wilburite Posts

I'm reading Bill Taber's fascinating history of Ohio Conservative Friends called The Eye of Faith. Like any good history there's a lot of the present in there. There's a strong feeling of deja-vu to the scenes of Friends in conflict and various characters come to life as much for their foibles as their strength of character (there's more than a few bloggers echoed there). I'm now a few years into the second great separation, the Wilburite/Gurneyite split that brewed for years before erupting in 1854.

I'm not one of those Friends who bemoan the various schisms. The diversity of those calling themselves Friends today is so great that it's hard to imagine them ever having stayed part of the same body. Only a strong authoritarian control could have prevented the separations and even then, large masses of the "losing" party would have simply left and regrouped elsewhere: the only real difference is that one party stops using the Quaker name. Here in South Jersey, where the only Gurneyite meeting wasn't recognized by either Philadelphia yearly meeting for almost a hundred years, we've got dozens of Methodist "meeting houses" with graveyards full of old Quaker family names. Fascinating histories could be written of Friends who didn't bother to squabble over meetinghouse deeds and simply decided to congregate under another banner.

One concept I'm chewing on is that of the "remnant." As I understand it, the doctrine comes largely from Revelation 12 and is used by small theologically-conservative Christian sects to explain why their small size isn't a problem; it's kind of like Mom saying it's better to do the right thing than to be popular. When the remnant community is a relatively isolated locale like Barnesville, there's also the image of the Land That Time Forgot, the place where the old time ways has come down to us most fully intact. There's truth to the preserving power of isolation: linguists claim the Ozark hillbilly accent most clearly mirrors Shakespeare's. But Ohio Friends aren't simply Jed Clampett's Quaker cousins.

Like most rural Quaker yearly meetings, Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative has lost much of its membership over the last hundred years. I don't have statistics but it seems as if a good percentage of the active members of the yearly meeting hail from outside southeastern Ohio and a great many are convinced Friends. This echoes the most significant change in U.S. Quakerism in the past fifty years: the shift from a self-perpetuating community with strong local customs and an almost ethnic sense of self, to a society of convinced believers.

The keen sense of self-sufficiency and isolation that held together tight-knit Quaker communities over the centuries are largely non-sustainable now. In our media-saturated lives even Barnesville teens can get the latest Hollywood gossip and New York fashions in real time. Yes it's possible to ban the TV and live as a media hermit in a commune somewhere, but even that only gets you so far. Once upon a time, not so long ago, a Friend could situate themselves in the wider Quaker universe simply by comparing family trees and school ties but that's becoming less important all the time. For those of us who enter into the Society of Friends as adults--majorities in many yearly meetings now--there's a sense of choice, of donning the clothes. We play at being Quaker until voila!, some mystical alchemical process happens and we identify as Quaker--even if we're not always quite so made-over into Quakerness as we imagine ourselves.

At the Ohio sessions a few Friends really loved Wess Daniel's statement that "A tradition that loses the ability to explain itself becomes an empty form" (see his wrap-up post here). One Ohio Friend said he had heard it postulated that isolated and inward-focused communities like Ohio Conservative were God's method of preserving the old ways against the onslaught of the modernist age (with its mocking disbelief) until they could be reintroduced to the wider world in a more forgiving post-modernist era. Looked at that way, Quakerism isn't a quaint relic in need of the same botox/bleach blond "NOW!" makeover every other spiritual tradition is getting. Think of it instead as a time capsule ready to be opened. An interesting theory. Are we ready to look at this peculiar thing we've dug up and reverse-engineer it back into meaningfulness?

Update:

Kirk W. over at Street Corner Society emailed me that he had recently put the Journal of Ann Branson online. She features heavily in the middle part of Taber's book, which is the story of Conservative Ohio finding its own identity. Kirk suggests, and I agree, that her journal might be considered one of the artifacts of the Ohio time capsule. I hope to find some time to read this in the not-too-distant future.

