Quaker Life Online Course Earlham School of Religion HCST107EA January 24 - April 29, 2006 Susan Jeffers, Instructor jeffesu@earlham.edu

This online course is part of the ESR Access program.

For information on enrolling in the course, tuition, graduate (seminary) level credit, etc., contact Sue Axtell, axtelsu@earlham.edu, 800-432-1377, Earlham School of Religion Admissions. This course may qualify for Church History, denominational studies or elective credit for MA or MDiv programs at other seminaries. ESR is an ATS accredited seminary affiliated with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

This web page was updated 1/19/06. No further changes are anticipated. If you are enrolled in the course, please go to the online ("Moodle") course, and log in. If you have trouble, don't know your password etc., contact Seminary Computing Services, help@scs.earlham.edu, phone 765-983-1568 (x1568 on campus).

This online Quaker Life course deals with the institutions, practices, vocabulary, and controversies characteristic of the Society of Friends. The Quaker Life course scrutinizes the separate traditions of contemporary Quakerism from the standpoint of history and theology to note the stages whereby seventeenth-century Quakerism becomes what we have today. This process inevitably raises theological questions, and it is hoped to review both the distinctiveness of Quaker faith and practice, and some of the critical questions that can be posed to it.

Required Books and Other Materials:

These books and resources have been requested to be available through the Earlham College Bookstore, or you can order them directly from the publishers and/or over the internet:

(1) Michael L. Birkel. Engaging Scripture: Reading the Bible with Early Friends. Friends United Press, 2005.
(2) Pink Dandelion. The Liturgies of Quakerism: Liturgy, Worship and Society. Ashgate, 2005.
(3) Thomas D. Hamm.The Quakers in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
(4) Thomas D. Hamm. The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1988.
(5) Jim LeShana. Evangelical Friends History: Birth, Growth and Organization. This is a self-contained CD-based course from the Friends Center at Azusa Pacific University. Available to order online through Barclay Press (click on Bookstore, Search).
(6) John Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History. Britain Yearly Meeting, 1984.

Also required:

(7) Issue 97 of the journal Quaker Religious Thought, "Uses of Scripture by Early Friends." You might be able to obtain this from a local Friends meeting or library. Otherwise, please order it directly from QRT, by sending $5 to: Quaker Religious Thought, c/o Phil Smith, Religion Department, George Fox University, Newberg, OR 97132. Please mention that you're taking this class; Phil has offered to include an additional issue from the earlier days of QRT at no charge.If you need to contact Phil, his email address is psmith@georgefox.edu.

You will also need to read, in any edition,

(8) George Fox's Journal and
(9) John Woolman's Journal, each of which is available in a number of editions, including online.

The two most commonly used print editions:
John L. Nickalls, ed. The Journal of George Fox. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1997 and earlier editions.
Phillips Moulton, ed. The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman. Friends United Press, 1989.

Various editions of these two journals are online; here are two:
George Fox Journal - The Rufus Jones edition of Fox's Journal (called Autobiography on the title page).
John Woolman Journal - 18th century Friend Woolman's Journal.

Other required readings will be specified from public websites, or posted on our online course for your use.

If you're planning on taking the course and want to get started on the reading, here's what I recommend:

We'll be having several "visitors" to the course, writers of books and essays we will read. The format of the "visits" will be question-and-answer; each student will be expected to formulate several questions for the visitor and the visitor will choose which questions to answer. The benefit of the visit will be largely a function of the quality of student questions. Soooo.... if you want to get started reading, please begin with things by and about our scheduled (some tentatively) visitors:

Tom Hamm: The Quakers in America and The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907.
John Punshon: Portrait in Grey: A Short History and "The End of (Quaker) History? Some Reflections on the Process" (chapter 3 in The Creation of Quaker Theory, ed. Pink Dandelion; this article will be posted in the online course.
East African Friends: Patrick Nugent, Principal at Friends Theological College(Kaimosi, Kenya), will be coordinating a "visit" from faculty at FTC, including himself. I'm still looking for online resources; here are some places to start: Kaimosi Connection (especially the earlier Archives), Friends Theological College, and University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center Kenya Profile.
Friends in the Middle East: Wikipedia on Ramallah, FUM on Ramallah's Friends Schools.
Friends in Central and South America: Iglesia Nacional Evangelica "Los Amigos" Junta Anual de Bolivia. If your Spanish isn't so good, you can go to the BabelFish Translator, copy in the url, and select "Spanish to English." Also, see Wikipedia on Quakers in Latin America.

