Quakers (also known as the Religious Society of Friends) in Britain have been called “the whitest church in Britain” (Crawley, 2020). How has this shaped Quaker theology?  What can the insights of black and critical white theology reveal about the Quaker understanding of what it is to be human? Does this understanding equip Quakers to envision and work towards a non-racist future? If not, how can this understanding be repaired?

My research focuses on liberal Quakerism in Britiain in its formative period (1890-1920) and in contemporary liberal Quaker thought (1994-2020). Although there has been important work examining Quakers’ racial justice failings (McDaniel and Julye 2009), as yet there is no extensive engagement with the ‘whiteness’ of Quaker theology (Daniels 2018). This project also answers the recent call within Quaker Studies for a fuller articulation of liberal Quaker anthropology (Grant 2020), and supports current British Quaker efforts to pay attention to race as a dynamic within their community and respond to the movement for black lives.