Getting right back on the horse, I'm teaching Quakerism 101 at Moorestown NJ Meeting Wednesday evenings starting in a few weeks. The original plan was for the most excellent Thomas Swain to lead it but he's become rather busy after being tapped to be yearly meeting clerk (God bless 'im). He'll be there for the first session, I'll be on my own for the rest. A rather small group has signed up so it should be nice and intimate.

For the last year I've been pondering the opportunities of using mid-week religious education and worship as a form of outreach. Emergent Church types love small group opportunities outside of the Sunday morning time slot and it seems that mid-week worship is one of those old on-the-verge-of-death Quaker traditions that might be worth revitalizing and recasting in an Emergent-friendly format.

Last Spring I spent a few months regularly attending one of the few surviving mid-week worships in the area and I found it intriguing and full of possibilities but never felt led to do more. It seemed that attenders came and went each week without connecting deeply to one another or getting any serious grounding in Quakerism.

Reflecting on the genesis of a strong Philadelphia young adult group in the mid-1990s, it seemed like the ideal recipe would look something like this:

• 6pm: regular religious ed time, not super-formal but real and pastoral-based. This would be an open, non-judgemental time where attenders would be free to share spiritual insights but they would also learn the orthodox Quaker take on the issue or concern (Barclay essentially).
• 7pm: mid-week worship, unprogrammed
• 8pm: unofficial but regular hang-out time, people going in groups to local diners, etc.

Unprogrammed worship just isn't enough (just when y'all thought I was a dyed-in-the-plain-cloth Wilburite....) . People do need time to be able to ask questions and explore spirituality in a more structured way. Those of us led to teaching need to be willing to say "this is the Quaker take on this issue" even if our answer wouldn't necessarily pass consensus in a Friends meeting.

People also need time to socialize. We live in an atomized society and the brunt of this isolation is borne by young adults starting careers in unfamiliar cities and towns: Quaker meeting can act as a place to plug into a social network and provide real community. It's different from entertainment, but rather identity-building. How do we shift thinking from "those Quakers are cool" to "I'm a Quaker and I'm cool" in such a way that these new Friends understand that there are challenges and disciplines involved in taking on this new role.

Perhaps the three parts to the mid-week worship model is head, spirit and heart; whatever labels you give it we need to think about feeding and nurturing the whole seeker and to challenge them to more than just silence. This is certainly a common model. When Peggy Senger Parsons and Alivia Biko came to the FGC Gathering and shared Freedom Friends worship with us it had some of this feel. For awhile I tagged along with Julie to what's now called The Collegium Center which is a Sunday night Catholic mass/religious ed/diner three-some that was always packed and that produced at least one couple (good friends of ours now!).

I don't know why I share all this now, except to put the idea in other people's heads too. The four weeks of Wednesday night religious ed at Moorestown might have something of this feel; it will be interesting to see.

For those interested in curriculum details, I'm basing it on Michael Birkel's Silence and Witness: the Quaker Tradition (Orbis, 2004. $16.00). Michael's tried to pull together a good general introduction to Friends, something surely needed by Friends today (much as I respect Howard Brinton's Friends for 300 Years it's getting old in the tooth and speaks more to the issues of mid-century Friends than us). Can Silence and Witness anchor a Quakerism 101 course? We'll see.

As supplementary material I'm using Thomas Hamm's Quakers in America (Columbia University Press, 2003, $45), Ben Pink-Dandelion's Convinced Quakerism: 2003 Walton Lecture (Southeastern Yearly Meeting Walton Lecture, 2003, $4.00), Marty Grundy's Quaker Treasure (Beacon Hill Friends House Weed Lecture, 2002, $4.00) and the class Bill Tabor pamphlet Four Doors to Quaker Worship (Pendle Hill, 1992, $5.00). Attentive readers will see echos from my previous Quakerism 101 class at Medford Meeting.

I had an interesting opportunity last Thursday. I skipped work to be talk with two Quakerism classes at Philadelphia's William Penn Charter School (thanks for the invite Michael and Thomas!). I was asked to talk about Quaker blogs, of all things. Simple, right? Well, on the previous Tuesday I happened upon this passage from Brian Drayton's new book On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry:

I think that your work will have the greatest good effect if you wait to find whether and where the springs of love and divine life connect with this opening before you appear in the work. This is even true when you have had an invitation to come and speak on a topic to a workshop or some other forum. It is wise to be suspicious of what is very easy, draws on your practiced strengths and accomplishments, and can be treated as an everyday transaction. (p. 149).

