Catherine Brekus | |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Let Your Women Keep Silence in the Churches (1993) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | History |
Sub-discipline | American religious history |
Institutions | |
Notable works |
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Catherine Anne Brekus is Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America at Harvard Divinity School. Brekus' work is centered on American religious history,especially the religious history of women,focusing on the evangelical Protestant tradition. [1]
Brekus received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and literature from Harvard University in 1985, [1] [2] [3] having submitted the honors thesis Women in the Chartist Movement:Historical and Literary Images. [4] She received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in American studies from Yale University [3] with the dissertation "Let Your Women Keep Silence in the Churches":Female Preaching and Evangelical Religion in America,1740–1845. [5]
Brekus' works have included a history of female preaching in America entitled Strangers and Pilgrims:Female Preaching in America,1740–1845 (1998) and a history of early evangelicalism based on a woman's diaries entitled Sarah Osborn's World:The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (2013). She has also edited volumes on The Religious History of American Women:Reimagining the Past (2007) and,with W. Clark Gilpin,American Christianities:A History of Dominance and Diversity (2011). [6] She has been involved in efforts to reprise women's role within American religious history,organizing the first conference on the topic in the United States in 2003. [7]
The Great Awakening was a series of religious revivals in American Christian history. Historians and theologians identify three, or sometimes four, waves of increased religious enthusiasm between the early 18th century and the late 20th century. Each of these "Great Awakenings" was characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense of conviction and redemption on the part of those affected, an increase in evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious movements and denominations.
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The Methodist Church used circuit riders to reach people in frontier locations.
The Third Great Awakening refers to a historical period proposed by William G. McLoughlin that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It influenced pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire Earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness movement and Nazarene and Pentecostal movements, and also Jehovah's Witnesses, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Thelema, and Christian Science. The era saw the adoption of a number of moral causes, such as the abolition of slavery and prohibition.
Ann Lee, commonly known as Mother Ann Lee, was the founding leader of the Shakers, later changed to United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing following her death. She was born during a time of the Evangelical revival in England, and became a figure that greatly influenced religion at this time, especially in the Americas.
The Social Gospel is a social movement within Protestantism that aims to apply Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, lack of unionization, poor schools, and the dangers of war. It was most prominent in the early 20th-century United States and Canada. Theologically, advocates of the movement sought to put into practice the Lord's Prayer : "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". They typically were postmillennialist; that is, they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort. The Social Gospel was more popular among clergy than laity. Its leaders were predominantly associated with the liberal wing of the progressive movement and most were theologically liberal, although a few were also conservative when it came to their views on social issues. Important leaders included Richard T. Ely, Josiah Strong, Washington Gladden, and Walter Rauschenbusch.
The First Great Awakening, sometimes Great Awakening or the Evangelical Revival, was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Protestantism as adherents strove to renew individual piety and religious devotion. The Great Awakening marked the emergence of Anglo-American evangelicalism as a trans-denominational movement within the Protestant churches. In the United States, the term Great Awakening is most often used, while in the United Kingdom, the movement is referred to as the Evangelical Revival.
Progressive Christianity represents a postmodern theological approach, which developed out of the liberal Christianity of the modern era, itself rooted in the Enlightenment's thinking. Progressive Christianity is a postliberal theological movement within Christianity that, in the words of Reverend Roger Wolsey, "seeks to reform the faith via the insights of post-modernism and a reclaiming of the truth beyond the verifiable historicity and factuality of the passages in the Bible by affirming the truths within the stories that may not have actually happened."
Christians in Bangladesh account for 0.30% of the nation's population as of 2022 census. Together with Judaism and Buddhism, they account for 1% of the population. Islam accounts for 91.04% of the country's religion, followed by Hinduism at 7.95% as per 2022 census.
Susie Marshall Sharp was an American jurist who served as the first female chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was not the first woman to head the highest court in a U.S. state, but is believed to be the first woman elected to such a post in a state, like North Carolina, in which the position is elected by the people separately from that of Associate Justice. In 1965, Lorna E. Lockwood became the first female chief justice of a state supreme court, but in Arizona, the Supreme Court justices elect their chief justice.
Christian feminism is a school of Christian theology which uses the viewpoint of a Christian to promote and understand morally, socially, and spiritually the equality of men and women. Christian theologians argue that contributions by women and acknowledging women's value are necessary for a complete understanding of Christianity. Christian feminists are driven by the belief that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically determined characteristics such as sex and race, but created all humans to exist in harmony and equality regardless of those factors. On the other hand, Christian egalitarianism is used for those advocating gender equality and equity among Christians but do not wish to associate themselves with the feminist movement.
Sarah Osborn was an early American Protestant and Evangelical writer who experienced her own type of "religious awakening" during the birth of American Evangelicalism, and through her memoirs, served as a preacher.
Portobago, on the south shore of Rappahannock River, is an unincorporated community in Caroline County, in the U.S. state of Virginia. Its name originates from the old village, probably belonging to the Nandtaughtacund Powhatans during the 17th century.
In the United States, evangelicalism is a movement among Protestant Christians who believe in the necessity of being born again, emphasize the importance of evangelism, and affirm traditional Protestant teachings on the authority as well as the historicity of the Bible. Comprising nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, evangelicals are a diverse group drawn from a variety of denominational backgrounds, including Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Pentecostal, Plymouth Brethren, Quaker, Reformed and nondenominational churches.
Kathleen Flake is an American historian, writer, and attorney. She was the inaugural Richard Lyman Bushman chair of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia from 2013 until her retirement in 2024.
Racial segregation of churches in the United States is a pattern of Christian churches maintaining segregated congregations based on race. As of 2001, as many as 87% of Christian churches in the United States were completely made up of only white or African-American parishioners.
Judith Lomax was an American poet and religious writer. She was the first woman in Virginia to publish a volume of poetry entirely her own.
Hannah Heaton was a New England woman known for chronicling in a diary her experiences during the Great Awakening in the northern American royal colonies.
Emma Anderson is a Canadian professor teaching since 2005, in the Faculty of Arts Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa located in Canada's capital Ottawa, Ontario. She is the author of two books. Her area of expertise focuses on relations between Indigenous and Catholic cultures from the early seventeenth century.
Sarah Edwards was an American missionary and the wife of theologian Jonathan Edwards. Her husband was initially drawn to her spiritual openness, direct relationship with God, and periods of spiritual ecstasy. As a theological student at Yale, he had longed to have a personal relationship with God. His wife's experiences, similar to those of Saint Teresa of Ávila, profoundly affected his religious life and the formation of the New Light. She was a model of spirituality during the Great Awakening of the early 18th century. Her experiences of religious ecstasy were documented in Jonathan Edwards's work, Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England. She was a Puritan who took her faith very seriously. She raised her eleven children, largely by herself, as Jonathan Edwards focused on sermons and books. Among her noted descendants, Sarah was the grandmother of U.S. vice president Aaron Burr.
Anthea Deidre Butler is an African-American professor of religion and chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies, where she is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought.