Copyright by Kelly Willis Mendiola 2002 The Dissertation Committee for Kelly Willis Mendiola Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Hand of a Woman: Four Holiness-Pentecostal Evangelists and American Culture, 1840-1930 Committee: Jeffrey L. Meikle, Supervisor Joanna M. Brooks Desley Deacon Howard Miller Juliet E. K. Walker The Hand of a Woman: Four Holiness-Pentecostal Evangelists and American Culture, 1840-1930 by Kelly Willis Mendiola, B. A., M. A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2002 Acknowledgements I have benefited from every kind of help in the writing of this dissertation. First, for financial assistance I would like to thank the University of Texas for a Continuing Fellowship, a Bruton Fellowship and for Professional Development Awards that allowed me to present my research at professional meetings. I would also like to thank the General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church for a Women in United Methodist History Research Grant. Archivists at the Moorland-Spingarn Center at Howard University, the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Public Library, the Drew University Methodist Archives, Boston University School of Theology Library, and the Tennessee State Library Archives all provided useful guidance through their collections. I especially wish to thank Joyce Lee and Glenn Gohr at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center in Springfield, Missouri, who showed particular interest in my project and not only provided valuable research assistance, but helped deepen my understanding of pentecostalism through meaningful conversations. The tireless efforts of the interlibrary loan staff at the University of Texas at Austin saved me many research trips. iv I am grateful to Sherry Dupree, a bibliographic instruction coordinator at Santa Fe Community College, who introduced me to one of the evangelists in this study and provided crucial guidance in finding black pentecostal sources. Meharry Lewis, the leader of the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, has spent years documenting the history of his denomination. His generosity in sharing historical material and insights made my study of Mary Magdalena Tate possible. I am grateful to my dissertation advisor, Jeffrey L. Meikle, who embodies an admirable combination of scholarly excellence and personal decency, for encouraging me to make connections between my specific areas of interest and a broader historical and scholarly picture. Howard Miller showed me that the study of religion deserves the greatest intellectual rigor and pushed me to think more deeply about theology and religious culture. Desley Deacon’s work served as a model of artful, rigorous and compassionate biography. Juliet Walker provided useful insights into African American history and enriched my discussion of Oprah Winfrey. Joanna Brooks enlightened me about the connections between the period I study and earlier eras in American religious and literary history. I wish to thank several of the unsung heroes of our culture, skilled day care providers. I extend heartfelt thanks to Kristal Jenkins, Laura Willis Aguilar, Rokeya Monsur, Monsur Ali, Helen Weicker, Fati Ghanei, Joyce Herzog, Estela Kumhyr and the staffs of First United Methodist Preschool, St. Luke’s Infant Care Center and the University of Texas Child Care Center. I would especially like to thank Jill Johnson, who not only provided the best possible care for my daughters v during a nine-month research stay on the east coast, but who was also a valued traveling companion, research assistant and friend. On the technical side of things, Yvette Clay provided valuable formatting assistance, and Jed Thornock sacrificed many hours of his own study time to render much-appreciated computer aid. I have been thankful for the companionship of fellow graduate students during this process. Maureen Reed provided useful feedback on Chapter three and inspired me to keep writing through her example. Leilah Danielson read all of the dissertation but Chapter one and provided thoughtful responses as well as support. Cindy Gladstone, who works in a historical field unrelated to mine, nevertheless provided much-needed companionship and encouragement. I have also been blessed with friends and family outside the academy who have expressed support and confidence in me even though I am sure the length of this project and the lack of visible results along the way sometimes made them wonder if I knew what I was doing. I am thankful for Caren Morton, who never quit asking to read my dissertation, Jessica Rickabaugh, who gave me some of the best advice I got along the way (“don’t make it harder than it needs to be”), and my siblings (Reuben, Vance, Katherine, Ben, Kristal, Laura, Madison and Mackenzie) and their families. I am thankful to Deborah Willis, one of the first people I knew to get a Ph.D., whose triumph over great odds has always served as an inspiration to me. I am also thankful