I Sing for I Cannot Be Silent: The Feminization of American Hymnody, 1870-1920 (Composition, Literacy, and Culture) - Softcover

"Hobbs's book should certainly alert religious historians to the rich interpretive possibilities of American hymnody, but also to the need for further exploration of the larger social world that made them such enduring and significant features of the religious landscape." --The Journal of American History "Building in part on her own childhood memories, Hobbs writes about the important role gospel hymns have played in the evangelical community. She focuses on the period between 1870 and 1920 but more briefly discusses earlier and later periods as well. Hobbs in particularly interested in women hymn writers and the position of power that hymn-writing gave to women. She argues that before the civil war, hymns were primarily used in private meditation and were the cultural property of women. After 1870, however, as hymns were used more frequently in public worship, women had less control over them. To make her case, Hobbs evaluates the use of hymns in domestic novels and compares hymns written by male and female hymnists. Hobb's work gives evidence of much research and applies theories from a number of disciplines." --Choice

Evangelical hymns constituted a cherished part of communal Christian life and served as an important and effective way to teach doctrine. These hymns - the focus of "I Sing for I Cannot Be Silent" - served an additional social purpose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: they gave evangelical women a voice in their churches. Drawing upon her own experience as a Baptist, June Hadden Hobbs shows how women utilized the only oral communication allowed to them in public worship. In this engaging study, Hobbs employs an interdisciplinary mix of feminist literary analysis, social history, rhetoric and composition theory, hymnology, autobiography, and theology to examine hymns central to worship in most evangelical churches today.