Founding Economy

Posted by on Aug 9, 2024 in | Comments Off on Founding Economy “It will be but two years since the forest was first felled upon which Economy is built; the roots still remaining in the streets are evidences of the short time that has elapsed. It is astonishing what united and regulated human effort has accomplished in so short a time!” – Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach, 1826   Two hundred years ago, on June 6, 1824, the Harmony Society landed at...
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Our Beloved Friend: The Life and Writings of Anne Emlen Mifflin by Gary B. Nash and Emily M. Teipe

Posted by on Sep 18, 2023 in | Comments Off on Our Beloved Friend: The Life and Writings of Anne Emlen Mifflin by Gary B. Nash and Emily M. Teipe Our Beloved Friend The Life and Writings of Anne Emlen Mifflin by Gary B. Nash and Emily M. Teipe Pennsylvania State University Press, 370 pp, $124.95 hardcover Our Beloved Friend: The Life and Writings of Anne Emlen Mifflin resurrects the life and work of a neglected but significant Pennsylvania Quaker leader. Born in 1755 to a wealthy family, Anne Emlen came of age during the Revolutionary...
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Perkasie Park Camp Meeting

Posted by on Jul 24, 2023 in | Comments Off on Perkasie Park Camp Meeting Pennsylvania’s religious groups have long sought peace in gatherings away from the commonwealth’s bustling cities. In the 19th century, this led to a rise in camp meetings across the state, especially among the pietist sects. Located in Bucks County, the Perkasie Park Camp Meeting was founded in 1882, when nine investors agreed to purchase property and form a camp meeting association. The first...
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Songs of the Saron: Ephrata Cloister’s Women Composers

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Songs of the Saron: Ephrata Cloister’s Women Composers   In the mid-18th century, a small religious community thrived at what is known today as Ephrata Cloister on the banks of the Cocalico Creek in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County. Founded in 1732 by German immigrant Conrad Beissel (1691–1768), the group was composed of celibate Brothers and Sisters who lived lives of religious devotion and self-denial, supported in part by the married members...
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Reforming Faith by Design: Frank Furness’ Architecture and Spiritual Pluralism Among Philadelphia’s Jews and Unitarians

Posted by on Feb 8, 2021 in | Comments Off on Reforming Faith by Design: Frank Furness’ Architecture and Spiritual Pluralism Among Philadelphia’s Jews and Unitarians Philadelphia never saw anything like it. The strange structure took shape between 1868 and 1871 on the southeast corner of North Broad and Mount Vernon streets, in the middle of a developing residential neighborhood for a newly rising upper middle class. With it came a rather alien addition to the city’s skyline: a boldly striped onion dome capping an octagonal Moorish-style minaret that flared...
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Mount Gretna’s Spirit Lives On

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Mount Gretna’s Spirit Lives On Mount Gretna in Lebanon County is an enduring gem of a historic village that offers visitors a rare opportunity to experience an unembellished, Victorian-era lifestyle that shuffles on in similar fashion today. Cloistered within a 16-mile slice of forested rocky hills surrounded by a patchwork expanse of farmland between Lancaster and Hershey, Mount Gretna came to life in 1892 as a village (now...
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The Amish by Steven M. Nolt

Posted by on Sep 9, 2016 in | Comments Off on The Amish by Steven M. Nolt The Amish: A Concise Introduction by Steven M. Nolt Johns Hopkins University Press, 52 pp., paper $16.95 In this brief but thoughtful book, Nolt leads his readers through the thicket of scholarship on Amish life to provide a concise introduction to America’s most distinctive religious community. He starts at the right place, delineating eight myths about the Amish that his book eventually...
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Ephrata’s Comet Book

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Ephrata’s Comet Book In the late winter of 1744 a bright comet with six tails that spread out like a fan was visible in the sky. It was so brilliant at its perihelion – its point closest to the sun – that it could be seen even in the daytime. Known as the Great Comet of 1744, the astronomical object mystified the world and led to speculation about its meaning in both scientific and religious circles. In...
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Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends Gettysburg Religion Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North In the borderland between slavery and freedom, Gettysburg remains among the most legendary landmarks of the American Civil War, asserts Steve Longenecker, author of Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North (Fordham University Press, 2014,...
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Changing Friends – Constant Friends

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Changing Friends – Constant Friends What is a Quaker? Who is a Quaker? Our mind’s eye first brings forth a picture of the plain Friend who accompanied William Penn. The image is of a black and white silhouette cut-out because Friends thought a full picture was too vain. Yet our sense of today’s Quaker may be less focused, even indistinguishable from the general populace – per­haps this is because we seem to...
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