a womans place

105
1 The Fourth Annual Quaker Genealogy & History Conference A Woman’s Place . . . Southwest Ohio Quaker Women & Reform Movements, 1800-1860Thursday ~ Sunday April 24, 25, 26, & 27, 2008 Report of the Research Committee This project has been supported by the OHIO HUMANITIES COUNCIL: A state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities © The Mary L. Cook Public Library

Upload: karencampbell46

Post on 18-Jul-2015

196 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: A Womans Place

1

The Fourth Annual Quaker Genealogy & History Conference

“A Woman’s Place . . . Southwest Ohio Quaker Women & Reform Movements, 1800-1860”

Thursday ~ SundayApril 24, 25, 26, & 27, 2008

Report of the Research CommitteeThis project has been supported by the

OHIO HUMANITIES COUNCIL: A state affiliate of the

National Endowment for the Humanities

© The Mary L. Cook Public Library

Page 2: A Womans Place

2

Sponsored by the Quaker Heritage Center, Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio & The

Mary L. Cook Public Library, Waynesville, Ohio, a member of the Freedom Station Affiliate Program of the National Underground Railroad Freedom

Center in Cincinnati.

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

Meriam R. Hare Quaker Heritage Center

Page 3: A Womans Place

3

Compiled and Written byKaren S. Campbell, Genealogy

Librarian

The Mary L. Cook Public LibraryThe Ohioana Room381 Old Stage Road

Waynesville, Ohio 45068http://www.mlcook.lib.oh.us

Page 4: A Womans Place

4

To understand the motivations of people involved in reform work during the antebellum period, one must examine a little

bit of theology and church history. Bright expectations, but also great fears, for the future filled the antebellum world and the

lives of the American people. Those expectations were rooted in and enlightened by faith.

In the majority of cases, motivations for women to become involved in reform work were religious, whether they were

Orthodox Evangelical Christians or more Liberal Christians. How far and how long a woman could participate in the reform movements depended on her church or religious community as

well as her own feeling of a call to service.

Some women remained churched, other “came out” of their churches

to find greater spiritual freedom.

Page 5: A Womans Place

5

Where is a Woman’s Place?What did men think?

“Observing woman's agency, devotion and efficiency in pleading the cause of the slave, gratitude for this high service early moved

me to give favorable attention to the subject of what is called ‘woman's rights’ and caused

me to be denominated a woman's rights man. I am glad to say I have never been

ashamed to be thus designated.” [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , 1881]

“Woman, however, like the colored man, will never be taken by her brother and lifted to a position. What she desires, she must fight for.”

Page 6: A Womans Place

6

Charles Dickens: American Notes

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. February 1842. Public Meeting Places for Women of Society.

“The tone of society in Boston is one of perfect politeness, courtesy, and good breeding. The ladies are unquestionably very beautiful-in face: but there I am

compelled to stop. Their education is much as with us; neither better nor worse. I had heard some very marvelous stories in this respect; but not believing them, was not disappointed. Blue ladies there are, in Boston; but like philosophers of that colour and sex in most other latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior than to be so. Evangelical ladies there are, likewise, whose attachment to the forms of religion, and horror of theatrical entertainments, are most exemplary. Ladies who have a passion for attending lectures are to be found among all classes and all conditions. In the kind of provincial life which prevails in cities such as this, the Pulpit has great influence. The peculiar province of the Pulpit in New England (always excepting the Unitarian Ministry) would appear to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational amusements. The church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, are the only means of excitement excepted; and to the church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, the ladies resort in crowds.”

Page 7: A Womans Place

7

Page 8: A Womans Place

8

often useful and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother and an instructor. Dancing is a healthy and elegant exercise, a specific against social awkwardness, but an accomplishment of short use , for the French rule is wise, that no lady dances after marriage... gestation and nursing leaving little time to a married lady when this exercise can be either safe or innocent."

He wrote to his daughter Martha on her marriage: "The happiness of your life now depends on the continuing to please a single person. To this all other objects must be secondary, even your love for me.”

Thomas Jefferson’s comments on girls and women reading novels:

"The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment and disgust towards all the real business of life. For like reason, much poetry should not be indulged. Some is useful for forming taste and style. French is indispensable. Music is invaluable where a person has an ear. Drawing is an innocent and engaging amusement,

Page 9: A Womans Place

9

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The education of women should always be relative to that of men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, to take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable; these are the duties of women at all times, and what they should be taught in their infancy."

Page 10: A Womans Place

10

CURIOSITY, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.

The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) US journalist, short-story writer

Page 11: A Womans Place

11

“Only a man who has loved a woman of genius can appreciate what happiness there is in loving a fool. ~~”

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838) French statesman

Page 12: A Womans Place

12

St. Paul

33 For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.

As in all the congregations of the saints, 34 women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law

says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should

ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

1 Corinthians 14:33-36

Page 13: A Womans Place

13

Fox wrote in his 1656 treatise, “The Woman Learning in Silence, or, The Mystery of the Woman’s Subjection to Her Husband”:

“If Christ be in the Female as well as in the Male, is not he the same? And may not the Spirit of Christ speak in the Female as well as in the Male? Is he there to be limited? Who is it that dare limit the Holy One of Israel? For the Light is the same in the Male, and in the Female, which cometh from Christ.”

George Fox (1624 – 1691)

Founder of The Society of Friends

Page 14: A Womans Place

14

What did women think?

1614

Birth of Margaret Askew Fell. Her second husband was George Fox, the founder of The Society of Friends. Margaret was born in

Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, England. She is known as the “Nursing Mother of Quakerism” and was one of the “Valiant Sixty”, the earliest group of Quaker preachers and missionaries. Her home, Swarthmore Hall, became a haven for traveling Quaker ministers. She wrote many treatises on Quakerism, and founded the Kendal Fund to help Friends who were in jail or were being persecuted in

some way. She worked for the release of those imprisoned and was imprisoned herself. During her own imprisonment (1664-1668) she wrote, “Women’s Speaking Justified”. She was a Quaker minister.

Swarthmore Hall

Page 15: A Womans Place

15

Margaret Fell warned that people should not ridicule God’s chosen “instruments” to proclaim

the Good News:

“Mark this, you that despise and oppose the message of the Lord God that He sends by women; what had become of the redemption

of the whole body of mankind if they had not cause to believe the message that the Lord Jesus sent by these women, of and

concerning His resurrection?” (Womens Speaking Justified by Margaret Fell, 4.9.11.16)

She argued that if Mary the mother of Jesus, the “woman at Samaria”, Martha, and “the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair,” and Mary

Magdalene were trusted with the Good News, why can’t other women also be so trusted? If Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), one of the most beautiful

expressions of inspired faith, is used in the Book of Common Prayer, why can not other inspired women speak in meeting for worship?

Page 16: A Womans Place

16

My soul doth magnify the Lord / and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded / the lowliness of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth / all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath magnified me / and holy is his Name. And his mercy is on them that fear him / throughout all generations. He hath shewed strength with his arm / he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat / and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things / and the rich he hath sent empty away. He remembering his mercy hath helped his servant Israel / as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.

The Magnificat is the prayer of a woman who has been “magnified,” praised by God and is inspired to “magnify the Lord.” She is the

archetypal “Mother of Israel,” a prophet who speaks the Truth.

Page 17: A Womans Place

17

Before the Protestant Reformation, the Cult of Mary in the Roman

Catholic Church and Tradition was the archetypical image of the good

woman and helped to define women’s place in Catholic society. That image

developed into a passive although powerful image of an obedient

woman who said “yes” to God and became the New Eve, The Mother of God (Jesus), the mother of a newly redeemed humanity due to Jesus’

redemptive act, “the first apostle” of her son, the Queen of Heaven, and the first among saints. Mary the

mother of Jesus was understood to be the “woman in the wilderness”, “the

woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet”, mentioned in

Revelation 12.

Page 18: A Womans Place

18

Then a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet, and on her head was a crown of

twelve stars. She was pregnant and was screaming in labor pains, struggling to give

birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: a huge red dragon that had seven heads and ten

horns, and on its heads were seven diadem crowns. Now the dragon’s tail swept away a

third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the

woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.

So the woman gave birth to a son, a male child, who is going to rule over all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was suddenly caught up to

God and to his throne, and she fled into the wilderness where a place had been prepared for

her by God, so she could be taken care of for 1,260 days.

~~ The Book of Revelation 12:1-6

Page 19: A Womans Place

19

Even with such a strong female figure as Mary, the Mother of Jesus, a woman who had been rescued from the faults and sins of the “First Eve”, the image of

Mary, and then through her, the image of women in general, was passive and it emphasized obedience. Mary had obeyed God and now, according to The Book of Revelation, she now has “a place” which had been prepared for her by God

in the wilderness.

Luther and other Protestant reformers emphasized the importance of the moral role of women in the home and the sanctity of marriage. Holiness would be able

to be attained in everyday life. Tremendous importance was placed on the family. Clerical power, of course, was still only for men. For a short time within the radical Anabaptist tradition, women were allowed some prophetic roles but that came to an end with the inevitable institutionalization of the movement. Consequently, throughout the Protestant tradition women’s moral authority is

definitely deposited in domesticity. “A Woman’s place” is in the home.

Page 20: A Womans Place

20

“A woman’s place” is defined in Scripture in both conventionally limiting and liberating ways. Whoever controls

doctrinal development and scriptural interpretation in a church has held the power to define “a woman’s place” in both the church and society. Those in

control were traditionally men. However, the “horse was out of the barn.”

The Christian experience of unity & oneness with Christ is one of turning away from the old to the new and is genderless. New wine skins are needed for new wine

(Matthew 9: 17). St. Paul wrote in Galatians, his great treatise on Christian

freedom, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free,

there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”

(Galatians 3:28).

Many women today see the world’s religions as archaic oppressors of women. Within Christian Scripture and Tradition the story is a mixed bag.

Page 21: A Womans Place

21

Within Protestant history, the millennial expectations of the various churches also impacted the role of women. The innately liberating aspects of Christianity, those

that are freeing for women are associated with predictions concerning the “eschaton” and the millennium. Millennial expectations would dictate whether a group would

believe whether the “age of prophecy” associated with the end-time had arrived or if it was still closed off and far away. The closer the “age of prophecy”, the greater is the

possibility of freedom for women. No matter if a woman had found her individual church “liberating” in relation to preaching or being involved in moral reform, most

established churches struggled over the issue of “women’s place” in thepublic sphere of society. The courage and commitment of a true prophet would be needed for women to break

forth from the comfortable but binding legal cords of the traditional woman’s sphere of domesticity, which

included church and benevolent work.

Women in the American “wilderness” would begin a long three-hundred year journey to a “place” of greater freedom

and civil rights.

Page 22: A Womans Place

22

“Then AfterwardI will pour out my spirit on

All flesh;Your sons and your daughters shall

Prophesy,Your old men shall dream

Dreams,And your young men shall

See visions.Even on the male and female

Slaves,In those days, I will pour out

My spirit”~~Joel 2: 28-29

Many people believed that they were nearing or were in the “eschaton”, the end-time, because a mighty Spirit was blowing, men and women were

prophesying, and even slaves were inspired to seek their freedom from the bondage of sin and from physical enslavement as well.

An African-American woman preacher, Mrs. Juliann Jane Tillman, Preacher

of the AME Church, P.S. Duval, 1844.

Page 23: A Womans Place

23

Many end-time scenarios have been broached throughout Christian history based on interpretations of the last book of the New Testament, the apocalyptic Book of

Revelation. There are three traditional theories within the study of Eschatology, the study of the end-time, to explain the possible nature of the Millennium, the thousand

year reign promised in Revelation 20. The first two scenarios associated with conservative Christianity will help shed light on the millennial expectations that

populated the antebellum world in the United States, a time when the definition of “a woman’s place” was radically challenged and changed in a way that is still influencing us today. These two eschatological constructs are rooted in opposite views of the goodness

or badness of human nature and the extent of the brokenness of the world within conservative Christianity. The third scenario can be interpreted conservatively but is

usually identify with the more Liberal Christian tradition.

Page 24: A Womans Place

24

Pre-Millennial Eschatology ~ This theory is rooted in a pessimistic Calvinist view of human nature that

claims that human beings can not do anything morally good. Since there is no real free will,

human beings can only do evil, even when they don’t intend to do so. Human beings are utterly incapable of helping themselves morally, nor can

they affect anything good on the unredeemed earth which is broken asunder by sin. Only the

supernatural intervention of God through the return of Jesus Christ can make all things right and

usher in the 1000 year reign before the final judgment by the triumphant Christ. New sectarian

groups are usually pre-millennial in attitude expecting the immediate return of Christ followed by the Millennium and they resist involvement in

reform groups and in politics within the larger society. After all, all secular governments and

societies will be wiped away during Christ’s millennial reign. Under this scenario, and in a

limited manner, women can be judged within the faith community to be prophets proclaiming the

quickly approaching Lord.

Page 25: A Womans Place

25

Post-Millennial Eschatology ~ This theory is rooted in a more optimistic view of God’s grace and of human nature which embraces free will. Human nature is fallen but it is not unredeemable. Human beings can cooperate with God’s redeeming grace. The world is

not totally unredeemable. It is a mixed bag, just as human beings are a complex combination of good and bad. Regenerated human beings can choose to cooperate with

God’s grace to regenerate the world through the reform of the world’s institutions. Human beings can help to pave the way for the Lord and strengthen the present

“millennium”, the dispensation of the church militant on earth. God works his will through human instrumentality and human institutions such as the churches and extra-

church organizations slowly but surely. After this millennial time of renewal and purification, the Triumphant Christ will return and judge all and rule.

Page 26: A Womans Place

26

The “place for women” in this scenario is usually conventional even when involved with benevolent work in society because

they are limited by a conservative or literal interpretation of St. Paul’s

comments on the role of women in the New Testament.

The Post-Millennial point of view also emphasizes that a person must go

beyond “conversion” and be “sanctified.” “Sanctification” is a life-long experience of living one’s faith with benevolence.

Evangelical women and men felt compelled to practice, and display too,

their benevolence by participating in the “sisterhood” of moral reform movements

that were trans-denominational in the “Evangelical Empire.”

Page 27: A Womans Place

27

Nunc-Millennial (Also known as Realized-Millennial) Eschatology ~ This theory has been conservatively interpreted to mean that the age of the church(es) is the

Millennium and so since the first Pentecost, human beings have been living in the Millennium (similar to the explanation above under Post-Millennial). However,

another more liberal explanation of this theory emphasizes that the eschatological longed-for Millennium has already arrived and can be lived in a comprehensive way

by individuals and communities who aspire to moral perfection in their spiritual lives. The Children of God, in this scenario have already been revealed.,

i.e. the Quakers, other groups of the radical reformation, and religious groups that embrace an utopian ideal.

Page 28: A Womans Place

28

In this scenario of nunc-eschatology women are usually encouraged to fulfill

their calling from God to preach and prophesy. A full lay ministry is supported. Human beings are being transfigured and transformed. It is believed that now in the

present moment, from moment to moment, the old is being made new, the

old creation is being renewed, and incorruptibility is replacing corruptibility. Reform is a deep-seated re-creation and restoration of God’s creation that is on-

going in individuals and spreads outwardly to the larger creation and

society. Benevolence by these sectarian communities is also integral to the

transformation from the old creation to the new. The membership in the sect’s benevolent reform oriented groups are, however, usually exclusive to the sect’s

members, although the work is aimed not only at sect members but also at the

people of the “world”.

Page 29: A Womans Place

29

TWO DIFFERENT VISIONS OF UTOPIA IN AMERICA

The Puritans ~”A City On The Hill”

The first religious utopian endeavor in America was attempted by the Puritans of New England in the 17th

century. They were intent on building a society based on a covenant that rigorously demanded absolute obedience to the Laws of God as they interpreted them. Their society permeated with moral purity was to be a City on a Hill, a

Light to all the nations as would befit the predestined Elect, the visible saints of God.

Calvinist orthodoxy is summed up in the five doctrines of Dort, known as “The Tulip”:

Total depravity of human natureUnconditional election (No free will)Limited atonement (Christ only died for the Elect)Irresistibility of Grace (Can’t turn away God’s gift)Perseverance of the Saints (Those who are saved must remain sinless.)

Page 30: A Womans Place

30

The Puritan oligarchy in New England was able to keep control of doctrine, virtue, and law in most towns. They created a close-knit community wherein

there was a stifling lack of privacy and personal freedom; where the Elect watched each other for signs of reprobation and where the saints could display their elected-ness. Outsiders were not welcomed and apostates were expelled.

Puritan dissenters were many. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were compelled to leave the commonwealth. Quaker men and women ministers

who dared to preach in Massachusetts were persecuted and a number hanged, one of whom was Friend Mary Dyer.

Page 31: A Womans Place

31

October 19th, 1658 ~ The Puritan authorities in the Massachusetts Bay Colony again strengthen the law against “invading” Quakers:

“. . . being too weak a defense against their impetuous frantick fury necessitated us to endeavor our security, and upon serious consideration,

after the former experiments by their incessant assaults, a law was made that such persons should be banished on the pain of death.”

Late 1658 ~ Quakers descend on Boston to challenge the unjust death penalty: William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, Mary Dyer, Mary Scott, and Hope Clifton. Alice Cowland came from Newport, Rhode Island carrying linen in which to wrap the martyrs.

October 27th, 1659 ~ Dyer, Robinson, and Stephenson were sentenced to hang. There is a last minute reprieve for Mary Dyer came and she was taken to Rhode Island

June 1st, 1660 ~ Friend Mary Dyer is hanged on Boston Common by Puritan authorities for trying to re-enter the Massachusetts Bay Colony after being banished for preaching the message of Quakerism.

Page 32: A Womans Place

32

Mary Dyer

"I came to keep bloodguiltiness from you, desiring you to repeal the unrighteous and unjust law made against the innocent servants of the Lord."

"Nay, man, I am not now to repent."

Page 33: A Womans Place

33

THE LAMB’S WAR ~ A QUAKER UTOPIA IN PENNSYLVANIA

“And whilst I was in my travails and sufferings I saw the state of the city New Jerusalem, which comes out of heaven . . . which the professors had looked up

onto be like an outward city or some town that had come out of the elements. . . The spiritual reign of Christ Jesus in this great city, is within the light, the city of the living God . . . so there is a city within the light (where) there is no place or language, but there his voice may be heard. The gate stands open night and

day that all may come in here. . . Without the city are dogs (Rev. 22:15). . . within this city, here is light, here is the heavenly bread and blood of the Lamb

to eat and drink of. . . I am just in the city. Oh, the heavenly Jerusalem, the bride is comedown, the marriage of the Lamb that must go over all the false

cities that have gotten up since the apostles' days . . . This true . . . city is come down since the apostles' days and is coming down from God. . . All that are within the light of Christ and his faith . . . and within the Spirit and the Holy

Ghost that Christ and the prophets and apostles were in. . . . all that come to this heavenly city, New Jerusalem, that is above the old (and) which is the mother of all true Christians. . . . must come to the truth and light in their

hearts . . .”

~~ George Fox (The Journal of George Fox, p. 433)

George Fox’s Nunc-Millennialsim

Page 34: A Womans Place

34

The Quaker faith in the “Inner Light” rejected most of the five Calvinistic doctrines of Dort. The Calvinistic belief is stated first and then

the Quaker response:

Total depravity of human nature ~ Even good people have an inevitable tendency to sin and will sin.

Unconditional election (No free will) ~ People can freely choose to refuse their salvation. There is such a thing as free will.

Limited atonement (The historical Christ only died for the Elect. Salvation is imputed and so there is no real inward change in the person.) ~ The coming of the Christ Spirit is for the atonement of all. A person has a free choice to accept it or reject it. Quaker emphasis is place on the saving power of the Inner Christ. The person does inwardly change and continually grows morally and spiritually.

Irresistibility of Grace (Can’t turn away God’s gift) ~ People can resist grace if they so choose.

Perseverance of the Saints (Those who are saved must remain sinless.) ~ People can backslide but they can regain grace and sanctification again through the revealing “Inner Light of Christ,” that “Seed” out of which the person’s repentance will grow again. There is always hope. The Quakers were perfectionists who defined sanctification as a slow life-long process of transformation.

Page 35: A Womans Place

35

Just as the Puritans had sought a refuge in the New World, so too did the Quakers seek a place away from

persecution in England. Would their intensely internal understanding of the “Lamb’s War” be transferable to the outer reality of colonial politics? How would the Quaker Testimonies of Simplicity, Integrity, Equality, and Peace manifest themselves in the political sphere? Unlike the

Puritans of New England whose community was exclusive and intolerant of people of other faiths, Friends were

determined to establish a province based on tolerance and the dictates of a rational humane way of life and

government. They wanted to have a place of their own in the new world that would be safe from persecution for

themselves and for all people. They wanted to witness to the Peace they experienced in their hearts. They also

wanted a place where human rights would be extended to everyone. The challenge was to bring the “Gospel Order” of their spiritual lives into the public sphere. Instead of

calling his newly founded town “New Jerusalem”, a spiritual reality that was inward in the hearts of individual

Quakers and within their meetings for worship and business, William Penn would name his town

“Philadelphia”, the City of Brotherly Love, the outward expression of the inward “New Jerusalem”.

William Penn

Philadelphia in 1683

Page 36: A Womans Place

36

The “Holy Experiment” came to an end with the outbreak of the transatlantic war known as the “French and Indian War” in America. It was also known in Europe as

“The Seven Years War”. In 1756 the Quakers relinquished political control of Pennsylvania following the outbreak of “Seven Years War” as a demonstration of their confidence in the Quaker Peace Testimony. In 1755 the governor had asked the Pennsylvania assembly to raise a militia and fund it to protect settlers on the

frontier from Indian raids. The Quakers in the assembly compromised and did pass a militia bill with the stipulation that anyone who opposed the war for religious

reasons was exempt from serving. Many “weighty Friends” were concerned that Quakers were being inconsistent about the Peace Testimony. In April 1756 the governor declared war on the Lenape Indians. All of the Quaker assemblymen

resigned in protest. Presbyterians then took over the assembly.

The treaty with the Lenape was signed under an elm tree at

Shackamaxon, a Delaware Indian town once located near present-day Kensington, Pennsylvania. The tree was known as the “Treaty Elm.” The Tree blew down in a storm in 1810.

Page 37: A Womans Place

37

Let’s re-coop:

Orthodox Reformed Christianity (Calvinistic-Puritan Tradition)

•Stress on correct doctrine and creed, literal interpretation of Scripture, correct behavior. They have a very negative view of human nature.

•Initially Calvinistic millennial view was Pre-Millennial, but, over the years becomes more Post-Millennial in the established denominations. There are Calvinistic churches that remain Pre-Millennial.

•Role of women is very limited. No ordination. A “woman’s place” is in the home and she is subservient to her husband.

The Society of Friends (Quaker)

• Emphasis on the enlightenment of every person with the Spirit of God (Christ). Friends are non-creedal and non-doctrinal. Friends see the source of revelation in the “Light of God” and not solely in the Bible. The Friends are initially nunc-millennial, the Millennium is now. Great emphasis is place on behavior. Friends have a more positive view of human nature.

•Role of women is important. Since we are in the Millennium the healthy relationship between men and women has been restored as it was before the Fall of Humanity. Women can be called to be prophets and are equally responsive to the “Light” as men. Women can speak in meeting and can be traveling ministers, “Publick Friends.” No ordination since Friends do not have sacraments. There is a “place” for women in the public.

Page 38: A Womans Place

38

The Two Great Evangelical Spiritual Awakenings1730s-1760s ~ A religious revival

known as the First Great Awakening begins to burn an enthusiastic path through New England, and the Mid-Atlantic States and the South. The

influence of the revival is also felt in Canada and in England and Europe. In the American Colonies it began in the

Presbyterian/Congregational churches of New England, but the intensity of

the revival would affect almost everyone, north and south. The

charismatic and emotional preaching of George Whitefield, a Methodist

minister from England who embraced Calvinistic doctrine, was extremely popular. George Whitefield is

considered one of the primary founders of the Evangelical Movement.First Great Awakening (1730-1760)

Page 39: A Womans Place

39

Page 40: A Womans Place

40

Dr. Squintum's Exaltation or the Reformation, 1763 (previous slide)

The extraordinarily popular missionary tours of the Reverend George Whitefield triggered a trans-Atlantic Great Awakening of religion in the mid-eighteenth century. He was often called "Dr. Squintum," the name

of an enthusiastic preacher in a popular play satirizing some of the more extreme elements in Methodist revivals. The play criticized the

evangelical appeal to passions. For Whitefield, true religion was a matter of the heart--an emotional embrace of Christ--rather than a

rational assent to a body of dogma.

Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, #C-USZ62-108255.

A more conventional view of Rev. Whitefield.

