“Home Without Walls should appeal to historians of Baptists, women, and the women’s mission movement. In addition, individual chapters, or the book as a whole, could easily be adapted for classroom use with both undergraduate and graduate students. In short, Holcomb’s book charts new waters, offering new streams of inquiry into the Progressive Era to novices and experts alike.”
—Baptist History and Heritage
“Southern Baptists are not usually associated with the social gospel, but they should be. In Home without Walls, Carol Crawford Holcomb demonstrates that the Woman’s Missionary Union nurtured women and encouraged them to engage in socially oriented ministry that went far beyond church planning. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in southern religion and social engagement.”
—Keith Harper, author of The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890–1920
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“In her detailed, nuanced, well-written and sympathetic account, Holcomb leaves no doubt that the social gospel was indeed present and vocal in the South, even within the most socially and theologically conservative denomination of the region, however much restrained by its own traditions. . . . Holcomb’s important work on settlement houses and urban reform alone makes this book an eye-opening and welcome addition to the historiography of the social gospel and progressive reform.”
—Journal of Ecclesiastical History
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