Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
New England Women and the Geographies of Power (Part One)

New England Women and the Geographies of Power (Part One)

Last updated on: March 4, 2023 at 2:23 am by Joey Cochran

0 Comments

New England Women and the Geographies of Power (Part One) 2023-03-04T02:23:44-04:00 Joey Cochran

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The First Peoples (Natives) viewed their geography as a space of spiritual interconnection between ecology and humanity facilitated by the force they called manitou (spirit). Natives approached their geography from the attitude of interdependence rather than dominance. They migrated seasonally to the resources they depended upon: men going on long hunts and women farming and raising children, while maintaining fisheries along the coast or major rivers. To the Natives, geography was not possessed or owned but sacred and shared by all creatures of the Gitchi Manitou (Great Spirit).

Europeans understood geography from a different perspective. The seventeenth century errand into the wilderness by British colonists created new opportunities to expand the British Empire’s global geographic holdings. Colonists came to dominate, possess, and domesticate the land. This is not to say that Puritans viewed the land less sacred than Natives. The project of subduing the geography of the land was a sacred mission. Just as Adam dominated the land and creatures by naming it (Gen. 2), the colonists subdued their geography by naming it New England. In the imagination of Puritans, conquest of New England included a spiritual domestication of the land. The geography of New England must be subdued and put under the sacred domain of Christianity.

Thus, they chartered colonies and villages through companies, which could be mapped and marked on paper. Then they constructed structures upon the land and enclosed them with protective walls by exploiting the geography’s natural resources and commodifying the earth: wood, stone, clay baked bricks. In the eyes of the land’s First Peoples, this process horrified them, for they observed Europeans violating the land and its manitou. Because the untamed wilderness sheltered fairies, spirits (ghosts) and demonic forces—Puritans associated the Natives, who lived interdependently upon their geography, with either pagan or demonic spiritual forces.

As colonists domesticated their newly acquired New England property, they established geographies of power, both physical and spiritual. These geographies of power were gendered. Men and women had authority in different geographical spaces within the community, and they were expected to respect and recognize each other’s authority in those geographies and behave appropriately in those spaces.

Geographies of Power in New England Villages

The geographies of power ultimately rested in the hands of household heads, the men of the community. Husbands and fathers operated as lords and pastors over the home. They had all legal power and covered the rest of the home with their authority. They had all financial power. A household head’s wife could contain all her valuable possessions in a wooden trunk at the foot of her bed.

At the center of a New England village, stood the meeting house, where both civic discussion and sacred worship took place, all under the authority of manly headship. This geographical center of power remained securely in the hands of men. Women sat dutifully and silently in their pews, minding their children’s behavior, while they listened to the minister preach from his pulpit and the magistrate, selectmen, and their husbands stood and spoke on behalf of their families and community in weekly meetings.

On the other hand, other geographies empowered women. Women possessed the most power at the symbolic heart of the home, the hearth. Similar to the heart, which pumps warm blood through the body, the hearth held fire that radiated heat, emanating warmth throughout the home. If the soul of the home turned cold, it was the wife’s, daughter’s, or chamber-maid’s duty to fetch fire from a neighbor or take tinder and rekindle the soul of the home. Every member felt when the soul of the home grew cold, and women took seriously their responsibility to domesticate this space. They painstakingly kept the hearth clear of debris, so fire did not become unwieldily, spread, and destroy the home. As women domesticated the fire in the hearth, they perceived the metaphorical association with their hearts and affections. Their affections empowered them to warm their home and community, as long as they kept them in check, and respected the hierarchy of authority with their gentle, quiet, and sweet dispositions. However, if they let debris come too close to their hearts, their passions might ignite and bring down the whole household upon their heads.

There at the hearth, women dutifully prepared meals that nourished every member and warmed bellies and hearts. They read Scripture and imparted literacy to their children from the light of that fire, and they fashioned or repaired garments, and did other work with their hands, in order to keep from idleness.

The hearth was also a threshold, a gateway to the wilderness outside, and, therefore, a vulnerability. Animals, fairies, familiars, and the spectral spirits of witches might come from the wilderness and invade the home through the chimney threshold. While every household member paid attention to the soul of the home, the hearth, it remained under the special authority and domain of women.

Another geography of power that New England women maintained included the garden immediately surrounding the home. Gardens occupied the space immediately surrounding the home and were enclosed with a gated fence. The fenced enclosure around the garden functioned as an important physical demarcation that the home was domesticated, private property, set apart from the enchanted wilderness without its enclosure. Within this enclosure, the garden contained many good things necessary to nourish the home. Puritan women grew and gathered herbs, fruits, vegetables, and flowers to bring to the cast-iron pot in the hearth of the home. There they made potions of protective and healing magic, which we now call medicine, or they boiled stews, baked pies, and other tasty meals to provide sustenance for household members.

