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Trifling With Holy Time: Women And The Formation Of The Calvinist Church Of Worcester, Massachusetts, 1815-1820, Carolyn J. Lawes

History Faculty Publications

The Calvinist Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, grew out of the frustration of three wealthy women who had been excluded in 1816 from the process of selecting a new minister, Charles A. Goodrich, for the First Congregational Church. Elizabeth Salisbury and Rebecca and Sarah Waldo found Goodrich insufficiently masculine and wondered about his orthodoxy. They rejected the decision of the church's deacons and minister to block their transfer to another congregation. In 1820, they won a reversal of this decision and founded the new church. The women had not explicitly challenged the subordination of women, but their actions amounted to this. …