Emma Newman

About this book

"A biography and a fresh view of gender in relationship to geography, Emma Newman, A Frontier Woman Minister gives us a view of the evolution of women's roles in Christianity in nineteenth-century frontier America.". "Randi Jones Walker illustrates how Emma Newman's life and career took her to an "American West" that was, in general, more receptive to women's professional aspirations. The vast, sparsely populated landscape modified traditional gender roles and relationships and demanded of all its inhabitants an entrepreneurial spirit. Social conventions restricting women's religious activity were less firmly entrenched than in the East. And because the geography isolated men from women, minister from denomination, and minister from her people, it provided freedom for women to engage in pastoral work and to break the barriers keeping them from the pulpit and ordination." "Walker draws on Emma Newman's diaries and correspondence to examine religion through day-to-day experiences of one who lived a life of service on the American frontier."--BOOK JACKET.