Quaker Studies

The message of peace and nonviolence was believed in the early church until the claim of Constantine's vision was endorsed by Eusebius and Lactantius. Scriptures and quotes from early church writers are reviewed, and thought questions challenge the reader.

Welsh and Northwest English Quakers organized their settlement in the Delaware Valley to promote the spiritual development of their children and thereby built a rich agricultural economy that discouraged slavery locally while promoting it in the Atlantic World.

Helen's presentation is prompted both by her experience in James Turrell's work and his teasing remark: "This idea of going inside to gain outlook is of course this idea that there is in meditation.  And certainly the Quakers were involved in that.  And for them it was going inside to greet the Light.  That's what my grandmother would always say to me, and I'm still sort of finding out what that really means."

She will explain what Quakers mean by 'Light' and explore the links between that Quaker meaning (of Light) and James Turrell's work (with light).  She will describe the basis of Quaker worship and the nature of Quaker experience and, with particular reference to Kjaer (2008) and Adcock (1990), highlight Quaker inferences in his sculptures.  Helen will also discuss the experience of being in Turrell's pieces, concluding how they both evoke Quaker practice and invoke Quaker experience.

This essay reappraises the origins of French Quakerism based on new archival research conducted on both sides of the Channel. It identifies 34 Quaker missionaries in 17th- and early 18C France, sheds new light on the French reception of Quakerism and suggests possible connections with non-violent, charismatic movements in Languedoc.

This eloquent minute (around which most of the discussion in annual sessions in Wilmington Yearly Meeting was based) was approved on January 15, 2017, in a small rural Friends' church in New Vienna, Ohio. It was in response to a longstanding disagreement in that yearly meeting over a familiar range of issues including same-gender marriage, Biblical authority, and yearly meeting authority. Details will be found below about those, but, for the moment, let's focus on the Fairview Minute.

This essay argues that the center of Quaker Faith and Practice is the immediacy of Christ; connected to the center are convictions regarding authentic worship, universal ministry, incarnational sacramentology, nonviolent peacemaking, consensus decision making and a witness to simplicity.

Her picture is on the five-pound British note. She brought about prison reform in Britain, which spread to civilized nations in Europe and beyond. Her school of nursing inspired and supported the work of Florence Nightingale. She was the first woman to address Parliament and did so several times. She was visited in her prison-reform work by kings and queens of Denmark and Prussia. She was a recorded Friends minister who provided Bibles for people, established multiple organizations for social reform, challenged the death penalty and slavery, and who was sponsored by Queen Victoria. Referred to as "the Angel of the Prisons," her name was Elizabeth Fry-a noteworthy Friend, indeed!

This 40-day invitation to a transformative reading of a biblical text puts into play what I call "The 5 Rs of Transformative Bible Reading—Read, Reflect, Respond, Remember, Record". Especially meaningful during Lent, but a worthy exercise any time of the year.

First published in 1982 by Barclay Press, the Meet the Friends Series has been a leading introduction to the Quaker movement. The third edition (2011, Newberg, OR: Barclay Press) makes a correction or two and illumines the complexion of Friends around the world, in addition to clarifying the difference between Christian Testimonies Friends have upheld and their distinctive expressions.

In a time when ‘if one was born a male, one became a soldier’, what does it mean to be a man who refuses to fight? This article uses Connell’s framework of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ to locate conscientious objectors’ male identities as a suppressed, subaltern manliness that deviated from the dominant norm of martial masculinity. It argues that despite rejecting many aspects of this norm, objectors nonetheless articulated their counter-hegemonic struggle in starkly militarised language, presenting themselves as heroes sacrificing their lives for the greater good. It suggests that in order to understand, rather than merely judge, this strategy, it is important to see masculinity not as a completely discrete field of struggle, but as one of many mutually constitutive structuring principles underpinning a social order that is arranged not merely along patriarchal lines, but along lines of nation and class. In turn, these other principles impose limits on the nature of and possibilities for counter-hegemonic struggle.

