online discussions Posts

One of the blueprints for Quaker community is the "Epistle from the Elders at Balby" written in 1656 at the very infancy of the Friends movement by a gathering of leaders from Yorkshire and North Midlands, England.

It's the precursor to Faith and Practice, as it outlines the relationship between individuals and the meeting. If remembered at all today, it's for its postscript, a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians that warns readers not to treat this as a form to worship and to remain living in the light which is pure and holy. That postscript now starts off most liberal Quaker books of Faith and Practice.

But the Epistle itself is well worth dusting off. It addresses worship, ministry, marriage, and how to deal in meekness and love with those walking "disorderly." It talks of how to support families and take care of members who were imprisoned or in need. Some of it's language is a little stilted and there's some talk of the role of servants that most modern Friend would object to. But overall, it's a remarkably lucid, practical and relevant document. It's also short: just over two pages.

One of the things I hear again and again from Friends is the desire for a deeper community of faith. Younger Friends are especially drawn toward the so-called "New Monastic" movement of tight communal living. The Balby Epistle is a glimpse into how an earlier generation of Friends addressed some of these same concerns.

ONLINE EDITIONS OF THE EPISTLE AT BALBY:
Quaker Heritage Press: qhpress.org/texts/balby.html
Street Corner Society: strecorsoc.org/docs/balby.html
Wikisource: en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Epistle_from_the_Elders_at_Balby,_1656

DISCUSSIONS:
Brooklyn Quaker post & discussion (2005): brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2005/03/elders-at-balby.html

A few weeks ago a newsletter brought written reports about the latest round of conflict at a local meeting that's been fighting for the past 180 years or so. As my wife and I read through it we were a bit underwhelmed by the accounts of the newest conflict resolution attempts. The mediators seemed more worried about alienating a few long-term disruptive characters than about preserving the spiritual vitality of the meeting. It's a phenomena I've seen in a lot of Quaker meetings.

Call it the FDR Principle after Franklin D Roosevelt, who supposedly defended his support of one of Nicaragua's most brutal dictators by saying "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." Even casual historians of Latin American history will know this only led to fifty years of wars with reverberations across the world with the Iran/Contra scandal. The FDR Principle didn't make for good U.S. foreign policy and, if I may, I'd suggest it doesn't make for good Quaker policy either. Any discussion board moderator or popular blogger knows that to keep an online discussion's integrity you need to know when to cut a disruptive trouble-maker off--politely and succintly, but also firmly. If you don't, the people there to actually discuss your issues--the people you want--will leave.

I didn't know how to talk about this until a post called Conflict in Meeting came through Livejournal this past First Day. The poster, jandrewm, wrote in part:

Yet my recognition of all that doesn't negate the painful feelings that arise when hostility enters the meeting room, when long-held grudges boil over and harsh words are spoken.  After a few months of regular attendance at my meeting, I came close to abandoning this "experiment" with Quakerism because some Friends were so consistently rancorous, divisive, disruptive.  I had to ask myself: "Do I need this negativity in my life right now?"

I commented about the need to take the testimonies seriously:

I've been in that situation. A lot of Friends aren't very good at putting their foot down on flagrantly disruptive behavior. I wish I could buy the "it eventually sorts out" argument but it often doesn't. I've seen meetings where all the sane people are driven out, leaving the disruptive folks and armchair therapists. It's a symbiotic relationship, perhaps, but doesn't make for a healthy spiritual community.

The unpopular solution is for us to take our testimonies seriously. And I mean those more specific testimonies buried deep in copies in Faith & Practice that act as a kind of collective wisdom for Quaker community life. Testimonies against detraction and for rightly ordered decision making, etc. If someone's actions tear apart the meeting they should be counseled; if they continue to disrupt then their decision-making input should be disregarded. This is the real effect of the old much-maligned Quaker process of disowning (which allowed continued attendance at worship and life in the community but stopped business participation). Limiting input like this makes sense to me.

