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The Quakers are a fascinating religious group both in their origins and in the variety of reinterpretations of the faith since. Emerging from the social unrest of the English civil war, the Quakers have gone on to have an influence way beyond their numbers: be it their continued stance against war or their pioneering work against slavery. At the same time, Quakers maintain a distinctive worship method to achieve the direct encounter with God which has been at the heart of the movement since its beginning. This book charts the history of Quakerism and its present-day diversity, and outlines its approach to worship, belief, theology and language, and ecumenism. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
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.
The Liturgies of Quakerism explores the nature of liturgy within a form of worship based in silence. Tracing the original seventeenth century Quakers' understanding of the 'liturgy of silence', and what for them replaced the outward forms used in other parts of Christianity, this book explains how early Quaker understandings of 'time', 'history', and 'apocalyptic' led to an inward liturgical form. The practices and understanding of twenty-first century Liberal Quakers are explored, showing that these contemporary Quakers maintain the same kind of liturgical form as their ancestors and yet understand it in a very different way. Breaking new ground in the study of Quaker liturgy, this book contrasts the two periods and looks at some of the consequences for the study of liturgy in general, and Quakerism in particular. It also explores evangelical Quaker understandings of liturgy.
Example in this ebook In the preparation of these Memoirs for publication, the principal part of the labour has been undertaken by my daughter; the pressure of other engagements having only permitted me to undertake the general direction and supervision of the whole. As the Executor of Mrs. Opie, her papers and letters came into my hands; and it devolved on me to decide in what way to dispose of them. There had been, (I believe,) a general impression among her friends, that she would herself prepare an account of her Life; but although she seems to have made some efforts at commencing the task, and the subject was often affectionately recommended, and even urged upon her, she has left it a matter of regret to her friends, (and especially so to the compilers of these memoirs,) that no “Autobiography” was found among her papers. Nor did Mrs. Opie ever distinctly give any directions as to the publication of her MSS. or any Memoir of her Life; but we have, we think, strong presumptive evidence, that she anticipated, if not desired, that it should be done. Not long before she died, she said, that her Executor would have no light task with her papers; and a few days before she breathed her last, when she could no longer hold a pen, she called her attendant to her, and dictated a most touching and affectionate farewell address, to me and my daughter, directing the delivery of various small articles as remembrances to a few most intimate friends, and requesting us to complete what she had left undone; adding, that she had confidence in our judgment, and believed that we should “do everything for the best.” It has been with an earnest desire to justify this trust, and to perfect, as far as in our power, that which she had, in fact commenced, but left incomplete, that these pages have been put to the press. It will be seen, in the course of these Memoirs, that the materials from which they are compiled, are principally Papers, Letters, and Diaries, of Mrs. Opie’s own writing; a few Letters preserved by her, and judged to be of general interest, and bearing upon her history, we have thought it well to give. It would have been no difficult task, to have greatly extended these Memoirs, had it been deemed expedient to make a free use of the Letters received by her, and of which a very large number were found among her papers; but we have not felt ourselves at liberty to adopt such a course, and we trust there will be found in this Volume few (may we say we hope no) violations of private and confidential communications. My acquaintance with the subject of these Memoirs, commenced nearly forty years ago; and well do I remember the first impressions made on me by her frank and open manner, the charm of her fine and animated countenance, her artless cheerfulness and benevolence, and the extraordinary powers of her conversation. But it was not till the time of Dr. Alderson’s last illness, that my acquaintance with Mrs. Opie ripened into confidential friendship. From that period to the time of her decease, I had the happiness to enjoy much of her society, and to hear her recollections of her earlier days, and her graphic descriptions of the scenes and characters, which had been subjects of interest to her during the course of her long life; and she subsequently often read me a large portion of the correspondence she continued to maintain. To be continue in this ebook