The Quaker Books for Friends newsletter is no longer being distributed, nor is it kept current.  This archive remains for readers' interest.
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Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn
(Eric K. Taylor, ed. | Herald Press, 2003)  These wise sayings of a godly man will stay with you long after you put the small book down.  Taylor's edition preserves Penn's wisdom while at the same time making it accessible to the modern reader through a careful rewrite of the original published sayings. His translation helps to put William Penn back into the corpus of must-read literature within the Quaker tradition. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 5, no. 3]
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Imagination & Spirit. A Contemporary Quaker Reader
(J. Brent Bill, ed. | Friends United Press, 2002)  This collection is a hardy effort to make the Quaker experience accessible to those outside the tradition and to let Friends themselves appreciate the nuances of that experience. Seventeen modern writers, either within the Quaker Christian tradition or near its fringe, are here represented in this balanced reader.  For Friends who read widely, the authors in this collection will be very familiar; for those who aspire to be widely read in the Quaker tradition, this book will indeed be a reliable guide. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 5, no. 2]
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Genteel Revolutionaries: Anna and Thomas Haslam and the Irish Women's Movement
(Carmel Quinlan | Cork University Press, 2002)  This is much more than a book about the struggle for women's voting rights in Ireland. Quinlan has good scholarly habits and a talent for chronicling the Quaker couple's efforts to change the wider Irish society's treatment of women within a very long period—from the Victorian era well into the 20th century. We get a glimpse of the younger Haslams as they embark on careers as social activists and their interaction with leading figures such as John Stuart Mill and Marie Stopes; we get to see the older Haslams as they face a changing Ireland, complicated political issues, and aggressive tactics of a new generation of women who are both eager for equality and less inhibited about how to get it. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 5, no. 1]
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Love is the Hardest Lesson: A Memoir
(Margaret Hope Bacon | Pendle Hill, 1999)  From the autumn of 1944 until the end of World War II, the author and her husband, Allen, a conscientious objector, were connected with a mental hospital in Sykesville, Maryland. Although this is a book about war and peace, fairness and injustice, loyalty and betrayal, meanness and benevolence, and disease and the horrible things we do in the name of medical science, Bacon has given her memoir a meaningful literary poise. Her memories are of a difficult period for peace-committed Quakers, of people in service in a fallen world, and of the persistent triumph of love over evil. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 2, no. 3]
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Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
(William A. Dembski | InterVarsity Press, 1999)  In biology, where the Darwinian methodological battle is still being fought, there is a move now to reintroduce design as a bona fide scientific explanation. Dembski, a leader in this renewal movement, argues for "intelligent design" as a robust program within scientific research and as a genuine bridge with Christian theology. This is an ambitious book, a brilliant book, packed with awesome insights. Christians who are not afraid of rigorous analytical debate need to read it. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 2, no. 1]
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The Clouded Quaker Star: James Nayler, 1618-1660
(Vera Massey | Friends United Meeting/Sessions Book Trust, 1999)  The story of early Quaker leader James Nayler, both poignant and weird, has an undercurrent of sex and scandal, madness and intrigue, abandonment and reconciliation, and the bitterest of ironies. Massey relates the drama in a narrative style that enlivens the main characters, highlights the dangers that Nayler unwittingly brought upon the nascent Quaker movement, and brings the whole into a useful historical perspective. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 12]
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Quakerism and Science
(Calvin W. Schwabe | Pendle Hill, 1999)  As a Friend and research scientist, Schwabe brings to this little study excellent credentials and many years of thoughtful reflection on the methodologies of Quaker worship and scientific discovery. The interesting result is an aggressive argument for the pragmatic benefits of a Quaker-like meditative approach to problem-solving in science. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 12]
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Caught in Between: The Story of an Arab Palestinian Christian Israeli
(Riah Abu El-Assal) | SPCK, 1999)  This book, by the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, is an enthralling, sometimes poignant, and often exasperating tale of several identities in crisis. This is less a book about the Episcopal church and far more a book about the Arab-Palestinian search for identity and the increasing isolation of the Christian community in Israel today. Friends who want to know more about currents of change in the historic region will find this to be stimulating and informative, sad but never dispiriting, and always well worth the reading time. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 11]
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More than Equals: Spiritual Friendships
