Between Authority and Service: The LeBar Sisters

Between Authority and Service: The LeBar Sisters

Presenter(s)

Andrew McNeely

Comments

3:00-4:15, Kennedy Union Ballroom

Description

American evangelicals have long engendered strict codes of gender hierarchy in churches and their related institutions. Twentieth-century evangelical education, however, discloses unique ironies women educators embodied in their reliance on these designated gender roles. Placed in liminal positions between authority and service, women educators transgressed boundaries between the “maleness” of given authority and the subservient nature proper to womanhood. This research explores this phenomenon by examining the educational careers of Mary and Lois LeBar, both of whom taught at Wheaton College from 1945 to 1975. Instead of rejecting gender hierarchy, they used their distinct gender roles as women tasked to serve others by appropriating progressive educational pedagogy that proved amenable to their agency as evangelical women educators. For the LeBars, this was as theologically imperative as it was pedagogically effective.

Publication Date

4-23-2025

Project Designation

Graduate Research

Primary Advisor

Tim R. Gabrielli

Primary Advisor's Department

Religious Studies

Keywords

Stander Symposium, College of Arts and Sciences

Institutional Learning Goals

Scholarship

Between Authority and Service: The LeBar Sisters

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