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This thesis challenges Classical Christian presentations of God based on exclusive and literalized metaphors. This piece explores the response of three dissenting groups, who place their emphasis on an experiential theology, directly challenging the use of conventional language to describe God. The Quaker practice of silent worship, Isadora Duncan’s dance form and Theopoetics each demand that religious structures enable an experience of the Divine that is spontaneous, mysterious and deeply personal.

This thesis considers the development of Quakerism from 1647 to 1700. Changes affecting the movement in this period are often explained as the result of the Quakers' desire for socio-political respectability – that is, their desire to reduce persecution and social exclusion. This thesis does not deny the importance of socio-political factors. However, it argues that they have been exaggerated as a historical force, and that theological factors driving change have been comparatively neglected. The thesis therefore explores the Quakers' desire for 'theological respectability', by examining the scope and impact of their constructive engagement with outsiders. The project begins with an investigation into the Quakers' understanding of their personal experience, noting both continuities and underlying theological changes which cannot be explained in socio-political terms – namely, a changed view of divine immanence, a strengthened group identity, and the loss of a sense of prophetic vocation. The rest of the thesis explains these developments in their theological context. The Quakers' engagement in Christological debate forms the central case-study. Individual chapters examine the Quakers’ earliest Christology, first responses to criticism, the early career of William Penn, the intellectual development of Robert Barclay's Vehiculum Dei, the Quakers' place in the early Enlightenment, and the Keithian controversy. In particular, the need to articulate a positive theology of the Incarnation led the Quakers into conversation with many influential figures outside the movement, which in turn encouraged an increasingly derivative understanding of the Light within and more optimistic view of physical matter. These shifts relate directly to the religious changes explored in the first part of the thesis. This study illustrates the necessity of theological analysis as part of historical investigation and provides a sustained intellectual history of seventeenth-century Quakerism, demonstrating its important contribution to the intellectual landscape of the early Enlightenment.

The residents of Henry County, through the evolving practices of collecting and preserving local history, organized and developed a sustainable local historical society. The 1902 dedication ceremony, which signaled the beginning of the “museum” chapter of the HCHS, was only one of many steps in the institutionalization of local history in Henry County. The foundation of a sustainable local historical society is constructed upon permanent quarters and a historical collection. Additional requisite building blocks include wide public support, adequate and consistent funding, and a paid individual to facilitate and manage the museum, its collections, and various other day-to-day operations and activities. In Henry County, this blueprint for sustainability was greatly facilitated by the county’s territorial beginnings and its cultural development before the Civil War, as well as the county’s old settlers’ society movement and local history writing during the latter half of the nineteenth century. With this said, historical societies were “not created in a vacuum” but rather amid a complex historical framework encompassing local, regional, and national contexts. For Henry County, this framework consisted of many varied but constituent parts. The American Centennial in 1876, industrialization, Quakerism, the popularity of Civil War history and commemoration in Indiana that peaked around 1900, and a state historical movement and the simultaneous development of other historical organizations following the Indiana Centennial in 1916 were also instrumental in the county’s evolving dedication to preserving local history and the organization’s course toward sustainability.

This dissertation examines the contributions of Quakers, specifically from the liberal tradition of the Religious Society of Friends, to the advancement of lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights in the United States between 1946-1973. In this period, Quakers established the first social service organization for gay people in the United States, wrote the first public and positive evaluation of homosexuality from a religious perspective, and composed the first public statement in support of bisexuality from a religious assembly. A critical study of Quaker pamphlets, periodicals, lectures, business minutes, and personal papers from this era reveals that Quaker support of gay liberation was exercised through experiments in criminal justice reform, challenges to Christian moral codes, and advocacy for change within the Religious Society of Friends. The findings presented in this project seek to broaden our understanding of gay rights history by showing that Quakers played a pivotal role in the emergence and development of the gay rights movement in the United States. / Religion

