Welcome to the Helen Barrett Montgomery blog!

Hello, and welcome to the Helen Barrett Montgomery blog! I've created this blog as a place where people who are interested in HBM can learn and share information, and as a forum for discussion of my book, Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism (Baylor University Press, 2009).

Here's a link to my book on amazon.com.

So who was Helen Barrett Montgomery?

Helen Barrett Montgomery (1861-1934) was a social reformer, a Baptist leader, a New Testament translator, and a prominent intellectual of the American woman’s ecumenical missionary movement. She developed an apologetic that transformed the cause of woman’s emancipation into a rationale for global mission. My book sets her in the context of progressivism and the women’s rights movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Montgomery’s childhood experiences and early education inclined her toward progressive thought and social reform. Like other prominent women’s rights activists, Montgomery’s intellectual development was profoundly influenced by her father. Her Wellesley education provided her with strong female role models and training in faith-based social reform. She received crucial support from her husband, parents, and church, which allowed her to transcend the traditional boundaries for women and integrate her marriage and her family with her career as a social reformer.

Montgomery’s experience as president of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Rochester, New York, and on the Rochester school board were primary in the formation of her social reform thought. She maintained a decade-long partnership with suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony. They disagreed on style and emphasis, but worked together for women’s higher education and political empowerment. Their approaches were complementary and mutually supportive. She was also a contemporary of Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, who was sometimes critical of her educational reform initiatives.

Montgomery defined a theoretically limitless sphere for “woman” in society. She argued that society, like the home, needed the particular skills and sensibilities of women and mothers. Women had a duty to work publicly for social betterment and the uplift of poor women and children; and women’s activism would lead to women’s rights. In her mission textbooks, she gave those principles a biblical basis and argued that “woman’s work for woman” represented the cutting edge of a global movement for women’s emancipation because Christianity gave women equal spiritual and social status with men.