Thy Servant Forever: Girlhood and Religious Authority in Antebellum America

• Published in: Church history and religious culture 2023-12, Vol.103 (3-4), p.285-304
• Main Author: Leal, K. Elise
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1871-241X; 1871-2428
• DOI: 10.1163/18712428-10303012

This article expands scholarly definitions of female religious authority—conversations that typically focus on women—by situating girlhood as an equally important site of receiving, developing, and performing religious agency. Using a biographical case study approach, the article examines the life of Mary Chrystie, a deeply pious American girl who lived from 1825–1841 in the mid-Atlantic region and left one of the most substantial extant primary source collections produced by a child from this period. Her life represents the religious potency of girlhood’s “in-between status” to building female-centric sacred repositories. To demonstrate this dynamic, the article analyzes Mary’s stewardship over her spiritual interiority, participation in religious communities, and her engagement with voluntarism. Ultimately, this article demonstrates the necessity of incorporating age as a category of analysis into gendered reformulations of religious authority, allowing girls to be integrated into scholarly narratives of women’s religious history as actors in their own right.