Passion, Desire, and Ecstasy The Experiential Religion of Southern Methodist Women, 1770–1810
Passion, Desire, and Ecstasy The Experiential Religion of Southern Methodist Women, 1770–1810
Methodism was a religion of daily emotional experience, and for southern women like Sarah Jones, the experience involved both soul and body. White Methodist women embraced, literally and figuratively, a God who deeply affect those aspects of the human experience that were associated by male critics with women's weaker nature. Black Methodists do not seem to have used erotic imagery in their accounts, but their visions of heavenly beings who personally appeared, spoke, and displayed heaven and hell in vivid detail to them indicate their rejection of “unfeeling philosophy” and secularized Christianity. The religious lives of women such as these reveal a far different mentality than historians usually associate with the early South. Enslaved Methodists experienced a soul-transporting, joyous intimacy with God that gave meaning and purpose to their lives and white women experienced a rich and vibrant world of passion, desire, and ecstasy.
Keywords: Methodism, white Methodist women, black Methodist women, heavenly beings, unfeeling philosophy, secularized Christianity, God, experimental religion, Sarah Jones
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .