Early Quaker History
-
“Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey”* A Review
Chuck Fager It’s my fate to spend a fair amount of time on the larger Quaker-oriented Facebook groups.That is often a challenging, and even dispiriting experience, especially when talk turns to “what Friends believe,” and how that is evidenced in actual Quaker Read More
-
Resisting Oppression: Friends and the Stuart Restoration, 1660-1689
H. Larry Ingle Someone with more insight than I possess once said that history opens up a foreign land, one that moderns cannot know about without an act of will and then only fitfully. This pregnant observation comes into sharp relief when we Quakers consider, as we Read More
-
Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, and Quaker Leadership: A Problem for Friends
H. Larry Ingle Lately, I have come to see Whittaker Chambers as one of the most fascinating Quakers in the middle of the 20th century. He was also the member of the American Communist Party for about thirteen years, from 1925 to 1938. He joined the rural Pipe Creek Meeting, Read More
-
“Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution”* Reviewed
Reviewed by Chuck Fager Can this be just a coincidence?ྭThe full-color cover image on Holy Nation is an Edward Hicks “Peaceable Kingdom” painting. It’s the one featuring William Penn in the background, making a peace treaty with the Indians, while to the Read More
-
Excerpt from: “Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution”*
The Society of Friends cast themselves as a “holy nation” during this period, drawing on the Jewish tradition of Zion to articulate their relationship with God and to govern their interactions with outsiders. This parallel explained their suffering Read More
-
Varieties of Interpretation of Francis Howgill’s Works: Apocalypse, Light and Convincement in Tension
Frederick Martin Read MoreFrancis Howgill was one of the “First Publishers of Truth,” the early Quaker traveling ministers, and a leader of the early Quaker movement in the 1650’s and 1660’s. Not as widely known today, in the beginning of Read More
-
“Paper Trail: Writings from the Front Line of Peace Action, Quaker House/Fort Bragg, 2001-2012″* A Review
Reviewed by John Kiriako This is an eminently readable first-person account of a daily fight for peace during what is arguably the most militarily active period of the past two generations. First, the reader should know what the book is NOT. It is not anti-military. (In fact, Read More
-
“Angels of Progress: A Documentary History of the Progressive Friends: Radical Quakers in a Turbulent America”* Reviewed
Reviewed by Stephen W. Angell Read More
-
“Let the holy seed of life reign” Perfection, Pelagianism, and the early Friends
John Connell Introduction “For this was the error of Pelagius, which we indeed reject and abhor, and which the Fathers deservedly withstood, that man by his natural strength, without the help of God’s grace, could attain to that state so as not to sin.” – Robert Read More
-
The Battle for Battle Creek: Sectarian Competition in the Yankee West
Brian C. Wilson Battle Creek, Michigan, is famous as the 19th-century headquarters of Seventh-Day Adventism and its prophet, Ellen White, as well as for the Adventist-inspired Battle Creek Sanitarium, superintended for years by the dynamic John Harvey Kellogg. Battle Read More
-
“The Early Quakers and the Kingdom of God: Peace, Testimony and Revolution”*
Reviewed by H. Larry Ingle This hefty work serves to introduce Australian Friend Gerard Guiton to the Quaker scholarly world concerned with the origins of the Religious Society of Friends. It is heralded with sparkling back cover endorsements by three Read More
-
“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. Read More
-
The Psychology of Salvation: Recovering, Reframing, and Reclaiming the Early Quaker Experience
As it continues to lose its historic identity as a distinctive Christian movement, contemporary Quakerism becomes increasingly diffuse, a condition leading to diminished vitality, commitment, depth, community, and influence. Throughout the range from Christocentrism to nontheism, Friends express various views of what Quakerism is about, what its essential principles and practices are.
-
“Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”* A Review
A review of Conservative Quakerism on the Rise
-
A Conservative Yearly Meeting is Born
Lloyd Lee WilsonAdapted from Remarks at Representative Body, North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), 10/30/2004 Several years ago, Wil Cooper gave a plenary address to our yearly meeting sessions. After his prepared remarks, a member of the audience (not a Friend) rose to ask a question. Friends, this man observed, in his experience talked about themselves…
-
Friendly Healing in Frampton and the Forest
By Richard Lee Frampton on Severn was around before William the Conqueror and his Normans conquered England. It is an old village on the edge of the Royal Forest of Dean. Still, no one knows for sure just how old Frampton is. It was in Frampton where my Ol’ Gran taught Read More
-
Quaker History & Theology: Three Interviews
By Chuck Fager Editor’s Introduction: In Tenth Month 2002, some very interesting people gathered at Swarthmore College for a Conference on George Fox’s Legacy. Numerous papers were delivered, many of which will be published presently in Quaker History, the journal 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…
-
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
-
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