Pendle Hill Pamphlets

One of the basic ideas concerning Pendle Hill is the application of the tenets of the Religious Society of Friends to education as a preparation for usefulness in the field of religion and social action. Because it is a Quaker institution, Pendle Hill differs radically from a theological seminary or a school for social workers. As in the case of other vital movements, small or large, the idea motivating this experiment seeks embodiment in pamphlets. Pendle Hill pamphlets, like the early Christian or the early Quaker tracts, present a variety of viewpoints, all in some way derived from another fundamental idea. Variety is evidence of life; cold uniformity presages death.

But why pamphlets? Why not more books, or magazine articles, or posters? The typical pamphlet has certain characteristics which make it an apt vehicle for experimental thought. It should be the right length to be read easily at a single sitting. It should portray a single thesis without wandering from it. It must be concerned with a topic of contemporary (though not necessarily topical) importance. And a Quaker pamphlet, like a Quaker sermon, must embody a concern.

Though these qualifications have never been used as a systematic checklist by our Publications Committee in choosing manuscripts, they have generally applied to the more than 300 pamphlets we have issued since Vincent Nicholson’s Cooperation and Coercion as Methods of Social Change began our series in 1934. Some of these pamphlets have been written by persons who have lived and worked at Pendle Hill as students and staff or who have attended conferences or visited as sojourners. Others come from a wider community of seekers.

The pamphlets presented below are links to selected older pamphlets which are now at Pendle Hill. Pamphlets can be ordered directly from the Pendle Hill bookstore. As additional older pamphlets are added to the web at Pendle Hill they will also be added to this site. You can be notified when additions are made by sending email to webmaster@pamphlets.quaker.org