274 - Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America
Women in Shaker Community and Worship: A Feminist Analysis of the Uses of Religious Symbolism

Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America

By Margaret Hope Bacon

New York, Harper & Row, 1986. 273 Pp. $16.95.

Women in Shaker Community and Worship: A Feminist Analysis of the Uses of Religious Symbolism

By Marjorie Procter-Smith

Lewiston, N.Y., Edwin Mellen, 1985. 253 Pp. $49.95.

Although the Quakers and the Shakers are two distinct movements, they are sometimes confused with each other. The Shakers developed as a celibate American communitarian experiment, largely withdrawn from mainstream society, which believed that the realm of God had already come in their midst, albeit in embryonic form. The Quakers, on the other hand, have always been far more integrated into society, living in biological families, known for their nonviolence, sometimes serving in government and often in reform movements, and thus observably influential.

There is certainly some historical basis for the popular confusion of the two groups, for the Shakers had some early Quaker connections while still in England. However, scholars have rightly treated them as distinct and have not made much of the early connections. But a simultaneous reading of these two books reveals some similarities not usually noted, and this helps explain things previously thought curious and unique to the Shaker experiment. Although comparison of the two groups is not the point of either author (in fact Bacon never mentions the Shakers and Procter-Smith only mentions the Quakers in passing), both authors focus on gender issues, and thus make it possible for a reader of both books to see connections previously overlooked.

Both the Shakers and the Quakers had a sense of the spiritual basis of male/female equality and the divine mandate to work this out in practical terms. And both groups struggled to come to terms with this clear principle in the midst of a cultural context that did not always make the principle's implementation seem so practical or necessary. The Shakers, however, did this within the context of their own community, while the Quakers allowed for both inner focus and direct outward implementation of their principles in society at large.

Bacon mainly deals with the principle of gender equality in Quakerism and details the history of the group as it sometimes nurtured, sometimes ignored, and sometimes fought the women (and men) who helped "mother" feminism into being. Bacon ably demonstrates that Quaker principles of equality, nonviolence, and full participation under

 

275 - Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America
Women in Shaker Community and Worship: A Feminist Analysis of the Uses of Religious Symbolism

girded the earliest history of feminism in America. Many of the first women's rights activists were practicing Quakers or had Quaker upbringings, such as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, the Grimke sisters, and, the pioneer of the Equal Rights Amendment, Alice Paul.

But Bacon shows that Quaker women also provided decisive leadership in other related reform movements, such as the opening to women of higher education, medical schools, the professions, and suffrage. By moving between internal changes in Quakerism and related changes in American society, Bacon carefully documents that Quakers have provided spiritual and practical leadership to gender-related reforms far disproportionate to their actual numbers in society.

The undergirding concern of Women in Shaker Community and Worship is also the principle and implementation of gender equality. But Marjorie Procter-Smith has a different direction for this theme, for she examines evidences of the internal implementation of the principle of gender equality as reflected in the relationship of Shaker community worship and social structure. Because many people are not familiar with the history of Shakerism, Procter-Smith's detailing of Shaker origins is a useful introduction to this study of women in Shaker community and worship. But the main emphasis of the work is on women's roles within Shakerism and Shaker images of women as reflected in liturgical forms.

Just as Bacon shows that Quakers have bad a practical ambivalence toward fully implementing the gender equality principle, Procter-Smith makes clear that women in Shakerism were also in an ambiguous position. Thus, early unstructured worship patterns, in which women took an equal part, gave way later to the separation of the sexes during worship, and the restriction of public address to males. Yet Shaker worship contained much of what is today called "feminine imagery," as well as ample opportunity for women as well as men to share personal testimonies, create songs, and express themselves in dance during worship.

Other comparisons, not usually noted in treatments of either group, can be made between the Quakers and Shakers from these two books. For instance, the Shakers' institution of parallel lines of male and female authority, often treated as a novel procedure, may echo the dual business meetings of the Quakers, although the Shakers went further in giving full authority to the decisions of the "female line." Also similar to certain Quaker practice is the division of Shaker dwelling units into male and female sides, without use of walls or barriers of any kind. Thus Shaker men and women used separate but contiguous staircases, ate on opposite sides of the communal dining room, entered buildings through parallel doorways, and met regularly together for similarly structured socializing. It is intriguing to learn that in early American Quaker coeducational boarding schools a similar set-up seems to have existed in the physical structuring of male and female interaction, as described by Bacon.

 

278 - Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America
Women in Shaker Community and Worship: A Feminist Analysis of the Uses of Religious Symbolism

These books are quite useful in tracing how two groups attempted to implement gender equality and, through this effort, developed a growing commitment to this principle as a central tenet of their faith. But each of these books stands on its own as well. Mothers of Feminism will be of interest to those who value a comprehensive treatment of the key figures and movements related to gender in the history of the Quakers, and its influence on the wider women's movement in America. The book is most useful if used in that way, since it does not treat with any depth the theological principles, major writings, or development of the concept of gender equality in Quakerism.

Procter-Smith's book is necessary reading for any student of Shakerism, especially those interested in a careful treatment of the status of Shaker women as expressed in liturgical forms. But, again, although much more is done with theological development than in Bacon's book, the focus is directed to that which aids the understanding of Shaker worship and its relationship to social structure. Both of these books make important contributions to a historical understanding of the principle of gender equality, and should be helpful to anyone interested in roots and precedents for current changes in the church.

However, there is also need today for constructive theological work to guide the structural and liturgical changes being done to promote gender equality in the church. Thus, more attention must be given to the specifically theological resources from the past that can aid in this constructive work. The Quakers and Shakers, with hundreds of years between them in explicating and implementing the theme of gender equality, are worth examining from theological, as well as liturgical, historical, and structural perspectives.

LINDA A. MERCADANTE

Hopewell, New Jersey