I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to revisit that 19th century advice, and step back. I’ve seen too much of the corrupting influence of partisanship. I’ve seen too many arguments from people who know better about which people are not really people. I’ve too many friends who have become political arguments which do not respect their humanity.

1842: The cost of compromise

Reflections on Elijah and Levi Coffin after reading Elijah Coffin’s “Life with Reminiscence”

Michael’s ‘Deep Thoughts’

The 2013 split created two bodies: the Evangelicals who retained “Indiana” as their name and the Liberals who became the New Association of Friends. At the time I was pleasantly surprised that both sides remained part of the Friends United Meeting, the international umbrella organization of what you might call churchy Friends. I thought it might be a sign that we had outgrown the kind of nineteenth century attitudes that forced everyone pick sides in splits like these. Apparently not.

Some Evangelical Friends have been dreaming about a “realignment” of FUM since the 1980s, a concept that would split FUM down the middle between Evangelicals and Liberals, pushing everyone to decide between their respective national conferences, Evangelical Friends International and Friends General Conference respectively.¹ Somehow FUM’s been able to resist the centrifugal forces and maintain a big tent approach that’s frustrated many² but somehow held together. What happens to this balance if the center of gravity for FUM American Friends pivots more toward its liberal end?

FUM is an international organization and Africa’s the wild card. The largest population of Friends are there, with most of its yearly meetings affiliated with FUM. Even the decamping Indiana Yearly Meeting wants to find an arrangement with FUM to keep those ties going (met with guffaws in some quarters).

I don’t hear anyone talking about realignment much these days. But in the U.S. context there’s an increasing number of FUM Friends and FGC Friends³ who aren’t so very different anymore. This presumably is Indiana YM’s argument for leaving, but it’s a chicken-or-egg scenario: the result of splits is often that each side shifts to fit the stereotype the other side accused it of being all along. In the meantime there are a lot of Friends with deep family and childhood ties to Indiana Yearly Meeting who are grieving right now.

I don’t know much about Rorem or the extent or ongoingness of his Quaker identity (if anyone wants to share more in the comments that would be great). I keep a list I call “Surprising Unexpected Unlikely Quakers” for names people give me of famous’ish people with Quaker connections. Who’s your favorite unlikely Quaker?

At 95, Ned Rorem Is Done Composing. But He’s Not Done Living. (Published 2018)

As the composer, writer and gay icon lives quietly on the Upper West Side, his music and books…

www.nytimes.com

The separations stem from a disagreement over whether same-sex weddings are to be permitted in member churches, or as they are often called in the Quaker tradition, meetings. The churches leaving WYM regard same-sex marriage as against the will of God.

It looks like many of the more Evangelical churches are the ones pulling out of the yearly meeting. The lines of controversy are similar to recent separations in Indiana and North Carolina Yearly Meetings. The big-tent center of Midwestern FUM Friends seems to be pretty permanently fractured.

https://www.wnewsj.com/news/78939/several-churches-leave-wilmington-yearly-meeting-over-same-sex-marriage

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Just as background: I’m a thirty-something Philadelphia native, brought up without any formal religion in a Philly suburb. I first started approaching Quakers (Friends) back in college. In my early twenties, I started working at a collectively-run pacifist book publishing house and living in what was then the sort of downscale hipster neighborhood of West Philadelphia. In 2002 I attended a week-long workshop that had some plain dressing Friends and felt the nudge to experiment. I’ve left Philadelphia to become a resident of a small farming town in South Jersey (what love will do) but I still spend a lot of time in the city and in decidedly urban settings. I don’t aim to be historically correct with my plain dress and I don’t want to simply “look like an Amish” person.

