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Citation: Pope-Levison, Priscilla. “Dressing Their Spiritual and Ecclesial Changes: 
Women Preachers in the Progressive Era.” April 26, 2022, Toronto, Ontario, MPEG-4, 45:11 min.

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So the title of my paper, as you know, is dressing their spiritual and ecclesial changes, women preachers in the Progressive Era. 
And just to clarify, Progressive Era dates are generally 1890 to 1920. So that's the time period that we'll be talking about this 
morning. At the time of her conversion, evangelist Amanda Berry Smith was deliberating over which Spring outfit to purchase with 
the money she earned as a domestic servant working for a Quaker family. Finally, she decided. A white straw bonnet with a very pretty 
broad pink tie strings pink or white muslin dress tucked to the waist, black silk mantilla and light Gator boots with black tips. I 
had it all picked out in my mind. My nice. Spring and summer suit. I can see the little box now where I had put all my money saving 
up for this special purpose. Her dress dilemma coincided with an ongoing spiritual one. Specifically, her desire to be converted 
became, entangled with buying or not the spring suit. She explained. One day while I was praying, I got desperate, and here came my 
spring suit up constantly before me. So I told the Lord if he would take away the burden that was on my heart, that I would never 
get one of those things. I wouldn't get the bonnet, I wouldn't get the dress, I wouldn't get the mantilla, I wouldn't get the shoes. 
Oh, I wanted relief from the burden. And then all at once there. Came a quiet peace in my heart, and that suit never came before me 
again. Smith did not end up purchasing the Occurrance outfit. Instead, she marked her spiritual transformation with a very different 
style, patterned after the Quaker attire of her employer, known as plain Dress. Historian Pamela Klassen describes plain dress as 
dress. Excuse me. Without unnecessary ornament made from solid drab fabric, usually in a uniform and figure obscuring style, and 
with a plain bonnet, usually white or black, worn close to the head. In her study of Quaker women's dress, Marianne Cayton finds 
1 characteristic in common and that is the avoidance of certain features of high style worldly fashions and fads. The Quaker Plain 
aesthetic was one of recognizable absence. By not buying the colourful spring suit and by changing into plain dress. Smith chose to 
display virtues of piety, simplicity and aversion toward the material world and a heightened interest in the spiritual world. Garbed 
in plain dress, from bonnet to sturdy shoes, she went on to national and international fame across various networks, including 
speaking at black and white Methodist Churches, Wesleyan Holiness Camp meetings and W CTU, the Woman's Christian Temperance unit 
platforms. This study will demonstrate that women preachers in the Progressive Era changed dress. To mark moments of a spiritual 
and ecclesial changes. Spiritual moments of transformation included conversion, as we just heard from Smith, who changed from 
fashionable into plain dress. The spiritual experience of sanctification also spurred on address change, as we will see for Mary 
Lee Cagle and Emma Ray. Then, at ecclesial moments of change, women preachers like Mariah Woodworth Etter, Emma Ray and Alma White 
quit mainline Methodism to join smaller, tightly knit Wesleyan holiness churches. This dress change reflected their heightened 
adherence to holiness standards in order to differentiate themselves from the mainline churches following after middle class, 
respectability and fashion. In other words, women preachers changed dress to display spiritual and ecclesial change to stem the 
tiled of world tide of worldliness and to mark the break with their former change. Their former church. Dress change was more 
complicated for women than their male counterparts because women preachers were on constant exhibit and heightened scrutiny in a 
public setting. What they wore had to negotiate and often mollify the hostility they faced. As historian Leah Payne explains quote 
most turn of the 20th century Americans took this historic position toward women pastors. There is in most of us, wrote the 
discontented man. Don't you love that the discontented man in 1895? There is in most of us he wrote, an inwardness of instinct 
against setting up a female in the prominence of the pulpit to lecture on their sins to a mixed congregation of men and women. 