This chapter explores the oral prophetic culture of several French Protestant movements that emerged in south-eastern France in the aftermath of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. While Huguenots largely dismissed beliefs in prophecy and miracles as “superstitious” and “popish”, intensifying persecution in the 1680s led many to believe that they were living in the end times. Charismatic lay preachers replaced their pastors who had fled abroad and several generations of prophets survived underground in the remote mountains of Languedoc and Dauphiné over the eighteenth century. Their predictions of the relief of the ‘True’ --Protestant-- Church and the fall of Rome circulated in manuscript form and some were even published abroad. This chapter therefore sheds lights on the oral prophetic culture of the clandestine Huguenot community, starting with Isabeau Vincent and the “petits prophètes” of Dauphiné, whose prophecies circulated as far as New England; the French Quaker Daniel Raoux; the Camisards in the Cévennes; Isaac Elzière and the New Zionists; and the Huguenot minister Paul Rabaut. Considering these against the backdrop of other prophetic movements, it argues that the French eighteenth century was prophetic.

In this paper I will compare and contrast two significant Friends ministries that attempted to “tell the secret of Quakerism” to people of African descent in the United States. The Southland Institute in Helena, Arkansas, considered “the largest development of Negro Quakerism” in the first part of the 20th century, began as an orphanage for African-Americans near the end of the Civil War, and developed into a school and monthly meeting that lasted into the 1920s. The Chicago Fellowship of Friends was a Friends church with a majority African-American membership that ministered in one of Chicago's most notorious public housing projects for close to twenty-five years, until it was laid down in 2005.

The heart of Turrell’s work is the Roden Crater, out in Arizona. François Jonquet met the artist at his ranch, in the Painted Desert, and visited the Crater, this work which he is constantly sculpting and developing. He reports on this vertiginous experience

In 1903 Hannah Whitall Smith, a free-spirited product of Orthodox Quakerism” in the 19th century, proudly admitted in her spiritual autobiography:
“I have always rather enjoyed being considered a heretic, and have never wanted to be endorsed by any one. I have felt that to be endorsed was to be bound, and that it was better, for me at least, to be a free lance, with no hindrances to my absolute mental and spiritual freedom.”  This paper will examine the sources and nature of her feminism, mysticism, and universalism, her multiple and contrasting identities, and how she integrated all into her new understanding of Quakerism just as it was opening into the modern world of culture, politics, and the new science of evolution and psychology.

From autumn 2015, Drs Rebecca Wynter and Sian Roberts, on behalf of Central England Quakers and the University of Birmingham’s School of Education, ran a collaborative project to research Quaker experiences of the First World War and its legacy. 'Quakers & the First World War: Lives & Legacies' worked with a group of volunteers to co-produce four booklets; 'The Friends' War Victims' Relief Committee' is one of the four. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Voices of War and Peace First World War Engagement Centre, the project built on the research undertaken for the exhibition Faith & Action: Quakers & the First World War held at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (January-June 2015).

This essay played a significant role in my directing of two Lilly grants on discernment-oriented leadership across 9 different Christian traditions. A Quaker approach to discerning how God speaks includes Scripture, history and tradition, critical analysis and scientific inquiry, personal openings, and corporate discernment. Reference: Quaker Religious Thought #106 (2006): 26-47.

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This thesis is a geographic and temporal case study of the carpentry and joinery trades present in the Delaware River Valley region from the period of Anglo-European settlements in the 1660s to about 1740. This examination of the region’s craft traditions emphasizes what its colonies share: patterns of settlement, ethnicity, kinship, religion, material richness, and commercial interdependence.

This study closely examined the construction of and materials used in case furniture produced in New Jersey or Pennsylvania individually, or in the larger Delaware River Valley region as a whole, revealing the persistence of Anglo-European craft traditions in colonial America, and a relative stasis in internal casework construction as a result of the apprenticeship system.
The similarity of construction and material found in these objects indicates the shared cultural expectations of craftsmen and their patrons, illustrative of the craft tradition of the Delaware Valley Region, not of any one colony.  It also speaks to the significant role of New Jersey's timber in intercolonial commerce. This further suggests that extant furniture defined as made within Philadelphia or Pennsylvania without any further details of maker and place of manufacture could have been produced anywhere in the Delaware River Valley, including New Jersey, Chester County, and the Lower Counties (Delaware). In addition to case studies examining furniture of this region, this study identifies over two hundred and fifty members of New Jersey’s woodworking trades who utilized the colony's material wealth and interpersonal resources for individual success.

