"Deluded Women" and "Violent Men": Women, Gender and Language in the Hicksite Schism

On a First Day morning in February of 1823, Priscilla Hunt stood up to preach in the Pine Street Meetinghouse of Philadelphia. Aware of the tension between the elders of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and Elias Hicks, she declared that "strife and contention" were contrary to Christianity. "Reason alone," she asserted, would not "any more lead to God than that star which appeared to the wise men would have led them to God." After she had finished, a young man named William Evans rose to refute her sermon, saying, "these are not the doctrines of our religious society, we never professed to the world that reason leads to Christ." After he had spoken, Hunt, in supplication, asked that the "dark veil" spreading over those present would be "rent asunder" so they might see "the light of truth." When Hunt knelt those present immediately stood except for Evans, his father, Jonathan (who was an elder and a member of the powerful Meeting for Sufferings) and one or two others who hesitated; this breach of protocol ended the meeting in "a state of agitation." The Evanses' rude response to Hunt's preaching conveyed their dislike of her quietist theology versus their endorsement of evangelicalism, which had become increasingly popular among American Friends. Notwithstanding these ill feelings, Hunt felt called to preach again; the next day she appeared at the Green Street meetinghouse and clarified her position on reason and revelation: "Do I say reason is the light that leads to heaven? No. I put no more dependence on reason than is due; for reason alone cannot guide a man in the way that is light." Nevertheless, she also stated that anyone "void of reason cannot know Christ." She reminded Friends to attend to the inner monitor that provided self-knowledge: "for until a man do see and know himself, he cannot come to the knowledge of God." Hunt not only advised her fellow travelers to look within for guidance, she prophesied an impending division among Friends. Providing a "searing communication" to the city's Quaker community, she proclaimed that they "had undermined their own habitations." She scolded them for following "forms" of religion without "the eternal word"; like the Romans at Christ's crucifixion, Friends had been haggling over "the fragments" of faith "to the utter neglect of the living eternal substance." Opinion had supplanted piety. She warned them of the dangers of "contentions, divisions and subdivisions," and feared that through the "blind zeal" and "self-will" of some, the "blessed truth and its advocates" would be "judged down."¹

Hunt's vigorous condemnation as well as the indecorous conduct toward her (disapproved by some who attended the First Day meeting), was evidence of the deteriorating relations among American Friends during the 1820s. William Evans' behavior was disconcerting in what it revealed about the fractious situation in the Philadelphia Quaker community: as a youth, he questioned an elder's authority; as a member, he had disrupted the spiritual peace of the meeting; and as a man, he challenged the preaching of a woman.² This last interaction—gender relations among Friends during the Hicksite schism—will be the focus of this paper. Scholars have attributed the origins of the schism to several factors, from class and occupational differences, to the increasing influence of evangelical religion as well as competing notions of religious authority and worldliness among Friends. This range of causes, however, has paid scant attention to gender. To address this gap in the scholarship, I will argue that gender became a significant attribute in how the "Great Separation" unfolded in 1827–1828. Both groups employed gendered behavior and language to defend their position and to castigate their antagonists. Specifically, men used gendered terminology against women of the opposing camp that played into both customary and contemporary concepts of white femininity. Gendered language, therefore, became a primary pivot point in the disorder and confusion known as the Hicksite Schism. A crisis that had been building for nearly ten years, this schism exposed underlying gender conflicts that were representative of...