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Women in New Worlds
Edited by Hilah F. Thomas and Rosemary Skinner Keller
Nashville, Abingdon, 1981. 445 pp. $12.95.

A Bible verse used by the Women's Missionary Society of North Carolina in 1920 nicely captures the spirit here: "Behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it." This volume contains 20 papers presented at the Women in New Worlds Conference in Cincinnati in 1980 and attempts to examine the religious history of American women within the broader context of women in our society. As they advocated suffrage and championed social reforms, they also sought greater voice, wider roles, and increased power within the church. This volume documents a little-known story of faith and struggle in which women lobbied for lay rights, created a missionary society, established training schools, and took the Gospel to the "urban" jungle of the saloon-spirited itinerants in the circuit of social Christianity.

The word "itinerant" has a special meaning to Methodists, referring to ministers in the time of Wesley who "travelled the connection" in particular circuits. This work similarly chronicles the journeys of women who helped shape a new vision of the church. Traveling in uncharted territory, fighting formidable opposition, these women claimed the right to serve God along with their brothers, husbands, sons, and daughters. Deferred acceptance as well as recognition in the institutional church, restricted by both social sentiment and church law, these women surmounted barriers posed by sanction, as well as by Scripture. Recounting the contributions of women including Susanna Wesley, Lucy Jane Rider, Phoebe Palmer, Mary McLeod Bethune, Sarah Crosby, Frances Willard, and Georgia Harkness, the roles of deaconess, missionary, prophet, preacher, social reformer, and theologian emerge

343 - Women in New Worlds

as visions, become reality, and are reflected in the social teachings of the church.

This is a valuable addition to denominational history as well as to "everyone's history." It includes contributions from the Evangelical United Brethren, Methodist Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal Church (South), Methodist Protestant Church, and United Brethren in Christ-all of these religious bodies have merged into the United Methodist Church. The book organizes the essays into five sections: women in church and society; the spiritual empowerment of women; contributions of women to church life; the status of women in institutional church life; and the movement of church women into social reform.

This book serves several important functions. First, it provides a compendium of little-known histories of pioneers in American Methodist church history. Second, it chronicles the history of the church in American society and in so doing orients us to ideologies, movements, and theologies. The editors, as well as the contributors, are to be commended for their efforts to present a broad spectrum of perspectives. But the absence of an index or cross-reference of topics is a distinct oversight.

After a recovery of such histories as these, a systematic analysis of the integration of women in American religious life is in order. Hopefully, other denominations may prepare similar works, and further volumes in this series may be forthcoming. Such efforts can only be welcomed as we bridge the gap between secular and church history, as well as strengthen the inroads toward ecumenicity.

Beverly J. Crute
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey