“Neither Male Nor Female”: Resurrecting Spiritual Genderlessness in the Life of the Public Universal Friend, 1776 - 1819

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: This thesis examines spiritual performances of androgyny in the life of an eighteenth-century preacher named the Public Universal Friend. I argue that the Public Universal Friend’s gender identity has to be understood in analogous terms to their religious beliefs. Gendered in-betweenness reflected the spiritual in-betweenness the Friend embodied as an immortal spirit housed in a mortal body; simultaneously, androgyny visually reinforced their claims to spiritual otherworldliness. From their transformation in 1776, the Friend assumed a gender identity that flowed from their original claim to having been resurrected and reborn as a prophet. In this sense, we can reinterpret the Friend’s gender not as a secular expression of masculinity or femininity, but as a theological practice that expressed the preacher’s immaterial and metaphysical identity. Understanding the Friend in this light allows us to view the eighteenth-century spectrum of gender alongside the religious contexts the Friend existed within: one in which the boundaries between life and death, heaven and hell, mortal world and metaphysical realm were readily collapsed under the banner of God and in the body of the Friend.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 3, 2021

Author	Lindqwister, Elizabeth
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of History
Primary advisor	Gienapp, Jonathan
Advisor	Winterer, Caroline

Related Publication	Lindqwister, Elizabeth Anne. “‘Tabernacle of Flesh’: Traversing and Transcending Death and Gender in the Life of the Public Universal Friend, 1776-1819.” Hoefer Prize Winners Publication, Spring 2021. https://stanford.app.box.com/s/wo0q0wyrac7n4jtv84mv9ur4mztwsldb.
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/hv256sp0892

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Preferred Citation: Lindqwister, Elizabeth. (2021). “'Neither Male Nor Female': Resurrecting Spiritual Genderlessness in the Life of the Public Universal Friend, 1776 - 1819." Undergraduate Honors Thesis. Stanford University. https://purl.stanford.edu/hv256sp0892.

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Department of History, Stanford University

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