Writing App: Quaker Revivals

We know there are plenty of Quakers who only need a little nudge to share their perspectives with a wider audience. If you know anyone who should write about this topic, please share this post with them!

Fast Facts

Our June/July 2025 issue will look at Quaker Revivals.

Revival is a funny concept if you think about it too hard. It can mean many things: a quickening of spiritual fervor, an increase in numbers, a return to some earlier golden age. Quakerism began as a revival of sorts—a brash new religious outlook that didn’t have much regard for other denominations—and we have had many revivals in the 385 years since.

Friends have gone through regular cycles of getting set in our ways and being roused to renew our commitments to the radical promise of the Quaker way. Many of the Friends we remember and celebrate were calling for a change and a return. People like John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, and Rufus Jones were all reacting to what they saw as a decline in Quaker vitality.

There’s often a kind of purity in revival that casts off those who don’t share the vision. Large numbers of disownments and schisms accompanied reform movements, and ex-Quakers went on to heavily influence other religious movements in the United States, from Methodists to Mormons, and Shakers to the more modern Jesus Movement.

Revivals often reshape us. In the nineteenth-century, Britain and much of the U.S. Midwest was awash in an evangelical spirit that spawned revivals and Quaker missionary work around the world. It brought Quakerism to millions of people, but in new forms that sparked controversy and schisms. We’re still reacting to these changes today in our worship, unity, and organization.

Many twentieth-century Friends forged a new consensus that created a new form of modern Liberal Quakerism that drew in people with its return to Quaker pacifism, a stress on relief efforts, and a strong sense of engagement with the world and sciences. U.S. political activism in the 1960s and 1970s brought in new waves of Friends drawn to a worldview and lifestyle that didn’t always fit the old forms. Every revival has reshaped us, in ways that can focus our efforts while simultaneously driving us away from other Friends.

What’s the state of Quaker revivals today? Where is it needed? Are there places where we are in danger of catching fire? When I look around I see bits of revivals that have excited subsets of Friends: movements like 2011’s Occupy Wall Street, the 2023 Asbury Revival, the early-aughts Emergent Church networks, hashtagged justice protests like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. Where do we need to grow and is it possible to have that growth without splintering Friends further?

Submit: Quaker Revivals

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Learn more general information at Friendsjournal.org/submissions.

1 thought on “Writing App: Quaker Revivals

  1. Revival among Quakers has different meanings
    1. To some is to bring back the old ways and practice missionaries taught
    2. To some revival is to bring in the church their traditions and customs
    3. To some revival is immitaters or becoming more of Pentecostal noise practice
    4. Personally I agree with those who believe revival should be when people are preached to and repent, be delivered, be baptized in the Holy Spirit, and are transformed and start living Holy life and bearing fruits by serving God and nature

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