The 18th Century Near-Death Experience of the Nonbinary Public Universal Friend
A near-death experience leads to the realization of a nonbinary gender identity, almost 250 years ago.
One of the well-known hallmarks of near-death experiences is their transformative after-effects on those who have them. So pronounced are these transformations that some argue that should be considered evidence that the experience is genuine. The argument is essentially that if NDEs were merely hallucinations, why would they lead to such powerful transformations? The “fruits” (a term used by William James) of NDEs and other religious experiences are typically qualities such as loss of the fear of death, less materialistic values, a greater spiritual awareness, and a desire to help others.
In the present case, a near-death experience led to the realization of a nonbinary gender identity, nearly 250 years before widespread awareness of this gender category in Western countries. In addition, as readers of my books know, there are various examples around the world of new religious movements that were founded on the basis of an NDE – and that’s also a characteristic of this case. Claims of gaining new “paranormal” abilities such as healing and precognition after an NDE are also well-known, and both feature in this account.
The Public Universal Friend (sometimes called the Universal Friend of Mankind, or simply the Friend) was born into a Quaker family in Rhode Island in 1752, and given the name Jemima Wilkinson. They (to use current correct pronouns) were a well-read child with a keen interest in religion and spirituality. From an early age, they had memorized long passages from Quaker texts and from the Bible. In their 20s, they became interested in the New Light form of Baptism, which ultimately led to them being thrown out of the Society of Friends.
In 1776, at the age of sixteen, the Friend grew ill with typhus and was allegedly unconscious for a number of days. When the fever broke, they revived and told of their near-death experience. Rare for any historical NDE, we have the Friend’s own first-person account of this “truly interesting and great event.” Their version of events survives in this handwritten note, discovered after their death, slipped into their Bible. Significantly, they refer to the identity associated with their birth name (or "deadname") in the third-person:
A certain young woman, known by the name of Jemima Wilkinson was seized with this mortal disease. And on the 2nd day of her illness, was rendered almost incapable of helping herself. And the fever continuing to increase until the fifth day of the week about midnight, she appeared to meet the Shock of Death; which [illegible; freed?] the soul.
The heavens were opened and she saw, too, Archangels descending from the east, with golden crowns upon their heads, clothed in long white robes, down to the feet; bringing a sealed pardon from the living God; and putting their trumpets to their mouth, proclaimed saying, “Room, room, room, in the many mansions of eternal glory for thee and for everyone,” [and] that there is one more call for, that the eleventh hour is not yet past with them, and the day of grace is not yet over with them. For every one that will come, may come, and partake of the waters of life freely, which is offered to sinners without money, and without price.
And the Angels said, “The time is at hand, when God will lift up his hand, a second time, to recover the remnant of his people, whose day is not yet over”; and the Angels said the spirit of Life from God had descended to earth, to warn a lost and guilty, perishing dying world, to flee from the wrath which is to come; and to give an invitation to the lost sheep of the house of Israel to come home; and was waiting to assume the body which God had prepared, for the spirit to dwell in....
And then taking her leave of the family between the hour of nine and ten in the morning, dropped the dying flesh and yielded up the ghost. And according to the declaration of the Angels, the spirit took full possession of the body it now animates.
The earliest published account, just eight years after the event, seems to be that of Hannah Adams, a self-taught student of comparative religions. This is how Adams summarized the NDE of the Public Universal Friend, while also giving details about their new spiritual status and the new religious movement:
She was taken sick, and actually died, and her soul went to Heaven, where it still continues. Soon after, her body was reanimated with the spirit and power of Christ, upon which she set up as a public teacher; and declared she had an immediate revelation for all she delivered, and was arrived to a state of absolute perfection. It is also said, she pretended to foretell future events, to discern the secrets of the heart, and to have the power of healing diseases: and if any person, who had made application to her, was not healed, she attributed it to his want of faith.
She asserted that those who refused to believe these exalted things concerning her, will be in the state of the unbelieving Jews, who rejected the counsel of God against themselves; and she told her hearers, that was the eleventh hour, and that the last call of mercy that ever should be granted them: for she heard an inquiry in Heaven, saying, “Who will go and preach to a dying world?” or words to that import: and she said she answered, “Here am I, send me"; and that she left the realms of light and glory, and the company of the Heavenly host, who are continually praising and worshiping God, in order to descend upon earth, and pass through many sufferings and trials for the happiness of mankind. She assumed the title of the Universal Friend of Mankind; hence her followers distinguish themselves by the name of Friends.
What is meant by the statement that her soul “still continues” in Heaven seems puzzling, though it confirms what the Friend had also written. A slightly later account also asserts that “she died, and when about to be buried, she was again quickened by a power from above, but not by her own soul, which, she says, is yet in Heaven.” According to David Hudson’s 1821 biography, the Universal Friend further claimed that “the body of Jemima Wilkinson had been dead, that her soul was then in heaven, and that the tabernacle which Jemima had left behind was re-animated by the power and spirit of Jesus Christ — that this was the second coming of the Lord.” They further claimed that they were immortal, and would “reign on earth for a thousand years.”
