or benign her influence spreads itself from centre [sic] to circumference, a blessing or a curse," Zealy opined. "Her constant presence in the homestead gives her opportunity to exert influence which the husband and father never has." With vivid imagery of separate spheres, Zealy explained the responsibilities of men and women: "While he is mingling with the outside world, taxing brain and muscle--following the plow, wielding the sledge, shoving the plain, or pursuing some of the higher callings of life, she is imparting a character to those around her at home which will continue, either in dark or splendid lines, when our world shall be burned up, and the sun and stars shall have gone out."

While men were "mingling with the outside world," women were responsible for the moral character of the entire family. Zealy asserted that women would be ultimately held accountable for the spiritual life of her household: "Upon her it will depend whether the curse of the Lord shall be in her home, as it is in the house of the wicked, or His blessing, as it is in the habitation of the just." (44) Zealy's portrait of woman, if taken at face value, poses all sorts of problems--not only for women's rights, but for evangelical theology. In his mythological home, women's work is eternal, yielding blessing or curses. She becomes a sort of Christ figure who mediates salvation for those around her. This sharply counters an evangelical message of individual conversion and personal accountability before God. As a result of this tendency to equate Christ-like virtues with the feminine, women often found themselves caste in the role of the suffering servant. (45)

One WMU magazine article suggested specific qualities mothers needed to influence their households: "What blessings should we ask for the mothers? What do they and we ourselves need? Unselfish love, infinite patience, wisdom and insight, tact and sympathy, health to bear the daily strain, quiet nerves, a sense of humor that smoothes rough places, a sweet strong cheerfulness, a likeness to Christ that shall be reflected in the lives of all the household." (46) Female qualities and those of Christ were so often equated that women came to be regarded as inherently religious--the female character more readily conformable to the image of Christ.

For the majority of women, the ideals of true womanhood remained an unattainable dream. The only ones who could conceivably fulfill the obligations of the "Southern Lady" were middle to upper middle class women. The women who fit Heck's description of a "pet whose beauty was extolled" were not factory workers or field hands on southern cotton farms; they represented a small percentage of privileged white women with the leisure time to practice their piety and to care for their homes exclusively. (47)

Certainly, the majority of white Southern Baptist women were not "Southern Belles." Most Baptists in the South during the Progressive Era were poor and lived in rural areas. According to the 1890 census, 96 percent of Baptists lived in rural areas. (48) Rural Baptist women worked hard and had little leisure time, even for education. The Corresponding Secretary of the Education Board for the Southern Baptist Convention commented that "since the Baptists predominate down South, much of the ignorance and illiteracy revealed during the War is Baptist ignorance and Baptist illiteracy." (49) Nevertheless, domestic ideology persisted as the standard for evangelical women, the majority of whom had little hope of embodying its virtues. As Anne Scott astutely observed, the myth of the southern lady never derived its power from reality, any more than had notions of "omnipotent men" or "satisfied slaves." (50)

Subverting True Womanhood

Fannie Heck, Annie Armstrong, and other Baptist leaders shared the assumptions about the nature and role of women that pervaded Victorian culture. Baptist women accepted the idea that women were to be pious, pure, submissive, and to remain within the domestic sphere. Because they did not openly endorse suffrage or advocate for legislation protecting women's rights, it is tempting to paint these women as indifferent to the status of women. Yet an influential cadre of WMU leaders fostered a feminine consciousness among Baptist women--promoting education, encouraging leadership, fostering business skills, and celebrating women's entrance into a variety of typically male professions. The writings of Fannie Heck and her colleagues reveal that WMU leaders often interpreted "True Womanhood" in ways that broadened their sphere and challenged the status quo.

Piety and Christian Missions

The leaders of WMU appropriated Victorian ideology to defend their missionary activity and to reconfigure the boundaries of domesticity. WMU leaders accepted the idea that women were inherently more pious without equivocation. They sincerely believed that God had created women with an innate spirituality. When Baptist women in the South were struggling to form a denominational missionary society, the basis of their argument was that God would not have given women this unique spiritual nature unless he intended for them to use it. It was an argument based on design. Alice Armstrong stated this clearly in the first organizational meeting for WMU in 1888:

   Should a naturalist see for the first time the wing of a bird, he
   could judge from its construction ... That it was intended for easy
   and successful progress through the air. The fin of a fish is the
   best oar that ever worked in an oar lock ... The Gospel of Jesus
   Christ ... was put into the hands of man and woman alike to be
   distributed to the sin-sick and dying ... [Nevertheless] With a
   tenderer heart and keener sensibilities than man, she [woman] can
   take in a fuller measure of the love of Christ ... The same
   tenderness which draws her to Christ, widens her sympathies
   towards all whom she may help. (51)

Armstrong clearly states that women's gifts are from God, but she implies that anyone who questions women's work is doubting God's wisdom. The minutes of the Rehoboth Baptist Association echoed these sentiments in 1913: "We are sure ... that God endowed women with special gifts." Therefore, women should show their gratitude by "service in the great fields of religious activity for which her special gifts so eminently qualify her." (52)

Some women took exception to the idea that women innately responded to Christianity. They understood the difficulties of assuming that Christian virtues were feminine by definition, and chafed at the idea that Christianity appealed to women because they were the "weaker sex." Mary Hill Davis, president of the Texas WMU, gave her perspective on the feminization of Christianity in a speech in San Antonio in 1907. She believed that women accepted Christianity not because they were weaker, but because they were smarter!

   Women and Christianity have ever gone hand in hand. Woman's quick
   and blessed response to the call of love divine has been the cause
   of the heaping of much opprobrium upon her devoted head. How often
   have we heard it remarked with withering scorn by scoffing,
   unbelieving men, that religion is only for women and children,
   implying that only the so-called weaker sex, and the plastic little
   lives entrusted to her guidance, could or would accept the simple,
   gracious, life-giving message of a Savior's atoning blood! But such
   an impeachment is not to the discredit of woman, but rather to her
   eternal credit ... [W]hen the veil is lifted, she shall stand erect
   in the light of a glorified womanhood. Rather than a reproach, it
   is the glory of Christianity that women preponderate on all
   occasions, and in all the forms of testimony to it. (53)

Davis argued that the "so-called weaker sex" accepted Christianity because it brought the "truest success" in life. Women heard a "simple," beneficial message and acted upon it. The implication is that these "scoffing, unbelieving men" did not recognize a good thing when they saw it. Women should not apologize for the fact that they "preponderate" in the faith, but rather be proud of their numbers--assured that they will be vindicated in the end and "glorified" as women.

