Just fin­ished: Ken­neth S.P. Morse’s “A His­to­ry of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends” from 1962. Like most his­to­ries of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends, it’s both heart­en­ing and depress­ing. It’s great to read the quotes, which often put the dilem­ma very clear­ly, like this one from Iowa Friends in 1877:

In con­sid­er­a­tion of many and var­i­ous depar­tures in Doc­trine, Prin­ci­ple and Prac­tice, brought into our beloved Soci­ety of late years by mod­ern inno­va­tors, who have so rev­o­lu­tion­ized our ancient order in the Church, as to run into views and prac­tices out of which our ear­ly Friends were lead, and into a broad­er, and more self-pleasing, and cross-shunning way than that marked out by our Sav­ior, and held to by our ancient Friends.… And who have so approx­i­mat­ed to the unre­gen­er­ate world that we feel it incum­bent upon us to bear testimony…and sus­tain the Church for the pur­pose for which is was pecu­liar­ly raised up.

I love this stuff. You’ve got the­ol­o­gy, poli­ty, cul­ture and an argu­ment for the eter­nal truths of the “pecu­liar­ly raised” Quak­er church. But even in 1962 this is a sto­ry of decline, of gen­er­a­tions of min­is­ters pass­ing with no one to take their place and month­ly and year­ly meet­ings wink­ing out with dis­arm­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty as the con­cept of Friends gets stretched from all sides. “It is cer­tain­ly true that most of those who call them­selves Friends at the present time are only par­tial Friends in that they seem not to have felt called to uphold var­i­ous branch­es of the Quak­er doctrine.” 

Putting the book down the most remark­able fact is that there are any Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends around still around almost fifty years later. 

The task of shar­ing and uphold­ing the Quak­er doc­trine is still almost impos­si­bly hard. The mul­ti­plic­i­ty of mean­ings in the words we use become stum­bling blocks in them­selves. Friends from oth­er tra­di­tions are often the worst, often being blind to their own inno­va­tions, often­er still just not car­ing that they don’t share much in com­mon with ear­ly Friends.

Then there’s the dis­uni­ty among present-day Con­ser­v­a­tives. Geog­ra­phy plays a part but it seems part of the cul­ture. The his­to­ry is a maze of tra­di­tion­al­ist splin­ter groups with carefully-selected lists of who they do and do not cor­re­spond with. Today the three Con­ser­v­a­tive Year­ly Meet­ings seem to know each anoth­er more through carefully-parsed read­ing of his­to­ries than actu­al vis­i­ta­tion (there is some, not enough). There’s also the human messi­ness of it all: some of the flaki­est lib­er­al Quak­ers I’ve known have been part of Con­ser­v­a­tive Year­ly Meet­ings and the inter­net is full of those who share Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends val­ues but have no year­ly meet­ing to join.

No answers today from me. Maybe we should take solace that despite the tra­vails and the his­to­ry of defeat, there still remains a spark and there are those who still seek to share Friends’ ways. For those want­i­ng to learn more the more recent “Short His­to­ry of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends” (1992) is online and a good introduction.