Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century

PREFACE

PREFACE William L. Andrews here presents the autobiographies of Jarena Lee, Zilpha Ela~N, and Julia Foote, three black women whose narratives are remarkable in a number of ways. The memoirs of all three are rich personal documents, casting important light on a series of themes in mid-nineteenth-century black religion and in American religion in general. The deep vein of personal spirituality these narratives reveal is combined with material that heightens our understanding of camp meetings and class meetings as well as interdenominational relationships during the period. Still more, from solidly within the African Methodist Episcopal church and in the shadow of the legendary Richard Allen, the autobiographies point to a protoholi11ess movement and even a protopentecostalism. qffering a view from the ranks, they provide a perspective not otherwise available on the role of Allen and other key A.M.E. leaders in shaping the Afro-American church. The spirituality of vision and dream, which abundantly characterizes these recollections, has often been read in the Afro-American context as "counterrevolutionary." Yet here, with uncanny and otherworldly manifestations aplenty, we find visionary strength and support at the core of a radical religious stance. Probably without consciously intending, these women exemplify in their lives a feminism that challenged male leadership and prerogatives, that found in the Spirit an authority transcending the imposing presence of the ecclesial voice. Although this "spiritual feminism" was still in its formative phases, Lee, Elaw, and Foote pointed the way along a path that other American religious women would tread. Beyond the radical stance of feminism, though, these women moved to a racial radicalism in which they read the Pauline theological affirmation as existing social fact. For the three, slave or free, black or white, were secondary characterizations when placed beside the primacy of the Spirit's call. While each woman was, in her way, keenly aware of racial difference, each practised a kind of spiritual "oneupping " in which charismatic religious authority transcended social station and, indeed, turned sociological tables to insert whites in a new religious orcler. VI Preface Vll The texts of these narratives leave many questions still unanswered. How is it that women with such comparatively feeble formal education could write accounts cast in dramatic and sophisticated prose, as especially in the latinate sentences of Foote? Were these autobiographies ghost-written? Or dictated to an editor? Or heavily manicured in some other way? And what is their relationship to the rest of the black church? Surely the authors paint themselves at the center; but what would have been the view of their contemporaries in the church concerning their respective missions? How may we view their passionate and visionary religious life in the context of the general revival spirituality as well as the black spirituality of the time? William Andrews addresses some of these questions in his helpful and instructive introduction to the volume. Lee, Elaw, and Foote invite additional interpretation now that their accounts are again readily accessible and available. Andrews has helped to make that possible by bringing these forgotten texts once more to lighL CATHERINE L. ALBANESE STEPHEN J. STEIN, SERIES EDITORS ...