That Was Faith

Jane James performed her last baptism for the dead in the Salt Lake Temple in 1894. Health concerns began to arise more often as she aged, but she remained active and regularly attended women’s meetings and special events. Her daughter died in 1897, leaving only two of her children alive for the last decade of her life. James was one of few remaining Mormons who had known Joseph Smith personally, so the community valued her memories and gave her regular opportunities to talk about them. James obliged, partly because this allowed her to press her case for temple privileges. James was regularly referred to as “Aunt Jane,” a title that conveyed respect but also reinforced the racial hierarchy and kept her at arm’s length. James’s 1908 death was front-page news. Her funeral was well attended and included remarks by the LDS Church president.

Written from the Body of Sisterhood

This chapter, focusing on transatlantic Quaker women’s autobiographical writings between 1650 and 1800, explores the ways in which these Spiritual Mothers prophetically performed and sustained George Fox’s calling for an embodied spirit theology. Faced with impending, male-inscribed censorship on their female body/text, these women resisted patriarchal control and emigrated to the ‘Holy Experiment’ of early America. Their separate and privatized Women’s Meetings became a dynamic network for channelling female prophecy and agency in the colonies. Quaker women established a radical literary tradition, locating autobiography as the new site of prophecy and the semiotic voice in the eighteenth century. Writing from the female body as from the body collective, these women thus created a ‘New Word’ and simultaneously expanded the boundaries of gender and prophecy in the ‘New World’.

‘She Suffered for My Sake’

This chapter examines the relationship between female suffering and active participation within the early decades of Quakerism. Using personal correspondence and spiritual testimonies penned by Quaker women and their male relatives, it shows how women’s lives were shaped and disrupted by their conversion to the movement. The chapter is organized around two arenas that provided British and colonial female Quakers with opportunities to play a direct role within the developing movement: the home and the Women’s Meetings. These are two aspects of Quaker women’s identities that have often been marginalized in early Quaker history in favour of their more prophetic and radical gestures. Through adopting this dual focus and focusing on the more ‘everyday’ aspects of these women’s experiences, it aims to show how widespread suffering and persecution shaped women’s experiences and identities in interesting and powerful ways.

“Paul Has Been Forgotten”: Women, Gender, and Revivalism during the Gilded Age

During gigantic urban revivals in 1875 and 1876, the Chicago-shoe-salesman-turned-religious-evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody set the northern United States ablaze with the fires of a great religious awakening. Over two million Americans of all Protestant affiliations attended his meetings in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York City, and Chicago. Although his popularity had been unrivalled, Moody worried about his campaign that would begin in Boston in 1877. To carry the day, he knew that he would need the help of “the New England women.” “What a power they would be,” Moody claimed. For this reason, he sought out Frances E. Willard, an up-and-coming female leader and temperance advocate. When the two met, the evangelist asked, “Will you go with me to Boston and help in the women's meetings?” After considering the invitation for several days, Willard agreed to join him. She did more than merely minister to women, however. On one occasion, as she recounted later, “Mr. Moody…placed my name upon his program” to “literally preach” to men and women. Willard wondered aloud if the sight of a woman preaching would shock the audience: “Brother Moody…, perhaps you will hinder the work among these conservatives.” Responding, Moody “laughed in his cheery way, and declared that ‘it was just what they needed.’”

The ‘Durty Spirit’ at Hertford: A Falling out of Friends

In 1660 the Quaker movement was confronted with a new political situation. In response, the leadership constructed a centralised system of bureaucracy designed to maintain solidarity in the face of persecution. Not all Friends, however, reacted positively to the changes, especially the new arrangements for women's meetings and the conduct of weddings. By the 1670s the movement was split by the Wilkinson–Story controversy, an internal dispute reflected in Quaker meetings throughout the country. This article examines the friction between Friends in Hertford and the claims made by some members of the meeting that George Fox was stifling individual spiritual freedom, the touchstone of Quaker doctrine.