Puritan men took responsibility for subduing the enchanted wilderness beyond the garden enclosure. They daily penetrated into their surrounding geography and converted it into their domain. As the land submitted to their authority, they refashioned its geography into pasture for their livestock and they planted fields in it. They cleared their property of trees and brush, and these fields functioned as an intermediary buffer between the wilderness and the domesticated garden and home.

Puritans possessed plots of land that ran deep rather than wide. They wished to have near proximity to neighbors, while having large plots for pasture and planting. As you walked deeper into a Puritan man’s property, the geography of this buffer transitioned into forrested wilderness, useful for wood-cutting and supplying wooden enclosures, structures, and fueling the hearth. Hopefully, a spring of fresh water cut through a Puritan man’s property before he or his household left the safety and clear sight of the subdued fields and entered the undomesticated, enchanted wilderness.

Puritan men, at first, did not enclose their large properties. This practice symbolically rejected what had happened to the England they left. Across the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, Tudor and early Stuart royalty exhausted the available land they dispossessed from the Church during the Reformation by bequeathing it as gifts to loyal aristocrats. Often times this was payment in lieu of services rendered on behalf of protecting or expanding the British Empire. In order to obtain more land, both royalty and aristocrats seized land previously held for public use as hunting grounds, fisheries, pasturing, and as wood-cutting sources. They enclosed these lands, converting them into private holdings, with strict laws against encroachment. The practice of seizing and enclosing public lands made it difficult for middling class people to survive. The lack of available land for sale contributed to why West-country Puritan men sought new land across the Atlantic.

Puritan villages found it necessary to enclose their townships with palisades that protected the immediate community from the enchanted wilderness without and, especially, its inhabitants, Natives. The first settlers would have the privilege of having their homes and properties within the safety and fortification of the palisades. Latecomer stakeholders and township growth, primarily through male children reaching adulthood, caused townships to spread beyond the bounds of the palisade. Nonetheless, palisades physically signified that each colonial township had property limitations. Those physical limitations typified political and spiritual limitations. Puritans respected the civic and congregational autonomy of each others’ townships. What this meant was that a magistrate or minister did not exercise authority in another’s township. If one did so, this might upset the entire balance of domesticated geographies and encourage others within the social hierarchy to re-envision how their domain of authority was used.

Magistrates mustered colonial militia to protect the domesticated region within townships and patrol the wilderness without the palisades. As colonial militias penetrated the wilderness, they demonstrated their dominance and control over it. Colonists constructed networks of trails and roads, bridging across waterways. They also mastered the waterways. Militia patrols intimidated hostile Natives and protected townships from attacks. They tracked down renegade slaves and protected shipments of commodities sent to ports either by water or road. These activities altered the geography of the wilderness and turned it into the dominion of New England.

Across the rest of the seventeenth century, ministers participated in the spiritual domestication of New England by mustering their words in the pulpit and in print to be heard and spread across the land. For the most part, they remained immobile and engaged in this effort from their pulpits. They respected each other’s autonomous spiritual enclosures and domains. Mobilizing their message with itineracy was irregular and by ministerial invitation only.

Rather than physically mobilizing, they spiritually domesticated the wilderness by describing how the whole natural world belonged to God, the Creator and sustainer of creation. From the pulpit and print, ministers typified what they saw contained in the natural geography of the land and imbued it with spiritual significance that matched Scripture’s use of it. While the use of typology, as the preferred exegetical technique for spiritually subduing and domesticating the wilderness and appropriating it into the Christian domain, much predated John Flavel’s Navigation Spiritualized (1664) and Husbandry Spiritualized (1669), these two works exemplified the practice that had been used across the century. Flavel’s works were key sources for the early evangelical, Jonathan Edwards, who relied upon Flavel’s model of exegesis to convey the Creator’s domination over all creation and creatures within his global domain.

Awakeners Challenging the Geographies of Power

By the 1740s, the physical geography of New England had become quite domesticated by British colonists. Plentiful roadways and waterways existed to swiftly transport the evangelical message across the colonies and fully realize the spiritual domestication of this geography. When the awakener, George Whitefield, arrived, the spiritual geography of New England was ripe for harvest. He attempted to first bear his message within the sphere of manly authority at the town’s center, the meetinghouse. However, he faced resistance from ministers, who believed he ought to respect the spiritual enclosure of the township and its minister’s autonomous domain over the spiritual community. In addition, the sheer mass numbers of those attracted to his mobile revival tour made indoor gatherings impractical. He took to the geography of the fields to revive the people. Note that he selected a geography of power acceptable for man, the field men had subdued, the buffer between the undomesticated wilderness and the enclosed garden and the home. While not the domesticated center of manly authority, the meetinghouse, the field was a conventionally accepted geography of power for men to occupy. He and his associates: Gilbert Tennent, James Davenport, and other New Lights, who continued to mimic their practices and methods, challenged the authority and autonomy of local ministers and their spiritual enclosures by occupying a space of power designated for men.

