ALL THAT FITS A WOMAN [Hardcover]

T. Laine Scales (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

All That Fits a Woman is a detailed, well-researched and well-written study of the lives of women missionaries and others assosciated with the Women's Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, Kentucky. It includes case studies of individual women, along with careful analysis of the school's curriculum, architechture, and material culture.

Connected to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the WMU Training School provided enormous educational opportunities for Southern Baptist women, while ensuring that they would study and serve within the limits defined for them by male seminary faculty and by women leaders of the WMU. This history offers a feminist perspective, focusing on the subtle forms of teaching that were used and are still used today to exclude women from the preaching ministry and leadership within the Southern Baptist Convention. This timely work resonates with current issues as Southern Baptists continue to draw national attention for their stance on the submission of women to male authority. All That Fits a Woman is sure to become a major resource for students of American women's and religious history.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

T. Laine Scales (Ph.D., University of Kentucky) is assistant professor of social work at Baylor University. She has also worked as a social worker with churches in rural Kentucky and is a graduate of the WMU Training School's successor institution, the Carver School of Church Social Work at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 324 pages
• Publisher: Mercer University Press (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865546681
• ISBN-13: 978-0865546684
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #838,618 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Leadership for An Emerging Century, March 27, 2001

By 

Timothy A. Norton (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ALL THAT FITS A WOMAN (Hardcover)

The 20th Century will be remembered for many things, one of the most significant will be the emergence of women in leadership both inside and outside of the church.

Scales book gives pause for consideration by anyone interested in how women recognize the call of God and then pursue that call with tenacity, perserverance and determination. All That Fits a Woman is much more than a history of the training of Southern Baptist Women at the school in Louisville, KY, it is a wonderfully woven, and meticulously researched, story of the passion for God that supersedes all of life's other considerations and drives one to do the extraordinary for others in need.

Highly recommended!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A History for our Time, March 18, 2001

By 

Ann M. Ellis (Waco, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ALL THAT FITS A WOMAN (Hardcover)

At a timely moment, when questions about the role of women in religious institutions cross social and ecumenical lines, Scales offers a well-documented, detail-oriented history of the founding of the Women's Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, Kentucky in 1907. The educational arm for training Baptist women both for foreign missions and their duties in and for "home" in the broadest sense of the word, the WMU's founding offers in microcosm the issues and trends of the time. The author details the inside maneuvering among Baptists of the early 20th century south juxtaposed with the larger history of women's movements in the United States, for the two often coincided in their concerns: slavery, temperance, women's education and role in society. Individual stories weave across broader historical developments and are set against the background of the at-times contentious relationships among Baptist organizations throughout the United States, and in particular in the south, where the evolution of the Southern Baptist Convention would come to dominate the particular coda of Baptist life below the Mason-Dixon line. The depth of Scales worth, though, is found in the details: students' daily lives at the WMU, their studies, development of domestic skills, their activities, be it drama or music, and the evolution from "calling" in the courtship process to the gradual freedom of the unchaperoned "date" of "dining and dancing, Coke dates, movies, parking." The author never waivers in her assessment of the driving force and enduring legacy of the creation of this school for females as it empowered women in the utilization of the skill most significant for home and church, yet one whose imprimatur yet awaits a final Baptist consenus: their leadership.