Sandra Lee Cronk Papers

Sandra Lee Cronk (1942-2000) was a Quaker author who co-founded School of the Spirit, a ministry of prayer and learning under the auspices of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

Cronk was born in 1942 and was a member of Princeton (NJ.) Monthly Meeting. She graduated from Western Reserve University and received her graduate degree in History of Religions at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Her dissertation, Gelassenheit: The Rites of the Redemptive Process in Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites, was completed in 1977 and was published as an article in The Mennonite Quarterly Review as “Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites: Loving Community Based on the Power of Powerlessness” in 1980. Sandra Cronk also wrote Peace Be With You: A Study of the Spiritual Basis of the Friends Peace Testimony (1984?), Dark Night Journey: Inward Re-patterning Toward a Life Centered in God, and Gospel Order: A Quaker Understanding of Faithful Church Community, the latter two published by Pendle Hill in 1991.

She taught Christian Spirituality and Quaker Studies at Pendle Hill, the Quaker center of study and contemplation in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. She also spent time at Woodbrooke, the Friends’ study center in Birmingham, England.

Sandra Cronk and Kathryn Damiano, another teacher at Pendle Hill, co-founded the School of the Spirit in 1989. In 1991 they were joined by Frances Taber who was a core teacher for the first offering of the program, “On Being A Spiritual Nurturer.” Carole Treadway and Michael Green later became part of the program. After Sandra’s death in April of 2000, the School of the Spirit Ministry, formerly sponsored by the Meeting on Worship and Ministry of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, became a Working Group under that body’s Worship and Care Standing Committee.