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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Environmental Aesthetics And Environmental Justice In Jonathan Edwards’S Personal Narrative And John Woolman’S Journal, Jay David Miller
Environmental Aesthetics And Environmental Justice In Jonathan Edwards’S Personal Narrative And John Woolman’S Journal, Jay David Miller
Faculty Publications - Department of English
This essay examines the relationship between Christian theology, environmental aesthetics, and environmental justice in colonial America. As opposed to the work of secular writers from the early republic like J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and Thomas Jefferson, the Christian environmental aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards and John Woolman have potential to address questions of environmental justice in American literary history, such as tenant exploitation, African enslavement, and Indigenous displacement. Edwards, however, worked in a pastoral literary tradition, which limited his ability to imagine environmental justice due to his commitment to the doctrine of election. Woolman, on the other hand, worked …
“Friend Thou Art Often In My Remembrance”, Jay D. Miller
“Friend Thou Art Often In My Remembrance”, Jay D. Miller
Faculty Publications - Department of English
A recently discovered letter by Elizabeth Ashbridge expands the very small archive of documents related to this important Quaker minister, gives scholars a better understanding of the circles in which she moved, and offers an occasion for reflection on epistolary writing in the eighteenth century. Written to her fellow Quaker Margaret Bowne, the letter fascinates as a dense record of the overlapping transatlantic, commercial, and ministerial connections Friends maintained during the period. It also illustrates the persistence of Pauline epistolary tropes in the context of an ostensibly “secular” familiar letter, reminding scholars of the pitfalls of thinking of the secular …
The Problem Of Quaker Identity, Peter J. Collins
The Problem Of Quaker Identity, Peter J. Collins
Quaker Studies
The paper constitutes a summary of my attempts, during the past 15 years, to understand contemporary Quakers and Quakerism. The issue on which I focus is the difficulty in representing Quaker identity given the heterogeneity of Quaker belief. During the last decade I have found three approaches useful in analysing this problem. In the first place, I found that Quaker identity is revealed through their talk in and around Meeting. Although each individual friend has a unique biographical trajectory, this talk tends to be both storied and thematic. Furthermore, such narrative discourse is coloured by one particularly pervasive character of …
'Chipping At The Landmarks Of Our Fathers': The Decline Of The Testimony Against Hireling Ministry In The Nineteenth Century, Thomas D. Hamm
'Chipping At The Landmarks Of Our Fathers': The Decline Of The Testimony Against Hireling Ministry In The Nineteenth Century, Thomas D. Hamm
Quaker Studies
One of the distinctive features of Quakerism from the 1650s until the 1870s was its stance against any kind of pay for ministers, what Friends referred to as 'hireling ministry'. Friends viewed a paid, authoritative pastoral ministry as contrary to Scripture, as tending toward preaching that pleased humans rather than God, as limiting the leadings of the Holy Spirit, and as generally corrupting. One of the criticisms of Orthodox by Hicksite Friends in the 1 820s was that the Orthodox were compromising this testimony by associating with clergy of other denominations in reform and humanitarian causes, and both Orthodox and …
'What They Seek For Is In Themselves': Quaker Language And Thought In Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century American Literature, James Peacock
'What They Seek For Is In Themselves': Quaker Language And Thought In Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century American Literature, James Peacock
Quaker Studies
This paper argues that Quakerism was an important influence on a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American writers. Looking at the work of, amongst others, Charles Brockden Brown, Robert Montgomery Bird, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Greenleaf Whittier, it demonstrates that both the stereotyped depiction of Quakers and the use of Quaker ideas, such as the inward light in literature of the period, helped writers tackle some of the paradoxes of democracy in a young nation. The perceived mystery of Quaker individualism is used in these texts first to dramatize anxiety over the formation of American 'character' as either fundamentally …
