A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America by Janet Moore Lindman (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America by Janet Moore Lindman Stephanie J. Richmond (bio) Keywords Quakerism, Society of Friends, Schisms, Faith, Reform A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America. By Janet Moore Lindman. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022. Pp. 284. Cloth, $119.95.) Janet Moore Lindman's A Vivifying Spirit examines the increasingly complex world of doctrinal conflict among mid-Atlantic Quakers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The book, based on deep archival research, dives into the spiritual practices of American Quakers through a variety of lenses. Lindman argues that Quakers' responses to mainstream evangelical Protestantism shaped their engagement with social reform and their own history. The context Lindman provides for Quakers' debates over reform develops a historiographical thread in both American religious history and the history of antebellum reform examining the connections between reform and religious movements in early America. Despite the details that Lindman adds to the debate over the connections between religion and reform, the book at times struggles to find its footing and audience. The first part of the book examines the spiritual lifecycle of Quakers. After framing the general outlines of American Quaker beliefs in the opening chapter, Lindman takes us into the classrooms and catechism books of Quaker childhood. Quaker educational theory was particularly attentive to both the popular theorists of their time and the need to instill central Quaker values of piety, pacifism, and equality in children from a very young age. The last chapter in the section examines the spiritual practices of Quakers nearing the end of their lives and those of their loved ones. Embracing or easing suffering and grieving together after friends [End Page 355] and family passed—death was central to understanding Quaker faith. As Lindman remarks, "mindfulness dictated recurrent engagement with death to learn how to do it well" (64). These early chapters give a fascinating insight into the mental and religious lives of Quaker families across the spectrum of life stages. The second part of the book examines the impact of the various schisms and divisions within American Quaker meetings. The section opens with a chapter detailing the doctrinal differences between the Orthodox and Hicksite Quakers, who split apart over whether scripture or the inner light should drive one's faith. Orthodox Quakers, who cleaved to scripture, were accused of being influenced by evangelical Christianity and the need to fit into the vigorous Christianity of the Second Great Awakening. Hicksites read both scripture and the writings of early Quakers to assert the primacy of the inner light to Quaker devotion. The division between the two groups intensified, and new fractures appeared in the 1840s and 1850s when Joseph Burney began preaching around the United States, splitting the Orthodox Quakers into Burneyites and Wilburites. Burney, a British Quaker, questioned early Quaker teachings and brought Quakerism closer to the practices of evangelical Christian churches. John Wilbur asserted the importance of quietism and other Quaker practices and challenged Burneyite rejection of the inner light. The final chapter focuses on the disputes between reforming Quakers and those who thought that the right path was keeping separate from the larger political and cultural debates in the United States. This section, like the first, does an excellent job in explaining the impact of these schisms on the rank-and-file of mid-Atlantic Quakers. Through the words of Quaker pedestrians, we learn how they navigated the debates and chose their positions within them, even when friends and family may have taken the other side. The third section engages with how American Quakers applied their spiritual and religious teachings to their interaction with the secular world. This last section, along with the rather awkwardly positioned last chapter in the second part, is perhaps the least interesting for scholars of nineteenth-century America as it retreads familiar ground for scholars of abolitionism and other reform movements. The first chapter in the section examines Quaker print culture and Quakers' engagement in the broader reform print culture in early America. Here we hear more often from well-known historical figures including Lucretia Mott and her fellow abolitionists. [End Page 356] The final chapter...