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The Beauty of the Lilies: Femininity, Innocence, and the Sweet Gospel of Uldine Utley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Kristin Kobes Du Mez
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Abstract

In the 1920s, a child evangelist by the name of Uldine Utley toured the United States, attracting large crowds and captivating the press. She enjoyed the support of ministers from a wide variety of denominations, though her most ardent proponent was the famous fundamentalist preacher John Roach Straton. In many ways, Utley's success seems to counter existing narratives of early-twentieth-century religious history. Her revivalist ministry developed in an era that saw the decline of revivalism, and she rose to prominence during the height of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Claiming to adhere to biblical “literalism,” she nonetheless affirmed the appropriateness of female preaching. And, in the wake of efforts to masculinize American Protestantism and rediscover a “muscular” Christianity, Utley was known and celebrated for her femininity and beauty.

Utley's femininity was, in fact, central to her appeal. She preached a “sweet and kindly gospel” and fashioned an elaborate feminine persona. Her diminutive size, her blond hair and blue eyes, and her white attire seemed to give her an “angelic” appearance, and her persistent association with flowers, both allegorical and real, further contributed to her aura of femininity. In the context of shifting gender arrangements and changing constructions of sexuality and morality in early-twentieth-century America, Utley's femininity and innocence provided a soothing alternative to the uncertain times. But the model of femininity Utley displayed was fraught with ambivalence and proved difficult to maintain as she matured from child to young woman. In addition to illuminating a frequently overlooked strand of conservative Protestantism during this time, attention to Utley's life and ministry also reveals a powerful yet ambivalent script that remains available to modern Protestant women to this day.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Summer 2005 , pp. 209 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2005

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References

Notes

I would like to thank Robert C. Anderson for sharing both his collection of Uldine Utley materials and his hospitality with me in December of 1998, and also John McConnell, Jr., who shared with me his personal memories of Utley. I am grateful to Gail Bederman, George Marsden, Margaret Bendroth, Michael S. Hamilton, and Jack Du Mez for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

1. This account of the Dempsey-Sharkey fight is drawn from Nat Fleischer's Jack Dempsey: The Idol of Fistiana, rev. ed. (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1936), chap. 60. In Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), Gail Bederman describes the importance of prizefighting in marking the shift from a middle-class Victorian “manliness” to a rougher “masculinity” based in part on working-class values like “physical prowess, pugnacity, and sexuality” (17).

2. “Uldine Utley Speaks above Din of Fight,” New York Times, July 22, 1927.

3. The New York Evening Journal (May 2–5, 9, and 12, 1927), for example, ran several front-page articles following Utley's activities, including her preaching on Wall Street, at the New York Stock Exchange, and to soldiers aboard a battleship of the Atlantic fleet. It also contained reports of her harrowing experience of nearly being crushed by a mob of admirers, as well as of her regular sermons at Carnegie Hall.

4. In addition to John Roach Straton's powerful sponsorship, Utley also enjoyed the support of S. Parkes Cadman, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, and the sponsorship of several leading New York ministers, the members of the Evangelistic Committee of New York City.

5. Michael S. Hamilton makes this point in his insightful examination of American fundamentalism, “Awash in a Sea of Fundamentalisms: Problems in the Literature on American Fundamentalism, 1925–1960,” unpublished paper. He writes that he was “hard-pressed to find much militant anti-modernism” or even militancy in general.

