The Great Awakening had a lot of impact. Not only did it lay the groundwork for countless American high school students to read _The Scarlet Letter_, but it created a mood of religious dynamism that inspired many to begin their own Christian denominations. Like this person here, the “Publick Universal Friend,” neé Jemima Wilkinson, born in Rhode Island in 1752.
Jemima came from a Quaker background, but in 1776 she almost died from a serious illness. It was probably Typhus, but when they healed, they said that two archangels had come to them in a vision, and that Jemima was dead but resurrected. Now androgynous — refusing gendered pronouns and dressing in clerical flowing robes that looked as asexual as one could get at the time — Jemima now was called the Friend.
And they started their new apocalyptic religion — the Society of Universal Friends. It actually was theologically very similar to the Friend’s Quaker faith. It was against slavery and downplayed the role of ministers. However, it was decidedly more egalitarian in terms of gender roles. The core group of the Friend’s followers were women under 40, and a number of them led their own households. The Friend preached that women should “obey God rather than men,” so maybe it isn’t surprising that females were more attracted. The group even founded a town in western New York called Jerusalem.
Like many messianic splinter dominations of Christianity, the Society of Universal Friends didn’t last long after the Second Coming failed to arrive before the founder’s death in 1819.
Source(s): P 244-245 _Upoity Women if the New World_, Vicki Leon, 2001, Conari Press. Wikipedia