The other advance preparation that will stand you in good stead, is to get familiar with the Earlham College Lilly Library's vast assortment of online resources, free to you as an enrolled student. If you're off-campus, you'll need to use the "proxy server" which requires your Earlham user ID and password. These should be the same as the user ID and password you use to get into our Moodle course. To get to the online resources, go to http://www.earlham.edu/~libr/, and either poke around on your own, or check out the instructions posted at http://www.earlham.edu/~libr/seminaries/fulltext.htm. If you need help getting in via the proxy server, email proxy-support@earlham.edu. For general reference and searching questions, our normal library contact would be Christine Larson, but she's on sabbatical, so email Janet Wagner instead: wagneja@earlham.edu. Some of the most profitable online resources available through the library - make sure you can get to them:

Early English Books Online (Find Library Materials ==> Electronic Books). Just for practice, look for works by George Fox and William Penn.

NetLibrary (Find Library Materials ==> Electronic Books). For practice, look for Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-century England by Phyllis Mack. Just click on "View this eBook" and give it a quick look. You don't have to read the whole thing!

Journals, some with full-text articles available online. The two places to start are:
(1) ATLA Religion Database (Find Article ==> In Databases ==> Arts and Humanities ==> Specialized)
(2) Academic Search Premier (Find Article ==> In Databases ==> Arts and Humanities ==> General).

For practice, see if you can find the full text of Steve Angell's review of Pink Dandelion's Creation of Quaker Theory. Steve's review is in the journal Quaker Studies.

Two other online resources we'll be using, which you can access directly (no proxy server necessary):

Quaker Bible Index: Esther Murer's comprehensive Scripture index to early Quaker writings
ESR's Digital Quaker Collection

Other Online Resources, some of which will be required reading in the course:

"Three Twentieth-Century Revolutions: Liberal Theology, Sexual Moralities, Peace Testimonies. 2000 FGC Gathering address by Quaker historian Jerry Frost.

Chuck Fager review of The Creation of Quaker Theory: Insider Perspectives, Ben Pink Dandelion, ed.

NOTE: When you click on the link to the MS Word documents below (or if you try to download them to your computer or print them) you might get a little security screen asking you for a user name and password; just click on "Cancel" or your Escape key and the document should appear.

George Fox, Letter CLI [ html | MS Word ]

Worksheet for Fox Letter CLI [ html | MS Word ]

John 1:1-18 in KJV, NRSV, and NIV [copyright] - you can look these up easily enough.

Worksheet for John 1:1-18 [ html ]

William Penn "The Sandy Foundation Shaken"

The Richmond Declaration

Margaret Fell, "Women's Speaking Justified"

George Fox, "Some Principles of the Elect People of God Who in Scorn are called Quakers, For all People throughout all Christendome to Read over, and thereby their own States to Consider."

Letter from the Elders Gathered at Balby, 1656

Catalog of Quaker Writings of the 17th, 18th, & 19th Centuries Currently in Print or Online.
If you know the name and century of the Friend whose writings you want, this is the place to go.

Online Texts
An interesting selection of online early Quaker texts.

QuakerPages
Includes Peter Sippel's online anthology of Friends writings and links to other Friends' sites.

Quaker Heritage Press
"Aims to make available various historical Quaker writings that have been allowed to go out of print."

Robert Barclay Apology
1678 edition.

Robert Barclay Catechism and Confession of Faith
1831 edition corrected from 3 editions that date from Barclay's lifetime.

Isaac Penington Works
The complete Works of early Friend Isaac Penington.

Writings of James Nayler
Writings of controversial early Friend James Nayler.

William Penn: "Some Fruits of Solitude"
Written 1682.

George Fox Epistles
From the 8-volume set of Fox's Works. "My dear friends,---Keep your meetings in the power of the Lord god, in which ye may all feel life eternal among you."

John Wilbur "On the Holy Scriptures"
"1st. Can the Scriptures, or did they ever, save any one without the spirit? 2nd. Is a person called to the work of the ministry by the Scriptures, or by the spirit of Jesus Christ? 3rd. Is a man brought under a concern to go from one place to another to preach the gospel, by the Scriptures, or by the constraining power of the spirit and love of Jesus Christ? 4th. And when he is arrived at the place assigned, and is assembled with the people, is it not the spirit of Christ that truly unfolds the Scriptures, and brings to view the state of men, either in the words of Scripture, or in some other suitable language? 5th. And when a professed minister preaches in any of our meetings, his doctrines not being repugnant to the letter of the Scriptures, are the elders or others to judge by the Scriptures, or by the Spirit of Truth, whether his ministry is from the right spring or not? 6th. Did not the Jews think they had eternal life in the Scriptures, and yet would not come unto Christ that they might have life?"

Classical Theories of the Atonement
Here are 4 short pieces by Arthur Roberts, one on each of the 4 classical theories of the meaning of Jesus Christ's death on behalf of humanity:
Ransom
Satisfaction
Substitution
Moral Influence

Questions about this web page or the course? EMail Susan Jeffers at jeffesu@earlham.edu.