The Role of Women, Family, and Community in Shaping Revival

The Second Great Awakening that swept across upstate New York’s “Burned-Over District” was not driven by itinerant preachers and novel theology alone – it was equally shaped by the women, families, and tight-knit communities who fueled and sustained the revival fires. In an era when women’s public roles were sharply limited, many found in revivalist Christianity a rare arena to exert influence, whether in the home, the congregation, or even from the pulpit. Entire families experienced conversion together, and towns were knit into intense networks of prayer and social reform. This chapter explores how women, family dynamics, and communal bonds both influenced and were influenced by the fervent revival culture. In particular, we will see how some determined women circumvented prohibitions on female preaching by invoking divine visions and prophetic authority – as exemplified by figures like Ellen G. White, Jemima Wilkinson, Ann Lee, and others – and how these religious experiences helped pave the way for the early women’s rights movement. The interplay between revivalism and nascent feminism in the Burned-Over District offers a vivid case study of social change born in the cradle of religious zeal.

Women in the Revival Movement

By the early nineteenth century, women had become the majority constituency of American churches and revival meetings .  Contemporary observers noted that women often outnumbered men in the pews, sometimes constituting two-thirds of a congregation . Despite their numbers and devotion, however, women in traditional churches were expected to remain in “silent” roles – they could pray and teach children, but preaching or leadership were usually off-limits under prevailing interpretations of Scripture (such as St. Paul’s injunction that “your women keep silence in the churches”). The revivalist ethos of the Burned-Over District began to chip away at these constraints. In the emotionally charged atmosphere of camp meetings and protracted revivals, the voices of women could increasingly be heard in public prayer, testimony, and song.

Evangelist Charles Grandison Finney’s revivals in upstate New York in the 1820s–30s exemplified this shift toward greater female participation. Finney introduced “new measures” to revival meetings, one of which was allowing women to pray aloud and share religious experiences in mixed-gender assemblies – a practice almost unheard-of in established churches at that time . Finney’s innovation was controversial (critics accused him of impropriety and breaching St. Paul’s command), yet it proved effective in galvanizing entire audiences. In defense of these measures, revival proponents pointed out that women were often the most fervent pray-ers and steadfast believers; why should their prayers not be heard by all? Indeed, a council of ministers in 1827 met to scrutinize Finney’s methods and ultimately gave their grudging approval to women speaking in prayer as long as it promoted salvation of souls . This tentative acceptance marked a significant cultural moment – the revival had carved out a new public space for women’s voices within a religious setting.

Beyond the revival meetings themselves, women assumed critical supporting roles in the religious life of the community. They organized maternal prayer societies and ladies’ missionary circles, taught Sunday schools, and arranged charity for the poor and orphans – all endeavors that emerged out of revival-inspired compassion. In the Burned-Over District, female converts would gather weekly to pray for the salvation of their families and neighbors, forming a backbone of intercessory prayer that ministers widely credited for sustaining the work of revival. Historian Nancy Hewitt notes that women found in revival meetings “a place where their voices could be heard and their spiritual gifts put to use,” even if indirect, as they prayed publicly or gave moving personal testimonies of conversion.  Revival narratives from the era frequently mention women exhorting sinners to repent during camp meetings, or leading by example with tearful, impassioned pleas. At the famous Cane Ridge camp meeting of 1801 (a precursor of Burned-Over events), women converts were observed rising to speak or sing under the Spirit’s influence, something that greatly impressed onlookers unused to women taking such initiative . The Second Great Awakening, in its populist and experimental spirit, thus provided an opening – however modest – for women to exercise religious agency in front of others.

Crucially, many revivalist preachers themselves encouraged women’s involvement (within certain bounds) as a means of amplifying the revival’s reach. These evangelists recognized that pious women wielded influence over husbands, children, and the social circle. Finney, for example, not only permitted women to pray in mixed gatherings but later, as a professor at newly founded Oberlin College in Ohio, supported the admission of female students and training of women in theology . (Oberlin, which had deep ties to the Burned-Over reformist milieu, became the first American college to graduate women and one of the first to admit African Americans, embodying the revival-born ideal of spiritual and moral equality.) In churches throughout western New York, women also began to serve unofficially as exhorters – following a minister’s sermon with their own heartfelt appeal or prayer – or as local prayer meeting leaders. Although they did not hold formal office, these women were effectively exercising leadership, shaping the tone and outcomes of revival gatherings through their devotion and organizational talents.

Yet even as some doors opened, others remained firmly closed. No matter how eloquent or theologically astute a woman might be, if she dared to preach or claim spiritual authority, she risked censure or expulsion from most denominations. This obstacle gave rise to a fascinating phenomenon: a number of women circumvented the usual restrictions by presenting themselves not as self-appointed teachers, but as divinely commissioned prophets. If a woman could testify that God Himself had called her to speak – through a vision, a trance, a prophetic message – who was any man to say she must remain silent? In the charged religious culture of the Burned-Over District, where many believers already embraced supernaturalism and expected end-times signs, such claims were taken seriously. The following sections examine prominent (and some less well-known) examples of these female visionaries who, armed with perceived mandates from Heaven, assumed roles of religious leadership that society would otherwise have denied them.

Prophetesses and Female Preachers on the Radical Fringe

Ann Lee: “Mother” of the Shakers

One of the earliest and most influential of these women was Ann Lee (1736–1784), known to her followers as Mother Ann. Lee was an English factory worker-turned-religious enthusiast who emigrated to New York in 1774 with a small band of devotees, bringing the sect of the Shaking Quakers (or Shakers) to American shores. By the standards of the time, Ann Lee’s religious claims were astonishing: she preached that she had received direct revelations from God that the root of all human sin was sexual lust, and thus true holiness required complete celibacy . She further proclaimed that God was dual in nature – both masculine and feminine – and that in herself was manifest the female aspect of Christ. In effect, Shaker theology held that Jesus’ second coming had occurred spiritually through Mother Ann, the “Bride of Christ” and female messiah who opened a new gospel age . With this bold theological framework, Lee and her followers justified a complete reordering of religious life that placed a woman at the very pinnacle of authority.

