Quaker Studies
Volume 10 | Issue 1
Article 7
2006
Gardina's "Quakers and Baptists in Colonial
Massachusetts" - Book Review
Jeanne-Henriette Louis
University of Orleans, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/quakerstudies
Part of the Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, and the History of Christianity
Commons
Recommended Citation
Louis, Jeanne-Henriette (2006) "Gardina's "Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts" - Book Review," Quaker Studies: Vol. 10:
Iss. 1, Article 7.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/quakerstudies/vol10/iss1/7
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quaker
Studies by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected].
108
QUAKER STUDIES
41. Olcutt Sanders, memo to Alex Morisey, 31 January 1957, folder: Information Services,
Audio Visual Aids, Radio & Television- Correspondence, box: General Administration, 1957:
Infom1ation Services to International Affairs Seminars ofWashington, AFSC.
42. Sanders, memo to Morisey.
43. Sanders, memo to Morisey.
44. Alex Morisey, memo 'Radio Programs' to Olcutt Sanders, 8 February 1957, folder:
Inforn1ation Services, Audio Visual Aids, Radio & Television - Correspondence, box: General
Administration, 1957: Inforn1ation Services to International Affairs Seminars ofWashington, AFSC.
45. Morisey, memo 'Radio Programs' to Sanders.
46. Morisey, memo 'Radio Programs' to Sanders.
47. Morisey, memo 'Radio Programs' to Sanders.
48. Barbara Moffett, memo 'Radio Programs' to Olcutt Sanders, 8 February 1957, folder:
Inforn1ation Services, Audio Visual Aids, Radio & Television - Correspondence, box: General
Administration, 1957: Infom1ation Services to Intemational Affairs Seminars ofWashington, AFSC.
49. Morisey, memo 'Radio Programs' to Sanders.
50. Sanders, memo to Morisey.
51. Alvin Gaines, letter toLewis Hoskins, 4 March 1957, folder: Infom1ation Services, Audio
Visual Aids, Radio & Television - Correspondence, box: General Administration, 1957:
Infom1ation Services to International Affairs Seminars ofWashington, AFSC.
52. Olcutt Sanders, 'Proposed Arrangements with Ed Randall', 2 October 1957, folder:
Information Services, Audio Visual Aids, Radio & Television - Correspondence, box: General
Administration, 1957: lnfomution Services to International Affairs Seminars ofWashington, AFSC.
53. 'Radio Programs Available on Tape- 1961-ListW', 'Radio Programs Available on Tape1961-ListX', both reel 2, SRC.
54. E.T. Randall, 'The Exciting Story of "A Yankee in the Heart of Dixie'", n.d.; Edwin
Randall, letter to Paul Rilling, 26 September 1962, both, reel 2, SRC.
55. 'Report on Radio and TV Activity, October 1954-September 1955'.
56. Joe B. Long, letter to Edwin Randall, 21 August 1956, folder: Infomution Services,
Radio/TelevisionWork, box: General Administration 1956: lnfomution Service (News Releases)
to lntemational Affairs Seminars in Washington (Seminar Meetings - 'Next Steps in US
Development Programs'), AFSC.
57. 'Radio Programs Available on Tape - 1959 -List 0'; Edwin Randall, letter to Harold
Fleming, 18 May 1959, both reel 2, SRC.
58. Don Stephens, letter to Harold Fleming, 25 November 1958, reel 2, SRC.
59. Harold Fleming, letter to whom it may concern, n.d. [1964?], reel 2, SRC.
60. Jonas, On Doin,f? Good, pp. 86, 89.
61. Jonas, On Doing Good, pp. 156-57.
AUTHOR DETAILS
Brian Ward is a professor of history and Chair of the Department of History at the
University of Florida. He is the author of several books, including just My Soul
Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations, London: Uni­
versity College London; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, and Radio
and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South, Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
2004.
Mailing address:
Brian Ward, Department of History, 025 Keene-Flint Hall, University of Florida,
Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
QUAKER STUDIES 10/1 (2005) [109-126)
ISSN 1363-013X
BOOK REVIEWS
PESTANA, Carla Gardina, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. xii + 197. ISBN 0-521-52504-7, Paper
£15.99. Reprint from 1991 (hardback).
