From 1750 to 1820 Quakers tested a cosmopolitan, transnational cultural identity by reformulating their theology. Invoking the Hebrew scriptures’ “Zion tradition,” they came to view themselves as a “holy nation” (4). They believed that this identity superseded national citizenship. In a period of war, revolution, and mounting patriotic sentiment, Quakers asserted their independence from governmental authorities and their commitment to each other, often across geopolitical boundaries. Like ancient Israel, Friends viewed themselves as a chosen people who were more similar to their coreligionists, wherever they were, than to their compatriots. Sarah Crabtree argues that Quaker critiques of “worldliness” must be understood in the political and cultural, as well as religious, context of a protest against the patriotic consolidation of power and imperialism that typified the era. Because of their rejection of “worldly” political authority, Quakers were persecuted and treated with suspicion by nationalists. While other religious groups had challenged the legitimacy of the state, governmental authorities, and national boundaries, Crabtree asserts that only Quakers questioned their very existence (10).
This study was conducted by examining the sermons and letters of the 110 recognized Quaker ministers that crossed the Atlantic in the second half of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Quaker travel networks and correspondences spread the “holy nation” ideology to members and created a theological cohesion that connected members together, regardless of geographic location. Quakers, then, represent an important example of transnationalism at the very moment when nationalism and nation building flourished.
Crabtree divides her book into three parts: “Combat: 1754–89,” “Compromise, 1779–1809,” and “Concession, 1793–1826.” The trajectory of these three parts follows the development of a Zion motif in the late eighteenth century to the eventual diminishment and accommodation of “holy nation” theology to mainstream views of governmental authority in the early nineteenth century. Crabtree begins by examining the factors most prescient to the rise of a Zion motif during the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution: Friends resisted British, French, and revolutionary nationalist pressures to conform to governmental causes by proclaiming their own sovereignty as a “chosen people,” ultimately responsible to divine law. Their shared history of persecution defined their relationship to governments under which they lived and united them together. Moreover, their experience of diaspora denied the importance of geopolitical boundaries and created a cosmopolitan ethos (33). Crabtree contends that Quaker antiwar stances maintained transnational unity among Quakers, and angered politicians who viewed their pacifism as a threat to nation-building enterprises. Persecuted and beleaguered, Quakers sought to provide a space to educate their young in the alternative modes of citizenship they tried to embody. These “walled gardens” were viewed as seditious by early advocates of public education, like Benjamin Rush, who thought these schools trained the young to resist the government's patriotic definition of citizenship (98–99).
By the end of the eighteenth century, Crabtree asserts, Quakers were aware that their “holy nation” would not be able to exist in absolute autonomy, and they attempted to demonstrate the compatibility of their sovereignty with existing nation states. They hoped charity would provide a venue for productive membership within society, while maintaining a distinctive identity over and against worldly structures. Ultimately, the “holy nation” identity fell apart with the internecine, intra-Quaker “Great Separation” of the 1820s. Crabtree argues that this conflict within Quakerism was “a historically contingent product of decades of war and less an inevitable consequence of economic and cultural modernization than historians have previously understood” (206). Rather, Quakers had acquiesced to nationalist pressures, ceding ultimate sovereignty to the nation-state and adjusting previously “peculiar” notions of citizenship to the nationalist ones perpetuated by the government.
Crabtree's Holy Nation is convincing. It highlights the importance of Quaker theology in understanding the social impact of a relatively small religious group. Moreover, Crabtree effectively expands previous notions of the transatlantic Quaker culture to a robust transnational ideology. Her thorough citations of key Quaker ministers give insight into the common language and shared cultural vision that motivated the extensive travel networks among Friends, their persistent pacifism, and an impressive record of coordinated social reforms. By viewing Quaker culture as a political and cultural ideology, not just a religious one, Crabtree also undermines previous descriptions of Quakers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as essentially quietist. The quietist categorization does not fit with the activism and political aspirations of Quakers during the era, and Crabtree's analysis is a great help in understanding this phenomenon.
Holy Nation provides the best look at Quakerism leading up to the turn of the nineteenth century and prior to the Hicksite-Orthodox split. One quibble: Crabtree uses the phrase “inner light” to describe an aspect of Quaker theology in her period of study. That phrase is anachronistic to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It originated with the modernist influences at the turn of the twentieth century and connotes a humanistic understanding of religion that would have been foreign to earlier generations of Quaker (201).
Holy Nation is an immensely valuable contribution to Quaker studies, transnational understandings of religion, and nationalism. While scholars have studied the early anti-slavery views and reforms of the mid-eighteenth century, as well as the intra-Quaker splits of the nineteenth century, Crabtree bridges the scholarship with clarity and insight. Her work suggests ways that transnational Quaker studies can challenge accepted understandings of the relationship between religion and nation-state.