(Trish Roberts | Pendle Hill, 1999)  This is a short acclamation of special, meaningful relationships that foster accountability, the nurturing of faith, and edification. The author calls these relationships "spiritual friendships." They are meetings in confidence with someone for the sharing of one's faith life. They can be safe harbors for theological discussions, for conversations about spiritual insights, and where a friend's presence can be the face of God for us. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 11]
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When Christ Comes
(Max Lucado | Word Publishing, 1999)  Few books that touch on the end of the world manage to fashion a clarifying message in quite the way Max Lucado has done here. His purpose is to use the return of Christ to encourage our hearts, and in this he succeeds. This is a book for both the mature Christian and the new, and it is rich in scriptural imagery and insight. If you read only one Max Lucado book, read this one. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 10]
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Jesus Freaks
(dc Talk and The Voice of the Martyrs | Albury Publishing, 1999)  You will not likely find a more intense book on Christian martyrs than this. Cutting a wide swath through history and through geography, this is a compilation of new and old stories of real persons who suffered, were tortured, maimed, or killed, for their faith in Jesus Christ. You will also not find anything quite like this book on the market today. This is a book you may want to put down—it presents painful stories, some anguishing to read—but in the end you will pick it up again and again. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 9]
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Streams of Mercy
(Mark Rutland | Vine Books/Servant Publications, 1999)  This is a book every Christian must read. The real point of what Rutland wants to achieve here is to make sense of Jesus, who showed mercy to people who deserved to be hated. Rutland wants to take us from the many mercies of God to how mercy can be realized in our daily lives, from merciful God to merciful man, reflecting in our lives the immense love in God's wide stream of mercies. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 8]
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The Old Discipline
(Licia Kuenning, ed. | Quaker Heritage Press, 1999)  This book reproduces the 19th-century books of discipline of the eight oldest yearly meetings in America: Baltimore, Indiana, New England, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Philadelphia, and Virginia. This is an uncommon book, fascinating reading even apart from its scholarly value, and well worth adding to one's collection of Quaker history. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 8]
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Just Like Jesus
(Max Lucado | Word Publishing, 1999)  Only until we know the heart of Jesus can we understand the changes we need to make in our lives, really appreciate our special circumstances, and fathom the depths of God's commitment to our transformation. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 8]
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Growing Up Plain Among Conservative Wilburite Quakers
(Wilmer A. Cooper | Friends United Press/Pendle Hill, 1999)  The founder and first dean of the Earlham School of Religion writes from both heart and head in this book about tradition and the pitfalls of living in the Spirit amid the flux of American life and culture. This is a story of one man's appreciation of his childhood faith and of why this faith community should not disappear in the vortex of a carnal world. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 7]
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How to Succeed at Being Yourself
(Joyce Meyer | Harrison House, 1999)  Meyer's book is a finely crafted prescription for finding and following the destiny God has planned for each of us. It is also good Christian literature. If you read only one book by this prolific teacher and minister, let it be this one. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 7]
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The Holiness of God
(R.C. Sproul | 2nd ed | Tyndale House, 1998)  First published in 1985, Sproul's exposition on God's holiness has become a classic of theological literature. Now in its second edition, with revisions and new material, this is a book still able to hold our attention and impart important insights into a subject our modern mind struggles still to discern. This will both change and enrich your way of thinking about God. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 6]
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Knowing God's Will
(M. Blaine Smith | 2nd ed | InterVarsity Press, 1991)  This is one of those books that you want to pick up and read again every now and then—not only because it serves as a perennial reference work, but also because it continues to surprise and enlighten with every read. For this second edition, Smith has expanded and revised his book, first published in 1979, and added two appendices to tackle some issues of more recent topical interest in the biblical teaching on guidance. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 6]
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The Believer's Way
(Scott Johnson | Harrison House, 1998)  This is a friendly little tract on the spirit-filled Christian life. It is really a small guide book designed for special use in evangelical outreach, where a mature Christian can walk alongside someone who is lost. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 6]
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Thus Saith the Lord?