Page 41: A Womans Place

41Whitefield preaching

Page 42: A Womans Place

42

November 29th, 1752 ~ Birth of utopian leader Jemima Wilkinson, known as “Second descent of the Spirit of Life from God”, the “Publick Universal

Friend”, the “Universal Friend of Mankind”, and the “All Friend” in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Suffering from a disease that produced either coma or seizures,

she would prophesize when unconscious and often would appear to be dead. Once she was placed in a

coffin, which was nailed shut, but, she regained consciousness and was rescued from her burial. She

immediately claimed to be Christ and preached a strict celibacy for her followers. Some believed her to

be the second coming of Christ in the guise of the apocryphal Woman in the Wilderness, the Woman

Clothed with the Sun (Rev. 12). She attempted to live an androgynous life, always dressing in men clothing.

Jemima Wilkinson was born into a traditional Quaker family in Rhode Island. Her followers, known

as “The Society of United Friends”, separated from mainline Quakerism. She and her followers

attempted to establish a “New Jerusalem”, a utopia based on a non-dogmatic, a non-doctrinaire and a

practical theological and loosely organized community in New York State.

Jemima Wilkinson

Page 43: A Womans Place

43

A “Phrenological” portrait of

Mother Ann Lee

August 6, 1774 ~ Mother Ann Lee and a small group of “Shakers” land in

New York City. Like her contemporary, Jemima Wilkinson, Mother Ann Lee, thought of herself

as that “woman in the Wilderness” mentioned in the Book of Revelation and was determined to create Shaker Villages, Zions on earth. She did not preach about the resurrection of the

body, however. She preached that sex was evil and to live the “higher life”

one must remain celibate. She preached that God was a duality, not a

trinity; equally male and female.

Page 44: A Womans Place

1792 ~ Joanna Southcott, and erstwhile Methodist, in England proclaims herself the pregnant lady of The Book of Revelations,

“the woman in the wilderness.” “Shiloh” was supposedly born on October 19th, 1814.

Some of her followers believed that the child was born before her death in 1814, but was taken out of this world into heaven. Joanna

Southcott was born into a poor farming family in East Devon in 1750. She was a

domestic servant and upholsterer. When she turned forty-two she began to prophesy and

interpreted the chaotic social changes in industrial England as a sign of God’s

displeasure. During the 1790s she began to write down her many

visions and warnings and solutions and published her first book The Strange Effects of Faith in 1801. She had thousands of followers and she published sixty-five books before

her death in 1814. Her religious movement continued after her death. It has been estimated that there were during the 19th century approximately 100,000 followers in

her prophecies, Southcottians. Her “box” of sealed prophecies, whereabouts unclear, is to be open during a national crisis according to her present followers.

Page 45: A Womans Place

45

August 1801 ~ The Cane Ridge Revival, part of the Great Kentucky Revival (part of the Second Great Awakening) takes place in northern Kentucky.

25,000 attend and are deeply affected by the experience. The Christian Church of Barton Stone and the Disciples of Christ of Alexander Campbell

grow out of this “American Pentecost”. Early adherents to the“Restoration Movement” went by a variety of names: “New Lights”, “Campbellites”,

“Restorationers”, “Christadelphias”, “Primitive Christians”, “Church of God”, and so on. Both Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell were ex-Presbyterian

ministers and southerners who owned slaves. They freed their slaves.

Second Great Awakening (1790-1840)

Cane Ridge Meetinghouse,Paris, Kentucky

Page 46: A Womans Place

46

Camp Meeting. Color lithograph by Kennedy and Lucas, after a painting by A. Rider, ca. 1835, negative number 26275. Collection of the New York

Historical Society, New York City.

Page 47: A Womans Place

47

In her book Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, an African-American women preacher, she describes a camp meeting which was held in the back woods of the interior:

“In the space before the platform, seats are placed sufficient to seat four or five thousand persons; and at night the woods are illuminated; there are generally four large mounds of earth constructed, and on them large piles of pine knots are collected and ignited, which make a wonderful blaze and burn a long time; there are also candles and lamps hung about in the trees, together with a light in every

tent, and the minister’s stand is brilliantly lighted up; so that the illumination attendant upon a camp-meeting, is a magnificently solemn scene. The worship

commences in the morning before sunrise; the watchmen proceed round the enclosure, blowing with trumpets to awaken every inhabitants of this

City of the Lord: they then proceed again round the camp, to summon the inmates of every tent to their family devotions; after which they partake of

breakfast, and are again summoned by sound of trumpet to public prayer meeting at the altar which is placed in front of the preaching stand. Many precious souls

are on these occasions introduced into the liberty of the children of God; at the close of the prayer meeting the grove is teeming with life and activity; the

numberless private conference, the salutations of old friend again meeting in the flesh, the earnest inquires of sinners, the pressing exhortations of anxious saints,

the concourse of pedestrians, the arrival of horses and carriages of all descriptions render the scene portentously interesting and intensely surprising.

Page 48: A Womans Place

48

At ten 0’clock, the trumpets sound again to summon the people to public worship; the seats are all speedily filled and as perfect a silence reigns throughout the place

as in a Church or Chapel; presently the high praises of God sound melodiously from this consecrated spot, and nothing seems wanting but local elevation to render the place a heaven indeed. It is like God’s ancient and holy hill of Zion on her brightest festival days, when the priests conducted the processions of

people to the glorious temple of Jehovah.”

Page 49: A Womans Place

49

Page 50: A Womans Place

50

Page 51: A Womans Place

51

Presbyterian minister Richard McNemar is also influenced by the Second Great Awakening and he will eventually leave the New Light Presbyterians and

become one of the founders of Shaker Union Village in Warren County, Ohio.

The ecstatic dancing of Shakers.

Page 52: A Womans Place

52

In Between the Two Great Awakening Revivals was the American Revolution and the

Establishment of the United States.

The two Awakenings are like bookends to the Revolution.

Page 53: A Womans Place

53

The beleaguered Americans during the darkest days of the Revolution were assured that “we have incontestable evidence, that God Almighty, with all the powers of

heaven, are on our side. Great numbers of angels, no doubt, are encamping round our coast, for our defense and protection. Michael stands ready; with all the

artillery of heaven, to encounter the dragon, and to vanquish this black host.” In-other-words, the revolution was a just, perhaps even a holy war; a war to defend civil and personal freedom and also to defend the newly found freedom of God’s church,

the “ecclesia”, from the machinations of European politics and clerical control. Consequently, the Anti-Christ was no longer thought of as the classic embodiment of heresy, heterodoxy, or non-conventional beliefs. It became “Tyranny” itself, in this

case, the oppression of England. According to American revolutionary political theology, the survival of the new Republic would play a role in the history of salvation

as well as secular history

During the Revolution the image of “the woman in the wilderness” from the Book of Revelation had

taken on another, more political, meaning. Seeking religious liberty from the bondage and servitude of sin would take on an additional layer of meaning;

liberty from civil tyranny. Congregational minister Samuel Sherwood (1730–1783) gave the most

famous sermon of the revolutionary era concerning the millennial theme in politics, “The Church’s Flight

into the Wilderness” in January of 1776.

Page 54: A Womans Place

54

Rev. Samuel Sherwood

St. Michael defends “ecclesia” from the dragon, “Tyranny.”

Page 55: A Womans Place

55

The two Great Awakenings, in a sense, “frame” the American Revolution and the developing Republican and Democratic beliefs

rooted in the Enlightenment values of freedom and individual human worth; a “civic millennialism.” It is summed up in the

Declaration of Independence that

“all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

“the golden apple” ~ faith in the unalienable Rights of human beings

Page 56: A Womans Place

56

“The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government and consequent prosperity. The

assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word "fitly spoken" which has proven an "apple of gold" to us. The Union and the Constitution, are the

picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple -- not the apple for the picture. So let us act, that neither

picture, nor apple shall ever be blurred, bruised or broken.”

~Abraham Lincoln, Fragmentary Writing, c. 1858, ("A Meditation on Proverbs 25:11")

Lincoln quotes the Bible to help him phrase his political thought: “A word fitly spoken is like

apples of gold in settings of silver”, Proverbs 25:11.

Page 57: A Womans Place

57

Abraham Lincoln’s masterful definition of the moral foundation of the nation and the role of the United States as the beacon of democracy and freedom to the world and as the advocate for universal human rights, which is known as the great American Civil Religion/Theology, is a moral theism devoid of sectarian conflict and anger and liberal in its all-inclusive embrace of religious diversity.

It is a unique combination of religious and political faith that developed because of the Separation of Church and State in our culture.

