In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Book Reviews Edited by Edwin B. Bronner The Quakers. By Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. $65.00. This long-awaited volume by two of the most respected scholars in the field of Quaker history today is the first in almost half a century to attempt a general history of the Society of Friends in the United States. The result is a work that is undoubtedly the best we have on the subject, albeit with shortcomings. This is a work different in many respects from its predecessors, most notably the magisterial multi-volume history of Rufus M. Jones and William C. Braithwaite (1906-1921), or the best previous one-volume treatment, Elbert Russell's A History ofQuakerism (1942). They, along with Walter R. Williams's The Rich Heritage ofQuakerism (1962), were the works of controversial Quaker luminaries with particular theological axes to grind and careers to defend. The works of Jones and Russell especially were characterized by prodigious research and brilliant insight, but tended to see Quakerism as finding its inevitable and natural culmination in their own brand of modernism. The Quakers, in contrast , is rigorously impartial, remarkably so in view of the fact that many of the issues that divide Friends today involve the interpretation and understanding of Quaker history. Rarity of rarities, one comes away unsure just what side the authors would have taken had they been there for the Hicksite separation. The contents of The Quakers will hold few surprises. It opens with the English background of Friends, drawing on Barbour's almost encyclopedic knowledge of the seventeenth century, then shifts to the New World to discuss Friends in the colonies. The eighteenth century is introduced by chapters on the achievement of toleration, the nature of Quaker spirituality, and the practice of the discipline, before plunging into John Woolman, the "Reformation" of the 1750s, and the impact of the American Revolution. Then come the standard topics of the nineteenth century—the separations, antislavery and reform, and the revivals in the Gurneyite yearly meetings in the 1870s. The section on the twentieth century takes up five subjects: the emergence of Quaker modernist liberalism, the rise of the independent college and suburban meetings, peacemaking , social activism, and a survey of world Quakerism since 1960. Several of the chapters are absolutely first-rate essays. The treatment of George Fox in the context of his times manages to make a complex subject intelligible in the space of a few pages. The chapter on the Hicksite separation is the best analysis this reviewer has seen, scrupulously fair to both sides, cognizant of the variety of beliefs and motivations involved, and avoiding easy labels like "evangelical" to describe all of the Orthodox. The chapters on the twentieth century, especially on events since World War II, plunge into what is essentially virgin territory. On the other hand, the treatment of the Wilburite separations is not nearly so satisfying. The authors' argument that "tactless actions" and disagreements about committees were the paramount issues ignores the fundamental doctrinal differences between John Wilbur and Joseph John Gurney. Their disagreements over the nature of justification and sanctification , while seemingly obscure, led the former toward an unbending conservatism , while the Gurneyites found no doctrinal barrier to moving closer to evangelical Protestantism. The last quarter of the book, in accordance with the policy of the series, consists of brief biographical sketches. These are a helpful reference, and are for the most part well-done, although a few errors have crept in. Catherine 40Quaker History (White) Coffin, for example, died in 1881, not 1910; Nereus Mendenhall contemplated moving to Minnesota, not Indiana; Clarence Pickett grew up in Kansas , not Iowa. One can also quibble about the criteria for selecting subjectsare Emily Howland and William Hobson really more imporant than Alice Paul and Charles Osborne, for example? Overall, however, the selection is remarkably inclusive, doing justice especially to Evangelical Friends such as Esther Butler, Everett Cattell, and Walter and Emma Malone who have often been left out of other compilations. Probably the greatest strength of the work is its bibliographic base. Between them, Barbour and Frost appear to have read virtually every work of scholarship on Friends...

pdf

Share