This study explores the absorption of Western religious ideas into African religious traditions, the emergence of independent African churches and religious movements, and their connection with political protest. The Friends African Mission, an offshoot of the evangelical revival in Britain and America in the late 19th century, took root among the Luyia people of Western Kenya. Quaker doctrines found a particular resonance with indigenous religion and spirituality but also divided African Quakers. The author considers the work carried out in education, agriculture, industrial training and health care by the Society of Friends, and charts the development of an independent church (finally established in 1963). She traces the developing relationship between African Quakers and the emerging African nationalist movements, and the colonial administration.

During the 1650s, James Nayler was one of the most important leaders of the emerging Quaker movement in England and, arguably, its most effective preacher and writer. However, his legacy has been dominated by events that took place in the summer and autumn of 1656, leading to a conviction for blasphemy, brutal public punishment, and imprisonment. Official histories of Quaker beginnings portrayed him as a gifted, but flawed, character, who brought the Quaker movement into disrepute, and prompted a concern for corporate order. Scholarship during the past century has begun to question this received position. However, a continued preoccupation with his 'fall' has tended to overshadow interpretations of his writings. In this volume, Stuart Masters seeks to identify a number of important theological themes visible within Nayler's works, and to locate them within their radical religious context. He argues that a powerful Christological vision at the heart of Nayler's religious thought engendered a practical theology with radical political, economic, and ecological implications.

Zachary Moon explores the rich traditions of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in relationship to the field of pastoral theology. Firstly, he explores the significance of metaphor in influencing the pastoral theological imagination. This includes revisiting Seward Hiltner's classic 'shepherding perspective.' Moon secondly utilizes the works of Jim Corbett in animating an alternative pastoral metaphor and claims a 'goatwalking perspective.' Finally, he broadly traverses the terrain of Quaker traditions, particularly those practices that pertain to compassionate care and support of spiritual wellbeing, acknowledging that the concepts of 'pastoral theology' and 'pastoral care' are largely unfamiliar within Quaker theological understanding yet asserting that Quaker traditions provide resources that aid broader pastoral theological discourse and support the healthy living out of Quaker faith in community. In a foreword, Jim Higginbotham explores a complementary metaphor of sanctuary for pastoral theology. Inspired by Corbett's role as one of the founders of the Sanctuary Movement, sanctuary is understood as a sacred liminal space of radical hospitality connecting the pastoral and prophetic.

Quakeriana Latina: Quaker texts in Latin from the 1670s juxtaposes translations of texts written in Latin by arguably the finest early Quaker theologians, George Keith and Robert Barclay. A commentary provides philological, historical, and theological perspectives. The works by Keith are two substantial letters to German polymath and Christian Kabbalist, Baron Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. The chief concerns of these letters are Christian appropriation of concepts from Jewish mysticism and eschatology. In the year before Keith began this correspondence, Barclay wrote his Animadversiones, a response to an attack from the Dutch Calvinist, Nikolaus Arnold, on his Theses Theologicae. Thus, both writers illustrate how a Quaker might write to a non-Quaker, even non-British, audience, one in a persuasive tone, and the other in a more polemical mode. Together, these texts cast new light on Quakerism in the 1670s.

Many Quakers who reached maturity towards the end of the nineteenth century found that their parents' religion had lost its connection with reality. New discoveries in science and biblical research called for new approaches to Christian faith. Evangelical beliefs dominant among nineteenth-century Quakers were now found wanting, especially those emphasising the supreme authority of the Bible and doctrines of atonement, whereby the wrath of God is appeased through the blood of Christ. Liberal Quakers sought a renewed sense of reality in their faith through recovering the vision of the first Quakers with their sense of the Light of God within each person. They also borrowed from mainstream liberal theology new attitudes to God, nature and service to society. The ensuing Quaker Renaissance found its voice at the Manchester Conference of 1895, and the educational initiatives which followed gave to British Quakerism an active faith fit for the testing reality of the twentieth century.