The birth of Quaker historical study

      "Through their opposition to the evangelicals' emphasis on the Scriptures and their savage criticism of the latter's apparent 'backsliding' into the unreformed Church, the Quietists drew attention to the divisions that existed within British Quakerism during the early part of the nineteenth century.  Subsequent historical study of this period has also emphasized these divisions and often cast evangelicalism as an invading force in British Quakerism.  This is because, as ever, history was written by the winners.  The birth of Quaker historical study coincided with the eclipse of evangelicalism within London Yearly Meeting and its replacement with a liberalism which doubted whether evangelical doctrine represented the true beliefs of Friends.  Elizabeth Isichei has identified the links that existed between the main motor of Quakers' study of their own past, the Friends Historical Society, and the rise of liberalism within British Quakerism."

     Simon Bright, "'Friends have no cause to be ashamed of being by others thought non-evangelical':  unity and diversity of belief among early nineteenth-century British Quakers," in Unity and diversity in the church:  papers read at the 1994 summer meeting and the 1995 winter meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. R. N. Swanson, Studies in church history 32 (Oxford:  published for the Ecclesiastical History Society by Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 340 (337-349).