In spite of Mary Hill Davis' irritation with the idea, most Baptist women accepted the notion that Christianity held a unique appeal for women. Related to this belief were several other underlying assumptions. First of all, Baptists took it for granted that all women in every culture shared the same religious nature and could exert religious influence over their families. Zealy alluded to this in his previously quoted sermon. "If mothers were all Christians, and such Christians as they ought to be, a hope might be cherished that the world would soon be converted," he wrote. "O woman! Great is thy power," continued Zealy. "With thee is a lever strong enough to move the world and bring it back to God. In thy hands are seeds to be sown in the soil of humanity, which may yield a harvest to be garnered in heaven." (54) Mothers were the key to the salvation of the whole world.

Second, Southern Baptist women assumed that American women enjoyed a higher status and more freedom in their culture than non-Western women experienced in theirs. Evangelicals firmly believed that Christianity was responsible for this elevated position. Ann Judson insisted that Christianity improved the role of women in her letters to the United States in the early part of the nineteenth century. Baptist and other Protestant women poured over her letters and held them up as the words of a saint. In a letter to the Female Judson Society of Richmond in 1823, Judson rebuked those who opposed mission activity on the grounds that there "were heathen enough at home" and insisted that American women had tremendous advantages over the Burmese. (55) WMU leaders shared Judson's perspective. An early WMU publication titled Our Mission Fields printed a poem by Laura S. Copenhaver written in the voice of a foreign woman pleading for help:

   O women of the West that hear not,
   O women dwelling in the blessed light,
   O women of the West that fear not
   The darkness deepening into endless night:

   By lives that end when yours are just beginning
   By babes that perish in our helpless hands
   By mother joys we have no hope of winning
   By nameless horrors which our law commands.

   They tell us that your lives are full of joys,
   And best of all, that they are free--are free.
   Yet we in bondage cry to you; the noise
   Of wailing, can it reach from sea to sea?

The poem continues in this vein for several more stanzas urging American women who have "love and power" to help lives that "perish--hundreds every hour." (56)

Though the mission studies in WMU magazines were obviously designed to show the superiority of Christianity over other world religions, they still introduced young women in the rural South to world religions. It is fascinating that in the same edition that speaks of the horrors foreign women endure, of corrupt laws, and false worship, Baptist women printed a cheerful description of life in Japan--including an explanation of a Japanese god. "The god Jizo is especially the children's god. They think he takes care of little children who are dead," the writer explained. "As the children pray to Jizo, they toss little pebbles toward the idol." (57)

Ultimately, Baptist women believed that Christianity was the key to improving the lives of women trapped within oppressive "heathen" cultures. Ann Judson appealed directly to Protestant women by suggesting that they would be as "degraded" as Burmese women if they had not heard the Christian message:

   Had the commands of our Savior been limited ... what would now be
   the situation of our own sex? What was our situation, and in what
   light were we viewed when Augustine, the first Christian
   missionary, visited the shores of our ancestors? Were we not then
   as Eastern females now are--the servants, the slaves of the other
   sex, and viewed by them as almost destitute of intellect, and
   little superior to the brute creation? If, my beloved sisters, this
   change in the situation and circumstances of our sex has been
   effected through the instrumentality of the gospel, how great
   should our efforts be to enlighten those who are still degraded?
   (58)

In 1893 a North Carolina mission worker urged Baptists to consider the benefits of Christianity for women: "While we discuss what women are doing for missions, we may well consider what missions are doing for women, in developing the highest type of womanhood." She provided statistics concerning the oppression of women: "The condition of woman in heathen lands is an irresistible appeal to Christian women. There are 100,000,000 women in India in a state of almost brutal degradation." (59) Mary Hill Davis echoed these sentiments in 1907:

   Has the Gospel of Jesus Christ been a friend to women? Look around
   you then think of barbaric Africa, benighted India, beclouded
   China, and the other lost nations of the earth, and contrast the
   condition of the women before the people had heard the blessed
   story with their state after the refreshing, life-giving message
   had come to them ... The resounding affirmative answer comes in
   glad notes that shall resound until the heavens shall be rolled
   together as a scroll ... From the beginning of the Christian era,
   women have been animated by the grateful and honest desire to do
   their part in the worlds' evangelization, and who would set bounds
   on their wonderful possibilities when they proclaim their
   redemption by seeking to lead those who dwell in darkness into the
   kingdom of life and light? (60)

Baptist women from Burma to Texas shared the belief that Christianity had improved the lives of Western women and would do the same for their "heathen" sisters. This concern for foreign women fueled the fires of missionary spirit. When religious women began to heed the preacher's call to exercise their spiritual authority, they embarked on a journey that would lead them away from hearth and home into the four corners of the world. Piety undermined domesticity.

Women around the world needed Christianity, but many of these women could not be reached by traditional methods. Before the formation of WMU, Baptist women discovered that cultural prohibitions on certain foreign mission fields were preventing women from hearing the gospel from male missionaries. The first Baptist women's missionary organization, Woman's Mission to Woman (WMW), was organized in 1871 "to give light to the women that sit in darkness because of Bible destitution, by taking the gospel of Christ into their homes, through the agency of native Bible women, aided and superintended by their Christian sisters from Bible lands." (61)

WMW raised money to train native women to evangelize their female friends and neighbors. American women recognized that women who were isolated from public life would need to be reached by other women. Thus, piety and separate spheres together provided the impetus for women to receive religious training in order to meet the needs of their own gender. Since Baptist men were not focusing their mission strategy on women, WMU did not perceive missionary work as a departure from their proper sphere.

