From Pilgrimage to Discipleship: Quaker Women's Ministries in Nineteenth-Century England

From Pilgrimage to Discipleship: Quaker Women's Ministries in Nineteenth-Century England Dale A. Johnson* The lead editorial in The Friend for September, 1 876 was titled "The Ministry of Women." Its impetus came from an essay by the journalist Frances Power Cobbe1, but soon turned to a question related to the Friends. "We have observed," the author stated, "a readiness to take up a lamentation over a supposed decline in the numbers of women preachers amongst Friends. We doubtthe reality ofthe fact." He notedthat inthe latest five-year period, the ratio of persons recorded as ministers was three men to two women; and looking for a "fitting relative proportion," he went on, "drawn from the obvious fitness of things, from the facts of the New Testament history (where all the Apostles were men), or the facts in the first generation of Friends, sixty percent ofmen to forty ofthe other sex does not seem an undue preponderance of men."2 The author unfortunately mingled "fitting relative proportion" with real numbers and looked only at the most recent period. He was thus mistaken in doubting that the numbers of women ministers in the Society had declined. Leaving aside the question ofwhat would be a fitting proportion, both the numbers and the proportion ofwomen ministers declined significantly over the course of the century. Behind the statistics, which can be pieced together from several sources, stand more substantive issues concerning opportunities and attitudes relating to Quaker women's ministries inthe nineteenthcentury. What, forexample, mighthave contributedto such a decline? Is there any connection between numbers and the character of women's ministries in this period? I Accepting the distinctiveness of Quaker religious organization, it is widely recognized that its ministry (non-professional and non-remunerative , anddependent onthe testimony ofdivine inspiration affirmedby alocal meeting) was, from its seventeenth-century beginnings, open to women as well as to men. While the only substantial study of the movement in the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Isichei's Victorian Quakers, does not discuss the particulars of women's ministries extensively, it does note that "for *Dale A. Johnson is Professor of Church History in the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. His publications include Women in English Religion, 1 7001925 (1983) and Women and Religion in Britain and Ireland: An Annotated Bibliographyfrom the Reformation to 1993 (1995). From Pilgrimage to Discipleship1 9 Victorian Quaker women the ministry filled an obvious latent function. . . . The ministry offered a magical escape, for an able woman, from the narrow confines ofdomesticity. It enabled her to speak in public, and travel abroad, with the approval, indeed the deference, of her co-religionists."3 At the same time as such opportunities were available for women, decision-making within the movementwas clearly done by men. A separate Women's Yearly Meeting, established at the end ofthe eighteenth century, continued to 1907, but always had limited responsibilities in the Society. This separation became the focus ofincreasing concern to womenmembers in the latter part ofthe nineteenth century.4 While the fact that Quakers were divided into several theological camps in the nineteenth century is not directly relevant forthe investigation ofthis particular topic, it is helpful to understand the basic distinctions. A quietisi element that drew especially from early Quakers such as Robert Barclay, stressedaperson's mystical experience with God, andencouraged followers to live in isolation from the wider society, was gradually superseded by the 1830s by an evangelical spirit that took the Bible as its chief authority, emphasized the doctrine ofthe Atonement and the need for conversion, and encouraged a wider range ofphilanthropic activities in the world. Later in the century, this was, in turn, succeeded by liberals who were shaped by modern science and the rise of biblical criticism and who combined an optimistic understanding of human nature with a notion of progressive revelation.5 Joseph John Gurney's important 1824 volume, Observations on the Religious Peculiarities ofthe Society ofFriends, encouraged the growth of an evangelical consciousness within the Society. It contained a final chapter entitled "On the Ministry of Women," setting forth boundaries of activity that could have worked for quietists as well. While he readily affirmed the Quakercontribution"freely andequallyto allowtheministry ofboth sexes," he addedtwo "reflexions ofapractical...