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.