‘Subjective Testimonies’: Women Quaker Ministers and Spiritual Authority in England: 1750–1825

It was generally believed by historians that the increasingly formal regulation of belief and practice in the Society of Friends (Quakers) during the eighteenth century led to a decline in the influence and authority exercised by women in the denomination. Recent research has indicated, however, that although women were denied equal status and roles in the Society's new disciplinary bodies, the period also saw them beginning to outnumber men as the principal upholders of charismatic spiritual leadership through the ministry. These conflicting trends suggest that there were tensions and ambiguities within Quaker discourses on the meaning of gender and its implications for the exercise of religious authority. Using the testimonies of religious experience constructed by women ministers, this paper explores those discourses and illuminates the ways in which they were exploited, questioned and transformed by women. It argues that belief in the equal capacity of men and women for divine service was cut across by the conviction that sexual difference played a crucial part in shaping religious experience. Ministering women negotiated and manipulated the relationship between spirituality and femininity, both to understand themselves as instruments of divine power and to challenge the establishment of a male hierarchy in their church.