Articles and Publications

Articles and Publications Mary Ellen Chijioke & Claire B. Shetter Having opened last issue's column with mention ofH. Larry Ingle's biography ofGeorge Fox, it seems fitting to begin this time with Bonnelyn Y. Kunze's new book, Margaret Fell and the Rise ofQuakerism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). It would be worth getting the two authors in a room to debate the relative importance ofearly Quakerism's "nursing Mother" in shaping the Society of Friends. Such a debate would be greatly enlightened by prior reading of Rosemary Moore's Ph.D. dissertation, "The Faith ofthe First Quakers: The Development of Their Beliefs and Practices up to the Restoration" (University of Birmingham, Department ofTheology, 1993). In a tour deforce study ofthe early Quaker and anti-Quaker pamphlet literature, Moore has analyzed the interaction of internal sources of Quaker faith with the external political forces that impelled early Friends to seek to express their prophetic inspiration in terms of theological subtleties. Moore has also made available to Quaker repositories a printout oftwo databases prepared in the course ofher research, collectively headed "An Annotated Listing of Quaker and Anti-Quaker Publications, 1652-1659." In "George Keith: Post-Restoration Quaker Theology and the Experience of Defeat" (Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 76.1 (1994): 119-37), Stephen George Keith Trowell attributes the eventual rupture between Keith and the Quakers to a growing divergence in the priority given to the external (historical) Jesus vs. the inward Christ. Besides those explicitly celebrating William Penn's 350th birthday, a number of publications have highlighted the most famous post-Restoration Quaker. The one specifically "occasional" piece to come to our attention in this period is "Explaining William Penn on the 350th Anniversary of His Birth: An Interview with Richard S. Dunn" (Pennsylvania Heritage 20.4 (1994): 26-32), by William C. Kashatus. From his experience co-editing the William Penn papers, Dunn concludes that Penn's most striking characteristic was his energy and that his significance lay in ensuringthe survival ofQuakerism in aperiod oftransition and as an important figure for the development of American pluralist society. In his A.P.S. presidential lecture, "William Penn and the American Heritage ofReligious Liberty" (Proceedings ofthe American Philosophical Society 137.4 (1993): 516— 23), Arlin M. Adams concludes that Penn had more influence on the American relationship between church and state than Roger Williams, who has received much more credit in this respect. William Penn 's "Vision ofPeace ": A Symposium Commemorating the Three Hundredth Anniversary of William Penn's 1693 "Essay on the Present and Future Peace ofEurope " (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1993) includes contributions from a number of Penn scholars. William K. Sessions adds a footnote to Penn studies and printing history in "William Penn's Tract Printing in Cork in 1670," in his Further Irish Studies in Early Printing History (Greenback Series: The Spread of British Printing from 1476 to 1695; York: Ebor Press, 1994), pp. 1-23. Two articles on John Woolman escaped earlier notice. Michael A. Heller's "John Woolman: The Quaker Meeting and Eighteenth-Century Social Reform" 78Quaker History (New Jersey Folklife 15 (1990): 10-17) provides an introduction to Woolman for non-Quakers. In "John Woolman's 'Kindness Beyond Expression': Collective Identity vs. Individualism and White Supremacy" (Early American Literature 26.3 (1991): 251-75), Margaret E. Stewart argues that Woolman's ideal of a society based on sympathy between people rather than white dominance has endured as an alternative ideal of "Americanness." A number of other studies deal with the interconnectedness of sectarian and social history. Bruce A. Dorsey's 1993 Ph.D. dissertation for Brown University, "City ofBrotherly Love: Religious Benevolence, Gender, and Reform in Philadelphia , 1780-1844," treats religious activism as a window on cultural change in the early republic, exploring a shift in Quaker charity from general philanthropy to charity for evangelism. Don Yoder provides a much wider overview in his article on "The Cultural Impact ofQuakerism on Southern New Jersey" (NewJersey Folklife 15 (1990): 39 ). Continuing north, Bill Richardson attempts to draw conclusions about the Quaker testimony of simplicity from his study of tombstones in "Quaker Burial Grounds: Plainness Texts from Community and Family...