Ann Braude

Epiphany-OviedoELCA: Library section 3 B: General Christianity. This book introduces us to female American religious leaders, beginning with Puritan Anne Hutchinson, a believer in salvation by faith alone. An early Lutheran, perhaps? She was exiled for those beliefs and for public preaching by the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay colony. We meet Quakers; Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers; and Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott, women's civil and religious rights activists.
There's a section on show more Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of popular evangelist Lyman Beecher. In a family with 11 children, all seven Beecher sons became ministers. Her father lamented the fact that Harriet, his brightest child, was not a boy, since it would have meant even greater glory for himself. Hoo, boy, them's fightin' words! She showed HIM!! Her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, asked," how could any woman condone a system that sold into slavery other women's children?" (She wrote the book after her own infant died.) By appealing to women's humanity, Stowe changed the way Americans looked at slavery, as a barbaric offense to God and the human fmaily.
We also meet Mary Baker Eddy; Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah (the Jewish women's humanitarian organization), the WCTU, and American nuns. Their religious work often coincided with the fight for women's suffrage, the right to female self-autonomy, and the passage of the ERA (which, by the way, has STILL not been passed.) At least our church is a beneficiary of this struggle -- our pastor is female. Despite the fact that religious hierarchies are still predominantly male, America has a rich religious female heritage which only now is being recognized as a treasure of great value to the ethical fabric of American faith, bravery and courage. show less