Ann Lee’s personal charisma and reputed spiritual gifts helped to persuade skeptics that her calling was genuine. Eyewitness accounts describe her as illiterate and physically frail, yet capable of preaching with mesmerizing fervor, often moving while in trance-like states and speaking “as the Spirit gave utterance.” Under her leadership, the Shakers established their first American communal farm at Niskayuna (near Albany, NY). There, Mother Ann preached to the public and led the Shaker church at a time when few women were religious leaders, attracting both fervent followers and fierce opposition . Traditional clergymen derided her as a blasphemer, and mobs harassed the Shakers; on several occasions Lee was imprisoned for disturbing the peace with her unorthodox preaching. Yet the movement endured. Before her death in 1784, Ann Lee had gathered a core of believers and appointed elders (interestingly, Shaker governance from early on featured joint male and female leadership, reflecting their belief in the equality of the sexes before God). Thanks to her prophetic authority, a stable sect was born that long outlived her: the Shakers went on to found utopian communities across the Northeast and Midwest, carrying on Mother Ann’s legacy well into the 19th century.

Ann Lee’s success illustrated how a woman claiming visionary leadership could transcend the usual gender barriers in religion. In orthodox churches a woman could not be a pastor, but among the Shakers a woman was revered as God’s anointed messenger, her words taken as scripture. This was an extremely radical inversion of gender roles for its time. While the Shakers remained a relatively small and separatist group, their very existence challenged contemporary assumptions about women’s spiritual capabilities. Lee’s dramatic life story – a lowborn woman asserting Christ’s authority – circulated in the Burned-Over District and beyond, inspiring some women (and alarming many clergymen) with the notion that “daughters shall prophesy” in the last days, as the biblical book of Joel promised. Mother Ann thus paved a path, however narrow, for female religious leadership by wielding the only authority that could trump male hierarchy: the authority of divine revelation.

Jemima Wilkinson: The Public Universal Friend

Another extraordinary figure was Jemima Wilkinson (1752–1819), who styled herself the Public Universal Friend. Wilkinson’s story unfolds at the very dawn of the Second Great Awakening and is intimately tied to the Burned-Over region. Born into a Quaker family in Rhode Island, Jemima experienced a severe illness in October 1776 during which she was presumed to hover near death. Then, in a remarkable turn, she revived and announced that Jemima Wilkinson had died once and for all; in her place had risen the Public Universal Friend, a genderless spirit sent by God . The Friend (as this personage was known) refused to answer to Jemima’s former name or to gendered pronouns, declaring a new identity as an agent of the Almighty unhindered by earthly labels of “male” or “female.” Backed by this dramatic personal rebirth, Wilkinson embarked on a career as an itinerant preacher and prophet across New England and Pennsylvania, eventually gathering a band of several hundred followers. By the 1790s, the Friend led her flock to frontier country in western New York – still a sparsely settled wilderness – where they established a communal agrarian settlement near Keuka Lake. This would become the first enduring religious community in the heart of what later became the Burned-Over District.

The Public Universal Friend delivered charismatic sermons urging repentance, celibacy, and abolitionism, blending radical Quaker egalitarianism with evangelical fervor. Notably, women played prominent roles among the Friend’s disciples. Several women rose to be the Friend’s close aides and lieutenants, preaching or leading prayer in the group’s meetings . Within the Friend’s community, traditional gender hierarchies were upended: adherents were encouraged to “obey God rather than men” – a pointed message in a society where men typically claimed spiritual and legal dominion over women . The Friend taught that in Christ there was “neither male nor female,” and modeled that principle by adopting androgynous dress (donning clerical black robes with a white cravat, an outfit more common to male ministers)【55†image】. Such gender-nonconforming behavior was shocking to outsiders, but it reinforced the Friend’s claim to be a vessel of divine truth rather than an ordinary woman. It also subtly asserted women’s spiritual independence: if even a person born female could be God’s prophet, then women’s souls were clearly as authoritative as men’s in the eyes of Heaven.

Local reaction to Jemima Wilkinson was mixed. Many flocked to hear the Public Universal Friend out of curiosity, and some were genuinely converted by the Friend’s preaching of imminent judgment and holy living. By 1800, perhaps as many as 250 followers had committed themselves to the Friend’s communal lifestyle in New York . On the other hand, established clergy vilified Wilkinson as a heretic, newspapers mocked the “pretended prophetess,” and more than a few scandalous rumors swirled (one common accusation – never proven – was that the celibate Friend secretly violated her own teachings). Such attacks, however, only seemed to solidify the loyalty of core followers, who viewed persecution as a sign of the Friend’s righteousness. In the wilderness of Yates County, the Friend’s settlement – called Jerusalem – thrived modestly as a pacifist, Sabbath-observing community. Women and men shared labor and leadership, and the group even founded one of the area’s first mills and roads, contributing to regional development .

The Public Universal Friend carried on this prophetic ministry for over forty years until Wilkinson’s death in 1819. Without a designated successor (and given the doctrine that the original Jemima had “died” back in 1776), the movement struggled to maintain cohesion after the Friend was gone. Over the next generation, the majority of the Friend’s followers drifted away to other faiths or secular life; by the 1840s, only a remnant remained at the communal farm, and the unique sect gradually faded into obscurity . In terms of lasting religious influence, Wilkinson’s movement ultimately failed to perpetuate itself beyond its charismatic founder’s lifespan – certainly not to the extent the Shakers did. Yet the Public Universal Friend’s legacy loomed large in local memory. Her bold example of a woman reinventing herself as a prophetic “Friend to all” challenged 18th-century gender norms in a way that was arguably ahead of its time. Long before modern concepts of gender fluidity or the pronoun “they,” Wilkinson carved out a startling identity that defied categorization. More broadly, she demonstrated to other women in the early republic that charisma and claimed revelation could open pulpits that canonical authority had closed to them. As one contemporary observer noted, the Friend had “stepped outside the bounds of her sex under pretense of inspiration,” thereby gaining a platform no other woman of her day could attain .

