Mother of Holiness: Phoebe Palmer's Maternal Grief, Silence, and Spiritual Leadership in her Spiritual Narrative

This article expands upon a central aspect of Holiness evangelist Phoebe Palmer's (1807–1874) theology, which has been only tangentially mentioned by scholars: her gendered identity of motherhood. It first considers how Palmer narrated the deaths of her first two sons in her spiritual narrative The Way of Holiness as divine punishment for her relational idolatry. It then traces Palmer's omission of her daughter Eliza's brutal death from her narrative, which has gone unnoticed by scholars. It argues that this omission serves as a reminder of Palmer's editorial agency and painful identity of motherhood that went beyond her published writings. Finally, this article analyses Palmer's consecration and spiritual guidance of her surviving daughter Sarah to demonstrate that she never considered motherhood a hurdle to her evangelistic career but rather another crucial avenue for her Abrahamic leadership. This serves to recentre motherhood as a locus of holy boldness that helped nineteenth-century Protestant women move beyond public and domestic spheres yet caused many tensions. This article further encourages scholars to read the gendered identity of motherhood as more than the linear impact it had on women's public life since this risks upholding a model of separate spheres on a methodological level.