Page 58: A Womans Place

58

Page 59: A Womans Place

59

THE FIRST GREAT AWAKENING (approximately 1730-1760)

How it influenced American Quakerism:

~ The time of the first evangelical Great Awakening overlaps with the end of the Quaker “Great Experiment” in Pennsylvania (approximately 1681-1756).

~ Withdrawal from active politics; Quakers affirm their testimony of peace by non-participation in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. Quakers retreat back into sectarianism; behind the “hedge”. The period is known as the “Quietist” Period (approximately 1700-1800).

~ There is a religious renewal movement within Quakerism lead by Quaker reformers and leaders like John Churchman and John Woolman.

~ Quakers come to a consensus about the evils of slavery and eliminate slavery from among themselves. The Quaker response to the reform movement to eradicate slavery outside of its own sectarian boundaries would be ambivalent and would manifest resistance to civic involvement in antebellum reform movements. The “proper” way to engage the world about the Quaker testimony against slavery would be an awful antebellum conundrum for American Quakers.

Page 60: A Womans Place

60

~ Quakers embrace the English Enlightenment values of reason, emotional balance, humanitarianism, and social stability.

~ Quakers become “enlightened bourgeois Quakers” and experience great success and wealth.

~ Continual accommodation of the Evangelical theological point-of-view due to the Great Awakening and the influence of British Quakers who have adopted Evangelical beliefs (i.e. Friends Mary Dudley and Thomas Shillitoe).

Page 61: A Womans Place

61

THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING (approximately 1790-1850)

How it influenced American Quakerism:

~ The Second Great Evangelical Awakening places emphasis on Post-millennialism, personal and societal reform, and on “Perfectionism.”

~ The great migration of Quakers from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia to the Northwest Territory to escape from slavery at the turn of the 19th century.

Orthodox (Evangelical)~ 1828-THE HICKSITE SEPARATION Conservative Hicksite (more Liberal)

~ 1838-THE GURNEY-WILBUR SCHISM WITHIN THE ORTHODOX QUAKERS - John Wilbur opposes the evangelistic methods of an English missionary, Joseph John Gurney and held to the more primitive Quaker practices and teachings. The main Orthodox body of The Society of Friends would eventually accept Gurney (Gurneyities) but the followers of John Wilbur (Wilburites) would set up their own Yearly Meetings in 1845.

Page 62: A Womans Place

62

~ The liberal “Come-Outers” from their Quaker Meetings over the radical issue of abolition:

~ 1843 - The Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends split off from Indiana Yearly Meeting (Orthodox).

~ 1848 ~The Progressive Friends separate from Hicksite Yearly Meetings and create their own Yearly Meeting.

Longwood Meeting of Progressive Friends , June 1865. Photo by John Hurn.William Lloyd Garrison is standing between doorand right front window holding a bouquet of flowers.(Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, PA)

Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

Page 63: A Womans Place

The Evangelical women are very much influenced by the First and Second Great Awakening. Many, in different evangelical churches feel called to preach and take on

a greater responsibility in church. However, it was a difficult struggle:

1741 ~ Congregational Bathsheba Kingsley is inspired by Spirit the First Great Awakening and steals her husband’s horse and begins traveling throughout her rural neighborhood preaching. She claims that she has received revelations immediately

from heaven. Jonathan Edwards who met with her in 1743, declared that she was a “brawling woman” and could not any longer speak in public. She had forgotten her place in their society. She would be allowed to read her Bible and share her faith

with other women but not publicly.

Compare her with Quaker Minister Charity Wright Cook:

Unknown Quaker Woman

The most famous of the Quaker women ministers mentioned above is Charity Wright Cook. Charity Wright Cook, the daughter of John and Rachel Wells Wright, was born on

November 17, 1745 near the Monocacy River a few miles south of Frederick, Maryland. The family, like many Mid-Atlantic

Quakers, would eventually migrate south settling in Newberry County, South Carolina. Charity was one of sixteen siblings. The

family was a healthy one, all sixteen children lived into their maturity and Charity and her sister Susan were described as

strong and “rotund.”

Page 64: A Womans Place

64

Her mother, Rachel Wells Wright, was a traveling minister. Charity’s younger sister, Susanna Wright Hollingsworth, would also become a Quaker minister and often

accompanied her older sister. Although both sisters were married with many children, they travel widely in the ministry. Charity’s traveling was much more extensive than

Susanna Hollingsworth’s, however, even though Charity and her husband Isaac had ten children. Charity and Susan were acknowledged ministers by Bush River Monthly

Meeting in South Carolina early in their young lives.

Charity had an unfortunately event happen to her when she was fifteen. She was accused of carnal behavior with a local boy, Jehu Stuart. She denied this accusation and claimed

that Jehu raped her. Charity’s powerful mother Rachel Wright vehemently criticizes Cane Creek Meeting for their mismanagement of this situation. Charity was disowned

from Cane Creek Meeting of North Carolina in 1760. She eventually was reinstated into the meeting when the young man in question began to accuse many women of the same

behavior and was caught lying.

Page 65: A Womans Place

65

Although it is reported in some places that Charity was illiterate, we do have a few examples of her letters. In a letter to fellow minister Hannah Yarnall dated 29th 12th

mo. 1811 from near Silver Creek, Indiana Charity wrote:

“. . .though I am a poor scribe, and what is worse, a poor speller, but what thou can’t read, thou must guess at, as dear Samuel Emlen told the first time I was in

Philadelphia.”

Although perhaps a weak writer, she must have been a powerful speaker. Her public testimonies were described as animating life and power. Her delivery was in the old

sing-song style of Quaker ministers.

Page 66: A Womans Place

66

That same year of 1797 with Lydia Hoskins, Charity traveled to England. They traveled from New York and landed in Liverpool. In the letters that survive Charity expresses her concern for the

time and distance away from her children and family at home. She asks her friends to write to

her. She described her journey as a “weighty undertaking” and “arduous.” She proceeded to visit Friends Meetings in Lancashire, some in

Cheshire, and some in Westmoreland. She also visited the societies of non-Friends. Besides

preaching during meetings for worship, traveling ministers would also visit each family in the

meeting. In Liverpool she visited sixty families. In Kendall she visited nearly seventy families.

While she was in England she reported the presence of other traveling ministers from

America. She mentioned Phebe Speakman, Sarah Harrison and David Sands who were in Ireland,

Sarah Talbot who was in Yorkshire, Thomas Scattergood who was near London, William

Savery who was in London, and Mary Swett who would be one of her companions to the continent

of Europe.

Page 67: A Womans Place

67

On 7th month 21st, 1798 Charity traveled from London with Mary Swett and Sarah Harris to Hamburg, Germany. During the course of this remarkable journey these three women visited forty-five meetings, visited almost all the families of Pyrmont

Monthly Meeting and held a number of religious conferences. They distributed 675 books and traveled over 1600 miles by land and water. They began being only mildly successful in Hamburg but they moved on to Hanover where they held two meetings for worship on First Day. At their next stop in Pyrmont, where they spent ten days,

they attended a number of meetings and visited many families. In Minden they begin to have problems with the local authorities who forbid the local Friends to

have a meeting for worship. They went ahead with the meeting and Friends were arrested for not removing their hats in deference to the authorities. They traveled then to Rinteln and back to Pyrmont. They wanted to travel to France, but he way

was not open and as they found out, the way was very dangerous.

Page 68: A Womans Place

68

Charity Cook, Sarah Harrison, and Mary Swett were imprisoned for many days in

Friedberg in October of 1798 for attempting to hold a large Quaker Meeting of about one

hundred persons. The authorities were at first incredulous about their religious

mission. They were accused of being spies. The authorities were also taken by surprise

that they were women ministers. While they were imprisoned they preached to their

captors and distributed Quaker books. Eventually they were released and they

embarked for England on the 14th of 11th mo., 1798.

In 1799 Charity visited Ireland where she contracted smallpox. In 1801 Charity Cook and Mary Swett return home from Europe. In 1805, she and Isaac visited Philadelphia

(Dictionary of Quaker Biography, Haverford College).

Page 69: A Womans Place

69

In 1806 Charity and her husband, Isaac, move to the area of Miami Monthly and Quarterly Meeting in Waynesville and establish themselves at Caesar’s Creek

Meeting six miles to the northeast. They are part of the great tide of Friends who were moving from Bush River Monthly Meeting in South Carolina to the

Waynesville area to escape the violence of slavery. Most of their children and grandchildren settled in the area around Waynesville; some in Indiana near Sliver Creek Meeting, near Liberty, Union County. Charity and Isaac lived in Indiana for

a short time while he was dying of cancer, probably to be near some of their children and other kin. Isaac was buried in the Silver Creek Monthly Meeting

cemetery. Charity moved back to the Caesar’s Creek area in Ohio to live near two of her daughters. On November 13th, 1822, Charity Wright Cook died at the age of

77 years and 9 months and is buried in Caesar’s Creek Monthly Meeting graveyard, six miles northeast of Waynesville, Ohio.

