Abstract
T. Vail Palmer, Jr.’s A Long Road provides a nuanced and comprehensive overview of the thought of two centuries of Quaker Biblical scholars and theologians, focusing on the careers of individual religious leaders to chart the trajectory of a movement. The introduction positions the book as building on classics of Quakerism like Rufus Jones’s Faith and Practices of the Quakers, John Punshon’s Portrait in Grey, Walter Williams’s Rich Heritage of Quakerism and Carole Dale Spencer’s Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism, but the Quaker work that Palmer’s book most closely resembles is Wilmar C. Cooper’s attempt to document a systematic Quaker theology in A Living Faith. The book’s format and close kinship with earlier scholarship can also be a limitation, however; this is a history of familiar English and American weighty Friends that tries to see their continuities with George Fox and the early Quakers.
Recommended Citation
May, Isaac Barnes
(2018)
"Review of T. Vail Palmer, Jr., A Long Road: How Quakers Made Sense of God and the Bible (Newberg, OR: Barclay Press, 2017),"
Quaker Religious Thought: Vol. 131, Article 6.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/qrt/vol131/iss1/6