I wrote this in Eighth Month 2004 for the Plainandmodestdress discussion group back when the red dress MacGuffin made it’s appearance on that board.
I wonder if it’s not a good time for the Margaret Fell story. She was one of the most important founders of the Quaker movement, a feisty, outspoken, hardworking and politically powerful early Friend who later married George Fox.
The story goes that one day Margaret wore a red dress to Meeting. Another Friend complained that it was gaudy. She shot back in a letter that it was a “silly poor gospel” to question her dress. In my branch of Friends, this story is endlessly repeated out of context to prove that “plain dress” isn’t really Quaker. (I haven’t looked up to see if I have the actual details correct – I’m telling the apocryphal version of this tale.)
Before declaring her Friend’s complaint “silly poor gospel” Margaret explains that Friends have set up monthly, quarterly and yearly meeting structures in order to discipline those walking out of line of the truth. She follows it by saying that we should be “covered with God’s eternal Spirit, and clothed with his eternal Light.”
It seems really clear here that Margaret is using this exchange as a teaching opportunity to demonstrate the process of gospel order. Individuals are charged with trying to follow Christ’s commands, and we should expect that these might lead to all sorts of seemingly-odd appearances (even red dresses!). What matters is NOT the outward form of plain dress, but the inward spiritual obedience that it (hopefully!) mirrors. Gospel order says it’s the Meeting’s role to double-guess individuals and labor with them and discipline them if need be. Individuals enforcing a dress code of conformity with snarky comments after meeting is legalism – it’s not gospel order and not proper Quaker process (I would argue it’s a variant of “detraction”).
This concern over legalism is something that is distinctly Quaker. Other faiths are fine with written down, clearly-articulated outward forms. Look at creeds for example: it’s considered fine for everyone to repeat a set phrasing of belief, even though we might know or suspect that not everyone in church is signing off on all the parts in it as they mutter along. Quakers are really sticklers on this and so avoid creeds altogether. In worship, you should only give ministry if you are actively moved of the Lord to deliver it and great care should be given that you don’t “outrun your Guide” or add unnecessary rhetorical flourishes.
This Plain and Modest Dress discussion group is meant for people of all sorts of religious backgrounds of course. It might be interesting some time to talk about the different assumptions and rationales each of our religious traditions bring to the plain dress question. I think this anti-legalism that would distinguish Friends.
For Friends, I don’t think the point is that we should have a formal list of acceptable colors – we shouldn’t get too obsessed over the “red or not red” question. I don’t suspect Margaret would want us spending too much time working out details of a standard pan-Quaker uniform. “Legalism” is a silly poor gospel for Friends. There’s a great people to be gathered and a lot of work to do. The plainness within is the fruit of our devotion and it can certainly shine through any outward color or fashion!
If I lived to see the day when all the Quakers were dressing alike and gossiping about how others were led to clothe themselves, I’d break out a red dress too! But then, come to think about it, I DO live in a Quaker world where there’s WAY TOO MUCH conformity in thought and dress and where there’s WAY TOO MUCH idle gossip when someone adopts plain dress. Where I live, suspenders and broadfalls might as well be a red dress!
Wow great work, MK! I regret that I hadn’t read this earlier. It provides some interesting insights into the issue.
It is true that Margaret complained that clothing requirements for everyone comprised the silly poor gospel. It is also true that those who usually quote her on this A) think she meant that wearing plain clothes was the silly poor gospel and B) often prefer that Friends blend into the wider American culture. The question “what is the Lord is directing thee to do?” usually gets shifted away from the discussion when that was at the center of what Margaret was trying to communicate.
This is a nicely written essay. I admire the way you made your way through a maze of theological and political pitfalls without falling into any of them.
I had never heard or seen the “red dress” story, and I wouldn’t be the least surprised to find that it is apocryphal, as it sounds rather out of character for Margaret Fell-Fox. What I had been given to understand was that she refused to give up the style of dress that was conventional, though not showy, for a woman in her position — a manorial lady in the English North who had to oversee her estate, treat with the national government on behalf of an embattled movement, and deal with an endless stream of hostile lawyers. I suspect that what happened was a quarrel between Margaret, who was simply utilitarian in her dress, and other Friends who were more Puritanically severe.
