Johan Maurer brings up a question in a post about what was the London Yearly Meeting’s book of Christian Faith and Practice. He asks whether our practices should be treated as models we’d expect other Christians to follow.
I suppose that in either case, Christian or Quaker, the prevailing assumption was that these books are for internal use among Friends. This is who we are, more or less. But what I like about the title Christian Faith and Practice is another interpretation entirely, one I have no permission or evidence to propose: this way of faith and life is not just for us; it’s recommended for all Christians.
I’d argue a strong yes to this. When I think about what ancient Quaker oddities might still be relevant, one of the questions I ask myself is whether we could argue that the whole church should also adopt the practice (however unlikely that might be in reality). If it’s just some Quaker canard, we can toss it into an antiquity dustbin. But if all Christians should be following the practice, then let’s set the example.
I like Thomas Clarkson’s historical account of Friends particularly because he’s not writing for a Quaker audience. I get the feeling he’s holding our practices up for scrutiny, as if to say that maybe everyone should be following them and indeed, his pacifism and abolitionism were greatly influenced by the Friends he met in his work.
Of course this witness to other Christians sort of falls apart if we don’t consider ourselves Christian. If online discourse is any indication, there are large numbers of Quakers who are rather oblivious that almost all of our Quaker identity has a biblical basis (selective, of course, and also interpreted, debated and changing). Quakerism is seen as something that just randomly popped up in the world. None of the early Friends would have thought that.
In the mid-80s I was one of the many idealistic college kids who interned with the UFW for a summer. I got to hang out with him a number of times. His son-in-law ran the NYC-based media campaign and Cesar would come for planning meetings but also to visit his daughter and grandkids. She made great cheese enchiladas and all of us would talk late into the night as he told stories.
I do remember thinking — and asking — why the sainted VP Dolores Huerta never actually seemed all that involved, at least not to the point of ever coming East that summer to participate in NYC-based media strategy meetings. It was explained she was needed back in California.1 I never met her. I remember not being surprised at all that she didn’t ascend to the UFW presidency when Cesar died. It went instead to the son-in-law who had led our office.
My direct supervisor was a schlub and sexist pig. He was always making inappropriately suggestive comments to the young female interns, which they universally laughed off. They were all smart, confident women with futures who weren’t going to be put off by him. I was the only male intern that summer and he put me in shitty assignments, pressuring me to drop out. I assume I was seen as competition and indeed I did start dating a fellow intern (the only reason I put up with his behavior and made it through the summer). I see he’s still with the UFW, now listed as first vice president, which is not at all inspiring.
It was perhaps the most dysfunctional office culture I’ve ever seen. The union’s influence had obviously declined since the heady days of RFK marching with Cesar in huge rallies. They seemed to jump from fad to fad hoping to recapture attention. That year direct marketing was all the rage in business circles and the UFW was jumping in with both feet. We would spend hours in meetings setting unrealistic expectations, then break our own guidelines to “meet” them. I’d be called out for trying to do things the way we had agreed. I remember wondering if any of the office work I did that summer actually made a jot of difference. Helping to organize East Coast appearances of Cesar was definitely the highlight of the summer — well, that and the girlfriend and getting to hang out in New York City all the time.
I do have to wonder now if some of the dysfunction and sexism in the office was ultimately related to Cesar’s repeated molestation of children.2 Did he foster a culture in which we laughed off bad behavior and didn’t question poor management?
There are of course influences but that’s to be expected. Every religious movement of the Second Great Awakening had some relationship to Quakers. The Methodists, Mormons, Holiness, Adventists all have some connections. When you tour the “1652 Country” area of England, where George Fox first brought Quakers together, you’ll keep running into signs about John Wesley doing the same for Methodists a century later, and here in South Jersey where I live a whole slew of Quakers became Methodists in the early 1800s. At least one early Mormon evangelist in Ohio essentially went from Quaker town to Quaker town trying to recruit people. The Quaker defense of female leadership and the principle that women can preach obviously rubbed off on the Shakers and other movements.
The idea that the British colonies in America were some pure land where we could reinvent a primitive Christianity was a powerful meme (if you will) at the time and certainly drew Ann Lee to cross over and plant a religious movement here. But Ann Lee picked one of the least Quaker areas to plant her community and drew early members from New England millennialist revivalists. She definitely wanted to build something distinct from Friends.
Ten authors featured in the March 2026 Friends Journal special issue on gender and sexual identities join trans and nonbinary moderators for facilitated conversation. Free and both online at at Swarthmore College. Learn more here.
am grateful that both our religious society and wider culture have developed a greater understanding of the diversity of gender expressions. I appreciate an expanded vocabulary with which to include people. (Only ten years ago the singular “they” was still cautioned against in the Friends Journal style guide!) Change can be confusing and bewildering, but open conversations between Friends one-on-one and in settings like a clearness committee can help us understand one another in our longing to be known and loved.
I was really looking forward to The Testament of Ann Lee, the biopic of Shaker founder Ann Lee, directed and cowritten by Mona Fastvold and starring Amanda Seyfried as the titular character. My wife and I have read a bunch of books on Shakers over the last few years, including at least one cited by the filmmakers in the end credits. We knew from the trailer that this would be a Hollywood treatment, with Ann Lee played by a lithesome young blonde actress but we figured it might be interesting enough anyway.