(John Bevere | Creation House, 1999)  This enduring little book belongs in the hands of every Christian reader. Its author wrestles boldly and skillfully with a theme rarely dealt with in issues of God's gifts: How to know when God is speaking prophetically to us through another. The outcome is an encouraging, solid, Scriptural-based, and refreshingly intuitive formula for true discernment. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 5]
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John Woolman: Quintessential Quaker
(David Sox | Friends United Press, 1999)  John Woolman is a man who has to be shared. This little book is therefore as much an act of kindness as it is a readable contemporary appreciation of a beloved 18th-century American Quaker. There is enough of the life and times of John Woolman here to satisfy the newcomer to Quaker history who seeks to understand Woolman's endearing legacy as a Quaker minister, prophet, mystic, activist, and saint. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 5]
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Romans. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
(Gerald Bray, ed. | InterVarsity Press, 1998)  This is the second published entry in an ambitious 27-volume series that encompasses all of Old and New Testament Scripture through commentary and key writings by the early church fathers. Bray's edition of Paul's epistle to the Romans is exceedingly well-done. He includes a carefully arranged introduction to Paul's letter and spends time, too, on the patristic commentators, their dates and extant works, and why they were chosen to speak in this volume. The end result of his labors is a rich exegesis of an important document in the Christian corpus. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 5]
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Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation
(H. Larry Ingle | 2nd ed | Pendle Hill, 1998)  "And what sort of religion is this?" So asked Jonathan Taylor, clerk of Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1828, as he lay on the ground after tumbling out the door of the Mount Pleasant meeting house following a struggle with Hicksite reformers over physical possession of the clerk's desk. Needless to say, he lost the desk (it was literally pulled apart) and his usurper reconvened the meeting using the desk drawer as a table top. So it was that Quakers in Ohio split themselves (not unlike the clerk's desk) into two separate groups. Like the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting before it, this was a division that was repeated throughout New England. Not until 1955, nearly three generations later, were any of these factions reconciled. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 4]
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It's Time for Your Comeback
(Tim Storey | Harrison House, 1998)  When God gives you a promise, argues Storey, he also gives you a plan, he reveals his purpose for you, and he makes provision for the successful realization of that purposeful plan. Drawing on Scripture, Biblical stories, and contemporary tales of outstanding courage and fulfillment, Storey lays out an intricate battle plan for overcoming obstacles and setbacks, for plotting one's comeback, and for bringing our personal expectations into the light. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 4]
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Mark. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
(Oden and Hall, eds. | InterVarsity Press, 1998)  This is the first published entry in an ambitious 27-volume series that encompasses all of Old and New Testament Scripture through commentary and key writings by the early church fathers. Using contemporary computer technology, the editors are able to include selected patristic commentary on key passages and topics. The end result is a volume that not only enlivens study of a cherished Gospel but also creates a bridge between our historical-critical method of interpretation and several centuries of Spirit-led exposition and reflection. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 4]
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Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers
(Christopher Hall | InterVarsity Press, 1998)  This is an exciting little companion to anyone's study of the scripture with the aid of commentary by early church fathers. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 3]
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Holy Ghost Fire
(Ray McCauley | Harrison House, 1998)  As Christians, we frequently forget what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and even less do we know what it is like to live every day in the spirit.  McCauley's central message is that the outpouring of God's spirit is not a one-time experience, but a continual walk—an achievable lifestyle. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 3]
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The Fight
(John White | InterVarsity Press, 1976)  Even after 23 years in print, this small robust book is still reliable as a guide for any Christian's walk with God.  Christian Friends will find this handbook both refreshing and provocative. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 2]
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Eternal Impact
(Phil Downer with Chip MacGregor | Harvest House, 1997)  This is an outstanding discussion and guide for men on living the authentic Christian life, on becoming a spiritual reproducer, and making a difference in other men's lives. [Quaker Books for Friends: vol. 1, no. 1]
[Print version]

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