ABSTRACT

In this multi-disciplinary collection we ask the question, 'What did, and do, Quakers think about good and evil?' There are no simple or straightforwardly uniform answers to this, but in this collection, we draw together contributions that for the first time look at historical and contemporary Quakerdom's approach to the ethical and theological problem of evil and good. Within Quakerism can be found Liberal, Conservative, and Evangelical forms. This book uncovers the complex development of metaethical thought by a religious group that has evolved with an unusual degree of diversity. In doing so, it also points beyond the boundaries of the Religious Society of Friends to engage with the spectrum of thinking in the wider religious world.

part I|28 pages

Introductory Section

chapter 1|12 pages

Introduction

part II|52 pages

Historical Perspectives

chapter 5|12 pages

Beyond Depravity

Good and Evil in the Thought of Robert Barclay

chapter 6|10 pages

John Woolman and Good and Evil

part III|38 pages

Present-Day Perspectives

chapter 8|10 pages

Giving Thanks to God in All Things

Good and Evil in Conservative Quaker Experience

chapter 9|12 pages

The Publishers of Truth and the Enemy of Truth

Evangelical Friends Consider Good and Evil

part 4|88 pages

Contemporary Reflections on Good and Evil

chapter 10|10 pages

A People of Unclean Lips

Reclaiming an Anthropology of Complexity

chapter 12|12 pages

Evil

The Presence of Absence

chapter 13|10 pages

Driven By Darkness, Drawn By Light

The Progression of Faith in the Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier

chapter 15|10 pages

‘It is worse to be evil than to do evil’

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Challenge to the Quaker Conscience

chapter 16|10 pages

Looking Within

A Nontheist Perspective

chapter 17|14 pages

Darkness and Light

part 5|25 pages

Towards Paradigms of Quaker Approaches to Good and Evil

chapter 18|10 pages

Good and Evil

An Epistemological Paradigm