Earlham

Earlham enters the account as the Indiana college where Thomas Kelly began his teaching career after a period of Quaker service in Germany. Its significance in the book lies in the way Kelly’s early years there connected college teaching, preaching, and a developing understanding of spiritual life in ordinary experience.

Setting and Kelly’s Appointment

After graduating, Kelly received two offers: a philosophy teaching post at Earlham and an opportunity to work in Germany with the American Friends Service Committee. He accepted the Earlham appointment, but it was delayed for a year so that he and his wife could serve abroad. The committee asked them to nurture an infant Quaker movement in Germany, where many people had become receptive to pacifism after the First World War. A permanent Quaker center was established in Berlin. After fifteen months, the couple returned to Indiana, and Kelly began teaching at Earlham.

Teaching and Religious Life

Kelly’s first two years at Earlham were described as very happy. Alongside teaching, he began preaching frequently at Quaker meetings. His sermons expressed the conviction that divine life was present within human beings, and that the deepest source of inner life and consciousness was the Eternal Spirit. The account presents these ideas as the emerging mystical dimension of Kelly’s thought, rooted in a belief that the human and divine are in contact.

The Ordinary as a Spiritual Setting

Kelly’s account of spiritual life resisted the idea that God was to be found only in exceptional or elevated experiences. He acknowledged moments of dreamy, mystical thought and intellectual exaltation, but gave particular importance to the repetitive routines of daily life as settings for encounter with God. He sought a God present among people working in fields and stores, among women carrying household responsibilities, and amid the small irritations that make ordinary life difficult. In this portrayal, Earlham is the setting for an early articulation of a central emphasis in Kelly’s teaching: spiritual awareness belongs not only to moments of elevation, but also to the familiar work and friction of everyday living.