Women and the Civil War Sects

Female preachers and male wives: Gender and authority in civil war England

“…Rogers accorded women all the privileges of men and was careful not to bar women from church government -"Most men," he writes "do arrogate a sovereignty to this point which I see no warrant for"; yet his position on women seems to have led half his congregation to reject his ministry. 20 Even with such constraints, however, separatist churches nevertheless fostered a visible number of women visionaries, over 300 by Phyllis Mack's count. 21 In addition to encouraging (however reluctantly) women to take on the role of prophet or preacher, the sects also inadvertently helped women to abandon their traditional duties as wives and mothers and to define themselves instead as independent thinkers and preachers by demanding obedience to their church over obedience to their husband.…”

“…In 1658, Jane Adams was rebuked by the Baptist church at Fenstanton when she blamed her failure to attend a meeting on her wifely duty to respect her husband's disapproval of her religious calling; she was told that her desire to be a good wife must not interfere with her desire to be a good Baptist and that she was required to attend church meetings under any condition except forceful physical restraint. 22 In A Dissuasive from the Errours of the Time (1645), Robert Baillie deplores the fact that the followers of the radical spiritist Gorton in New England saw fit to assert that "it is lawful for a woman who sees into the mystery of Christ, in case her husband will not go with her, to leave her husband and follow the Lords House; for the Church of God is a Christian home, where she must dwell. .…”

Modeling the Gender Politics in Science

“…The Seventeenth Century saw the development of the ideal woman as a bourgeoise who was to marry and to stay at home minding the house; while married, she was to own no property. She had no voice in the Church or State (Thomas 1958, 43). Puritan marriage manuals continually reinforced the view that “the man when he loveth should remember his superiority” (Quoted by Thomas 1958, 43) and William Gough, in his popular manual Of Domesticall Duties of 1622 and 1634, flatly declared that “the extent of wive's subjection doth stretch itself very far, even to all things” (Stone 1977, 197).…”

“…And once admitted to the sect women had an equal share in church government. ‘It followeth necessarily', wrote John Robinson, ‘that one faithful man, yea, or woman either, may as truly and effectually loose and bind, both in heaven and earth, as all the ministers in the world”’ (Thomas 1958, 44).…”

Social Change and Psychopathology in the Emotional Climate of Millennial Movements

“…In this sense, a pamphleteer of 1646 asked sarcastically: &dquo;Is it a miracle or wonder to see saucie boyes, bold botching taylors, and other most audacious, illiterate mechanicks to run out of their shops into a pulpit? To see bold, impudent huswifes to take upon them to prate an hour or more; but when I say is the extraordinary spirit poured upon them&dquo; (Barclay, 1876: 157; Thomas, 1967)?…”