Quakers in Victoria

By Paul Kingsnorth (383.064 KIN)           Kingsnorth—novelist, poet, essayist—addresses what he calls the age of the Machine, where state power merges with tech power, potentially resulting in the unmaking of humanity.  Though we “have every gadget and recipe and website and storefront and exotic holiday in the world available to us, […] we are lacking… Read more: Against the Machine. On the Unmaking of Humanity

Religious Schism in Early Nineteenth Century America By Robert W. Doherty (289.6 DOH)             This book traces the sociological or societal, as well as the religious, issues, particularly in the Philadelphia area of 19th century America, that led to the so-called Hicksite Separation (named after Elias Hicks) of 1827.  Doherty points out that the early… Read more: The Hicksite Separation: A Sociological Analysis of

Selected with and Introduction by Kerry Walters (289.6 JON)           At his birth in Maine in 1863, Rufus Jones’s Aunt Peace said of him, “This child will one day bear the message of the Gospel to distant lands and to peoples across the sea.” And so, he did.  By the time he was four years… Read more: Rufus Jones. Essential Writings

If, as a librarian, I allow myself some time to muse about libraries, it is only fitting that I begin with reference to the great Library at Alexandria in Egypt, which is believed to have been instituted by Ptolemy II, pharaoh and basileus of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, sometime in the 3rd century BCE.  It formed… Read more: A Librarian Muses about Libraries

          If you’re familiar with Quaker practice, but not with the psychological principles of Carl Jung, this book is a good introduction to Jung, as well as being an interesting perspective on the intersection of his principles with Quakerism.  Jung, like Quakers, believed “that any true religion should be founded on experience, not on dogma,… Read more: Jung and the Quaker Way by Jack H. Wallis (289.6092 WAL)