Ellen G. White: Prophetess of the Adventist Movement

By the 1840s, the Burned-Over District was alight with millennial expectations due in part to the teachings of William Miller, a Baptist farmer-preacher from upstate New York who predicted Christ’s Second Coming in 1843–1844.  The widespread excitement and subsequent Great Disappointment of October 22, 1844 (when Christ did not return as anticipated) created a spiritual crisis that could have destroyed the Millerite movement. In the aftermath, however, a young woman named Ellen Harmon (later Ellen G. White, 1827–1915) emerged as a prophetic figure who helped revive the hopes of the disillusioned faithful. Ellen was just 17 at the time and had no formal education or status. But in December 1844, she experienced her first vision during a prayer meeting, in which she saw a symbolic journey of the Adventist believers toward the Heavenly City. Over the next months and years, Ellen Harmon reported multiple divine visions that confirmed God’s guidance for the shattered Millerite flock. Her revelations lent fresh meaning to the disappointment (explaining, for instance, that the date was correct but the event was Christ’s heavenly inauguration of judgment, not his visible return) and charted a path forward – including the call to keep the seventh-day Sabbath – that eventually led to the formation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Ellen G. White’s rise to prominence is a remarkable example of how a woman in the 19th century could attain spiritual leadership through claims of divine inspiration. Naturally timid and in frail health, Ellen initially felt overawed by the mostly male Millerite preachers around her. But her visions gave her a powerful platform to speak publicly and influence doctrine within the growing Adventist movement. Often introduced modestly as “the Lord’s messenger,” she delivered testimonies of her visionary journeys to congregations that came to regard her words as carrying prophetic authority. In her own recollection of the very first vision, Ellen described how while kneeling in prayer with a few other women, “the power of God came upon me as I have never felt before”, and she seemed to rise above the earth and travel to the Holy City . At first, the idea of recounting this experience to others terrified her – she was a teenaged girl tasked (as she believed) by God to instruct adults, including clergymen. Yet when she finally stood in a meetinghouse and haltingly shared her vision, the effect was electric: listeners wept and shouted praises, convinced that God had indeed spoken through this humble young woman. White later wrote that she felt a supernatural boldness overtake her: “God gave me a message to bear, and I delivered it,” regardless of her youth or gender. In a movement desperate for divine direction, her gender became secondary to her gift.

Over the subsequent seven decades, Ellen White would become arguably the most influential person in Sabbatarian Adventism. She cofounded the Seventh-day Adventist denomination (established officially in 1863) and guided it through sermons, personal testimonies, and an astonishing literary output (she eventually penned some 100,000 pages of written counsel). Not only did she help shape theological points, but she also gave practical guidance on education, health, and family life within the church – effectively delineating how the new faith should be lived in community. It is important to note that White never assumed a formal clerical office; in fact, Seventh-day Adventists had no ordained female ministers in the 19th century apart from her unique status. Her authority rested entirely on the community’s acceptance of her visions as genuine prophecy. This led even skeptics to acknowledge that White had carved out a role unlike any other for a woman of her era: she was an advisor to male leaders and laity alike, often referred to simply as “Sister White,” whose words could prompt nationwide revivals or reforms. Because her influence endured across generations, Ellen G. White stands out as a case where a woman’s claim to prophetic inspiration achieved lasting, institution-building impact – in stark contrast to someone like Jemima Wilkinson whose movement dissipated. The Seventh-day Adventist Church, guided in its early decades by a woman’s visions, grew to become a durable denomination that still thrives today.

Lesser-Known Female Exhorters and Prophets

Not every woman who felt called to preach during the Burned-Over District revivals became a famous sect founder. Indeed, many lesser-known women stepped briefly into the limelight of religious leadership only to be forgotten by history when their movements failed or their personal influence waned. Their stories nevertheless paint a rich picture of how widespread and daring women’s religious activism had become by the mid-19th century.

During the 1830s–40s, for example, revivalist and reform circuits welcomed a number of female preachers and exhorters. One such figure, Harriet Livermore, gained national notoriety as an independent evangelical preacher. Described by contemporaries as a charismatic if eccentric woman, Livermore boldly defended women’s right to speak in church and felt divinely commissioned to preach .  In a singular achievement, she even preached before the U.S. Congress – not once but four times. The first was on a January day in 1827, when Livermore mounted the Speaker’s platform in the House of Representatives and delivered a sermon to an audience of over a thousand people, including President John Quincy Adams and many top government officials . President Adams recorded in his diary how astonished he was to see a woman in flowing plain dress proclaiming the Gospel to Congress with fervor. Livermore’s example showed that a woman, if persistent and persuasive enough, could break into even the most male-dominated forums. She became a minor celebrity and was frequently invited to revival meetings or camp gatherings to share her testimony. Yet despite her early prominence, Livermore struggled later in life. As she became more apocalyptic in her teachings (at one point predicting Christ’s imminent return and identifying herself among the biblical 144,000 elect), she lost favor with mainstream audiences. By the 1850s, she had fallen into poverty and relative obscurity, dying in 1868 in a charity ward with no movement to carry on her name . Harriet Livermore’s rise and fall encapsulates the precarious path of many female exhorters: initially applauded for their piety and novelty, they often found little institutional support and could easily be dismissed as fanatical once their message strayed beyond what the public found palatable.

Within the Millerite movement of the 1840s (the same milieu that gave rise to Ellen White), there were also numerous female preachers who blazed briefly during the fervor of expected Advent. Contemporary accounts and later historians have uncovered names like Lucy Maria Hersey Stoddard, who at age 18 felt called to give Adventist lectures in New England, or Olive Maria Rice, who preached across upstate New York barns and schoolhouses about Christ’s coming . Two women, Emily C. Clemons and Corinda S. Minor, even launched a periodical in 1844 called The Advent Message to the Daughters of Zion, specifically to encourage and unify Millerite women in evangelism . For a time, female Millerite preachers enjoyed a surprising degree of acceptance; Millerite gatherings, much like other revival meetings, allowed “anyone who felt moved by the Spirit” to speak – a policy that, intentionally or not, opened the floor to women. However, after the Great Disappointment, as the Millerite movement splintered and regrouped, most of these women were pushed back into the shadows. When formal denominations (like the Advent Christian Church and eventually the Seventh-day Adventists) formed out of Millerism, leadership roles largely reverted to male hands, with the notable exception of Ellen White. Thus, many of the female Millerite preachers became footnotes.

Some left poignant records of how they navigated opposition. Abigail Mussey, a Millerite preacher from New Hampshire, recalled how some ministers tried to shut church doors against her simply because she was a woman. Unfazed, she took her message to private homes and open fields. “Preachers that oppose female laborers can shut church doors to us,” she wrote, “but they can’t shut private houses. The Lord opened the dwelling of a sister, and I held meetings there. … I knew who had sent me out. My mission was from heaven, not from man.” With such words, Mussey echoed the sentiment of dozens of intrepid women: they derived courage from the conviction that they answered to a higher authority than prevailing social custom. Even if their names are mostly forgotten now, these “female laborers in the vineyard” (as some called themselves) laid groundwork that would benefit later generations of women in the church. Their persistence proved that women could attract audiences, handle scripture, and inspire converts – facts that slowly but surely eroded the theological arguments against women’s public religious engagement.

