Hope for a Better World: Growing Up Quaker in the Midwest

This book tells the story of how I grew up in a Wilburite Quaker family in Ohio and attended Scattergood Friends School in Iowa. I give an overview of Quakers who originated as the The Religious Society of Friends in seventeenth-century England. I tell about Wilburite Friends, which are much different from most Quakers. Their practices are close to early English Friends. I tell how the Blackburn Family lived out Quaker beliefs. I tell about Scattergood Friends School in Iowa. I present my personal faith. An inspiration for this book is A Quaker Book of Wisdom - Life Lessons in Simplicity, Service, and Common Sense by Robert Lawrence Smith. He states, "It is my ever-growing conviction that the compassionate Quaker message badly needs to be heard in today's complex, materialistic, often unjust, and discriminatory society. Every day brings new public debate over issues Quakers have always addressed: war and peace, social justice, education, health care, poverty, business ethics, public service, the use of world resources" (Smith, xii-xiii).