The spiritual and physical needs of women coalesced to affirm the role of female medical missionaries. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a formal medical degree in America, argued that woman's nature made her ideally suited for the medical profession. Blackwell believed that female physicians were needed to treat women within their own sphere. (62) Male missionaries pointed out that female doctors were needed on the field because men were not allowed to attend women in many cultures. Helen Barrett Montgomery noted that "the need for women physicians to relieve the physical sufferings of their own sex was first perceived and emphasized by missionaries." (63) She offered an example given by a male medical missionary in India:

   Thousands of women die annually because such help as might be given
   them cannot be had on account of the restricted condition of their
   lives. A physician walking in the streets of India recently heard
   the screams of a woman coming from a fine native house. He asked a
   servant to say to the master of the house that a physician was
   passing by who would gladly be of service. The man returned an
   answer that he would rather his wife should die than be relieved by
   a male physician. (64)

In spite of early pleas from the mission field, mission boards were reluctant to appoint female doctors. A laywoman of some influence organized a society to support female medical missionaries in 1851, but "the project aroused a storm of opposition and ridicule." Some opposed the project because they did not support any form of medical missions and believed only evangelism was necessary. "Then there was that awful bogy," commented Montgomery, "of woman going out of her sphere, even for the saving of life." (65) Eventually the argument that women needed physicians of their own sex to protect "separate spheres" and to further the work of the gospel won the day.

In 1913 a writer in Our Mission Fields openly pleaded with Southern Baptist women to support the training of female doctors and nurses:

   In many of the mission fields the need and opportunity for women
   physicians is unparalleled. Medical women are the only ones who are
   permitted to enter the homes of millions of women. There are tens
   of thousands of sick women who would rather die than have a male
   physician attend them in sickness. And because there are no women
   physicians in many large districts they do die ... Let us heed the
   earnest requests for reinforcement and equipment that come from our
   own medical missionaries on the fields. (66)

In this same edition of Our Mission Fields, a female doctor from India encouraged women to volunteer as medical missionaries: "My dream for the future is to have an army of medical women come to this country, to go out two by two to preach and to heal and to teach." (67)

It is unclear exactly how many Southern Baptist women responded to these pleas and received medical training in order to serve as missionaries during the Progressive Era. The first Southern Baptist female doctors and nurses were appointed between 1880 and 1920. Dr. Ruth McGowan was the first female physician appointed by the Southern Baptist Convention. She was commissioned in 1885 to serve in China. (68) Jesse Pettigrew of Virginia, appointed in 1901 for ministry in China, was the first "trained missionary nurse." Dr. Hallie G. Neal received her training at the Woman's Medical College and the Illinois Medical College and was appointed in 1907 as a missionary to Mexico. (69) Kentucky native Claire Keith was appointed by the Foreign Mission Board in 1916. She was the first female registered nurse commissioned by Southern Baptists to serve in Africa. (70) The 1926 Album of Southern Baptist Foreign Missionaries listed ten women working as nurses, two as doctors, and twelve in an unspecified capacity as "medical workers." (71)

Southern Baptist mission boards paid women as medical professionals to serve on the mission field even while they clearly affirmed that women belonged at home. But the rationale for sending female doctors and nurses rested firmly on the pious nature of women and the needs of women in separate spheres. Female missionaries, doctors, and nurses were initially appointed because of the cult of domesticity, not in spite of it. This may explain the seeming contradiction of Baptist women's colleges and seminaries of that era perpetuating Victorian assumptions about women while training women for professional vocations. (72)

Domesticity

Probably the most dominant feature of Victorian gender ideology was the emphasis on domesticity. Baptist women were fully aware that they were expected to remain in a separate sphere--and even joked about it among themselves. In her presidential address of 1902, Sarah Jessie Stakely exhorted the women of WMU to create "a missionary atmosphere" in their homes. "You remember for a long time," she noted sardonically, "we have heard much about women's sphere in religious work--many were profoundly interested in getting us properly located, in helping us decide what we could and we could not do. But no one will deny that to us belongs the home." (73)

Domesticity not only provided justification for organization and missions, but also produced a distinctly feminine social ethic. Within the language of domesticity, WMU leaders discovered mandates for social action. (74) The presence of maternal interests contributed to the theological presuppositions of Baptist women. Women's everyday lives were consumed with issues of nurture--feeding those who were hungry, clothing the naked, and nursing the sick. As a result, women utilized practical, maternal images to advocate a more wholistic view of salvation and to advocate social reform. (75) This use of maternal imagery was common among female Progressives. (76)

WMU leaders also appealed to the maternal sympathies of Baptist women to enlist their service in evangelism and social reform. Lulie Wharton, chairman of the WMU Personal Service Committee pronounced that "in the fullness of time God is sending forth His daughters, as well as His sons, for the uplift of the world which so much needs mothering." (77) Maud Reynolds McLure promoted mission work in the inner cities by pointing to the city children: "Innocent, bright-eyed boys and girls are these, just as beautiful as your children whose little feet are dancing along the happy paths of childhood, while these little ones are pattering over hard stones into the garish paths of sin." (78) "When we see the ill-kept homes," stated the WMU magazine, "the poorly prepared food and the shabbily dressed children, our hearts go out to them and we long to help them to a higher plane of living." (79) Rural ministry also appealed to the domestic concerns of women. "The making of the environment of the country girl and boy healthful, educative, attractive, and uplifting is a crying need." (80) Social concern was merely the expansion of the role of mother to include all children and every home.

WMU periodicals also appealed to motherhood as an evangelistic strategy. WMU literature assumed that mothers were the key to converting and reforming the family and then the world. (81) "Find your way to the mother's heart," advised WMU writers, "and you will have touched the keynote of this family." (82) The Personal Service Committee urged local societies to establish Homemakers Clubs, or Mother's Meetings primarily to convert women to Christianity. In the February 1915 edition of Royal Service, Susan Tyler Pollard of Baltimore, Maryland, stated:

   Educated motherhood is the demand of today, not only in our own
   land but across the sea. It is a demand that will not be ignored;
   it is a Macedonian cry that refuses to be silenced. Consciously or
   unconsciously every true mother feels the spiritual development of
   her child is vital and important.... The greatest emphasis should
   be laid upon the fact that the aim of the club is to lead the
   mothers to Christ who alone can help them [children] through the
   hard places of life. (83)

Notice that the writer says "consciously or unconsciously." Women had a maternal interest in their children's well-being whether they knew it or not! Women needed to be educated not only in home economics, but also in Christianity. Baptist women believed that the conversion of women was key to reaching entire families for salvation.

