Female missionary memberships powered religious education societies into national organizations

Evidence

If freedmen’s education societies continued to grow because of missionary zeal “rooted,” as McPherson posits, “in the institutional structure of American Protestantism,” they experienced renewed vigor, in no small measure, because of tremendous activity on the part of their predominantly female memberships.’ By the 1870s a vibrant, separate voice, amplified in an age of growing demands on the part of women for equality in education, the workplace, government, and society in general, began to resonate within evangelical Protestantism. In the postbellum period women’s missionary activities transcended local community activity to become large national operations—each with tens of thousands of members linked together through news organs, educational literature, missionary training schools, and sophisticated organizational structures and administrative skills. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 428

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Women leveraged their Sunday-school majority to shape the church’s future membership — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 368; Church women claimed greater practical missionary power than ordained theologians — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 115; National women’s church networks disseminated new reform techniques to local communities — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 811

Broader Connections

• National women’s church networks disseminated new reform techniques to local communities #corroborates (0.84) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 811
• Church women claimed greater practical missionary power than ordained theologians #expands (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 115