A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Janet Moore Lindman’s A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America is a history of the energetic and enthusiastic ways that Quakers practiced their faith, navigated divisions within the Society of Friends, and responded to changes in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Lindman investigates Quaker piety from the cradle to the grave and in its internal and external manifestations. She then turns her attention to the divisions that tested Quakerism in the antebellum period. Finally, she analyzes how print culture influenced Quaker spirituality and history.Quakers engaged in various spiritual practices. Lindman describes these acts as components of “practical Quakerism” (6). Some were internal and individual and included practicing mindfulness, meditating, reading, and writing, while others, like simple dress, were external. Quakers visited, conversed, went to meeting, and hosted family worship. Parents, educators, and elders taught and encouraged children to participate in these activities. In addition to engaging in these practices in their youth and over the course of their lives, Quakers also took part in them as they died. Preparing for, being mindful of, and resigning oneself to one’s death characterized how Quakers died. They welcomed last visits from family members and friends. The simplicity that Quakers sought to display during life typified their deaths. When dead, Quakers expected to be simply dressed, placed in plain caskets, and laid in graves marked by no headstones.Influenced by external religious and social forces, Quakers dealt with turmoil, disorder, and change in the antebellum period. Lindman sees these rifts as further evidence of “practical Quakerism,” or “decisions American Friends made to construct a workable concept of Quakerism responsive to the transformations occurring during the nineteenth century” (6). In the late 1820s and 1830s, the Hicksite Schism split the faith; Orthodox Quakers, affected by the larger evangelical Christian movement, embraced “Christ’s divinity, conversion, salvation . . . the primacy of the Bible” while the Hicksites held to “the Inner Light and Truth, . . . direct revelation, and separation from the world” (87). Then, in the 1840s and 1850s, Gurneyites, who repudiated the Inner Light and wanted to align more closely with other Protestants, battled Wilburites, who sought to retain “unique customs that set them apart from other Christians” (109). Progressive or Congregational Friends, motivated to participate in reform activities like abolitionism, temperance, and Native American relief, also emerged.The final section of the book examines how print culture, which expanded in the antebellum period, affected Quaker spirituality and history. Using English and literature scholar Michele Tarter’s concept of “spiritual literacy,” Lindman shows how Quakers read, wrote, and published texts as acts of piety and to shape diverse and sometimes contentious histories of the faith. Books and other texts, carefully chosen by parents and teachers, educated young people about correct living. Books, especially those that compiled the accounts of those near death, also taught Quakers how to die. Friends not only read, wrote, and published, but they also treasured printed objects, especially items that enabled them to reflect on the memory and history of their families and their fellow Quakers. Print culture also played a part in the conflicts that divided antebellum Friends. Whether Hicksite, Orthodox, or Reformed, Quakers used books, periodicals, and newspapers to communicate their ideas and to shape their own versions of Quaker history.Lindman uses an impressive array of primary sources. She incorporates evidence from diaries, journals, common books, pamphlets, photographs, and maps. She consulted diaries kept by Quaker parents and teachers who sought to aid children’s spiritual formation. In Mary and Moses Brown’s diary, she found, “Oh, could we blot out the deeds of our little naughty boys this day from our remembrance!” (45). A fascinating photo of female members of the Lucretia Mott family shows the evolution of Quaker dress and the willingness of younger members of the family to forgo simplicity, and instead, don worldly garb (29). To access these sources, Lindman visited numerous Quaker archives and manuscript collections including Swarthmore, Haverford, and the Westtown School. She acknowledges the assistance of archivists and directors of special collections, and she relates her own study to the work of other scholars of Quaker history. Lindman did what she describes Quakers as having done—like them, she read widely, wrote, and was in fellowship with other thinkers and doers. Lindman’s primary and secondary source research and her writing matched her description of Quaker practice and the reason that she titled the book, A Vivifying Spirit. She describes Quaker practice as “vigorous,” “demanding,” and “taxing” (3, 7, 8). Her title communicates the energy and enthusiasm that Quakers displayed in their spiritual practice; the depth of her research, the integration of evidence, and the written work bear witness to Lindman’s historical labor.The work that Lindman accomplished will be welcomed by a variety of scholars. Quaker historians will be interested in Lindman’s book while scholars of Pennsylvania history will find an excellent study of Quakers in the mid-Atlantic region and the Delaware Valley. Finally, historians who study religion in the antebellum period will appreciate the book.
Source: Pennsylvania history
Author: Karol Kovalovich Weaver
Institution: Susquehanna University
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409574849