Woman's Missionary Union programs of social service focused almost exclusively on women and children. Whether in work with immigrants, city dwellers, industrial workers, or concerns with public health, Baptist women tailored their efforts to reach women and children. (84) Ministry to mothers was a recurring theme in the pages of Royal Service. They believed women could become ideal mothers through an imitation of Christ. "The aim of Homemaker's Clubs is to help mothers to gain a sense of the value of Christ to every human being, young or old," insisted Royal Service. "What blessing should we ask for the mothers? What do they, and we ourselves, need? ... [A] likeness to Christ that shall be reflected in the lives of all the household." (85)

Baptist women assumed that every woman had an innate maternal instinct, but they did not believe that every woman knew best how to exercise her maternal concerns. WMU leaders often asserted that women in poverty needed instruction. One objective of their programs was to educate poor and immigrant women in order to improve the social conditions of the family. "For mother love is, when aroused, the strongest; when enlightened the truest leaven in the hand of the social worker for elevating the home." (86) Mother's clubs offered information on hygiene, sewing, first aid, and child care in addition to Bible study. WMU recommended methods they considered "the true ideals of home making and child training." (87) This education could be gained through "Homemakers Clubs" where "problems of everyday life in the home are to be discussed: child welfare, training, care of infants, first aid to injured, household economies, and problems of every kind." (88)

Practical education complemented the primary objective of missions. "The purpose of the club is not only to bring cheer to the lives of the mothers; it is to help them to solve the many difficult problems they meet in the care of their homes and their children, and especially to give them the message of Christ's love." (89) One society in North Carolina explained that at their mothers club "we teach [the mothers] fancy work as well as plain sewing. An interesting program is prepared. These meetings are especially attractive to the tired mothers; they bring their babies, and one of our young girls goes each time to amuse them." (90)

"Cheer-all clubs," devoted to helping young women working alone in urban areas, were also developed by WMU workers. "In Cheer-All Clubs girls are banded together to help, protect, and encourage other girls and for the development and advancement of Christian young womanhood." (91) These clubs typically met on Friday evenings to entertain young women who worked all week. The meetings began with devotions and hymn singing, then continued with various "bright and entertaining" programs. These might include games or stories read aloud while the girls worked on "embroidery, millinery, or basketry. " (92) Baptist women believed that they could improve the lives of underprivileged women through domestic and religious education.

Like other women at the turn of the twentieth century, Baptist women continued to affirm domesticity, but interpreted it in ways that blurred the lines between public and private. (93) If women were limited to the sphere of the home, for example, they felt it was reasonable to expect to control that sphere they had been assigned. The same Texas Baptist newspaper that published Zealy's sermon calling home a woman's "sweet empire" also published a reprinted article from Harper's Bazaar that illuminated the subversive potential of true womanhood ideology:

   We hear a good many sermons now-a-days from the text that the chief
   duty of woman is to render home attractive to her husband. No doubt
   any good wife will make this her crowning pleasure; but where duty
   is in question, there is another phase of the matter which is sadly
   overlooked--the duty of the husband to make home pleasant for the
   wife. As a very small portion of his waking hours is spent in the
   house where his wife's whole life is passed, it would seem quite as
   important that her convenience and tastes should be consulted as
   his.

With a note of sarcasm, the writer insisted that women should have unqualified authority over the temporal aspects of the household as well as the spiritual:

   The home should belong to the wife; she should plan the house,
   arrange the furniture, lay out the garden, and order all the
   details. She knows from experience, better than her husband could
   possibly do, what arrangement best conduces to her housekeeping
   convenience. It would be just as absurd for her to undertake to be
   the architect of his warehouse and to place the desks, drawers and
   pigeon-holes of his counting-room, as for him to divine from his
   omniscience the most convenient spot for her cupboards.

She further argued that the wife should control which trees are cut and how the flowerbeds are laid out. Finally, the author boldly demanded that "the homestead should belong to the wife in fee-simple; she has a right to the nest in which she rears her young, and ought to be assured that it can never be torn from her by those reverses of fortune to which, in this country, all are so liable. Women all feel this, though they are apt to lack the courage to say it." (94) The call for "fee-simple" implied an absolute ownership of land whereby the owner could do whatever she wished with the property. This author from Harper's Bazaar welcomed the idea that home was a woman's "kingdom" as long as she owned the deed to the castle. It is intriguing that a Baptist paper reprinted this article in the late nineteenth century. Although this may he indicative of a more independent spirit in Texas, it nevertheless illustrates cracks in the foundation of Victorian domesticity.

Southern Baptist women interpreted domesticity as a mandate to become involved in broader civic activities and utilized the language of hearth and home to justify their actions. In a 1914 article in Royal Service, Lulie Wharton clearly articulated this propensity for reconfiguring private and public spheres. (95) "Neither husband, wife nor child finds satisfaction or complete maturity in the family alone," Wharton explained. "Their ambitions and needs demand a larger opportunity--a wider circle. This circle is the community--the 'home without walls."' Wharton then urged Baptist women to embrace "community realization" to foster a spirit of social reform in their neighborhoods. Anticipating conservative resistance to her proposals, Wharton skillfully noted:

   Someone may urge that this is not woman's work. No one can deny
   that her work is primarily home keeping, care of children and
   ministry to the sick and helpless. The fact is that her house
   cannot be kept clean unless the neighborhood is clean; ... that the
   moral standard of the vicinity of her home affects the character of
   her children ... these facts are forcing women to reach out and
   take her share in preparing the "home without walls." (96)

Wharton's vivid imagery indicates that she, at least, comprehended the ideological shifts. Women were removing the walls that limited them to the domestic sphere and folding the public realm under the purview of the private. Occasionally Baptist women suggested that maternal love should not only prompt Christian ministry, but also shape political agendas. Concern for children could give women a vested interest in poverty, labor laws, prohibition, education, and economic justice. The March 1916 edition of Royal Service stated: "The standard which the best and wisest parent desires for his own child that must the state desire and provide for every child whether native, immigrant or negro." (97) Wharton's perspective is in keeping with that of other female progressives.