Whitefield’s innovative field preaching and evangelical message, which challenged spiritual enclosures, inspired the creation of separatist churches and stimulated the growth of both Baptists and Methodist churches that continued to mobilize the evangelical message into the geography of the frontier wilderness. These revivalists participated in spiritually domesticating the geography of the wilderness, while lay colonists physically domesticated the land further on into the interior of the domain of the British colonies in North America.

Local ministers in the 1740s, now known as Old Lights, recognized the threat that Whitefield’s infringement upon spiritual enclosures meant for the entire social hierarchy of domesticity. They feared that others in the community might leverage their geography of power to inspire revival. In other words, they feared more Anne Hutchinson’s would arise.

How Anne Hutchinson Repurposed the Home’s Geography of Power

Hutchinson was exiled from Boston in the late 1630s after hosting conventicles (bible studies) in her home. Realizing she could never exercise authority from the manly domain of the meetinghouse, in the town’s center, she provided hospitality from her hearth and welcomed her spiritual community into her home, an acceptable domain of power for a woman. From her geography of power, she exercised spiritual authority. Her popular weekly meetings of women transitioned into mixed-meetings of men and women. She was accused of exhorting in her home, with authority over men, and, from her home, critiquing the prophetic ministry of the ministers that took place in the town’s center, at the meetinghouse. In other words, her ministry, from the hearth of her home, de-centered the ministry of its town’s ministers and threatened their authority. Her geography of power threatened the geography of power controlled by the men in the community.

After a civic and ecclesial trial, she was exiled, as a sacrificial scapegoat into the wilderness, by the domestic authorities. Boston’s leadership hoped this sacrifice would recompense for the sins of breaking covenant with God. Her family established a new settlement in Rhode Island, but their new home was too vulnerable to the wilderness threat, and she ultimately died at the hands of Natives, during their raid upon her village. Boston’s leadership believed the misfortune that befell her family vindicated their exile of her and was a just judgment for how she undermined and disregarded, what they believed, was the God-ordained geography of power for biblical authority in the community, the meetinghouse. Not only this, but one might speculate that the fact that the attack occurred upon her home might vindicate that she had abused the appropriate use of the home as a geography of power for women.

How Itinerant Awakeners’ Challenge to the Geography of Power Might Empower Women

Old Light ministers in the 1740s feared that women would rise up as lay exhorters and spread the fires of revival from their hearths. Like Hutchinson, they might be inclined to claim that God implanted within their hearts immediate revelation.

The revival power a woman might claim, while standing by the hearth of her home and exhorting her neighbors and fellow congregants from her heart, might rival the minister’s authority in the meetinghouse at the town’s center, as they stood in the pulpit and claimed prophetic authority from the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures.

George Whitefield’s use of the field challenged the boundaries of the spiritual enclosure of the village. His actions might very well have been a precursor and inspiration that incited women to boldly challenge the geography of power controlled by manly authorities, wielding the Word of God, from the meetinghouse at the village center. They might do so by harnessing the geography of power they had been relegated to, the hearth and the home, as a space to re-envision biblical authority. They might host revivals in their homes and exhort listeners from the Word, as they stood by the heart of their home, the hearth, and spoke from the heart of their soul.

My next post will discuss the activity of two such exhorters.

Previous Post

March 2, 2023

Fire Fall Down: The Asbury Revival

Next Post

March 6, 2023 People Get Ready (again)!

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"The TV sitcom BEWITCHED was an old favorite of mine"

philipjenkins

How Scotland Gave Us Our Modern ..."

"From now on whenever I see a clipper ship, see a certain brand of Scottish ..."

Terry

How Scotland Gave Us Our Modern ..."

"There are no such things as witches. They were just unmarried or elderly women with ..."

Dot Newkirk

How Scotland Gave Us Our Modern ..."

"The book of THE KEEP is wonderful, but I was not such a fan of ..."

philipjenkins

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe Guest Post guest post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Complete the line from John 11, verse 35: "Jesus....."

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jesus answered Jesus spoke Jesus wept Jesus waved