British Quakerism, 1860-1920: The Transformation of a Religious Community (review)

34Quaker History gallery to describe both the facing bench area and the balcony-like area, although in America the former use was preferred. Lidbetter attempted to clarify the terminology by using the English term ministers ' stand for the facing bench area and loft for the youth's gallery, eliminating any confusion resulting from the dual use of the term gallery. Although Butler followed Lidbetter's usage, his historical passages almost all use the word gallery to describe the facing bench area (e.g., pp. 257, 892). Butler himself used gallery on occasion to describe the facing bench area (e.g., p. 897). Butler does not use the term elders ' stand which is now coming into vogue in America; this term confuses the primarypurpose ofthis architectural feature and should be avoided by historians. Throughout the twentieth century, photographic inventories of Friends meeting houses have increased in quality. The first such book was printed by J. Russell Hayes a century ago, illustrating some standing Hicksite meeting houses. The Eastern Region followed Hayes's example when it printed a sesquicentennial book in 1 962 giving a cut ofeach oftheir active meeting houses. North Carolina FUM printed an inventory in 1972 including commentary and some illustrations ofprior buildings, and later inventories have at least included commentary (e.g., Eastern Region 1987, Wilmington 1991). [A smaller geographic area such as a yearly meeting is critical for an American book of this type due to the massive amount of primary research involved.] Photographic collections such as those printed by Ruth Bonner and Silas Weeks help to fill regional voids. Indiana Yearly Meeting is the only American body with a comprehensive inventory available in print (1996). A possible improvement in future books of this type would be detailed maps. Butler has set a high standard for future inventories of Friends meeting houses. Althoughhisworksuffers fromalargenumberoftypographical errors, it will be a helpful reference work for Friends historians for years to come. Seth B. HinshawDowningtown, Pa. British Quakerism, 1860-1920: The Transformation ofa Religious Community . By Thomas C. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xv + 477 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $90. Thomas C. Kennedy's long-awaited book is one of the most important works on Quaker history to appear in the last decade. It offers both a reinterpretation ofnineteenth-century Quakerism and an analytical framework for understanding a critical period, the early twentieth century, to which historians of Quakerism had previously given little attention. Book Reviews35 Informed by massive research that includednot onlymassive exploration of archival resources but also wide ranging oral history, British Quakerism is a wonderful accomplishment. Kennedy's earlier writing had been focused on what he had called the "British Quaker Renaissance," the period between 1890 and 1914 when a group of brilliant young Friends assumed leadership in London Yearly Meeting and replaced its previous evangelicalism with a modernism that was sympathetic to critical study of the Bible and de-emphasized the centrality of the Atonement in Quaker faith. Here, however, Kennedy begins a generation earlier. His decision makes sense. Evangelical Quakerism , epitomized in Friends like Joseph Bevan Braithwaite (1818-1905), while sometimes narrow andrepressive, laidthe foundations forwhat came later, breaking Friends out of spiritual isolation and engaging the society with the larger world. The parallels to American Quakerism are striking; Rufus Jones emerged not from Hicksite or Wilburite Quakerism, but Gurneyite. Such English Evangelicals prevailed over hidebound conservatism , but found a more tenacious foe in liberal Friends. The first rebels, like David Duncan of Manchester in 1870, found themselves isolated and disowned. But they were the forerunner of a new direction. By the 1880s, theywere visible and gaining strength, andwere powerful enoughtoprevent London Yearly Meeting from endorsingthe RichmondDeclaration ofFaith. Between 1890 and 1914 these liberals assumed the leadership ofBritish Quakerism. In some ways, they were a paradoxical group. Many, such as John Wilhelm Rowntree, Henry T. Hodgkin, and William C. Braithwaite, came from influential evangelical families. While drawing on non-Quaker modernism to embrace critical study of the Bible and make the love and example of Christ, rather than the Atonement, central Christian doctrine, they also found inspiration in the Quaker past. In particular, they made the InnerLight, which evangelicals hadlongregardedwithdownright suspicion, the...