| | by admin | | posted on 10th May 2025 in Quakers in 100 Objects | | views 203 | |
Margaret Fell's Women's Speaking Justified (1666) is one of the earliest works of feminist theology, defending women's right to speak publicly and preach, grounded entirely in
In 1666, Fell, a founding figure of the Society of Friends, published a small but extraordinary pamphlet titled Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures. Though modest in length, this work stands as one of the earliest and clearest articulations of a Christian feminist theology. Its historical importance is twofold: it defends the spiritual and public voice of women in a time when such defence was rare, and it does so not through modern secular reasoning, but through scripture-a method calculated to confront the theological basis for women's silence in church and society.
Fell wrote at a time when English society, both religious and civil, was overwhelmingly patriarchal. Women were expected to be silent in public, subordinate in the home, and invisible in the pulpit. The prevailing interpretations of Pauline scripture, particularly 1 Corinthians 14:34 ("Let your women keep silence in the churches..."), were used to bar women from preaching, teaching, or exerting spiritual authority. Yet the Quaker movement, radical in its egalitarianism, had already begun to upend this structure. Quaker belief in the Inner Light means that The Spirit speaks directly to all people, regardless of gender, status, or education.
Fell, sometimes called the “Mother of Quakerism,” was uniquely positioned to defend women's ministry. As the wife of Judge Thomas Fell and later of George Fox, the movement’s co-founder, she was both well-educated and deeply immersed in the theology and persecution faced by early Friends. Women’s Speaking Justified was her spirited rejoinder to those who used scripture to silence women.
Fell’s central claim is simple and revolutionary: women may and must speak when the Spirit of God moves them. To argue this, she conducts a thorough examination of the Bible, especially the New Testament, and highlights the many instances in which women were not only allowed, but divinely commissioned, to speak.
She points to Mary Magdalene, the first to witness the resurrected Christ and commissioned by Him to tell the others-a form of apostleship. She references Deborah, a judge and prophetess in Israel. She invokes the words of Joel, quoted by Peter in Acts: “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh… and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” And she engages directly with Paul’s epistles, offering interpretations that contextualise or rebut the passages used to suppress women.
Fell insists that to deny women’s speech is to deny the activity of the Holy Spirit, which “knows no such bounds of male or female, bond or free.” This was a profound assertion in a time when women's words were considered suspect, emotional, and untrustworthy by default.
Though Fell did not use the language of modern feminism, her pamphlet aligns closely with feminist principles. It is a defence of women's agency, their spiritual equality, and their right to participate in shaping religious life and doctrine. Her authority to write and publish it was grounded not in male approval but in divine inspiration and reasoned scripture.
This is what makes Women’s Speaking Justified historically significant: it is not only a defence of women in ministry but a broader challenge to the structures of patriarchal control over women's expression. In this way, it prefigures later feminist theology and women's rights literature. It is one of the first works by a woman in English history to use religious scholarship in defence of women's voice and presence in the public sphere.
Though not widely recognised in mainstream histories of feminism, Women’s Speaking Justified has had a quiet but enduring influence. Among Quakers, it has long been treasured as a foundational text for gender equality. In academic circles, it is now studied as one of the earliest expressions of Christian feminist thought.
Margaret Fell’s work reminds us that the struggle for women’s equality has deep roots, even in times and places where it seemed unthinkable. Her pamphlet stands as a testament to spiritual courage, intellectual rigour, and the enduring power of the spoken word-even, and especially, when spoken by a woman.
