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.
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It sounds like a really interesting read, thanks for sharing it. I’m glad the conservatives are still around and hope to see it grow into a more viable movement, so I’m glad others (insiders?) are discussing this too.
What is left unsaid here, but ought to be brought to the forefront, is that there has been a sort of definitional struggle over what, exactly, Conservative Quakerism is meant by God to be.
Kenneth Morse had an Ohio-centric view, as the full title of his book — A history of Conservative Friends: Consisting of a history of Ohio Yearly Meeting, Somerset Monthly Meeting (Ohio) and other Conservative bodies in America — makes plain. And the passage you quote underscores the fact that he shared Ohio’s view of what Conservative Quakerism was supposed to be: a defense of every jot and tittle of discipline settled upon by Orthodox Friends business meetings in the period 1660 — 1830.
Friends in North Carolina (Conservative) and Iowa (Conservative) fully agreed with the Ohioans that the early Friends were right on target, and that Hicks and his followers had taken one sort of wrong turn — away from the doctrine of the Atonement, and away from confidence in the discernment of the generations whose testimony was compiled in the Bible — while Gurney and his followers had taken another sort of wrong turn — away from Quietism, away from careful corporate discernment, and away from a wariness of leadership based on human charisma. That agreement was why the three yearly meetings identified as one body.
But beyond those basic agreements, the three communities’ sense of what God wanted of the Society of Friends today was, in fact, not quite the same.
I dare not speak at any length about North Carolina ©, since I hardly know it. But whereas Ohio saw the elements of the traditional testimony as absolutely eternal verities, as true in the year Two Million A.D. as they were in 1712, there was in Iowa a strong sense that many Friends testimonies were not eternal verities at all, but apt responses to the sickness of the world as that sickness manifested itself in a particular time and place. Seventeenth century England had been sick with cultural pretension, classist oppression, and human pride, to which “plain” speech, with its thees and thines, had been powerfully confronting; but plain speech was only quaint to twentieth-century ears; its usefulness as a continuing buttress of Gospel living seemed dubious. Banning pianos and piano playing from Friends’ living-rooms didn’t necessarily hold people in the discipline of the New Testament, or testify to righteousness, more than the rigors of learning to play music beautifully, and the contagious effect of music played by hand and filling a room with a spirit of love. If God had wanted a human race that all dressed alike, would He not have said so in the Bible? — but no, what He said in the Bible was that He wanted hearts brought tenderly to His side.
Prior to about 1930 or 1935 Friends in Iowa © were dissuaded from following their sense of being called to a more adaptive path by the greater authority of Ohio YM, but since that time they have been increasingly consistent in following the leadings of the Guide as He speaks in their own hearts and settled meetings. You may have one opinion about the worth, or lack of worth, of this, and I may have another, but my point is that this is not necessarily the degeneracy that Morse thought it was: it really does depend on one’s point of view.
Alas, the problems you note, of geography and culture, have prevented the three Conservative YMs from working out their differences and arriving at a common vision. Their members really would need to live and work together for months, or years, to come to a sufficient feeling of respect for one another’s vision that they began to grow together once more.
However, I think the fact that there are three somewhat different strains of Quaker Conservativism is likely a blessing, in the same sense that having different strains of seed corn is a blessing. A variety of good seeds means a variety of good fruits; it also means more adaptability to the future. I do not grieve, as Morse did, at the sight of all this variety.
Well Marshall, I think you know I don’t agree that the Conservative yearly meetings fit quite so neatly into the boxes you like to lay out. Part of the stumbling block to cooperation is the stereotypes. I’d love to see you put down the 1930s histories and find some way of regularly visiting Ohio and North Carolina. I think you’d be surprised if you got to know the flesh-and-blood Friends who make up these bodies today. I know it’s expensive to travel but I would hope Iowa might find way to help you.
Hi, Martin. I know they don’t fit neatly into the boxes, but I was trying to keep my posting short. You might be surprised how many flesh-and-blood Friends in those bodies I do know. I regret that you do not respect my perspective, and will spare you my thoughts in the future.
Now don’t go pouting off. That’s the last thing we all need. What I’m saying is that I’d love to see you travel more. I think you have a keen sense of observation and a good understanding of how the puzzles of Conservative identity fit into place. When I talk to various Conservatives from my vantage of an outside insider (inside outsider?), I see their self-identity sometimes stuck on incidents that are twenty or more years old and I’m not sure we’re very clearly seeing ourselves or one another very clearly.
I don’t have enough visitation under my own belt to make definitive sweeping statements, but my hunch is that the three surviving Conservative yearly meetings are going to be tested in the next ten years and that their current “house styles” are going to be the threat of their undoing. It might be a good time to mix a little of that seed corn. One way would be getting you out on the road.
I agree, Martin. I have a lot of respect for Marshall; and if God led him in that direction, I think it would be of great benefit to the Church for him to travel more among the Conservative Meetings. I know that he has plenty of other responsibilities in his life, but I pray that God will free him for more sustained public ministry.
Agreed that any kind of common ground vision thing is going to require a very very long time in the oven. Nonetheless, one can imagine, in the far off distant hazy future, one version of the future which contains something on the order of a ‘new orthodox quaker fellowship’ across the YM boundaries — whatever that would or could even rather loosely entail. Here’s hoping for something to be lifted up in the long run, though.
Great post, Martin. I’m glad I finally have a few minutes to stop by and catch up on some of my blog reading! I’m also glad, as usual, for Marshall’s input.
There’s nothing substantive I’ll add here, but I do want to point to Marty Grundy’s new pamphlet, about how ministry among traveling Friends has changed over the centuries. A quick read that also lends itself to more thought about how the various branches of Friends and those who travel in the ministry do things, especially in modern times.
Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up
Hey Martin–
I also would like to drag Marshall out as a circuit rider. But travel now is high dollar. I drive 1800 miles every week, but I still haven’t figured out how to connect to people while I do, and I can’t park 80,000 pounds in an average Meeting House side street.
I’ll call you the next time I spend a day counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.
It’s worth pointing out that the intensely Wilburite nature of Ohio Yearly Meeting in the 19th century is mostly gone. Wilbur was pre-Conservative, and would happily have disowned most anybody in OYM today. We are no longer what he was, as we have both mellowed and strayed. The endpoint of Wilburite Quakerism was best illustrated by old Joshua Maul, who as a hard-core Ohio Wilburite seceded from every group he created until ultimately his Yearly Meeting contained only him.
In my exceptionally humble personal opinion, I find a lot of traditional Wilburism to have missed the mark on what God would have his people do and be, to tweak Marshall’s observation a bit. I am less concerned that people identify themselves as Conservatives than I am that they listen to God and do what he says. Because I identify God exclusively with Jesus Christ, I don’t have a problem with letting him straighten people out, even if they get his name wrong. If they’re really listening to him, it will work out, I think.