Genres of worldliness: Meanings of the meeting house for Philadelphia Friends, 1755-1830

This dissertation examines the meanings of the Quaker meeting house for a situated historical community: Philadelphia's members of the Religious Society of Friends during the late colonial and early national periods. It extends beyond an exclusively architectural focus to examine the ways in which Quakerism negotiated its material world in the context of the larger surrounding society, through its development of a shared expressive culture centered in the meeting house. An interdisciplinary approach is used to examine the relationship of theology to material life for a religious and social group during a period of transformation culminating in the Hicksite Separation of 1827. Issues such as commodification and commerce, social and political transgression, constructions of hierarchy and difference, and the emerging urban environment are addressed.;The Quaker meeting house was not a sacred space; according to doctrine of the Religious Society of Friends there was no distinction between sacred and secular spheres. All aspects of life were encompassed by the sacred once a proper understanding of the Inner Light was achieved. In practice, however, meeting houses embodied heightened meanings for Society members, as regulated spaces for gathered silent worship and as symbolic centers for the Quaker community. In worship a focus on silent reflection was balanced against the needs of the group to communicate--this tension highlights the meeting house's role as the space most available for shaping group consensus. In addition, the meeting house served as a springboard and referent for Quaker involvement in the larger surrounding society.;Quaker members addressed the issue of worldly transgression by defining a landscape of shared and conventionalized material forms, practices, and behaviors. The meeting house came to be a place where Friends negotiated an acceptable level of unavoidable "worldliness." For Philadelphia Friends during the 1755-1830 period, the meeting house served as a space of theological self-definition, the site of boundary definitions and negotiations for the group, and a referent for Quakerism moving outward into secular society.