What the author referred to the Reverend Doctor Charles Penk Parkhurst, who was Senior Minister of Madison Square Presbyterian 
Church in New York City, called and Romania. Simply defined Parkhurst and he made-up this word, defined and Romania as quote a 
passionate aping by women of everything that is masculine, UN quote. In a full page article in Ladies Home Journal, also written 
in 1895, Parkhurst called and Romania a disease with these symptoms. It is an attempt on the part of those affected with the disease 
to minimize distinctions by which manhood and womanhood are differentiated, whether it's regards their culture, their interests, or 
their activities. It is that animus which accepts to having woman's public activities along any line, distinguished by any designation 
of sex. UN quote. Women preachers, by the very nature of their activity of preaching in a public space, held the public gaze while 
speaking a public in which many who attended believed they themselves suffered from such a disease. This situation then further 
compounded and quite honestly put a lot of pressure on the import of their dress and any change they made in that dress. So we're 
going to talk just a little bit about the importance of dress and how dressing signifies. Smith's dress change held momentous 
significance because dress signifies it acts as a sign. Dress is a visible form of communication that conveys essential information 
about the wearer. As dress scholar Joanne Eicher writes, dress functions as a silent communication system that provides basic 
information about age, gender, marital status, occupation, religious affiliation, and ethnic background. Much information about 
identity is communicated through sensory cues provided by dress, without the observer asking any questions, UN quote. A significant 
piece of information communicated by Smith's dress was her gender. Another another dress scholar, Gertrude Leonard, explains that 
the way people dress is among the most significant ways of doing gender. Doing gender means the conscious or unconscious staging of 
gendered selves in everyday life. Doing gender was even more critical when women dressed for the staging aspect of public speaking, 
particularly in this time period when, as we have just been saying, great was the animosity toward women preachers. When any 19th 
century American woman ventured onto it, public stage clothing was a necessary and evocative medium for her message. And especially 
for religious trailblazers like women preachers, they had to look the part but not veer off into too much masculinity, lest they be 
accused of and Romania, or too much femininity in fashionable clothing, lest they not look sanctified or converted. Writing about 
sanctified women in the Church of God in Christ, the Cogic denomination historian Anthea Butler's words apply to the women we will 
look at today as well, she writes. Particularly for women, living the sanctified life meant that one's body and its public 
presentation was regulated from the tops of 1 head to the soles of 1's feet. The outward appearance of both Kojak men and women 
was important, but the women bore the greater burden and keeping their bodies within the confines of sanctification, UN quote. 
Because we're going to be talking about Methodists, I thought it was important to remind ourselves of what it meant to dress 
Methodists. So plain dress like what you see so joiner. Truth wearing in the slide broadcast the religious commitment of evangelical 
groups such as the Quakers and Methodists who adopted Paul's admonition and first Timothy 29 as the primary biblical basis for 
plain dress that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently, and suitable clothing not with their hair braided or 
with gold. Curls or expensive clothes. This biblical teaching was fundamental for John Wesley, and he admonished his followers 
to dress accordingly. Wesley gave detailed instructions about dress for men, women and children, mostly the don'ts, as in what 
not to wear. No gold, pearls, precious stones, fine linen, or costly apparel like silk or velvets for women. No lace of any kind 
or colour, no earrings. Rings, necklaces, or ruffles? For men, no coloured waistcoat is shining, stockings, glittering or costly 
buckles or buttons. His admonition for plain dress made its way into early versions of the Methodist discipline published in the 
American colonies. To the question should we insist on the rules concerning dress? The following answer was cited by all means. 
This is no time to give encouragement to superfluity of apparel. Therefore, receive none into the church till they have left off 
superfluous ornaments. In order to do this. One, let everyone who has charge of a circuit or station read Mr. Wesley's thoughts 
upon dress at least once a year in every society. 2IN visiting the classes be very mild but very strict. 3 allow of no exempt 
case. Better one suffer than many. Four. Give no tickets to any that wear high heads, enormous bonnets, ruffles or rings. UN quote. 
