Aug 3, 2nd hour (12:30-1:30) Presentation discussion with Jim Krippner on his book Henry Cadbury: Quaker, Pacifist and Skeptic

Come find out more about a Friend who helped found American Friends Service Committee and why he was later forced to resign from a Quaker college for being too committed to nonviolence during a time of global conflict in 1918.

Jim Krippner is the Edmund and Margiana Stinnes Professor in Global Studies and Professor of History at Haverford College.  He will be discussing his recent book Henry Cadbury:  Quaker, Pacifist and Skeptic (Brill, 2024) co-authored with David Harrington Watt.  The book introduces readers to the life, thought, social activism and political conflicts of the Quaker intellectual and peace activist Henry Cadbury (1883-1974).  Born into an established Orthodox Philadelphia Quaker family, Cadbury was among the most prominent Quaker intellectuals of his day.  During his lifetime, he was well-known as a contributor to one of the most important English translations of the Bible (the Revised Standard Version) and wrote scores of articles and books on the early history of Christianity and the history of the Society of Friends.  He also had enormous influence over what may be the single best institutional instantiation of the Quaker commitment to nonviolence—the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an organization Cadbury helped to found in 1917 and served throughout his long lifetime.  When the AFSC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947, Cadbury was asked to accept the prize on its behalf.  The book focuses upon Cadbury’s 1918 dismissal from Haverford College due to his ardent pacifist opposition to World War I, an event that raises the interesting question of how could a Quaker College fire a Quaker Professor for being “too Quaker?” 

For more information about Cadbury, see Krippner and Watt’s Friends Journal article from April 2017

See also Henry J. Cadbury: Scholar, Activist, Disciple By Margaret Hope Bacon, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #376 (2005)