Piety and Dissent: Race, Gender, and Biblical Rhetoric in Early American Autobiography

247 Pages·2008·3.008 MB·English

by  Eileen Razzari Elrod

PIETY AND
DISSENT
(cid:2)
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✝
PIETY AND
DISSENT
race, gender, and
biblical rhetoric
in early american
autobiography
(cid:2)
Eileen Razzari Elrod
University of Massachusetts Press
amherst
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Copyright © 2008 by University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
LC 2007022044
ISBN 978-1-55849-629-3 (paper); 628-6 (library cloth)
Designed by Dennis Anderson
Set in New Baskerville by BookComp, Inc.
Printed and bound by The Maple-Vail
Book Manufacturing Group
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elrod, Eileen Razzari.
Piety and dissent : race, gender, and biblical rhetoric in early American autobiography /
Eileen Razzari Elrod.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55849-628-6 (library cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-55849-629-3
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. United States—Church history. 2. Christian biography. 3. Church and minorities.
4. Social integration—Religious aspects—Christianity. 5. Race relations—Religious
aspects—Christianity. 6. Sex role—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
BR515.E47 2008
277.3092'2—dc22
2007022044
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available.
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To Mary Heywood Razzari
In Memory of John Serafi no Razzari
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contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Margins and Centers, New and Old Narrations:
Biblical Voices, Great Awakening Christianity, and
American Autobiographical Traditions 1
2 “I Did Not Make Myself So . . .” : Samson Occom and
American Religious Autobiography 21
3 John Marrant, John Smith, Jesus: Borders, Tangles, and
Knots in Marrant’s 1785 Narrative 38
4 Moses and the Egyptian: Religious Authority in
Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative 62
5 Gender, Christian Suffering, and the Minister’s Voice:
Submission and Agency in Abigail Abbot Bailey’s Memoirs 85
6 Devotion and Dissent: Jarena Lee’s Rhetoric of
Conversion and Call 117
7 Finding a Way in the Forest: The Religious Discourse of
Race and Justice in the Autobiographies of William Apess 146
8 Religious Imperatives, Democratic Voices, and
Autobiographical Preoccupations 171
Notes 187
Works Cited 201
Index 217
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illustrations
Samson Occom 26
Olaudah Equiano 69
Jarena Lee 121
William Apess 153
Phillis Wheatley 173
ix
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