Hannah Whitall Smith

Hannah Whitall Smith

Hannah Whitall Smith (born February 7, 1832 in Woodbury , New Jersey , † May 1, 1911 in London ) was an American, influential representative of the sanctification movement and suffragette .

Whitall Smith came from a family of glass manufacturers in the Quaker tradition .

In 1851 she married Robert Pearsall Smith (1827–1898) and was won with him around 1867 for the Methodist sanctification movement. Then she published in 1870 the best-seller The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life ( The secret of a happy Christian life ). The Smith couple joined William Edwin Boardman (1810-1886), whose book The Higher Christian Life (1858) was considered the standard work of the sanctification movement. In 1874, Whitall Smith and her family moved to England, where she supported her husband at major conferences in Oxford and Brighton . Her appearance as a brilliant speaker caused a sensation, not only in front of women but also in front of men, which until then had hardly happened in Christianity. Hannah Whitall Smith campaigned for women's public teaching as well as for women's suffrage. Also in 1874, she co-founded the Woman's Christian Temperance Union , which campaigned against alcohol abuse.

Between 1875 and 1888 the Smiths returned to the United States. Hannah now withdrew from actively supporting the sanctification movement. In 1888, the family finally moved to London, where their daughter Mary (1864–1945) married the Irish lawyer Frank Costelloe. Mary later divorced and married the art historian Bernard Berenson . The other daughter, Alys (1867–1951), became the first wife of the English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell . The son Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) became a well-known literary critic. Hannah Whitall Smith's niece Martha Carey Thomas became the first female dean of a US college and an active suffragette in 1884.

Hannah Whitall Smith was also involved in the women's rights movement in the 1890s, but she also remained a sought-after speaker in Christian circles. In 1903 she published her autobiography The Unselfishness of God And How I Discovered It . In it, she explains, among other things, how she came to believe that there was an all-out reconciliation . Since autumn 1904 she has not appeared in public for health reasons. She died in London on May 1, 1911.

Literature on Whitall Smith

• Paul Fleisch: Die Heiligungsbewegung , TVG Brunnen 2003 (reprint);
• Karl Heinz Voigt_ The sanctification movement between the Methodist Church and the regional church community , TVG Brockhaus / Brunnen 1996;
• Dieter Lange: A movement breaks out , TVG Brunnen 1990;
• Rudolf Dellsperger u. a .: On your word , Bern 1981

Works

• The secret of a happy Christian life , Herold Verlag