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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Broadcasting Truth To Power:The American Friends Service Committee And The Early Southern Civil Rights Movement, Brian Ward
Quaker Studies
This article addresses two gaps in the historical literature on the modern civil rights movement. First, it highlights the contributions of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to the struggle for racial justice in the South. Second, it reveals the importance of radio broadcasting in helping to create a climate in which southern white racial attitudes and discriminatory practices were challenged. It demonstrates how AFSC-sponsored broadcasts reflected Quaker principles, but also how debates over appropriate programme content exposed the tensions between principled and pragmatic considerations, morality and expediency, that shaped the Movement and determined the AFSC's role in it.
Quaker Beliefs: Diverse Yet Distinctive, Rosamund Bourke
Quaker Beliefs: Diverse Yet Distinctive, Rosamund Bourke
Quaker Studies
The aim of the research was to obtain the views of Quakers about their beliefs. 166 members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) responded to a questionnaire about Quaker faith and practice. The respondents largely agreed with traditional Quaker beliefs. As might be expected from previous studies, a diversity of views was found and it was not possible to calculate an 'index of Quakerism'. Eighty percent were over the age of 50. Their attitudes to religion were probably formed before the changes in cultural values of the latter half of the twentieth century.
America's Learning About Foreign Places Through The Eyes Of Missionaries: Writings In The Friends' Missionary Advocate, 1885-1933, Stanley D. Brunn, Elizabeth J. Leppman
America's Learning About Foreign Places Through The Eyes Of Missionaries: Writings In The Friends' Missionary Advocate, 1885-1933, Stanley D. Brunn, Elizabeth J. Leppman
Quaker Studies
Missionaries were among the travelers who supplied American adults and children with information about foreign places. Because they enjoyed a high status and respect with their home congregations and because they lived among peoples in foreign, often exotic, lands, missionaries and their writings enjoyed a wide and attentive audience. Materials in The Friends' Missionary Advocate between 1885 and 1933 report that information on foreign regions reached American audiences through presentations at monthly and quarterly meetings and at yearly conferences. Articles, letters, reports, maps, and pictures were also a medium for influencing Americans' impressions of the world.
Rethinking The British Anti-War Movement 1914-1918: Notes From A Local Study, Cyril Pearce
Rethinking The British Anti-War Movement 1914-1918: Notes From A Local Study, Cyril Pearce
Quaker Studies
Based on extensive research into the 1914-1918 anti-war movement in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, this study sets out to examine the proposition that Huddersfield was a 'special place' in the strength of its anti-war community and in the tolerance shown to it. In the process, it raises fundamental questions about historians' understanding of the way in which British society dealt with the war. It criticises what it sees to be an essentially metropolitan view of the war which it regards as inaccurate and misleading. It also raises questions about popular attitudes towards the war, the nature of anti-war groupings, accepted calculations …
The Quaker Peace Testimony And Its Contribution To The British Peace Movement: An Overview, Martin Ceadel
The Quaker Peace Testimony And Its Contribution To The British Peace Movement: An Overview, Martin Ceadel
Quaker Studies
This article attempts the first overview of the contribution of Quakerism to the British peace movement from its eighteenth-century origins to the present day. It emphasizes that the Society of Friends did much to make pacifism acceptable in Britain, and was the principal backer of the peace movement in the century following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It shows how Quakers, although divided by the First World War and eclipsed by an upsurge in non-Quaker activism, reaffirmed their pacifism and did as much for the peace movement during the inter-war years as any small religious body could have done. …
Questions Of Identity Among 'Buddhist Quakers', Klaus Huber
Questions Of Identity Among 'Buddhist Quakers', Klaus Huber
Quaker Studies
This paper is focused on a survey of Quakers who regard Buddhism as the major source of their spirituality, with the aim of establishing how it is possible to be a 'Buddhist Quaker'. It will be argued that there are two distinct groups of survey respondents: 'Quaker Buddhists' and 'semi-Buddhist Quakers' who differ in their self-identification. Tendencies and influences within both groups will be discussed along with their respective choice of spiritual resources, their meditation practices and their belief patterns. It will be observed that Quaker Buddhists have established stronger roots in Buddhism, whereas semi-Buddhist Quakers remain closer to British …
James Nayler In The English Civil Wars, David Neelon
James Nayler In The English Civil Wars, David Neelon
Quaker Studies
James Nayler spent between eight and nine years in Parliament's army during the English Civil Wars, but this period of his life has not been adequately discussed in any of his biographies. This article documents causes for the Civil Wars in Nayler's home town and his enlistment, rank and service throughout the wars. His involvement in a list of major battles is shown. Nayler became a member of the Council of War under John Lambert, commander of the Northern Armies, and served as Lambert's Quartermaster in the settlement of the rebellious army troops. As a member of the Council, Nayler …
Friend In The Field: A Reflexive Approach To Being A Quaker Ethnographer, Eleanor Nesbitt
Friend In The Field: A Reflexive Approach To Being A Quaker Ethnographer, Eleanor Nesbitt
Quaker Studies