Submission and Power

WMU workers repeatedly denied accusations that they wished to trespass into masculine realms of power while they systematically carved out new arenas for female autonomy. For example, minutes of the South Carolina WMU written in 1892 stated: "It is nonsense to speak of woman's usurping man's work. She does not want it." This seems pretty clear. Yet even this seemingly traditional North Carolina writer went on to explain that women did not want man's work because "she has sufficient responsibility devolving upon her in the performance of her own God-given duties." (98)

Women did not have the time to bother with men's work because they were too busy taking control of their own finances and developing independent programs. The struggle to control their own money and determine the course of their own work lurks just beneath the surface in WMU literature and correspondence. In 1912 a WMU writer explained why the earliest women's mission work floundered. "The early scattering efforts ... didn't fail for lack of fervor and interest, but because little money was in the hands of women then, and because once again they were resisted by the men of the denominational boards." (99) She goes on to demonstrate that the great success in missions began when women moved out from under male control and managed their own finances.

It is also true that Southern Baptist women often affirmed their submission to male authority in their letters and publications, yet their references to submission often, strategically, defend their religious work. For example, at the organizational meeting of WMU in 1888, Fanny Stout read a paper urging women to approve the South-wide missions organization in spite of opposition. "Much will depend on the spirit we show," Stout insisted. "The brethren are our guardians--and when they realize what we want to do, that we do not wish to wander in any dangerous ways, but are only trying to follow them as our leaders and trying to carry into practice what they have taught us from pulpit and press, their anxieties will cease." (100)

Most likely Stout was being entirely guileless in her explanation, simply stating a belief in female submission to male leadership. She was also candidly stating the limitations of women's work. Their organization had to operate with a spirit of submission and obedience in order to win the approval of the male-dominated Southern Baptist Convention. Nevertheless, she pointed out that women were practicing what they had been taught from "pulpit and press." Husbands and pastors had no grounds to complain about female missionary activity because the women were merely being submissive and obedient to their instructions.

Woman's Missionary Union leaders were careful to affirm submission in their pubic correspondence, but some Baptist women chaffed at the restrictive bonds of male authority. Southern Baptist missionary Charlotte "Lottie" Diggs Moon provided a leadership model that inspired Baptist women across the South. Lottie Moon served as a missionary to China from 1873 until 1912. She repeatedly argued that single women made more effective missionaries and insisted that the mission board respect her independence. From the beginning she proved to be an influential member of the North China mission. Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board executives relied upon Moon to provide them with concise, balanced reports on not only the religious progress of the work, but also financial holdings and transactions. Lottie Moon corresponded frequently with Annie Armstrong, and it was Moon who encouraged Armstrong in her dream to establish a woman's missionary society. The women shared a passion for missions and a determination to see their ideas reach fruition.

In 1885 a conflict over mission board policy toward single women forced Moon to bluntly state her opinion about women's leadership. When rumors were circulated that single women might be prohibited from having a full vote in mission meetings, Moon wrote the board a letter clearly stating her concern. "Can you tell me--or rather will you tell me," she wrote to Dr. H. A. Tapper, "if the China committee proposes to make any changes in the status of unmarried women in the missions? Here in Tungchow the ladies have always been admitted to mission meetings on equal terms with the gentlemen of the mission." Moon went on to briefly narrate the history of the mission in Tungchow, including a reference to an earlier period of conflict. "At that time, as you know, the mission was left entirely in the hands of the women," she reminded Tapper, intimating that the mission may not have survived without the women. Ultimately, Moon made her feelings plain: "To exclude unmarried ladies would be a most glaring piece of injustice, in my opinion. To such exclusion I could never submit & retain myself respect." Moon did not shy away from the language of "rights" in this discussion. She explained how she had pitied Presbyterian and Anglican female missionaries "for the way in which their rights were ignored." (This concern for her Protestant sisters gave rise to an article she wrote in Woman's Work advocating a "broader & juster view" of women.) Moon concluded with an ultimatum to Tupper and the China committee:

   I presume the China committee is laboring under a misapprehension
   of facts. I suppose they are unaware that the ladies here, whether
   married or single, have always occupied precisely the same position
   as the gentlemen. Otherwise, I cannot see why they felt called upon
   to say that they "do not endorse" my position. If it indeed be
   their real purpose to deny ladies of this mission rights that have
   never heretofore been questioned, then, sorrowfully, but as a
   matter of self-respect & duty there can be no course open to me but
   to sever my connection with the board. (101)

The board did not accept Moon's resignation nor did they exclude her and other single women from mission meetings in China.

In July of 1896 Annie Armstrong wrote to J. M. Frost, secretary of the Baptist Sunday School Board, about the limits of female power and seemingly agreed with the status quo: "I regard it as the sheerest nonsense for persons to claim that women can do men's work. We can go a certain distance and there we have to stop, and unless we have the support of our brethren, the work does not assume the proportions it should." Notice that Armstrong did not characterize the problem as a deficiency in women, or even suggest that it was not their role to do men's work; rather she was stating the harsh reality of her circumstances--although she hastened to add that "our brethren are the God-appointed leaders." (102) Armstrong was notorious for affirming male authority, then expecting the heads of the mission boards to follow her detailed instructions.

In other correspondence Armstrong demonstrated her disdain for domineering males. Armstrong grumbled that a Tennessee pastor named Golden "thoroughly, entirely, and fully believes in man's supremacy." She then noted with some exasperation that "[Golden's] wife (who is a really talented woman) seems completely overshadowed" and during their last visit "sat by almost as mum as an oyster." (103) She pleaded with R. J. Willingham, corresponding secretary of the Foreign Mission Board, to distract Golden while the WMU workers toured the state in 1903. In 1913 Mary Hill Davis commented about the relationship between men and women: "They [the men] seem very much to need us ... and we need them--a little." (104) Her words were likely meant in jest, but if gender records on the mission field are any measure, her comment was entirely true. On average, single women remained on the mission field longer than single men, married men, or married women.

