Christopher Evans’s new biography of educator, temperance crusader, and women’s suffragist Frances Willard (1839–1898) is insightful, timely, and adds greatly to our understanding of a much-forgotten figure in US history. “Perhaps no woman,” writes Evans, “did more to expand opportunities for women’s rights in the late 19th century than Frances Willard. As a reformer, Willard carved out a distinctive path of women’s activism that remains largely misunderstood.” Evans tells the story anew of one of America’s most significant agitators and engaged Christian activists. The writing is lively, and the research is exemplary. I especially appreciate Evans’s reimagining of Willard’s life within the context of all the difficult contingencies of the past. The book carries with it a certain caution about presentism and anachronism. For instance, Evans notes that “1920, the year when national prohibition went into effect, was a very different historical context from 1870, when Frances Willard was...
Panel Discussion of Do Everything: The Biography of Frances Willard by Christopher H. Evans, sponsored by the Manchester Wesley Research Centre, Manchester, England Available to Purchase
CHRISTOPHER H. EVANS is Professor of the History of Christianity and Methodist Studies at Boston University School of Theology. He is the author of Do Everything: The Biography of Frances Willard (Oxford University Press, 2022). His other books include The Social Gospel in American Religion (New York University Press, 2017); Histories of American Christianity, An Introduction (Baylor University Press, 2013); and The Kingdom is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Eerdmans, 2004).
RANDALL J. STEPHENS is Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo. He is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008); The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with physicist Karl Giberson (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); and editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History (University of South Carolina Press, 2009). His latest book is The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll (Harvard University Press, 2018).
DAVID BUNDY is Associate Director of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre. A scholar of the global Holiness, Radical Holiness, and Pentecostal Movements as well as of early Asian and African Christianity, he is the author of Keswick: An Introduction to the Higher Life Movements, Visions of Apostolic Mission: Scandinavian Pentecostal Mission to 1935; co-editor of Holiness and Pentecostal Movements: Intertwined Pasts, Presents, and Futures (2022); as well as hundreds of scholarly articles and reviews. He has lectured and taught in more than fifty countries. He was founding editor of the Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, now Journal of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.
CAROLE DALE SPENCER was Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Earlham School of Religion from 2010–2016. She also served as Adjunct Professor of Spiritual Formation at Portland Seminary of George Fox University for many years. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, UK. She is author of Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism: An Historical Analysis of the Theology of Holiness in the Quaker Tradition (Paternoster, 2007), and edited with Robynne Rogers Healey, Quaker Women: Studies in a Changing Landscape, 1800–1920, (Penn State University Press, 2023). She has contributed chapters and journal articles on Quakerism and its intersection with the 19th century Holiness Movement.
Christopher H. Evans, Randall J. Stephens, David Bundy, Carole Dale Spencer; Panel Discussion of Do Everything: The Biography of Frances Willard by Christopher H. Evans, sponsored by the Manchester Wesley Research Centre, Manchester, England. Methodist History 18 April 2024; 62 (1): 97–118. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/methodisthist.62.1.0097
Download citation file:
Advertisement