The trouble that if your meeting is in this kind of spiral there might not be much you can do by yourself. People take some sort of weird comfort in these predictable fights and if you start talking testimonies you might become very unpopular very quickly. Participating in the bickering isn't helpful (of course) and just eats away your own self. Distancing yourself for a time might be helpful. Getting involved in other Quaker venues. It's a shame. Monthly meeting is supposed to be the center of our Quaker spiritual life. But sometimes it can't be. I try to draw lessons from these circumstances. I certainly understand the value and need for the Quaker testimonies better simply because I've seen the problems meetings face when they haven't. But that doesn't make it any easier for you.

But all of this begs an awkward question: are we really building Christ's kingdom by dropping out? It's an age-old tension between purity and participation at all costs. Timothy asked a similar question of me in a comment to my last post. Before we answer, we should recognize that there are indeed many people who have "abandoned" their "Quaker experiment" because we're not living up to our own ideals.

Maybe I'm more aware of this drop-out class than others. It sometimes seems like an email correspondence with the "Quaker Ranter" has become the last step on the way out the door. But I also get messages from seekers newly convinced of Quaker principles but unable to connect locally because of the divergent practices or juvenile behavior of their local Friends meeting or church. A typical email last week asked me why the plain Quakers weren't evangelical and why evangelical Quakers weren't conservative and asked "Is there a place in the quakers for a Plain Dressing, Bible Thumping, Gospel Preaching, Evangelical, Conservative, Spirit Led, Charismatic family?" (Anyone want to suggest their local meeting?)

We should be more worried about the people of integrity we're losing than about the grumpy trouble-makers embedded in some of our meetings. If someone is consistently disruptive, is clearly breaking specific Quaker testimonies we've lumped under community and intergrity, and stubbornly immune to any council then read them out of business meeting. If the people you want in your meeting are leaving because of the people you really don't want, then it's time to do something. Our Quaker toolbox provides us tool for that action--ways to define, name and address the issues. Our tradition gives us access to hundreds of years of experience, both mistakes and successes, and can be a more useful guide than contemporary pop psychology or plain old head-burying.

Not all meetings have these problems. But enough do that we're losing people. And the dynamics get more acute when there's a visionary project on the table and/or someone younger is at the center of them. While our meetings sort out their issues, the internet is providing one type of support lifeline.

Blogger jandrewm was able to seek advice and consolation on Livejournal. Some of the folks I spoke about in the 2003 "Lost Quaker Generation" series of posts are now lurking away on my Facebook friends list. Maybe we can stop the full departure of some of these Friends. They can drop back but still be involved, still engaging their local meeting. They can be reading and discussing testimonies ("detraction" is a wonderful place to start) so they can spot and explain behavior. We can use the web to coordinate workshops, online discussions, local meet-ups, new workship groups, etc., but even email from a Friend thousands of miles away can help give us clarity and strength.

I think (I hope) we're helping to forge a group of Friends with a clear understanding of the work to be done and the techniques of Quaker discernment. It's no wonder that Quaker bodies sometimes fail to live up to their ideals: the journals of  olde tyme Quaker ministers are full of disappointing stories and Christian tradition is rich with tales of the roadblocks the Tempter puts up in our path. How can we learn to  center in the Lord when our meetings become too political or disfunctional (I think I should start looking harder at Anabaptist non-resistance theory). This is the work, Friends, and it's always been the work. Through whatever comes we need to trust that any testing and heartbreak has a purpose, that the Lord is using us through all, and that any suffering will be productive to His purpose if we can keep low and listening for follow-up instructions.

On electronic fellowships, online magazines and the freedom of this patchwork of independent cross-linked blogs: "Maybe the web's form of hyperlinking is actually superior to Old Media publishing. I love how I can put forward a strong vision of Quakerism without offending anyone--any put-off readers can hit the "back" button. With my Subjective Guide to Quaker Blogs and my On the Web posts I highlight the bloggers I find particularly interesting, even when I'm not in perfect theological unity. I like that I can have discussions back and forth with Friends who I don't exactly agree with. I have nothing to announce, no clear plan forward and no money to do anything anyway. But I thought it'd be interesting to hear what others have been thinking along these lines."