Baptist women's efforts to expand their power were not always relegated to private correspondence. By the end of the Progressive Era some Baptist women understood that their power needed to be guaranteed in the governing documents of the denomination in order to be secure. In 1922 Royal Service magazine reported a very public effort the women made to expand their influence over denominational institutions. "Many of the women felt for a number of years that the work of the WMU would be greatly strengthened and helped if there could be a fair proportion of women as members of each of the Boards of the Convention," explained the writer. "Then, in view of the large contributions of women to the causes of the denomination it was thought fair that women have some proportionate part in the administration of these funds ... Accordingly in 1921 the WMU petitioned the SBC to amend its constitution so that there might be 9 women added to its Executive Committee and 12 women to each of its five boards." The petition failed when it was replaced by a substitute motion that the Committee on Committees nominate "any brethren or sisters according to their personal qualifications." (105)

A petition such as this would have needed broad support from WMU state leaders in order to be submitted to the Convention in the first place. Even though this petition failed, the very fact that the women tried to gain an equal voice on institutional boards is remarkable. WMU leaders continued to be frustrated by their lack of power within the SBC. Lulie Wharton expressed her view of the problem in a 1925 article in Royal Service. "The world needs the contributions women can make to its welfare," she wrote, "and this contribution can never be given in full measure as long as the notion prevails that her thoughts, her feelings, and her actions are of real worth only when they have been strained through a masculine percolator." (106) Wharton's words suggest that WMU leaders were beginning to challenge not only the application of true womanhood, but also the substance of it.

Conclusion

Southern Baptist women appropriated and internalized Victorian domestic ideology with its requisite emphasis on women's innate piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. While they accepted the cultural expectations of women and took these very seriously, women interpreted these expectations differently than men. Ironically, the ideology became subversive because women so earnestly accepted its tenets. Baptist women embraced the idea that women were inherently more pious than men and concluded that women would be more effective missionaries and social workers. WMU leaders affirmed the teaching that women should remain at home, relegated to a separate domestic sphere with complete responsibility for the care of the household and children. As a result, women became convinced that they were responsible for all matters relating to the home and children and should be allowed to make decisions regarding them. Maternal concerns led WMU leaders to visualize a new "home without walls" in which women actively worked to improve the lives of every mother and child. Baptist women repeatedly affirmed their belief in submission to male authority, then insisted that the vast missionary enterprise was a direct result of their obedience to pastors who exhorted them to share the "whole gospel with the whole world."

Near the end of the Progressive Era, Baptist women openly called for an equal voice on Southern Baptist boards and agencies. For one historical moment it seemed that Baptist women were poised to become full participants in the organizational structures of the Southern Baptist Convention. This was not to be. The moment was lost and numerous factors would emerge--from the Fundamentalism of the 1920s to its resurgence in the 1970s--that would derail efforts to secure equal leadership for Southern Baptist women in the twentieth century.

Notes

(1) Fannie Exile Scudder Heck, In Royal Service (Richmond, VA: Foreign Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, 1913).

(2) Ibid, 8.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ibid, 221.

(5) Ibid.

(6) In her study of Baptist women, Patricia Summerlin Martin stated: "the central theme of change in Baptist women's role was power--the assumption of personal power and the exercise of institutional power." See Hidden Work: Baptist Women in Texas, 1880-1920 (Ph.D. dissertion, Rice University, 1982), 10.

(7) "In the nineteenth century," noted historian Paul Harvey, "Southern Baptist churchwomen increasingly chafed at quietist prescriptions for female piety even while continuing to work within the language of 'the refined Southern woman.'" See Paul Harvey, "Saints But Not Subordinates: The Woman's Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention," in Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism, ed. Margaret Lamberts Bendroth and Virginia Lieson Brereton (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 8.

(8) Catherine Allen, A Century to Celebrate: History of Woman's Missionary Union (Birmingham, AL: Woman's Missionary Union, 1987), 237. After the Nineteenth Amendment passed, however, WMU leaders boldly encouraged women to vote.

(9) Historians have studied these various perceptions of womanhood in the nineteenth century that Fannie Heck described. Barbara Welter's groundbreaking study found the "cult of true womanhood" pervasive not only in the literature of the mid-nineteenth century, but also deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. "If anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex of virtues which made up True Womanhood," Welter noted, "he was damned immediately as an enemy of God, of civilization and of the Republic." See "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860," American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 152.

(10) "Tuition for Daughters," Texas Baptist Herald, 25 September 1873.

(11) "Perseverance," Texas Baptist Herald, 19 September 1866.

(12) Welter, "True Womanhood," 174.

(13) Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Family and Female Identity in the Antebellum South: Sarah Gayle and Her Family," in In Joy and Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900, ed. Carol Bleser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 11.

(14) Heck, In Royal Service, 9.

(15) Anne Firor Scott reports that one young woman wrote that she "begged to die because she had not found a husband," and if given a chance "would make a faithful, obedient wife, loving with all my heart, yielding entire trust to my husband." Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 7.

(16) Suzanne D. Lebsock, "Radical Reconstruction and the Property Rights of Southern Women," in Half Sisters of History: Southern Women and the American Past, ed. Catherine Clinton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 113.

(17) Judith Tomlin to Virginia Savage, in Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 85.

(18) In "Family and Female Identity," 11, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese explained that antebellum defenders of slavery linked that institution with the role of women. "Religious and secular pro-slavery theorists alike forcefully insisted that all social relations--notably those of slavery--depended upon and were grounded in the natural and divinely sanctioned subordination of women to men." Eugene Genovese points out that religious theorists applied the same biblical literalism that defended slavery to the issue of women: "Suffice it to note that pro-slavery rested, above all, on biblical sanction the justification of black slavery derived from the general justification of slavery, regardless of race, as ordained of God, and all class stratification derived from the prior divine command that women should submit to men--racial subordination derived from class subordination, which derived from gender subordination. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it" ("Toward a Kinder and Gentler America: The Southern Lady in the Greening of the Politics of the Old South," in In Joy and Sorrow, 127).

(19) For further discussion of female purity and white supremacy, see Catherine Clinton, "Southern Dishonor: Flesh, Blood, Race, and Bondage," in In Joy and Sorrow, 52-68.

(20) Frederick A. Ross quoted in Eugene Genovese, "Toward a Kinder and Gentler America," 127.

(21) Christopher C. G. Memminger, Lecture before the Young Men's Literary Association of Augusta, Georgia, 1851, quoted in W. S. Jenkins, Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), 210.

