The Evolution of Quaker Exhortations on Women's Ministry in the 1650s

This paper will trace the development of Quaker argumentation over women's ministry as expounded in three Quaker tracts in the 1650s, by Richard Farnworth; Priscilla Cotton and Mary Cole; and George Fox. The first two feature a higher degree of spiritualization of the Apostle Paul's passages on gender and women's ministry, both making the argument that "women" should mean those who are "weak in the spirit," mostly male priests. Fox's tract balances support of women's prophesying with traditional views of women's submission to husbands. This paper considers the role that such differences likely played in the substantial divisions that developed among Quakers in England, most notably between George Fox on the one hand with his traditional views, and that of James Nayler and Martha Simmons on the other hand, as they enacted a Christological sign of Nayler's 1656 entry into Bristol, similar to Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem