This thesis explores the thought of John William Graham in the context of changes that took place in the Society of Friends in Britain during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. With other liberal-minded Christians, he turned against evangelicalism and strove to promote a faith open to new scientific thinking, and new approaches to the Bible. With other Quakers of his generation he found a religion which met his needs in George Fox and other early Friends, with their promotion of an inward faith, free alike of dogma and of ritual, and relying on the ‘free ministry’ of immediate inspiration. He became prominent in campaigning against tendencies within Quakerism to establish a paid pastorate and set forms of worship, and for a newly invigorated Quaker ministry. He believed that authentic Quakerism, based on the ‘Inward Light’ could lead the way towards a new and better world. Graham had an idiosyncratic outlook on theology as well as politics, especially the politics of war and of empire, which occasionally set him at variance with other Quakers of the ‘Renaissance’. In exploring points of convergence and divergence, this thesis provides new ways of understanding this crucial era in Quaker history.

This thesis argues that current debates about belief within present-day British Quakerism misrepresent the nature of Quaker faith and practice by over-emphasising particular aspects of the way in which Quakers have traditionally talked about God, namely, seeking to understand the mystery of divinity and the role of the divine will in relation to human intuition and reason in guiding behaviour. By comparing texts from the seventeenth and twenty/twenty-first century, using a quantitative method, it is demonstrated that there is a consistency across time in the way in which Quakers have perceived God and their relationship to God. By treating ‘performance’ (how adherents follow the will of God) and ‘transformation’ (how adherents experience their relationship with God) as dualistic and by using different strategies to avoid the challenge of empiricism, present-day Quakers appear dis-united in their internal theological disagreements. This thesis argues that Quaker faith and practice is more accurately understood, in both periods, as a single axis, running between performance and transformation and that this pattern of believing and belonging avoids internal disputes, which are misplaced. The method of analysis itself also provides a contribution to academic understanding of how patterns of belief and behaviour can be analysed.

This thesis is an historical case-study using archival written data to analyse the formation of a neo-evangelical identity within Oregon Yearly Meeting (OYM) of the Religious Society of Friends, with emphasis on the years 1919-1947. The argument of this thesis is that by 1919 there were fundamentalist thinking patterns developing within the corporate religious identity of the Yearly Meeting (YM) marked by ecumenical separatism, world-rejecting views, biblical literalism and decreasing social action. The values of this fundamentalist identity became dominant by 1926, pervading the mindset of the YM until the late 1940s when it was replaced with a more socially-concerned, world-engaging expression of evangelicalism. This neo-evangelicalism attempted to highlight positive Christianity, while maintaining the supernatural orthodox theology of its fundamentalist predecessors. The pattern that unfolded in OYM shares similarities with a larger pattern taking place throughout Protestant Christianity in America over the same period. This research makes original contributions to scholarship in three ways. Firstly, it analyses a particularly influential group among evangelical American Quakers during the twentieth-century. Secondly, it starts to redress the dearth of scholarship specific to evangelical Quakerism, and, thirdly it adds to the scholarship on twentieth-century American Protestantism by focusing on an understudied region and denomination.

This thesis contends that contemporary work processes shape fundamentally Quaker practice in the everyday context. This qualitative research is based on semi-structured interviews of opportunistically acquired participants. It is therefore an in-depth, if not statistically representative, study of the contemporary Quaker tradition. Participants in the research are overwhelmingly adult converts who frame conversion to the Quaker church in liberating terms. The interviewees depict the prescription of religion by mainstream Christian churches as oppressing the individual religious enterprise. Rather, Quakers in the research tend to see their religious journey as a primarily individual project which is affirmed by their conversion to the church. Tensions are also evidenced, however, between affiliates’ highly individualised re-imagination of the Quaker tradition and conformity to the collective concern. The interviewees claim an intention to improve the world, matching Quaker horizons with those espoused by their work organisations. Lived religion and work are thus conflated by affiliates with regard to their everyday social practice. Workaday tensions, however, show that the claimed utopian compact between affiliates and the work setting is provisional. The thesis concludes that, whilst the contemporary work organisation sets out the terms of affiliates’ social practice, these Quakers tend towards pragmatism in the everyday.

This study ascertains what is recognisably distinctive about seventeenth-century Quaker prose compared to other contemporary varieties of prose, and identifies characteristic features of that style. By compiling and investigating through corpus analysis techniques a collection of texts from a wide range of authors, I reveal key elements of the language through quantitative methods not previously applied to this subject. The study is not genre-based nor is it a literary investigation of a single author. The corpus is unusual in comprising texts by many different people within the same community of practice, demonstrating a remarkable uniformity of style and discourse. Typical stylistic features include a speech-like informal register, idiosyncratic syntax and sentence length, and I suggest reasons why Quakers developed this sociolect. In key Quaker lexis I found unexpected frequencies and usage, including findings that differ from assertions in the critical literature. Corpus analysis provides new insights into early Quakerism as well as establishing a new mode of research. My findings clarify understanding of early Quaker writing, experience and practice, dispelling some present-day misconceptions.

