Women and Church Governance

In most Protestant denominations around 1800, white women made up the majority of congregants. Yet church leadership of most denominations rested in men’s hands. There were some exceptions, however. In Baptist congregations in New England, women served along with men on church governance committees, deciding on the admission of new members, voting on hiring ministers, and even debating doctrinal points. Quakers, too, had a history of recognizing women’s spiritual talents. Some were accorded the status of minister, capable of leading and speaking in Quaker meetings.

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How did Jefferson attempt to undo the Federalist innovations of earlier administrations?

What was the significance of the Louisiana Purchase for the United States?

Why did Congress declare war on Great Britain in 1812?

How did the civil status of American women and men differ in the early Republic?

Why did partisan conflict increase during the administrations of Monroe and Adams?

Conclusion: How did republican simplicity become complex?

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Between

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1790 and 1820, a small and highly unusual set of women openly engaged in preaching. Most were from Freewill Baptist groups centered in New England and upstate New York. Others came from small Methodist sects, and yet others rejected any formal religious affiliation. Probably fewer than a hundred such women existed, but several dozen traveled beyond their local communities, creating converts and controversy.

The best-known exhorting woman was Jemima Wilkinson, who called herself “the Publick Universal Friend.” After a near-death experience from a high fever, Wilkinson proclaimed her body no longer female or male but the incarnation of the “Spirit of Light.” She dressed in men’s clothes, wore her hair in a masculine style, shunned gender-specific pronouns, and preached openly in Rhode Island and Philadelphia. In the early nineteenth century, Wilkinson established a town called New Jerusalem in western New York with some 250 followers.

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Women and the Church: Jemima Wilkinson
In this early woodcut, Jemima Wilkinson, “the Publick Universal Friend,” wears a clerical collar and body-obscuring robe, in keeping with the claim that the former Jemima was now a person without gender. With hair pulled back tight on the head and curled at the neck in a masculine style of the 1790s, was Wilkinson masculinized, or did the “Universal Friend” truly transcend gender? Rhode Island Historical Society.

The decades from 1790 to the 1820s marked a period of unusual confusion, ferment, and creativity in American religion. New denominations blossomed, new styles of religiosity gripped adherents, and an extensive periodical press devoted to religion popularized all manner of theological and institutional innovations. In such a climate, the age-old tradition of gender subordination came into question here and there among the most radically democratic of the churches. But the presumption of male authority over women was deeply entrenched in American culture. Even denominations that had allowed women to participate in church governance began to pull back, and most churches reinstated patterns of hierarchy along gender lines.