Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Naomi Baker, "Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
Host: Yana Byers
Guest: Naomi Baker (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Manchester)
Date: November 7, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Naomi Baker, discussing her groundbreaking book Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century. Through insightful conversation with host Yana Byers, Baker explores the extraordinary stories, writings, and legacies of women who challenged the religious, social, and political status quo in 17th-century England. The dialogue dives into the sources, contexts, and the enduring significance of these voices, spotlighting both the radical theological ideas and the personal stories behind them.

Main Themes & Purpose

• Exploration of “radical” 17th-century religious women: their lives, beliefs, writings, and legacies.
• Examination of how religious, social, and political turmoil enabled women to assume public, prophetic, and activist roles.
• Consideration of historical sources, including both supportive and hostile accounts.
• Reflection on the significance of recovering these erased or marginalized voices.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Baker’s Intellectual Trajectory—From “Plain Ugly” to “Voices of Thunder”

Timestamp: 03:03–05:10

• Baker details her early academic work on Quaker women’s writing.

• She describes returning to this passion after research on identity, gender, and the body.

• Manchester’s rich archives of nonconformist writing were pivotal to her research.

  "It feels to me like a return home rather than a departure, because I'm going back to texts I studied many decades ago and now I'm able to revisit them."
  — Naomi Baker [04:40]

2. 17th-Century Context—A Breeding Ground for Radicalism

Timestamp: 05:10–11:51

• Religion and politics were inseparable; the era saw the collapse of traditional authority and censorship (especially in the 1640s).

• Radical Protestant ideas focused on individual conscience and direct relationship with God, encouraging dissent and new movements.

• Apocalyptic anxieties galvanized activism, not fatalism.

• These women acted from a fusion of spiritual and social conviction.

  "Their spiritual conviction is inseparable from a sense of social justice and from a commitment to a wider cause. And so that's what makes them radical."
  — Naomi Baker [10:38]

  "There is a very widespread sense of apocalyptic crisis. ... It did seem as if the sky was falling."
  — Naomi Baker [12:10]

3. The Theology: Direct Divine Inspiration and Individual Conscience

Timestamp: 14:00–17:01

• Radical women believed God spoke directly to them; this made them extremely threatening to authorities.

• This conviction also led to some of the earliest forms of women’s autobiographical writing—stories told not for ego but as testimony.

• Their unmediated claim to spiritual authority justified dissent from any hierarchy, including within their own radical groups.

  "It's very, very hard for anyone to then dismiss your ideas or to shut you down, because that's what you just keep reverting to. Well, it doesn't matter what you think. ... God can speak to whoever he wants to."
  — Naomi Baker [14:18]

4. The Sources—Unearthing Women’s Voices

Timestamp: 18:16–21:12

• Baker notes sources are patchy: some women left only hostile accounts written by critics; others wrote autobiographies, testimonies, or tracts.

• The act of finding and interpreting these traces is complex and often involves reading between the lines of condemnation.

  "...we only have hostile accounts. And of course, that raises all kinds of issues about how much we can trust the accounts. We have to tread very carefully in what we take at face value...But nevertheless, it does give us a glimpse because obviously they wouldn't be so scandalized if nothing had been happening."
  — Naomi Baker [18:49]

5. Profiles—Case Studies of Radical Women

a) Rose Thurgood—Poverty, Faith, and Self-Authorship

Timestamp: 21:12–28:28

• Wrote an unprecedentedly early (1630s) conversion narrative, describing her struggles with poverty and faith.

• Thurgood uses writing as a means of coming to terms with suffering, demonstrating a depth of interiority often denied to early modern women.

  "You don't come across these authentic raw voices very often in 17th-century writing, especially by women and especially from women of this social status. I do think this is a unique document..."
  — Naomi Baker [24:56]

b) Anna Trapnell—Prophet, Political Critic, Ecstatic Visionary

Timestamp: 28:49–34:55

• Trapnell fell into public ecstatic trances, prophesied against Oliver Cromwell, was accused of witchcraft, imprisoned, but remained unbowed.

• Her visionary and sensuous writing situates her within, but also apart from, older traditions of female mysticism.

