Gospel Order Improved

HE schism that disturbed Pennsylvania's Quakers in the i69os appears in recent treatments of it as a most peculiar kind of affair. In his study of early Pennsylvania society Gary Nash has emphasized economic and political causes, finding the schism part of the broad secular divisions that undermined harmony in the colony between i68o and I720 and one of the many manifestations of the resentments that small farmers and merchants held toward the colony's wealthy, domineering Quaker elite. In another analysis George Keith's only biographer, Ethyn Kirby, has argued that the schism was led by a man whose Quakerism always was flawed. Keith was too intellectual. His commitment was a product of conscious effort, of deliberate rationalization and introspection, and never reflected the simpler understandings of Friends who waited quietly on the Inner Light. Failing ever to accept the central thrust of Quakerism, Keith finally and noisily broke his ties with the Friends in the i6gos by leading the schism in Pennsylvania.' These interpretations obscure and sometimes distort fascinating aspects of the schism by explaining it in unnecessarily oblique terms. For example, why was it that Keith, who Kirby asserts was never really comfortable as a Quaker, waited thirty years to declare his true self? Ilow are we to comprehend the specifically religious aspects of the dis

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