You're feeling a little uncomfortable. An observer in 1831 differentiated Methodist dress from other mainline Protestants in these 
words. The Episcopalians showed most grandeur of dress and costume next to the Presbyterians, the gentleman of whom freely 
indulged in powdered and frizzled hair. The Methodist desire to be a peculiar people and for a time affected their purpose. 
The women all wore plain black sonnet satin bonnets. Straw bonnets were never seen among them. No white dresses, no jewelry, 
no rings. The females wore no curls, no sidelocks or lace or ornaments. Gradually, however, these admonitions waned and eventually 
disappeared altogether, as we will see in a moment. But for now, just to show you the contrast, we've been looking at plain dress. 
Now I want you to see what fashionable women were wearing at the time, just so you can visibly see what exactly is going on here. 
So we're going to talk about dressing fashionable women. The spring outfit Smith merely purchased exemplified fashionable dress in 
the late 19th century. During this age of conspicuous consumption, fashion became a more affordable commodity. Even the working 
class could purchase discretionary items. Mass production meant that clothes, souvenirs, newspapers, and more. And more were 
affordable to almost everyone. Young female factory workers spent their meager wages on uncomfortable and impractical French 
heel shoes, inexpensive knockoffs of costly models. This meant that a domestic worker like Smith could keep pace with fashion, 
albeit at discounted prices. Women's dress dress style followed and a line skirt smooth and fitted around the hips and slimmer 
in the front with gathers or pleats in the back. Sleeves grew larger, beginning with the tight sleeve on the upper arm and a puff 
set vertically high on the shoulder. Invisible to the public. Women wore multiple layers and textures of underwear in order to 
achieve the well upholstered look of a Victorian lady. Most women, even young girls, wore corsets to achieve the fashionable shape. 
It was an immensely complicated construction of either cotton or satin, composed of insets, gussets and bands, some reinforced by 
whale bones, with a straight steel busks in front and laces at the back. Ouch. The intricacy and intensity of women's dress, 
literally from head to toe prompted this comment by Methodist Holiness preacher and evangelist Jenny Fowler Willing. God has not 
yet made the animal strong enough to endure what women are subjected to. Shut in closed rooms, breathing exhausted air with 
nothing to stir the blood, lungs, lungs, compressed heavy weights hung to the hips, everything heat and pinned upon the head, 
and almost nothing on the feet. If they have even passable health, it is owing to a miracle of endurance. Fashionable dress 
also displayed strong colours with the industrial age in full swing. The use of synthetic dyes such as those made from Anilin, 
developed from coal tar, allowed for brilliant, gorgeous hues in women's fashion. The crowning result. Women's clothes were as 
colourful as a parrots plumage, among them shades of deep red, Peacock blue, bright apple green, royal blue, purple, Mandarin 
and sea green. Trimmings such as buttons, fringes, braids, puffs and ribbons were displayed prominently, and they came in 
luscious materials like silk, satin, brocade and velvet. Fashionably outfitted women wore jewelry, and lots of it, according to 
Josiah Allen's wife, the writer Marietta Hawley, who was a Methodist writing at the turn of the century who described one woman's 
jewelry in her customary colloquial language. She's describing a scene at the swanky Saratoga Springs Resort why one woman had so 
many diamonds on that she had a detective following her. All around, wherever she went, she was ablaze of splendor, and so was 
lots of them, though like the stars, they differed from each other in glory. Ellen Simpson, wife of Bishop Matthew Simpson, 
epitomized how a fashionable woman should dress. She was, after all, the wife of the leading Methodist in the United States who 
entertained several American presidents in his home and was well known for his friendship with Abraham Lincoln. Her dress became 