Page 70: A Womans Place

70

By the end of the 18th century, the radical Evangelical women preachers who had ministered in sectarian churches were almost totally forgotten as their churches moved

from being sects to denominations. Evangelical women preaching had never been “institutionalized” as it had been with the Quakers. Preaching for Evangelical women,

however, would open up again in the throws of the Second Great Awakening.

By the turn of the 19th century, more than half the ministers in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of The Society of Friends are women ministers. Quakers had by this time

become more middle-class and staid. Quaker women ministers were not the radicals they had been in the 17th century. They were no longer martyrs for the cause and their

faith was shared in the meetinghouse not proclaimed to outsiders.

A fiery and dynamic example of this is Harriet Livermore (1788-1868), the daughter and granddaughter of Congressmen, became the

second woman to preach in the House of Representatives. (Evangelist Dorothy Ripley

was the first in 1806.) She was invited four times to lead the U.S. Congress in prayer beginning in

1827. She was an apocalyptic Adventist. Livermore warned the politicians of the pending

Apocalypse in a fire and brimstone address that lasted well over an hour. Many of the assembled

politicians are brought to tears.

Page 71: A Womans Place

71

The antebellum moral reform movement was actually “a Sisterhood of Reform”, a

collection of reform issues that arose out of the

tensions of the Jacksonian period before 1830. The most important and the

most controversial cutting-edge member of the

“sisterhood of reform” was abolition, which was viewed as radical and could lead its advocates into participation

in Women’s Rights and Non-Resistance. Abolition reform would also be more

open to women’s participation and would be the most interracial of all the reform movements.

“A SISTERHOOD OF REFORM”

Page 72: A Womans Place

72

REFORM MOVEMENTS OF THE TIME INCLUDED:

• Internal religious reforms and the establishment of new churches

•A plethora of national moral reform societies and their local auxiliaries: i.e. the American Female Moral Reform Society, the National Bible Society, the American Tract Society, the America Temperance Society, the American Sunday-School Union, the Association of Adults for Moral Education (established the popular “American Lyceum” lecture circuit), and the American Home Missionary Society. All these are part of the great “Evangelical Empire.”

•Temperance

•Universal Public Education

•Health reform

Sylvester Graham (1794-1851)

Sylvester Graham is known as the father of graham crackers! His original "Graham bread" was the centerpiece of the Graham Diet, a regimen to suppress what he considered unhealthy carnal urges, the source of many maladies according to Graham. He taught that vegetarianism was a cure for alcoholism. In 1850 he helped to found the American Vegetarian Society. His devoted followers where known as “Grahamites.”

Page 73: A Womans Place

73

• Dress reform: A shorter dress, the famous “pantalette costume” or “Bloomer” outfit for women was advocated as both healthier by secular reformers and advocated as more spiritual in religious circles. Women should choose to give up a “dress spirit,” an over-dependency on fashion and ornamentation. The reformed dress made up of full length pantaloons with a matching knee length skirt was first experimented with at New Harmony, Indiana by Fanny Wright. Some of the religious groups that adopted a new dress for women were the John Humphrey Noyes’ Oneida Community, The 7th Day Adventists, and the Strangite Mormons in Michigan.

• Labor

• Abolition

• Women’s Rights

• Peace and Non-Resistance

“Resolved, that it is the object of this Society neither to purify nor to subvert human governments, but to advance in the earth that kingdom of peace and righteousness, which supersedes all such governments” (Non-Resistance: In Relation to Human Governments by Adin Ballou, 1839. Founder of the Hopedale utopian community.

Page 74: A Womans Place

74

1850 ~ Amelia Jenks Bloomer (right) launched the dress reform movement with a costume bearing her name. The “Bloomer”

costume was actually first utilized by Fanny Wright (above) and other women at the

Owenite New Harmony utopian community in Indiana. The Bloomer costume was later

abandoned by many suffragists who feared it detracted attention from more serious

women's rights issues.

Left:

Lucy Stone, women's rights activist & lecturer

Page 75: A Womans Place

75

Dress Reform

Dress worn by Quaker Anne Bartlett Taylor who lived in Erie Co., N.Y. near Buffalo.

Photographs used with permission of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, Tejon, County

Katie Gardner, Curator

F.Y.I.: The Dress Reform Association had held its first meeting in Glen Haven, New York in 1856.

Page 76: A Womans Place

76

Page 77: A Womans Place

77

Page 78: A Womans Place

78

THE QUAKER ALTERNATIVE “EMPIRE”

“Keep within. And when they say, 'lo here', or 'lo there' is Christ; go not forth; for Christ is within you. And they are seducers and antichrists, which draw your minds out from the teachings within you.” ~George Fox

The Society of Friends, originally sectarian and radical in nature, during its Quietist Period withdrew from public discourse and politics when William Penn’s “Great

Experiment” of Pennsylvania came to an end during the French and Indian War. With their withdrawal from politics and governance, the Friends created other

organizations benevolent in nature to communicate to some extent with the world. Some were: The Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1775, the Philadelphia

Committee for Alleviating the Miseries of the Public Prisons in 1787, the Female Society for the Relief and Employment of the Poor in 1795, and the Indian Affairs Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1796. They were larger versions of local monthly meeting committees that dealt with charitable endeavors such as

“Indian Affairs” and the “Committee on Concerns of People of Color.” During this same time Friends began to establish academies where Quaker adults could be

taught to be teachers. The goal was to provide a “guarded” or “hedged” education for their children while protecting them from the world. One of the first things a

new monthly meeting would do after erecting a building was establish a school in it as well as a meeting for worship.

Page 79: A Womans Place

79William Tuke & York Retreat Elizabeth Fry in Newgate Prison

Co-Education

Temperance

John Woolman

Quakers & Indians

Page 80: A Womans Place

80Friend’s Asylum

Eastern Penitentiary

Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society

Association of Friends for the Free Instruction of Adult Colored

Page 81: A Womans Place

Evangelical women and Liberal Christian women in the antebellum would work together in many of the reform

movements such as Temperance and Abolition. However, they would take different paths defined by

their understanding of the nature of their moral duty to be involved in reform movements. By being involved in benevolent societies they would expand the “women’s

domestic sphere” into the “informal public sphere” where women could interact safely within the larger

public with the approval of church and society. Women coming out of Christian liberalism, for example

Hicksite Quakers and Unitarians, would find it easier to embrace the call to reform society. Women Friends would have experience speaking in meeting but they

would have togo through another liberation from Quaker 81 sectariansim to enter the “public male sphere” to work for equal rights, the right of

critical public discourse, and the right to vote. The issue of “a woman’s place” would center on a lengthy public debate over whether the domestic sphere should alone

be the critical and authentic sphere of female moral power, or whether women would find their voice and

their “place” in an expanded more inclusive public sphere which would include them and minorities.

“The Cult of Domesticity”

Page 82: A Womans Place

82

FRIENDS AND THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT

Most conservative Friends, whether Orthodox or Hicksite, looked with great suspicion at the radical abolition movement, especially the members of William

Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. They did not approve of Friends working in an ecumenical way with other reformers of other churches. Many

conservative Friends also believed that “abolitionism” had become its own religion.

A highly controversial event was the disownment of Isaac T. Hopper in 1841. It was shocking that such a “weighty Friend” would be disowned for his association with a

political Abolitionist magazine. He was disowned because it attacked another Friends’ minister as soft on slavery.

Isaac Hopper was a renowned Underground Railroad Conductor. He was an overseer of the Benezet School for

African-American Children, and a volunteer teacher in a Free School for African-American Adults. He was one of the

founders and the secretary of a Society for the Employment of the Poor; volunteer prison inspector; member of a fire

company, and guardian of abused apprentices. In New York City he ran a Hicksite Bookstore. He was the secretary of the

American Anti-Slavery Society.