6. Preliminary evidence suggests that more attention to Protestant women, liberal and conservative, may help bring our conceptions of early-twentieth-century Protestantism into balance. For example, women in the International Association of Women Ministers in the 1920s repeatedly downplayed divisions between fundamentalists and modernists, arguing that doctrinal disputes were of secondary importance. While cultural presuppositions associating militancy with masculinity and a more pacific nature with femininity may have influenced these women, other factors must also be taken into account. As “outsiders” to the centers of Protestant power, women generally had far less invested in theological controversies of their day than men did. Lacking strong ties to theological seminaries, and more likely to be involved with women of many different denominations through reform work and women's organizations, they tended to value unity above divisive theological differences. Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts discusses this tendency as well in Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

7. Historians who have mentioned Utley include Hassey, Janette, in No Time for Silence: Evangelical Women in Public Ministry around the Turn of the Century (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1986)Google Scholar; Bendroth, in Fundamentalism and Gender; and Blumhofer, Edith, in Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993)Google Scholar. See also Blumhofer, , “‘A Little Child Shall Lead Them’: Child Evangelist Uldine Utley,” in The Contentious Triangle: Church, State, and University: A Festshrift in Honor of Professor George Huntston Williams, ed. Petersen, Rodney L. and Pater, Calvin Augustine (Kirksville, Mo.: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

8. This account of Utley's life is taken largely from her book Why I Am a Preacher (New York: Fleming H. Revel Co., 1931; repr., New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), 13–85.

9. Letter to Utley from Willis Slater, San Quentin, Calif., March 28, 1927, personal collection of Robert C. Anderson.

10. Most of Utley's accounts of her conversion do not mention McPherson by name, a likely reflection of Utley's attempt to distance herself from the increasingly controversial evangelist.

11. Utley, Why I Am a Preacher, 21.

12. “God's Way with Uldine Maybelle Utley,” Petals from the Rose of Sharon 5 (June 1925): 8–10. Utley's Sunday School class provided the only formal training she received, apart from a course in Old Testament studies she took in the summer of 1935 at Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois. (Although her brother-in-law was under the impression that Utley attended and graduated from Garrett Theological Seminary through a concentrated parttime program, the seminary records show that she attended only one class, in which she earned a B2, and that she did not graduate from the institution.)

13. That day, Utley remembers, the father, as well as three of his children who had never before confessed Christ, were saved, and Utley experienced “the greatest joy in service I could ever have” (Why I Am a Preacher, 40). Utley's sermon text was Romans 12. It is not clear whether this official beginning of her public ministry occurred before or after Utley attended Sunday school at Angelus Temple.

14. McConnell's song leader, for instance, was McPherson's former song leader. One newspaper article described McConnell as “of the same faith as Aimee Semple McPherson” (Pacific Grove [Calif.] Daily Review, March 19, 1923), and McConnell attended the opening of McPherson's Angelus Temple in 1923 (Oakland Post-Enquirer, January 13, 1923). McConnell preached “the old time Gospel,” and his evangelistic crusades frequently included highly publicized healings.

15. John McConnell, Jr., telephone conversation with the author, April 22, 2003. A Fresno paper (Thursday, October 18, 1923) notes that a month of revival meetings by the Reverend J. S. McConnell at the Full Gospel Tabernacle of Fresno would be started off by sermons delivered by Uldine Utley (Scrapbook, John S. McConnell Papers, Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, Springfield, Mo.).

16. While Utley's ministry supported her family financially and lifted them out of poverty, they never amassed a significant amount of money. Often they lived from week to week, trusting God that they would receive enough money to travel to their next destination.

17. See, for example, the Sheboygan (Wis.) Press-Telegram, February 25, 1924.

18. At this point in her ministry, Utley emphasized “salvation, divine healing, and the baptism of the holy spirit.” She identified herself as a “fundamentalist,” testifying to her belief that “each line of the Bible is literally true.” This account of her San Francisco revival comes from the Indiana (Pa.) Messenger, June 19, 1924.

19. According to John McConnell, Jr., his father, who had preached in Straton's church in New York, recommended her to Straton (telephone interview with the author, April 22, 2003).

20. Straton, John Roach, Does the Bible Forbid Women to Preach and Pray in Public? (New York: Religious Literature Department of Calvary Baptist Church, [1926])Google Scholar.

