When Americans today think of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as Quakers, they may picture the smiling figure on boxes of oatmeal. But since their arrival in the American colonies in the 1650s, Quakers spiritual values and social habits have set them apart from other Americans. And their example whether real or imagined has served as a religious conscience for an expanding nation.
Portrayals of Quakers from dangerous and anarchic figures in seventeenth-century theological debates to moral exemplars in twentieth-century theater and film (Grace Kelly in High Noon, for...