Introducing Quakers

by George H. Gorman

This short book is intended to introduce Quakers to people who, while they know little about them, are interested to know more. The author has deliberately limited himself to the experience of Quakers in Britain and has not attempted to write about Friends in other parts of the world.

Chapter

1) Approach to Faith
2) Quakers and Christianity
3) Quaker Worship
4) The Quaker Community
5) Quaker Organisation
6) Quaker Concerns
7) National Activities
8) Can I become a Quaker?
9) Suggestions for further reading

Genres: Religion

80 pages, Unknown Binding

First published May 1, 1969

Reviews

[Douglas]

Meh. This book has been on my shelf for more than 35 years. I finally read it to try to better understand my Quaker ancestors in colonial Pennsylvania.

I really wanted to like the book because the Society of Friends may be the only religion/sect with which I have any sympathy. No dogma. No hierarchy. Largely silent « worship » services where only an attender’s expression of insight into their « inner light » may break the reflection. A historic peace and social justice church. Simple living. « i am a little church, no great cathedral »

But this volume left me still relatively unenlightened about Quakers, except, to some extent, as to their « organization, » such as it is, and the centrality of Quaker meetings. The author deliberately omits any précis of Quaker history—but I don’t see how you can explain Quakers without at least some discussion of the violent, religiously intolerant crucible of the mid-Seventeenth Century Britain that gave rise to George Fox’s putative insight and inspiration.

And I still don’t understand how Quakers gave us Richard Nixon and Herbert Hoover.