Quaker Theology

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  • “Catechism and Confession of Faith,”* by Robert Barclay, A Review

    Reviewed by Thomas D. Paxson, Jr. Many who come to the Religious Society of Friends are not introduced in any systematic way to the scriptural passages which most spoke to the experience of early Friends, which strengthened them in their faith and helped them keep to the Light. Nor is Read More

  • Stillness: Surrounding, Sustaining, Strengthening

    Ann K. Riggs July 2, 2001 Friends General Conference GatheringBlacksburg, Virginia Be still, and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10 Introduction — Stillness Materials giving information about the 2001 Gathering and its theme included a memorable quotation from Thomas Kelly and a reflection on the value of stillness: “We hope you will join us…

  • Crossroads of Western Quakerism in Africa

    Robert Juma Wafula For One to Understand the History of a Place, One Must Know the People Involved The history of the foundation of the Quaker movement in East Africa is straightforward and easy to understand. At least it seems so, basing oneself on Read More

  • War in the Social Order: the Great War and the Liberalization of American Quakerism

    Howell John Harris (NOTE: This essay was first published in David Adams and Cornelius van Minnen, eds., Religious and Secular Reform Movements in American History [Edinburgh, 1999], pp. 179-204.  It is reprinted here by permission.) Introduction When, or if, historians think of Read More

  • Quaker Peace Witness After 9/11 – A Resource List

    By Chuck Fager Quaker Thoughts on September 11 Terrorism The shocks of 9/11, the September 11 attacks, on and their aftermath have abruptly put Read More

  • Editor’s Introduction #5

    By Chuck Fager In this issue of Quaker Theology, matters of peace and war are again in the forefront, due as much to the force of events as to our own inclinations. We begin with something which would not have occurred to us prior to Ninth Month 11, 2001: a resource Read More

  • About the Contributors

    Chuck Fager is Editor of Quaker Theology. He was also Co-Clerk of the 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable. His newest book is The Harlot’s Bible: Quaker Essays, forthcoming from Kimo Press. Thomas Finger, Mennonite World Conference, Read More

  • A Reflection: This Is a Start

    Core Beliefs of Quakers By Dana Kester-McCabe Recently I attended a weekend gathering to study Quaker theology. It was an introduction to the terms and the traditions used in exploring this topic. The event was hosted by Chuck Fager and Ann Riggs. It was intended to inspire Read More

  • “Refiner’s Fire: A Religious Engagement with Violence”* a Review

    Reviewed by Jeffrey Gros An African American Womanist Perspective on Violence The African American “Womanist” perspective, developed in this volume, is an important explication from within a culture that has been the recipient of violence. It provides both a critique of society’s violent culture and of those whose Read More

  • A review of “Anabaptist Theology in Face of Postmodernity: A Proposal for the Third Millennium”*

    Reviewed by Thomas Finger1 Western systematic, or constructive, theology has developed largely within “mainline” communions– most notably, Reformed, Lutheran and Catholic. Since about 1970, however, a broadly postmodern atmosphere has encouraged explicit theologizing Read More

  • The Bible & Peacemaking — A Response

    By Chuck Fager Are there other ways of looking at the Bible and what it may have to teach us about Peacemaking? In particular, are there other ways to take the Bible seriously, on this topic? Ron Mock invites his readers to develop alternative approaches, and here I’ll attempt to sketch Read More

  • What Can The Bible Teach Us About Peacemaking?