the subject of an often told story about a well to do Presbyterian couple who hosted The Simpsons in their sumptuous, exquisitely 
appointed home. The Presbyterian Hostess, who had a very sneering way of Speaking of Methodists, thinking they were illiterate, 
plain people, anticipated that Mrs. Simpson would be wearing, quote, a well worn bombazine, a linen collar. A pinned by a common 
brass pin, hair twisted and a pigtail on the back of the head, a scoop bonnet and cotton gloves. So the Hostess chose to dress 
more simply, in keeping with what she assumed a Methodist woman would wear. She twisted up her hair in a tight knot, took off 
her rings, wore a big flower tycoon Rep wrapper and a white apron, and thus, Appareled, took her stand in her parlor. Unfortunately 
for the Hostess, Ellen Simpson dressed fashionably and elegantly. A rustling of silk was heard, and a tall stately woman in black 
silk ruffled to the waist after the fashion of that time, with expensive laces and jewelry, and with their hair done in the latest 
style, swept down the stairs and into the parlor. The Presbyterian woman concluded her sad tale with this observation quote. The 
Methodists of these days are up with the times, UN quote. Dress became even more conspicuous against the backdrop of momentous 
foment in the religious landscape during the Progressive Era. Historian Ann Taves enumerates an ever widening gulf in the late 
19th century as that between religion of the church and religion of the camp meeting. Take the Methodist Episcopal Church north, 
for instance, which was then the largest denomination. In the United States. At its Centennial in 1884, Bishop Matthew Simpson 
assessed correctly that during its 1st century Methodism had transitioned from frontier revivalism to liturgical services held in 
Gothic Revival sanctuaries whose style was both splendid and expensive. This did not sit well with many folks in the pews, fancy 
ideas, even in architecture and the profound changes and shocks that accompanied accompanied them, observed William McLaughlin. 
McLaughlin registered most heavily upon those country bred, evangelically oriented individuals who made-up the bulk of the nation's 
churchgoers. During the Progressive Era, this evangelical hegemony splintered markedly in reaction to seismic theological and 
economic economic shifts. And women preachers, among many thousands, left the mainline church at the height of its ascendancy in 
numbers, finances, and social and political prestige in order to unite with smaller holiness churches. Between 1880 and 1905, some 
100,000 come Outers, as they were called, broke away from mainline Methodist churches to join holiness denominations, which maintained 
they believed the theological, social and economic teachings spanning the centuries since John Wesley and the early Methodists. Many women 
preachers who left the mainline church to join or found their own religious institutions denounced methodism's embrace of a middle class 
lifestyle with its material prosperity, social standing and cultural accommodation. In particular, they criticized mainline church members, 
worldly amusements and activities like fashionable dress, conspicuous consumption, elaborate ritual, expensive church buildings, and Sabbath 
breaking as behaviors which put one soul in jeopardy. Dress became one sign to set them apart, especially as they stepped into church pulpits 
or onto camp, meeting wooden stages to preach to a mixed audience of men and women. So let's look first at some specific examples of dressing 
spiritual change, along with Amanda Berry Smith we've already seen. Excuse me, I'm going to go to that in a minute. First of all, Mary Lee Cagle, 
a Church of the Nazarene evangelist minister and church planter, had a spiritual moment of reckoning when a Holiness preacher spoke on the danger 
of worldly dress at her rural Arkansas Methodist Church. For the first time, she noticed the gold feathers and flowers she was wearing. As the 
preacher continued on the topic, she realized that despite over five years of weekly attendance, she had never heard any reference to methodism's 
general rules on dress. As she sat there that night, while the man of God was preaching, she had on a hat with a rather high crown and some yellow 