The definition of "theocracy" has perplexed scholars for many centuries.  Some argue that theocracy exists only when religious leaders are also the actual, official political leaders and, as such, impose their particular theological views on the populace at large.  This essay argues that effective control of a polity by religious leaders and their theology is dispositive, regardless of the governmental organization that exists on paper.  For example, Roger Williams pointed out that in many theocracies (including that of seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay) "the Magistrate is but the Ministers Cane through which the Clergy speaks . . . ."  "The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody" (London, 1652), 131.  The present essay was incorporated, with some additions and revisions, into Appendix B of Alan E. Johnson's book "The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience" (http://www.amazon.com/First-American-Founder-Williams-Conscience/dp/1511823712/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436397728&sr=1-1).  For a summary of some of the points in this book, see the author's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOlUZaehYk7WmwW8v9oBMzQ) about Roger Williams, including an interview (https://youtu.be/mGRl5lIbdYY) with the author about this book.

Note:  The sentence and citation on page 5, n.1, in this article referring to John M. Barry's book on Roger Williams should be qualified by Barry's remarks elsewhere in his book:  "Technically, the Bay was not a theocracy. Consistent with the admonition to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, and to God those which were God’s, the plantation prohibited a minister or church officer from simultaneously holding a government office. (For this reason some historians have argued that Puritan Massachusetts actually advanced the concept of separation of church and state.) But if not a theocracy, Massachusetts was theocentric."  Barry, Roger Williams, 169.  As discussed in this article, I disagree with the position that Massachusetts Bay was not a theocracy.

During the American Revolution, Quakers were divided over the idea of going to war with Britain. Despite their adherence to a singular doctrine, many Quakers opposed fighting, while others were eager to join the war effort. In this paper, I will examine the contrasting sides of Quaker beliefs regarding their attitudes toward the American Revolution: both their willingness to fight as well as their view of the American cause. I will first analyze those Quakers who were unwilling to fight in the war and consider their reasons for not fighting.

THE STYLE OF QUAKER CONSUMPTION IN BRITISH COLONIAL NEW JERSEY: The Link between Religious Beliefs and Values and the Archaeological Record of The Society of Friends Michael L. Young This research focuses on the role of beliefs and values at domestic Quaker sites in British Colonial North America and their transformations through time. Evidence is drawn from building techniques, ceramic and glass tablewares, foodways as manifest through storage/preparation vessels and faunal remains, alcohol and tobacco-related objects, and materials related to dress and personal adornment. The aim of this research is to make substantial contributions to the study of Quakers, to the study of the influence of beliefs and values in colonial situations and past cultural traditions in general, and to the study of the rise and spread of eighteenth-century consumerism associated with the Industrial Revolution. Beliefs and values possess material manifestations. To link the material archaeological evidence to cultural ideals, this proposed research focuses on behavior which may be documented in the archaeological record. The full potential of the archaeological contribution to issues surrounding the varying degree of adherence to Quaker beliefs and values may be realized through consideration of all available types of material culture. An analytical focus on the style of consumption and technology is considered essential for the study of tenets, beliefs, and values in the archaeological record. The revival of archaeological theories of style is advocated as the primary means archaeologists have available to study the manifestation of beliefs, values, and the underlying ethos through variation in material culture. The revival of an archaeological focus on style enables a more full realization of the goals of social archaeology and the consideration of the significance of a research project at the higher scales of relevance: the scale of issues of importance in history and the social sciences in general, and the scale of the contribution research may render towards developing solutions to contemporary social problems. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The assistance of many people has rendered this work possible. I extend thanks to Sarah Tarlow at the University of Leicester School of Archaeology and Ancient History, and to Audrey Horning, formerly at the University of Leicester and currently Head of the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology at Queen's University Belfast. This work has benefited greatly from their insightful comments and advice. I would like to thank internal examiner Lin Foxhall, Head of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, and external examiner Richard Veit, Chair of the Department of History and Anthropology at the University of Monmouth, for their detailed comments and discussion during the viva voce examination. Thanks are also extended to David Edwards and Craig Cipolla at the University of Leicester for helpful comments. I am also thankful to the University of Leicester for the College of Arts, Humanities and Law Scholarship for International Students which helped make this work possible.

This essay outlines the history of Quakers' receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. It will be published in Quakers and the Future of Peacemaking, edited by Alonzo Valentine, Quakers and the Disciplines 8 (Friends Association for Higher Education, Full Media Services) 2022.

This thesis brings the fields of Christian theologies of atonement and reconciliation and Liberal Quaker theology into dialogue, and lays the foundation for developing an original Liberal Quaker reconciliation theology. This dialogue focuses specifically on the metaphorical language employed to describe the relationship of interdependence between humans and God, which both traditions hold as integral to their conceptions of human and divine existence. Towards this pursuit, I provide an outline of the forms of reconciliation and Liberal Quaker theology used for the dialogue. This includes two main elements: a definition of the core concepts of each theology, including the main structural elements; and, a model of the human and their relationship with other humans, including the human person's relationship with God and the ways which these relationships are both broken and healed. This is necessary as Liberal Quaker theology is a diverse tradition, with numerous perspectives on the major concepts and how they are expressed and interpreted. This unique approach develops an original model of reconciliatory interdependence between humans and God that is rooted in both Christological and Universalist Liberal Quaker metaphorical and theological categories and utilises the Liberal Quaker language of God as interdependent Light towards a new theology. Dedication This thesis is dedicated to Megan, my spouse, my bulwark, my best friend.

This thesis examines the work of British and American Quakers in the Spanish Civil War and its immediate aftermath. The focus is on the relief effort and the relief workers who operated in the field, but it also looks at the development of the Friends' Peace Testimony as it emerged into the modern world of civil wars and humanitarian aspirations. After looking at the general history of Quaker attitudes to peace and at the 8 Dedicated to Alfred Jacob, without whom this thesis could not exist

Neotestamentica 41:1 (2007): 6-41. This essay builds on the works of Harnack, Barrett, Kaesemann and others in exploring the Johannine-Matthean dialectic over church structure and governance in the late first-century situation of the early church. In dealing with Diotrephes (3 John 9-10) and his kin, John's presentation of Jesus' promise to lead the community of faith in unity by means of the Holy Spirit--available to all seeks to restore a more primitive and egalitarian model of leadership, arguably closer to the views of the charismatic Jesus than later institutionalizing developments.

Whilst there has been an expanding amount of literary works on Thomas Paine in recent years, for a long time his significance was lost to history. This dissertation of 11,982 words (total 15,201) seeks to uncover the significance of Paine during the revolutionary era. To qualify Paine’s place within the Enlightenment, I will aim to place him amongst the thinkers of his age whilst attempting to counter critics. Paine’s position can only begin to be understood in the context of trans-Atlantic eighteenth-century politics. Paine’s writings, whatever the appraisals of modern-day assessments, must be juxtaposed to the prevailing beliefs of the period in order to recognise his destabilising rhetoric. In doing so, we can begin to distinguish Paine as a “radical.” A conflation of republicanism and liberalism is also required in order to connect Paine to the founding and identify his multifaceted political and social theories.
Three strands of Paine’s republican model will be explored. Artisanal republicanism will uncover Paine’s efforts to politicise Philadelphian society, beginning with the Pennsylvania Magazine and then the Pennsylvania Constitution, as well as covering Paine’s attitudes towards (slave) labour. Francophile republicanism concerns ideas of national identity during the French Revolution and a period of heightened political tension, explaining the beginning of Paine’s political decline. Finally, Deistic republicanism will explain Paine’s often misconstrued thoughts on religion, dissecting the reception of Age of Reason. A conclusion will seek to restore Paine’s once supposed negative impression as a positive one; Paine was not nearly as radical as scholars have professed him to be.

This essay argues, in dialogue with recent interpretations of the character and vision of the early Quaker movement, that the best lens for understanding the beginnings and development of Quakerism is William Penn's description of the movement as "Primitive Christianity Revived." Presented at the November 17, 2017 Quaker Theological Discussion Group meetings, Boston.