    (Originally presented at the Quaker Peace Roundtable 2001) By Ron Mock I. Introduction I have been asked to bring to the 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable a reflection on what the Bible teaches about peacemaking. I accepted the task with some reservations. For one thing, among the peace churches (at least) the subject has gotten a little…

  • Friends’ Ecclesiology and The Quaker-Wide Web

    By Chuck Fager Ecclesiology, the nature of the church, is a bubbling issue among American Friends today, at least of the unprogrammed variety. Almost anywhere you care to look, Yearly Meetings are struggling with their structures, worrying about staff or no staff, laying down Read More

  • A Report on the North American Launch of the World Council of Churches’ Decade to Overcome Violence

    By Ann K. Riggs. April 23 to 25, 2001, I was one of those representing Friends at the launch of the Decade to Overcome Violence of the World Council of Churches (2001-2010). We met at the Scarritt-Bennett Read More

  • Editor’s Introduction #4

    By Anne K Riggs, Associate Editor In this issue of Quaker Theology we highlight concerns of peace and violence, ecclesiology and theological method, or ways of thinking and talking about theological subjects – about God, about ourselves in relation to God and to one Read More

  • Growing Up Plain, Conservative Quakerism

    by Wilmer Cooper. Friends United Press/Pendle Hill, 195 pages Reviewed by Chuck Fager Not far from where I live in central Pennsylvania, there is a lovely valley populated heavily by Amish and plain Mennonites. Every Wednesday morning, in the valley’s main town, there is a farmer’s market which serves up a generous slice of true…

  • Beyond the Age of Amnesia: Charting the Course of 20th Century Liberal Quaker Theology

    Here’s some good news: there are signs that American Friends, at least in the largest unprogrammed branch, are beginning to awaken from a long sleep of unawareness of their recent history. I call this period the Age of Amnesia, an unarticulated sense that Quakerism was effectively Read More

  • Excerpts from The Devotional Heart: Pietism and the Renewal of American Unitarian Universalism, by John C. Morgan. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1995.

    Copyright © by John C. Morgan.   Reprinted by permission. INTRODUCTION The issue facing Unitarian Universalists entering a new century is that we often lack spiritual focus and depth, at a time when increasing numbers of newcomers to our congregations are demanding both. The decades Read More

  • Caroline Emelia Stephen (1834-1909) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): A Quaker Influence on Modern English Literature

    By Alison M. Lewis, Ph.D. Caroline Emelia Stephen has enjoyed a long-standing reputation among Friends as a Quaker theologian. Quaker Strongholds (1891) is considered a “Quaker classic;” one hundred years after its first publication, Friends General Read More

  • Editor’s Introduction #3 — Notes on Contributors

    By Chuck Fager. We didn’t plan it that way, but this issue is about learning Quaker theology from history, mostly recent history. And some of the best recent historical insights into Quaker theology that I’ve seen have come from outside, from our sister denomination the Read More

  • About the Contributors

    George Amoss, Jr. is a member of Homewood Meeting in Baltimore. He edits the Journal of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship, and established the Quaker Electronic Archive and Meeting place website, at: http://www.qis.net/~daruma/index.html Chuck Read More

  • An Exchange: Quaker Theology Without God?

    By Edward James. A Response to: “The Making of a Quaker Atheist,” by George Amoss, Jr., in Quaker Theology #1. (Amoss’s comments follow.) Mother Angelica of the Eternal Word TV Network likes to describe those Catholic churches which have abandoned Read More

  • A Review: Among Friends, A Consultation with Friends about the Condition of Quakers in the U.S. Today. An Earlham School of Religion Report. 294 pp., paperback, 1999.

    Reviewed by Chuck Fager. There are many true and important statements in this report. One of the truest and most important, however, is regrettably buried on page 244. Let’s begin there, because its content is foundational: “This profile provides information about Read More

  • First Thoughts on Sixteenth Century Spanish Mysticism and the First Quakers: Communion with The Light in Early Modernism

    By Alvin Joaquín Figueroa. This article is a preliminary draft of a more ambitious project. It is a skeleton and a brainstorming process of some ideas I have been examining for a while. I would like to study the relationship, and points of convergence and divergence, between Read More

  • George Fox Among Christian Mystics

    By George H. Tavard. In this paper I will take the words, mystic, and mysticism in the sense they have in the Catholic spiritual tradition. Over the centuries there have been innumerable believers, lay or ordained, who have been given access to the presence of God in them Read More