Nope. It didn’t feel as if the director really understood either the theology behind Shaker aesthetics or the profound oddness of Mother Ann. Much of the movie leaned heavily on music-video styling, with wall-of sound electronica and well-trained singing voices reworking Shaker hymns, all set to carefully choreographed dance scenes. That would be fine for a Pat Benetarbiopic but the real Shakers were fiercely against musical instruments (they considered them used “to excite lasciviousness, and to invite and stimulate men to destroy each others’ lives”). I’ve always imagined that dancing would have been more of the random repetitive trance of hippy or all-night raver — chaotic, unpredictable, profoundly un-synchronized.
I certainly understand that creators of period dramas sometimes feel the need to go off in ahistorical directions, especially in their use of music, as a way of setting a mood. But the plainness of Shaker music and dance is precisely its point. To make it too perfect is to misunderstand the theology itself.
The Ann Lee in my head canon isn’t a comely figure with a lust for mystical visions, burning truth and kindness for all. She’s short, kind of shapeless, illiterate, but most of all she’s unpredictable, by turns kind and mean, but also batshit and manipulative. The movie only has one scene about her confessions (a tame depiction at that), which is a shame as confessions were a core part of Mother Ann-era Shaker bonding. When people came to join or even visit the Shakers, she would confront them to confess all their sins in great detail. It was a humiliating process and not by accident: personal humiliation is a key tactic for all cults. There’s an implied blackmail, as embarrassing details could be shared publicly of anyone who might change their mind and want to leave. Another common cult tactic is separating individuals from their families, also an essential part of the Shaker experience.
In the movie, we see a dramatic example of townspeople terrorizing the Shakers but we’re never shown why the locals might be so angry. When people joined the Shakers they split up marriages, pulled children from parents, demanded converts give their material goods to the collective, and turned the new believers against their non-Shaker families. There were accusations that they stole wives and children, all detailed in lawsuits. The Shaker model was a profound threat to the familial structures that held together late-eighteenth century New England life. The violence shown the Shakers was inexcusable but also somewhat understandable — well, unless you watched this movie, where it was portrayed as a fear of the unknown.
The details also seriously strayed from history toward the end, depicting later Shaker life as co-existing with Mother Ann. That’s a terrible choice. Shakerism as an organized religion arguably only began shortly after her death, when a new leadership came together, new settlements started, and a social structure constructed that rewarded technical innovation. Pretty much everything we associate with Shaker design — the flat brooms (1798), the efficiently of the round barns (1826), the apple peelers (1830s), even the hymns that this movie sets to modern music (“Song of Summer” is c. 1875) — came later and really could only have come from institutional Shakers. This is the course of most new religious movements: a charismatic leader holding a small band of committed zealots together, followed by a later institutionalization of roles. By smushing these eras together, Mother Lee’s life is sanitized and Shakers presented as an American origin story.34
What’s ironic that the movie itself is beautifully done. The rocked-up ahistorical Shaker songs are stirring. The singing and dancing are beautiful and well choreographed. The cinematography is exceptional. Amanda Seyfried does a great job playing the character she’s been given. If only she had been given Mother Ann!
I recently got around to seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, another period movie that profiles a cult in a tumultuous time in American history. It transported me so much more than this one. As I sat in the theater this week, sighing as yet another music video montage powered up, I found myself longing for an auteur with a tiny budget to take on Ann Lee’s story (David Lynch would have understood the essential weirdness of Ann Lee). Less is sometimes more. And it definitely would have been for this production.
I love complicated identities like this. There’s a lot of discernment that goes on about how to incorporate Indigenous and Quaker elements into life. For many, it seems a surprisingly natural fit. This is true elsewhere, in parts of Africa and South America, where missionary Quakers’ beliefs meshed with the belief systems of pre-colonial ethnic groups, allowing an easy transition.
Also of interest is that these meetings are all Christian, which demographers tell us is the norm for Native Americans today.5 Decolonialism means something very different for those who are committed to hold on to Christianity.
I wrote the opening column for the January Friends Journal, which looks at Indigenous Peoples and Friends. As regular readers of this blog already no doubt know, I’m a fan of local history, especially contact-era and colonial histories and especially about relations with the Indigenous Lenape and the enslaved Africans.
The whole issue is really powerful and I hope you find it as enlightening as I did.
Where I live, in one of the colonial-era Quaker colonies of the Mid-Atlantic United States, there has long been a benevolent portrayal of Quakers’ relations with the local Indigenous Peoples. We are told that early Friend William Penn negotiated the Treaty of Shackamaxon with Lenape leader Tamanend, a moment memorialized by parks, statues, and a famous painting by Benjamin West. The great French philosopher Voltaire declared it “the only treaty never sworn to and never broken.” The new settlers bought each plot of land from the local Lenape bands. Violence in the first half-century of Quaker governance was rare; cooperation and good will were the norm.
And yet: there is no federally recognized Indigenous Nation left in this former Lenape territory. Every boatload of Quakers that sailed up from Delaware Bay brought the threat of another round of deadly smallpox. Every creek dammed to power a mill cut off the spawning fish runs that stocked upland creeks. Every pig let loose from an English farmstead ate through nearby Lenape maize and squash plantings.