Quaker Plaining As Critical Aesthetic, Peter J. Collins
Quaker Plaining As Critical Aesthetic, Peter J. Collins
Quaker Studies
In the first part of this paper I explore the possibility of identifying a Quaker aesthetic through the concepts 'plain' and 'plaining'. I begin with an examination of the importance of 'the plain' as product and practice to seventeenth-century Friends and briefly outline its enduring importance to Quakers. Friends, however, were not the first group to adopt the plain style which is better understood when located in its broader historical context. For Quakers, the plain is ethic as well as aesthetic, partially grounding all Quaker testimonies. Given the well-documented aestheticization of contemporary life, I argue that the Quaker plain and …
Preaching For Hire: Public Issues And Private Concerns In A Skirmish Of The Lamb's War, Jonathan Harlow
Preaching For Hire: Public Issues And Private Concerns In A Skirmish Of The Lamb's War, Jonathan Harlow
Quaker Studies
Quakers from the first rejected the idea of the professional minister requiring university education and being paid for his work. This was a principal motif in the Lamb's War they waged in the 1650s; and it naturally aroused the hostility of established ministers, who had good reason to feel insecure. This article examines a brief battle of books which took place in 1656 and 1657: Thomas Speed, a leading Bristol Quaker, fulminated against preaching for hire and three incumbent ministers countered his attacks. It turns out that the participants were known to each other and had personal axes to grind. …
Victorian Philanthropy And The Rowntrees: The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Mark Freeman
Victorian Philanthropy And The Rowntrees: The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Mark Freeman
Quaker Studies
Through an examination of the establishment and early grant-making priorities of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, this article explores the development of Quaker philanthropy in Britain in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, especially in the context of the long-standing Quaker interest in adult education. It locates Joseph Rowntree's view of philanthropy in the wider contexts of the changing patterns of Victorian and Edwardian philanthropic theory and practice, the nineteenth-century growth of Quaker social concern, and the changing perceptions of the problem of poverty during Rowntree's lifetime. It argues that the motives underlying the establishment of the Charitable Trust were predicated …
An Occupational Analysis Of The Society Of Friends In Nineteenth-Century Scotland, Paul F. Burton
An Occupational Analysis Of The Society Of Friends In Nineteenth-Century Scotland, Paul F. Burton
Quaker Studies
This paper summarizes our knowledge of the occupational background of English Quakers as a preliminary to an analysis of the occupations of Scottish Quakers in the nineteenth century, based upon the primary sources of records of births, marriages and burials. The same increase in middle-class occupations, including the professions, is evident in Scotland, but the process of embourgeoisement seems to have been slower in Scotland, and by the end of the nineteenth- century merchants and retailers were the largest group in the Society there, rather than the professions. There is also evidence of regional variations in the occupations noted.
'On Behalf Of All Young Women Trying To Be Better Than They Are': Feminism And Quakerism In The Nineteenth Century: The Case Of Anna Deborah Richardson, Elizabeth A. O'Donnell
'On Behalf Of All Young Women Trying To Be Better Than They Are': Feminism And Quakerism In The Nineteenth Century: The Case Of Anna Deborah Richardson, Elizabeth A. O'Donnell
Quaker Studies
Historians of the early British women's movement have frequently drawn connections between the theology and practice of Quakerism and the involvement of female Friends in nineteenth-century 'women's rights' campaigns. These connections are usually expressed in terms of religious, organizational and environmental factors particular to Quakerism, and embody the assumption that the cultural milieu of Quaker women was peculiarly conducive to the development of 'feminist consciousness'. This article examines the complexity of these assumed links, through an exploration of the life and writings of Anna Deborah Richardson (1832-1872) of Newcastle Monthly Meeting. Through her close association with Emily Davies, who established …
The Embodiment Of Seventeenth Century Quakerism: An Exercise In Historical Anthropology, Peter J. Collins
The Embodiment Of Seventeenth Century Quakerism: An Exercise In Historical Anthropology, Peter J. Collins
Quaker Studies
No abstract provided.
