Abstract
Birthing Revival, by Michèle Miller Sigg, is a splendid achievement. It is deeply informed and comfortable in addressing crucial issues in French ecclesiastical, missional, and political history over the course of several centuries. The book has two primary foci. Temporally, Birthing Revival focuses on developments within Le Réveil (The Revival) during the first half of the 19th century in France. Thematically, Sigg focuses on the character of women’s participation in mission leadership within the Réveil. What new qualities did women as women bring to their role as mission organizers, advocates, fundraisers, and innovators? What new endeavors did they propose? What blind spots did they discern? Sigg tells this story well, in part because of her engagement with biography.
Movements have precursors. The Réveil had roots deep in the soil of Huguenot spirituality forged by persecution. When, for their faith, the King’s army killed the Huguenot men or condemned them to slavery in the galleys, Huguenot women stepped into the breech, catechizing the children at home. Despite the threat of life imprisonment, they stepped beyond socially prescribed roles, even though largely restricting themselves to exercising leadership within the home.
By the mid-1820s, women such as Émile Mallet and Albertine de Broglie were part of a group of women who, without asking for a male sponsor or masculine permission, organized a committee in support of mission outreach. They wrote reports of their activities. They advocated for greater missionary engagement. They raised funds and developed a mission theology. They published articles. They were effective organizers, and the list goes on. But something they did not do was to read their own reports to public assemblies of mission supporters. They decorously handed the reports to a man, who read them to the assemblies for them. Also, the articles they published in mission periodicals were unsigned.
Two decades later, on February 6, 1841, Catherine Malvesin and Pastor Antoine Vermeil each wrote a letter to the other proposing the formation of a Protestant order of deaconesses. Their letters crossed in the mail. More letters followed, but when the time came to devise the charter and rules for what became the Deaconesses of Reuilly, Malvesin reserved that prerogative for herself. She both wrote them in her own name and became the order’s first prioress. Times and sensibilities shifted, and women contributed to reviving the Réveil.
Perceptive, deeply informed, well organized, and cogently expressed, Birthing Revival is a major contribution to both mission history and women’s studies. I recommend it highly.