Quaker Studies Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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... more

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- Political Participation, Peace and Conflict Studies, Theology, Violence

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... more

- by Barry Levy
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- History of Slavery, Welsh History, Quaker Studies, History of Childhood

Atheism is scientific method masquerading as theology.

- by Jonathan Wooding
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- Creative Writing, Atheism, Quaker Studies, Faith
- by Paul N Anderson
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- Christianity, Peace and Conflict Studies, Theology, Leadership
- by Ana Acosta
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- Quaker Studies

New Writing 16.3 (2019): 336-42. Print.

- by Tom Ue, FRHistS
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- Gender Studies, Theatre Studies, Victorian Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies

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... more

- by Helen Meads
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- Heterotopia, Quaker Studies, Sculpture, Quakerism

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... more

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,... more

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Christianity, Comparative Religion, Peace and Conflict Studies

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!

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Social Work, Women's Studies, Social Sciences

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... more

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Transformative Learning, Religious Education, Contemporary Spirituality

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.

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Christianity, Sociology of Religion, Philosophy Of Religion

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.

- by Lee Jones
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- Religion, Gender Studies, War Studies, Gender and Sexuality

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.

- by Lionel Laborie
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- Quaker Studies, Millenarianism, Languedoc, Prophecy

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.

- by Brian Young
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- Quaker Studies, African American History, Quakerism, History of Quakerism

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... more

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.

- by Carole Spencer
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- Quaker Studies, Women Studies in Religion

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).

- by Rebecca Wynter
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- Women's History, Quaker Studies, First World War, History of Humanitarianism

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.

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Christianity, Sociology of Religion, Philosophy Of Religion
- by Anne Verplanck
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- American History, American Studies, Material Culture Studies, Quaker Studies

George Washington’s death in December of 1799 sparked a revolutionary chain of events that transformed a small corner of Fairfax County, Virginia, from an assemblage of slave labor plantations into a successful community based on free... more

- by Maddy McCoy and +1
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- History of Slavery, Quaker Studies, Anti-slavery, Virginia History
- by John Daniel Thieme
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- British Literature, English Literature, Poetry, Modernist poetry
- by Brian Tervo
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- American History, American Religion, Quaker Studies, American Revolution

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... more

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Peace and Conflict Studies, Social Sciences, Violence
- by Christy Randazzo
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- Quaker Studies, The Atonement, Reconciliation, Christian Theology
- by Sem C Sutter
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- Jewish History, Jesuit history, Quaker Studies, Religious Toleration
- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Philosophy Of Religion, Peace and Conflict Studies, Theology
- by Johan Maurer
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- Quaker Studies
- by Daniel M Keeran MSW
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- Gnosticism, Buddhism, History, Psychology

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.

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Critical Theory, Christianity, New Testament, History of Christianity

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.

- by Dominic McGovern
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- History, Cultural History, Economic History, Philosophy

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.

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, Philosophy Of Religion

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... more

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, History, Sociology, Psychology

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.

- by Lionel Laborie
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- Religion, Early Modern History, History of Religion, Refugee Studies

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.

- by Paul N Anderson
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- Religion, Christianity, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology

The interplay of religion, culture and society in any country, at any given time, is one of the most complex phenomena experts have attempted to understand and explain.To analyze such interaction in a nation in which the predominant religion has historically been somewhat weak institutionally and in which there have been high levels of competition from other religions, as well as ideologies, presents clear challenges. Hence, the task undertaken by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s January 21-22, 2003 seminar Religion, Culture, and Society: The Case of Cuba was particularly challenging. Sponsored by the Center’s Latin American Program, the seminar brought together academic experts on religion, Cuba, and civil society with practitioners and policymakers. Building on previous exchanges between the participants and their Cuban counterparts, the seminar explored theoretical and methodological trends in the study of religion,culture and society in terms of the applicability of the predominant analytical models to the case of Cuba.The seminar then focused on historical legacies, as well as contemporary developments. Suggestions for the reconceptualization of the current “wisdom” concerning the interplay of religion, culture and society in general and with reference to Cuba resulted.

- by Latin American Program Wilson Center and +1
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- Religion, History, Law, International Relations

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.