THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

that uncritical acceptance of the scriptures could lead an individual to make moral, and
perhaps mortal, errors. Barnard’s views were consistent with Quakers’ peace testimony;
yet, her position implied the Bible was imperfect, a view inconsistent with evangelical
doctrines that emphasized the infallibility of the scriptures. When Barnard arrived in
London in 1800, she was brought before a committee of ministers and elders and ordered
to stop preaching and return home. The official charge against Barnard claimed she
denied the authority of the scriptures though unofficially she was attacked as a deist, an
atheist, and a Unitarian. After her return to the United States, she faced similar questions
by her home meeting. She was again requested to be silent as a minister. Barnard
appealed to the Quarterly Meeting. In the end, Barnard was disowned. 26
Elias Hicks like Barnard emphasized the quietist tradition of the Society of
Friends. Both Hicks and Barnard worried that uncritical devotion to the Scriptures might
lead to beliefs that clashed with essential Quaker witness. This can be seen in Barnard’s
questioning whether God had ordered the Israelites to war. Likewise, this critical
approach to the Scriptures can be seen in Hicks’s views of slavery. In 1811, Hicks wrote
Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendants, and on the Use of the
26 Jones, The Later Periods of Quakerism, I:281-310; Forbush, Elias Hicks, 119-120; Ingle,
Quakers in Conflict, 9-10; Rycenga, “A Greater Awakening,” 34-36; Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of
Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986), 40,
91; Maxey, “New Light on Hannah Barnard,” 61-86. Maxey argues that Barnard’s problems with the
authority of London Yearly Meeting and Hudson Monthly Meeting were the result of Barnard’s “sense of
her own rectitude.” “[I]f the men of the meeting in Hudson thought they had command of the rules of
discipline as they moved against Hannah Barnard,” Maxey notes, “they were promptly instructed
otherwise: she demanded the presentation of formal charges, the reading of the entire record received from
England, the opportunity to make a counter-statement, . . . and fair copies of countless documents.”
Maxey, “New Light on Hannah Barnard,” 66. Jennifer Rycenga succinctly sums up the charges against
Barnard: “she thought too much.” Women like Barnard, she argues, had no vested interest in maintaining
social norms. Thus, when women such as Barnard became involved in social movements, they naturally
questioned “existing social norms and institutions.” Rycenga, “A Greater Awakening,” 35-36.
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