In summary, the Burned-Over District’s revival culture provided both an impetus and a platform for women to step beyond traditional confines. Whether by quietly organizing prayer circles or by boldly claiming the mantle of a prophet, women were active shapers of the revival. Some, like Ann Lee and Ellen White, founded movements that survived and gave them lasting influence. Others, like Jemima Wilkinson and Harriet Livermore, enjoyed more transient success. And countless more labored in local anonymity. Collectively, however, their contributions were indispensable: they infused the revivals with a passionate intensity and moral fervor that might well have been absent had religion remained an all-male domain. Moreover, their experiences in the religious sphere were beginning to spur questions that extended well beyond the walls of the church, spilling into the realm of social and political life.

Family and Faith: Revival in the Domestic Sphere

The impact of the Second Great Awakening in the Burned-Over District was felt not only in public spaces like camp meetings and sermon halls, but also in the most intimate social unit of all – the family. Revival religion pervaded 19th-century domestic life, reorienting relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children. In turn, the dynamics of family life could significantly shape the course of a revival, as conversion (or resistance to it) often ran along familial lines.

Evangelical Protestantism of that era placed strong emphasis on the home as a “nursery of virtue”. The family was seen as a microcosm of Christian community, with each member’s spiritual condition intertwined. Thus, revival preachers deliberately targeted households in their outreach. It was common for a minister or exhorter to pay calls on families, urging the male head of household to set a pious example, or the mother to consider her sacred duty in raising godly children. Many a revival meeting was followed by visits around the parish, seeking to convert entire families rather than just isolated individuals. When successful, the result could be a truly transformative moment: period newspapers and memoirs recount scenes of a father, mother, and several children all stepping forward together at an altar call, weeping and embracing as they jointly “gave their hearts” to God. Such stories were held up as ideals – tangible proof that the Spirit was reforming society from the ground up, one home at a time.

In practice, of course, family responses to revival were often mixed. Frequently women were the first in the family to experience conversion, especially in the early phases of a revival. A mother’s or wife’s newfound zeal could then become a catalyst for other members. For instance, one might read in a minister’s journal that “Mrs. X found peace [in conversion] last night, and today she implored her husband to attend the meetings”. The husband, seeing the change in his wife, might grow curious or uneasy and eventually be drawn in. The diaries of revival converts are full of tributes to praying mothers and wives who “would not relent until every child was safely in the fold.” The trope of the praying mother became almost a staple of evangelical literature – exemplified by popular stories of errant sons or daughters brought back to faith by a mother’s incessant prayers and tears. Indeed, revival-era publications like the Christian Advocate and tract societies often printed accounts such as “The Power of a Mother’s Prayers” to encourage Christian women in their domestic spiritual labor.

Women thus acted as spiritual gatekeepers of the home, sanctifying daily life. Many households established the practice of a “family altar,” meaning morning and evening family prayers and scripture readings led by a parent. If the father was not devout or absent, the mother took up this role. One can imagine countless log cabins and village parlors in upstate New York where, each night by lamplight, mothers led their children in hymn-singing or told them Bible stories, cementing the revival’s message in young hearts. These home observances reinforced what was preached on Sunday and often proved more enduring. The fruits of revival were meant to be seen in domestic harmony and morality – less drunkenness and abuse, more love and piety. And in many cases, that ideal did manifest: converts gave up drinking to provide for their families, fathers and mothers began to teach their children to pray, and sibling prodigals reconciled under the influence of newfound faith.

To be sure, the intersection of revival and family life was not always smooth. There were families bitterly divided by revival allegiances. If, for example, a wife converted under Finney’s preaching but her husband remained skeptical, this could produce real marital strain. Some husbands resented their wives spending so many evenings at church or disapproved of the emotional display of revivalism. Conversely, some women who clung to more traditional faith looked askance at daughters who got “carried away” at camp meetings. An illustrative case occurred in the 1830s when a teenage girl from a prominent Albany family attended a revival against her father’s wishes; upon her conversion and public testimony, her enraged father threatened to disown her. (The father eventually relented as he saw positive changes in his child, a common outcome in these dramas.) Such intra-family tensions were acknowledged by revival leaders, who counseled tact and patience to converts living in “unequally yoked” households. The conversion of one member was often soon followed by concerted efforts – gentle or forceful – to convert the rest, making the family a battleground for souls in the revival’s progress.

The Burned-Over District was also notable for producing alternative models of family and community under the impetus of religious revival – models that sometimes challenged the conventional nuclear family. Revival-inspired perfectionism led to the founding of utopian communities that reimagined family structure in radical ways. For example, the Shakers under Ann Lee (discussed above) completely abolished marriage and the biological family, teaching celibacy for all. In Shaker communities, men and women lived separately and were considered brothers and sisters; the sect’s only “family” was the family of God, led paternally by Elders and maternally by Eldresses. Though extreme, this experiment was driven by the conviction that the imminent kingdom of God transcended earthly ties – an idea kindled in revivalist millennial expectations. Likewise, the Oneida Community, founded in Oneida, NY in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes (a disciple of revivalist theology who embraced the concept of human perfectibility), practiced what they termed “complex marriage.” In Oneida’s communal living arrangement, all men were married to all women, and traditional monogamous family units were abolished in favor of a larger communal “family.” Children were raised collectively. Noyes argued that this system, including regulated sexual relations and communal child-rearing, actually liberated women from being the property of husbands and freed men from exclusive lust – a shocking assertion, but one he couched in quasi-religious logic of perfect love. Although Oneida’s practices were widely criticized as immoral, the community lasted over three decades and its women did enjoy some unusual measures of autonomy (for instance, Oneida women were encouraged to engage in work and intellectual life, and the community’s rules gave them the ability to refuse male advances – a relative rarity in the 19th century) . Here again, we see that revival-born religious fervor led some to question and reinvent family norms, sometimes in ways that intersected with early feminist impulses regarding female autonomy and shared responsibility for child-rearing.

