Lucretia Mott: Spiritual Warrior for Human Rights

It seems as if a day rarely goes by when I’m not inundated with opinions both inane and profound in a never-ending stream across social media platforms. It can be overwhelming and discouraging, and I often find myself seeking refuge in the pages of old books. There is something very grounding about the experience of sitting down with a book written fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years ago and knowing that these words have lasted. How can I describe the reassurance and even solidarity that I feel when I delve into the voices of the past and find that they wrestled with the same philosophical, theological, and social questions that we face today and see that those questions were answered so powerfully?

It was in one such old book that I came across the fascinating Lucretia Mott. The book where I first heard about her, Lucretia Mott: Gentle Warrior, by Dorothy Sterling,^[1] is a biography that was written for young people. Unfortunately, it is out of print today. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful introduction and overview of Mott and her work, and it inspired me to delve into the author’s primary sources, which are easily accessible in online archives.

In her day, it was said of Lucretia Mott, “There was . . . a power in her calm, deliberate but pitiless logic that seemed to sway the minds of her hearers even against their will.”^[2] In a time when women were often not permitted to speak in public, “she spoke in public because she was conscious of a Power which impelled her to do so,”^[3] and this gift was nurtured and encouraged in the shelter of her faith.

Lucretia was born to a Quaker family in Nantucket in 1793, and from a very early age was said to be high-spirited and stubborn, a quick worker who found it difficult to sit still.^[4] The Religious Society of Friends, or followers of the Quaker faith, believe that all people are capable of directly experiencing God and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit. They teach that “when the Spirit has a message for you to share, you should share it.”^[5] Their founder, George Fox, taught the importance of returning to the roots of Jesus’s teaching around non-violence, simple living, God’s concern for the marginalized, and equal access to God’s Spirit.”^[6] Lucretia Mott’s activism—her work for abolition, women’s rights, and Native American rights—directly resulted from her upbringing and faith. In a time before the term “intersectionality” was coined, she saw how human rights were for all, and she would not be silenced on any front in order to make way for another.^[7] “Every humane movement for the last 40 years has known something of her aid,” the New York Herald wrote in 1872.^[8]

When Lucretia was only a child, her mother mused, “Maybe thou wilt be a preacher someday,” and her prediction came true by the time Lucretia was 28 years old.^[9]  She became an approved minister of the Society of Friends because of her eloquence and persuasiveness and, I believe, because of her prolific reading and a sensitivity to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.^[10] Along with her sense of calling to ministry was a sense of calling to the abolitionist cause—rather, she saw those two callings as inseparable. “This duty was impressed upon me at the time I consecrated myself to that gospel which anoints ‘to preach deliverance to the captive,’ ‘to set at liberty them that are bruised.’”^[11] She taught that there is a big difference between being a pacifist and a passivist, thus laying a strong foundation for peaceful protest and non-violent activism. Her commitment to abolition led to her boycott slave-produced goods, creation of the Female Anti-Slavery Society, and participation in the Underground Railroad.

Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, where the women penned the Declaration of Sentiments following the format of the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness . . .. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman . . . ”^[12] The complaints listed in the Declaration were not only social but also religious and theological. “He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry… He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.”

It is noteworthy that, nearly 200 years later, many of the “sentiments” in this document have been addressed in many parts of the world. In these places, women’s rights to vote or participate in legislation are mostly upheld. Women are not generally deprived of property or kept from education; rights of wages, child custody, and divorce are in many places protected for women. But the “religious degradations”—exclusion from the ministry, and the right to choose one’s role and sphere of influence in the Christian world—are still very much disputed. But Mott called this inequality a perversion of Christianity.  In her Discourse on Women, she taught that a faithful reading of the Scriptures shows that male and female are in an equal position to one another, and hierarchy is a man-made concept:

“‘Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam.’ He gave dominion to both over the lower animals, but not to one over the other . . .. The laws given on Mount Sinai for the government of man and woman were equal, the precepts of Jesus made no distinction. Those who read the Scriptures, and judge for themselves, not resting satisfied with the perverted application of the text, do not find the distinction, that theology and ecclesiastical authorities have made, in the condition of the sexes.”^[13]

Mott goes on in her Discourse to discuss women of the Bible from Miriam to Deborah, Huldah to Anna, Phoebe to Priscilla. She makes the aside, “Phoebe is mentioned as a servant of Christ, and commended as such to the brethren. It is worthy of note, that the word servant, when applied to Tychius, is rendered minister. [When] Women [are] professing godliness, [it] should be translated ‘preaching’.”^[14] In this, she points out the disparities brought about by biased translations.

