Comments on: Going lowercase christian with Thomas Clarkson

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:15:00 +0000

I forgot to add my other, and probably more important question: can you tell me what early 19th-century Friends thought of Clarkson’s book? Did any Friend resort to print about it, do you know? Thanks for any directions you can suggest>

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:10:00 +0000

I have an 1806 first edition of Clarkson's "A Portraiture of Quakerism ..." and everywhere Christian has an upper case C. Could you say in which edition a lower case christian appears?

By: forrest curo

forrest curo — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:04:44 +0000

When I found Ursula Jane O'Shea's _Living the Quaker Way_ squirreled away on the shelves of the Swarthmore Library a few years ago, that had the same kind of effect on me, ie seeing Friends' history from the perspective that we have declined and need to renew our movement--regardless of what happens or doesn't happen to our institutions. But the past is a dry hole. O'Shea wasn't trying to recreate it, but rather to return to the spirit that created it: "The charism of early Friends was their gift of sight and action to live at home in the upside-down world of God's reign. We need to reclaim their gift of seeing the Way of God clearly despite the disturbance and distraction of their times... Learning to respond to the signs of our times, modern Friends have a double resource in the Quaker tradition of inward waiting and active persistence. This tradition calls for giving careful attention to the inward guide, in the inspiration of the individual and in the discernment of the community, and then matching this inward focus with the hard experience of living out testimonies that are not at home in the world." She talks about applying this practice to the challenges within our Meetings as well as out in the so-called Real World. I have many times come close to dispairing of Friends... and the notion that a community could 'discern' anything whatsoever without its individual members seeking and finding God in their own souls. But my own Meeting continues to surprise me; just watching how all my efforts to get us to renew ourselves have fallen flat--and yet new people, live people are finding us and waking us up. We may forget God, as a group; but God doesn't forget us!

By: kevin

kevin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:31:07 +0000

Hey Martin-
My first exposure to Clarkson came as a surprising jewel among the shelves of mouldering time-worn leather-bound books in an Ohio Yearly Meeting library. I still go back to him now and then when I need some perspective on shifts in the Society.
You’re right about his explanations of plain dress being something other than the “simplicity” testimony gone retro, which the unfamiliar often consider it to be. I changed the way I look the day a California judge refused to let me testify in my own defense because I wouldn’t raise my hand and swear an oath for him. Now everybody knows in advance that I may turn out to be a loose cannon. And like Clarkson observed, it also keeps me out of places I would prefer not to want to be in. It has had a profound change on the way I live, too.
Start writing, bud.
Kevin