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A Quaker Community on the Pennsylvania Frontier

其他書名	Exeter Monthly Meeting, 1737-1789
出版	University of Houston, 1994
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=wpS2cQAACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Exeter Monthly Meeting serves as an ideal case study to determine the impact of life in the backcountry on members of the Society of Friends. The local meeting, then known as Oley Preparative Meeting, was first organized in 1725 and became a Monthly Meeting in 1737. From that year until 1789, it served as the only organization for Quakers who had settled in the Berks County area and beyond; by 1775 it included meetings in the upper Susquehanna valley, over one hundred miles away. Friends within the realm of Exeter Monthly meeting had to confront matters the Quaker founders of the province could hardly have anticipated, such as surviving as an ethnic and religious minority and reconciling their pacifist principles with constant threats of Indian attacks. One response was an increasing rigidity in discipline that resulted in the expulsion of wayward members in the hopes of maintaining a more stable society. Some Quakers moved to other areas, either back east or to the south. In addition, members of the monthly meeting were forced to deal with neighbors of varied faiths and linguistic backgrounds.