21. See New York Times, April 5, 1927, p. 3, col. 4, and Our Hope (June 1927): 719, for examples of opposition to Utley due to her association with McPherson. Both of Utley's early influences, McPherson and McConnell, were from the Pentecostal tradition. Utley herself, especially after her first year of ministry, downplayed doctrinal definitions and generally attempted to avoid identifying with theological categories, including “Pentecostal” and “Fundamentalist.”

22. Marian Hale, “Fashionable Church Splits on Charges of Emotionalism,” Appleton (Wis.) Post Crescent, July 14, 1927; on Mrs. Straton's healing, see Florence S.C. Morning News Review, March 4, 1927. Straton had been a supporter of divine healing before meeting Utley, but she further inspired him in this faith through her “consistent and courageous example in putting her preaching into actual practice” by healing the sick at her meetings ( Straton, J. R., Divine Healing in Scripture and Life [New York: Christian Alliance Publishing Co., 1927], 9 Google Scholar). Another of Straton's sons, Douglas Straton, recalled that Utley was “quite an influence” on Warren's turn to the Pentecostal faith (Douglas Straton, “An Interview with Douglas Straton,” interview by Wayne E. Warner, sound recording, October 5, 1990, Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, Springfield, Mo.).

23. This led to an extended debate between Straton and the Association for the Advancement of Atheism, which culminated in Straton's successful prosecution of Charles Lee Smith, the association's president, for actions and remarks he made in connection with Utley.

24. J. R. Straton to Uldine Utley, April 5, 1926, John Roach Straton Papers, American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. Catherine, known as “Kitty” to her family, was twelve years old when she died. Straton wrote to Utley, “Your brave fair spirit and your devotion to the blessed Master make you so much like Kitty that you will just have to let me adopt you after a fashion, and your mother and father will have to share you with us, as far as that is possible.”

25. Joe Eliot, “The Story Told about the Pittsburgh Revival,” Vision (June 1929): 16.

26. Schaeffer, John, “Uldine Utley, the Child Evangelist,” National Magazine 55 (November 1926): 112–15Google Scholar, quote on 112.

27. One of the most famous Christian women who dressed as a man was Joan of Arc, with whom Utley was frequently compared. In fact, it was largely for her transvestism that Joan was brought to trial by the Inquisition. See, for example, Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar, particularly chap. 9, along with Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996). From her simple page-boy haircut to her plucky courage and her sense of divine calling, young Utley did indeed resemble representations of the French saint. Moreover, her disarming, childish presence convinced many that, like Joan, she must be a messenger from God. When it came to her attire, however, Utley parted ways with the saint. For a discussion of cross-dressing and the masculine appearance of some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century female preachers in America, see Brekus, Catherine A., Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)Google Scholar. Most of the ministers Brekus describes who did not dress as men wore simple attire that lacked the feminine frills fashionable at the time. An exception to this pattern can be found in the female spiritualists Braude, Ann describes in Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)Google Scholar. For both Utley and the spiritualist women, femininity could signal passivity and enhanced receptivity to things spiritual.

28. With regard to her feminine attire, Utley resembled her early mentor, McPherson, as well as another of McPherson's devotees, the evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman.

29. “My Bible and I,” Petals from the Rose of Sharon 6 (July 1925): 10.

30. Flowers were ubiquitous in McPherson's ministry. Angelus Temple was frequently filled with baskets of flowers, and McPherson was often greeted with floral bouquets. She was known to place red roses on the pulpit as she spoke and even entered a prize-winning float in the Tournament of Roses Parade—a floral replica of Angelus Temple constructed of pink roses and white carnations. See Blumhofer, , Aimee Semple McPherson, 216, 230, 233, 235, 264–65Google Scholar. In many ways, Utley's construction of femininity mirrored McPherson’s, but Utley was less assertive, less threatening, and had a greater claim on sexual purity.

31. Utley, Why I Am a Preacher, 33–35. See also “God's Way with Uldine Mabelle Utley,” Petals from the Rose of Sharon 4 (May 1925): 9.