One of the more revolutionary transformations of American Quakerism in the twentieth century has been our understanding of the testimonies. In online discussions I find that many Friends think the "SPICE" testimonies date back from time immemorial. Not only are they relatively new, they're a different sort of creature from their predecessors.

In the last fifty years it's become difficult to separate Quaker testimonies from questions of membership. Both were dramatically reinvented by liberal Gurneyite Friends in the early part of the Twentieth Century and the codified by Howard Brinton's landmark Friends for 300 Years, published in the early 1950s.

Comfort and the Test of Membership

Brinton comes right out and says that the test for membership shouldn't involve issues of faith or of practice but should be based on whether one feels comfortable with the other members of the Meeting. This conception of membership has gradually become dominant among liberal Friends in the half century since this book was published. The trouble with it is twofold. The first is that "comfort" is not necessarily what God has in mind for us. If the frequently-jailed first generation of Friends had used Brinton's model there would be no Religious Society of Friends to talk about (we'd be lost in the historical footnotes with the Muggletonians, Grindletonians and the like). One of the classic tests for discernment is whether an proposed action is contrary to self-will. Comfort is not our Society's calling.

The second problem is that comfortability comes from fitting in with a certain kind of style, class, color and attitude. It's fine to want comfort in our Meetings but when we make it the primary test for membership, it becomes a cloak for ethnic and cultural bigotries that keep us from reaching out. If you have advanced education, mild manners and liberal politics, you'll fit it at most East Coast Quaker meetings. If you're too loud or too ethnic or speak with a working class accent you'll likely feel out of place. Samuel Caldwell gave a great talk about the difference between Quaker culture and Quaker faith and I've proposed a tongue-in-cheek testimony against community as way of opening up discussion.

The Feel Good Testimonies

Friends for 300 Years also reinvented the Testimonies. They had been specific and often proscriptive: against gambling, against participation in war. But the new testimonies became vague feel-good character traits--the now-famous SPICE testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality. Who isn't in favor of all those values? A president taking us to war will tell us it's the right thing to do (integrity) to contruct lasting peace (peace) so we can bring freedom to an oppressed country (equality) and create a stronger sense of national pride (community) here at home.

We modern Friends (liberal ones at least) were really transformed by the redefintions of membership and the testimonies that took place mid-century. I find it sad that a lot of Friends think our current testimonies are the ancient ones. I think an awareness of how Friends handled these issues in the 300 years before Brinton would help us navigate a way out of the "ethical society" we have become by default.

The Source of our Testimonies

A quest for unity was behind the radical transformation of the testimonies. The main accomplishment of East Coast Quakerism in the mid-twentieth century was the reuniting of many of the yearly meetings that had been torn apart by schisms starting in 1827. By end of that century Friends were divided across a half dozen major theological strains manifested in a patchwork of institutional divisions. One way out of this morass was to present the testimonies as our core unifying priciples. But you can only do that if you divorce them from their source.

As Christians (even as post-Christians), our core commandment is simple: to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Matthew 22:37-40 and Mark 12:30-31, Luke 10:27.

The Quaker testimonies also hang on these commandments: they are our collective memory. While they are in contant flux, they refer back to 350 years of experience. These are the truths we can testify to as a people, ways of living that we have learned from our direct experience of the Holy Spirit. They are intricately tied up with our faith and with how we see ourselves following through on our charge, our covenant with God.

I'm sure that Howard Brinton didn't intend to separate the testimonies from faith, but he chose his new catagories in such a way that they would appeal to a modern liberal audience. By popularizing them he made them so accessible that we think we know them already.

