Quakers Find a Way - Their Discoveries in Practical Living Book

Quakers Fin da THEIR DISCOVERIES IN PRACTICAL LIVING CHARLES M. WOODMAN wtl A. B., B. D., D. D. THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, INC. Publishers INDIANAPOLIS NEW YORK DEDICATION To THE young Quaker preachers of America, who, pn the background of a Liberal Quakerism reflecting the Sermon on the Mount, are carry ing forward the mission of Christ in the world CONTENTS Part I IN THE BEGINNING CHAPTER PAGE 1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17 2. THE WEAVERS 24 Part II A PECULIAR PEOPLE 3. THE QUAKER MARRIAGE 37 4. THE QUAKER COSTUME 40 5. THE QUAKER WORSHIP 46 6. THE PECULIAR LANGUAGE 54 7. THE UNIQUE ORGANIZATION 57 Part III THE NEW TYPE OF MESSAGE 8. A MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 63 9. Two KINDS OF SACRAMENTS 77 10. MULTIPLICITY OF REVELATION 81 n. QUAKERS AND THE SCRIPTURES 87 12. THE DILEMMA OF THE DISCIPLINE 95 Part IV NEW WAYS OF EVANGELISM 13. IN GREAT BRITAIN 107 14. IN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA . 121 CONTENTS Continued CHAPTER PAGE 15. IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 127 16. IN WESTERN AMERICA 138 17. THE PROBLEM OF Music 159 1 8. THE QUAKER EDUCATION 174 Part V THE NEW SOCIAL APPROACH 19. INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS .... 183 20. SOME SCRIPTURAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS 189 21. INITIAL STATUS OF THE SOCIAL APPROACH . . 195 22. SOME HIGH POINTS IN QUIETISM 200 23. IMMEDIATE REVELATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE SLAVERY 204 Part VI THE NEW RELATION TO GOVERNMENT 24. EQUALITY, WORSHIP, JUSTICE 225 25. PROTESTING WAR, PROMOTING PEACE . . . . 233 26. OVERTURES TO GOVERNMENTS 249 APPENDIX AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 INDEX 275 QUAKERS FIND A WAY PREFACE IN THE course of its nineteen hundred years of existence Christianity has expressed itself in two relatively distinct types of belief. One is called experiential or mystical. It starts with ones sense of the reality and presence of God at the cen ter of mans personality. It struggles to maintain mysticism supreme against the inevitable temptation to make ecclesi astical form central and to define faith in terms of theological tenets and subscription to creedal statement. The other type of Christianity, doubtless starting with in timations of the mystical in personal experience, immediately becomes crystallized into set forms and ceremonies. Assent to creed and theology becomes the controlling feature of its mental attitude, and the practice of its forms becomes for the majority the all-essential element of its faith. Quakerism belongs to the first of these two types of Chris tianity. The inner personal consciousness of the Spirit of God at the center of ones being gave to the faith its internal drive and power to reach with its message approximately one hun dred thousand people in the first half century of its life. It has not been free from yielding at times to the encasing of its life in fixed dogma. Even its formless worship has on occasion become as fixed as any professedly liturgical type of religion. It has not been altogether free from a formless formalism. Quakerisms three hundred years of history present an in triguing study of its efforts to keep its spirit free and untram meled in the power of the Divine leadership, and to keep its action aggressive as it went out to grapple with every human relationship until society itself should take on the nature of a Divine program of living. The striking thing is that in the ii 12 Quakers Find a Way course of its history Quakerism has found the way in many areas of human relations. The story of Quakerism has been too well written to call for another volume on its history as such. However, the swamps it has found in the course of its ten generations and the way it has built highways through those swamps in a world civilization which has survived crisis after crisis is informing, stimulating and also a revelation of the quality of Quakerisms spiritual and social fiber. It is to this pleasing task we have turned in this little volume...Read More