In this dissertation, I argue that ethos is generative as James Corder defines it. I seek to show that women preachers of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church who spent a significant amount of their careers in Oklahoma generated an ethos in their autobiographical texts and transcribed, edited interviews that constructed individualized as well as a social instantiations of ethos. I rhetorically analyzed these texts using five categories of ethos as a rubric for making connections between Corderian theory and my case studies: ethos as transformation, ethos as wisdom or authority, ethos in the stated motives and purposes in a text, ethos as charisma, and ethos as dynamic processes built from identification. In chapter one, I lay out my theoretical perspective, situating it within the canonical history of rhetoric. In chapter two, I describe the historical and religious contexts that put my study of women preachers into a wide conversation of views on women preachers and show how my work is a participation in and a continuation of such conversations. In chapter three, I focus on the autobiographical texts from the late nineteenth through the middle twentieth centuries, comparing male constructions of ethos to female from members of the same group. In chapter four, I make connections between the older texts of chapter three and the twenty-first century interviews I collected and transcribed in 2004 in order to demonstrate paradigm shifts that have occurred, as well as to show how new instantiations of ethos are grounded in localized histories as well as larger ones. In chapter five, I turn to a discussion of the nature of truth inside of epistemic rhetorics. Since generative ethos is aligned with epistemic rhetoric, how we construct ethos within a group is tied to our sense of the nature of truth. Particularly interesting is my connection of truth and ethos to the Holy Spirit.

In the past two decades or so, feminist historians have sifted through the copious illustrations of the turbulent, emotion-ridden years of early nineteenth-century American revivalism to devote considerable attention to the rise of female evangelism. Despite the notable upsurge, scholars generally remain untutored about the plethora of powerful female preachers who devoted their lives to advancing the kingdom of God. This dissertation seeks to resurrect the voice of one such woman: Dorothy Ripley (1767- 1831), an evangelist from Whitby, England, whose personal and evangelical awakening rivaled the revolutionary power of the revivalism sweeping the new Republic. Citing her direct mandate from God to preach, Dorothy grasped religion and reshaped it into a spiritually, culturally, and politically altering device. She became the first woman to preach before the U.S. Congress, composed five literary volumes (most of which she published herself and in multiple editions), crossed the Atlantic as many as nineteen times, and traveled up and down the Eastern Seaboard to preach among the different levels of society in a variety of settings. As an unlicensed, unsanctioned preacher, Dorothy defied powerful social and religious conventions by her solitary travel, scriptural exegesis, public performances, and presumption of the patriarchally assigned and protected role of preacher. She strove to proclaim the gospel even at the expense of reputation, family ties, home and hearth, marriage and motherhood, and personal security. Her rebelliousness allowed her to rise above the backstage role commonly assigned to, and accepted by, women of the early Republic. Her works serve as cultural artifacts by providing eyewitness accounts spotlighting the problems inherent in the formative years of a Republic reeling with the headiness of self-rule: the tension between Protestantism and American capitalism, the conflict between an emerging elite and the increasingly dissatisfied lower class, the misogyny of the cult of domesticity and separate spheres, the embryonic stages of widespread social reform, and the virulent ethnocentrism of the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny. Through an examination of her spiritual autobiographies, this dissertation seeks to enrich scholarly understanding of women’s influence in the evolution of evangelization, abolitionism, women’s rights, and social service.

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