British Quakers and Religious Language

British Quakers and Religious Language
Author: Rhiannon Grant
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Quakers
ISBN: 9789004378704

In British Quakers and Religious Language, Rhiannon Grant explores the ways in which this community discusses the Divine. She identifies characteristic patterns of language use and uncovers the philosophical and theological claims that support these patterns.

British Quakers and Religious Language

British Quakers and Religious Language
Author: Rhiannon Grant
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004379142

In British Quakers and Religious Language, Rhiannon Grant explores the ways in which this community discusses the Divine. She identifies characteristic patterns of language use and, through a detailed analysis of examples from published sources, uncovers the philosophical and theological claims which support these patterns. These claims are not always explicit within the Quaker community, which does not have written creeds. Instead, implicit claims are often being made with community functions in mind. These can include a desire to balance potentially conflicting needs, such as the wish to have a single unified community that simultaneously welcomes diversity of belief. Having examined these factors, Grant connects the claims made to wider developments in the disciplines of theology, philosophy of religion, and religious studies, especially to the increase in multiple religious belonging, the work of nonrealist theologians such as Don Cupitt, and pluralist philosophers of religion such as John Hick.

Advices & Queries

Advices & Queries
Author: Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia
Publisher: Interactive Publications Pty Ltd
Total Pages: 22
Release: 2015-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0975157965

Advices and queries designed to challenge and inspire Australian Quakers in their personal lives and in their life as a religious community.

Liberal Quaker Reconciliation Theology: A Constructive Approach

Liberal Quaker Reconciliation Theology: A Constructive Approach
Author: Christy Randazzo
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2020-02-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004425063

This work brings the fields of Christian theologies of atonement and reconciliation and Liberal Quaker theology into dialogue, and lays the foundation for developing an original Liberal Quaker reconciliation theology. This dialogue focuses specifically on the metaphorical language employed to describe the relationship of interdependence between humans and God, which both traditions hold as integral to their conceptions of human and divine existence. It focuses on these areas: the sin of human division and exclusion; atonement and reunification of humans and God as a response to sin; and the metaphors Liberal Quaker use to describe this interdependent relationship, specifically the metaphor of Light. This unique approach develops an original model of reconciliatory interdependence between humans and God that is rooted in both Christological and Universalist Liberal Quaker metaphorical and theological categories and utilizes the Liberal Quaker language of God as interdependent Light towards a new theology.

The Cultivation of Conformity

The Cultivation of Conformity
Author: Pink Dandelion
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2019-04-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351728873

This book explores the inter-relationship between religious groups and wider society and examines the way religious groups change in relation to societal norms, potentially to the point of undergoing processes of ‘internal secularisation’ within secular and secularist cultures. Received sociological wisdom suggests that over time religious groups moderate their claims. This comes with the potential loss of new adherents, for theorists of secularisation suggest unique or universal, rather than moderate, truth claims appear attractive to would-be recruits. At the same time, religious groups need to appear equivalent, in terms of harmlessness, to state-sanctioned religious expression in order to secure rights. Thus, religious organisations face a perpetual conundrum. Using British Quakers as a case study as they moved from a counter-cultural group to an accepted and accepting part of twentieth- and twenty-first-century society, the author builds on models of religion and non-religion in terms of flows and explores the consequences of religious assimilation when the process of constructing both distinctive appeal and ‘harmlessness’ in pursuit of rights is played out in a secular culture. A major contribution to the sociology of religion, The Cultivation of Conformity presents a new theory of internal secularisation as the ultimate stage of the cultivation of conformity, and a model of the way sects and society inter-relate.