to my in-laws, Lino Mendiola Jr., Connie Mendiola, Laura Mendiola-Stommen, Lisa Price and Lily Mendiola who were vi understanding about all the missed visits to their home (when I needed to work) and my disorganized hosting when they came to mine. My interest in the study of women in American religion began with my Mormon women ancestors, particularly my grandmothers Lilly Vance Willis and Glada Rose Crandall Turner and my great grandmother Zina Perkins. Their faith, endurance, determination and human frailty are part of who I am. My grandmothers as well as other capable Mormon women I have admired all my life (particularly my aunt Zola Willis) have served as constant reminders that even in patriarchal religions resourceful women often find ways to carve out considerable freedom of movement. I most of all wish to thank the people in my immediate family who have had the most profound impact on my life and work. I owe an immense debt to my father, Emanuel Van Willis, psychologist, artist and erstwhile farmer, who showed me that beauty and utility could go hand in hand and who always took my thoughts seriously. My mother, Kathleen Perkins-Willis, has been a source of strength and security all my life. I am especially thankful to her for never questioning my decisions, even though they are different from her own. My daughters, Cecelia and Isabel already surpass me in so many ways. I am grateful to them for enriching my life beyond measure and being proud of me, with or without a Ph.D. If they learn nothing else from watching their mother write a dissertation, I hope they learn to have big dreams and to work hard to reach them because sometimes dreams come true. vii In his own way, my husband, Lino Mendiola III, has worked as hard as I have to see this project completed. Among his many contributions I am most grateful for his faith in me. Time after time he has pushed me to realize potential I did not know I had. viii The Hand of a Woman: Four Holiness-Pentecostal Evangelists and American Culture, 1840-1930 Publication No._____________ Kelly Willis Mendiola, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2002 Supervisor: Jeffrey L. Meikle Nineteenth-century evangelist and popular writer Phoebe Palmer is widely recognized as the mother of the American holiness movement, which produced pentecostalism in the early twentieth century. This dissertation examines Phoebe Palmer and three subsequent holiness-pentecostal women evangelists for the ways their writings and sermons responded to critical issues in American culture. In the mid-nineteenth century Phoebe Palmer responded to American revivalism’s focus on emotion and changes in gender roles arising from industrialization with popular religious books that relieved emotional distress and justified women’s activity in public. Amanda Berry Smith, an African American holiness evangelist, began her career in 1870s New York City. Despite the fact that Smith lived at the most ix contentious time in American race relations, she became phenomenally popular among white holiness audiences because she offered hope for a spiritual solution to racial strife. Although white audiences often viewed Smith in stereotypical ways, in her autobiography and sermons Smith testified to the complexity of her racial identity and called attention to the plight of African Americans in the United States. Mary Magdalena Tate, an African American pentecostal evangelist in the South in the early twentieth century, was Palmer and Smith’s religious descendent. Tate’s ministry and writings offered her southern African American followers an alternative to racism with teachings that challenged racial segregation, offered psychological safety, and established an alternative community. Tate’s struggle to maintain control of the denomination she founded reveals much about African American gender relations and the impact of the Great Migration. Although Aimee Semple McPherson, the Los Angeles celebrity evangelist popular in the 1920s, was a clear descendent of Palmer and Smith, she was also on the cusp of change. During McPherson’s lifetime evangelical Protestantism began to lose its power as a cultural common denominator and secular opportunities for women in the public arena began to emerge. McPherson’s teachings responded to these cultural shifts by spanning the divide between religion and popular culture. x This dissertation ends with a discussion of the television talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who carries on the cultural work of Palmer, Smith, Tate and McPherson in the twenty-first century. xi Table of Contents INTRODUCTION................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1:“Thy Quickening Word Shall Raise Me Up”: Phoebe Palmer, Gendered Rhetoric and Nineteenth-Century Middle-Class Culture......................................................................................................... 17 “The Lines had Fallen to Her in Pleasant Places”.......................................