32. Songs of the Rose and Word, 1935–36 ed., compiled by Uldine Utley (Chicago: Rodeheaver Co., 1936), 2.

33. W. J. Laughon, “Florence, S.C.—March 4th–5th: A Railway Conductor's View of the Meeting,” Vision (April 1929): 10.

34. “Girl Evangelist Has Stirring Message,” New York Journal, May 2, 1927; another article reported that, during her campaign, “a steady stream of women and girls thrilled by her message” visited Utley's hotel with gifts of flowers for the evangelist (“Many Gifts for Uldine,” New York Evening Journal, May 12, 1927).

35. My discussion of “cultural artifacts” is drawn from Colleen Mc-Dannell's examination of religion and material culture in Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 2–16. McDannell argues that scholars of American religion have tended to focus on words, following a view of religion that can be traced to the Puritans’ emphasis on theological writing. But at times, she suggests, they have done this at the expense of the nonwritten text, the material artifacts that communicate their own messages alongside the written and spoken word. Welter, Barbara also discusses briefly the “culture of flowers” in “The Cult of True Womanhood,” Dimity Convictions (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976), 23–24 Google Scholar.

36. Goody, Jack, The Culture of Flowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. In many cultures, brides have worn a chaplet of flowers signifying their virginity, and flowers have long been associated with the Virgin Mary.

37. See ibid., 242–53, who quotes a book by Mme Marie XXXX titled Voyage autour de mon parterre: petite botanique religieuse et morale, emblème des fleurs (Paris, 1867), 32.

38. Here Goody refers to a 1930 encyclopedia titled Larousse du XXème siècle, as well as to Michèle Curcio's Manuel du savoir-vivre d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Tchou, 1981).

39. This discussion draws on Braude, Ann, “Women's History Is American Religious History,” in Retelling U.S. Religious History, ed. Tweed, Thomas A. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar, and Juster, Susan, “The Spirit and the Flesh: Gender, Language, and Sexuality in American Protestantism,” in New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Stout, Harry S. and Hart, D. G. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

40. Douglas, Ann, in The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar, argues that the nineteenth century saw the defeat of its “male-dominated,” rigorous theological tradition by a feminized “antiintellectual sentimentalism” (13). See also Barbara Welter, “The Feminization of American Religion: 1800–1860,” in Dimity Convictions, 137–52. While these associations were not without exception, they reflected long-held assumptions that education and intellectual life in general and the study of theology in particular were the prerogative of men.

41. For example, in a 1924 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Utley was quoted as saying “I’m a fundamentalist as opposed to the school of modernists— the latter don't accept every word of Holy Writ, whereas the fundamentalist says each line of the Bible is literally true” (January 11, 1924). Elsewhere she stressed her belief in miracles and “other fundamentals of the Scriptures” and urged her listeners to “cast out the stones of higher criticism and modernism” (San Francisco Chronicle, June 14, 1924, and New York Times, October 19, 1926). Although Utley shared many doctrinal beliefs with fundamentalists, one should not overlook some important differences (in the eyes of staunch fundamentalist leaders, at least): Utley's belief in divine healing and speaking in tongues. Utley publicly identified with fundamentalism less frequently as the movement became more militant and extreme. Many of Utley's beliefs, including her emphasis on the Bible as the divinely inspired absolute authority, her belief in the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit after conversion, and the importance she placed on evangelism, placed her securely in the tradition of American evangelicalism. These ideas resonated widely among Americans and comprised for many people “that old-time religion.”

42. Marsden, George, in Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 4 Google Scholar, defines fundamentalism as “militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism.” Later in his book, however, Marsden notes that “fundamentalism was a mosaic of divergent and sometimes contradictory traditions and tendencies that could never be totally integrated.” Among these traditions were both militancy and a warm and irenic side: “at times they seemed ready to forsake the whole world over a point of doctrine; at other times they appeared heedless of tradition in their zeal to win converts” (43).

