Steven Davison is nerding deep into Quaker history, specifically the process in which younger members of Britain Yearly Meeting started formulating a new kind of Quakerism. Here’s his explanatory introduction and here is part 2:
Meanwhile, membership dropped precipitously, as meetings applied discipline increasingly rigorously for walking disorderly in all manner of ways. In 1859, a prize of one hundred pounds was offered by an anonymous British Friend for the essay that best explained this decline and that offered the most promising solutions
The process was anything but overnight. As I understand the history it would be another half century from the prize to a yearly-meeting-wide shift. I don’t think many Friends in England appreciate just how Evangelical their yearly meeting has become in these years; their refusal to recognize American Hicksites led to the latter’s shunning from the world Quaker family and meant modernist Quaker responses would evolve on largely separate paths.
I wonder if British Friend William Pollard will make an appearance in Steven’s posts. I’ve been fascinated how Philadelphia Hicksites took to him despite the formal institutional barriers. [Update: Steven just dropped part three and there’s Pollard!]