The status of women in the Disciples of Christ movement, 1865-1900

America's largest indigenous religious movement, the Disciples of Christ was a microcosm of midwestern and southern middle class attitudes toward woman's status in the late nineteenth century. Between 1865 and 1900, the movement divided with the church's majority emphasizing ecumenism and its minority stressing evangelism. At the same time, the two sides of the movement engaged in a spirited debate over woman's proper role in both church and society. Liberal, ecumenical Disciples generally accepted female ordination, approved of women voting, and urged their sisters to engage in moral reform. Their conservative, evangelistic brethren rejected each of those ideas. Nonetheless, their divided concept of woman's role was far less dissimilar than it appeared to those involved in the debate. Fundamentally, liberal and conservative Disciples perceived of woman's status as arising out of her domestic responsibilities.

Almost all Disciples rejected such woman's rights as ordination, voting and the privilege to campaign for moral reform when advocated by nineteenth century feminists. Essentially the feminists worked under the assumption that the equality of the sexes justified more rights for women. Such logic was anathema to the Disciples who assumed that equal rights would lead to sexual immorality, destruction of the American family, and disorder in society.

On the other hand, liberal Disciples found the cause of woman's rights acceptable when associated with those whom they saw as modest females campaigning to save or preserve the sanctity of the home. Working under both the assumption of woman's moral superiority to man and the belief that the female was more inclined to protect the family than the male, ecumenical ministers granted to women a much wider social and church role. Liberal churchmen believed that women should preach because the tender pleadings of the more virtuous sex were missing from the pulpit; they assumed that mothers should vote because they would protect their children by supporting prohibition, the abolition of prostitution, and the outlawing of gambling; ; and they believed that women should engage in moral reform because "organized mother love" would bring the virtues of the Christian family into society as a whole.

Despite the vast amount of rhetoric expended by the Disciples over the question of woman's status, they differed

only slightly in their emphasis. Conservatives believed that woman best served by remaining cloistered in the home and there protecting it from the evils of the outside world; their liberal brethren affirmed that she best served by securing rights sufficient to enable her to go into the world and there combat the evils that threatened her domestic felicity.