43. “Many Thrilled by Message of Child Orator,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 1924.

44. Letter from the Reverend Henry E. Nicklen, Pastor, Beechview Presbyterian Church, and letter from the Reverend J. A. Tinker, Pastor, First Primitive Methodist Church, printed in Vision (June 1929): 4–5. Theologically, Utley also shared many similarities with her early mentor, Aimee Semple McPherson. Both preached the familiar gospel message, focusing on love and forgiveness and personal salvation. Sister Aimee's favorite Bible text was Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today and forever.” Utley heard this from McPherson and chose it as a text for many of her own sermons. For both McPherson and Utley, this meant that Christ not only was but is the Savior, Healer, Baptizer, and Coming King. These tenets comprised the basic doctrines of McPherson's foursquare gospel and also formed the foundation of Utley's theology.

45. “The Story Told about the Pittsburgh Revival,” Vision (June 1929): 16. As Gladys Campbell, Utley's campaign secretary, explained, Utley's work was done “in churches of various denominations; but, irrespective of denominational beliefs, there has been none in which she did not feel perfectly ‘at home’” (from Report for 1930: An Account of the Results of Evangelistic Endeavor during the Past Year, issued by Uldine Utley Headquarters, 1930, 3). The churches she preached in included Baptist, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Methodist Episcopal, and Presbyterian, in addition to chapels and revival tents, street corners, factories, high schools, and aboard ships, among other places.

46. “Uldine Utley, Pulpit Beauty, Drives on Sin,” unnamed newspaper article in personal collection of Robert C. Anderson.

47. “Miss Utley Likens Dempsey to a Sinner,” New York Times, July 19, 1927. This is in stark contrast, for example, to Straton's condemnation of prizefighting in general and of Dempsey in particular in his Fighting the Devil in Modern Babylon (Boston: Stratford Co., 1929). Straton's harshest criticism, however, was saved for women who attended a Dempsey match, a “disgraceful orgy of blood and beastiality [sic]…” (Fighting the Devil, 146, quoted in Russell, C. Allyn, Voices of American Fundamentalism [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976], 61 Google Scholar).

48. Letter to Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Paige, May 20, 1926, John Roach Straton Papers.

49. “From the Reviewer's Desk: Books Received,” Moody Church News 19: 3.

50. Letter from Iowa Conference Methodist Episcopal Church, Ottumwa District, to Uldine Utley, September 6, 1932, from the personal collection of Robert C. Anderson.

51. Excerpt from a letter to Uldine Utley from “M. E. S.,” printed in Petals from the Rose of Sharon 10 (November 25): 4.

52. Danbury News-Times, May 20, 1935. This description of Utley's oratorical style provides a sharp contrast to the “brusque energetic movements, the attitude of the arms, the direct speech, the inflexions of the voice,” and “the masculine straight-forwardness” Havelock Ellis described as characteristic of a classical “masculine” woman. See Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Knopf, 1985), 280 Google Scholar.

53. Letter from Iowa Conference Methodist Episcopal Church, Ottumwa District, to Uldine Utley, September 6, 1932.

54. Utley, Uldine, Am I a Worth-While Christian? (New York: Uldine Utley Ministry, [1935]), 39 Google Scholar.

55. Historians have examined how the Baconian biblicism dominant in fundamentalist circles often conflicted with opening the public ministry to women (see, for example, Marsden, , Fundamentalism and American Culture, 80, 249–50Google Scholar). Some conservative Protestants, particularly in the holiness tradition, endorsed women's preaching. But many fundamentalists used the literal interpretation of the Pauline epistles to limit women's activities and to overrule the prophet Joel's prediction that women prophesying would mark the dispensation opened by Pentecost.

56. “From the Reviewer's Desk: Books Received,” The Moody Church News 19: 3.

