With at least two comprehensive biographies of John Woolman in the last decade, it is remarkable that Jon Kershner finds so much new to say in his John Woolman and the Government of Christ. Woolman (1720–1772), of course, has long held a special place in Quaker history and historiography, but recent works such as Thomas Slaughter's The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman (Hill & Wang, 2008) and Geoffrey Plank's John Woolman's Path to the Peaceable Kingdom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) have made a persuasive case for his broader influence in colonial American society. In particular, these authors argue that Woolman merits closer consideration by scholars interested in early critiques of slavery, war, and the market revolution. Kershner joins with these previous biographers in stressing the uniqueness and importance of Woolman's social and political critiques, but he does so by refocusing our attention specifically on “the theological and conceptual underpinnings of his views” (6).

Kershner maintains Woolman is “a neglected example of popular colonial American religious thought” (3), exemplifying a religious identity and practice that “located spiritual authority in the hearts of everyday people” (87). These valuable attempts to excavate the lived experience of Woolman's Quakerism echo David Hall's Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement (Harvard University Press, 1990) and Douglas Winiarski's Darkness Falls on the Land of Light (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Like these scholars, Kershner draws out the multiple influences on Woolman's theology and stresses how he fused various strains of religious thought and practice. Specifically, Kershner demonstrates that Woolman's theology incorporated elements of revelation and mysticism “in a reinforcing, iterative process” (31) and that his connection to God was both “visionary and oracular” (33). Kershner also builds on Carla Gerona's Night Journeys (University of Virginia Press, 2004), underscoring how important Woolman's experience and interpretation of his dreams were to his faith (see 48–51 especially). In all of these ways, Kershner wants readers to understand that Woolman's lived religion was a “powerful theology [that gave] everyday colonists a renewed sense of personhood and connection to things eternal” (127).

The heart of Kershner's argument is Woolman's vision for the “Government of Christ.” Kershner calls attention to Woolman's self-identification as a prophet, an identity and an orientation that prompted him to focus on “revelation, conflict, and suffering [as] mutually reinforcing elements of [his] prophetic identity” (65). His propheticism also inspired him to believe that God wanted him to led by example, to change his life in a way that reflected the change God demanded of society at large. Woolman felt acutely the irreconcilable distance between the world as it was and the world as God intended, a void that caused him to adopt an apocalyptic vision “best characterized as a realizing, amillennial eschatology” and to see himself as “a harbinger of God's kingdom on earth” (112, 170).

In this way, Kershner is less interested in the world that made John Woolman than in the world John Woolman was trying to make. Kershner argues that previous authors have incorrectly understood Woolman as “a ‘throwback’ or a ‘conservative voice’” (5) and therefore misunderstood Woolman as either a man out-of-his-time or a critic who withdrew from a society he could not abide. Kershner thus joins several recent scholars of Quakerism in challenging the characterization of the mid-eighteenth century as one of “Quietism” (see especially 29–30). Perhaps best encapsulated by Jack Marietta's Reformation of American Quakerism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), religious historians have cast this period as one of the Society turning inward and rejecting the outside world. Events, such as Friends’ withdrawal from the Pennsylvania government as a result of the Seven Years War, have long epitomized the Society's assumed policy of submission to God's will (and to Caesar's). This interpretation has led scholars to frame Woolman's refusal to wear dyed clothes, to travel in a first-class cabin, to sell goods to the West Indies market, and to notarize documents relating to enslaved people as evidence of his disengagement from contemporary politics, economics, and society. Kershner, however, offers a different interpretation, emphasizing that “Woolman's theological perspective was addressed toward shaping, changing, and transforming human affairs and Woolman viewed himself as an agent sent by God to participate in that mission” (35). In other words, Woolman's vision for the future meant that he stayed actively engaged in the present. His submission to God did not mean he retreated from the world around him but rather “it was precisely through a state of ‘resignation’ that Woolman acted boldly and decisively” (37). Indeed, Woolman believed he actively “participated in God's intervention in history, the transformation of society, and the defeat of apostasy” (59–60).

John Woolman and the Government of Christ is an essential complement to previous biographies. A deep dive into Woolman's theology, the book is accessible to a broad range of scholars. It is less concerned with the world around Woolman, though the last chapter, titled “Influences and Comparisons,” helpfully situates Woolman within the long trajectory of Quakerism as well as the broader religious landscape of the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. There is also a brief but fascinating examination of his relationship with Anthony Benezet for those interested in Woolman's antislavery views. Though perhaps outside the bounds of this study, a similar section comparing Woolman's faith and practice to those of Benjamin Lay would have been most welcome. In sum, Kershner's work is not only an overdue reevaluation of Woolman's theology but also a timely consideration of how individuals have attempted to “navigat[e] world affairs with a heavenly perspective” (121).