Papers relating to Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury and the World Council of Churches

This section contains papers relating to Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's involvement in debate surrounding the membership of the Religious Society of Friends in the World Council of Churches.

In June 1940 a letter written by Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury entitled 'Friends & the World Council' appeared in 'The Friend', the Journal of the Society of Friends, in which Taylor Cadbury expressed her views concerning unity and co-operation between the Society and other Christian churches. Much of the correspondence featured in this section was sent to Taylor Cadbury in response to the publication of her letter, including a number of letters written by prominent Quakers such as John Henry Lloyd and Taylor Cadbury's cousin the American Quaker academic Rufus Jones. These letters reflect the diversity of views within the Society of Friends about the issue of unity with other Christian churches. A number of the letters reflect anxiety amongst Quakers over the basis of this unity and whether it would be in terms of creed and ordination rather than cooperation and spiritual fellowship. The letters also reveal widespread concern about the identification of Jesus Christ in the creedal form 'I believe in Christ as God and Saviour', which had been chosen by the World Council of Churches to form the basis of membership. The section also contains correspondence exchanged between Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury and Reverend William Paton, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches and the typescript of a letter written by Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury to 'The Friend' in 1948.

Finding number: MS 466/163/12-22 and 26-27

Information about Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's religious views taken from Richenda Scott, 'Elizabeth Cadbury: 1858-1951' (London: Harrap, 1955), p. 159.

In her biography of Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury, Scott emphasises Taylor Cadbury's enthusiasm for the development of unity and co-operation between Christian denominations and her support for the World Council of Churches during the 1930s and 1940s. Scott writes that it was to Taylor Cadbury's 'lasting regret that London Yearly Meeting felt unable to join the World Council of Churches when plans for its establishment were set on foot in 1938'.