This issue is the largest we have ever published. It wasn’t planned that way: good stuff just kept coming in. And it covers a wide range of topics and concerns, from Quaker peace work in Kenya, to the theological character of a recent award-winning novel about a Quaker who becomes a slaveowner. There is also …
Category Archives: Issue #22 – Winter/Spring 2013

Indiana Yearly Meeting Update & Documents
In This Section: Update: The “Reconfiguration” of Indiana Yearly Meeting Enters an Intense Organizational Phase, By Stephen W. Angell Documents: Camping Out at the Borderland: Reflections on Life in a Liminal Time (Ruth 1: 1-14) By Stephanie Crumley-Effinger From the Indiana Yearly Meeting Communicator, January 30, 2013 Remarks for Representative Council, 9-29-2012 by Thomas Hamm …
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Studying Music and Violence
Heidi Hart The souls of all my dears have flown to the stars. Thank God there’s no one left for me to lose – so I am free to cry. This air was made for the echoing of songs. –Anna Akhmatova, Russian poet, 1944 Random cannonfire punctures the sound-space in Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory. Wagner’s Ring …
“An Excerpt from Howard and Anna Brinton: Re-inventors of Quakerism In the Twentieth Century, An Interpretive Biography”*
By Anthony Manousos Growing Up in “Brinton Country” To tell the story of the Brintons or of the Beans and the Coxes, Anna’s family, is to tell the story of Quakerism as it developed in America. Anna and Howard both took pride in the fact that they could trace their ancestry to the early days …
Questions for Howard: Being a Kind of Review of the New Biography of Howard & Anna Brinton
By Chuck Fager “The time has come–indeed, it is long overdue–for a critical assessment of Howard’s major works: Friends for Three Hundred Years (1952) and Guide to Quaker Practice (1943), which continue to be best sellers among liberal Friends.” –Anthony Manousos in Howard and Anna Brinton: …
The Still Small Voice in the Wilderness: The Treatment of Silence in Two Abolitionist Quaker Narratives—Tracy Chevalier’s The Last Runaway and Linda Spalding’s The Purchase
Reviewed by Selena Middleton The past year has seen the beginning of what could be a renaissance of Quakerism in the mainstream collective consciousness, from Martin McDonagh’s film Seven Psychopaths in which Christopher Walken plays a serene, yet foul-mouthed Quaker, to two books in which readers are presented with alternatives to the already familiar historical …
“A Peace of Africa, Reflections on Life In The Great Lakes Region”
Reviewed by Chuck Fager In the US, the career track for “development work” is pretty well laid out: it starts with a degree from a “quality” college. Season that with a bit of “on the ground” foreign experience (the Peace Corps will do). From there, snag a slot at a NGO (nongovernmental organization), hang on …
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“350 Years of the Society of Friends in North America: 1661-2011″*
Reviewed by Chuck Fager Want to see all US Quaker history in a single page? With attitude? Here it is. Well, one very large page: thirty by forty inches. It’s actually a chart, meant to hang on your wall, not nestle among the pamphlets on a bookshelf. Friend Kaiser sells these charts for $13 postpaid; …
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About the Contributors
Stephen Angell is the Leatherock Professor of Quaker Studies at Earlham School of Religion, Richmond Indiana, and Associate Editor of Quaker Theology. Stephanie Crumley-Effinger is a member of the faculty of Earlham School of Religion. Since 2000 she has taught one of ESR’s core ministry formation courses, Discernment of Calling and Gifts for Ministry, and …