Christian Imperial Feminism - (North American Religions) by Gale L Kenny (Paperback)

About the Book

"Christian Imperial Feminism examines how ecumenical Protestant women's practices of pageants, prayer, and political activism sustained the Christian imperial feminism of the White women's missionary movement within an emerging Protestant-inflected postwar racial liberalism"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"[Christian Imperial Feminism] expands feminist theory, which often focuses on secular feminism, by showing how Christian feminism shaped global women's rights movements. With its very detailed analysis and academic focus, the main audience for the book includes historians and scholars of religion, feminism and gender studies, postcolonial studies, and American studies, but the book, especially chapters four and five, could be of great interest to those in the field of social work."-- "Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work"

"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

"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

About the Author

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.