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.

This book brings Quaker thought on theological ethics into constructive dialogue with Christian tradition while engaging with key contemporary ethical debates and with wider questions about the public role of church-communities in a post-secular context. The focus for the discussion is the distinctive Quaker concept and practice of `testimony' - understood as a sustained pattern of action and life within and by the community and the individuals within it, in communicative and transformative relation to its context, and located in everyday life. In the first section, Rachel Muers presents a constructive theological account of testimony, drawing on historical and contemporary Quaker sources, that makes explicit its roots in Johannine Christology and pneumatology, as well as its connections with other Quaker "distinctives" such as unprogrammed worship and non-creedalism. She focuses in particular on the character of testimonies as sustained refusals of specific practices and structures, and on the way in which this sustained opposition gives rise to new attitudes and forms of life. Articulating the ongoing relevance of this approach for theology, Rachel Muers engages with the "ethics of witness" in contemporary Protestant theology and with a longer tradition of thought (and debates) about the significance of Christian ascesis. In the second section, she develops this general account through a series of case studies in Quaker testimony, written and practised. She uses each one to explore aspects of the meaning of, and need for, shared and individual testimony.

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 book came together with the help of many members of the Langley Hill community, past and present. They shared their lived experience of our early history as a meeting, their memories of our life as a community, and their first-hand knowledge of our witness. Any work of this kind owes a final clear debt to a single source: to the promptings of the Spirit, who nudged so many of us to set down this history. It is, finally, a love story - the story, so far, of that Spirit and Langley Hill Meeting.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1850 Edition.

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.

The Quaker religion, properly called the Society of Friends, began in Westmoreland in northwest England in the mid-1600s, when George Fox and several others including William Dewsbury, James Nayler, Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough traced their inspiration and their constructive ideas to direct divine "openings" through which they believed they were being led by God. Because this book covers only up to the end of 1660, it is a very detailed study of the early history of Quakerism. The book explains background influences which led to the formation of the new religion, then shows us the beginning of its growth, in which its members were persecuted and jailed, in England, Europe and America, with some followers paying with their lives. Quakerism did not exclude women, some of whom felt called to the ministry. Some followers showed dramatic fits of trembling (hence the term Quaker) while others manifested their convictions in other ways. William Simpson of Lancaster "went three years naked and in sackcloth in the days of Oliver and his Parliament, as a sign to them and to the priests showing how God would strip them of their power..." Many of the followers called themselves "seekers" or "publishers of the truth." The book also includes four excellent maps of parts of Britain which cradled this religion. While we have all heard about the Quaker religion, there are few people whose understanding would not be greatly broadened by this informative work.

This is a new release of the original 1930 edition.

"A major contribution to our understanding of the American South and the history of American religion and reform."--Dee E. Andrews, author of "The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800" "A model study of an antislavery, reformist minority trying to find its place in the Antebellum South."--Thomas D. Hamm, author of "The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907" This examination of a Quaker community in northern Virginia, between its first settlement in 1730 and the end of the Civil War, explores how an antislavery, pacifist, and equalitarian religious minority maintained its ideals and campaigned for social justice in a society that violated those values on a daily basis. By tracing the evolution of white Virginians' attitudes toward the Quaker community, Glenn Crothers exposes the increasing hostility Quakers faced as the sectional crisis deepened, revealing how a border region like northern Virginia looked increasingly to the Deep South for its cultural values and social and economic ties. Although this is an examination of a small community over time, the work deals with larger historical issues, such as how religious values are formed and evolve among a group and how these beliefs shape behavior even in the face of increasing hostility and isolation. As one of the most thorough studies of a pre-Civil War southern religious community of any kind, "Quakers Living in the Lion's Mouth" provides a fresh understanding of the diversity of southern culture as well as the diversity of viewpoints among anti-slavery activists. A. Glenn Crothers, associate professor of history at the University of Louisville, is director of research at The Filson Historical Society and coeditor of "Ohio Valley History."

World renown astronomer and Quaker Jocelyn Bell Burnell reflects on the big issues confronting scientists who also have a strong spiritual belief system. How can the principles of science be reconciled with the faith required by religion? Does scientific investigation call into question the givens of religion. While specific to her Quaker beliefs, Burnell's reflections apply to many other religions as well. This is the 2013 James Backhouse Lecture Series, sponsored by the Society of Friends (Quakers( in Australia.

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.

A Quaker prayer life arises from a life of continuing daily attentiveness. The first generation of Quakers followed a covenant with God, based on assidious obedience to the promptings of the Inward Light. This process did not require the established churches, priests or liturgies. Quaker prayer then became a practice of patient waiting in silence. Prayer is a conscious choice to seek God, in whatever form that Divine Presence speaks to each of us, moment to moment. The difficulties we experience in inward prayer are preparation for our outward lives. Each time we return to the centre in prayer we are modelling how to live our lives; each time we dismiss the internal intrusions we are strengthening that of God within us and denying the role of the Self; every time we turn to prayer and to God we are seeking an increase in the measure of Light in our lives. David Johnson is a Member of Queensland Regional Meeting of the Australia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. David is a geologist with both industry and academic experience, and wrote The Geology of Australia, specifically for the general public. He has a long commitment to nonviolence and opposing war and the arms trade, and has worked with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. David delivered the 2005 Backhouse Lecture to Australia Yearly Meeting on Peace is a Struggle. He was part of the work to establish the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre in Australia in 2010, and is Co-Director of the Centre for 2013-14.

With the same biblical lens employed by the founders of the Quaker movement, Paul Anderson explores what it looks like to be the body of Christ. He describes in practical terms a journey that is Christian rather than denominational. And he lovingly, humbly invites you to follow Jesus.

On February 2, 2006, two intrepid women set off from Portland, Oregon via Greyhound bus for Limon, Colon, Honduras. There they would establish a new thing, a small monastery and medical mission using sustainable living, voluntary poverty, and religious practice as nuns following Methodist and Quaker traditions of worship and governance. Soon La Doctora, Pediatrician Beth Blodgett, and La muchacha, her assistant, Prairie Naoma Cutting, would be deeply involved helping in nearby clinics. Reading like a frontier women's story, this adventure (still continuing in 2010) has fire, hurricanes, and a robbery as well as other exciting accounts. These gringas become, by the close of the collection of letters home, true hermanas, religious sisters to the neighbors in their rural community. Now professed nuns, they invite other courageous women to join them in a life of service.