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Early Modern and Modern Spiritualities

15:30 - 17:00 Friday, 3rd January, 2025

English / Art Hall

Carol Vaughn Cross


25 Black Women and Moravians in United States South: Slavery, Reproduction, and Spirituality

Savannah Flanagan
Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

Mini-Abstract

    This presentation highlights Black women's experiences in Moravian communities and how ideas about reproduction shaped their lives. The Black women who lived in these towns and missions in the south found ways to assert their humanity as white Moravians reduced them to their reproductive functions.


78 “The Work of God in a Dying Maid”: Religious Legitimacy, Death, and Children as Divine Messengers in Late Seventeenth Century England

Bryan Maine
University of Mary-Hardin Baylor, Belton, TX, USA

Mini-Abstract

This paper analyzes accounts of godly deaths of children, noting their connection to the medieval tradition of children as divine messengers. It argues that these works were apologetic for nonconformists, presenting the godly death of a child as proof of their theological legitimacy.


97 Trouble in Paradise: Anti-trinitarianism and Deconstructing the Queen of Heaven, 1558-1625

Heidi Olson Campbell
Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

Mini-Abstract

This paper analyzes the underlying tensions in preaching against the Queen of Heaven that led to retaining the memory of the medieval Virgin. The need to assert an orthodox view of the Trinity against heterodox ideas led to a revival of medieval Marian hagiography.