Yet more details of this remarkable case are given in an 1804 book entitled, Eccentric Biography, or Memoirs of Remarkable Female Characters, Ancient and Modem. This source is not mentioned in biographies of the Friend, perhaps due to its generally negative tone and sensational, largely unsubstantiated accusations.
In the course of a long and dangerous illness, she was suddenly seized with a lethargy, so that to her friends she appeared as really dead. She continued several hours in this situation; and preparations were actually making for her interment, when she suddenly started up, and called for her clothes, declaring “that she had risen from the dead, and that she had cast off all her material substance, and retained only the spiritual.” She went accordingly to the next [Quaker] meeting, and as if with the authority of some celestial being, spoke there as one inspired, and gained some followers. She soon made some proselytes, and at the same time drew upon herself the displeasure of all who adhered to the old forms of the religion of the Quakers.
The anonymous author goes on to recount how the Friend and 30 families of followers bought 6,000 acres of land near Lake Seneca in the state of New York, forming a religious commune which they called Jerusalem.
These narratives reveal how NDE accounts can be elaborated by successive authors in order to make them more dramatic and compelling stories. Most prominent here is the claim that the Friend was temporarily dead—which, of course, is a crucial question when evaluating any allegedly "near-death" account. In their own account, the Friend unambiguously claimed that they had died. The testimony of the attending doctor, however, suggests otherwise. On the one hand, he confirmed that “she rose with different ideas than what she had” before the fever had reached their brain—namely, "she conceived the idea that she had been dead and was raised up for extraordinary purposes, and got well fast.” However, “none of her friends or attendants had any apprehension or thought of her having been dead, but she was for some time after considered by her friends not to be in her right mind.”
While we wouldn’t attributed a feverish visionary experience to mental illness, the fact that no one but the Friend thought they had actually died is certainly worth considering. The Friend’s own brother, Jeremiah, said that she had not even been in a trance state let alone temporarily dead, that her illness was brief and she quickly recovered. While he may have been motivated by his Quaker allegiances to discredit his sister's claim of a direct encounter with the divine, the historian Herbert Wisbey wrote in his important 1964 biography of the Friend that testimonies from those close to the Friend contradict their claim that they were dead or even “in a deathlike state.” As he summarized:
It is clear from these accounts of her illness by people who were actually present that the various stories of her “death,” describing cataleptic or comatose periods of unconsciousness, ranging in length from as little as half an hour to as long as three days—the latter an obvious comparison to Christ—are fabrications. They are folk tales that many repeated and a few believed even while Jemima Wilkinson was alive. Her own account of her “fatal fever” shows that she herself believed that she had actually died and that the visions she experienced in the delirium of the fever were genuine revelations of the will of God.
Needless to say, statements “that she was actually placed in a coffin as dead and arose, dramatically, as she was about to be buried” lack any first-hand testimony or even attribution of a source. Not even the Friend made such a claim.
A person's self-understanding of an extraordinary experience deserves to be taken seriously, and there is nothing to suggest that the Friend was lying about their belief that they had died and returned. And yet, these factors are import in the study of historical and cross-cultural NDEs. In my work on NDEs in indigenous societies, I accept an account as an NDE based not on its internal features (out-of-body experience, other realms, deceased relatives, being of light etc.) but on context: if within their own cultural context the person was believed to have died, had conscious experiences during their “death,” and then revived, it should be considered an NDE. What, then, are we to make of an account such as that of the Public Universal Friend, who was apparently the only one to believe they had died (not counting their later religious followers who merely took their word for it)? At the same time, the account does indeed feature many of the elements of what are generally considered to be "typical" of NDEs.
It's also interesting that many of the early accounts make no mention of the Friend’s affirmation of a new gender identity. The first hint of such a change appears in the 1804 book, which states that for devotees, “she passes as a prophetess, an indescribable being; she is not Jemima Wilkinson, but a spirit of a peculiar name, which remains a profound secret to all, who are not true believers.” Witnesses remarked on the Friend’s “masculine” appearance, and their transformation of mannerisms and attitude. They also commented on their newfound “arrogance and obstinacy,” an “intimidating” way of speaking, “the firmness of her voice, the inflexibility of her countenance, and the steady and intense stare from her keen eye.” In their last will and testament, the Friend specified that prior to their NDE, they had been “called Jemima Wilkinson, and ever since that time the Universal Friend, a new name which the mouth of the Lord hath named.”
Reminiscent of the musician Prince, who changed his name to a symbol incorporating bioth male and female elements, the Public Universal Friend also adopted a personal symbol to express their new identity:
Whatever its merits, this case may also challenge stereotypes about the transformative effects of NDEs being unambiguously positive (if indeed the Friend had a NDE at all, as opposed to a visionary experience not near-death). Firstly, the religious movement founded by the Universal Friend has an antisemitic dimension in holding up Jews as a negative example of what people will face if they choose not to accept their revelations. While this was, of course, a common belief among Christians of the times, it does not reflect the notion that NDErs achieve spiritual enlightenment. One would think that such a divine transformation would entail a transcendence of divisive religious hierarchical thinking (this problem was also discussed in an earlier post on the alleged NDE of William Dudley Pelley, known as “America’s Hitler” in the 1930s.)