Pestana's 2004 book was exactly reprinted from the 1991 print. Only the cover
summary was slightly changed. So this is not research revisited, but a response to the
interest which made the first publication out of print.
The topic might look very specialised and irrelevant for our modern times at first,
but one should go beyond this first impression.
Pestana compares the fate of Quakers and Baptists in colonial Massachusetts,
chronologically starting with the Baptists church, whose members first came to
Massachusetts in the first half of the seventeenth century, and going on with Friends
from 1656 (the time of their first immigration) onwards. Both groups had to suffer
from the Puritans' intolerance, but, following the paths opened byRoger Williams
and Anne Hutchinson, they militated for religious diversity in a very forbidding
context. They challenged the Puritans' patriarchal authority.
The author focuses on Salem Monthly Meeting and the Boston Baptist Church
for her comparison. She points out that the main common point between the two
groups, besides their 'boldness', was the refusal of infant baptism, although she
underlines the fact that Friends were more radical than the Baptists by refusing
exterior baptism altogether, and claiming a preference for inner baptism, as explained
by Robert Barclay in his Apology. Baptists only postponed baptism until the adult
age, and made it a sign of deliberate choice of the Baptist faith. She reminds the
reader that antipedobaptism was a burning issue in colonial Massachusetts at this
time. It was the Baptists and the Quakers' honour to create the issue instead of
yielding to the Puritans in a docile way. This issue linked the two groups together in
the seventeenth century, but it faded in the eighteenth century with the Puritans'
reluctant toleration of antipedobaptism.
To have spotted an interesting role played by both Baptists and Quakers in
colonial Massachusetts and made it into a topic and a title is the particular merit of
Carla Gardina Pestana. It is a rich topic. Personally I bought the 1991 publication
(but did not read it!) before I was asked to write a review of the 2004 one (now I
have read it!). But I remember why I bought the 1991 one several years ago.
Working on the history of Nantucket island, I had noticed that the first European
settlers on this island (1659) were either Baptists or influenced by the Anabaptists.
110
QUAKER STUDIES
Thomas Macy, from Salisbury, was a Baptist who was fined for sheltering Quakers
caught in a storm. This story is dramatically narrated by John Greenleaf Whittier in
his poem T11e Exiles. Tristam Coffin had shown Puritans that he disagreed with their
law against lay preachers. Edward Starbuck had been accused by the Puritans of
professing anabaptism. These founders of the Nantucket British community moved
to Nantucket for the sake of religious liberty, to escape the stifling atmosphere
.
created by the Puritans. Then Peter Folger, who became the key figure ofNantucket
after 1664, had become a Baptist in 1660. He was sympathetic to the Friends'
philosophy, and was the spiritual guide of Mary Starbuck, who founded the Quaker
community in 1708. As the works ofRoland Warren (Mary O?ffin Starbuck and the
Early History cf Nantucket (1987]) and Robert Leach and Peter Gow (Quaker
Nantucket (1997]) show, Baptist and Quaker history are entangled in the history of
the island. And considering that Nantucket had a majority of Quakers in the
eighteenth century, Nantucket history is an important piece in the puzzle of the
United States' Quaker history and its relations with Europe.
So the success of the 1991 book is not surprising to me. A comparison between
Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts is not just a footnote to the United
States' colonial history, and deserved to be done in depth. The reprint is most
welcome.
Jeanne-Henriette Louis
University of Orleans, France
BOOKR.E
BecameDi:
have contri
century.
AnneM
up the diffi,
cultural cliff
will. As col
more a diss
Society's co
tender as W
stop in his n
the good '-'
strangers, an
course, just
Woolman,'
Lisa Gore
transcends la
an 'unmedia
explores, ha·
the Holy Ot
Margaret
Companiow
prompts so 11
entries in my
in a denial c
leveler, but ;
which this e�
Jean Sode
man's World
ships with },
slavery and fc
response to e
that'Woolm
without thre;
publicly the t
the wealthy l
North Ameri
J. William
ing question <
modes of thm
of little help
Enlightenmet
enlightenmen
account of wl