The Quaker World

The Quaker World
Author: C. Wess Daniels
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 631
Release: 2022-11-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0429632355

The Quaker World is an outstanding, comprehensive and lively introduction to this complex Christian denomination. Exploring the global reach of the Quaker community, the book begins with a discussion of the living community, as it is now, in all its diversity and complexity. The book covers well-known areas of Quaker development, such as the formation of Liberal Quakerism in North America, alongside topics which have received much less scholarly attention in the past, such as the history of Quakers in Bolivia and the spread of Quakerism in Western Kenya. It includes over sixty chapters by a distinguished international and interdisciplinary team of contributors and is organised into three clear parts: Global Quakerism Spirituality Embodiment Within these sections, key themes are examined, including global Quaker activity, significant Quaker movements, biographies of key religious figures, important organisations, pacifism, politics, the abolition of slavery, education, industry, human rights, racism, refugees, gender, disability, sexuality and environmentalism. The Quaker World provides an authoritative and accessible source of information on all topics important to Quaker Studies. As such, it is essential reading for students studying world religions, Christianity and comparative religion, and it will also be of interest to those in related fields such as sociology, political science, anthropology and ethics.

The Living Fountain

The Living Fountain
Author: Benjamin Wood
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2023-05-26
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1803412348

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, Quakers are increasingly divided over matters of theology, religious belonging, and the status of Friends’ Christian past. Recent controversies over Theism, Non-Theism and Universalism have highlighted deep-rooted transformations of Quaker self-understanding. In contrast to earlier decades, many contemporary Quakers hanker after an intensely inclusive community, unhampered by the particulars of Christian theology. Many British Friends no-longer see the Quaker movement as an expression of the Gospel nor a manifestation of the Universal Church. What might Friends be missing by re-imagining Quakerism in these resolutely post-Christian terms? Author Benjamin Wood argues that, far from limiting the bounds of Quaker identity, a selective return to Quakerism’s seventeenth-century roots can restore to modern Liberal Friends a shared story capable of deepening their spiritual life and worship-practice. Based neither on doctrinal agreement nor inflexible religious borders, the Quaker narrative recovered in The Living Fountain: Remembrances of Quaker Christianity is drawn together by sacred experiments in mutual love and enduring hope. Through a series of extended reflections on God, Jesus, and the language of salvation, Wood seeks to uncover a dynamic faith ncommitted to universal healing, reconciliation, and the crossing of religious and cultural boundaries. At the centre of this retrieval is the insistence that the God revealed in Quaker worship cherishes our differences and delights in our diversity.

Theology from Listening: Finding the Core of Liberal Quaker Theological Thought

Theology from Listening: Finding the Core of Liberal Quaker Theological Thought
Author: Rhiannon Grant
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 99
Release: 2020-04-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004431551

In Theology from Listening: Finding the Core of Liberal Quaker Theological Thought, Rhiannon Grant explores the changes and continuities in liberal Quaker theology over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in multiple English-speaking Quaker communities around the world. The work involves a close analysis of material produced by Quaker meetings through formal, corporate methods; of material produced by individuals and small groups within Quaker communities; and of writing by individuals and small groups working primarily within academic or ecumenical theological settings. It concludes that although liberal Quaker theology is diverse and flexible, it also possesses a core coherence and can meaningfully be discussed as a single tradition. At the centre of liberal Quaker theology is the belief that direct, unmediated contact with the Divine is possible and results in useful guidance.

Irish Quaker Hybrid Identities

Irish Quaker Hybrid Identities
Author: Maria Kennedy
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2019-09-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900441519X

Dr Kennedy’s work is a sociological study of Quakers that investigates the impact that sectarianism has had on identity construction within the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland. The research highlights individual Friends’ complex and hybrid cultural, national and theological identities – mirrored by the Society’s corporate identity. This monograph focuses specifically on examples of political and theological hybridity. These hybrid identities resulted in tensions which impact on relationships between Friends and the wider organisation. How Friends negotiate and accommodate these diverse identities is explored. It is argued that Irish Quakers prioritise ‘relational unity’ and have developed a distinctive approach to complex identity management. Kennedy asserts that in the two Irish states, ‘Quaker’ represents a meta-identity that is counter-cultural in its non-sectarianism, although this is more problematic within the organisation. Furthermore, by modelling an alternative, non-sectarian identity, Quakers in Ireland contribute to building capacity for transformation from oppositional, binary identities to more fluid and inclusive ones.

Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750

Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750
Author: Naomi Pullin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2018-05-24
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1316510239

This original interpretation of the lives and social interactions of Quaker women in the British Atlantic between 1650 and 1750 highlights the unique ways in which adherence to the movement shaped women's lives, as well as the ways in which female Friends transformed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious and political culture.