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University of Oklahoma Graduate College UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE SPIRITUAL RHETORIC OF EARLY METHODIST WOMEN SUSANNA WESLEY, SARAH CROSBY, MARY BOSANQUET FLETCHER, AND HESTER ROGERS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By CAROLYN PASSIG JENSEN Norman, Oklahoma 2013 THE SPIRITUAL RHETORIC OF EARLY METHODIST WOMEN SUSANNA WESLEY, SARAH CROSBY, MARY BOSANQUET FLETCHER, AND HESTER ROGERS A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY ______________________________ Dr. Catherine Hobbs, Chair ______________________________ Dr. Christopher Carter ______________________________ Dr. Susan Kates ______________________________ Dr. David Mair ______________________________ Dr. Barbara S. Boyd © Copyright by CAROLYN PASSIG JENSEN 2013 All Rights Reserved. Acknowledgements John Wesley Chilcote ends his study of the women preachers of early Methodism by noting that blessings come to those who discover and share in the lives of these women. Throughout this study, I have been immeasurably blessed by discovering and sharing in the lives of Susanna Wesley, Sarah Crosby, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, and Hester Rogers; I have also been blessed by the generous support and encouragement of numerous individuals who helped to make this project and the completion of my doctoral degree possible. My first thanks must go to my dissertation committee for their continual support and assistance. Dr. Catherine Hobbs has graciously shepherded me through the entire Ph.D. process. Without her scholarship, guidance, encouragement, friendship, and unwavering confidence, it is unlikely I would have pursued my doctorate at the University of Oklahoma or completed this project. Dr. Christopher Carter contributed richness to my study through his helpful insights and by helping me work out ideas for studying religious rhetoric. Dr. Susan Kates provided in her published work an organizational scheme that I found very valuable in constructing my dissertation. The pedagogical training I received from Dr. David Mair empowered me to achieve my goal of teaching composition and technical writing courses at the university level. Dr. Barbara Boyd contributed to my work through discussions about women in Christian ministry and her insightful perspectives on theological issues. I first came to study the rhetoric of Hester Rogers while pursuing my M.A. degree in rhetoric and writing studies at San Diego State University under the guidance iv of Dr. Glen McClish. Dr. McClish introduced me to the history of rhetoric, encouraged my fledging efforts to study Hester Rogers’s journal, and suggested I pursue Ph.D. studies at the University of Oklahoma. Without his encouragement and support, I would not have embarked on doctoral studies or expanded my work on Hester Rogers to now include studies of Susanna Wesley, Sarah Crosby, and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher. I am indebted to Dr. Vicki Tolar Burton whose excellent and comprehensive work on Hester Rogers and other aspects of early Methodist rhetoric first attracted me to the study of texts written by religious women. Dr. Peggy Poteet, my long-ago English professor at Southern Nazarene University, has always been the model of a kind, caring, and knowledgeable professor that I have sought to emulate ever since I decided to pursue advanced degrees so I could teach at the university level. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my dear friends Betty, Pastor Jim and Peggy, Kim, Liz, Lynn, Rhonda, and Teri who uplifted me with their friendship, phone calls, messages, and prayers. My late parents, Clarence and Eunice Passig, provided my childhood biblical training and spiritual foundations. Finally, earning the Ph.D. degree would have been impossible without the friendship, love, support, and encouragement of my husband, John Jensen, who sacrificed many hours of companionship—and carried many of my books and my burdens—to make the completion of this degree possible. I reserve my deepest gratitude for the God of Susanna, Sarah, Mary, and Hester, whose wisdom guided my deliberation and who blessed me by allowing me to share in the lives of these outstanding women. v Table of Contents Chapter 1 Women’s Works and Words in the Era of John Wesley ....................... 1 Chapter 2 Spiritual and Feminist Rhetoric: Heuristics for Analyzing Women’s Religious Texts ................................................................... 27 Chapter 3 Susanna Wesley: “A Preacher of Righteousness” ............................... 76 Chapter 4 Letters to the Leader: Sarah Crosby and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher Defend Women’s Preaching to John Wesley .................................... 113 Chapter 5 Hester Ann Rogers: Reporting “What the Lord Hath Wrought” ...... 