Mary Lyon and the Mount Holyoke missionaries / Amanda Porterfield.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-172) and index.

Print version record.

The Place of Antebellum Missionary Women in American Religious History -- The Puritan Roots of Republican Motherhood -- The Role of New Divinity Thought in Motivating Enthusiasm for Foreign Missions -- Distinctions between Religious and Political Imperialism -- The Importance and Distinctiveness of Antebellum Missionary Women -- The Myth of Puritanism's Morbidity -- The Feminist Distaste for Self-Denial -- Religious Community at Mount Holyoke -- Education and Teaching as Means of Negotiating Social Stress and Change -- Mount Holyoke as an Instance of Antebellum Communitarianism -- Mount Holyoke Compared to the Oneida Community -- The Role of Community in Shaping Modern Society in the United States -- The Mechanics of Communal Life at Mount Holyoke -- Anti-Catholic Sentiment at Mount Holyoke -- Investment in the Scientific Validity of Protestant Orthodoxy -- Building God's Work of Redemption at Mount Holyoke -- The Conversion Process and the Self-Referential Character of Missionary Zeal -- Missionaries as Exemplars of an Advanced Stage of the Conversion Process -- Mary Lyon's Conversion -- Precedents for Conversion at Mount Holyoke -- Lyon's Strategies for Nurturing Conversion and Missionary Zeal -- The Centrality of Women in the Revitalization of Nestorian Christianity and Its Conflict with ... -- Fiske Seminary as an Outpost of Mount Holyoke -- The New Culture Created at Fiske Seminary -- The Place of American Intervention in the History of Nestorian Culture -- American Contributions to Changing Expectations of Gender Differentiation -- The Exclusivism of American Missionary Idealism -- The Presence and Impact of Mary Lyon's Students in Maharashtra -- Christianity in India -- Abby Fairbank as a Cross-Cultural Exemplar of Female Piety -- Mary Lyon's Students as Religious Teachers and Pioneers in Female Education -- Conflict in the Maratha Mission and Its Implications for Missionary Women

(Cont.) Coinciding Iconoclasms and Forces of Social Reform -- The Syncretic Reach of Hindu Piety -- The Role of Women and Women's Issues in Hindu Reform -- Mount Holyoke Missionaries and Their Husbands in Zululand and Natal -- Charlotte Grout's Exhibition of Power -- The African Context of American Involvement -- The Nature of American Influence -- Mount Holyoke Missionaries in Natal -- The Centrality of Women's Issues in Cultural Change -- Missionary Influence on Gender Role Differentiation and Sexual Behavior -- The Entrenchment of Separate Communities and the Violation of Christian Fellowship -- Conclusion.

American women played in important part in Protestant foreign missionary work from its early days at the beginning of the nineteenth century, enabling them not only to disseminate religious principles but also to break into public life and create expanded opportunities for themselves and other women. No institution was more closely associated with women missionaries that Mount Holyoke College. This book examines Mount Holyoke founder Mary Lyon and the missionary women trained by her. Porterfield sees Lyon and her students as representative of dominant trends in American missionary thought before the Civil War. She focuses on how their activities in several parts of the world--particularly northwest Persia, Maharashtra in western India, and Natal in southeast Africa--and shows that while their primary goals remained elusive, antebellum missionary women made major contributions to cultural change and the development of new cultures.

eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - Worldwide