Quaker Research in Progress

QUAKER RESEARCH IN PROGRESS Prepared by John and Barbara Curtis Robert K, Goertz is doing research for a doctoral thesis at the City University of New York's department of Political Science. The title will be "To Plant the Pleasant Fruit Tree of Freedom: Community and Consciousness in Digger and Early Quaker (c. 1650 to c. 1660) Thought." The emphasis will be on the political community and political ideas, but the subject is not limited to political ideas. William E. Nawyn is nearing completion of the research for his doctoral thesis in History at the University of Iowa. The title is "The Response in American Protestant Churches to the Jewish Policies of Nazi Germany, 193341 ." It seeks to ascertain how and to what extent representative Protestant denominations and the Society of Friends—officially and through leading persons and related organizations—responded or reacted to the Jewish persecutions in Nazi Germany either in word or in deed. R. Palmer Howard and Virginia R. Allen are working on a "History of Health in Indian Territory and Oklahoma, 1830-1907." Publication is expected in 1976 or 1977. It will explore the interrelations between events and health, disease and medical practice. Quakers were supervisors of Indian reservations during the earlier part of the time covered in this study. Sarah Elizabedi Hart has completed her research on a paper for a B.A degree in History at Beaver College. This study will be on "The Attempt by the Quakers to Establish a Quaker Government in Pennsylvania and die Factors which Prohibited their Success." Clyde A. Milner II reports that he is in the final research phase of preparation for writing a thesis widi the tide: "Good intentions on die road to Hell: Quakers and the Indians in the post-Civil War period." Milner is a candidate in American Studies at Yale University. He intends diis dissertation to be a study of the relationships of Friends' Indian agents and the reservation tribes for which they were administrators during the presidency of U. S. Grant. He will be completing research and doing the writing of diis study during 1975-76 while holding a fellowship at the Center for die History of die American Indian in The Newberry Library at Chicago, 111. 60610. Jon Butler writes that he is completing a comparative study of denominational development among Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians and Anglicans in Pennsylvania before the Great Awakening. "Power, Authority and the Origins of American Denominationalism : The English Churches in the Delaware Valley, 1680-1730," is a revision and rewriting of the material included in his doctoral dissertation completed in 1972 at the University of Minnesota. 134 ...