George Keith (missionary)
George Keith (1638/9 – March 27, 1716) was a Scottish missionary.
Born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to a Presbyterian family, he received an M.A. from the University of Aberdeen. This brilliant and accomplished figure joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the 1660s, accompanying George Fox, William Penn, and Robert Barclay on a mission to the Netherlands and Germany in 1677.
In 1685, three years after Barclay had been made the nonresident governor of the Province of East Jersey (part of the present-day American state of New Jersey), Keith traveled there to take the post of Surveyor-General. In 1686 he ran the first survey to mark out the border between West Jersey and East Jersey. He moved to Philadelphia in 1689 to serve as headmaster at the Friends School there.
Around 1691 Keith decided that Quakers had strayed too far from orthodox Christianity and began to have sharp disagreements with his fellow believers. He first broke with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to form a short-lived group called the Christian Quakers in the colonies. After returning to England and meeting with less success in persuading Quakers to follow his lead, he was disowned by London Yearly Meeting in 1694. In 1699 he attacked William Penn and other Quakers as "Deists." He was ordained an Anglican priest in March 1702.
Sponsored by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, he spent 1702 to 1704 on a return mission to the Jerseys trying to win over Quakers and others, and invigorating Anglican congregations in Perth Amboy and Burlington. Returning to England he worked for the Church of England until his death on March 27, 1716, a rector at the parish of Edburton, Sussex.
Sources
- Bowden, James. The history of the Society of Friends in America. [n. p.] 1850.
- Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911 edition, http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ accessed May 23, 2003.
- Pomfret, John Edwin, The Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702, the rebellious proprietary. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1962.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article by J. S. Chamberlain Keith, George (1638?–1716), Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2005 [1], accessed 26 April 2007.
- Episcopal Church Liturgy & Music website - Biography of George Keith
- Claus Bernet (2009). "George Keith (missionary)". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 30. Nordhausen: Bautz. cols. 752–787. ISBN 978-3-88309-478-6.
Further reading
- Kirby, E. W. (1942) George Keith. New York: American Historical Association (includes a full bibliography)