chrysanthemums still higher than the crown. And as the preacher talked, it seemed to her that the flowers began to grow and finally then seemed a 
foot higher and were nodding back and forth, and everyone was looking at them. Her conviction was so great that if she could have gotten the hat off 
and put it under the bench without anyone seeing it, she surely would have done so. When trusting for church the next morning, she hunted in the closet 
for her plainest dress. She did not curl her hair or powder her face and has never curled her hair since. Her mother's reaction to her dress change 
was surprise and disappointment all wrapped up in her question. Mary, are you going to church looking that way? Mary was sanctified during that 
revival and ended up marrying the Holiness preacher who preached on dress. Within a short time, they withdrew from the Methodist Church South and 
founded their own church, the New Testament Church of Christ, which eventually merged with the Nazarenes. Throughout her life, she maintained a 
fierce commitment to plain dress. She recalled being divinely prompted when she saw the fashionable dress at a camp meeting, holiness camp meeting 
and Debbie Arkansas. She recalled being divinely prompted to preach undress. The sermons finale covered the standard verses, which she believed gave 
God's clear guidance on Christian dress. Like first Peter 33. Do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair or by wearing gold ornaments or 
fine clothing. The first Timothy 2 passage I already read, and then from Exodus 33 four. When the people heard these harsh words, they mourned and no 
one put. On ornaments afterwards, she recalled, the people responded by stripping themselves of their ornaments, including a school teacher. Who removed 
her gold ring and gold class pen and a rose shouting the praises of God. Next we're going to look at MRA, who's actually one of my favorites. I had the 
pleasure of. Learning about her and doing a lot of research on her when we lived in Seattle. I'm sorry, I promise you I'm not doing this. It just seems 
to have a mind of its own. So sorry to be putting the slides back and forth. In a circa 1890 photo of the Francis Harper Coloured unit of the WCTU in 
Seattle, WA, Emma Ray, who is the 4th from the left in the actually, it's not the back row, it's the middle row, fourth from the left or third from the 
right. Is wearing a close fitting dark coloured dress with small buttons and ribbon trim on the bodice. An oversized white Lacy collar frames her neck. 
The 13 other women, all members of Joan St. African Methodist Episcopal Church, the AME Church, are similarly clad. 30 years later, in a photo of Emma 
and her husband LP on the frontispiece of her 1926 autobiography, as You See, her dress is strikingly altered. In place of the Lacy collar, she wears a 
plain white shirt topped with a white clergy collar. And she changed from her close fitting button bodice dress into a man's black suit jacket that is 
identical to her husbands. The only difference between them is his tie and her collar. Why the dress change? Like Kaggle, Emma Ray was sanctified. 
She was initially introduced to sanctification from some white holiness folks, who explained it through an illustrated chalk talk. They presented it as 
instantaneous following the shorter way playbook of preacher, author and journal editor Phoebe Palmer, whom Mark Knoll refers to as quote the major domo 
of the Holiness movement. UN quote. I love that phrase. From the moment she heard about it, Emma yearned to be sanctified, often pausing over the wash tub 
while doing laundry to pray for it to happen. Finally it did. And, she writes, it seemed that a strike of lightning had struck over the corner of the house, 
and it struck me on the top of the head and went through my body from head to foot like liquid fire. As my strength began to return, I felt a passion. Such a 
love for souls as I had never felt before. I saw a lost world. My heart became hot. A fire of holy, abiding love for God and souls was kindled at that hour, 
and I feel it will last until Jesus comes. To mark her sanctification, she changed dress. Women preachers also changed dress to mark their ecclesial change. 