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In the past two decades or so, feminist historians have sifted through the copious illustrations of the turbulent, emotion-ridden years of early nineteenth-century American revivalism to devote considerable attention to the rise of female evangelism. Despite the notable upsurge, scholars generally remain untutored about the plethora of powerful female preachers who devoted their lives to advancing the kingdom of God. This dissertation seeks to resurrect the voice of one such woman: Dorothy Ripley (1767- 1831), an evangelist from Whitby, England, whose personal and evangelical awakening rivaled the revolutionary power of the revivalism sweeping the new Republic. Citing her direct mandate from God to preach, Dorothy grasped religion and reshaped it into a spiritually, culturally, and politically altering device. She became the first woman to preach before the U.S. Congress, composed five literary volumes (most of which she published herself and in multiple editions), crossed the Atlantic as many as nineteen times, and traveled up and down the Eastern Seaboard to preach among the different levels of society in a variety of settings. As an unlicensed, unsanctioned preacher, Dorothy defied powerful social and religious conventions by her solitary travel, scriptural exegesis, public performances, and presumption of the patriarchally assigned and protected role of preacher. She strove to proclaim the gospel even at the expense of reputation, family ties, home and hearth, marriage and motherhood, and personal security. Her rebelliousness allowed her to rise above the backstage role commonly assigned to, and accepted by, women of the early Republic. Her works serve as cultural artifacts by providing eyewitness accounts spotlighting the problems inherent in the formative years of a Republic reeling with the headiness of self-rule: the tension between Protestantism and American capitalism, the conflict between an emerging elite and the increasingly dissatisfied lower class, the misogyny of the cult of domesticity and separate spheres, the embryonic stages of widespread social reform, and the virulent ethnocentrism of the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny. Through an examination of her spiritual autobiographies, this dissertation seeks to enrich scholarly understanding of women’s influence in the evolution of evangelization, abolitionism, women’s rights, and social service.

This thesis examines how lay members of the Jain and Quaker traditions understand and navigate ideals of non-ownership. The tenets of aparigraha (non-ownership) and the testimony of simplicity are explored to show how interpretation of sacred texts leave open the possibility for financial success. Through interviews with members of Jain and Quaker communities in the US, and textual research, I assert that proper methods for earning, maintaining and using capital in each tradition transcend prohibitions against excess accumulation. Following Foucault and Weber, I show that proper ethical ways of earning and spending money depend on community-based interpretations and self-policing. My research suggests that lay members focus on ethical ways to earn and spend money rather than the amount of wealth they possess. Due to these foci, transgressions of ideals are viewed within community-established norms, which maintain high levels of engagement with both the capital world and their own religious tradition.

The thesis uses the case study of the experience of middle-class northern white women in America during the period 1800-1860 to explore several issues of wider significance. Firstly, the research focuses upon the dynamic relationships between the culturally-constructed categories of public/formal and private/informal power and participation at both the practical and symbolic levels, suggesting ways in which they intersected on the lives of women. Secondly, consideration is given to the validity of the stereotyped view that 'domestic' women were necessarily disadvantaged and dominated relative to those who aspired to public political and economic roles. Thirdly, the relationship of religious belief to these two areas is discussed, in order to discover its relevance to the way in which women both perceived themselves and were perceived by others. In seeking to explore these issues, the research has analysed the patterns of social and cultural change in the era under question, indicating how those changes influenced the perceptions and experiences of both women and men. Their reactions in terms of discourse and activity are located as strategies of negotiation in redefining both social role and participation for the sexes. The rhetoric of 'separate spheres', which was used by men and women to order their mental and physical surroundings, is reduced to its symbolic constituents in order to illustrate that the distinction between male and female arenas was more perceptual than actual. The motivating forces behind the activities and ideas of women themselves are investigated to determine the role of religion in the construction of both female self-images and wider negotiational strategies. The context of nineteenth-century social dynamics has been revealed by detailed analysis of extensive primary sources originated by both women and men for private as well as public consumption. Feminist tools of analysis which enable the conceptualisation of 'meaningful discourse' as including female contributions have further enhanced the specific focus on how women constructed their own world-views and approaches to reality. 'Traditional' approaches and tools are shown to have seriously skewed and misrepresented the reality and variety of both discourse and female experience in the era. Great efforts have been made to allow women to speak in their own words. This has produced an insight into a richness of female social participation and discourse which would otherwise be obscured. The research indicates that women were indeed actors and negotiators during the period. Those women who advocated as primary the duties of women in the domestic and social arenas were by no means setting narrow limitations on female participation in both society and discourse. The religious impulses and eschatological frameworks derived by women (varied as they were) served to order and renegotiate reality and meaning, whilst they produced female roles and influence of great significance. Women were not passive victims of male oppression. Religion can thus be perceived as a positive force which women were able to approach both for its own sake, and for their own particular ends.