Quaker Women and the Charge of Separatism

QUAKER WOMEN AND THE CHARGE OF SEPARATISM By Margaret H. Bacon* The current women's movement has had reverberations within the Society of Friends. In many monthly and yearly meetings, women have chosen to meet separately in support groups, while continuing as full partners in the business meeting and meeting for worship. These separate groups have been regarded as controversial , and frequently the charge is made that they are not "Quakerly ." A glance back into Quaker history assures us that the controversy is an old one. George Fox is credited with establishing the first separate business meetings for women, to supplement the men's meetings; and to handle the placement and supervision of servant girls, the care of poor widows, and the like. He did so not so much out of principle , but in the belief that women had much practical ability to contribute to the life of the Society of Friends. He was criticized for the establishment of these separate meetings by two fellow Quakers, John Wilkinson and John Story, who felt that they were innovations grafted onto primitive Quakerism. Why not let the women join the men in business meetings? the schismatics asked. Because women would then be too intimidated to bring their concerns out into the open, Fox replied. "There is some dark spirits (sic) that would have no women's meetings, but as men should meet with them, which women cannot for civility and modesty's sake speak amongst men of women's matters"1 he argued. In other words, separate meetings for women were more functional at that time. Meeting apart, women were able to play a more constructive role in the Society than if they had been submerged by meeting with men. Almost 170 years later in the life of the Society, Fox's empirical insight was defended by Lucretia Coffin Mott, the founder of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and the guiding spirit at *Margaret H. Bacon is Assistant Secretary for Information and Interpretation of the American Friends Service Committee. She has written several books and numerous articles on Quaker history and the role of women in the Society of Friends. Her latest book, Valiant Friend, the Life of Lucretia Mott, will be published in June by Walker and Co. 1. George Fox's Epistles No. 313 as in Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism, p. 274, Note 4. 23 24QUAKER HISTORY the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. Two Quaker sisters from South Carolina, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, had joined the Female Society and subsequently became lecturers for the American Anti-Slavery Society. When they began to speak to mixed audiences , the abolitionists quarrelled among themselves over the question of permitting the rights of women to become part of the antislavery campaign. The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society backed the Grimké sisters, and became the springboard for the women's rights movement. In Lynn, Massachusetts, a young Irish Quaker schoolteacher, Abby Kelley, sponsored the Grimkés in speaking to a "mixed" or "promiscuous" audience in the Lynn Friends Meeting House. Inspired by the Grimkés, Abby became an ardent supporter of women 's rights within the antislavery movement. In 1837 she attended the first American Convention of Anti-Slavery Women, and in 1838 she came to Philadelphia to be part of the second such gathering . Here she made her maiden speech to a "promiscuous" audience , the night before the hall in which the meetings were held, Pennsylvania Hall, was burned by a mob.2 From Philadelphia, Abby went to Boston, where her appointment to a committee of the New England Anti-Slavery Society began a schism over "the woman question." Becoming more and more of a radical, she answered Lucretia Mott's invitation to attend the third annual American Convention of Anti-Slavery Women, to be held in Philadelphia in May of 1839, with a letter claiming that for women to meet separately was to violate the very principle for which they were struggling. This letter has unfortunately been lost, but Lucretia Mott's answer is self-explanatory: My dear friend Abby Kelley Thy letter of 1st mo. last, tho apparently so neglected, has been read again and again with deep interest...