Barclay College: Lighthouse on the Prairies (review)

112Quaker History Friends? Why and when did early Quaker enthusiasm wane? The author suggests that early Friends held a doctrine of "christopresentism" or "celestial inhabitation," which means that the flesh and bone ofChrist dwelt within them. This keen sense ofthe presence ofChrist led them to identify fully with Christ, becoming "avatars." This found expression in "exalted language" among Friends, such as George Fox's self-description as the Son ofGod and inspired such behavior as James Nayler's famous ride into Bristol, re-enacting Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, for which he was tried by Parliament for blasphemy. As a result of this scandal, Friends retreated from their "outrageous" acts and language and settled for a comfortable existence as "tame," "innocuous," and "respectable mysticism," characterized by such innovations as pacifism and organization. Fox was no longer "a god" but rather now merely "an apostle." In other words, Bailey maintains that the death and transfiguration of early Quakerism occurred not with the persecutions that accompanied the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, nor in the political and social crisis of 1659, but already in 1656. Early Quakerism was short-lived, indeed. This point may spark some interesting discussion. Some positive features of this work include the following: 1) It takes early Quakers' "exalted language" very seriously and does not try to explain it away (or expurgate it, as he notes that Friends later did). 2) It takes the charges ofblasphemy against early Quakers with similar seriousness and sees in them the possibility that early Friends' theology was threateningly different from that oftheirpersecutors. 3) It tries to make some connections among scattered christological statements regarding the unity of the saints with Christ, or the glorified body of Christ as not physical, of the whole of Christ dwelling in the saints, of early Quaker use of the Biblical expressions of eating the flesh of Christ (John 6) and ofbeing ofthe same flesh and bone (likely derived from Genesis 2, through Bailey does not discuss the implications of this) and ofpartaking in the divine nature (2 Peter 1). 4) It seeks to document changes in Quaker theology after the Nayler incident (though Robert Barclay does not, as claimed, equate the Light with the conscience—cf. Apology V Vl.xvi), making interesting use of the works of Henry More and George Keith as barometers of Quaker theological change, or, as Bailey prefers, "retreat." The chiefdisappointment lies in the execution ofthe third point. Building on his previous workwith Anabaptist notions ofthe divine flesh ofChrist, Bailey maintains that the "doctrine ofcelestial inhabitation" was for Fox "the hub ofhis entire world ofthought," the neglect ofwhich constitutes "an historiographical calamity." Ifthat be so, one could wish fora more coherent explanation ofthis "bedrock ofFox's new religion." I for one would appreciate, for example, a fuller description of the mechanics of early Quaker theophagy. Just how does one literally eat palpable, immaterial, non-spiritual, celestial flesh and bone which already fill every particle ofone's innerbody? The idea remains attractive, but the case for its literalness is not convincingly made, and the textual evidence cited is rather fragile. Earlham CollegeMichael L. Birkel Barclay College: Lighthouse on the Prairies. By Sheldon G. Jackson. Haviland, Kans.: Barclay College, 1990 [O 1992]. iv + 160 pp. Illustrations, appendices, notes, selected bibliography, and index. Cloth, $15; paper, $12. When the history of American Quakerism in the twentieth century comes to be written, the Quaker colleges will be central to it. At some point, virtually all have been rallying points for unity or lightning rods for controversy. The history of Book Reviews113 Evangelical Friends in particular has been shaped by Walter and Emma Malone's Friends Bible Institute (now Malone College), by the Huntington Park Training School in California, and by Friends Bible College in Haviland, Kansas. We are fortunate now to have a very good history of the last, in its new identity as Barclay College. Barclay began in 1892 as the Haviland Friends Academy, one of the numerous Quaker academies in the Midwest founded between 1865 and 1900. It served a community offervently evangelical Gurneyite Friends from Iowa and Indiana who had homesteaded in western Kansas, Friends who were, in Henry Stanley Newman's memorable...