Loughborough University
Browse
Gill_Ministering Confusion_ Rebellious Quaker Women (1650-1660).pdf (1.04 MB)

'Ministering confusion': Rebellious Quaker women

Download (1.04 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2020-06-17, 13:42 authored by Catherine GillCatherine Gill
This paper assesses the position of women within the Quaker community, concentrating on their ministerial roles. Female prophets and preachers were visible during the first decade of Quakerism, and the early years prove fruitful for exploration of women's experiences. In order to consider the difficulties women faced when taking a public role in support of Quakerism, some context on seventeenth-century attitudes to women will be provided. It will be argued that women had to challenge patriarchal notions that the 'weaker' sex should be silent, passive and obedient. In contrast to prevailing seventeenthcentury norms, the potential radicalism of the Quaker approach to gender can be demonstrated. Yet, the majority of this paper deals with evidence showing that women were chastised by other Quakers for apparently departing from the conventional female roles. Hence, this paper examines the co-existence of radical, egalitarian attitudes to gender alongside more conservative, and restrictive evaluations of women's ministry.

History

School

  • The Arts, English and Drama

Department

  • English and Drama

Published in

Quaker Studies

Volume

Vol. 9

Issue

(1)

Pages

19 - 35

Publisher

George Fox University

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by George Fox University under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publication date

2004

Copyright date

2005

ISSN

1363-013X

Language

  • en

Depositor

Catie Gill. Deposit date: 17 June 2020

Article number

3

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC