Joseph Bevan Braithwaite (21 June 1818 – 15 November 1905) was a conservative, evangelical English Quaker minister. In 1887, he drafted the Quaker

Richmond Declaration The Richmond Declaration was made by 95 Quakers (representatives of all Orthodox Gurneyite Friends Yearly Meetings) in September 1887, at a conference in Richmond, Indiana. It was a declaration of faith, and although Quakers do not have a dogma or ...

which stated, among other things, that the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

was of greater authority than the

Inner Light The inward light, Light of God, Light of Christ, Christ within, That of God, Spirit of God within us, Light within, and inner light are related phrases commonly used within the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) as metaphors for Christ's li ...

Biography

Braithwaite was born in 1818 to Quaker minister Anna Braithwaite and manufacturer Isaac Braithwaite of Kendal. His mother had been involved in trying to heal the first schism of Quakerism personified by

Elias Hicks Elias Hicks (March 19, 1748 – February 27, 1830) was a traveling Quaker minister from Long Island, New York. In his ministry he promoted unorthodox doctrines that led to controversy, which caused the second major schism within the Religious Soc ...

.Edward H. Milligan, ‘Braithwaite, Joseph Bevan (1818–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 9 April 2017
/ref> Braithwaite attended the Friends' School, Stramongate, Kendal, in the Lake District. In the late 1830s, he was drawn to the evangelical ministry of

Isaac Crewdson Isaac Crewdson (6 June 1780 – 8 May 1844) was a minister of the Quaker meeting at Hardshaw East, Manchester. He wrote ''A Beacon to the Society of Friends'', a work published in 1835 which had a schismatic effect on English Quakerism. Ear ...

. He considered leaving mainstream Quakerism, as many in his family had done, but in 1840 he attended

London Yearly Meeting The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, also known as the Britain Yearly Meeting (and, until 1995, the London Yearly Meeting), is a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in England, Sc ...

and decided to remain. In 1843, Braithwaite became a barrister but due to a pronounced

stammer Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the ...

he did not practice in court. In 1851, Braithwaite married Martha Gillett (1823–1895), also an acknowledged Quaker minister, daughter of banker Joseph Ashby Gillet of Banbury. Together they had three sons and six daughters, including

Joseph Bevan Braithwaite (stockbroker) Joseph Bevan Braithwaite (5 October 1855 – 30 November 1934) was an English stockbroker and Quaker. Through his stockbroking firm and personally he played an important part in the development of the electricity supply industry in Britain at t ...

and

William Charles Braithwaite William Charles Braithwaite (23 December 1862 – 28 January 1922) was a British historian, specialising in the early history of the Society of Friends (Quakers). Braithwaite was born on 23 December 1862, the son of Joseph Bevan Braithwaite (1818� ...

. Through his daughter Martha, he was grandfather to Sarah Martha Baker.

Quaker Ministry

Despite his stammer, Braithwaite spoke eloquently at Westminster Meeting House and he was acknowledged as a

recorded minister A Recorded Minister was originally a male or female Quaker who was acknowledged to have a gift of spoken ministry. The practice of recording in a Monthly Meeting Minute the acknowledgment that a Friend had a gift of spoken ministry began in the 1 ...

in 1844. After the death of the leading Quaker evangelical,

Joseph John Gurney Joseph John Gurney (2 August 1788 – 4 January 1847) was a banker in Norwich, England and a member of the Gurney family of that city. He became an evangelical minister of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), whose views and actions led, ...

, in 1847 the responsibility for evangelical leadership among British Quakers passed to Braithwaite, who edited Gurney's Memoirs, the two volumes of which were published in 1854. Like his mother, Braithwaite travelled extensively among Quaker meetings in Britain and Ireland. He visited the US five times between 1865 and 1887 and established extensive contacts with American Quakers who visited London. He therefore became personally influential in Quakerism both in Britain, the USA and France. In 1869, Braithwaite joined the committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society and made two journeys on its behalf to Eastern Europe in 1882, and to the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, including Syria and Palestine in 1883. While at Mersin, near Tarsus, the birthplace of Paul the Apostle, Braithwaite was inspired to write ‘''Paul, the Apostle, a Poem''’. Along with Charles Fox, Braithwaite was one of the committee appointed by London Yearly Meeting in May 1871 to deal with the outbreak of "modern thought" in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

Quaker Meeting. The Committee arranged for the disownment of David Duncan, the outspoken leader of the Manchester dissidents and published a ''Declaration of some fundamental principles of Christian Truth'', which was, however, rejected by London Yearly Meeting in 1872. This declaration was an antecedent of the Richmond Declaration.

The Richmond Declaration

Braithwaite had a deep aversion to the ministry of the American Quaker

who was responsible for a major schism in Quakerism in 1827. Hicks had considered 'obedience to the light within' to be the foundational principle of Quakerism and that adherence to the

was of secondary importance. In 1887, Braithwaite travelled to the USA as a British Quaker representative to the Five Years Meeting of Friends in Richmond, Indiana. There he wrote, as the primary compiler, a statement of faith, the

. The Declaration was agreed to by 95 representatives at the meeting but unexpectedly it was not adopted by London Yearly Meeting in 1888 as an influential minority, including Edward Grubb, blocked its endorsement as being a ' creed' and insensitive to Quaker distinctiveness. This rejection came as a great disappointment to Braithwaite and the Richmond Declaration was one factor leading to the sharp doctrinal turn taken by London Yearly Meeting in 1895, shifting to a more liberal stance and to developing contacts with Hicksite Friends.

Postscript

Braithwaite died at his home in Islington in 1905. His grave is in the Quaker burial ground at

Winchmore Hill Winchmore Hill is a suburb and electoral ward in the Borough of Enfield, North London, in the N21 postal district. With the Winchmore Hill conservation area as a focal point, the district is bounded on the east by Green Lanes (the A105 road ...

, London. In 1907, his papers were archived as the ‘Braithwaite Collection’ in the Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London.

Bibliography

* J. Bevan Braithwaite a Friend of the Nineteenth Century By His Children, London: Hodder and Stoughton (1909). * Claus Bernet: Brithwaite, Joseph Bevan, in: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL), vol. 32, Bautz, Nordhausen 2011, , p. 133–137.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braithwaite, Joseph Bevan 1818 births 1905 deaths English Quakers Quaker evangelicals Quaker theologians Quaker writers