08/03/2023
It's International Women's Day, so I had to post today! Hope you enjoy this, there will be a follow-up life soon.
Back in January 2019 I submitted my MA dissertation on Margaret Fell. I’d written it accidentally, intending on writing a shorter essay, but I had got so interested in her that it ran away with me, and my supervisor suggested I adapt it into my dissertation. I’ll talk about her life another day (soon!) Today, however, I want to write about one of her tracts, Women Speaking Justified. I’m adapting this from part of my dissertation but will hopefully adapt it enough for it to stand alone and not be as distant in style, as well as remove footnotes, etc. I decided that I wanted to post about this today, International Women’s Day, because although it is more than 350 years old, the arguments and the emotion behind them are familiar to us, they are the same arguments we are making today and remind us that we are part of a great heritage.
Women Speaking Justified was published in 1666 while Fell was imprisoned in Lancaster Castle. (My local Castle) This imprisonment was because she would not give her word that she would stop holding Quaker meetings at her home, which was illegal, and then she refused to take the oath of allegiance when it was offered to her. Quakers did not believe in swearing oaths, following the biblical principle of letting “your yes be yes, and your no be no.” This was Fell’s first experience of imprisonment because until his death her husband, a local magistrate, had been able to protect her. During these four years in prison Fell wrote letters and tracts. Women Speaking Justified is her most well-known work, especially outside of Quaker circles, and has earned her a reputation as a proto-feminist. Although other sects also taught spiritual equality, Quakers were the readiest to accept women in ministry, speaking, teaching, preaching, and prophesying. Kunze says it was the first defense of women preachers written by a woman. (Kunze, Margaret Fell, p19) Glines calls the tract “a carefully reasoned discussion of women’s ministry, with reference to the Old and New Testaments [with] answers to possible biblical objections” (Glines, Zeal, p255)
Women Speaking Justified begins by stating that most objections are based on a wrong reading of the Apostle Paul, but that she will start by showing “how God himself hath manifested his will and mind concerning women, and unto women” (Fell in Quaker Writing p95) and then goes on to speak about creation, how God made male and female and made no difference between them, both being made in God’s image. She recognises that division came in at the fall, but she reads the words of Genesis about enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman as prophetic rather than a curse. There is a wonderful passage when Fell says “Let this Word of the Lord, which was from the beginning, stop the Mouths of all that oppose Women's Speaking in the Power of the Lord; for he hath put Enmity between the Woman and the Serpent; and if the Seed of the Woman speak not, the Seed of the Serpent speaks; for God hath put Enmity between the two Seeds; and it is manifest, that those that speak against the Woman and her Seed's Speaking, speak out of the Envy of the old Serpent's Seed.” (Fell, Quaker Writings, p96)
From here Margaret Fell goes on to show how the church is referred to as female and looks at a series of women from the New Testament who spread the gospel or were entrusted with revelation by Jesus. “We see that Jesus owned the Love and Grace that appeared in Women, and did not despise it: and by what is recorded in the Scriptures, he received as much Love, Kindness, Compassion, and tender Dealing towards him from Women, as he did from any others, both in his Life time, and also after they had exercised their Cruelty upon him. (Fell, Quaker Writings, p99) She then speaks of the resurrection, mentioning that the first to carry the news were women. “Mark this, you that despise and oppose the Message of the Lord God that he sends by Women; What had become of the Redemption of the whole Body of Mankind, if they had not cause to believe the Message that the Lord Jesus sent by these Women, of and concerning his Resurrection?” (Fell, Quaker Writings, p100). She also mentions that the men did not immediately believe.
After this Fell looks at women in Acts before turning to the words of Paul regarding women keeping silence. These she deals with in two ways. Firstly, she points out the confusion and contradictions with Paul’s other passages about ministry in the church, about all having something to bring and women covering their heads to pray and prophesy. Bruyneel argues that Fell “assumes that to accept contradiction without any attempt to establish some sort of harmony of Pauline purpose is indicative of some more sinister force at work” (Bruyneel, Margaret Fell, p151) Fell said: “But all this opposing, and gainsaying of Womens Speaking, hath risen out of the Bottomless Pit, and Spirit of Darkness, that hath spoken for these many Hundred Years together in this Night of Apostacy, since the Revelations have ceased and been hid.”( Fell, Quaker Writings, p103) Secondly regarding Paul, Fell argues that his restrictions on women speaking were situational. She says that women who speak at the command of the Spirit, those who are in the light, in freedom may speak, but those who are still under the law, who are not part of the new covenant, who have not received revelation, may not. She presents Paul as speaking to specific situations when he told women to be silent and said that those women, he so commanded were those who were worldly and sinful, not those who have the Spirit of Christ filling them. She refers to Hagar to make this point and then refers to other Old and New Testament women to further her overall point. She finishes with a call to “let this serve to stop that opposing Spirit that would limit the Power and Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whose Spirit is poured upon all Flesh, both Sons and Daughters, now in his Resurrection” (Fell, Quaker Writings, p105)
In this tract, Fell shows her command of the Bible, her ease in using it from beginning to end to prove her argument, and her ability to make a sustained and logical argument. Kunze believes that this “places Fell among the significant seventeenth-century sectarian religious apologists” (Kunze, Margaret Fell, p20) Fell’s call for women’s freedom to speak was limited, it was not for a general equal authority for women in society and church, it was only for those women who were regenerate and specifically led by the Spirit, speaking on spiritual matters. She argued that they had freedom and that it was evil to oppose the Spirit who spoke. Even this limited argument, was radical for its time, and was pioneering. The arguments she presented are ones that were to be taken up by successive generations and are still being made by women today. It can be disheartening to think this conversation has been going on for so long, but let’s remember all those women whose shoulder’s we now stand on and whose work we can build on. This is not a conversation started because of 20th Century feminism, nor one that started in the 17th Century upheavals, but one that has been going on for two thousand years as women have spoken out as the Spirit has led them.
Sources
Bruyneel, Sally. Margaret Fell and the End of Time: The Theology of the Mother of Quakerism. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010.
Fell, Margaret. “Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures.” In Quaker Writings: An Anthology, 1650-1920. ed. Thomas D Hamm. 95-105. London: Penguin, 2010.
Glines, Elisa F. Undaunted Zeal: The Letters of Margaret Fell. Richmond: Friends United Press, 2003.
Kunze, Bonnelyn Young. Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1994.