I sometimes enjoy putting on my go-to-meetin’ clothes because it makes a visual and psychological statement that the time spent in Meeting is special and different from other times in the week. There are other times when I think my jeans reflect the lack of class distinction that the plain dress represented in Elizabethan times. In short, my clothes are a reflection of where my head is at the time.
My mother grew up in an Indiana Quaker community that was still transitioning from the plain dress and speech. She taught us that the reason for the change was that those customs no longer served their original purpose. Historically, the plain dress reflected the homespun clothes that working class Elizabethans wore. (Colored dyes were very expensive.) Friends’ plain dress was an affirmation of the New Testament teaching that we are all one, and therefore socially equal, in the spirit.
Likewise, Elizabethan English still reflected differences between the familiar “thee” and the formal “you,” similar to the German “tu” and “ihr”. Thee indicated that the person with whom one was speaking was either family, or a friend with whom one was intimate. By using “thee” universally, they were reinforcing Friends commitment to all humanity being family because of the unifying spirit articulated in Jesus’ teaching. The language changed, but Friends didn’t until much later.
There’s a Rufus Jones quote, which I may not remember precisely, but which is one of my favorites when discussing religion. As I remember it, he said: “I’d rather be a smiling St. Francis than a dour-faced old Quaker who looks as if he’s been fed on a spiritual diet of persimmons.” I hope that when Friends discuss the topic of dress and language that they will consider the self-effacing insight, and humor, of our elders.
Wow, Chronicler Seth and Marshall Massey commenting and saying they like this!
I always recommend reading through the old advices about plainness. They don’t describe any specific styles of clothing, nor do they proscribe a dour disposition. They’re very clear that the plainness we need is plainness of the heart. Outward plainness is merely a recommended tool to achieve that inner state.
Did Friends in earlier ages make a fetish out of plain dress? Certainly. Every good practice can be taken out of context. Anything we do should be part of an attempt to clear ourselves to hear God better but we forget that and idolize the silence or the meetinghouse architecture or any other outward form as a goal in and of itself.
There’s no reason that plainness as a testimony needs to be abandoned. And there’s no reason to think it shouldn’t be a generic Christian testimony. Everyone from the most hard core traditionalist Friend to the most out-there emergent church non-denominational Christian would do well to consider the advices of plainness. What form plainness takes is contextual and will change and should change if we’ve reached a point where it’s source (The Source) is forgotten and it’s just become another fashion.
The quotation from Margaret Fell, dated 1700, is in the current British Yearly Meeting Book of Discipline. The sources page says: “From manuscript Portfolio 25/66 in LSF. The passage is considerably abridged and omissions are not indicated in the text.”
‘We are now coming into that which Christ cried woe against, minding altogether outward things, neglecting the inward work of Almighty God in our hearts, if we can but frame according to outward prescriptions and orders, and deny eating and drinking with our neighbours, in so much that poor Friends is mangled in their minds, that they know not what to do, for one Friend says one way, and another another, but Christ Jesus saith, that we must take no thought what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or what we shall put on, but bids us consider the lilies how they grow, in more royalty than Solomon. But contrary to this, we must look at no colours, nor make anything that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them, nor wear them: but we must be all in one dress and one colour: this is a silly poor Gospel. It is more fit for us, to be covered with God’s Eternal Spirit, and clothed with his Eternal Light, which leads us and guides us into righteousness. Now I have set before you life and death, and desire you to choose life, and God and his truth.’
I think it helps to understand the context of Fell’s comment to look at the passage quoted just before it in the Book of Discipline. In an epistle to Friends dated 6, 4th mo. 1698, Fell wrote:
‘It’s a dangerous thing to lead young Friends much into the observation of outward things which may be easily done. For they can soon get into an outward garb, to be all alike outwardly. But this will not make them into true Christians: it’s the spirit that gives life.’
Those of you who want to know more of Fell will hopefully be delighted to know that a small team of us are currently working on an edition of her 1710 Collected Works which will be published by Barclay Press in, I think, 2026. While most of the major male writers of the 17th century were reprinted in the 18th and 19th centuries (Nayler being, I think, the exception), there has never been an edition of Fell’s works since that original 1710 publication.