Even within more mainstream revival circles, ideals of marriage and parenting were subtly reshaped by the evangelical ethos. The Second Great Awakening popularized the notion of “companionate marriage” founded on mutual spiritual commitment rather than just economic necessity. Advice literature of the time urged husbands to respect their wives’ moral sensibilities and treat them as partners in faith. Wives were encouraged to gently “guide the home” with Christian principles – effectively giving them a moral authority within the domestic sphere even if legal authority rested with men. Parenting, too, took on an almost sacred urgency; raising the next generation of godly citizens was portrayed as a divine calling for mothers and fathers alike. In western New York, the influence of revivalism could be seen in the proliferation of family-oriented religious publications, such as child-friendly hymnals, Bible storybooks, and parenting manuals like The Mother’s Nursery Guide to Soul Winning. These all reinforced a model of the family as the first church, with the mother often depicted as the primary nurturer of faith.

In summary, revivalism and family life in the Burned-Over District were deeply interwoven. Revival converts carried their zeal back into their households, transforming daily routines and relationships. The family, in turn, could either amplify a revival (when whole households came into the faith together, becoming model “Bible families”) or impede it (when spiritual divisions arose at the hearth). Moreover, the era’s religious enthusiasm even dared to reconceptualize what “family” meant – inspiring experiments like Shaker celibacy or Oneida’s communal marriage that challenged the traditional family form. While most people in the region did not join such radical communes, the very existence of these experiments underscored how profoundly the values of community and faith were being reimagined. Whether within conventional homes or in utopian enclaves, the Second Great Awakening left a lasting imprint on American family ideals – strengthening the image of the home as a holy refuge, elevating the role of women as guardians of domestic piety, and planting early seeds of egalitarian thought about marriage and gender relations.

Communities of the Spirit: Social Bonds and Reform

Religion in the Burned-Over District was not a solitary affair; it was a collective experience, rooted in community life. The very term “revival” implies communal revival – whole towns awakened in spirit. Thus, to understand the Second Great Awakening in western New York, one must appreciate how communities, both geographic and spiritual, shaped the revival and were reshaped by it in turn.

From a geographic perspective, the Burned-Over District of the 1820s–40s was a patchwork of new towns, villages, and farmsteads mushrooming along the Erie Canal and the expanding frontier. These settlements were often close-knit communities where news traveled quickly and people were bound by ties of neighborliness, kinship, and commerce. When a traveling preacher arrived or a revival broke out, it tended to spread through these existing social networks “like fire in dry stubble,” to use Charles Finney’s famous imagery. Neighbors would invite neighbors, extended families would attend en masse, and local newspapers would announce forthcoming protracted meetings or camp gatherings. The revival thus piggybacked on strong community bonds – church membership rolls sometimes read like family directories, with multiple siblings, cousins, and in-laws joining around the same time.

One striking aspect of the Burned-Over revivals was the phenomenon of entire communities undergoing moral transformation. In 1831, Finney led a massive revival in Rochester, NY, that was heralded as a model of community change: within a year, the taverns and theaters emptied out while churches overfilled; crime reportedly dropped; and voluntary societies (for Bible distribution, temperance, and poverty relief) multiplied . Rochester’s revival was carefully organized with the help of the town’s existing social framework – local businessmen, the mayor, and church ladies all pitched in to support the nightly meetings. Converts were funneled into church membership and also into reform committees to carry their faith into civic life. This became something of a template: revival not as a momentary emotional spike, but as a sustained community reformation project. Towns like Utica, Troy, Syracuse, and scores of rural villages experienced similar movements, often in communication with each other. A network of interlocking communities of faith stretched across central and western New York, forming what one historian calls an “evangelical united front.” Letters and revival newspapers spread testimonials: a report from a small town would inspire the next town over to pray for a comparable blessing. In this way, communities almost competed in piety, spurring one another on.

The communal nature of revival was also evident in practices like the camp meeting. Though the camp meeting style originated earlier (Kentucky, 1801) and more in the South/West, it became a staple in the North as well, including in New York. Families would travel from miles around to camp in a field for several days of continuous worship with their broader community. These were major social as well as religious events – a break from routine where normal social barriers could soften. Poor and rich, women and men, young and old, black and white (sometimes) all mingled under the revival tent. In such a charged communal atmosphere, participants reported feeling a profound sense of unity and equality in the Spirit. One might share a hymnal or a tent with a stranger who, by the meeting’s end, felt like family. Lifelong friendships and even marriages were forged at camp meetings, binding communities tighter. And when the meeting was over, people brought that shared spiritual bond back to their home congregations, invigorating local church life. In essence, the revival provided a renewed sense of community identity – a town could see itself as “a God-fearing town” after a successful revival season, and this self-image often translated into collective projects like building new churches, founding Sunday schools, or campaigning for local moral laws (for instance, anti-liquor ordinances).

Moreover, revival-inspired faith communities often turned outward to address societal ills, giving rise to the famed benevolent and reform movements of the antebellum period. The Burned-Over District became the seedbed for a host of reformist communities. Churches and voluntary societies banded together to combat intemperance, forming temperance associations that pledges abstinence from alcohol; to fight slavery, birthing abolitionist chapters and the Underground Railroad; to aid the poor, creating orphan asylums and refuge homes; and to spread the Gospel, organizing Bible societies and foreign missions boards. Women played crucial roles in many of these communal endeavors – for example, the Female Moral Reform Society, founded in New York City in 1834 and spreading to upstate, was led mostly by Christian women who sought to eradicate prostitution and sexual exploitation by lobbying against brothels and aiding “fallen women.” By 1841, the Ladies’ New York Moral Reform Society had 445 auxiliaries, a number of which were in Burned-Over locales, engaging thousands of women in letter-writing campaigns and petition drives. Through such organizations, pious women in small towns formed part of a nationwide community of activism, well before they had any political rights – an important stepping stone for later women’s rights efforts.

