Stone Man Preacher: J. Walter Malone: The Autobiography of an Evangelical Quaker with Essays on Emma Brown Malone by John W. Oliver, Jr., and Emma Lapsansky (review)

At the end of the nineteenth century Walter (1857–1935) and Emma Malone (1859–1924) were the quintessential religious entrepreneurs, creating new kinds of Quaker social, spiritual and educational institutions. Most notably they were co-founders of the Friends Bible Institute and Training School, later called Cleveland Bible Institute, a product of the late nineteenth century Holiness Movement, and modeled on Dwight L. Moody’s Bible Institute in Chicago. (Emma, whose mother was an Orthodox Friend and father a Hicksite Friend, was converted to evangelicalism through the preaching of Moody.) Despite the Malones’ lack of training in biblical studies—in fact, they had no higher education at all—their capable teaching and administration of the school enabled it to grow and thrive. Scores of Quaker ministers, missionaries and social workers graduated from the Institute. Like many Bible institutes, it eventually evolved into a Christian liberal arts college.

J. Walter Malone recorded his reminiscences in the early 1920s, originally entitled “Lifestories” (J. Walter Malone: The Autobiography of an Evangelical Quaker, ed. John W. Oliver, University Press of America, 1993) and now edited and annotated by John W. Oliver as Stone Man Preacher. This new version is reprinted from an earlier edition by Oliver published in 1993 by University Press in America. The newest edition contains two essays on Emma Malone, and several other short remembrances by living relatives today. The addition of the material on Emma Malone by Emma Lapsansky adds significantly to understanding her role in the historical context of Quaker female ministry and leadership, and shows how that legacy persisted in an evangelical context. Oliver and Lapsansky present Walter and Emma as a team of equals: both were teachers, preachers, and social activists. From their Quaker roots, they brought egalitarian and pacifist values and a mystical spirituality into the evangelical milieu. They challenged conventional views concerning the role of women and racial minorities. According to Oliver, their school, which opened in 1892, admitted African Americans fifty years before most other American Quaker schools, and the Malones’ lack of class and race prejudice contrasted with the racist and classist attitudes of the wider society and Victorian Quakerism.

Lapsansky labels Emma Malone a self-actualized woman and a “functional feminist” (Malone, Stone Man Preacher, p. 114). Malone, she claims, was a woman of independent mind who modeled gender equality but avoided feminist rhetoric. Such a description would characterize many Quaker revivalist women of that period, though some evangelical Quaker women also spoke publicly for suffrage and gender equality. The research on Emma Malone in this short publication hints at the contributions of other relatively unknown nineteenth century Quaker women who contributed to social reform and ministry to the poor and working classes.

Walter and Emma may best be described as “plainfolk modernists” who became leading voices in the innovative and growing branch of holiness Quakerism. They merged mid-western Orthodox Quakerism with revival theology and became a part of the spiritual stew that helped birth modern evangelicalism at the turn of the century.

Walter’s reminiscences provide a fascinating history of how traditional Quaker spirituality could flow easily into holiness mysticism and missional evangelicalism, though not without strong resistance from some quarters. The Malones communicated in the new style, language, and methods of evangelicalism—they were not merely Quaker ministers, but “soul-winners,” who preached and witnessed one-on-one so that souls would be “saved” and “sanctified.” A surprise to some Quaker readers will be the depth of the Malones’ belief in faith healing, exorcism of demons, and the recounting of the many experiences where family members, including Emma and Walter, were miraculously healed through prayer.

The Quaker holiness movement was not monolithic, but included radical, moderate, progressive, pentecostal and fundamentalist factions, all desiring to bring renewal and diversity into...