George Keith was a Christian Quaker, later an Anglican missionary, born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1639 [1]. He earned his M.A. from Marischal College in Aberdeen in 1658 [2] and was intended to be ordained in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, but in 1662 became an adherent and leader of the new Quaker movement founded by George Fox in 1647 [3].
About The Quaker Religion
The early Quakers were devout Christians [4]. In the mid-17th century, the major Christian “kirks” in Scotland were Episcopalian and Presbyterian [5]. Mainstream Christian theology adhered to the Calvinist beliefs that God preordained an individual’s salvation or damnation, and that people are incapable of acts of saving goodness. Quakers rejected these Calvinist tenets and preached that salvation is open to all people through acceptance of Jesus Christ, His crucifixion, and His resurrection from death [6,7]. Quakers were “twice-born Christians” in their belief in salvation through spiritual conversion to Jesus [8]. Thus, they were more akin to modern-day evangelicals than they were to the Calvinist Christians of the 17th century.
Quakers also believed that they had an obligation to preach about the “errors” in the teachings of mainstream Christian churches [9]. Such aggressive preaching brought them into conflict with the established religious order and led to their persecution in Scotland and England. Rev. Keith was first imprisoned in the Tolbooth in Aberdeen in 1664 [10] and was imprisoned many more times over the following 21 years [11,12]. He never gave up his adamant preaching, at times speaking to crowds through prison window bars.
Rev. Keith’s Growing Stature In The Quaker Movement
In 1672, Rev. Keith married a wealthy heiress, Elizabeth Johnston, the daughter of William Johnston, M.D. and Barbara Forbes, a descendant of the storied Forbes clan of Scotland [13]. Elizabeth had her “convincement” into Quakerism in 1663, and was also an active missionary in the movement. Rev. and Elizabeth Keith had 3 children, including Anne Keith who married George Walker of Jamestown. Anne and George Walker were the grandparents of our cousin, George Wythe, the first Virginia signer of the Declaration of Independence.
In 1677, Rev. Keith and his wife joined William Penn, George Fox and Robert Barclay on a missionary trip to Holland and Germany [14]. During this trip, Rev. Keith’s stature in the Quaker movement grew.
Elizabeth undertook some missionary trips on her own with other Quaker women. At one point the activist women were condemned by the Presbytery of Aberdeen as having “feillin from the truth of God and unitie of the Church into the pernicious errors and un-christiane practices of.. Quakers” [40]
Perhaps because of his repeated imprisonments, and the persecution that he and his wife suffered, Rev. Keith moved his young family to East Jersey in the American Colonies in 1685 [15,16]. Fellow Quaker, Governor Robert Barclay of East Jersey, hired Keith as the Surveyor General of East Jersey to survey a line between East and West Jersey [17], a boundary still referred to as the Keith line. Rev. Keith is documented on a land patent in East Jersey in 1686 [18].
Keith spent 4 years in the settlement he founded—Freehold, East Jersey. In 1689, he moved to Philadelphia at the request of William Penn to become headmaster of the new Friends School [19,20]—a post that he held for just one year.
In 1693, Rev. Keith published An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of [Blacks], one of the earliest printed anti-slavery tracts in North America. According to David Brion Davis, a scholar of the abolition movement, Keith’s treatise foreshadowed “the major religious themes of nineteenth-century abolitionism.”[39] Specifically, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, the nation’s Christian churches split into northern and southern factions. Northern Protestants adopted abolitionism as part of a religious world view that promoted progressive changes in society. Southern Protestants tended to a more individual, salvation-based set of religious beliefs.
Development Of The “Quaker Christians”
At about the time that George Fox died in 1691, Rev. Keith came to the conclusion that the leaders of the Quaker movement were drifting away from a Christ-centered theology. Keith believed that the salvation of man had been achieved through the crucifixion and resurrection of the historical Jesus [21]. In a series of public debates, he accused William Penn of Deism [22], and precipitated Quakerism’s first major schism. Keith’s followers were known as “Keithians”, or “Quaker Christians” [23].
In 1692, Rev. Keith established 15 new congregations of “Quaker Christians” in the Philadelphia and New Jersey area, numbering about 500 adherents [24]. Two specific congregations are well documented:
- First, he established a Christian Quaker congregation in Philadelphia in a log house on Second Street, below Mulberry Street [25].
- Second, he established a congregation in Topenamus, East Jersey [26], near his hometown of Freehold. However, we can probably assume that he had been preaching at this meeting beginning with his arrival in Freehold in 1685.
In 1694 Rev. Keith left Philadelphia to travel to London to continue his public disputation with the other leaders of Quakerism. In London, Rev. Keith’s theological ideas were ill-received by his fellow Quakers, and he was eventually expelled from the “yearly meeting” [27]. The Anglican establishment soon welcomed him, and he was ordained an Anglican Priest in May 1700 [28].
A Missionary Trip To The American Colonies
In April 1702, Rev. Keith undertook a 2-year missionary trip to the American Colonies, on behalf of the Anglican Church, as an emissary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts [29]. A detailed journal of this mission survives, written by Keith himself [30]. He documents his arrival in Boston onboard the Centurion on June 11, 1702 [31].
Rev. Keith writes that he returned to the congregation he founded at Topanemus in Freehold, East Jersey, on October 10, 1702, where his sermon was well-received [32]. He preached again in Freehold over Christmas that year [33], and returned on October 10, 1703, when he confirmed that his congregation had converted to Anglicanism [34].
The Topanemus congregation that Rev. Keith founded exists to this day, now known as St. Peter’s Church. Their website [35] states,
“The first service of our congregation was held on October 10, 1702, at the Quaker Meeting House in Topanemus, near present-day Marlboro, led by the Reverend George Keith, an early settler of Freehold”.
Rev. Keith performed many Baptisms and brought many former Quakers into the Anglican Church during his 2-year mission in the American Colonies [36].
Rev. Keith’s Return To England
In 1704, he returned to England to rejoin his wife and 2 daughters. Rev. Keith assumed the position of Rector of Edburton, Sussex, and continued in active ministry until about 1711 when he became bedridden with rheumatism [37]. By the time of his death in 1716, Keith had written enough to fill 23 pages in a contemporary bibliography catalog [38]. His will, written in 1709, left his estate to his daughter Elizabeth and his step-daughter, Margaret Whyte.
© 2013 W. Mullins