Acknowledgement of the significance of reflexivity in social research has generated numerous autobiographical references in introductions to reports of field studies of faith communities. In particular the relevance of the researcher's gender- or at least female gender - has been a subject for scholarly reflection. Moreover, the insider/outsider dichotomy has been invoked and contested, and the changing relationship between the ethnographer and the field during field work has been charted. In this article it is some ethnographers' religious context and orientation that is the focus. With particular reference to some contemporary British Quakers whose field work has had a religious …
Friends In Business: Researching The History Of Quaker Involvement In Industry And Commerce, Helen Roberts
Friends In Business: Researching The History Of Quaker Involvement In Industry And Commerce, Helen Roberts
Quaker Studies
This paper is intended as an aid to those researching the history of Quaker involvement in industry and commerce, with a regional focus on Yorkshire. A selection of archives of businesses founded and run by Quakers, as well as of family and personal papers of Friends in business are surveyed here. Both the historical context and a summary of the surviving sources are given for each collection surveyed, with details of where the material is held. Examples have been chosen to represent the Quaker contribution to particular trades and industries, and in some cases, to promote collections which have recently …
Quaker Families And Business Networks In Nineteenth-Century Darlington, Gillian Cookson
Quaker Families And Business Networks In Nineteenth-Century Darlington, Gillian Cookson
Quaker Studies
This article investigates the central role played by Quakers in the industrial and urban growth of Darlington, focusing in particular upon family and business connections with Friends in the City of London. From the launch of the town's famous first railway, to the ensuing arrival of heavy industry in the 1850s and 1860s, Quakers were at the forefront of industrial and urban developments. While Quaker entrepreneurs possessed advantages in business deriving from their access to finance and advice, and from their reputation for probity, the idea that they also had special talents for foresight, innovation and management, is not borne …
Anne Camm And The Vanishing Quaker Prophets, Christine Trevett
Anne Camm And The Vanishing Quaker Prophets, Christine Trevett
Quaker Studies
No abstract provided.
Contemporary Quaker Attitudes To Science And Technology, Jackie Leach Scully
Contemporary Quaker Attitudes To Science And Technology, Jackie Leach Scully
Quaker Studies
I discuss some data on contemporary Quaker attitudes to science, particularly gene technology, gathered from member of Britain Yearly Meeting. Quakers are often perceived as having a relatively positive attitude towards innovation, including technology, and some confirmation of this can be found in Quaker history, until 30 years ago. The observations described in this paper suggest that, in line with the general trend in the west towards a greater skepticism about the benefits of science, the current attitude of British Friends towards the practice of science is a more ambivalent or even negative one, although attitudes towards the scientific/experimental method …
Money Matters - The Experience Of English Friends In Stavanger, 1885-1900, David Adshead
Money Matters - The Experience Of English Friends In Stavanger, 1885-1900, David Adshead
Quaker Studies
The economic depression in Norway in the mid- 1880s led to the virtual bankruptcy of two of the key members of the Stavanger Meeting at a time when there was also a crisis of leadership following the death of Endre Dahl for so long the leader of the Quaker group there. A small group of English Friends led by Walter Morris (later, Morice) made an appeal for funds so as to be able to make commercial loans and thus ease the situation for Carl Nyman and Peter Fugilie who had by now made arrangements with their creditors. But just as …
British Quakers And A New Kind Of End-Time Prophecy, Charles Stroud, Pink Dandelion
British Quakers And A New Kind Of End-Time Prophecy, Charles Stroud, Pink Dandelion
Quaker Studies
This research note challenges the accuracy of Dandelion's claim that British Quakerism will survive until 2108 and presents two mathematical calculations of the point when there would be no Quakers left in Britain. It concludes that the 2108 figure may not be so far from the truth although this depends on the date from which decline is charted. The article also raises questions about the date at which a critical minimum might be reached.
'Will The Last (Woman) Friend To Leave Please Ensure That The Light Remains Shining?', Bill Chadkirk
'Will The Last (Woman) Friend To Leave Please Ensure That The Light Remains Shining?', Bill Chadkirk
Quaker Studies
This paper analyses trends in membership of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain, the number of members per Meeting and the changes in the gender balance of membership. It identifies polynomial equations to curves that match the data very closely. An accelerating decline in membership commencing in 1990 is identified. Trends are extrapolated to determine an end-point in 2032. The paper makes clear that as this date approaches the relationship between the data and trend is liable to breakdown.
John Brewin's Tracts: The Written Word, Evangelicalism, And The Quaker Way In Mid Nineteenth Century England, Edwina Newman
John Brewin's Tracts: The Written Word, Evangelicalism, And The Quaker Way In Mid Nineteenth Century England, Edwina Newman
Quaker Studies
This study explores seven volumes of tracts collected between 1827 and 1850 by John Brewin, a Cirencester Quaker. This period was a critical one for the Religious Society of Friends, notably in its relationship with Evangelicalism. The collection allows us to test something of the nature and extent of change at grassroots level, by providing an insight into the range of issues that were of interest to provincial English Quakers, the means by which ideas were disseminated, and how they might have been received by readers. The conclusion is that, while Evangelical influence was clearly growing, Quakers remained deeply attached …