Sites of Radical Religious Experience

This entry examines key sites of women’s radical religious experiences, documented in English-language texts in the period 1640–1700. It focuses on courtrooms, prison cells, open air streets and marketplaces, rulers’ courts, and spaces of worship both in Britain and abroad, and domestic spaces, especially bedrooms, which were home variously to mystical sex, prayer, and prophecy. It examines a spectrum of radical religious sects in which women were active members and either writers or the sources of texts in other ways, such as prophets whose words were transcribed by others’ hands or women whose striking behaviours were recorded in legal documents. Often broadly called “Nonconformist” because they did not conform to mainstream Anglican religious beliefs and practices, these sects were “radical” in the twin senses of seeking an especially pure and essential form of Protestant Christianity and of engaging in extreme and far-reaching experiences and practices. Sects covered include Baptists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Fifth Monarchists, Puritans, and Behmenists; they frequently intersected with nonconforming political groups too, such as the Levellers. The entry also discusses several women whose extraordinary experiences seem, though resonant with Nonconformist sectarian beliefs, a phenomenon in and of themselves; one example is Mary Gadbury, who believed she had had sex with Christ and borne his child. In doing so it explores how theologies, sites, and genders intertwine in early modern women’s writing.