A Tale of Two Testimonies

Take the twin testimonies of plainness and simplicity. First the ancient testimony of plainness. Here's the description from 1682:

Advised, that all Friends, both old and young, keep out of the world's corrupt language, manners, vain and needless things and fashions, in apparel, buildings, and furniture of houses, some of which are immodest, indecent, and unbecoming. And that they avoid immoderation in the use of lawful things, which though innocent in themselves, may thereby become hurtful; also such kinds of stuffs, colours and dress, as are calculated more to please a vain and wanton mind, than for real usefulness; and let tradesmen and others, members of our religious society, be admonished, that they be not accessary to these evils; for we ought to take up our daily cross, minding the grace of God which brings salvation, and teaches to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present world, that we may adorn the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in all things; so may we feel his blessing, and be instrumental in his hand for the good of others.

Note that there's nothing in there about the length of one's hem. The key phrase for me is the warning about doing things "calculated to please a vain and wanton mind." Friends were being told that pride makes it harder to love God and our neighbors; immoderation makes it hard to hear God's still small voice; self-sacrifice is necessary to be an instrument of God's love. This testimony is all about our relationships with God and with each other.

Most modern Friends have dispensed with "plainness" and recast the testimony as "simplicity." Ask most Friends about this testimony and they'll start telling you about their cluttered desks and their annoyance with cellphones. Ask for a religious education program on simplicity and you'll almost certainly be assigned a book from the modern voluntary simplicity movement, one of those self-help manuals that promise inner peace if you plant a garden or buy a fuel-efficient car, with "God" absent from the index. While it's true that most Americans (and Friends) would have more time for spiritual refreshment if they uncluttered their lives, the secular notions of simplicity do not emanate out of a concern for "gospel order" or for a "right ordering" of our lives with God. Voluntary simplicity is great: I've published books on it and I live car-free, use cloth diapers, etc. But plainness is something different and it's that difference that we need to explore again.

Pick just about any of the so-called "SPICE" testimonies (simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality) and you'll find the modern notions are secularlized over-simplications of the Quaker understandings. In our quest for unity, we've over-stated their importance.

Earlier I mentioned that many of the earlier testimonies were proscriptive--they said certain actions were not in accord with our principles. Take a big one: after many years of difficult ministering and soul searching Friends were able to say that slavery was a sin and that Friends who held slaves were kept from a deep communion with God; this is different than saying we believe in equality. Similarly, saying we're against all outward war is different than saying we're in favor of peace. While I know some Friends are proud of casting everything in postitive terms, sometimes we need to come out and say a particular practice is just plain wrong, that it interferes with and goes against our relationship with God and with our neighbors.

I'll leave it up to you to start chewing over what specific actions we might take a stand against. But know this: if our ministers and meetings found that a particular practice was against our testimonies, we could be sure that there would be some Friends engaged in it. We would have a long process of ministering with them and laboring with them. It would be hard. Feelings would be hurt. People would go away angry.

After a half-century of liberal individualism, it would be hard to once more affirm that there is something to Quakerism, that it does have norms and boundaries. We would need all the love, charity and patience we could muster. This work would is not easy, especially because it's work with members of our community, people we love and honor. We would have to follow John Woolman's example: our first audience would not be Washington policy makers instead Friends in our own Society.

Testimonies as Affirmation of the Power

In a world beset by war, greed, poverty and hatred, we do need to be able to talk about our values in secular terms. An ability to talk about pacifism with our non-Quaker neighbors in a smart, informed way is essential (thus my Nonviolence.org ministry, currently receiving two millions visitors a year). When we affirm community and equality we are witnessing to our faith. Friends should be proud of what we've contributed to the national and international discussions on these topics.

But for all of their contemporary centrality to Quakerism, the testimonies are only second-hand outward forms. They are not to be worshipped in and of themselves. Modern Friends come dangerously close to lifting up the peace testimony as a false idol--the principle we worship over everything else. When we get so good at arguing the practicality of pacifism, we forget that our testimony is first and foremost our proclamation that we live in the power that takes away occassion for war. When high school math teachers start arguing over arcane points of nuclear policy, playing armchair diplomat with yearly meeting press releases to the State Department, we loose credibility and become something of a joke. But when we minister to the Power is the Good News we speak with an authority that can thunder over petty governments with it's command to Quake before God.

