ABSTRACT
Women prophets could face moral harassment and persecution within their own ranks if their understanding of revealed truth was not in line with that of their group leadership. The cases of Susanna Parr, Mary Allein, and Anne Wentworth illustrate precisely how inconvenient women's speech was attacked on personal and moral grounds within a congregation that prided itself on allowing the free-flow of female voices. The Wentworth affair brings home the dynamics between prophetic speech and its actual content. The prophetic message is not simply didactic, or empowering of a new woman and authorial self: it brings to the surface hidden concerns that need to be collectively addressed regardless of any church's position about them. More than any other dissenting group in the past decades, the Quaker emphasis on evangelizing promoted a sense of spiritual community in which prophecy was put at the service of advancing Quaker tenets.
