The Life of Selina Campbell: A Fellow Soldier in the Cause of Restoration.

By Loretta M. Long. Religion and American Culture. (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, c. 2001. Pp. [x], 235. $34.95, ISBN 0-8173-1059-2.)

Loretta M. Long, an assistant professor of history at Abilene Christian University, has published this groundbreaking book on Selina Campbell (1802-1897), the second wife of Restorationist movement leader Alexander Campbell (1788-1866). Both Alexander and Selina exercised leading roles in the nineteenth-century movement that resulted in the Disciples of Christ and its later southern branch, the Churches of Christ. While the book is something of a biography (the first on Selina), it is obvious from the bibliography that its guiding rationale is contemporary American women's studies. Long proposes to show how "Selina Campbell's life exhibits two fundamental themes in the history of American women": "the role of Christian faith in the development of the 'separate spheres' ideology" (pp. 1-2) and "the importance of the private sphere for many nineteenth-century women" (p. 3).

Born in the midlands of England, Selina Bakewell came to America with her family in 1804 and settled in the region of Wellsburg, Virginia. She was baptized by Alexander Campbell in 1821. She married Alexander in July 1828, after the death of his first wife, Margaret Brown Campbell. Margaret left behind five surviving daughters, and to these, Selina would add six children of her own. Long' s second chapter focuses on Selina' s "partnership"--in life and in Restorationism--with her husband. The intensity of their relationship is revealed largely through the letters of Alexander to Selina and in her 1882 memoir, Home Life and Reminiscences of Alexander Campbell. Though Selina did not make final decisions in regard to financial affairs, she saw to it that her husband's decisions were carried out during his constant travels. But Selina's paramount contribution was to their family; as Long writes, Selina Campbell "reigned supreme over the moral and spiritual atmosphere of the home" (p. 100). Her letters to the children reveal a lifetime spent counseling them on religious activities and the disciplined life. In her third chapter, Long highlights Selina's efforts to forge a role for women in the Restorationist movement. She published several essays in movement journals that depicted the ideal home and women's involvement in church activities, and her promotion of missionary activities "helped shape the environment" for the founding of the Disciples of Christ's Christian Women's Board of Missions in 1875 (p. 178).

By carefully weighing and sifting through the available source materials, Long is able to provide many exemplary reflections on the life of her subject. Additional quotations from Selina Campbell's own writings, however, might have helped make her more concrete to readers. Long also tends to constantly reiterate her major theses. Nevertheless, The Life of Selina Campbell is a worthy book that helps us to understand how a nineteenth-century woman found fulfillment in her roles as a religious mother and an opinion leader in a religious movement.

THOMAS H. OLBRICHT
Pepperdine University