57. Straton, Does the Bible Forbid Women to Preach and Pray in Public? See also New York Times, July 19, 1926 and September 20, 1926, for discussions of Straton's defense of the female ministry in the secular press. Straton maintained that the Bible needed to be “seen in the large and taken as a whole.”

58. In No Time for Silence, 117–19, 126–27, Hassey convincingly demonstrated that Straton, as well as Utley, stood in a long line of evangelical or fundamentalist preachers who publicly defended the female ministry while championing biblical literalism and taking strong stands against higher criticism. See also Michael S. Hamilton, “Women, Public Ministry, and American Fundamentalism, 1920–1950,” Religion and American Culture 3 (Summer 1993): 171–96.

59. Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender, 81.

60. As noted above, Utley persisted in her Pentecostal leanings despite Straton's public disapproval of Pentecostalism and strengthened his commitment to divine healing. Straton acknowledged that he had “been twitted by some because of my public admissions that little Uldine's life and ministry have influenced me, but I am by no means ashamed to confess it” (Divine Healing in Scripture and Life, 8). Utley, however, did not adopt his militancy, and Straton was accused of going soft on the fundamentals when it came to Utley. Additionally, issues that were important to Straton, such as evolution, received virtually no attention by Utley in her sermons, although she preached extensively on modern science and Christianity, marveling at the new wonders around her and finding analogies in new technologies for the love and mystery of God.

61. Published letter from H. K. to Utley, Uldine; and Watson, W. T., “The Revival of the Word in St. Petersburg,” Vision (March 1929): 4, 8 Google Scholar.

62. As noted above, the way Utley's femininity functioned is, in some respects, similar to the femininity of female mediums described in Braude's book Radical Spirits, but Utley did not claim a merely passive role as a “channel” of spirit or spirit communication.

63. The suggestion that Utley's femininity and her faith cannot be separated is supported by the memories of those who knew her personally. Robert C. Anderson, for example, credits Utley's ministry with his father's conversion and with the Christian heritage passed down from him to his children and grandchildren. At the same time, his father became enamored of the bringer of that good news and carried with him memories of her sweetness and beauty until his death. Another of her admirers, John McConnell, also seems to have been infatuated with Utley for a time. He remembers seeing her sleeping before one of her preaching engagements and thinking, “my goodness, she's the girl for me!” He remembers her as “very attractive,” with “bobbed hair,” a “warm and wonderful personality,” and much “charisma” (telephone conversation with John McConnell, April 22, 2003).

64. On religious reactions to changing social conditions during this time, see DeBerg, Betty A., Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 39–41, 57–58, 99–117Google Scholar.

65. Bushnell, Horace, Women's Suffrage: The Reform against Nature (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1869), 135–36, 109Google Scholar.

66. Halberstam, Judith, Female Masculinity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 48 Google Scholar. See also Behling, Laura, The Masculine Woman in America, 1890–1935 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 27 Google Scholar.

67. Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 177–78.

68. Hall, Radclyffe, The Well of Loneliness (Garden City, N.Y.: Sun Dial Press, 1928)Google Scholar, and Woolf, Virginia, Orlando: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928)Google Scholar. Scientific theory, too, supported the link between physical appearance, sexuality, and morality. For example, the Austrian neurologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing placed great importance on physical appearance in determining and assessing gender identity. His studies had linked “sexual inversion” in women “to cross-dressing and to ‘masculine’ physiological traits,” and, in his categorization of women as lesbians, their “social behavior and physical appearance” mattered far more than their sexual behavior. See Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 271–72.