Finally, beyond traditional communities, the Burned-Over District saw an unusual flowering of intentional religious communities – essentially utopian communes – which we have touched on earlier (Shakers, Oneida, etc.). These experimental communities were tightly cohesive groups, often sharing property and living under distinctive theological rules. They represented a different kind of communal bond: one chosen by conversion and commitment rather than by accident of geography or birth. The fact that so many sprang up in this region speaks to the intense communal idealism fostered by revivalism. Revival preaching often invoked the image of the New Testament Church in Acts, where believers “had all things in common” and broke bread together daily. It is not surprising that some took this vision literally and tried to construct heaven on earth in communal fashion. One could mention also the short-lived Skaneateles Community (near Syracuse, 1843) based on John Collins’s utopian ideas, or the various Fourierist phalanxes (secular but overlapping with revivalist circles in membership) that briefly took root in New York in the 1840s, aiming at cooperative living. Although most of these communities eventually dissolved or moderated, they left traces – for instance, the Shakers’ legacy of simple living and equality of the sexes, or Oneida’s eventual transformation into a successful joint-stock company (Oneida silverware). These experiments tested how far the bonds of Christian community could go in remaking social relations. In doing so, they also thrust questions of women’s roles and family structure into public consciousness, as we have seen.

In conclusion, the Burned-Over District’s revivals were profoundly communal events. They bound people together, forged new collective identities, and motivated collaborative efforts to improve society. The social fabric of towns was strengthened (sometimes practically remade) by the shared experience of spiritual awakening. And in the crucible of that intense community life, new ideas about equality, including women’s equality, began to take shape. It is to that development – the link between the revival and the early women’s rights movement – that we now turn, as it represents one of the most significant legacies of how religion can catalyze social change.

From Revival to Reform: Women’s Rights Emerges

In July 1848, a convention convened in the village of Seneca Falls, New York – right in the heart of the Burned-Over District – that would launch the organized women’s rights movement in the United States. The Seneca Falls Convention produced the famous Declaration of Sentiments, asserting the equal rights of men and women, and demanding, among other things, woman suffrage. On the surface, this was a political gathering focused on legal and social reform, not a religious revival. Yet the connections between the two were profound. The women (and men) who led the early women’s rights movement had been shaped in a society saturated by Second Great Awakening values, and many were themselves veterans of church-based reform activism. The religious milieu of the Burned-Over District – with its mix of fervent revivalism, radical sectarian experiments, and communal reform efforts – formed the indispensable backdrop for the push for women’s equality. In particular, the phenomenon we have examined – women circumventing restrictions by leveraging spiritual authority – became a stepping stone toward women challenging restrictions in the secular realm. Here we outline how revival-influenced ideas and networks flowed into the women’s rights crusade, and we trace a timeline of which developments came first, influencing those that followed.

Roots in Faith and Reform

Decades before Seneca Falls, religious movements had already begun to question the status quo of women’s roles. Among Quakers, for example, the concept of spiritual equality of the sexes was long established – female ministers like Lucretia Mott had been preaching since the 1820s. Mott, a devout Quaker and gifted orator, routinely addressed mixed audiences in meetinghouses, enjoying the full support of her denomination for her preaching. This Quaker practice of affirming women’s right to speak in worship stemmed from their interpretation of Inner Light (the presence of God in every person) and had a cumulative effect: it produced a cohort of women experienced in public speaking and leadership, something rare in other communities. Notably, Lucretia Mott would become a central figure at Seneca Falls in 1848 – indeed, she co-organized the convention. Mott’s role is a direct thread from religious revival to women’s rights: she became an abolitionist and women’s advocate precisely because her Quaker faith nurtured her talents and convictions. As she later recounted, it was at a Quaker yearly meeting that she first decried slavery, and it was through abolitionist circles (many of which overlapped with revivalist evangelical circles) that she met younger activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In short, Quaker egalitarianism provided an early model of female empowerment that fed into the broader women’s movement.

Evangelical Protestant women, while not officially allowed the same freedom as Quakers, nonetheless carved out empowering roles via the reform movements of the 1830s and 1840s. The abolitionist movement in particular became a training ground for women who would later shift into women’s rights activism. For instance, the Grimké sisters, Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimké Weld (1805–1879), were Southern-born daughters of a slaveholding judge who converted to fervent evangelical Christianity and consequently became abolitionists. In the mid-1830s, Angelina and Sarah began speaking in public against slavery – first to small circles of women, then, as their fame spread, to “promiscuous” audiences (mixed genders), which was highly controversial. Their passionate speeches drew large crowds in the North. Clerical authorities in Massachusetts were alarmed enough to issue a Pastoral Letter in 1837 condemning women’s public lecturing as a violation of gender roles. The Grimkés answered this criticism with biblical arguments and bold reasoning that directly prefigured the logic of Seneca Falls. Sarah Grimké penned a series of letters, later published as Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838), where she declared, “I ask no favors for my sex. … All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks.” This oft-quoted line distilled the pent-up frustration of religious women who had found their moral voice but were still held back by male dominance. Notably, Grimké’s writings grounded the call for equality in Christian principles, citing that women and men were equally moral agents before God and that denying women the right to do good works (like preaching or reforming society) was to “question God’s sincerity” in giving women spiritual gifts. In essence, the Grimkés transformed the moral energy of revival (the urgency to save souls and fight sin) into a dual crusade against slavery and sexism. Their example and writings had a profound influence on other activist women, including some in New York.

By the 1840s, a robust network of women with revivalist and reformist backgrounds was in place. Many of the organizers and attendees of the Seneca Falls Convention came directly from these networks. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the principal author of the Declaration of Sentiments, was not deeply religious herself in the orthodox sense – in fact, she later became a critic of organized religion’s treatment of women – but she was immersed in a culture shaped by revivalist Protestantism. Stanton grew up in a reformist whirl (her cousin Gerrit Smith was a prominent evangelical abolitionist in upstate NY, and she had heard revival preachers as a girl). She also interacted with evangelical reformers through the temperance movement and her attendance at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London (1840). It was in London that Stanton, accompanying her abolitionist husband, met Lucretia Mott, who had been denied a seat as a delegate because of her sex. Stanton later said Mott’s dignified but resolute response to that humiliation planted the seed for a women’s convention. The two women vowed to call a convention on women’s rights once back in America – a promise fulfilled at Seneca Falls eight years later . Thus the exclusion of women by church-influenced men at a reform gathering (for the Anti-Slavery Convention had a strong contingent of clergy and religious men who opposed female delegates) directly triggered the genesis of the women’s rights movement.

