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'A Protest Against Protestantism': Hicksite Friends And The Bible In The Nineteenth Century, Thomas D. Hamm

Quaker Studies

Differing views of the nature and authority of Scripture were at the heart of the Hicksite Separation of 1827-1828 among American Friends. Mter the separation, the Bible became a source of conflict among Hicksites. Some Hicksite leaders feared anything that tended to diminish the authority of the Bible; other Hicksites argued for a critical view. By 1870, the liberals had the upper hand, as virtually all Hicksite Quakers came to share views of the Bible, including a sympathy for critical scholarship, that mirrored the modernist movement among Protestants.