Reviewing the history of this remarkable band of committed people, the reader learns that on the one hand, the formation of FOCIS represented a cessation of warfare with an unrelenting hierarchical church.
The church, in its rejection of the principles of self-determination and egalitarian interaction desired by Glenmary and FOCIS, forfeited a vibrant model of church as promoted by the council documents.
The chapter begins with an epigraph: "obedience went first, then chastity, and then poverty" (100), and the abstract describes FOCIS as a sort of "halfway house" for adolescents who had committed to convent life and never fully matured as females.
Appleby was one of the original Glenmary Sisters, and Lewis, a former sociology professor at Clinch Valley College in southwest Virginia, connected with Appleby and the segment of FOCIS in that area not long after Appleby and her husband purchased property that became the River Farm, a nucleus for FOCIS work in the region.
