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This is a review of Reasons for Hope: The Faith and Future of the Friends Church by John Punshon, Friends United Press, Richmond, Indiana, 2001. Punshon is recently retired as Professor of Quaker Studies at Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion. He is a member of First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, and a recorded minister in Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends. His other books include Portrait in Grey, Patterns of Change, Encounter with Silence and Testimony and Tradition. I got to know him on a Quaker study tour of England he led.
The scope of what is covered in this book is amazing. The publisher calls it "a mini-course in evangelical Friends theology, Church history, and philosophy." The vast sweep of its intellectual coverage is to support his views regarding the future of evangelical Friends in the United States. By evangelical Friends, he means all Friends with an evangelical perspective both inside and outside of Evangelical Friends International.
Punshon does not offer a definition of evangelical because it "is ambiguous in practice." (page xv) I can appreciate that, but one also needs to understand an author's terms of reference. It seems to me that there are two main approaches to using the term. One, which appears to be Punshon's, is to focus on the use of evangelicals of the Bible as the fundamental source of our knowledge about truth. The other, which to me resonates more fully with the tradition of Friends and tracks with the root meaning of the word, is to focus on the yearning to spread the Gospel and fulfill the Great Commission. I believe Punshon would have done better to make the latter choice.
Probably the book's greatest contribution is its explication of key traditional Quaker understandings with attention to how they can fit within an evangelical perspective. The broad breadth of his analysis includes the actual message of early Friends, how it fits into the wider Christian tradition, and how it fits with human nature. Much of the book constitutes a modern apologetic for Quaker understandings. It should be much more accessible to modern evangelicals than many defenses of Quaker testimonies, as it is written with the perspectives of this audience particularly in mind. Punshon approaches early Quaker doctrines as a point of departure for a distinct line of doctrinal development rather than a fixed point from which there should be no deviation.
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