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Evangelism, Feminism and Social Reform: The Quaker Woman Minister and the Holiness Revival Carole D. Spencer* "In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action" (Hammarskjöld 122). Although Dag Hammarskjöld penned these words in the late twentieth century, his dictum would have been heartily embraced by Quaker women transformed by the revival spirit of the nineteenth century. A common presupposition among Quaker theologians and historians is that the influence of the Holiness Revival diluted the original radical insights of early Quakerism, and muted the historic Quaker concern for social reform. ' To be sure, some strands of Quaker revivalism evolved into fundamentalism, privatizing salvation and retreating from social concerns. But not all revivalism took that course. Within the mainstream of Quaker revivalism, the evidence is clear that the quest for personal holiness went hand-in-hand with a vision of a sanctified society. It is my contention that the interection of Orthodox Quakerism with the Holiness Revival, beginning around 1860, unleashed a flood of creativity and energy in Quaker women that had been suppressed by a century of Quietism and a rigid legalism.2 The passive pietism of the eighteenth century that had shaped the selfconcept of Quaker women ministers as merely submissive and lowly instruments was replaced with a dynamic and aggressive spirituality which was soon integrated with social and political activism. In particular , the implicit feminism of seventeenth-century Quakerism was enlarged and reinterpreted. The Quaker Vision ofSexual Equality and the Doctrine of Woman's Separate Sphere One of the dominant cultural myths about women in the nineteenth century was the doctrine of "woman's separate sphere." According to this theory, society was divided into two separate domains: the domestic sphere of home and family, the domain of women; and the public sphere of work and politics, the domain of men (L. Nicholson 43). Quaker women were not generally as bound by the doctrine of separate spheres as women in the dominant culture. They had been nurtured on values and behavioral patterns, and molded by an historical tradition, that differed in at least one respect from those affecting women in other churches. In the area of ministry some of them had personally experienced the freedom to share that same sphere of in- Evangelism, Feminism and Social Reform25 fluence and authority normally reserved for male clergy in other denominations. The Quaker vision of sexual equality was diametrically opposed to the doctrine of separate spheres. After the Civil War, when women became more visible in public life, the concept of woman's separate sphere began to come under attack. Even though women lacked political power and few were trained in a profession or had access to higher education, they discovered that by joining forces and expanding domesticity into the political arena they could exert influence far beyond the narrow confines of home and family. The rise of feminism, or at the very least "proto-feminism," is so pronounced in the latter half of the nineteenth century that it has been described by historians as the apex of the "feminization of American culture."3 Gurneyite Quaker women in the post-bellum period both reflected and shaped this "feminization of culture."4 Even evangelical, revivalist women, as I will show, became outspoken advocates of an egalitarian vision. The position of women in the Society of Friends was visualized as being "side by side" with men. This phrase spoken by Mary W. Thomas at the Richmond Conference in 1887 and echoed by George Gillett, a delegate to Richmond from London Yearly Meeting, clearly denotes a horizontal position of equality and mutuality, not an auxiliary or subordinate one (Proceedings 93, 127, 128). And the principle extended beyond the spiritual realm to include not only preaching and teaching, but also an "equal place" and "equal voice" in "church councils and deliberations." Nor was the "side by side" vision restricted only to the church, but was rather an extension of the Quaker concept of equality , unity, and consensus within marriage: "As in the counsels between a truly united husband and wife, the one advises and suggests probably as often as the other, and nothing is ever done until both are...

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