Baltimore Friends School Blows It The educational “Philosophy” stated on the website of the Baltimore Friends School [BFS] sounds great. The high points: [Baltimore] Friends School seeks to live the conviction that there is that of God in each person. At Friends, we work together to build and sustain a community that is inclusive, respectful, … Continue reading Baltimore Friends School Blows It
Besides, the book soon became an absorbing read – and how often can one honestly say that about an “institutional history”?
Except Gwyn has not set out to write an institutional history. “My training,” he says (vii) “is in biblical theology.” Hence, his slant is both different and more ambitious: the book is “probably best described as historical theology [his italics]. It examines how religious ideas, ideals, and practices have evolved over time through a particular institution, interacting with changes in the wider culture.”
Hence the subtitle, the “Life & Times” of Pendle Hill. Beyond the comings and goings, the highs and the lows, the book “ventures a theology of history.” [His italics again.] And in its eighty-plus years, Pendle Hill has been favored (and cursed) to have been through very interesting times, historically and theologically: not only wars and rumors of war, boom and bust, but also vast cultural changes in its Quaker constituency, with a theological evolution hardly less sweeping.
And yes, Doug Gwyn sets out to comprehend and grapple with it all.
Does he bring it off?
Review: A Convergent Model of Renewal By C. Wess Daniels. Wipf & Stock. Reviewed by Chuck Fager A Convergent Model of Renewal: Remixing the Quaker Tradition in a Participatory Culture. C. Wess Daniels. Pickwick/Wipf & Stock Publishers. 224 pages. Paper, $21.60. There’s more than little déjà vu about Wess Daniels’ book project. Quakerism, his book … Continue reading Review: “A Convergent Model of Renewal” (for Quakers)
BREAKING QUAKER NEWS: North Carolina Schism Takes Dramatic Turns Poplar Ridge Friends Meeting of Trinity, NC, the instigator of the attempted purge of “liberal” Meetings within North Carolina Yearly Meeting-FUM (NCYM), has drafted a letter addressed to “like-minded Friends,” proposing to abandon that effort, then leave NCYM and form a New Yearly Meeting, this blog … Continue reading BREAKING QUAKER NEWS: North Carolina Schism Takes Dramatic Turns
Some Liberal Thoughts About Conservative Quakerism For as long as I’ve been among Friends, closing in on 50 years, there’s been a certain cachet to the Wilburite/Conservative (WC) strain, which