There are a number of further disturbing elements to the Friend's religious movement indicative of coercive, toxic theology. The first is the tactic of blaming followers’ lack of faith for the Friend’s own failures to manifest promised miracles. Another is the Friend’s claim of infallibility in declaring themselves to have achieved “a state of absolute perfection,” which is ironic in light of their alleged errors and false promises. Still another is the claim that the Friend was bestowing “the last call of mercy” upon people at the behest of God. Typical of religious threats made on behalf of divinities, if people failed to heed this call, they would be lost – in this case, like the Jews. This claim is but one of a number of failed prophecies made by the Universal Friend. In fact, failed revelations that derive from NDEs are also a known cross-cultural phenomenon, as discussed in my book, The Next World.
The anonymous author of the Eccentric Biography book cited above made even more damning claims:
Whatever does not belong to her own sect, is with her an object of distaste and steadfast aversion. She sows dissentions in families, to deprive the lawful heir of his right of inheritance, in order to appropriate it to herself.
The author further commented on the Friend’s “hypocrisy” in preaching the virtues of not owning possessions while living a luxurious lifestyle, with devotees acting as servants and workers. Worst of all, the Friend allegedly attempted to convince children “to leave their parents, and form a part of her community.”
There are further suggestions of manipulativeness, trickery, and deception, including being exposed during a failed attempt to orchestrate a fake resurrection with an accomplice – a living man who hid in a coffin, awaiting the Friend's signal. Another anecdote claimed that the Friend staged an elaborate demonstration of walking on water, then blamed their followers' lack of faith for their failure. The author concludes,
all those particulars so strongly militate against the doctrine of peace and universal love, which she is incessantly preaching, that we were all actually struck with abhorrence at her duplicity and hypocrisy.
We cannot know for certain the degree to which this author and others were making such claims solely out of religious or some other bias. Hudson’s biography is notoriously inaccurate and he was known to have ulterior motives due to his involvement in a legal case against the Friend’s estate. At the same time, nor can we simply accept the more glowing testimonials of the Friend’s followers – especially in light of the inconsistencies surrounding claims of their temporary death.
It’s interesting to see the varying ways writers have approached this account over the years. As with most historical NDEs, it is unsurprisingly absent from the literature of near-death studies, and the biographies and histories do not frame the experience in such terms. As for the gender issue, until recent times, authors invariably used she/her. The most recent scholarly biography, however, used he/him. Neither form would likely have been seen as appropriate to the Friend, and neither are justifiable based on their self-perceived gender identity.
In addition, while many of the early sources are highly critical to the point of dubiousness (including, even, attempted murder!), the recent ones tend read like religious apologetics. Paul Moyer, in his 2015 book The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America, uncritically refers to the Friend's "transformation into a servant of heaven." He dismisses the negative claims about them in earlier sources as unreliable, though he does not provide specific justifications – particularly in light of the more balanced assessments in Wisbey’s work, which was nevertheless sympathetic). Moyer points out that neither the Friend nor their followers rebutted the accusations, but accepts their explanation that “actions spoke louder than words and that they should simply follow the path of righteousness instead of engaging in verbal duels with detractors.” Somewhat surprisingly, he also states that whether the Friend was a charlatan or not “is largely irrelevant” to his biography and he thus doesn’t explore the issue in any depth.
Blog posts routinely present the Friend as a pioneering trans religious leader, neglecting to discuss both their NDE and the more problematic facts of the case. One museum website actually changed the pronouns to “they/them” when quoting the historical documents. This is revisionist history. Putting today’s accepted nonbinary pronouns into the mouths of people from the past is not only a distortion of the historical record, it also portrays people in the past as being more accepting and understanding of gender diversity than they actually were. Conversely, whitewashing the case is a disservice to the Friend, casting them as a one-dimensional hero rather than a complex human being facing religious- and gender-based hostility in an intolerant world.
Whatever the case, the NDE of the enigmatic Public Universal Friend had an obviously profound impact on their life. As well as being spiritually transformative, it was a catalyst for their realization of their nonbinary identity, and for "coming out" to the public as such. It is also yet another example of cross-cultural and historical patterns alongside uniqueness and diversity – both of the experience itself and how it is received in the surround social and cultural environment.
Special thanks to costume historian and designer Valerie Marcus Ramshur, who discovered this account and brought it to my attention.
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Sources:
Adams, H. (1801) View of Religions. Excerpt reprinted in Hudson (1821) Appendix I.
Anon. (1804) Eccentric Biography, or Memoirs of Remarkable Female Characters, Ancient and Modem. Excerpt reprinted in Hudson (1821) Appendix II.
Hudson, D. (1821)History of Jemima Wilkinson, A Preacheress of the 18th Century. Geneva, Ontario: Hull.
Moyer, P.B. (2015) The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Universal Friend (n.d., ?1776) “A Memorandum of the introduction of that fatal Fever…” handwritten note, reprinted in Moyer 2015.
Wisbey, H.A. (1964) Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
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