Isaac Crewdson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Isaac Crewdson
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| Born | 6 June 1780 Kendal, Westmorland
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| Died | 8 May 1844 Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumberland, UK
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| Resting place | Rusholme Road Cemetery, Manchester, UK |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Mill Owner, Minister of the Religious Society of Friends |
| Known for | Founder of the Beaconites |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Jowitt (married 27 July 1803) |
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 Evangelical Friends
Together with his brother-in-law, the former Hardshaw East Quaker elder William Boulton, Crewdson founded the short-lived "Evangelical Friends", who were termed "Beaconites" by Quakers. They first met for Sunday worship on 18 September 1836 at an infant school in Manchester, before opening their 600-seat chapel at Chorlton-on-Medlock on Sunday 17 December 1837.
They incorporated into their worship baptism and taking the Lord's Supper, which had been rejected by Quakers as rituals that obstructed the relationship between the worshipper and God. The Evangelical Friends held a Yearly Meeting in the style of a Quaker Yearly Meeting in London in 1837 and for a short while published a monthly journal, The Inquirer.
An active abolitionist, Crewdson attended the June 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
Legacy
Crewdson died at Bowness on 8 May 1844 and was buried at Rusholme Road Cemetery, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester.
The Evangelical Friends did not flourish and gradually dispersed in the decade after Crewdson's death. Many joined the Plymouth Brethren and brought Quaker simplicity of worship to that movement. Notable Quakers who moved to the Brethren included John Eliot Howard and Robert Mackenzie Beverley.
The Beaconite chapel, which was sparsely attended, languished and was sold to the Baptists in 1844, the year of Crewdson's death.
In 1870, the last surviving member of the 1835 Visiting Committee, Doctor Edward Ash, wrote that the committee had been mistaken in suspending Crewdson's membership.
It has been suggested that A Beacon to the Society of Friends was twenty years ahead of its time and that by the 20th century some Quaker evangelicals had reached a position close to that of Crewdson in the 1830s.
