Jonathan Evans and His Time, 1759-1839: Bi-Centennial Biography (review)

122Bulletin of Friends Historical Association years ago, is reported planned and about to be built "in the near future." In addition to these regrettable mistakes which undoubtedly stem from the time-element involved in gathering the material, there are a number of more serious errors in the book. The Council of Jamnia is mistakenly dated in A.D. 118 rather than in A.D. 90 (p. 36). On p. 357 the death of Joseph Nichols (c. 1773) and the organization of the Nicholites (1774) are placed much too late (1782). John Woolman's 1757 visit to North Carolina is moved to 1759 (p. 161). And, to top it off, slavery appears to continue until 1873 (p. 166), and John Woolman becomes a British Friend on p. 217! It might also be noted that "membership" is misspelled eight times in the tables on pages 376-379. The reviewer is left somewhat puzzled by the author's outlook. In several places he writes longingly and approvingly concerning increased co-operation and new unions between various groups of Friends. Speaking of the division in North Carolina Quakerism, Anscombe says, "The Conservative element is needed to preserve a proper balance" (p. 108); yet elsewhere he describes the Conservative meetings as "typical of Friends of the year 1800" (p. 107). He feels that the adoption of the pastoral system by most of the meetings in North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Five Years) has been justified by the great increase in membership (p. 108), although he realizes that there has been a very marked departure from much of traditional Quakerism (p. 372), that practices and doctrines at variance with original Friends' views have appeared "temporarily" in some meetings (p. 367), and that there are among the pastors "not a few young men who had little Quaker background, and little awareness of the implications of the Quaker faith" (p. 96). The reviewer feels that both Dr. Anscombe and this book would have benefited greatly from his reading John Sykes's The Quakers: A New Look at Their Place in Society. Southern Methodist UniversityKenneth L. Carroll Jonathan Evans and His Time, 1759-1839: Bi-Centennial Biography. By William Bacon Evans. Boston: the Christopher Publishing House. c. 1959. 192 pages. Illustrations. $3.75. The tempered sympathy of a descendant glows from this review of the Philadelphia Separation of 1827 from the perspective of Jonathan Evans, a weighty Friend near the center of the tragedy. Bacon Evans believes, as I do, that the recent reunion cannot be fruitful if based on the principle of historical amnesia. Therefore he invites Friends everywhere to look calmly at the record, especially on points of difference still current, because differences still arise, and steps should be speedily taken, every time, to settle them. The central difference is embodied in two consonant Quaker slogans: "Let your lives speak" and "Speak truth to power." The tendency implicit in the first is to emphasize doing, and to Elias Hicks this meant reform. The tendency in the second is to emphasize being, and to Jonathan Evans (and even more to the Evangelicals) this meant doctrinally sound ministry. Book Reviews123 Hicks drew a scrupulous line between free and slave products ; his opponents separated with equally harmful scruple the orthodox from the heretic. Thus the belligerents were "united in the strife which divided them." Bacon Evans makes a good case for doctrine, but whereas he rightly recognizes that Elias Hicks's ideas changed, he does not point out Jonathan Evans's opposite development from views shared with Hicks around 1800. Doctrine is after all nothing but teaching. Do Friends who fear theological doctrine really want to say that the Society has nothing which might educate its neighbors? Bacon Evans wants Friends to reach out and never be "content to be a separated people" (p. 23). The trouble is that creeds, like manna, turn sour after sunset. Almost as important was the difference over church government. Race Street's penchant was congregational and Jacksonian; Arch Street's presbyterian and Whig. They assumed, respectively, that the popular majority or the experienced minority heard the voice of God. The author does not get above this battle until his conclusion that the whole Society of...