History of Quakerism

This new version has a Foreword by Michael Darby and new illustrations on the covers.

John Kelsall (1683-1743) was a Quaker teacher and diarist, well-known for the detailed Diaries which he kept from 1720 to 1743, which record his time as clerk at the Dolgun Blast Furnace and at the Dolobran Forge.

He was well-educated and his first post was as a teacher employed by Charles Lloyd at the Dolobran Quaker school from 1702 to 1713. In 1714 Abraham Darby appointed him as clerk to the new furnace at Dolgun, which he managed until 1719. He then returned to Dolobran as clerk at the new forge built by Charles Lloyd, which he managed for the next 10 years, during which he also kept the accounts for the Bersham furnace. After Lloyd became bankrupt, Kelsall returned to Dolgun in 1729 to manage the furnace for the Payton family. He remained there until 1734, when the furnace closed, and he returned to teaching, spending his final years in Chester.

The original Diaries and Journal, transcripts by W. G. Norris and microfilm copies are in the Library of Friends House, London. They were transcribed and converted to digital files by George Adamson in 1993-96 and have now been edited by his son Peter Adamson and Peter Crew. The Diaries contain a great deal of information relating to the social and economic history of the early 18th century and also record John’s work and life as a Quaker, during which he travelled frequently to meetings in Wales, north-west England, London and Dublin.

A4, 40 pages Introduction, 400 pages text, 5 figures

"Nestled within the open fields and the hills of eastern Chester County lies Brushwood Stable. Now home to world class race horses, the property's history spans back to the days of William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania. Located near Willistown Township's Historic Sugartown, 20 miles west of Philadelphia, the property consists of two tracts of land divided by Sugartown Road: Brushwood lies to the southwest; and Bryn Clovis lies to the northeast. A unique collection of documents survive to tell their story, offering a great insight into not only the broader changes of a burgeoning country but also the unique stories pertaining to the Garrett, Sinquet, Baker, and Robert families."

The writings of Jacob Böhme (1575-1624), the mystical philosopher from Görlitz, reached England in the 1640s and by the 1660s most were published in English. From their earliest publication, Böhme’s writings were influential in Britain. Those who imported Böhme’s texts hoped his views would help to overcome sectarianism. They looked forward to a return of paradise on earth, as described in Böhme’s writings. Furthermore, as new scientific discoveries shook traditional views, seventeenth-century philosophers and scientists were inspired by Böhme’s efforts to reconcile religion and science. This conference explores the varied paths through which Böhme’s thought spread in Britain. It accompanies the exhibition Light in Darkness: The Mystical Philosophy of Jacob Böhme in the Chapel of Christ the Servant, Coventry Cathedral (30th April-5th July 2019).

The birth of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1698 marks the beginning of direct institutional involvement by the Church of England in missionary activity abroad, and a new season of proselytism. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, numerous societies of religious propaganda were created both by the Established Church and non-conformists in Great Britain and Ireland, starting with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1701. The clear connection between missionary activity and British imperial expansion has been extensively investigated by historians, who have often highlighted the rhetorical and political importance of the British colonial enterprise in shaping new global Christianities. Neglected in this narrative has been the intense missionary action that these organizations, and British Protestantism more widely, engaged in towards Catholic Europe.

The conference aims to investigate the historical and theoretical context that favoured the birth of missionary institutions, looking in particular at their actions in continental Europe. We want to put together historians of the British Isles, of continental Europe, global historians, experts in Protestantism, Catholicism, and Jewish history, and ask them to go beyond the traditional boundaries of their historical disciplines. Furthermore, we will explore the origins of this missionary commitment in the religious and political turmoil of the seventeenth century, moving away from earlier approaches which emphasised the role of (solely) English religious life after the Glorious Revolution. Similarly, we adopt a long-term overview, overturning the distinction between early modern and modern: we are including the nineteenth century in our investigation, highlighting the continuity of Anglican and non-conformist missions in Europe. In doing so, we position the conference at the forefront of the debate on religious history, contributing to the radical reconsideration of the chronology of European religious history currently debated by historians. Finally, we believe necessary a constant comparative approach with Catholic missions.

This new approach is also an attempt to change the traditional perspective that saw the global Evangelical expansion as a one-way movement outwards from Europe, to the peripheries of the world.

It is our contention instead that global missions and the emergence of global Christianities profoundly changed European churches at home. The attempt to spread Protestantism in Europe was indeed the product of a missionary experiment that had been tested in America, Africa, and Asia. It is our ambition to show how, in a striking theoretical overturn, continental Europe was considered a missionary land, just another periphery of the world, whose centre was instead in Imperial Britain.

Catholic countries (particularly Spain and Italy) were often described using colonial language, with an emphasis on their backwardness, and their need to modernize. In this sense, the British missionary offensive in Europe has provided conceptual material to what can be called a true "imaginary colonialism". In the ideological construction of a global Evangelical Christianity, the history of this (failed) attempt to convert Europe had a role that has not been adequately investigated until now.