  "This is a young woman who is taking on the highest figures of the state from this prophetic position, from this apparently weak position of lying in bed and falling into a trance. But there's nothing weak about Anna Chapman..."
  — Naomi Baker [29:27]

• Her notoriety led to demonizing engravings and persistent misrepresentation.

  "...that picture is an example of how she's never been taken on her own terms. She's been mislabeled, she's been misidentified and obviously demonized. So it's time for her to have her own renaissance, I think."
  — Naomi Baker [34:35]

c) Hester Biddle—Quaker, Preacher, Advocate for Social Justice

Timestamp: 36:11–38:54

• Preached and published for decades, despite frequent imprisonment and violence.

• Targeted entire cities in Old Testament–style denunciations, focusing on inequality and hypocrisy.

  "She tends to take aim not at individuals but at whole cities, which makes her seem quite ... like an Old Testament prophet."
  — Naomi Baker [36:43]

d) Catherine Evans & Sarah Cheevers—Imprisonment and Endurance

Timestamp: 38:54–41:36

• Traveled abroad to spread Quaker teachings, arrested by the Roman Inquisition in Malta, endured psychological and physical hardship, and wrote powerful accounts of their ordeal.

  "They're only meant to be stopping off briefly in Malta, but ... they're openly on the streets of Malta preaching the Quaker truth. They're arrested, they're throwing in an Inquisition cell."
  — Naomi Baker [39:25]

e) Anne Wentworth—A Voice Against Domestic Abuse

Timestamp: 41:36–45:09

• Publicly denounced her prominent husband’s abuse in published tracts, despite ostracism and destitution.

  "...she almost dies. She becomes ill and almost dies, and then she recovers. And she believes that God has saved her life so that she can tell the truth."
  — Naomi Baker [42:17]

6. Lasting Significance and Legacy

Timestamp: 45:53–48:24

• Baker underscores the importance of recovering these voices: while later generations and early historians erased their memory, their legacy influenced movements for social justice and women’s rights, providing a throughline to the present.

  "Not just in terms of these particular women that I write... but the radical groups as a whole. They lived and behaved in ways which were totally confronting to ideas of social hierarchy, to ideas of injustice... And I think they have had a legacy inspiring later movements."
  — Naomi Baker [46:34]

7. Next Steps and Ongoing Research

Timestamp: 48:29–49:07

• Baker is continuing with deeper research into specific theological ideas and further exploring women’s interpretations of apocalyptic writing.

Memorable Quotes

• "Religion is not one way of understanding this. Religion needs to be interpreted much more specifically…it's their very strongly held belief which enables them to do that."
  — Naomi Baker [35:24]

• "We need to know more about them because it raises all kinds of questions about our own legacy, our own history, the legacy of our own ideas, and also where our ideas have come from, the inheritance that we have as feminists, as women who want to discover our own voices."
  — Naomi Baker [47:09]

Notable Moments with Timestamps

• [03:28] Baker recounts coming “home” to her initial research interests.
• [10:38] On individuality and conscience fueling radical religious expression.
• [14:18] The threat and power of direct divine inspiration for women.
• [21:12] Mystery and excitement of finding women’s voices in unexpected textual places.
• [24:56] Rawness and modern-seeming selfhood of Rose Thurgood’s account.
• [29:27] Anna Trapnell’s bold confrontation of Cromwell and the public sphere.
• [34:35] Misrepresentation and demonization of radical women.
• [36:43] Biddle as an Old Testament-style prophet for whole cities.
• [42:17] Anne Wentworth’s survival and public stance against domestic abuse.
• [46:34] The lasting impact and legacy of radical women’s voices.

Tone and Style

The conversation is inquisitive, warm, and respectful, balancing genuine scholarly enthusiasm with a commitment to nuance and historical empathy. Baker’s voice is passionate and her arguments are articulated with both academic care and narrative flair, making the stories vivid for listeners far removed from these early modern worlds.

Concluding Thoughts

Naomi Baker’s research is a reclamation of silenced voices—women who, through faith and conviction, transcended the boundaries of their time. Their stories, uncertain as they sometimes remain, continue to resonate, challenging both past and present notions of authority, gender, and agency.

For more, check out Naomi Baker’s Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century (Reaktion Books, 2025).