Wonderfully researched and written history of 18th-century Quaker
women preachers. Because Quakers held to a doctrine of Christ's
"Inward Light," which dwelt in all people, women as well as men,
were viewed as potential instruments for the divine. As Quakerism
became more established in England and America, the informal
exhortations of the 17th century gave way to a more permanent
network of "public friends" who traveled abroad and preached
Quakerism's message. Women were a part of this spiritual elite, and
Larson, who has a doctorate from Harvard, eloquently demonstrates
the surprising influence women "ministers" wielded. Larson has
narrowed her study to the approximately 1,500 English and American
Quaker women in the 18th century who traveled across the Atlantic
to preach and help establish Quaker meetings. In an era when few
women wrote and only a scant handful were published, these women
saw their sermons and tracts reach an eager transatlantic audience.
When women scarcely traveled much distance beyond their hometowns,
Quaker women with a "concern" for a particular destination
journeyed thousands of miles through dangerous conditions to preach
before mixed audiences. Believing that they were called of God to
preach, they were absent from husbands and young children for years
at a stretch. Larson shows that these preaching women were not
simply novelties; they exerted real power over the direction of the
midcentury Quaker Reformation. When the movement threatened to wax
soft in the face of religious toleration and material prosperity,
female Friends encouraged a return to the strict tenets of early
Quakerism. Women ministers demanded a retrenchment of dress, a
renewed commitment to pacifism, and a universal abolitionist stance
when such opinions were unfashionable among successful Quakers. And
the female reformers won. Largely because of their persistent
message, colonial Friends renounced politics and slaveholding, and
settled into Quakerism's now familiar trajectory of quiet activism
and social justice. One of the best books ever on women and
Quakerism. (Kirkus Reviews)
More than a thousand Quaker female ministers were active in the
Anglo-American world before the Revolutionary War, when the Society
of Friends constituted the colonies' third-largest religious group.
Some of these women circulated throughout British North America;
others crossed the Atlantic to deliver in courthouses, meeting
houses, and private homes, to audiences of men and women, to
Quakers and to those of other faiths, to Native Americans, and to
slaves. Utilizing the Quakers' rich archival sources, as well as
colonial newspapers and diaries, Rebecca Larson reconstructs the
activities of these women. She examines the ways their public,
authoritative role affected the formation of their identities,
their families and their society.
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