69. Already in the nineteenth century, Bushnell had recognized the threat to static norms and values. In Women's Suffrage, he linked support of women's rights with the philosophy of John Stuart Mill, who had no respect for “categories, absolute properties, or laws of kind that are immovable” but instead saw “all things, even the distinctions of morality, developed and shaped by the contingent, variable operations of experience” (164–65). In Fundamentalism and Gender, Bendroth stresses the importance of dispensational thought in fundamentalists’ understanding of the proper role for women. Of central importance to dispensational thought are order and obedience. Bendroth explains that dispensationalism “defined sin as ‘disorder’ and rebellion against God's rule as a latter-day sign of religious apostasy and social anarchy” (8). See also DeBerg, Ungodly Women.

70. Another example of this phenomenon can be seen in the popularity of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (1873–1897), the “Little Flower” of the Catholic church. Her “popular canonization” occurred in the years preceding her official canonization in 1925, when Pope Pius XI described her rise to sainthood as a “storm of glory.” Her innocence and sweetness, her association with flowers, and her remarkable popularity are strikingly similar to Utley's own.

71. By the 1920s, the “cult of true womanhood” was no longer intact, and, while its dismantling freed women from unrealistic ideals of purity and goodness and an oppressive double standard of morality, it left them without the claim to religious superiority that had also served to empower them and had justified their claim to greater religious and social authority.

72. Bushnell, Women's Suffrage, 121, 136–37.

73. See, for example, “Reverend Miss,” Time, December 30, 1935, 19. Although Garbo's lesbianism was known to some at the time, and she was well-known for playing cross-dressing characters, the quotes tying Utley to Garbo seem not to allude to this ambiguous side of Garbo's image but rather to her glamour.

74. “Uldine Utley, the Child Evangelist,” National Magazine 55 (November 1926): 112–15. Utley was fourteen years old at the time.

75. “Uldine Utley, Pulpit Beauty, Drives on Sin.” 76. Newsweek, December 28, 1935, 22.

77. Our Hope (August 1927): 85–86. While the journal rarely mentions Utley by name, it generally refers to her as a famous “girl evangelist” supported by the pastor of “a leading Baptist Church in New York City” or in other ways that establish her identity. It is not always clear if conservative fundamentalist leaders opposed Utley chiefly because, as a female, she violated Paul's proscriptions against women preaching or because she held Pentecostal beliefs, and the two were often conflated.

78. H. F. Dudley to J. R. Straton, June 26, 1926, John Roach Straton Papers. Dudley signed his letter “Yours for something above the carnal.” Straton replied on July 6, 1926, arguing that Utley received her inspiration from the Holy Spirit, not from McPherson or Pickford, and claimed that the offensive picture had been snapped unexpectedly. While Straton unequivocally supported Utley, whose persona combined beauty and spirituality, he had harsh words for the unbaptized beauty of “skeptical, silly young sensualists,” calling them “women with beautiful bodies but no souls” (New York Times, October 11, 1926).

79. “Girl, 14, in Pulpit of Calvary Church,” New York Times, June 14, 1926. The comparison of Utley with movie stars who graced the screen in the 1920s was a frequent one and not without warrant. Both her feminine style and her fame invited the association. While Utley may have reminded one critical observer of Pickford, she also bore resemblance to another star of the twenties, Clara Bow. As Elinor Glyn explained in her book “It” (New York: Macaulay Co., 1927), Bow, the “It” girl, possessed “that rare gift of the Gods,” “that strange magnetism which attracts both sexes.” To have “It,” one had to be “entirely unselfconscious and full of self-confidence,” and free of conceit, which destroys “It” immediately. Utley's own allure was described in similar words. After enumerating her gifts of artistry and elocution, a reporter went on to express that these skills alone could not move hearts. But “something” burned in the heart of a “true orator,” and there was “something in the spirit of Uldine Utley” (Danbury News-Times, May 20, 1935). For Utley's followers, of course, this “something” was not a nameless “it,” but nothing less than the power of the Holy Spirit.

80. “Reverend Miss,” Time, December 30, 1935, 19. A Newsweek article on Utley's ordination as a licensed deaconess in the Methodist Episcopal Church also commented on her feminine beauty and charm (“Methodists: A Blond Young Evangelist Gets Church's Stamp,” Newsweek, December 28, 1935, 22). See also New York Times, December 22, 1935.