Religious Silence: British Quakerism And British Buddhism Compared, Sandra Bell, Peter Collins
Religious Silence: British Quakerism And British Buddhism Compared, Sandra Bell, Peter Collins
Quaker Studies
In this paper we explore the communicative function of silence among British Quakers and British Theraviida Buddhists. Both examples link silence to stillness with the implication that non-activity is a means of evoking sacred presence. It is proposed that such an evocation is achieved through attaching aesthetic and ethical value to the performance of stillness and silence. Furthermore, we suggest that the identity of each of these religious communities is, in many respects, defined through the emphasis that is placed on the existential and moral significance of silence.
A Catholic Looks At Quakerism, Michael Mullett
A Catholic Looks At Quakerism, Michael Mullett
Quaker Studies
In this article Michael Mullet first sketches the well-advertised dissimilarities between Catholicism, the epitome, for many, of 'conservative' Christianity, and Quakerism, which brought to a high point of development the religious radicalism implicit in the Reformation. However, Mullett argues that, underlyingly, relatively superficial dissonances over such issues as church order and (more significantly) sacrament, Tridentine Catholicism and Quakerism shared, in opposition to the Reformation's key principles of justification by faith alone and its corollary predestination, an abiding, soteriological and anthropological acceptance (grounded in the Epistle of James) of the role of free will and of justification and sanctification by works …
A Case Of Political Philanthropy: The Rowntree Family And The Campaign For Democratic Reform, Jonathan S. Davies, Mark Freeman
A Case Of Political Philanthropy: The Rowntree Family And The Campaign For Democratic Reform, Jonathan S. Davies, Mark Freeman
Quaker Studies
This article examines the attitude of the Rowntree family - and in particular its three prominent members, Joseph, Arnold and Seebohm Rowntree - to campaigns for democratic and constitutional reform in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores their views on women's suffrage, reform of the House of Lords and proportional representation, and their practical involvement in the promotion or otherwise of democracy in their dealings with the press, their model community at New Earswick and in the adult education institutions with which they were associated. The article argues that, in common with many other Quakers, the Rowntrees' …
Women In The Quaker Community: The Richardson Family Of Newcastle, C.1815-60, Jonathan Mood
Women In The Quaker Community: The Richardson Family Of Newcastle, C.1815-60, Jonathan Mood
Quaker Studies
The town of Newcastle in the early nineteenth century offered many diverse forms of entertainment and socialising for middle class men and women. Although the religious beliefs of Quakers excluded them from sharing in many of these activities, their faith offered them unique opportunities to participate in, lead, and challenge middle class lifestyle. Through examining the domestic, religious, and charitable conduct of the women of the Richardson family it can be seen how their understanding of society was mediated through religious beliefs that allowed them to challenge the role of the typical middle class woman.
Bayard Rustin: An Annotated Bibliography Of Materials Relating To Rustin As A Quaker And Peace Activist, Buzz Haughton
Bayard Rustin: An Annotated Bibliography Of Materials Relating To Rustin As A Quaker And Peace Activist, Buzz Haughton
Quaker Studies
Although Bayard Rustin was one of the most important leaders of the American civil rights movement from the advent of its modern period in the 1950s until well into the 1980s, his name was seldom mentioned; he received comparatively little press or media attention, and others' names were usually much more readily associated with the movement than his was. His was a behind-the-scenes role that, for all its importance, never garnered Rustin the public acclaim he deserved. Rustin's homosexuality and early communist affiliation probably meant that the importance of his contribution to the civil rights and peace movements would never …
Voltaire's Convincement, Raymond Ayoub
Voltaire's Convincement, Raymond Ayoub
Quaker Studies
The aim of this essay is to trace the evolution of Voltaire's perspective toward Quakers and Quakerism during the course of his life. The record begins when in 1726 he was forced into exile and chose to go to England. In the course of his three-year stay there, he wrote letters to his friend-letters which were published in 1733 in English under the title 'Letters Concerning the English Nation' and in French with the title 'Lettres Philosophiques'. Four of the 25 letters are devoted to Quakerism. We endeavour to depict, through his writing, Voltaire's changing attitude toward Quakerism from one …