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141 Q Living in the Last Days Women’s Equality and Peace Testimony 5 When asked to step forward and explain Friends practice or theology, Margaret Askew Fell Fox was always willing. Of all the areas where her religious writings have had an impact in her own time and ours, it is her contribution on women and pacifism that continues to generate the most widespread interest. Now it is time to extend an analysis of Fell’s religious corpus to include her efforts toward establishing the spiritual equality of women and the Quaker peace testimony. As already presented, eschatology shaped Margaret Fell’s theology more than any other area of doctrine. This chapter will expand an understanding of the influence her realized eschatology exerted on her theology by a closer consideration of Fell’s positions on women’s ministry and the peace testimony as they relate to her publications, Women’s Speaking Justified and A Declaration and an Information. In these areas, Fell’s realized eschatology was central to her views on the spiritual rights of women and on violence. Those views, which seemed so radical to others in her place and time, retain a similar effect on readers today.1 In the modern context there can be no doubt that Fell’s most influential and well-known publication is her 1666 booklet Women’s Speaking Justified (rev. 1667).2 The modern movement for the equality of women and the development of feminist theory in general has sparked a renewed interest in the foremothers of feminist thought. Margaret Fell has been rediscovered, and her work reprinted and discussed, by scholars interested in the history of women in Christianity, of early modern England, or both.3 These developments are surely welcome, and Fell’s booklet on women and Scripture merits the attention it has received and more. She has a unique place among women of early Quakerism, as might be expected from a woman like Margaret Fell. 142 Margaret Fell and the End of Time However, in most ways, Fell’s ministry and approach were not unlike those of other women of religious significance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe. She was not alone, but stood in a tradition of women prophets and religious authors that began with the Renaissance. The rebirth of classical learning and Christian humanism of the European Renaissance brought with it important opportunities for women in the West. The Christian humanism of the Renaissance was accompanied by a reevaluation of the status and potential of women by many religious scholars. The lay orientation and educational emphasis of this religious humanism also provided opportunities for women to learn, and to become artists, poets, classical scholars, and philosophers in their own right. The movement was, for the most part, limited to women of high social standing, and it took place in the larger context of a patriarchal culture which wanted women to be educated so that they might be better wives and mothers. Still, the Renaissance opened a door that many intelligent and learned women walked through. Their activities would lead society in ways that were quite new compared to the Middle Ages. Two well-known examples of sixteenth-century women who were scholars and important leaders of their people may be found in Elizabeth I of England and Marguerite, Queen of Navarre and sister to the king of France. These women were trained in the classics from a young age by their humanist parents, in keeping with the goals and aspirations of the Renaissance. Some Renaissance scholars—both women and men—began to reexamine the status of women and to accept them as fully human individuals . This development took place against the backdrop of medieval theories in which women were deemed defective in a manner that rendered them less than fully human—that is, less than men. The tensions between the medieval and Renaissance social constructions of women sparked a literary debate throughout Europe, the so-called querelle des femmes. This debate (querelle) about the status of women took place in poetry, plays, and essays written by European humanists, often in Latin or French, during the late Medieval and Renaissance periods.4 Both sides of the debate referred to biblical stories and texts, which is not surprising given that this was a Christian humanism in which the Bible was a normal and normative part of culture.5 Initially the humanist woman scholars of the sixteenth century came from the aristocracy, and were primarily the wives, daughters...

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