This third installment in the New History of Quakerism series is a comprehensive assessment of transatlantic Quakerism across the long eighteenth century, a period during which Quakers became increasingly sectarian even as they expanded their engagement with politics, trade, industry, and science. The contributors to this volume interrogate and deconstruct this paradox, complicating traditional interpretations of what has been termed "Quietist Quakerism." Examining the period following the Toleration Act in England of 1689 through the Hicksite-Orthodox Separation in North America, this work situates Quakers in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Three thematic sections-exploring unique Quaker testimonies and practices; tensions between Quakerism in community and Quakerism in the world; and expressions of Quakerism around the Atlantic world-broaden geographic understandings of the Quaker Atlantic experience to determine how local events shaped expressions of Quakerism. The authors challenge oversimplified interpretations of Quaker practices and reveal a complex Quaker world, one in which prescription and practice were more often negotiated than dictated, even after the mid-eighteenth-century "reformation" and tightening of the Discipline on both sides of the Atlantic. Accessible and well-researched, Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690-1830, provides fresh insights and raises new questions about an understudied period of Quaker history. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Richard C. Allen, Erin Bell, Erica Canela, Elizabeth Cazden, Andrew Fincham, Sydney Harker, Rosalind Johnson, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Jon Mitchell, and Geoffrey Plank.

Known in Pennsylvania Dutch as Brauche or Braucherei, the folk-healing practice of powwowing was thought to draw upon the power of God to heal all manner of physical and spiritual ills. Yet some people believed-and still believe today-that this power to heal came not from God, but from the devil. Controversy over powwowing came to a climax in 1929 with the York Hex Murder Trial, in which one powwower killed another who, he believed, had placed a hex on him. Based on seven years of fieldwork and extensive interviews, David Kriebel's study reveals the vibrant world, history, and culture of powwowing in southeastern and central Pennsylvania. He describes, compares, and contrasts powwowing practices of the past and the present; discusses in detail the belief in powwowing as healing; and assesses the future of Braucherei. Biographical sketches of seven living powwowers shed additional light on this little-understood topic. A groundbreaking inquiry into Pennsylvania German culture and history, Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch opens a window onto an archaic, semi-mystical tradition still very much in practice today.

This is a new release of the original 1943 edition.

The Progressive Quakers, though long forgotten by historians, were the radical seed of activist American religion in much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They included pioneer crusaders for abolition and women's rights. They denounced authoritarianism in churches and many traditional dogmas as well. They championed the application of reason to doctrine, the Bible and theology; yet they were also welcoming to the burgeoning spiritualist movement. Come right down to it, the Progressive Friends were just damned interesting. They also shaped the contemporary liberal stream of the Quaker religious movement. Among other outstanding figures of the era, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and William Lloyd Garrison were associated with them. They deserve a much better deal from historians than they ever got. And with this book, they're finally getting it. The documents in "Angels of Progress," collected in print for the first time, trace where the Progressive Friends came from, sketch some of their outstanding leaders, detail their agenda for change in both society and spirituality and track their struggle for a voice and recognition. Beginning as a band of pacifists, it also shows their agonizing over the Civil War, which pitted one of their key values -- nonviolence, against another -- ending slavery. Then we follow their evolution and impact through the post-Civil War decades, into the first "Gilded Age," and the emergence of modern imperialism and militarism--all issues with striking contemporary resonance. It shows their ultimate success in shaping today's liberal Quakerism, even as their separate identity faded. The book includes extensive samples of their theological work, plus introductions and overviews.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1850 Edition.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1850 Edition.

Everett S. Allen, through diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts of the period, follows the Quakers from Plymouth Colony to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where these "children of the light" lived and founded an enormously lucrative whaling industry and elevated it to an almost holy activity ordained by God for the enrichment of the "chosen." Allen recounts the full story of a famous 1871 Arctic disaster, in which thirty-two vessels in the New Bedford whaling fleet, carrying 1200 officers and crew, found themselves trapped in gale-driven pack ice. The shipwrecked victims were miraculously rescued without a single loss of human life. The damage to the fleet, however, was something from which New Bedford never fully recovered.

This is a new release of the original 1930 edition.

The authors have surveyed recent thinking on the spiritual dimension of the environmental crisis and the wholeness of creation, and have worked to find ecomystical perspectives that will serve Quakers and others as we face the destruction or survival of our planet.

William Penn (1644-1718) was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians. Under his direction, the city of Philadelphia was planned and developed. In 1681, King Charles II handed over a large piece of his American land holdings to William Penn to satisfy a debt the king owed to Penn's father. This land included present-day Pennsylvania and Delaware. Penn immediately sailed to America and his first step on American soil took place in New Castle in 1682. On this occasion, the colonists pledged allegiance to Penn as their new Proprietor, and the first general assembly was held in the colony. Afterwards, Penn journeyed up river and founded Philadelphia. However, Penn's Quaker government was not viewed favorably by the Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers in what is now Delaware. They had no "historical" allegiance to Pennsylvania, so they almost immediately began petitioning for their own Assembly. In 1704 they achieved their goal when the three southernmost counties of Pennsylvania were permitted to split off and become the new semi-autonomous colony of Lower Delaware. As the most prominent, prosperous and influential "city" in the new colony, New Castle became the capital. As one of the earlier supporters of colonial unification, Penn wrote and urged for a Union of all the English colonies in what was to become the United States of America. The democratic principles that he set forth in the Pennsylvania Frame of Government served as an inspiration for the United States Constitution. As a pacifist Quaker, Penn considered the problems of war and peace deeply, and included a plan for a United States of Europe ("European Dyet, Parliament or Estates") in his voluminous writings.

Gwyn emphasizes the apocalyptic perspective behind George Fox's declaration that Christ has come to teach his people himself and describes how it affected Fox's view of preaching, worship, and Church order. This work helps explain the urgency of the message that sparked early Friends.

In 1828, Elias Hicks was the best-known Quaker in the United States. He was a deep and original religious thinker, a commanding and compelling preacher, and though eighty years old, still a faithful traveling minister. Whenever God said, "Go " he went. If he is remembered at all today, it is for his role in the most traumatic events in the history of the Religious Society of Friends - a series of separations that split American Quakers into two hostile camps - one of which came to be called Hicksite. Over the years, his memory has been lost to stories told by his friends and his opponents. Much of what people believe about him is false. The truth is, Elias Hicks was a minister, a mystic, a farmer, an environmentalist, an abolitionist, a father and a husband. This book aims to reveal the real Elias Hicks and his understanding of what it means to be a Quaker. Elias Hicks has much to say to Friends today. Paul Buckley is a Quaker historian and theologian, well-known among Friends of all stripes for his workshops, short courses, and retreats. He has written books on William Penn and Elias Hicks, and the Lord's Prayer; and co-edited The Quaker Bible Reader.