February 22, 2007

Angels in the Home: Nineteenth Century Women's Agency in Social Reform
By Jennifer Plaskota, Senior

As members of a nation on the brink of deep social change, nineteenth century women writers, through their expected roles as the religious idols of the home and society, used the genre of the spiritual conversion narrative to speak to social issues. In the face of limited outlets for their own opinions, these women took advantage of this spiritual agency and revealed dark truths of nineteenth century American society. Both Rebecca Harding Davis and Harriet Wilson particularly exemplify this process. The social concerns of their works, “Life in the Iron Mills” and Our Nig, may seem blatantly evident, suggesting that the social commentary would perhaps very well function on its own, with the spiritual narrative emerging as simply secondary. However, this paper finds that the social commentary is illuminated and deepened through the paralleling spiritual narrative, which provides the authors with an expanded opportunity to express their opinions. In addition, by intertwining spiritual narrative and social commentary, these authors create an ambiguity within the texts that allows for multiple interpretations of the texts, as one may choose to focus on one layer or the other, or study the two combined. Ultimately, the nineteenth century woman’s position at the top of a spiritual hierarchy provided her with a particular agency through which she could convey dissatisfaction with society’s treatment of a variety of issues.

Repentance, Tradition and Hospitality: Montaigne's Apologyas Preparation for the Gospel
By Isaac Schoepp, Senior

What is Christian evangelism to do with Christ’s final injunction, “Go make disciples of all nations…teaching them everything I have commanded you,” if rational arguments in favor of the Christian faith are incapable of achieving certainty? In An Apology for Raymond Sebond, sixteenth-century philosopher and Catholic Michel de Montaigne denies human reason the ability to reach certainty in knowledge. On one view, Montaigne’s assertion is good preparation for the gospel because it calls for human reason to repent from its presumption. Yet his assertion makes evangelism, particularly to intellectuals, problematic. If reason is no longer able to provide certainty, how does a thoughtful unbeliever know whether to choose Christianity, or Buddhism, or simply no religion at all? What use are arguments in favor of the Christian faith if reason is ultimately unable to provide an answer with certainty? Examining Montaigne’s essays An Apology for Raymond Sebond and On Experience, and drawing as well on seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal’s idea of the Wager, the answer turns out to be as provocative as the questions; unbelievers should be invited to assay—to try—a tradition, in order to discover its veracity. In order to encourage this, evangelism and apologetics ought no longer to be primarily concerned with creating convincing rational arguments. Instead hospitality, in the same sense used by the early church, ought to become the dominant mode of evangelism.

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