In this well-crafted analysis of the transatlantic Quaker community, Sarah Crabtree argues that the revolutionary spirit that swept both sides of the Atlantic in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries fundamentally altered the Society of Friends’ worldview. Although Quakers may have experienced harassment for their perceived separatist views prior to the American or French Revolutions, they still enjoyed relative security as one of several diverse religious and ethnic groups living within a larger empire. Yet, as a nationalist ethos predominated in the decades following independence, Quakers experienced external and internal strife as their religious ideology encouraged them to be “in a nation, but not of a nation” (3). In response to this societal repositioning, Friends adopted nationalist language to declare themselves a “holy” nation, one that surpassed geopolitical boundaries and state laws and instead upheld divine laws. Holy Nation therefore investigates the complex relationship between religion and nationalism, convincingly demonstrating that church authority did not always support the nation-state.
To emphasize the shifting role of Quakers’ holy nation in transatlantic theology and politics, Crabtree has divided the monograph into three chronological sections. The first part, “Combat, 1754-89”, examines the period from the Seven Years’ War through the American Revolution when individuals in the Americas and Europe experienced a marked change in their relationships with their respective governments. No longer subjects, but instead citizens, the Society of Friends needed to contend with their newfound affiliation to the state. To ease this transition, Quakers at first drew connections between their own transatlantic community and Jews living in the diaspora but, after the American War of Independence, they instead looked to the ancient Israelites for inspiration on becoming a modern nation of Zion, one which transcended nationalist borders and instead embodied a contemporary chosen people. This section also examines the “spiritual army” created by Quakers to fend off individuals or state apparatuses that objected to their religious ideology (65). Despite Friends’ avowed pacifism, Crabtree aptly titles the first section “combat”, illustrating the spiritual fighting Quakers experienced with outsiders as well as with members of their own communities during this turbulent period in Atlantic World history.
The second section, “Compromise, 1779-1809”, investigates Friends’ use of guarded or Quaker-only education to transmit the ideals of their “holy nation” to a new generation. Crabtree argues that the Society of Friends, in addition to defending their pacifist position and their rejection of militia duty and imposed taxes used to fund military campaigns, also sought to defend their youth from worldly influences. Borrowing from biblical imagery of a “walled garden”, the Society viewed their schools as protected spaces that blocked outside cultural and political ideas (98). In doing so, these “gardens” sought to foster a liberal education and a passion for philanthropic endeavours. Quaker day schools and boarding schools had been established in a variety of locations in the United States and Europe by the middle of the nineteenth century, even catching the attention of Czar Alexander of Russia who requested Friends’ assistance in overhauling the Russian education system.
“Concession, 1793-1826”, the third section of Holy Nation, examines the transatlantic Quaker communities in the early nineteenth century as they transitioned from a time of war to a relatively peaceful era. Decades of war, coupled with government suspicion of Quaker loyalties, however, led the Society of Friends to adopt a more accommodating worldview. Crabtree explains: “Friends had begun to see their existence as complementary to the apparatus of the state—perhaps still not fully integrated into the world and its government—but at least as integral to it” (134-135). Although the Society did not change its religious doctrine during the nineteenth century, it recognized that its members would need to play a greater role in the nations in which they lived, evidenced by their growing activist agenda conducted within rather than outside of a nationalist, political framework. Quakers viewed philanthropy and social reform as ways to replace the suspicion their neighbours and governments had levelled against them in previous decades with more positive associations. Yet, Friends often relegated themselves to behind-the-scenes roles in the charity work they took on, fearful that any negative perceptions of them would spill over onto the causes they supported.
Simultaneously, however, French writers filled their pages with positive comments about Quakers, lauding their humility, rationality and charitableness. To these philosophers, Quakers appeared as ideal citizens but this utopian vision changed markedly with the onset of the French Revolution. Crabtree contends that this reversal underscored the transatlantic ideological shift from cosmopolitanism to nationalism during and after the age of revolution. Perhaps the author’s most innovative chapter, Crabtree concerns herself with perceptions and ideal-types represented by Quakers rather than with actual Friends. A welcome addendum to this chapter would have been an analysis of Jews’ own perceptions of the Society of Friends, given the connections the latter group had previously drawn with the transnational Jewish community. Just as this chapter concerns itself with the French elite imagination, the larger book focuses on the beliefs of 110 Quaker ministers through their sermons and correspondence rather than including a sustained examination of the non-elites or less public figures within the Society.
Ultimately, Quakers’ own concessions led to the dissolution of their holy nation. Internal divisions, sparked by the changing world around them, led several Friends to call for greater standardization in discipline and practice. The Hicksite-Orthodox schism of 1827-28 fractured the Society of Friends from within as members’ competing visions of withdrawal or participation in the larger society created a deep ideological rift, one that would last well into the twentieth-century. Crabtree, diverging from past historians, contends that this split resulted from the demands of nationalism rather than from an inevitable confrontation between religious tradition and modernity.
Sarah Crabtree’s Holy Nation makes an important contribution to the study of the Atlantic World and transnational history by convincingly demonstrating how the growth of nationalism dramatically impacted the Society of Friends in their disparate communities. The book’s transatlantic approach is mirrored in the meticulous research conducted in the United States, England and Ireland. Much more than a book about Quaker history, this monograph compellingly connects the fields of religious history, political history and transnational history in the age of revolution.