Good advice. Of course the role of ministry is even more complicated in that I wasn't addressing a Quaker audience: like the majority of Friends schools, few Penn Charter students actually are Quaker. I'm a public school kid, but it from the outside it seems like Friends schools stress the ethos of Quakerism (here's Penn Charter's statement). Again Drayton helped me think beyond normal ideas of proseltyzing and outreach when he talked about "public meetings": "We are also called, I feel to invite others to share Christ directly, not primarily in order to introduce them to Quakerism and bring them into our meetings, but to encourage them to turn to the light and follow it" (p. 147). What I shared with the students was some of the ways my interaction with the Spirit and my faith community shapes my life. When we keep it real, this is a profoundly universalist and welcoming message.

I talked about the personal aspect of blogging: in my opinion we're at our best when we weave our theology with with personal stories and testimonies of specific spiritual experiences. The students reminded me that this is also real world lesson: their greatest excitement and questioning came when we started talking about my father (I used to tell the story of my completely messed-up childhood family life a lot but have been out of the habit lately as it's receded into the past). The students really wanted to understand not just my story but how it's shaped my Quakerism and influenced my coming to Friends. They asked some hard questions and I was stuck having to give them hard answers (in that they were non-sentimental). When we share of ourselves, we present a witness that can reach out to others.

Later on, one of the teachers projected my blogroll on a screen and asked me about the people on it. I started telling stories, relating cool blog posts that had stuck out in my mind. Wow: this is a pretty amazing group, with diversity of ages and Quakerism. Reviewing the list really reminded me of the amazing community that's come together over the last few years.

One interesting little snippet for the Quaker cultural historians out there: Penn Charter was the Gurneyite school back in the day. When I got Michael's email I was initially surprised they even had classes on Quakerism as it's often thought of as one of the least Quaker of the Philadelphia-area Quaker schools. But thinking on it, it made perfect sense: the Gurneyites loved education; they brought Sunday School (sorry, First Day School) into Quakerism, along with Bible study and higher education. Of course the school that bears their legacy would teach Quakerism. Interestingly enough, the historical Orthodox school down the road aways recently approached Penn Charter asking about their Quaker classes; in true Wilburite fashion, they've never bothered trying to teach Quakerism. The official Philadelphia Quaker story is that branches were all fixed up nice and tidy back in 1955 but scratch the surface just about anywhere and you'll find Nineteenth Century attitudes still shaping our institutional culture. It's pretty fascinating really.

Here's a couple of new-to-me blogs I've been reading lately.

The Contrarian Quaker's last post was about the Conservative Statement of Faith. He's also post a recent letter to the Friends Journal.

Kwakersaur is a Canadian Friend. He recently wrote about Quaker ecclesiology, citing Avery Dulles' Models of the Church, which is what Elizabeth Cazden uses in her recent pamphlet, Fellowships, Conferences and Associations (my post, pamphlet).

Finally, a warm welcome to Amanda's new blog Of the Best Stuff But Plain. She's part of the extended Quaker Ranter family. Here's just a taste from the first post on her new blog:

It feels a bit daunting to me, and very presumptive of me as a brand new, and yet unlisted Friend, to say that we have to be prepared to defy even the Tribe of our Meeting or the Tribe of Quakers, but I know without a doubt it is true. We might not even have to leave our meeting or our Society to shoulder our cross and follow Jesus beyond the gates, because it is already very apparent to me that both bodies are already efficiently subdivided into many different camps and cliques. Sometimes my conversations with Friends can feel as if I'm rushing extremely civilized fraternities and sororities. I can already feel myself wanting to choose a surname for myself among the different factions. Hicksite? Wilburite? Hmm? We need to be brave enough to stand outside of every one of them. The city to come will be built on new, uncharted land, and the great people to be gathered will meet each other on the journey there, not around the campfire.

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.