A Look at the "Quaker Revival of 1756"

A LOOK AT THE "QUAKER REVIVAL OF 1756" By Kenneth L. Carroll* For some time there has existed the view that the political crisis which Pennsylvania Friends experienced in 1756 sparked the moral revival in Pennsylvania Quakerism1 and produced a new "pattern of piety" which then "spread to New England, New York, and the South (and which carried a new approach to religion throughout American Quakerism)."2 On the whole I have been inclined to accept this view over the years, in spite of finding myself somewhat troubled by so neat and simple an answer to the complicated question of religious (spiritual and moral) revival in American Quakerism and the resulting "new pattern of piety." Even though Friends had become a "peculiar people," to a great degree cut off from those around them, could they have remained totally untouched by the fires of revival all around them?3 Were Pennsylvania Quakers the originators of the "new" when it did appear in their midst, or did it actually spring up in some other area of Quakerism? Can one really explain what happens in Pennsylvania Quakerism without being aware of what is taking place in the rest of the Atlantic Quaker Community (held together by love, traveling Friends, correspondence , trade, migration, etc.) ?* This nagging doubt about the validity of this thesis concerning *Department of Religion, Southern Methodist University. 1.Cf. Sydney V. James, A People Among Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 217. 2.Ibid., p. 2. 3.One thinks of the Great Awakening in America, the Wesleyan movement in England, and others of the first half of the eighteenth century. Cf. Frederick B. Tolles, Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York, 1960), pp. 91-113. Can not this religious revival so at large in the world have expressed itself in ways other than "enthusiasm"? 4.Cf. Tolles, op. cit., pp. 21-25, "The Transatlantic Quaker Community in the Seventeenth Century: Its Structure and Functioning," and Rufus M. Jones, Quakers in the American Colonies (London, 1911), pp. 314-315. "By the opening of the eighteenth century the Friends were one people throughout the world, though there was absolutely no bond but love and fellowship. There was no visible head to the Society, no official creed, no ecclesiastical body which held sway and authority. But instead of being an aggregation of separate units the Society was in an extraordinary measure a living group." 63 64QUAKER HISTORY the effect of the 1756 political crisis in Pennsylvania recently drew me to look more deeply into this question. Widespread reading in Irish, English, and American Quaker sources5 has now led me to believe that the seeds of religious revival within the Society of Friends were planted long before 1756 and had already begun to geirninate and even to grow in England, Ireland and parts of America before the political crisis in Pennsylvania (which undoubtedly did have a tremendous, catalytic effect on Pennsylvania Quakers and religious revival there and elsewhere). Revival of religion among Pennsylvania Quakers, however, must be seen in a larger context than has usually been suggested. II An examination of the life of English Quakers during the first half of the eighteenth century produces several things which suggest that a "revival" of religion was already taking place there. The most obvious one is the growing concern for reform, revival, and discipline which seems to date from 1735, when London Yearly Meeting commissioned "An Extract of the Written Minutes and Advices of the Yearly Meeting: from the beginning: Under the Title: Of extracts of Christian Advices given forth from time to time by the Yearly Meeting in London."6 This collection appeared in 1738 under the title "Christian Brotherly Advices,"7 and its appearance "introduced a period of intensified lamentation over the state of the Society which led eventually to the so-called Revival of the Discipline."8 David Hall, who often spoke of "primitive Quakerism ," wrote a letter in 1747 speaking of the necessity of having and observing rules.9 This letter was widely circulated among English Friends (and later among Irish Friends also). It was also reprinted in Philadelphia about 1753 or 1754. 5.Done in the summers...