142 Conclusion: “An activist tradition . that would continue to bear fruit” .............................................. 188 Works Cited ........................................................................................................... 196 vi Abstract This dissertation examines the rhetorical features of letters and journals composed by Susanna Wesley, Sarah Crosby, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, and Hester Rogers, all prominent and influential women in the early years of the Methodist religious movement in Great Britain in the eighteenth century. These women were all personally acquainted with John Wesley, the founder of Methodism; Susanna Wesley was John’s mother. To provide helpful heuristics to aid in the study of these, and other, early Methodist texts, three perspectives of Jewish-Christian rhetoric are examined and juxtaposed to form a new theoretical and methodological model of spiritual rhetoric. Similarly, several theoretical spaces that focus on feminist rhetoric are compared, contrasted, and then combined to create a model that considers the voices, knowledge, texts, and experiences of women rhetors. Susanna Wesley, Sarah Crosby, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, and Hester Rogers— and their texts—are introduced with an overview of the birth and early years of Methodism. This historical summary helps explain the women’s purposes for writing, the spiritual beliefs which informed their texts, and the impact of their words on readers. Susanna Wesley is shown to be an intellectual woman with strong religious and political viewpoints which she persuasively asserts in letters to her husband, Samuel Wesley and others. Sarah Crosby and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, both early Methodist preachers, defend women’s preaching in letters written to John Wesley. The evolution and development of John Wesley’s views and authorization of women’s preaching is vii also traced. Finally, the spiritual experience journal of Hester Rogers is analyzed to show how Rogers creates spiritual rhetoric for her own persuasive goals. In their letters and journals, Susanna Wesley, Sarah Crosby, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, and Hester Rogers combine many rhetorical appeals to form their own distinctive persuasive and empowering spiritual rhetoric. Through rhetorical analysis of their texts, this study shows the power and influence these women’s discourse had upon the establishment and shaping of the Methodist religious movement, and it contributes to broadening scholars’ interpretations of the revolutionary creativity and inventiveness of women’s rhetoric by suggesting new understandings of how four eighteenth-century early Methodist women constructed their persuasive message despite the constraints of their patriarchal culture. viii Chapter 1 Women’s Works and Words in the Era of John Wesley From the beginning of the Methodist religious movement in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, women played many important rhetorical roles including praying publicly, giving testimony, explaining biblical texts or sermons, and even preaching. They also recorded their spiritual experiences in diaries and journals which were often published and widely distributed, wrote theological pamphlets, and used written correspondence for a variety of persuasive purposes. These methods of public and private expression were supported by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who also encouraged women to act as “models of the Christian life” and to take unprecedented leadership roles in the Methodist movement as advisors, counselors, and leaders of small groups (Earl Kent Brown 20, 31, 42, 67, 72, 107). As a result of John Wesley’s support and encouragement, women were empowered to speak, write, and take on public roles that otherwise were prohibited to them, and all of these pursuits were marked by significant rhetorical activity, both written and spoken. Definitions of rhetoric Aristotle defines rhetoric as “an ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion” (14). George Kennedy expands this definition by explaining that Aristotle viewed rhetoric as referring to the “ability, capacity, faculty . potentiality . [and] the art of ‘seeing’ how persuasion may be effected” in a specific situation (On Rhetoric, 36). When I use the term rhetoric in this study, I refer to the Aristotelian definition and the “act of using language effectively to bring about desired change in an audience” (Collins, “Speaker” 547). I also follow after Quintilian’s 1 definition of rhetoric as “a good man speaking well” (12.1.1) to show that rhetoric is also good women speaking—and writing—well. My purpose: to examine rhetoric in early Methodist women’s texts The purpose of this study is to reveal and examine the rhetorical features of selected letters, journals, and other texts, composed
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