Let's look first at Mariah Woodworth Etter, who preached and planted churches for two decades for the churches of God Winebrenner, an offshoot from Methodism 
before she moved into Pentecostal circles. Woodworth Etter disparaged her former church with unflattering adjectives and phrases such as dead, very weak, 
contentious, few in working order, Valley of dry bones and worldly. She labeled the mainline churches having lost its power. She writes. Oh, the spiritual 
death that has come over the churches in this part of the country. They have drifted into formality and gone out after the world, she complained. Early in 
her preaching, she held many meetings in Methodist churches, which she did on purpose, particularly if no evangelist had exceeded their succeeded their 
previously because she wanted to be the change agent to revive this mainline church with an influx of energetic, spiritually alive members. This happened 
at the Methodist Church in Pleasant Mills IN she writes, I could only find 6 who had any experience. They were the discouraged. Even the minister had no 
hope of it being built up again. A good many of the Brethren advised me not to go, but I thought if it was such a hard place, work was needed there worse 
than anywhere else. As a result of her meetings, new members joined the Methodist Church. The same thing happened at the Methodist Church. The Van Wert, 
OH, which was forsaken looking, surrounded by weeds several feet high and ready for the real estate market. Not only did it blossom with her converts, 
but also the increase in attendance secured the appointment of a new minister. When she preached, as you see, she wore a plain ensemble that portrayed her 
in a matronly, modest manner. Lea Payne describes her preaching attire as quote a simplified, desexualized version of turn of the century styles. Her 
unofficial uniform was a plain white dress and a modest full length, usually black coat, while her more fashionable counterparts, as we've seen, wore S 
corsets to display their womanly form. Her loose fitting dresses deemphasized her waist and bust. The sleeves were minimally puffed. Her most flamboyant 
accessories were a chased black bonnet and thin white gloves. This dress played strategically to present her as being free from fashion and world vanities 
and fully committed without. Equivocation to preaching the gospel. Back to MRA. When Emma and LP Ray spoke about sanctification in their AME church in 
Seattle, WA, their minister censored them. So eventually they left the mainline AME and joined the Free Methodist Church. Joining this Holiness church 
prompted Emma to change her hairstyle. We've been looking at dress, but hair is also a part of the dress for 30 years from age 11, where you see her in 
a rare photograph. She's obviously a nanny to a young white girl. For 30 years, from age 11 to her early 40s, she wore false hair in what was called as 
chignon or a waterfall. You can see it there in this picture. She described it as a great big amount of hair with wires run through to hold it on and make 
it light and puffy. Her attention to hair reflected an essential aspect of fashionable dress, because even the head warranted dressing up and became the 
site for a complicated and compelling coiffure with braids, chignons and loops of a woman's own carefully arranged hair or a false hair. But Emma became 
convicted that her stylish hair was an expression of vanity, separating her from God. So in order to maintain her sanctification, it had to be removed. 
I had worn it so long that it had killed the roots of my hair and I was partially bald and I would not listen to any suggestions about putting it away. 
It took me a long time to get my hair all fixed and curled. I had to dye it to keep it black. I spent many dollars upon invisible pins and Nets. Besides 
a whole lot of worry as to whether I had it on straight or not. I did not want anyone to know I wore it. And many times I was late getting to church Sunday 
morning because I would stand before the glass to see if I had it good and secure, and I often tried my husband by taking so much time. I began to get tired 
of it and I would do it up Saturday nights. All ready for the Sabbath, but somehow I could not fix it right. Feeling a divine directive to remove the false 
hair with its accoutrements, she took it off and threw it into the fire. Her story ended with these words. I took my comb and brush and brushed what little 
hair I had. I made me a little bonnet and put streamers of ribbon and tied them under my chin. The ribbons cover the bald places on the back of my head where 
the hairpins had worn the hair off that night my sleep was so peaceful. Her unadorned hair, along with her dress change, signaled both her spiritual and ecclesial 
changes. She dressed, as did her free Methodist counterparts, as we see in this photo taken in the early 1920s at a Snohomish camp meeting just north of the city. 
And if you can see she is seated in the middle of the women. She is the only black woman and right behind her. Standing LP who was malato? So we're I hope this is 
fun for you. By the way, I have had such fun learning about clothing, so maybe I because I was a seamstress and and when I was a young girl. So I hope it's been 
fun for you. We're going to look at our last woman before the conclusion, and that is the indomitable Alma White. Alma White married a Methodist minister and 
preached in Methodist pulpits in Colorado until she encountered opposition both to women preachers and to the doctrine of sanctification. She quit Methodism to 
start a New Holiness church, the pillar of fire. She too, belittled her former church, declaring that whereas God had in former times raised it up as the true 
church, now, its holy zeal had dwindled and it no longer held the apple of God's eye. Using a boat metaphor, she described a Methodism as quote an old painted 
Hulk with no power, no fire and no steam. Simply a toad in vessel that will never plow the billows of the story deep again. UN quote. To separate her church 
visibly from the mainline church, White adopted a uniform for pillar of fire workers to wear, particularly when they were out and about on church business. 
