Animal Theologians by Andrew Linzey

Author:Andrew Linzey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Religious Writings

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, born Mary Gray, was raised in a strict, religious household in Andover, Massachusetts. Her father, Austin Phelps, graduated from Andover Theological Seminary, a stronghold of orthodox Calvinism. He became a minister, following in the steps of Mary’s maternal and paternal grandfathers. In 1848, Austin Phelps became the chair of rhetoric at Andover Seminary.7 He kept this chair until his retirement and wrote several influential books. Mary Gray’s mother, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, authored several books, as well as a series of Sunday school stories. Her last book, Sunnyside (1851), sold one hundred thousand copies in its first year.8 Mary was eight years old when her mother died. From that time, she took her mother’s name as her own. Phelps wrote that her mother “lived before women had careers and public sympathy in them. Her nature was drawn against the grain of her times and of her circumstances; and where our feet find easy walking, hers were hedged.”9

In The Gates Ajar (1868), Phelps questioned the orthodox vision of the celestial kingdom. She asserted that Jesus Christ would not have “pictured [people’s] blessed endless years with him in such bleak colors. They are not the hues of his Bible.”10 Instead, Phelps depicted heaven as a place where one can attend concerts and play the piano. In “Defenders of the Faith,” historian Barbara Welter points out that Phelps presented many of her beliefs in fictional form.11 Welter asserts that “her personal creed softened to a general religion she called ‘Christlove.’ ”12

In Chapters from a Life, Phelps claimed that The Gates Ajar came naturally to her: “The angel said unto me ‘Write!’ and I wrote.”13 The novel was published in the aftermath of the US Civil War when the country was “dark with sorrowing women.”14 Phelps spoke to “the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women; they whom war had trampled down, without a choice or protest . . . [those who] loved much, and, loving, had lost all.”15

In The Gates Ajar, the central character, Mary Cabot grieves the loss of her brother killed in the war. Mary finds no solace from her deacon, who instructs her that she must submit to “afflictions from God.”16 Mary is comforted by the arrival of her aunt, Winifred Forsythe. Winifred informs Mary that she will see her brother again when he leads her “into the light and warmth” of her new home.17 In her study of Phelps, Ronna Coffey Privett claims that Winifred’s view of the celestial kingdom is “more corporal than the traditional reading of heaven.”18 Trees, gardens, cottages, and pianos inhabit Winifred’s heaven. It is “a place where individuals can be their own best selves, where a woman can stand up to a man on an intellectual and spiritual level.”19

The Gates Ajar received mixed reviews. Religious newspapers denounced Phelps’s “notions of the life to come, as if she had been an evil spirit let loose upon accepted theology for the destruction of the world.”20 Although religious critics denounced The Gates Ajar, contemporary women, stirred by the tale, sent letters to Phelps seeking comfort and hope.

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