(22) Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Family and Female Identity," 15.

(23) William Harper, "Harper's Memoir on Slavery, "in The Pro-Slavery Argument, 214-215.

(24) Virginia Kent Anderson Leslie, "A Myth of the Southern Lady: Ante-bellum Pro-slavery Rhetoric and the Proper Place of Woman," in Southern Women, ed. Caroline M. Dillman (New York: Hemisphere Pub. Co., 1988), 19. "It is no accident," Anne Firor Scott commented wryly, "that the most articulate spokesmen for slavery were also eloquent exponents of the subordinate role of women" (The Southern Lady, 17).

(25) Scott, The Southern Lady, 21.

(26) Henry H. Tucker, "God in the War: A Sermon Delivered Before the Legislature of Georgia, November 15, 1861" (Milledgeville, GA: Boughton, Nisbet, and Barnes, 1861).

(27) Quoted in Scott, The Southern Lady, 5.

(28) Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 46-48, passim.

(29) "A Noble Woman," Tennessee Baptist, 3 August 1861.

(30) Stella, "Woman and the War," Biblical Recorder, 8 January 1862.

(31) "A Mother's Parting Words to Her Soldier Boy," A New Tract for Soldiers, no. 18, 1.

(32) See Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

(33) Anne Firor Scott noted that "when plantations broke up and people began to move to town, the image [of 'true womanhood'] as a real force in women's lives was doomed" (Southern Lady, 228).

(34) For information regarding revivalism and gender, see Sarah Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (London: Collier MacMillan Publishers, 1989) and Nancy Hardesty, Women Called to Witness: Evangelical Feminism in the 19th Century (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984). In The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), Ann Douglas contends that the relationship between the clergy and women was extremely strong because disestablishment relegated religion to the private sphere, thus reinforcing true womanhood notions of the "inherently religious" woman. The Anglican presence in the colonial South contributed similar notions of piety and submissiveness to the cultural pool. See Alice E. Matthews, "The Religious Experience of Southern Women," in Women and Religion in America, vol. 2, The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983): 193-232.

(35) Heck, In Royal Service, 8.

(36) Nancy Cott's study of New England women concludes that religion, particularly Calvinism, served "to elevate women as religion's supporters and ... to reaffirm women's subordination to men." The Bonds of Womanhood: 'Woman's Sphere' in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 159. It is important to note that the Puritan ethos carried with it a reverence for education. The majority of women in New England were literate because of Puritanism, and this shaped women's self-understanding as well as the evolution of gender roles in New England.

(37) Richard Allestree, The Whole Duty of Man, excerpts in Alice E. Matthews, "The Religious Experience of Southern Women," in Women and Religion in America, 207.

(38) Religious Herald, 20 February 1868, 2, quoted in Rufus Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1961), 168.

(39) Religious Herald, 20 February 1868, 2.

(40) Religious Herald, 5 January 1899, 1.

(41) The Christian Index, 28 May 1885, 8.

(42) Texas Baptist Herald, 17 May 1871, 1.

(43) George W. McDaniel, "Christ and Woman," Hume and Foreign Fields 2 (July 1918): 4.

(44) Texas Baptist Herald, 17 May 1871, 1.

(45) Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 113. Sara Evans noted: "Christ appeared as the epitome of feminine virtue: loving, forgiving, suffering, and sacrificing for others. Thus, the notion of female moral superiority received further reinforcement as the ideals of femininity and of Christianity appeared to coalesce." Born for Liberty (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 73.

(46) Royal Service (February 1915), 12.

(47) The model of separate domestic spheres has been questioned because of its narrow focus on privileged white women. Scholars have begun to question its relevance for women of other races and classes. For treatments of gender identities that take class and race into broader consideration, see Susan Thnk Lesser's biographical essay "Paradigms Gained: Further Readings in the History of Women in the Progressive Era" in Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era, ed. Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 180-193, and Sarah Eisenstein, Give Us Bread But Give Us Roses: Working Women's Consciousness in the United States, 1890 to the First World War (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983).

(48) Rufus Weaver, "The Problem of the City," Home Mission Board Leaflet Series No. 15, 1906-1907, Southern Baptist Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.

(49) Royal Service (September 1921), 28.

(50) Anne Firor Scott, "Women's Perspective on the Patriarchy in the 1850s," in Half Sisters of History, 86.

(51) Alice Armstrong, "Woman's Obligation to Spread the Gospel," 9-11. Annie Armstrong Notebooks, Woman's Missionary Union Archives, Birmingham, Alabama.

(52) Minutes, Rehoboth Baptist Association, 1913, 17.

(53) Mary Hill Davis, "San Antonio, 1907" in Living Messages: Official Addresses of Mrs. F. S. Davis, 1907-1931 (Dallas: WMU of Texas, 1935), 2.

(54) Texas Baptist Herald, 17 May 1871, 1.

(55) Ann Judson to Female Judson Society of Richmond (Washington, 26 April 1823) quoted in Heck, In Royal Service, 49.

(56) Our Mission Fields (January, February, March, 1912), 20-21.

(57) Ibid., 40.

(58) Ann Judson to Female Judson Society of Richmond, In Royal Service, 49.

(59) Minutes, Woman's Missionary Society, Auxiliary to the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, 9 December 1892 (Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton, 1893).

(60) Davis, "San Antonio, 1907," 2.

(61) Minute Book, Woman's Mission to Woman, Maryland Baptist Historical Society, quoted in Allen, A Century to Celebrate, 25.

(62) Charlotte G. Borst and Kathleen W. Jones, "As Patients and Healers: The History of Women and Medicine," OAH Magazine of History (September 2005), 24. See also, Charlotte G. Borst, Catching Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Regina Markell Morantz, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); The Empathic Practitioner: Empathy, Gender, and Medicine, ed. Ellen Singer More and Maureen A. Milligan (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).

(63) Helen Barrett Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman's Work in Foreign Missions (New York: MacMillan, 1912), 124.

(64) Ibid., 122.

(65) Ibid., 126.

(66) Our Mission Fields (April, May, June, 1913), 47-49.

(67) Ibid., 51. The doctor's name was Ida Fay Levering of Secunderbad, India. It is possible that Levering was related to Joshua Levering, but I have not found the connection. I do not know what reaction WMU may have received from Levering's comment that the women come "two by two to preach."

