Not Your Founding Father: How a Nonbinary Minister Became America’s Most Radical Revolutionary

In 1776, 23-year-old Quaker Jemima Wilkinson awoke from a deadly illness transformed into a genderless messenger from God named Universal Friend, also known as Public Universal Friend. In this riveting biography, historian Sankovitch (American Rebels) brings to vivid life the striking minister in “genderless clothing” who preached “repentance through gratitude” and “salvation guaranteed for all” in Rhode Island and eastern Pennsylvania, and later at outposts founded by the Society of the Universal Friend in western New York. The book elegantly embeds Universal Friend’s rise within the tumultuousness of the era, including the destabilizing upheaval of the American Revolution that led many to connect with the minister’s message of “Unity and Fellowship”; the concurrent explosion of other new religious movements building separatist communities, such as the more working-class Shakers; and the chaos of “conflicting claims of land speculators” during post-Revolution western expansion. The latter became a source of significant internal strife within the Society as several members, almost entirely men, undermined the group’s property claims and betrayed Universal Friend, accusing the minister of blasphemy. Most astute is Sankovitch’s argument that Universal Friend better achieved the ideals of the Revolution than many male contemporaries, establishing a community in which women were “unrestricted” and African Americans were “integral and welcome.” It’s a transfixing look at a remarkable leader whose belief in “the equality of all souls” still resonates. (Jan.)