Quaker Spirituality: Selected Writings

Quaker Spirituality: Selected Writings is an anthology edited by Douglas V. Steere and published in 1984 in the Classics of Western Spirituality series. Steere, a Quaker philosopher who taught at Haverford College and was a lifelong advocate of ecumenical dialogue, was well placed to attempt what the series required: to let a tradition speak in its own voice, in primary texts rather than summary. The Society of Friends had long been better known for its testimonies and its social witness than for a body of devotional literature, and Steere set out to show that behind the plain speech and plain meetinghouses lay a deep and distinctive inner life.

The collection gathers writings from the seventeenth century through the twentieth, beginning with the generation of George Fox, whose experience of Christ speaking directly to his condition gave the movement its center. It moves through figures such as Isaac Penington, Robert Barclay, and John Woolman, and on to modern voices including Rufus Jones and Thomas Kelly. Steere frames the selections with an introduction that traces the movement's characteristic convictions: that there is that of God in every person, that the Inward Light is a living teacher and not a doctrine to be assented to, and that worship is first of all expectant waiting in silence. The texts themselves hold together two things often thought to be in tension. One is the practice of listening, stillness, and inward obedience. The other is the outward consequence of that listening in speech, conduct, economic life, and costly witness against war and slavery. In Woolman especially, the reader sees how inward tenderness can become an exacting moral discipline.

The book has endured because it does not treat Quaker faith as a curiosity. It presents a spirituality in which contemplation and action are a single movement, and it offers the primary sources that let readers test that claim for themselves. It remains a standard entry point for those who want to understand Friends from the inside, and its selections reward slow reading, since many of these writers were describing an experience before they were defending a position.

Who should read this: Readers drawn to silence, discernment, and the link between prayer and justice will find in it a rich and demanding companion, as will pastors and spiritual directors wanting to learn from a tradition without liturgy or creed. It is not a systematic introduction to Quaker history or the varieties of Quaker practice today, and those wanting a survey, or a doctrinal argument for Quaker positions, should look elsewhere.