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‘Friends have no cause to be ashamed of being by others thought non-evangelical’:1 Unity and Diversity of Belief among early Nineteenth-Century British Quakers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
One of the most remarkable features in the history of British Quakerism is its ability rapidly to change its theological orientation — changing in succession from an outward looking mass movement, to an inward-looking sect, to an evangelical ecumenically-minded denomination, to a theologically liberal association of like-minded individuals. This paper considers the third of these transitions, the move from sectarianism to evangelicalism. This period of transition provides a useful case study of how the beliefs of a pan-denominational movement (in this case evangelicalism) interact with the existing beliefs of a sect (in this case the corpus of traditional Quaker beliefs known as Quietism). In this case study, particular attention will be focused on Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847), the individual most closely associated with the rise of evangelicalism within British Quakerism.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1996
Footnotes
1
‘The Evangelical Alliance’, The British Friend, 4 (1846), p. 45.
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