When we remember the spiritual source of our faith, our understandings of the testimonies deepen immeasurably. When we let our actions flow from uncomplicated faith we gain a power and endurance that strengthens our witness. When we speak of our experience of the Holy Spirit, our words gain the authority as others recognize the echo of that "still small voice" speaking to their hearts. Our love and our witness are simple and universal, as is the good news we share: that to be fully human is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbors as we do ourselves.

Halleluiah: praise be to God!

Reading elsewhere:

• James Healton has a great piece on the testimonies over on Quakerinfo.com. The One Testimony That Binds Them All Together talks about Christ's role in the testimonies. (Be sure to check out Quakerinfo's list of testimony resources.

A few months ago a Yahoo search stumbled across this gem: Using Weblogs for Spiritual Journaling (Rich Text Format), a paper written by Ruth Mason for a British conference of Friends. This really gets at one of the reasons I publish Quaker Ranter:

"Weblogs offer the opportunity for Quakers to publish to the web from their personal perspectives, rather than institutionally or corporately as on, for example, a yearly meeting website. By showing how Quakerism sits within our individual lives – as well as showing all the other ‘hats' we wear in being our selves – weblogs may provide a unique outreach tool. As the wealth of existing weblogs attest, the weblog journal is about recording the everyday, the detail of our lives: an alternative and a supplement to the generic monolithic identities as pacifists or social campaigners which may be the main images those outside of Quakerism have of us."

See also: Friends use of the Internet , a list of resources from the British Quaker techie brigade, led by John Wragg (the contact for the site). I was lucky enough to meet John at last year's British Yearly Meeting sessions though I wasn't lucky enough time to read the volumes of material he had prepared on Quaker IT use. My impression was that British Friends have engaged in more thoughtful deliberation of internet use and have a certain fondness for high-concept sites (online meeting for morship anyone?), while we Americans have the edge on the practical "beating Amazon at their own game" sites, like Quakerbooks.org. Maybe this is just me stereotyping, but the different mindset is part of the reason I like listening in on the British internet discussions.

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More

Don't miss my own Subject Guide to Quaker Websites and Blogs

Context and observations arising from my Nonviolence.org post, Where is the grassroots contemporary nonviolence movement? A comparison of 1970s peace culture with today's emergent church culture, with observations and cautions for contemporary Quaker peace networks.

Over on Nonviolence.org, I've posted something I originally started writing for my personal site: Where is the grassroots contemporary nonviolence movement?. It asks why there's no the kind of young, grassroots culture around peace like the networks that I see "elsewhere on the net."

The piece speaks for itself but there is one point of context and a few observations to make. The first is that the grassroots culture I was thinking of when I wrote the piece was the "emergent church," "young evangelical" movement. Thirty years ago the kids I've met at Circle of Hope, a Philadelphia "emergent church" loosely affiliated with the Brethren could easily have been at a Movement for New Society* training: the culture, the interests, the demographics are all strikingly similar.

(MNS was a national but West Philly-centered network of group houses, publications, and organizing that forged the identities of many of the twenty-somethings who participated; Nonviolence.org is arguably a third-generation descendant of MNS, via New Society Publishers where I worked for six years).

The observation for Friends is that retro-organizing like the relatively-new "Pendle Hill Peace Network" [website URL long since dropped & picked up by spammer] will have a really hard time acting as any sort of outreach project to twenty-somethings (a main goal according to a talk given my monthly meeting by its director). The grassroots peace-centric communities that were thriving when the Network sponsors were in their twenties don't exist anymore. Rather predictably, the photographs of the next two dozen speakers for the Pendle Hill Peacebuilding Forum series show only one who might be under forty (maybe, and she's from an exotic locale which is why she gets in). I'm glad that a generation of sixty-something Quaker activists are guaranteed steady employment, but don't any Quaker institutions think there's one American activist under forty worth listening to?

