The aca­d­e­mic obses­sion with Quaker his­tory is about 100 years old or so. From the begin­ning the rise of “Quaker his­tory” has been tied to the argu­ments of the day. We want to boil “Quak­erism” down to it essen­tials and sep­a­rate out what is core from what was an arti­fact of 17th cen­tury Eng­land. Each branch raises up his­to­ri­ans who argue that its churches’ focus is the essen­tial of those early Friends.

I con­sciously try not to use early Friends as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But I do use them for ref­er­ence. I think a lot of the prob­lem is we all have stereo­types about them. When I go back and read the old Books of Dis­ci­pline, I find them much more nuanced and interior-focused than we give them credit for. 

Greg men­tioned tav­erns, for exam­ple. It’s not that ear­lier Friends thought every­one couldn’t han­dle their liquor. They saw that some peo­ple couldn’t and that spend­ing a lot of time there tended to affect one’s dis­cern­ment and God-centeredness. They also saw that some peo­ple got really messed up by alco­hol and even­tu­ally came to the con­clu­sion that the safest way to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble in the spir­i­tual com­mu­nity was to stay out. 

The obser­va­tions and logic are still valid. I’ve known senior mem­bers of past Quaker com­mu­ni­ties who have had alco­hol prob­lems but we don’t know how to talk about it because we’ve decided it’s a per­sonal decision. 

What I try to do is not focus on the con­clu­sions of early Friends but to drop into the con­ver­sa­tions of early Friends. As I said, the old Books of Dis­ci­pline are sur­pris­ingly rel­e­vant. And I love Thomas Clark­son, an Angli­can who explained Quaker ways in 1700 and talked about the soci­ol­ogy of it more than Friends them­selves did. It’s a good way of sep­a­rat­ing out rules from knowl­edge. When we ground our­selves that way, we can more read­ily decide which of the clas­sic Quaker tes­ti­monies are still rel­e­vant. That keeps us a liv­ing com­mu­nity tes­ti­fy­ing to the peo­ple of today. For what it’s worth, there’s quite a bit of main­stream inter­est in the stodgy tra­di­tions most of us have cast off as irrelevant.…