Sermons

Abstract

There were hundreds of women preachers in the Romantic Era, though relatively few of their sermons survive. Preaching by women was at times religiously heterodox and socially transgressive. Only the Society of Friends and the Methodists gave significant opportunities for women’s preaching. While Quaker women were given full recognition as preachers, Methodism’s adoption of women’s preaching was tentative and uneven. A few women outside of those two traditions were able to preach or write sermons, and fewer still were able to publish sermons. Many women’s sermons were delivered extemporaneously, though some followed outlines or were revised through numerous iterations. Identifying women’s sermons can be a challenge because the sermon is a difficult genre to define and because women sometimes subverted the restrictions placed on their preaching by describing their activities in other ways. Women’s preaching from the Romantic Era remains an understudied topic, although some important research has been done on the women themselves and their activities as preachers.