We also see the influence of revival-born ideas in the very document that came out of Seneca Falls. The Declaration of Sentiments (1848) consciously echoed the Declaration of Independence, but it also included specific grievances related to women’s status in the church and moral sphere. One resolution stated that woman “is systematically degraded, and her self-respect destroyed, her hopes crushed,” and among the listed injustices was that “He [man] allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry” . Here the authors explicitly call out the practice (common in most denominations) of barring women from preaching or ruling in churches. The inclusion of this point reveals that the limitations women faced within the religious realm were keenly felt and deemed integral to their oppression. It also indicates that the solutions envisioned by the women’s rights pioneers were not merely political (like voting and property rights) but also social and religious – they wanted acceptance of women’s equal capability in every domain, including the spiritual. The fact that this grievance made it into the Declaration suggests that some of the signers had likely experienced that exclusion firsthand. Indeed, one of the signatories was a Methodist woman preacher, Phoebe Palmer, who although she did not attend Seneca Falls, hosted the follow-up Rochester Women’s Rights Convention just weeks later. Palmer was well-known in New York for leading a weekly prayer meeting in which she, a laywoman, effectively preached to mixed audiences about Christian holiness. Palmer’s involvement in early feminism underscores how female religious leadership flowed into female secular leadership – the confidence and public speaking experience she gained as an exhorter were easily repurposed to argue for women’s social reforms.

Timeline: Revival Precedents and Women’s Rights Milestones

To clarify the chronology and influence: the pattern generally was that innovations in women’s religious roles preceded and inspired advances in women’s secular roles. For instance:

• 1770s–1810s: Female religious visionaries like Ann Lee and Jemima Wilkinson break ground by leading their own sects long before any woman would lead a secular institution. They introduced the radical notion of women (or gender-nonconforming individuals) as ultimate authorities in a community of believers. These early precedents, while fringe, planted seeds in the public imagination about women’s capabilities.
• 1820s–1830s: The heyday of the Burned-Over District revivals. Women such as Jarena Lee (1783–?), a free Black woman in Philadelphia, receive authorization to preach (Jarena was the first woman recognized as an exhorter in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1819 after persistent lobbying). In New York, female converts swell church numbers and start to make their influence felt. Finney’s revivals (1825–1835) legitimize women praying publicly . In the same period, women like Harriet Livermore and the Grimké sisters begin addressing mixed public audiences on moral issues (Harriet’s first Congressional sermon in 1827; Grimkés on lecture tour by 1837). This is met with resistance, evidenced by the 1837 Pastoral Letter against the Grimkés, but it sparks debate. Also in the 1830s, women’s reform societies proliferate (maternal associations, moral reform, etc.), giving women organizational clout.
• 1840s: Militant reform and religious movements overlap. In 1840, the World Anti-Slavery Convention’s exclusion of women like Mott galvanizes the cause for women’s rights. Simultaneously, the Millerite movement (1840–1844) sees dozens of women preachers stepping forth , arguably habituating Millerite men to hearing women as prophetic voices. Though Milleritism itself collapsed, one could argue it left a residue of more open attitudes among its adherents – especially those who later joined groups like the Adventists or the Wesleyan Methodists (a new denomination formed in 1843 which supported women’s ministry to some degree). In 1844, Ellen Harmon’s visions begin, soon giving her a leadership position in Adventism. In 1845, Baptist preacher Antoinette Brown (who would become the first ordained female Protestant minister in 1853) delivers her first sermons in upstate New York. By 1848, the year of Seneca Falls, the cross-pollination between revivalism and women’s activism is evident: that same year, in addition to the women’s rights convention, John Humphrey Noyes establishes the Oneida Community and the Fox Sisters spark the Spiritualist movement in Rochester by claiming to communicate with spirits (another avenue where many women became public figures as mediums). The Spiritualist movement, in particular, attracted many women and allowed them to speak and publish as trance lecturers conveying messages from beyond – a development quite parallel to the prophetic mode used by earlier female revivalists. In fact, a number of suffragists (like Sojourner Truth and later Victoria Woodhull) were active in Spiritualism, finding it a liberating alternative to the traditional church which suppressed female leadership.
• Late 1840s–1850s: After Seneca Falls, the women’s rights movement picks up steam, holding annual conventions. Key leaders including Stanton, Mott, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony emerge. Lucy Stone (1818–1893), who was a young woman in the Burned-Over District during the revivals, had been so influenced by revival-born reform ideals that she attended Oberlin College (graduating in 1847) specifically to train for public service. At Oberlin, which had roots in Finneyite revivalism, Stone encountered the idea that it was not only permissible but righteous for a woman to develop her talents to serve God and humanity – a then-radical notion which she took to heart. Lucy Stone became a prominent antislavery agent and in 1850 addressed the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester. Meanwhile, Antoinette Brown (later Antoinette Brown Blackwell) who was a friend of Stone’s at Oberlin, completed a theology degree there and in 1853 was ordained by a Congregational church. Her ordination – the first of an American woman in a mainstream Protestant denomination – was widely covered in the press, with some deriding it but others seeing it as the logical next step for a Christian society that had embraced revival egalitarianism. Brown was also active on the lecture circuit for temperance and women’s rights, preaching a blend of scripture and women’s equality. Sojourner Truth (c.1797–1883), an African American evangelist and former slave from New York, likewise straddled the religious and feminist worlds: she preached at camp meetings in the 1840s and famously delivered extemporaneous speeches for women’s rights in the 1850s, invoking her faith and identity (“Ain’t I a Woman?” speech in 1851) to expose the hypocrisy of gender norms.

From this timeline, we see clearly that the religious breakthroughs often preceded political ones. Women were preaching and publishing theology (albeit informally) before they were speaking in legislatures or publishing political tracts. The confidence and networks formed in revivalist and reform circles became the backbone of the women’s rights movement. Many early feminists explicitly credited their religious convictions or experiences for igniting their sense of justice. As one participant at the 1853 women’s rights convention proclaimed, the movement was part of “the progression of Humanity upward… in accordance with the will of the Divine Father.” Others, like Stanton, took a more critical view of the church, especially as some established clergy staunchly opposed women’s rights. But even Stanton used biblical and religious rhetoric to make her case – for example, in debating a resolution on woman’s role in the church at the 1854 convention, she argued that soul and intellect have no gender, and she challenged the scriptural interpretations used to subordinate women, much as the Grimkés had done .

