Title: All Saints Sisters of the Poor: An Anglican Sisterhood in the 19th Century
Abstract: SUSAN MUMM, ED. All Saints Sisters of the Poor: An Anglican Sisterhood in the 19th Century. Church of England Record Society, 9. Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press, 2001. Pp. xxviii + 280, bibliography, index. $75.00. The crisis precipitated by the revival of sisterhoods in the Anglican communion in the mid-nineteenth rivals the intense conflict over women's ordination in the late twentieth and was a part of the transformation of the role of women in church and society that continues today. Yet the lives of women who joined religious congregations in England and in the United States until recently have remained relatively unknown, as do the institutional structures they developed and the contributions they made to the modernization of church and society. The Church of England Record Society's groundbreaking publication of selected manuscripts of the community of All Saints Sisters of the Poor is an indication of a profound shift in the academic world, the result of the past three decades of scholarship by historians in the fields of women's history and studies of gender and religion. One hopes this is the first of many subsequent publications of documents of women's congregational life since All Saints was one of the ninety-odd religious orders founded by anglican women in the second half of the nineteenth century (xvi), of which most still exist today. Susan Mumm's excellent selection and useful arrangement of documents allows the reader to obtain an overview of the life of this community. The texts are appropriately annotated and are organized into four sections: personal recollections of the society's early years; rules, statutes and chapter minutes; life and training; work, represented by the Franco-Prussian War diary kept by Sister Catharine Williams. Mumm's well-written introduction and helpful footnotes throughout the volume provide a congruent historical context valuable for the interpretation of the texts. A reading of this volume immediately raises questions about women's autonomy, authority, and leadership in the Victorian church. What we find in recent scholarship on sisterhoods is that religious communities such as All Saints were significant in the opening of professions to women and in the changing status of women within organized religion. The variety of documents included allow for a comparison of the official rules of the community with private, unauthorized texts and show that women religious struggled between two authorities-their bishop and their internal leadership. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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