She believed that the uniform would solidify church members into a phalanx like an army, she writes. The pillar of fire in uniform is like an army, and she 
went on to speak of the uniform as dressing. Up a militant church warring against worldliness. It certainly did broadcast the churches religious work what 
sociologist Nathan Joseph would later refer to as quote witnessing. By wearing the uniform UN quote, she decreed that everyone who joined the pillar of fire 
had to signal this ecclesial change by discarding their previous dress and putting on the uniform. Uniforms came in dark colours, with black being the most 
consistent choice, the material used most. Often with surge, a strong twill fabric with the pronounced diagonal rib on the front and the back surge was chosen 
because it meant the twin criteria of being economical and durable. The women's uniform consisted of a sailor blouse with very full sleeves and A5 board skirt 
gathered around the waist in dark Navy surge. It was trimmed with deep pockets and round collars. Topping the uniform was the hat which sparked a great debate. 
After an unsuccessful search through Milliner shops, the women designed their own. They fashioned a short backed sailor by using very lightweight surge drawn 
over a cardboard base. For the trim, the brim, a small scarf, was draped around the crown, and the ties of Navy ribbon, fastened at the back of the hat, were 
tied in a small bow under the chin. Church seamstresses kept the members in uniform, alternating lightweight or heavier material depending on the season. I had 
the pleasure of interviewing some longtime members when I went to Zarephath, New Jersey, where Alma Whites church and really her town was founded, and one of 
them, in her reminiscences about the uniforms, unflattering cuts, joked that quote. Omar the tent maker made them to make them more fashionable, she explained. 
We learned how to make a scene for a princess's waistline. The uniform replaced every aspect of women's fashionable dress that Alma white disdained. She put 
diverse her critique of fashionable dress and published it in her magazine, woman's chains. I'll warn you that the poetry, the poem, is not. Sophisticated. The 
skirts are short, the necks are low. You'll see it everywhere you go, no matter what. A woman thinks of fashions bold, from which she shrinks she must the latest 
hogs all wear, must paint her face and Bob her hair, so that a market may be had for every vein. And foolish fad her neck and arms, they would have bear a place 
for jewels rich and rare. And thus, you see, that woman's made the dupe of all the tricks of trade. The pillar of fire uniform not only covered women's bodies 
fully and appropriately, but also signified their ecclesial change and religious purpose and I would say was also a critique of women's fashions. So just a very 
brief conclusion. I presented how women preachers in the Progressive Era changed dress to mark spiritual transformations like Smiths change from fashionable to 
plain dress like Mary Lee Cagle's eliminating gold and jewelry and fancy bits to mark her sanctification, and Emma raise, changing from her fashionable dress 
actually to what male preachers would have worn. And women preachers also change dress when they made an ecclesial change like we've seen with Mariah Woodworth 
Etter, Mary Lee Cagle, Emma Ray and Alma White. And this change coincided with the mainline churches rise in stature and social class architecture and in dress. 
In contrast, women preachers fossilized fashion was staged to mark a visible contrast with what they consider to be the mainline churches excesses. Dressing their 
spiritual and ecclesial changes continued on display by women preachers on the cusp of the Progressive Era. Highly touted child evangelist Aldine Utley, who was 
converted in 1921 at age 9 during an evangelistic meeting preached by Amy Semple McPherson, also changed dress. She started wearing her trademark white upon white 
dress, all white, from shoes to colour. Such dress, as we've seen marked transformative moments like Aldine Utley's conversion. When she was fourteen, she stood 
poised on the mammoth stage of Madison Square Garden in New York City before a vast sea of 14,000 strangers in 1926. This was aldean's four week, two sermons a day 
evangelistic campaign in the city where the vast crowds had responded enthusiastically to the diminutive Blue Eyed, Fair haired evangelist, outfitted in her customary 
white robe, hose and shoes with a bulky leather bound Bible held high in her petite right hand. Her preaching dress, like the other women preachers we've considered 
this morning, helped her stage the setting in order to inculcate the public's positive gaze. Thank you.


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