I think the best description of this phenomenon comes from the military. They call it "incestuous amplification" and define it as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lockstep agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation." I suspect that peace activists are so worried about their own relevancy that they have a hard time recognizing new peers or changed circumstances.

These numbers and the lack of speaker diversity explain why I rarely even bother with Quaker peace conferences anymore. I wouldn't mind being overlooked in my peace ministry if I saw other activists my age being recognized. But I can't take my invisibility as feedback since it's clearly not about me or my work. The homogeneity of the speakers lists at most conferences sends a clear message that younger people aren't wanted except as passive audience members clapping for the inspiring fifty- to seventy-somethings on stage. How much of current retro peace organizing is just self-stroking Boomer fantasy?

The in-group incestuousness has created a generation gap of relevancy. When institutions and movements become myopic, they become irrelevant to those locked outside. We have to go elsewhere to build our identities.

The internet is one place to go. From there it's clear that the institutional projects don't have the "buzz," i.e., the support and excitment, that the Gen-X led projects do. The internet alone won't save us: there's only so much culture one can build online and computer-mediated discussions favor argumentation, rationality, and ideological correctness. But it's one of the few venues open to outsiders without cash or institutional clout.

But what about the content of a twenty-first century twenty-something peace movement?

Many of today's twenty-something Quakers were raised up as secular peace activists. Our religious education programs often de-emphasize controversial issues of faith and belief to focus on the peace testimony as the unifying Quaker value. Going to protests is literally part of the curriculum of many Young Friends programs. Even more of a problem, older Friends are often afraid to share their faith plainly and fully with younger Friends on a one-on-one basis. The practice of personal and Meeting-based spritual mentorship that once transmitted Friends values between generations is very under-utilized today.

Almost all of these Friends stop participating in Quakerism as they enter their twenties, coming back only occasionally for reunion-type gatherings. Many of these lapsed Friends are out exploring alternative spiritual traditions that more clearly articulate a faith that can give meaning and purpose to social action. I have friends in this lost Quaker generation that are going to Buddhist temples, practicing yoga spirituality, building sweat lodges and joining evangelical or Roman Catholic churches. Will they really be won back with another lecture series? What would happen if we Friends started articulating the deep faith roots of our own peace testimony? What if we started testifying to one another about that great Power that's taken away occasion for war, what if our testimony became a witness to our faith?

Why are a lot of the more thoughtful under-40s going to alternative churches and what are they hoping to find there?

Don't get me wrong: I hope these new peace initiatives do well and help to build a thriving twenty-something activist scene again. It's just that for fifteen years I've seen a sucession of projects aimed at twenty-somethings come and go, failing to ignite sustaining interest. I worry that things won't change until sponsoring organizations seriously start including younger people in the decision-making process from their inception and start recognizing that our focus might be radically different.

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Postscript

The idea of younger Friends actually taking leadership and starting a major peace initiative is not theoretical. My Nonviolence.org project is Google's top-ranked source for "nonviolence" and "Iraq anti-war" organizing, with thousands of visitors every day (over a million a year). It's been operating continuously since 1995, bringing up-to-date news and commentary about the peace movement, winning awards and getting write-ups in the top national papers. It is largely self-funded through my sucession of Quaker day jobs.

UPDATE: The Pendle Hill Peace Network was laid down in late 2005. The cited reason was "budgetary constraints," an empty excuse that sidesteps any responsibility for examining vision, inclusion or implimentation. It's forum is now an advertising stage for "free mature porn pics." It's very sad and there's no joy in saying "I told you so."

I share some observations about the different way institutional and outsider Friends use the internet in How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net.

This is a list of testimonies, guides, books and resources on the Christian testimony of plainness, historical and present. It focuses on the traditionalist Quaker understanding of plainness but it's not restricted to Quaker notions: you'll find links and discussions to the related concepts of modest dress and simple dress.

