Title: Divine destiny
First published: 1998
Description: Curiously, despite their exclusion from the Protestant rhetorics of manifest destiny and domesticity, the nineteenth century featured a remarkable growth in the conversion of women and nonwhite men to the Protestant faith. Why did women and nonwhite men seek to join a dominant religion that in many ways set out to limit and oppress them?

This book responds to that question by exploring the actual words and rhetorical choices made by some of the most progressive Protestant white, African American, and Native American thinkers of the era: Olaudah Equiano, William Apess, Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, and Amanda Berry Smith.

It argues that American Protestantism was both prohibitive and constitutive, offering its followers an expedient, acceptable but limited means for assuming social and political power and for forming a mutually empathetic, relational notion of self while at the same time foreclosing the possibility for more radical roles and social change.
Subjects: Christianity, Church history, History, Protestant churches, Protestantism, Race relations, Religious aspects, Religious aspects of Race relations, Religious aspects of Sex role, Sex role, Protestantisme, Ideologieën, Sekseverschillen, Rassenverhoudingen, Protestantism, history, Race relations, religious aspects, christianity, Sex role, religious aspects, United states, church history, Églises protestantes, Histoire, Rôle selon le sexe, Aspect religieux, Christianisme, Relations raciales, Histoire religieuse, RELIGION, Protestant
Places: United States
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: BR515 .H38 1998