Thus, one can fairly say that revivalism lit the fuse that led to early feminism. The Burned-Over District’s culture of spiritual intensity, communal reform, and empowered womanhood (within a religious framework) evolved naturally into demands for empowerment in the civic arena. The connection was so evident that some historians dub the region the “cradle of feminism” as well as the cradle of new religions . The proximity of Seneca Falls to the “burning” fields of revival was not coincidental. Upstate New York in the 1840s was a hotbed of innovation – religious and social – because a critical mass of its people had come to believe that old limits need not bind them. Revival taught that each soul could commune directly with God and take responsibility for moral action; it denounced fatalism and hierarchy in favor of individual agency and even perfection. Those same people then looked at society and asked: if God respects the soul of women as much as men, why doesn’t the state? Why doesn’t the church?

A Fair and Critical Appraisal

It is important to provide a balanced assessment: not everyone in the revivals supported women’s rights, and not all early feminists were pious revivalists. There were tensions and ironies. For instance, many clergymen – including some revivalists – became harsh critics of the women’s movement. Even Charles Finney, relatively progressive in the 1830s on women praying, did not endorse the push for women’s suffrage or full equality; like many evangelical men, he drew the line at what he saw as the “God-ordained order” of the family. On the other side, some women’s rights activists grew alienated from the church. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by the 1870s, spearheaded a project to rewrite the Bible from a feminist perspective (The Woman’s Bible), reflecting her frustration with what she considered patriarchy in scripture and church tradition. This shows that the alliance of revivalism and feminism was not monolithic or permanent – it was a complex, evolving relationship. Nonetheless, in the formative years up to 1848 and just beyond, the symbiosis is unmistakable: revival empowered women spiritually, and that empowerment flowed into the demand for social empowerment.

One must also critically analyze the women visionaries’ claims with a fair eye. While this chapter avoids dismissive terms like “gimmick,” it’s worth considering how contemporary observers viewed these claims of visions and prophecy. Skeptics at the time (usually men in authority or print) often accused women like Ann Lee or Ellen White of either fraud or delusion, suggesting that these “visions” were convenient ploys to gain influence. Modern historians have examined these cases and offered varied interpretations – some see the prophetic role as a calculated strategy that enabled women to subvert norms under cover of piety, while others emphasize the genuine faith and psychological experience of the women themselves. Likely it was a mixture: figures such as Lee, Wilkinson, and White seem sincerely to have believed in their divine calling (their lifelong dedication attests to that sincerity), yet they also shrewdly understood that invoking divine mandate gave them a legitimacy otherwise unattainable. Their movements often attracted followers who were marginalized or dissatisfied with mainstream religion, including many women – a sign that these female-led sects filled a real spiritual void that patriarchal churches left.

The lasting influence of these women varied, as we noted. In a critical sense, failure can be as instructive as success. The ephemeral nature of Jemima Wilkinson’s following or Harriet Livermore’s fleeting fame underscores how heavily these movements depended on singular charismatic leaders in the absence of broader institutional acceptance. They were outliers in the grand scheme. Yet the mainstream was not left untouched by them. Each controversial female preacher forced the public – and crucially, other women – to grapple with questions of women’s capabilities. The very audacity of these prophets to preach and lead made it a little less audacious for women to simply speak up in a prayer meeting or to organize a benevolence society. In that way, their influence can be seen as a cultural leaven, subtle but real.

Finally, a fair assessment should note that not all women in the Burned-Over District were on the side of change. Many devout women remained opposed to what they saw as radicalism or unfeminine behavior. For example, some pious women condemned women’s rights conventions as the work of infidels, preferring the traditional teaching that a woman’s highest domain was her home and that her influence, though powerful, should be wielded behind-the-scenes. This ideology of “separate spheres” (public for men, private for women) was strongly entrenched. What the revivals did, however, was to blur that boundary by drawing women into public religious activity. Even a conservative churchwoman who would never speak in a political meeting might still take charge of a mothers’ prayer group or publicly testify to her conversion – small but significant shifts. The cumulative effect was that by mid-century the notion of completely secluded, silent womanhood was fading.

Conclusion

The Second Great Awakening in the Burned-Over District was as much a social revolution as a religious one. In this chapter, we have seen that women, family, and community were not passive backdrop elements but active protagonists in the revival drama. Women brought zeal, organization, and even daring leadership to the revival – from the unsung hundreds who prayed and exhorted in local churches, to the bold few who claimed the mantle of prophetess and thereby preached with an authority equal to any man’s. Family life both absorbed and propagated the revival’s influence, as households were converted and domestic piety became a hallmark of the awakened life. And communities, whether traditional villages or experimental communes, provided the matrix in which revival faith either took root and flourished or, occasionally, struck off in startling new directions.

One of those new directions was the inception of the women’s rights movement. The Burned-Over District’s revival culture, by empowering women in spiritual matters and fostering a climate of reformist idealism, set the stage for women to demand empowerment in civic matters. The same region that was “burned over” by the fires of evangelical fervor in the 1820s and ’30s became, in the 1840s, the birthplace of the first women’s declaration of independence. Religious conviction and community activism were the midwives of early feminism. It was no coincidence that so many early feminists had ties to evangelical or Quaker faith – they were, in effect, converting the revival’s promise of individual salvation into a broader promise of social salvation for their sex.

In a balanced view, revivalism did not automatically equate to feminism – but it undeniably cracked open the door. The language of spiritual equality gradually morphed into the language of legal equality. The networks formed in churches and moral societies provided the blueprint for political organization. And the moral authority women claimed in the name of God became a stepping stone to claiming public authority in the name of justice. The Burned-Over District offers a vivid example of how a fervent religious movement can have unintended yet profound consequences for social change. Revival gave women a voice, and once awakened, that voice would not be confined to hymns and prayers alone – it would speak out for freedom, for rights, and for a reformation of society itself.

In the next chapter, we will continue to explore the legacies of the Burned-Over District, turning to how the fires of revival and reform gave rise to new religious denominations and social experiments that spread far beyond upstate New York. But as we conclude this chapter, the key insight remains: the story of the Second Great Awakening cannot be told without the women, families, and communities that shaped it at every turn. From humble kitchens to open campgrounds, from family Bibles to convention halls, their influence was pervasive. Revival was not merely a series of sermons – it was a lived experience, forged in the interactions of wives persuading husbands, daughters defying fathers, neighbors encouraging neighbors, and courageous souls – many of them women – daring to say, “God has called me to this,” even when the world said to be silent. The Burned-Over District’s flames thus purified and illumined, revealing a new vision of what society could be when touched by spiritual renewal: a vision that included women standing upright, no longer under the feet of their brethren , but alongside them, working in faith toward a more just and regenerated world.