For many years women were forgotten in history, with rare exceptions. Recently, however, there has been much work done uncovering the role and stories of women, including in the life of churches. My contribution to this has been researching and writing about women within Nonconformist churches, such as Baptist, Methodist and Congregationalist. Whilst I have mainly focused on the 19thC, I have occasionally dipped into the 20thC. I am planning to post stories here about women’s lives which I have uncovered over the years, so watch this space! Below are a few references to some of the work I have done.

Books

Marianne Farningham: A Plain Woman Worker, Studies in Baptist History and Thought,  Carlisle: Paternoster,  2007

Constrained by Zeal: Female Spirituality Amongst Nonconformists, 1825-75,  Paternoster Biblical and Theological Monographs, Paternoster, Carlisle, 2000.

I have a few copies of these books available for a small cost. Contact me if you are interested.

Selected Articles and Chapters

‘Domestic charms, business acumen, and devotion to Christian work’: Sarah Terrett, the Bible Christian Church, the household and the public sphere in late Victorian Bristol,  in John Doran, Charlotte Methuen and Alexandra Walsham, eds,  Religion and the Household (Studies in Church History Vol 50), (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2014), pp 405-15.

‘Women, men and Fundamentalism in England during the 1920s and 30s’ in in D Ceri Jones and D Bebbington, eds., Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the United Kingdom in the Twentieth Century,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

‘Sarah Terrett, Katherine Robinson and Edith Pearce: Three Nonconformist Women and Public Life in Bristol, 1870-1910’, in Pieter L Lalleman, Peter J Morden and Anthony R Cross, Grounded in Grace: Essays to Honour Ian M. Randall, London and Didcot, Spurgeon’s College and the Baptist Historical Society, 2013. 

‘Working Women make Happy Homes’: Marianne Farningham and the Role of Women in the late Nineteenth century’ in John Briggs, ed., Baptists and the World: Renewing the Vision, Oxford and Didcot: Regent’s Park College, Oxford and The Baptist Historical Society, 2011. 

‘Beads of Memory: Activism in the Biographies of Methodist Women’ in Norma Virgoe, ed, Angels and Impudent Women: Women in Methodism, Loughbourough: Wesley Historical Society, 2007

‘Marianne Farningham’; ‘Amy Carmichael’; ‘Corrie Ten Boom’ and ‘Helen Rosevere’ in T. Larsen, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals,  Leicester: IVP, 2003.