J. Walter Malone: The Autobiography of an Evangelical Quaker (review)

136Quaker History at appropriate places. One can see Mildred grow from a three-month-old baby to a ninety-four-year-old woman. Photographs of her husband, Allen Olmsted, and Mildred's life-long friend, Ruth Mellor, are also included as well as thoughtful pictures ofMildred, the elder stateswoman, telling her story to the next generation ofwomen like Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Eleanor Smeal and Coretta Scott King. The book is a carefully researched account ofboth public and private life of a complex woman. Written with sensitivity to both Olmsted's strengths and weaknesses , it is also a wonderful resource for those interested in the historical inner workings of WILPF and the twentieth-century peace movement in general. Earlham CollegeCarol Hunter J. Walter Malone: The Autobiography ofan Evangelical Quaker. Ed. by John W. Oliver. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1993. xv + 105 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $47.50; paper, $27.50. Outsiders have long failed to understand American evangelical Quakerism. This brief memoir lays bare the heart and soul ofthat movement's most inspiring and influential leader from 1 890 to 1917. John Oliver, its editor, sets the account in perspective with hundreds of well-researched notes identifying the people and ideas to which Malone referred in this manuscript composed during the 1920s. Oliver, husband of a Malone descendant and Professor of History at Malone College, successor to the Bible institute founded by J. Walter and his wife Emma B. Malone, is well situated to furnish a sympathetic insider perspective. The Malones in 1892 launched the Quaker Bible college movement in Cleveland , Ohio. Following the revival movement beginning in about 1860 and the consequent pastoral system of the 1880s, the Malones created the institutional machinery which perpetuated these changes. Ultimately supplying thousands of dedicated pastors, missionaries, and laypersons trained in the Bible text and in evangelism, the Cleveland Bible Institute and its counterparts from Haviland, Kansas to the West Coast succeeded in preserving this faith in America and in spreading it overseas. This doctrine consisted through the 1950s, at least, of a remnant ofQuaker tradition blended with the neo-Wesleyan teachings of Methodist Phoebe Palmer and with premillenialist fundamentalism. The memoir indicates that despite his evangelical language and methodology, Malone demonstrated profound obedience to the immediate leading of the Holy Spirit in business, family, and church matters. During the 1880s and after, such faith stimulated success in the stone business and evangelism. It also brought physical healings linked to repentance from sin, rather than to promotion of his ministry. Sacrificially devoting his modest wealth to the Bible Institute and to a nearby rural orphanage, Malone and his associates provided students ofboth sexes with training in the Bible and hands-on experience in inner-city missions, with a focus on the poor of all races and nationalities. Malone differed from those who came to control the Five Years Meeting and the American Friend in the early twentieth century. Unlike such leading Quakers as Rufus Jones and Elbert Russell, he was neither a religious liberal nor a Social Gospel Progressive. But the missions and churches the Malones and their students founded did promote sexual purity, family stability, and abstinence from alcohol. His compassionate and supportive ministry evidently created hope and moral Book Reviews137 improvement in many lives, both among neglected Americans and among the poor of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, Malone's simplicity and deep personal faith inspired the "common folks" who comprised much of the evangelical Quaker constituency from Ohio westward. Arthur O. Roberts's "Introduction" ably sets the Malones in historical perspective and deftly analyzes American evangelical Quakerism since the 188Os, especially the early conflict between the Bible colleges and Quaker liberal arts colleges. One may quibble with Roberts over such details as how "progressive" the Malones were and when the holiness movement narrowed in its social ethics. Both Roberts and Oliver also gloss over the shrillness of the attack on theological modernism launched by Cleveland-based associates ofMalone in the Evangelical Friend of 1905-1914. Nevertheless, this volume elucidates greatly the positive side of American evangelical Quakerism in the era before World War I. Seminole Junior CollegeRichard E. Wood Marjorie Sykes: Quaker Gandhian. By Martha Dart. York...