The Life and Times of John Woolman (1720-1772)
The eighteenth century Quaker, John Woolman, is a personal hero of mine. He is most well known as an antislavery advocate, but his reforms go well beyond that. I did my Ph.D. research on Woolman, and have written a bit about him. One of the things I like to do is to think about Woolman's life with others, and think together about what implications his life has for our own. This series of blog posts is based on some talks on Woolman I've given at Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, OR, and North Seattle Friends Church in Seattle, WA.
My goal in these posts is to explore Woolman not only as a sensitive soul, not only
as a social reformer, but as a theologian who had a coherent and comprehensive
conviction of God's role in colonial American society. I hope that this series will help us to view Woolman
in context, to let Woolman challenge us and make us uncomfortable.
The highest honor we can give Woolman is to accept him as he was without
trying to mold him into a figure who conforms to our modern sensibilities.