Page 83: A Womans Place

83

George F. White, whom Lucretia Mott sarcastically referred to as “‘the notable ‘Hicksite Priest,’ who ‘in season and out

of season’ assails Abolitionists, Non-Resistants and Temperance men” had many times tried to mobilize

Hicksites Friends to disown Lucretia due to her reform activities. In one of her letter’s Lucretia describes the

dissension within the Hicksite fold concerning abolition and efforts to collaborate with non-Quakers in any kind of

reform. She had traveled through Chester County, Pennsylvania, speaking from meeting to meeting, to

encourage Friends to involve themselves in the anti-slavery movement. G. F. White followed after her to discourage Friends from doing so. The ridicule of the Garrisonian non-resistants and all “hirelings” (Protestant ministers

who are paid for there services) made by George F. White during meeting is shocking to most modern ears. It is its inconsistency in light of the Quaker tradition of pacifism, temperance, women’s equality in the “light of Christ”, and

anti-slavery that gives pause. He and many others, however, believed “hirelings” to be infidels and

freethinkers. White was an anti-slavery person, refusing to buy anything produced by slaves. He believed, however, in

a high hedge around his faith to protect the sectarian community. He wanted that sectarian boundary.

Quaker Minister Lucretia Mott

Page 84: A Womans Place

84

The “Come Outers”

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues . . .” (Revelations 18:4)

Within The Society of Friends, the most discordant schism of the 19th century was between the radical Quaker abolitionists in the two “come outer” groups and

the more conservative Orthodox and Hicksite Friends who utilized the Quaker Peace Testimony and a desire to be good citizens to defend their non-

participation in worldly politics or in non-Quaker social organizations.

The “come outers” saw themselves as prophets, challengers to the American religious establishment to work for the moral good, the destruction of slavery and other injustices in the country. They took their cue from Revelation 18:4 to gain

the moral high ground. They had to “come out” of their church to do God’s will as they understood it.

Page 85: A Womans Place

85

Quaker women had a head start within their religious Society that had “institutionalized” lay ministry for both men and women. However, Quaker women,

both Orthodox and Hicksite, had to “jump the fence,” the sectarian hedge around Quakerism, to be leaders like the early “Mothers of Israel.” They had to “come out” from

a comfortable “place,” their meetings for worship, to follow where the “Light” was leading them into abolition and woman’s rights. The place they came out to was often

not too pleasant.

Like so many antebellum women, Sarah and Angelina Grimké undertook remarkable spiritual journeys by “coming out” to their churches to find their

“place” of morality and justice.

Page 86: A Womans Place

Angelina Grimké had been a follower of William Miller during the pre-millennial Millerite excitement in 1843, as well as a member of the Episcopalian Church, the Orthodox Quakers, and then finally the “ultra” Garrisonians. She would eventually marry Theodore Weld, a liberal Congregational minister.

A public and critical dialogue in print began in 1836 and lasted till 1838 between Angelina Grimké and

Catharine Beecher. In 1836 Angelina published her controversial Appeal to the Christian Women of the

South. Both of the Grimké sisters justified their anti-slavery and women’s rights work as heroic dissent; a

battle to overcome unjust suppression of black slaves. By leaving their womanly “sphere” of private

publication and speaking before “promiscuous” crowds of men and women, they were creating a more

authentic Christianity and world. Angelina cast herself and all women who dare to speak out in public about

the injustices of slavery in the role of Esther (Hadassah) of the Old Testament and in so doing she links the injustice of black slavery with the injustice of

benign chauvinism towards the female “sphere.”

Catherine Beecher 1848Catherine always had one of her

brothers read her speeches in public.

A true believer in the “cult of domesticity” and the wisdom of

maintaining the “woman’s sphere.”

Page 87: A Womans Place

87

Even within the same denomination, women would respond differently to what they heard as God’s call to action as moral individuals. One of the greatest examples of this among Evangelical women were the three Beecher sisters, Catharine Beecher, Harriett Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, three of the daughters of the

famous Calvinist, Reverend Lyman Beecher; members of the most famous Evangelical family of all. All three, representing three different generations, would

contribute to defining “a woman’s place”:

Catharine Beecher (1800-1878) ~ Catharine, who never married, was a teacher, and an author that

advocated the higher education of women so they could fulfill the moral obligations within their own domestic

sphere. Women were to be devoted to the moral development of their children and to their homes. Two of

her books are The Moral Instructor for Schools and Families: Containing Lessons on the Duties of Life (1838)

and A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School (1841). She was the founder of the Hartford Female College in Hartford, Connecticut,

the Western Female Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, and three other women’s colleges in the west. She also encouraged the hiring of women as teachers. Although encouraging women

to be educated, Catharine still counseled them to stay within their “sphere” and be content with “the cult of

domesticity”.

Page 88: A Womans Place

88

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811- 1896) ~ Harriet is, of course, famous for being the author of Uncle Tom’s

Cabin and an advocate of anti-slavery. She was a prolific author. One of her other books was Woman

in Sacred History. Harriett as well as her two famous brothers, Charles and Henry Ward Beecher, was

fascinated by the image of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Most of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s female heroines are

Marian figures. She took the Catholic image of Mary the Mother of God and transfigured it from the

almost goddess like Virgin image into a figure of heroic, active, and realistic motherhood. She rejected

the Catholic “cult of Mary” rooted in unscriptural legends, iconography, and pagan associations. Stowe’s image of Mary was not of a submissive

woman. Her portrayal, for example, of Eliza in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of a woman of faith and deep

maternal love who in a frenzy of activity saves herself and her child. By using the female image of Mary,

Stowe attempted to inject a balance in the male dominated Calvinistic faith of her father and may be

seen as an educated woman’s attempt to control doctrine and with scripture to re-configure Biblical

images of women for healthier role models.

Page 89: A Womans Place

89

Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907) ~ Isabella was a suffragette and a spiritualist. Isabella was the step-sister of Catharine and Harriett. In 1868 she

founded the Connecticut Women’s suffrage Association and was its president for 19 years. She also that same year published “Mother's Letters to a Daughter on

Woman's Suffrage” anonymously in Putnam's Magazine. She was one of the primary speakers at the 1870 convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Washington, D.C. She was instrumental in writing a federal constitutional suffrage amendment which she promoted for several years.

Towards the end of her life she came to believe through her belief in Spiritualism that she had an important role in a forthcoming matriarchal revolution. When

she died, the funeral service was Unitarian.

Page 90: A Womans Place

90

Jumping the Sectarian “Hedge”

Not always so easy to do!

Page 91: A Womans Place

91

Abby Kelley Foster

The controversy surrounding the anti-slavery and women’s right career of Abby Kelley Foster, whom

William Lloyd Garrison called the “most persevering, most self-sacrificing, most energetic,

most meritorious” abolitionist, and “the moral Joan of Arc of the world,” is an example of Quaker

ambiguity concerning the role of women in abolition. Like so many activist women of her generation, to do what she wanted she had to

“come out of” The Society of Friends (Orthodox). She had moved beyond them and her “place” was

with Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society. She disowned herself because The Society

of Friends was no longer in the forefront of the abolitionist movement. Many Quaker women

would take that route to the freedom to practice their faith, to follow their calling. Her Garrisonian

convictions were seen as a defection from The Society of Friends. Many conservative Friends believed that abolitionism, especially entwined

with spiritualism, had turned into a rival religion

Page 92: A Womans Place

92

As an anti-slavery lecturer Abby was entirely successful, drawing large crowds. Her manner of speaking was indeed quite different in style from the intellectual

Grimké sisters and the quiet charismatic style of Lucretia Mott. Abby Kelley Foster was a classic prophet, a female confrontational Jeremiah. On June 5th, 1845, five hundred men and women, mostly Quakers, came to listen to her at

New Lisbon, Ohio during a convention of the Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society. She came to see quickly that the eastern anti-slavery newspapers

took ten to two weeks to be delivered to eastern Ohio. She was instrumental in the founding of the “Anti-Slavery Bugle” newspaper, which issued its first

edition two weeks after her arrival. Through her extraordinary efforts, the “Bugle,” the Garrisonian newspaper for the “Old Northwest,” would publish

for the next fifteen years.

Page 93: A Womans Place

93

In the late summer of 1845, Abby Kelley Foster attended Ohio Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. She knew that the Orthodox Friends would not

be receptive of her or her message. They didn’t even recognize the ministry of mild mannered Lucretia Mott. She sat for almost one day before rising to remind Friends

of their historic commitment to anti-slavery. Three different Elders asked her to keep quiet but, of course, she wouldn’t. She reminded the gathered Friends that

George Fox himself often disrupted church services when felt called to speak a word to the gathered worshipers. She was bodily carried from the meeting and placed

soundly on the ground outside. As embarrassing as this treatment is for Friends to admit, they were kind compared to most, who, during her early years of lecturing

hurled “unsavory eggs, the contents of stables and out-houses” at her and ministers called her “Jezebel” and “fornicator.” Although the Quakers had disowned her, almost everyone else thought of her as a Quaker since she lived simply and wore

gray and would fall back into the plain language.