Gohn Brothers is a store in Indiana that sells “Amish and Plain Clothing.” It is currently celebrating it’s 100th year in business. It’s known for it’s simple print catalog, which is updated every few months. It does not have a website. You should get a copy of the catalog to get current clothing and shipping prices. It’s address is:

PO Box 1110, 105 S. Main St., Middlebury IN 46540
Phone: (574) 825‑2400. Toll-free: 800–595-0031

When I first started “going plain,” I simply wore regular dark pants with suspenders found at a generic department store. It was important to me that I was wearing clothes I already had, and I wanted to be “Sears Plain,” by which I meant I didn’t want to go to any extremes to find plain clothing. When I first bought a pair of broadfalls (the zipperless pants favored by plain men), I didn’t wear them for months. Slowly I started started wearing them out and feeling more at ease in them. They were made of rugged denim, wore well and were quite comfortable.
As my pre-plain clothes have worn out, I’ve started replacing them with Gohn Brothers-produced broadfalls. They’re just as inexpensive as any cheaply-made jeans from Old Navy but they hold up and are presumably made in Indiana by seamstresses earning a decent wage.

Broadfalls

Gohn Brothers offers many different weights and fabrics for their broadfall pants, numbering them for ease of ordering. I have bought two pair, both of which I like:

• #66: 10 oz. solid grey denim, 100% cotton: $22.98
• #92: 100% cotton blue jean denim (11 oz.): $24.98

Coats

Gohn Brothers produces a number of coats, also called “overshirts.” In these purchases I have tended to be more distinctly Quaker. I have two Coats:

• #225: 9oz. Poly, cotton. $41.98 at the time of this post. I have opted for a few alterations: A “regular cut” for $3.00, a “standup collar” for $2.00, “button holes with metal buttons” for $3.00 and a “quilted lining” for $5.00.
• #125 9 oz. Black drill denim. Poly/cotton. Unlined Jacket, black drill. Alterations: “standup collar” for $2.00. (for this I had the default “snaps” in place of buttons and the default “full cut”).

I’ve prefered the specialized “regular cut” coat over the standard “full cut.” The regular cut feels more like the standard suit jacket that most professional men wear to work, while the full cut felt more like a wind-breaker. I also prefer the buttons, as the snaps contributed to the wind-breaker feel.

Suspenders

Also known as “braces,” all you need are dark broadfalls and suspenders to really look “plain” to the world. “Tabbed” suspenders fit over buttons in your pants, while “clip-on’s” use alligator clips to fasten onto standard pants. Tabbed look better but I can’t help thinking of Michael Douglass in “Wall Street”; a lot of ordinary anabapist men I see have clip-on’s.

I’ve heard the story that there’s a good-hearted ribbing between the Iowa and North Carolina Conservative Quakers about whether thin or wide suspenders is more plain. I’ve started to throw my lot in with Iowa and have gotten the three-quarter inch suspenders. (Fashionistas will remember that thin suspenders were popular with a certain kind of high school geek in the mid-1980s–think Cameron in Ferris Beuler’s Day Off; fair disclosure requires that I admit that I wore them around Cheltenham High). Again Gohn Brothers:

• #550T 3/4″ tab. Black: $7.98
• #552C 3/4″ clip. Black: $6.98

Hats

While Gohn Brothers does hats, I haven’t bought any of theirs. Instead I’ve gone for the Tilley T3 hat. I’m not complete happy with this, as Tilley’s seem to be associated with a certain kind of clueless traveler, but I’ve noticed that there are a lot of men in my yearly meeting who wear them, I think as an unconscious nod toward plainness. The Tilley is also friendlier to bike commuters: its tie-down strings wrap easily around bike handlebars, and it’s very crushable and washable.

Not a Uniform

Again, let me stress: I am not trying to specify a modern plain dress uniform. The only time you should adopt plain dress is when you’re feeling actively led by it. Sometimes that leading is an intution, which is fine, but you need to follow it on your own terms. My practice has evolved over time and yours should too. I’ve become more plain since I started this witness simply because I had to replace worn clothes and couldn’t see spending more money for shoddier clothes than I could get at Gohn Brothers. You don’t need to get broadfalls to be “plain,” as “plainness” is as much a state of mind and an attitude toward God and your spiritual community as it a set of clothes. I think of it now as a spiritual discipline, one very fitting for our consumeristic times.

I’d love to hear from others about their plain dressing.

h3. See also:
* “Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal”:/Quaker/emerging_church.php