81. Vision (June 1929): 6, 16. The writer credited Utley with “an inestimable service rendered both to her country and the Kingdom of God” and suggested that “worth-while parents have Uldine to thank for doing in three weeks what some of them have been trying to do in three and twenty years.” See also a Gettysburg Times article of February 26, 1926, where Utley says that “the flapper has no respect for herself and her coming was prophesied in the fifth chapter of Isaiah.”

82. This discussion draws on Edith Blumhofer's analysis of Aimee Semple McPherson, who seemed far safer to many Christians than did Hollywood stars. McPherson resonated with people because “she touched their emotions without apparently jeopardizing their souls.” See Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson, 230.

83. Printing of the Vision ceased near the end of 1929 due to a shortage of funds.

84. Vision (June 1929): 7. Earlier in her ministry, opponents, especially members of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, had decried the frantic pace Utley maintained. See, for example, New York Times, March 14, 1927. On her sacrificed rest periods, see Vision (April 1929): 11. In his introduction to Utley's book Why I Am a Preacher, Bishop Edwin H. Hughes of the Methodist Episcopal Church commented on the rise of Utley's ministry in the midst of a heated controversy over child-labor. “We were sometimes asked whether the objection to placing adult work into young hands or upon young shoulders did not apply to evangelism?” he wrote. “Yet I have felt that this special case bore God's credentials.” Utley remained a child despite her adult work load, and “God mercifully saved her from the excesses that would have made her abnormal.” Hughes recalled the Dickens character Toots, “who was stuffed with knowledge prematurely and who suffered a pitiful rebound, ceasing ‘to have brains’ just when brains would appear to be most in order.” Hughes was confident that Utley had “wise hands” to guide her through this perilous period. Perhaps Hughes wrote too soon.

85. Gladys Campbell, “Activities on the Field,” Report for 1930, issued by Uldine Utley Headquarters, 2. A New York Times article (December 20, 1930) notes that, from January 1 to October 31 of that year, she conducted 266 services.

86. “Terror's Troth,” Time, January 10, 1938, 49.

87. “An Older Uldine Utley Back to Save New York,” Coschocton (Ohio) Tribune, September 5, 1928. Two years before her engagement, she had remarked that, if she were a man, she would “never marry a woman preacher. They declaim too much” (“‘Child Evangelist’ to Wed Missouri Salesman,” Nevada State Journal, December 29, 1937).

88. Excerpt from Robert P. Long, East from Iowa, Notes on a Journey, unpublished manuscript, personal collection of Robert C. Anderson.

89. Telephone interview with the author, April 22, 2003. McConnell is uncertain of the actual diagnosis of Utley's condition, but he describes her as having a kind of “nervous breakdown,” frequently experiencing spasms, shaking, and going stiff. It was, he remembers, “so unbelievably sad.”

90. Her family and friends even took Utley to an Oral Roberts healing service, but it was to no avail, and Utley had to be restrained and taken away.

91. Her husband quietly divorced her and remarried, leaving behind his years with Utley, and her family carefully guarded information about her condition and location.

92. For an excellent discussion of these issues, see Mathews, Donald G. and De Hart, Jane Sherron, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, quote from page 223.

93. Griffith, R. Marie, God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 3 Google Scholar. In another study of conservative women, Christel Manning finds that the most common complaint Evangelical antifeminists have of the feminist movement is that “feminists are out to reverse gender roles,” that “they want to make women into men.” One Evangelical woman explained, “the danger [posed by feminists] is that women lose their femininity.” Manning senses a nostalgia among Evangelical women to “‘get back’ to a time when male and female roles were more distinctive” (God Gave Us the Right: Conservative Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, and Orthodox Jewish Women Grapple with Feminism [New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999], 169).