She also taught mutuality in marriage. It is said that in her later years, she would write her advice for a successful marriage and give a copy to newly married couples. She wrote, “In the true marriage relation the independence of the husband and the wife is equal, their dependence mutual and their obligations reciprocal.”^[15] In her Discourse on Women, she makes the argument that educated and accomplished women will not fail to fulfill their “domestic relations, as the faithful companion of her chosen husband, and the fitting mother of her children. [Rather] because she had a right estimate of her position and her responsibilities [as an equal partner instead of a subordinate], her self-respect will be increased; preserving the dignity of her being, she will not suffer herself to be degraded into a mere dependent.”^[16]

She also condemned the notion that different roles for men and women are necessary for the formation of happy unions. “Minds that can assimilate, spirits that are congenial, attach themselves to each other. It is the union of similar, not opposite affections, which are necessary for the perfection of the marriage bond . . .. The distinctive relations of husband and wife, of father and mother of a family are sacredly preserved, without the assumption of authority on one part, or the promise of obedience on the other.”^[17]

Often, critics of mutuality fling words like “progressive” and “liberal” as labels of derision and a dismissal of the arguments. However, mutuality is neither a departure from historical precedence nor a rejection of biblical scholarship. Rather, when we search the scriptures without bias and look to history, we find that there have always been those who preached the gospel regardless of their sex. As Beth Allison Barr poses in The Making of Biblical Womanhood, “What if our Sunday school and Bible study curriculum correctly reflected Junia as an apostle, Priscilla as a coworker, and women like Hildegard of Bingen as preachers?”^[18] What if we kept digging into the old books to bring forward the voices of those who have been silenced, the writings of those who have been buried? At the very least, it could give us the confidence that we are, indeed, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and encourage us to run the race with perseverance.

[1] Dorothy Sterling, Lucretia Mott: Gentle Warrior. (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1964).

[2] John Greenleaf Whittier, Lucretia Mott, 1793–1880. (Philadelphia: Office of the Journal, 1880), 7.  Accessible via Google Books.

[3] Whittier, Lucretia Mott, 11.

[4] Sterling, Lucretia Mott: Gentle Warrior, 28.

[5] “What Do Quakers Believe?” Quaker Beliefs and Worship. Last Accessed May 3, 2024.  https://quaker.org/

[6] “What Do Quakers Believe?”

[7] Mott was giving a sermon in 1849. When she shifted from speaking about the Quaker faith and the doctrine of original sin to speaking about slavery, “a few persons, irritated by this reference to the question of slavery, left the meeting.” Mott simply carried on: “It is not strange that the allusion to this subject should create some little agitation among you; and while I can but regret it, I stand here on behalf of the suffering and the dumb.” From A Sermon to Medical Students, Delivered by Lucretia Mott at Cherry Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, on First-Day Evening, Second Month 11^th, 1849.  https://archive.org/details/DKC0164/mode/2up. Internet Archive.

[8] Kate Wheeling, What Made Lucretia Mott One of the Fiercest Opponents of Slavery and Sexism: Her Humble Quaker Upbringing Taught Her How to Stand Up for Her Beliefs. Smithsonian Magazine/ July, 2020. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/modesty-isnt-weakness-180975207/

[9] Sterling, Lucretia Mott: Gentle Warrior, 31.

[10] Sterling, Lucretia Mott: Gentle Warrior, 72.

[11] Margaret Hope Bacon, ed.  Lucretia Mott Speaking: Excerpts from the Sermons and Speeches of a Famous Nineteenth Century Quaker Minister and Reformer. (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #234, 1980).  https://quaker.org/legacy/mott/memo-on-self.html 

[12] John Dick, Report of the Woman’s Rights Convention, Held at Seneca Falls, New York, July 19^th and 20^th, Proceedings and Declaration of Sentiments. (Rochester, NY : North Star Office, 1848). https://www.loc.gov/item/rbcmiller001106/.

[13] Lucretia Mott, Discourse on Women, December 17, 1849. Archives of Women’s Political Communication. https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/discourse-on-women-dec-17-1849/

[14] Mott, Discourse on Women.

[15] Sterling, Lucretia Mott: Gentle Warrior, 191.

[16] Mott, Discourse on Women.

[17] Mott, Discourse on Women.

[18] Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Biblical Truth. (Brazos Press, 2021), 214.

Photo by Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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