Quakers and Mysticism: Comparative and Syncretic Approaches to Spirituality (Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism)

This book examines the nearly 400-year tradition of Quaker engagements with mystical ideas and sources. It provides a fresh assessment of the way tradition and social context can shape a religious community while interplaying with historical and theological antecedents within the tradition. Quaker concepts such as “Meeting,” the “Light,” and embodied spirituality, have led Friends to develop an interior spirituality that intersects with extra-Quaker sources, such as those found in Jakob Boehme, Abū Bakr ibn Tufayl, the Continental Quietists, Kabbalah, Buddhist thought, and Luyia indigenous religion. Through time and across cultures, these and other conversations have shaped Quaker self-understanding and, so, expanded previous models of how religious ideas take root within a tradition. The thinkers engaged in this globally-focused, interdisciplinary volume include George Fox, James Nayler, Robert Barclay, Elizabeth Ashbridge, John Woolman, Hannah Whitall Smith, Rufus Jones, Inazo Nitobe, Howard Thurman, and Gideon W. H. Mweresa, among others. "This book examines the nearly 400-year tradition of Quaker engagements with mystical ideas and sources. It provides a fresh assessment of the way tradition and social context can shape a religious community while interplaying with historical and theological antecedents within the tradition. Quaker concepts such as 'Meeting, ' the 'Light, ' and embodied spirituality, have led Friends to develop an interior spirituality that intersects with extra-Quaker sources, such as those found in Jakob Boehme, Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl, the Continental Quietists, Kabbalah, Buddhist thought, and Luyia indigenous religion. Through time and across cultures, these and other conversations have shaped Quaker self-understanding and, so, expanded previous models of how religious ideas take root within a tradition. The thinkers engaged in this globally-focused, interdisciplinary volume include George Fox, James Nayler, Robert Barclay, Elizabeth Ashbridge, John Woolman, Hannah Whitall Smith, Rufus Jones, Inazo Nitobe, Howard Thurman, and Gideon W.H. Mweresa, among others."-- Provided by publisher 1) Introduction: Quaker Engagements with Mysticism2) "Meeting": The Mystical Legacy of George Fox 3) James Nayler and Jacob Boehme's The Way to Christ4) How Ecology, Economics, and Ethics Brought Winstanley and Nitobe to Quakerism5) Robert Barclay and Kabbala6) Elizabeth Ashbridge and Spiritual Autobiography: The Old Awakened in the New7) John Woolman's Christological Model of Discernment8) Hannah Whitall Smith's Highway of Holiness9) The Unifying Light of Allah: Ibn Tufail and Rufus Jones in Dialogue10) Howard Thurman (1899-1981): Universalist Approaches to Buddhism and Quakerism11) The Singing Mysticism: Kenyan Quakerism, the Case of Gideon W. H. Mweresa12) Liberal Quakers and Buddhism 13) Conclusion