Liberal Quakerism and the History of American Liberal Theology
November 21, 2019 § 1 Comment
I have just finished reading Gary Dorrien’s The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805–1900 as part of my deep interest in the history and character of liberal Quakerism. It wasn’t as fruitful as I had hoped and in one case, quite disturbing. The disturbing part was learning how racist Elizabeth Cady Stanton was.
The book never mentions Friends; it’s mostly about Presbyterians and Congregationalists. But I do see definite overlap in the ways that liberal Quakerism and liberal Christian theology in general evolved. And I did find some definitions and characterizations of liberal American theology useful. So, hoping that my readers might find this material interesting, here are some sharings from Dorrien’s book.
From someone named Daniel Day Williams comes this definition: Liberal theology is a modern Protestant movement “which during the nineteenth century tried to bring Christian thought into organic unity with the evolutionary world view, the movements for social reconstruction, and the expectations of a ‘better world’ which dominated the general mind. It is that form of Christian faith in which a prophetic-progressive philosophy of history culminates in the expectation of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth.”
The movement tried to address three modern developments: the theory of evolution, German biblical criticism (so-called “higher criticism”), and the rapidly industrializing social order.
Evolution theory did not just challenge certain pseudo-historical claims in the Bible or, more broadly and importantly, the authority of the Bible itself. It opened the way for a new attitude toward religious authority even more broadly: it shifted the emphasis from external authority to inner authority and personal experience. Furthermore, the embrace of evolution theory transformed the very understanding of religion. Liberal theologians, and liberal Quakers, now came to believe that religion itself and our understanding of God and God’s will was also evolving. It paved the way for our current emphasis on “continuing revelation”.
Biblical authority was also challenged along another front, as liberals increasingly embraced the insights about the Bible that higher criticism was providing. German thinkers, working with the kinds of literary criticism tools being use by the Grimm brothers to analyze folk tales, concluded that more than one person had written parts of the book of Isaiah, that Moses could not have written all the books of the Penteteuch, and so on. Put another way, liberal Quakers embraced scientific method as a friend of forward-thinking Christianity, and this demanded a new approach to what God was doing with scripture. They strove for credibility rather than adherence to authority.
Thirdly, they redefined the mission of the church. They demanded that religion be relevant and even progressive, that it work to bring the kingdom of God on earth. They rediscovered Jesus as prophet and teacher, not just as priest and king. In this, they joined in spirit with the Progressive movement in politics and social and economic thought and with the social gospel movement that emerged at the same time in answer to the ravages of industrial capitalism unchecked by other social forces.
In spite of these profound challenges to the evangelicalism and traditionalism that had dominated Quakerism through most of the nineteenth century, liberal Quakerism remained unquestionably Christian in its language and worldview. They felt that science and these new ways of thinking brought them closer to realizing Jesus’ hope for his church, not farther way.
They did step away from the traditional understanding of the blood atonement of the cross, however. Rather, they found themselves moving toward a moral concept of the atonement that more resembled that of early Friends—salvation from sin came, not from Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, but rather from surrender to the spirit of Christ working within us to overcome sinful impulses.
How liberal Quakerism lost its center in Christ is a subject for another time.
Through the Flaming Sword 
Very interesting. I look forward to your next post. Thank you.