This is a list of some two dozen book length projects I'm working on (two thirds of which are largely written) and over a dozen books I hope to edit in the next few years. Some will be trade book projects; potential publisher inquiries welcome.

Of all the new religious movements that emerged during the English Revolution of 1641–60 the Quakers were the largest, most successful and enduring.  Naturally, they are also the most studied.  This chapter begins with a summary of the main scholarly literature on early Quakerism and an assessment of its merits.  I will then examine the origins of the name comparing it with the ways in which polemicists used other terms of abuse, before suggesting that Quakerism had multiple, loosely interlinked beginnings rather than a singular basis.  Other aspects of early Quakerism that I will briefly discuss include its defining characteristics, social composition, and the beliefs of its adherents: namely the supremacy of individual experience over religious traditions and dogma; their anti-sacramentalism, anticlericalism, hostility to tithes, pleas for toleration, concern for social justice and calls for legal and medical reform; as well as their attitude towards the Bible, Apocrypha, extra-canonical texts, Jews and the ‘occult’.  In addition, I will look at Quaker preaching, literary style, modes of speech, use of silence, prophetic behaviour and attempted miracle working within the context of a widespread belief in an imminent apocalypse and the re-emergence of Christian primitivism.  Finally I will suggest some reasons for the success of early Quakerism: the appeal of its message and charisma of those who preached it – notably George Fox and James Nayler; an organised program of evangelism wedded to contemporary political concerns; the willingness of believers to undergo sufferings and even martyrdom for their faith; the resilience of those engaged in pamphlet wars with competing sects and other detractors; the effective manner in which money was raised to finance and distribute these publications; the ability of the leadership to impose doctrinal uniformity and overcome rivalry and schism; and the ways in which Quakerism was able to evolve and adapt so as to survive the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 and the changed political and religious landscape that came in its wake.

Freedom of religion generally resonates in the collective mind as a prized legacy of the European Enlightenment alongside most individual liberties and modern values. This assumption, however, is flawed as it tends to downplay centuries of religious pluralism and cohabitation. Tolerance, in other words, was a practice long before it became a theory. This article considers tolerance not as an idea, but as a religious belief and a practice in the early Enlightenment. Drawing from rare manuscript sources scattered over several countries, it argues that tolerance was a grassroots Christian belief primarily promoted by those who needed it the most: persecuted radical dissenters. It shows how the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 sparked a tolerationist spur in Protestant countries, ‘refuges’ that often offered only a limited level of freedom. By contrast, more radical forms of tolerance existed among underground millenarians and ecumenical societies of this period. These refuges and milieus made a significant contribution to the Enlightenment debate on tolerance and deserve to be acknowledged for it.

This paper builds on the work of Alan Kolp, who follows on the work of Edward Schillebeeckx, regarding the character of sacramentology itself. It furthers the discussion, however, by rooting an incarnational view in the ministry of Jesus itself, noting also the diversity of developments within New Testament Christianity, posing ways forward in an ecumenical valuing of the multiplicity of developing sacramental traditions within the church. A Quaker perspective may here be helpful and reconciling among the churches. It was published in Quaker Religious Thought 109 (2007): 30-45. Interestingly, I served as a Fulbright Specialist at the University of Nijmegen the last two years--the place where Edward Schillebeeckx taught.

This article examines the life and agency of one African American family in Federal period Delaware. The Coopers used various practices, behaviors, and know-how to systematically confront racism, carve a place for themselves in the face of White--sometimes violent--aggression, and create opportunities for themselves. The Coopers improvised when necessary, syncretized learned traditions, and used material culture and space in their own, preferred and meaningful ways. In so doing, the family showcased the dynamic resiliency of their own Black cultural identity and simultaneously sought ways to subvert White subjugation.

This publication accompanies the exhibition "Light in Darkness: The Mystical Philosophy of Jacob Böhme, held 29 April-5 July 2019 in Coventry Cathedral. The volume includes sections about Böhme's life, his main philosophical concepts and his reception, particularly in the English-speaking world. A short selection of passages from Böhme's "Aurora" is also offered, together with explanatory notes.