This thesis examines Inwardness in the faith and practice of British Quakers. Inwardness is identified within the spiritual and mystical component of individual Friends’ experiences and discussed in terms of personal experiential knowing. Both academic and devotional discourses are used to clarify what is meant by ‘spiritual consciousness’, framed both within corporate, albeit mainly tacit, formulations of Inwardness, and expressed by leading exponents of Quakerism, at two different stages of the history of the Religious Society of Friends. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship in three ways: it identifies a distinct view of Quaker Inwardness in terms of process and state; it provides a new model of spiritual development through the Quaker worship practice; and it offers an explanation of spiritual maturity. The latter is identified with reference to an understanding of Interiority, which has consequences. Two Conditions and seven Elements of the process of gaining the state of Inwardness are identified and are found to be consistent between seventeenth and twenty-first century Quakers. Throughout the thesis analysis, reference to expansion of consciousness is interpreted in relation to mysticism, and proposes finally a new perspective on Quaker theology.

This thesis is a sociological study of Quakers in Ireland that investigates the impact that sectarianism has had on identity construction within the Religious Society of Friends. My research highlights the complex identities of individual Friends in respect of culture, national identities and theology – mirrored by the Society’s corporate identity. Jennifer Todd’s work on sectarianism and oppositional identities in Ireland provides part of the theoretical framework for this thesis. An identity matrix formulated from interview data is used to illustrate how different identities overlap and relate to each other. I argue that the range of ‘hybrid’ or multilayered identities within Irish Quakerism has resulted in tensions which impact on relationships between Friends and on the Society. The thesis discusses how Friends negotiate these ‘hybrid’ identities. Irish Quakers prioritise ‘relational unity’ and have developed a distinctive approach to complex identity management. I contend that in their external relations ‘Quaker’ represents a meta-identity that is counter-cultural in its non-sectarianism, although this is more problematic within the organisation of Friends. Furthermore, by modelling an alternative, non-sectarian identity, Friends are building capacity for transformation from oppositional to more fluid and inclusive identities in Ireland.

Previous approaches to colonial New Jersey Quaker tailor, John Woolman (1720-1772), have failed to address the centrality of theology to his social reforms. This thesis comprises an original contribution to Woolman studies and 18th century Quaker theology through a demonstration of a heretofore unrecognised apocalyptic theology which encompassed a practical and comprehensive vision of God's kingdom on earth. Based on an analysis of Woolman's entire body of writing, this thesis argues that Woolman's theology is best understood as apocalyptic because it was centred on a vision of Christ's immediate presence governing all aspects of human affairs. Woolman's apocalypticism is analysed around three main theological themes: divine revelation, propheticism and eschatology. These themes are evident in Woolman's belief that, 1) God intervened in world affairs to reveal God's will for humanity on earth in a way unavailable to the senses and natural faculties; 2) God's will made claims on society and God commissioned human agents to confront apostasy and be God's spokespeople; and, 3) the faithful embodied the kingdom and pointed to the transformation of all things to establish the 'government of Christ'.

This thesis discusses how British Quaker women negotiated relinquishing their religiously prescribed Plain dress from 1860 to 1914 in the context of developments in Quaker feminine identity. This thesis approaches its subjects by examining the primary source of surviving Quaker garments in British dress collections. These items provide the basis from which research methodologies and the personal narratives of Quaker women and their case studies are developed. Surviving garments, alongside historical letters, diaries, religious texts, department store catalogues, photographs and period dress illustrations are analysed in order to understand how women Quakers practised their religion and organised their public appearance through dress during this period. The original quality of this research is the outcome of an interdisciplinary approach. No other research project in the international dress history or religious history fields has discussed and critically considered the identity of British Quaker women through an analysis of their surviving clothing between 1860 and 1914. This aspect of British social history and therefore British identity has until now remained unexplored and unacknowledged. By 1860 Quakerism had undergone extreme doctrinal upheaval, which had led to the abandonment of those rules which enforced Plainness of speech and apparel that same year. Even prior to 1860, this thesis reveals that some women were incorporating fashion into their religious Plain dress, by using fashionable silhouettes and high-quality fabrics albeit eschewing bright colours and ornamentation. After 1860 however, male and female Quakers had complete individual freedom of choice in their clothing. During this period of religious turmoil, female Victorian Quakers vocalised a range of opinions on women's emancipation, education and welfare, on their role within the religious society and their opinions concerning dress through published correspondence in Quaker journals. This thesis identifies a variety of views concerning dress between 1860 and 1914, as Quaker women negotiated their individual freedom of choice in attire in a ternary manner. Moreover, this thesis proves that this ternary interpretation was acknowledged by Quakers themselves and discussed within Quaker journals in the 1860-1914 period. Quakers of the period identified these ternary interpretations as ascetic, moderate and fashionable. This thesis proposes a new set of classifying terms, Non-Adaptive, Semi-Adaptive and Fully-Adaptive, in reflection of the extent to which Quaker women adapted their religious clothing to incorporate fashion alongside their differing interpretations of Quaker belief. Four case studies illustrate further these three adaptive interpretations, and show how individual Quaker women chose to present themselves to their religious community and wider society.