Walter and Emma Malone: Friends of Sinners and the Poor

The Malones, leaders of Holiness Quakerism, were presented in The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends 1800-1907, an otherwise excellent early work by historian Thomas Hamm, as leaders of a movement whose \u27 dominant note ...was opposition to any type of reform activity\u27. If too strong, it is fair to suggest that numbers of Holiness Friends, including the Malones, were relatively indifferent to political, economic and social reform. But seeing them in this light, or as mere obstructionists to \u27modern thought\u27, does not quite capture who they were or what they were about. This article contends the Mal ones had a positive social agenda that deserves to be understood and evaluated on its own terms. To enter their world, to see others from their angle of vision, may be enlightening to folk who seek a deeper understanding of the origin and early agenda of Evangelical Friends, who are now the largest group of Quakers in the world