"Public Universal Friend"
« previous post |
Stephanie Farr, "The nonbinary Revolutionary leader who preached in Philly during the Revolution", The Philadelphia Inquirer 6/5/2025:
Sometimes when I walk the streets of Old City, I imagine the people of colonial times who walked those roads before me, before Philadelphia was Philly and before this nation secured its liberty and identity.
I mostly think about the smells folks had to endure before indoor plumbing, but I also wonder how those men and women traversed the cobblestone streets in their heeled shoes when I look like a wombat in flip-flips doing it in sneakers.
But the Revolutionary War was a revolutionary time, not just for this country, but for individuals who wanted to explore their own identity and the very concept of identity itself.
In celebration of Pride Month, the Museum of the American Revolution is debuting a new walking tour focused on one such individual, a nonbinary religious leader who called themself the Public Universal Friend and preached in Philadelphia during the 1780s.
You can learn more about the Public Universal Friend from their Wikipedia page. Farr's article explains:
Our walking tour started outside the museum at Third and Chestnut Streets, where Bowersox talked about the Friend’s early life, growing up in a large Quaker family in Cumberland, R.I.
“They’re born and named Jemima Wilkinson and they were identified as female at birth,” she said.
For the first 24 years, the Friend lived a pretty average 18th century life, but in 1776, they became ill with a fever (historians think it may have been typhus) and fell into a comatose state for days.
“They’re basically seen to be on the verge of death’s door,” Bowersox said. “Then all of a sudden they’re revived and when they come back to life on their own … they declare themselves basically no longer Jemima Wilkinson, but in fact, the Public Universal Friend.”
The Friend believed they were reborn as a genderless divine spirit whose mission was to preach God’s word — in buildings, churches, or outdoors — and they begin doing so within days of their revelation.
They rejected gendered pronouns and dressed in a long, black ministerial robe with a men’s cravat around their neck. Unlike women of the day, the Friend wore their hair down and often wore a men’s hat, according to Bowersox.
“When they’re asked about who they are and how they dress, they say, ‘I am that I am,’ which is kind of cool,” Bowersox said.
“Like Popeye!” I said.
The Wikipedia article explains that
The name referenced the designation the Society of Friends used for members who traveled from community to community to preach, "Public Friends".
This seems to be the same sense of public as in the idiom "public enemy", which the OED glosses as "An enemy common to a number of nations, a general enemy; a person considered as a threat to the community", and traces back to the 16th century.
But it's not clear to me why it's "Public Universal Friend" rather than "Universal Public Friend".
Y said,
June 7, 2025 @ 4:17 pm
I read it as "universal" in sense 1.d of the OED, "Modifying an agent noun, personal designation, or title, indicating that the role of the person concerned extends over or to all people, nations, etc.", with examples of that era such as "universal Father" (God), or "universal mother" (the Earth); and "public" in the sense of "visible to all, out in the open". "Universal" expresses a more innate and permanent condition, and is therefore closer to the head noun. So, 'openly a friend to all'.
John Swindle said,
June 7, 2025 @ 6:11 pm
I don't see anything wrong with Y's analysis, but if I wrote "Public Universal Friend" five times I might get the order of adjectives wrong a couple of times.
Public Universal Friend's story reminds me of Peace Pilgrim, who discarded her 20th-century worldly identity and spent the rest of her life walking around the USA preaching peace.
It reminds me also of the Bodhisattva Never Disparaging, a figure in the Lotus Sutra who goes around telling everyone he meets that he will never disparage them because he can see that they will in another life become a Buddha. He's scorned as a simpleton and a madman. In a later life he becomes the historical Buddha.
Neither of those two figures is nonbinary, although the original, female, activist Peace Pilgrim was followed after her death by a New-Age-minded man who adopted the name and the pilgrimage, Also, a female previous life of the Buddha is recounted in the Jataka Tales.
J.W. Brewer said,
June 7, 2025 @ 8:23 pm
If "I am that I am" reminds Stephanie Farr of Popeye the Sailor rather than of Exodus 3:14, she is perhaps not as conversant with the historical milieu in which the Public[k] Universal Friend was manifested as would be optimal for someone writing a story on the topic.
J.W. Brewer said,
June 7, 2025 @ 8:27 pm
To myl's query, the sect that followed the P.U.F. was apparently known as the "Universal Friends," or more formally the "Society of Universal Friends" in contrast to the regular-Quaker "Society of Friends." So [Public [Universal Friend]] would plausibly be the right analogy to "Public Friend" among regular Quakers.