By examining a wide variety of public and private primary sources from northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and midwestern states, Gedge challenges an assumption prevalent in nineteenth-century culture as well as twentieth-century historiography: women and clergy formed a natural alliance, exercised a particular influence over each other, and enjoyed a close, even perilously intimate, relationship. Part I locates the perception of a dangerous pastoral relationship in the published accounts of European travelers and in pamphlets describing dozens of criminal, civil, and ecclesiastical trials of clergy a ... More

By examining a wide variety of public and private primary sources from northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and midwestern states, Gedge challenges an assumption prevalent in nineteenth-century culture as well as twentieth-century historiography: women and clergy formed a natural alliance, exercised a particular influence over each other, and enjoyed a close, even perilously intimate, relationship. Part I locates the perception of a dangerous pastoral relationship in the published accounts of European travelers and in pamphlets describing dozens of criminal, civil, and ecclesiastical trials of clergy accused of sexual misconduct. Part II identifies both benign and malignant representations of the relationship in the imagination—the diverse literary genres that featured women and clergy as central characters, reinforcing and subverting the perception of a peculiar attraction between the two. The dangerous liaison so ubiquitous in popular culture, however, actually worked to alienate clergy and women. In Part III, pastoral manuals and seminary lectures, as part of the “professionalization” of the Protestant clergy, articulated an ideal relationship that effectively distanced ministers from their female parishioners. In Part IV, Gedge argues that the experience of ordinary pastors and female parishioners, as revealed in journals, diaries, and correspondence, also tells a tale of estrangement. Clergy resisted “feminization,” recording frustration, disdain, and avoidance in their relationships with women while women reported neglect, disappointment, and disillusionment in their relationships with pastors. The paradigm of “feminization” that historians have applied to the nineteenth-century clergy and the Protestant church is a distorted representation of the pastoral relationship. The gender ideology of separate spheres imposed enormous restrictions upon and tensions within that relationship, anxieties that reverberated in the culture at large.