"Chosen Vessels:" Protestant Women Prophets and the Language of Election in the Early Modern British Atlantic Público
Bouldin, Elizabeth (2012)
Abstract
Abstract
"Chosen Vessels:" Protestant Women Prophets and the Language of
Election
in the Early Modern British Atlantic
"Chosen Vessels" considers over one hundred women who prophesied
between the
British Civil Wars and the eve of the eighteenth-century
transatlantic awakenings. I argue
that the rich and varied expressions of election rhetoric among
women prophets from a
range of religious groups attest to the existence of a broad
cultural discourse on election
and chosenness. Election, or the claim of being chosen by God, was
more than doctrinal;
it became a powerful rhetorical tool with far-reaching effects on
the formation of
religious and national identities. How women prophets participated
in and negotiated
election discourse was key to how they worked out their own beliefs
about their elect
status. More broadly, it was also central to how women shaped ideas
about the role of
election in the lives of individuals and communities in the diverse
religious environment
of the expanding Atlantic world.
Through a consideration of groups such as the Quakers,
Philadelphians, French Prophets,
Labadists, and radical German Pietists, this dissertation examines
how transsectarian and
transnational encounters challenged British prophets'
understandings of who comprised
the "elect" and what "election" signified. The study also
challenges arguments that have
tied the feminization of late seventeenth-century religious
discourse to the
domesticization or decline of women's religious roles. I show how
some women
continued to participate actively in public religious life by
claiming that they had been
chosen for particular roles related to the end times. These women
played a central part in
the development of a transnational religious sphere, one in which
dissenters carried out
conversations and critical debates with one another about the
nature of radical
Protestantism.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Female Prophecy and Language of Election during the
Civil Wars and Restoration 36
Chapter Two: Female Prophecy, Election, and the Transatlantic
Quaker Community 73
Chapter Three: "Cloathed with the Sun:" Ann Bathurst and the
Gendering of Prophecy 132
Chapter Four: The Philadelphians, the French Prophets, and the
Problem of Prophetic Authority, c. 1706-1715 181
Chapter Five: "Peculiar People in all Parts and Denominations of
Christendom:" Religious Encounters among Radical Protestants, c.
1660-1730 232
Conclusion 279
Bibliography 292
About this Dissertation
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Primary PDF
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"Chosen Vessels:" Protestant Women Prophets and the Language of Election in the Early Modern British Atlantic () | 2018-08-28 16:21:28 -0400 |
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Supplemental Files
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Conclusion.docx () | 2018-08-28 16:21:37 -0400 |
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chapter 5.doc () | 2018-08-28 16:21:42 -0400 |
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chapter 1.doc () | 2018-08-28 16:21:47 -0400 |
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chapter 3.doc () | 2018-08-28 16:21:51 -0400 |
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chapter 2.doc () | 2018-08-28 16:21:55 -0400 |
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chapter 4.doc () | 2018-08-28 16:21:59 -0400 |
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