In 1776 a 23-year-old woman named Jemima Wilkinson suffered a severe illness, declared her past self dead, and then rebranded as the Public Universal Friend, a genderless messenger of God. In a few short years the Friend preached across the Northeast and attracted a devoted band of followers known as the Society of Universal Friends. A new book called Not Your Founding Father: How a Nonbinary Minister Became America's Most Radical Revolutionary, recounts the Friend’s radical and unprecedented ministry. Historian Nina Sankovitch traces the life of Jemima Wilkinson in colonial Rhode Island through to the Friend’s efforts to establish a community based on principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the challenges and scandals that threatened it.
Sankovitch will speak with author Jennifer Finney Boylan about how the Friend represented the possibilities of the American experiment and their challenges to faith and humanity.