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.¹ Decolonialism means something very different for those who are committed to hold on to Christianity.

Indigenous and Quaker Both

Explore how Native Quaker communities hold onto their unique culture while practicing Christ-centered worship cultural commonalities, and shared…

Friends Journal

Beyond Majority Rule has one of the more unique stories in Quaker writings. Michael Sheeran is a Jesuit priest who went to seminary in the years right after the Second Vatican Council. Forged by great changes taking place in the church, he took seriously the Council’s mandate for Roman Catholics to get “in touch with their roots.” He became interested in a long-forgotten process of “Communal Discernment” used by the Jesuit order in when it was founded in the mid-sixteenth century. His search led him to study groups outside Catholicism that had similar decision-making structures. The Religious Society of Friends should consider itself lucky that he found us. His book often explains our ways better than anything we’ve written.

Sheeran’s advantage comes from being an outsider firmly rooted in his own faith. He’s not afraid to share observations and to make comparisons. He started his research with a rather formal study of Friends, conducing many interviews and attending about ten monthly meetings in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. There are sections of the book that are dry expositions of Quaker process, sprinkled by interviews. There are times where Sheeran starts saying something really insightful about early or contemporary Friends, but then backs off to repeat some outdated Quaker cliche (he relies a bit too heavily on the group of mid-century Haverford-based academics whose histories often projected their own theology of modern liberal mysticism onto the early Friends). These sections aren’t always very enlightening–too many Philadelphia Friends are unconscious of their cherished myths and their inbedded inconsistencies. On page 85, he expresses the conundrum quite eloquently:

If the researcher was to succumb to the all too typical canons of social science, he would probably scratch his head a few times atjust this point, note that the ambiguity of Quaker expression makes accurate statistical evaluation of Quaker believes almost impossible without investment of untold time and effort, and move on to analysis of some less interesting but more manageable object of study.

Fortunately for us, Sheeran does not succumb. The book shines when Sheeran steps away from the academic role and offers us his subjective observations.

There are six pages in Beyond Majority Rule that comprise its main contribution to Quakerism. Almost every time I’ve heard someone refer to this book in conversation, it’s been to share the observations of these six pages. Over the years I’ve often casually browsed through the book and it’s these six pages that I’ve always stopped to read. The passage is called “Conflicting Myths and Fundamental Cleavages” and it begins on page 84. Sheeran begins by relating the obvious observation:

When Friends reflect upon their beliefs, they often focus upon the obvious conflict between Christocentric and universalist approaches. People who feel strongly drawn to either camp often see the other position as a threat to Quakerism itself.

As a Gen-X’er I’ve often been bored by this debate. It often breaks down into empty language and the desire to feel self-righteous about one’s beliefs. It’s the MacGuffin of contemporary liberal Quakerism. (A MacGuffin is a film plot device that drives the action but is in itself never explained and doesn’t really matter: if the spies have to get the secret plans across the border by midnight, those plans are the MacGuffin and the chase the real action.) Today’s debates about Christocentrism versus Universalism ignore the real issues of faithlessness we need to address.

Sheeran sees the real cleavage between Friends as those who have experienced the divine and those who haven’t. I’d extend the former just a bit to include those who have faith that the experience of the divine is possible. When we sit in worship do we really believe that we might be visited by Christ (however named, however defined)? When we center ourselves for Meeting for Business do we expect to be guided by the Great Teacher?

Sheeran found that a number of Friends didn’t believe in a divine visitation:

Further questions sometimes led to the paradoxical discovery that, for some of these Friends, the experience of being gathered even in meeting for worship was more of a formal rather than an experiential reality. For some, the fact that the group had sat quiety for twenty-five minutes was itself identified as being gathered.

There are many clerks that call for a “moment of silence” to begin and end business–five minutes of formal silence to prove that we’re Quakers and maybe to gather our arguments together. Meetings for business are conducted by smart people with smart ideas and efficiency is prized. Sitting in worship is seen a meditative oasis if not a complete waste of time. For these Friends, Quakerism is a society of strong leadership combined with intellectual vigor. Good decisions are made using good process. If some Friends choose to describe their own guidance as coming from “God,” that their individual choice but it is certainly not an imperative for all.

Maybe it’s Sheeran’s Catholicism that makes him aware of these issues. Both Catholics and Friends traditionally believe in the real presence of Christ during worship. When a Friend stands to speak in meeting, they do so out of obedience, to be a messenger and servant of the Holy Spirit. That Friends might speak ‘beyond their Guide’ does not betray the fact that it’s God’s message we are trying to relay. Our understanding of Christ’s presence is really quite radical: “Jesus has come to teach the people himself,” as Fox put it, it’s the idea that God will speak to us as He did to the Apostles and as He did to the ancient prophets of Israel. The history of God being actively involved with His people continues.

Why does this matter? Because as a religious body it is simply our duty to follow God and because newcomers can tell when we’re faking it. I’ve known self-described atheists who get it and who I consider brothers and sisters in faith and I’ve known people who can quote the bible inside and out yet know nothing about love (haven’t we all known some of these, even in Quakerism?). How do we get past the MacGuffin debates of previous generations to distill the core of the Quaker message?

Not all Friends will agree with Sheeran’s point of cleavage. None other than the acclaimed Haverfordian Douglas V Steere wrote the introduction to Beyond Majority Rule and he used it to dismiss the core six pages as “modest but not especially convincing” (page x). The unstated condition behind the great Quaker reunifications of the mid-twentieth century was a taboo against talking about what we believe as a people. Quakerism became an individual mysticism coupled with a world-focused social activism–to talk about the area in between was to threaten the new unity.

Times have changed and generations have shifted. It is this very in-between-ness that first attracted me to Friends. As a nascent peace activist, I met Friends whose deep faith allowed them to keep going past the despair of the world. I didn’t come to Friends to learn how to pray or how to be a lefty activist (most Quaker activists now are too self-absorbed to be really effective). What I want to know is how Friends relate to one another and to God in order to transcend themselves. How do we work together to discern our divine leadings? How do we come together to be a faithful people of the Spirit?

I find I’m not alone in my interest in Sheeran’s six pages. The fifty-somethings I know in leadership positions in Quakerism also seem more tender to Sheeran’s observations than Douglas Steere was. Twenty-five years after submitting his dissertation, Friends are perhaps ready to be convinced by our Friend, Michael J. Sheeran.

Postscript: Michael J Sheeran continues to be an interesting and active figure. He continues to write about governance issues in the Catholic Church and serves as president of Regis University in Denver.

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.