  • Editor’s Introduction, #1

    In good Quaker fashion, we begin with queries: What is theology, and why should Friends be interested in it? Read More

  • The Making of a Quaker Atheist

    Copyright © George Amoss, Jr., 1999All rights reserved. How did I come to be a Quaker and an atheist? I was raised as neither; my early life was filled with faith in God and a fascination with the Catholic priesthood and “the religious life”–life under vows Read More

  • The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) as a Religious Community

    Ann K. Riggs At the Fourth World Conference in Faith and Order in Montreal, 1963, the Commission presented the influential text, “Scripture, Tradition and Traditions.”2 This text developed an understanding of Christian Scripture as the creation of Read More

  • Puritanism, Spiritualism, and Quakerism:

    AN HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY Melvin B. Endy, Jr. The problems posed by the attempt to define Puritanism have driven some scholars to substituting description for definition and others to the use of the term as an umbrella for the religious experience shared by groups as disparate as mildly dissatisfied Read More

  • About the Contributors, #1

    George Amoss, Jr. is a member of Homewood Meeting in Baltimore. He edits the Journal of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship, and established the Quaker Electronic Archive and Meeting place website, at: http://www.qis.net/~daruma/index.html Melvin Endy, who is currently Read More

  • The Case Against the Richmond Declaration

    The “Richmond [Indiana] Declaration of Faith” has been used by many groups (and strongly rejected by many others) as the equivalent of a formal creed since it was produced in 1887. This essay explains why one liberal Friend can’t accept it.

  • Sense and Sensibilities: Quaker Bispirituality Today

    A fine essay by one of today’s most thoughtful and perceptive Quaker writers, on ways to bridge, or at least encompass, the divergent streams of contemporary Quakerism. From his book of essays and addresses, Words in Time.

  • Landmark: Manchester 1895

    Seventy years after Hannah Barnard was rebuked and sent packing by London Yearly Meeting, British Friends were still getting in trouble for openly challenging evangelical dogmas.

  • The Exposition of Sentiments, 1853

    This is the seminal manifesto of the “Progressive Friends” movement, which quietly but decisively shaped the direction and agenda of contemporary liberal unprogrammed Quakerism. Although previously obscure, not to say forgotten, this is a crucial landmark in intra-Quaker apologetic.

  • “Edward Hicks” Speaks– A Specimen of Quaker Theology In Transition, 1852

    Quaker “Spirits” Speak — Two “messages,” purportedly from George Fox and Edward Hicks, delivered by Isaac Post, a Quaker medium in 1852. This one is about Edward Hicks. Excellent specimens of Progressive Quaker theology.

  • “George Fox” Speaks

    Quaker “Spirits” Speak — This time, the ‘spirit’ speaking through medium, Isaac Post in 1852 is George Fox. This is another excellent specimen of Progressive Quaker theology.

  • Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers

    The collection contains a large amount of subject material related to the Post’s activities in the abolitionist, spiritualist, and women’s rights movement. Isaac Post, born in Westbury, Long Island, N.Y., in 1798, and Amy Kirby Post, born in Jericho, Long Island in 1802, were both Hicksite Quakers after the Separation of 1827, and as 19th…

  • Lucretia Mott, Liberal Quaker Theologian

    How a woman minister set the course and the content of most US liberal Quaker theology, and why she has not received her proper recognition as a seminal figure in our religious history.

  • Inventory of the William Rotch Papers

    William Rotch, prominent shipowner and resolute Quaker friend, was born October 4, 1734 on Nantucket into a family already involved in whale fisheries. When the American Revolution erupted, Rotch maintained the pacificist stance of his Quaker religion, which in turn reflected the official policy of neutrality adopted by Nantucket.

  • About the Contributors

    Chuck Fager is Editor of Quaker Theology. He was also Co-Clerk of the 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable, and serves as Clerk of the Religious Education Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. He has just become Director of Quaker House in Read More