If thou wilt be faithful in following that inward witness that has been so long pleading with thee, thy sins shall all be forgiven and I will be with thee and be thy preserver.
--William Hobbs, quoted in Hamm's Transformation of American Quakerism. (p.3)

Back in the summer of 2002 my wife and I became interested in Quaker traditions of plain dress (here's some idea of how we look these days). Trying to discern the issues for myself, I found very little on the internet, so here's my page with whatever testimonies, tips and links I can find. I'm starting to collect stories:

• My Experiments with Plainness, my own story, Eighth Month 2002
• Plain Dress--Some Reflections by Melynda Huskey, Fourth Month 2004
• Avoiding Plain Dress Designer Clothing by David/MQuadd, Seventh Month 21 2004
• Buying My Personality in a Store by Amanda, Ninth Month 8 2004
• On Dressing Plain from Rob of "Consider the Lillies," Second Month 15, 2005.
• Quaker blogs on Plainness from QuakerQuaker

Literary Plainness

• Friends accomplished in the ministry were often encouraged to write journals of their lives in their later years. These journals had a distinct function: they were to serve as education and witness on how to live a proper Quaker life. As such, they also had a distinct literary form, and writers almost always gave an account of their conversion to plain dress. This usually accompanied a profound convincement experience, wherein the writer felt led to cast aside worldly fashions and vanity. Howard Brinton wrote about some of the literary forms of the classic Quaker Journals.

Books on Plainness, a short bibliography

• The Quaker: A Study in Costume. By Amelia Gummere, 1901 (out of print, generally available used for around $50). As the subtitle suggests, Gummere is critical of the "costumes" of plain dressing Quakers. She argued that Friends needed to cast aside the musty peculiarisms of the past to embrace the coming socialist world of the Twentieth Century. Although unsympatheic, this is the most-frequently referenced book on Quaker plain dress. To get a sense of the turn-of-the-century Quaker embrace of modernity, I recommend Jerry Frost's excellent talk at the 2001 FGC Gathering, "Three Twentieth-Century Revolutions."
• "Why Do They Dress That Way?" By Stephen Scott, Good Books, Intercourse, PA, 1986, 1997, available from Anabaptist Bookstore. A well-written and sympathetic introduction to modern-day religious groups that continue to wear plain dress.
• Quaker Aesthetics. Subtitled "Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumptions," this is a 2003 collection of essays put together by Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne E. Verplanck. There's lots of good stuff in here: see Mary Anne Caton's "The Aesthetics of Absence: Quaker Women's Plain Dress in the Delaware Valley, 1790-1900" which does an excellent job correcting some of Gummere's stereotypes. Although I've only had time to skim this, Caton seems to be arguing that Friends' definitions of plainness were more open to interpretation that we commonly assume and that our stereotypes of a Quaker uniform are based in part in a way of colonial re-enacting that began around the turn of the century.
• Meeting House and Couting House: Tolles' book has some reference to plainness on page 126. Have to look into this.

Posts and websites on Plainness

• Discussion thread on Quaker Plainness on QuakerRoots
• Short History of Conservative Friends: Most plain dressing Friends today are part of the Wilburite/Conservative tradition. This online essay does an excellent job showing this branch of Friends and is a good counterpoint to histories that downplay the Wilburite influence in contemporary Quakerism.
• A number of the blogs I list in my guide to Quaker websites frequently deal with issues of plain dress. See also: Quaker Jane.
• Anabaptists.Org and Anabaptistbooks.com. Throughout most of the last 350 years, Friends have been the most visible and well-known plain dressers, but today the Amish, Mennonites and other Anabaptists have most faithfully carried on the tradition. Quakers have a lot to learn from these traditions. These sites are put together by a Conservative Mennonite in Oregon. His wife makes plain dresses, for sale through the bookstore.

Clothing Sources

• My wife has been happy with The King's Daughters and I've heard good reports about PlainlyDress and Vessels of Mercy.
• Men might want to write away for the paper-only Gohn Brothers catalog (105 South Main, Middlebury, IN 46540).
• There are lots of information links at Costume.org's religious costumes link.

Online tutorials

• My own guide to ordering Quaker plain men's clothes from Gohn Brothers.