Overview

Illuminates how white American Protestant women embraced a racially specific version of social inclusiveness that centered themselves as the norm Amidst the global instability of the early twentieth century, white Christian American women embraced the idea of an “empire of Christ” that was racially diverse, but which they believed they were uniquely qualified to manage. America’s burgeoning power, combined with women’s rising roles within the church, led to white Protestant women adopting a feminism rooted in religion and imperialism. Gale L. Kenny examines this Christian imperial feminism from the women’s missionary movement to create a Christian world order. She shows that this Christian imperial feminism marked a break from an earlier Protestant world view that focused on moral and racial purity and in which interactions among races were inconceivable. This new approach actually prioritized issues like civil rights and racial integration, as well as the uplift of women, though the racially diverse world Christianity it aspired to was still to be rigidly hierarchically ordered, with white women retaining a privileged place as guardians. In exposing these dynamics, this book departs from recent scholarship on white evangelical nationalism to focus on the racial politics of white religious liberalism. Christian Imperial Feminism adds a necessary layer to our understanding of religion, gender, and empire.

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9781479825516

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Reviews

"""Through close examinations of a wide range of practices from mission study to pageants to committee meetings to worship services, Christian Imperial Feminism reveals the ways that Protestant women embraced a Christian cosmopolitanism that simultaneously embraced diversity and sought to manage it…. A thoughtful exploration of Protestant churchwomen as full people with good intentions and deep flaws who took action in a world that they thought they understood far better than they actually did, with effects that they could not always predict."" -- Emily Conroy Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic ""Expertly written…. Will be of most interest to historians, particularly those working on missions, Christian women, and US Christianity in the twentieth century."" -- Hillary Kaell, author of Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage"

Author Information

Gale L. Kenny is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Barnard College. She is the author of Contentious Liberties: American Abolitionists in Post-emancipation Jamaica, 1837-1866.

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