Page 94: A Womans Place

94

The poet James Russell Lowell paid the following tribute to Abby Kelley Foster:

“A Judith there, turned Quakeress,Sits Abby in her modest dress.No nobler gift of heart or brain,No life more white from spot or stainWas e’er on freedom’s altar lainThan hers ~ the simple Quaker maid.”

~ Letter from Boston, December, 1846

“Abby in her modest dress” challenged women to move out of their comfortable “spheres” to accept responsibility in the reformation of the world. Both men and women are guilty of allowing the immorality that stalks abroad in the land to exist and men and women should work together and feel responsible for obtaining the necessities of life and the sustaining of Intellectual, moral, and religious aspects of civil discourse. Her message was full of millennial images. The message was “get up and do” while praying for more Light from God, a Light that will grow brighter unto the perfect day.

Page 95: A Womans Place

95

Antoinette Brown Blackwell an Evangelical “come outer”

An example of a liberal Evangelical woman and her journey of many turns out of the domestic “sphere”

and the “informal public” of her church was Antionette (“Nettie”) Brown Blackwell (May 20, 1825-November 5, 1921) who was the first American woman to be ordained as minister by a congregation. She was

born in Henrietta, New York into a loving family of liberal Congregationalists. Her initial experiences

with religion were positive; her image of God loving. Her grandmother would read with her and the other children from the Bible and from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s

Progress. When she was eight years old a visiting minister came to their church and challenged

members to dedicate themselves more to Christ, and so she did. The family was very much influenced by the revival preaching of Charles Grandison Finney.

Young Antionette proclaimed that she wanted to be a minister. Although this was not possible, her mother

always supported her in her dream.

Page 96: A Womans Place

96

Antionette grew up to be a teacher and then in 1846 she entered Oberlin College. On the completion of her studies in “the literary course” she asked to enter the Theology Department of Oberlin. Her application was resisted for a while even

though Oberlin encouraged the education of women as well as African-Americans. While at Oberlin she became actively involved in the abolition movement,

temperance, and women’s rights. In 1850 she completed the theology program but was denied a degree and

ordination. The Congregational Church eventually allowed her to preach but refused to ordain her. Much later in life Oberlin College would eventually grant her

a Masters and a Doctorate degree. When she would speak publicly for abolition, temperance, and women’s rights, she was routinely shouted down by male ministers who were appalled at her audacity to speak to “promiscuous” crowds. She attended

and spoke at a number of the early women’s rights conventions.

Page 97: A Womans Place

97

In 1852 she accepted a call from the Congregational Church of South Butler, New York. The Congregational

clergy would not ordain a woman; she was ordained there in 1853 by a Methodist minister. Antionette was also shocked by the negative reaction of many of the

women in her congregation to her as a minister. They were against her. A few women’s rights advocates were

also against her becoming a minister, although for another reason. Elizabeth Cady Stanton thought she was wasting her time with the church. Specifically,

Antionette and Elizabeth disagreed on divorce; Antionette against divorce to strengthen the family, and Stanton for divorce in unhealthy situations for women. Struggling against male chauvinism in general and the

surprising opposition of many women, led to a spiritual crisis. The death of un-baptized children in her church

led her directly to the crisis since she found it impossible to declare that these children were damned. She resigned her position and with the help of her new husband, Samuel Charles Blackwell, she moved further

away from Congregational orthodoxy being drawn to Unitarianism as was her friend and fellow Oberlin

alumni and activist, Lucy Stone.

Page 98: A Womans Place

98

Antoinette continued to lecture and write. She eventually published eight books and many essays. She was a supporter of the women’s rights movement even

though her more conservative religious ideas were disapproved of by Stanton and by Susan B. Anthony. She, none-the-less, worked with both for the advancement

of women. Antoinette was a religious leader throughout her life. In addition to preaching, she established the All Souls Unitarian Church in Elizabeth, New

Jersey. There, she served as pastor emeritus from 1908 until she died. Of the early advocates of Women’s Rights, she survived to be able to vote on November 2nd,

1920 at the age of 95.

Page 99: A Womans Place

99

THE JOURNEY OF QUAKER WOMEN MINISTERS & REFORMERS

FIRST GENERATION OF QUAKER WOMEN PROPHETS & TRAVELING MINISTERS

PERIOD OF QUIETISM

SCHISMS:~HICKSITE (More liberal for women)

~ORTHODOX (More evangelical and conservative)

PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS (Evangelical “come-outers”, often support Liberty Party)(Liberal “come-outers” and reject politics) ANTI-SLAVERY FRIENDS

GARRISONIAN ABOLITION Garrisonians advocate immediate emancipation and equality between blacks and whites and women’s rights. They believe in non-resistance,are non-political, non-creedal, and believe in “moral suasion.” (American Anti-Slavery Society)

WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT ~ SENECA FALLS, 1848

American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society that broke away from the American Anti-slavery Society (Authur Tappan).

Page 100: A Womans Place

100

JOURNEY OF EVANGELICAL WOMEN (PRESBYTERIAN & CONGREGATIONAL)

ORTHODOX EVANGELICAL SUPPORTERS OF ESTABLISHED CHURCH INSTITUTIONS (“Old Lights” and a few “New Lights”). Have conservative abolition ideas such as “gradual emancipation and colonization”. Women are to stay within their “sphere.” Believe in Original Sin.

OBERLIN COLLEGE EVANGELICAL PERFECTIONISM (“New Lights”) Are reformist abolitionists who believe they can Christianize politics and institutions as well as people. They are post-Millennialists. Many left their original church, “secession and reorganization.” Some of the “come-outer” churches were Wesleyan Methodist Connection, Union Churches, Anti-Slavery Congregational Churches, Free-Will Baptist, and the generic Abolition Churches. Quaker Progressives and Anti-slavery Friends are also “come-outers”. Women “perfectionists” are expanding the “women’s sphere”. Supportive of the “Liberty Party.” Many Evangelical women eventually became Unitarians.

Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society Tappan’s American & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society

WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT ~ SENECA FALLS, 1848

Page 101: A Womans Place

101

Garrisonian Abolitionists

Religious liberals of the antebellum period, the followers of William Lloyd Garrison, were a relatively small group of abolitionists whose

approach was based on radically liberal interpretations of Christianity. Persons involved in the Garrisonian movement

believed that the redemption of the United States and the world depended on the

eradication of the horrendous sin of slavery everywhere and quickly. They agreed that

America was at an eschatological crossroads and the dire situation would not brook any

compromises. Garrisonians responded with a radical Christian perfectionism and an urgent

form of millennialism.

Page 102: A Womans Place

102

Page 103: A Womans Place

103

Spiritualism

On March 31st, 1848, just about three months before the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, there was a

report of supernatural rapping in the home of the Fox sisters of Hydesville near

Rochester, New York. It is not surprising that the rapping phenomenon spread

quickly and widely throughout the United States. Some of the earliest adherents were

men and women involved in the radical reform movements, especially abolition and

women’s rights. Among these early advocates were Quakers who had “come out” of their Hicksite meetings and had

formed the Progressive Friends..

Page 104: A Womans Place

104

Radical Friends Amy Post and Isaac Post of Rochester, New York, who had founded the

Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and who were devoted conductors on the Underground Railroad, were members of Waterloo Progressive Friends. They knew

the Fox sisters and were their earliest supporters. The Posts took the Fox sisters into their own home and introduced them

to the multitude of Progressive Friends and other abolitions who constantly passed

through their house. Most of the Progressive Friends that participated in the

Seneca Falls women’s rights convention were supportive of the Fox sisters and

embraced Spiritualism.

Amy Post

Page 105: A Womans Place

105

The Progressive Friends took a great interest in Spiritualism because they believed that the unbroken chain of communication between this world and the next in séance was an affirmation of their radical belief in the “Inner Light”, the

direct communication, which is unmediated, of the divine with the human being.It seemed that the dreams and visionary experiences of the early Quaker ministers were being renewed in the phenomenon of Spiritualism. Isaac Post became an acknowledged medium and published a book entitled Voices From the Spirit World, Being Communications From Many Spirits in 1852. It is also

true that many of the radical participants in the intellectual utopian experiments of the antebellum period (i.e. Hopedale, New Harmony, and Prairie Home)

embraced Spiritualism.