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. Early life Isaac Crewdson was born into a Quaker family in Kendal in the English Lake District. He entered the cotton trade and became a successful mill owner in Manchester. He was appointed as a Quaker minister in 1816. The Beaconite Controversy In 1831, controversy arose amongst Manchester Quakers over the spiritual emphasis of Quakerism, and these differences culminated in 1835 when Crewdson's A Beacon to the Society of Friends was published. His book highlighted the distinction many Manchester Quakers drew between the guidance of Scripture and the central feature of Quakerism, the Inner Light, the direct and personal experience of God. Crewdson and his followers believed that too much emphasis was placed by Quakers on the Inner Light, at the expense of Biblical authority. In his book Crewdson criticized the American Quaker, Elias Hicks (1748–1830), who considered "obedience to the light within" to be the most important principle of worship and who regarded the Bible as a "dead letter" unless read "under the regulating influence of the spirit of God". Hicks had been responsible for the first schism in Quakerism in 1827.