(68) Franklin T. Fowler, "The History of Southern Baptist Medical Missions," in Baptist History and Heritage (1 October 1975): 196. On the voyage to China she met J. A. Thompson, a representative of the National Bible Society of Scotland, who was serving in Japan. Ruth McGowan later married him and left the service Of the Foreign Mission Board.

(69) Fowler, Medical Missions, 197.

(70) Ibid., 198.

(71) Album of Southern Baptist Foreign Missionaries, 1926 (Nashville: SBHLA).

(72) See Laine Scales, All That Fits a Woman: Training Southern Baptist Women for Charity and Mission, 1907-1926 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000). Dr. Francis Hatchett earned her B.A. degree from Baylor Female College (now the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor) in 1879 and became one of the first women in Texas to earn a medical degree. She later served as a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A pamphlet from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor lists more than a dozen women who received degrees in the medical field in the 1920s and 30s. Other UMHB alumni listed in this pamphlet who became doctors are: Alma Freeman (1922), Pearl Smith (1923), Estella Ginsberg Strayer (1924), Lois Norman (1930), Margaret Alex Vance (1931), Sally Provence (1937). See "By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them," ed. Dorothea Lohoff Gingrich, UMHB Centennial Series Pamphlet (Belton, TX: University of Mary Hardin Baylor, 1944), 23-28, located in the Musick Alumni Center and Museum at the Parker House, UMHB.

(73) Sarah Jessie Stakely, "Annual Address of the President," Report of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of WMU, SBC (1902), 7.

(74) See Mathews, Religion in the Old South, 115-120, for a description of the evangelical social impulse among antebellum women.

(75) Greg Vickers, "Woman's Place," 82. Vickers concluded that WMU leadership held "ethical tenets which were not shared by the men and which resulted in behavior historians have not found prevalent among Southern Baptist males (p. 90).

(76) Rosemary Skinner Keller noted this in her study of the Methodist deaconess movement. "The language of family and Mother House at the heart of the deaconess movement is undeniably quaint to the ears of feminists at the turn of the 21st century. However . . . advocates of deaconess orders were speaking in a language to make their radical moves as the first professional women in the churches justifiable to national authorities, and grassroots members of local congregations, as well as to themselves." "Creating a Sphere for Women: The Methodist Episcopal Church, 1869-1906," in Women in New Worlds: Historical Perspectives on the Wesleyan Tradition, ed. Hilah F. Thomas, Rosemary Skinner Keller, and Louise L. Queen (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), 84.

(77) Lulie Wharton, Royal Service (September 1925), 27.

(78) Maud Reynolds McClure, "A Glimpse of Settlement Work" (May 1913), pamphlet in the Personal Service Notebooks, WMU Archives.

(79) Royal Service (December 1920), 30.

(80) "Personal Service Survey" (c. 1912), Personal Service Notebooks, WMU Archives.

(81) This idea was common in women's literature in that era. In her study of female reformers in Atlanta, Georgina Hickey found that "throughout these case studies, social workers and reformers promoted the image of women as the key to a family's survival." "Disease, Disorder, and Motherhood: Working-class Women, Social Welfare, and the Process of Urban Development in Atlanta" in Before the New Deal: Social Welfare in the South, 1830-1930, ed. Elna C. Green (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 184.

(82) Annual Report, Woman's Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention (May 1916), 52.

(83) Royal Service (February 1915), 12.

(84) Susan Hill Lindley contends that most female middle-class social gospel activists focused their attention on women and children by organizing such works as kindergartens, day nurseries, and mothers classes. See Lindley's discussion of the social gospel in 'You Have Stept Out of Your Place": A History of Women and Religion in America (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996): 135-47.

(85) Royal Service (February 1915), 12.

(86) Our Mission Fields (October, November, December, 1913), 32. This focus on the maternal role as motivation for missions and reform is not unique to WMU. Female reformers in the Progressive era consistently modeled their public efforts on their domestic role. Ellen Carol Dubois argues that the first generation of women progressives--settlement workers and municipal reformers--consistently perceived their roles as public expressions of their maternal roles. See Ellen Carol Dubois, "Harriet Stanton Blatch and the Transformation of Class Relations Among Women Suffragists," in Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era, ed. Noralee-Frankel and Nancy S. Dye (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 162-79.

(87) Royal Service (February 1915), 11.

(88) Ibid., 12.

(89) Royal Service (August 1917), 12.

(90) Royal Service (October 1915), 27.

(91) Handbook for Personal Service, 28.

(92) Ibid.

(93) Anne Firor Scott contends that members of Women's Clubs were the first to initiate programs to address the problems of the cities and in so doing, virtually invented Progressivism. Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 141-174. Nancy S. Dye observed that "when we view reform through women's eyes, redefining the relationship between home and community--the private and the public--emerges as central to progressivism ("Introduction" in Gender, Class, Race, and Reform, 4).

(94) Texas Baptist Herald, 3 November 1869.

(95) Wharton was the director of the Personal Service Department of WMU, which was the center of their social service agenda.

(96) Lulie Wharton, Royal Service (October 1914), 24.

(97) Royal Service (March 1916), 10.

(98) Minutes, Woman's Missionary Society, Auxiliary to Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, 9 December 1892, 35.

(99) Our Mission Fields (January, February, March 1912), 15.

(100) Mrs. John Stout, Shall the Baptists of the South Organize for Mission Work? (Baltimore: Maryland Baptist Mission Rooms, 1888). In WMU historical scrapbook.

(101) Lottie Moon to H. A. Tupper, 17 July 1885, in Send the Light: Lottie Moon's Letters and Other Writings, ed. Keith Harper (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002), 114-115.

(102) Annie Armstrong to J. M. Brost/24 July 1896, in Harper, Send the Light, 94-95.

(103) Annie Armstrong to R. J. Willingham, 28 January 1903, in Harper, Send the Light, 54.

(104) Baptist Standard (16 October 1913) 14, quoted in Martin, "Hidden Work," 147.

(105) Royal Service (July 1922), 4-5.

(106) Lulie Wharton, Royal Service (September 1925), 27.

Carol Crawford Holcomb is professor of Christian studies at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.