Spirited Sisters

Women have long stood at the heart of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, even when their influence was only partially acknowledged. Spirited Sisters brings their stories into focus, tracing the ways women shaped these intertwined histories.

Through focused examination of varied contexts across the Anglosphere—the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia—from the mid-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, the book explores women’s roles in Holiness and Pentecostal communities. It considers both prominent figures, such as Phoebe Palmer, Catherine Booth, and Aimee Semple McPherson, and women whose contributions have been overlooked or marginalized in official historical accounts. Drawing on historical and contextual case studies, the chapters illuminate common patterns of liberation and limitation: women’s early freedom to exercise leadership, the barriers they continued to face, and the ways institutional structures often reinforced patriarchal norms over time. The volume also shows how the interplay between informal networks and formal denominational structures is crucial to understanding Holiness and Pentecostal history, especially as it relates to women.

In bringing these traditions into conversation, Spirited Sisters adds new detail and texture to the growing literature on women in Holiness and Pentecostal Christianity. It will interest scholars and students of these movements, Christian history, and women’s history more broadly, as well as clergy and educated lay readers.

“This edited volume allows scholars to explore the histories of women from the Holiness and Pentecostal traditions, offering concise, comparative portraits that reveal shared themes and distinct contributions of women in ministry in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The collection deepens our understanding of women’s roles across both movements.”—Andrea Shan Johnson, coeditor of Oneness Pentecostalism: Race, Gender, and Culture

James E. Pedlar is Bastian Chair of Wesley Studies and Professor of Theology at Tyndale University in Toronto. He is a former President of the Wesleyan Theological Society, a Fellow of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre, and author of British Methodist Revivalism and the Eclipse of Ecclesiology.

Kimberly Ervin Alexander teaches at the Ramp School of Ministry. She is a former faculty member at Regent University School of Divinity and Pentecostal Theological Seminary and a former President of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. She is the coeditor of Sisters, Mothers, Daughters: Pentecostal Perspectives on Violence Against Women and author of Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and Practice.

Glen O’Brien is Research Coordinator and Professor of History at Eva Burrows College, University of Divinity. He is the author of John Wesley’s Political World and Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia: Hallelujah Under the Southern Cross.

Gender Studies

History

           History of Religion

           Nineteenth-century

Religious Studies & Religion

           History of Religion

           Sociology of Religion

           Theology

Sociology

           Sociology of Religion

           Twentieth-century