It profiles Henderson Luelling (1809–1878) and it’s not exactly an academic source. Here’s a snippet:

Luelling had taken up with these groovy Free Lovers, whom he met in San Francisco. From the outset, the journey had complications. “Dr.” Tyler, it turned out, was actually an ex-blacksmith who now professed expertise in water-cures and clairvoyance. One of the men was fleeing financial troubles, and when the ship was searched by police he hid under the hoopskirt of a female passenger.

Luelling’s life follows many common themes of mid-nineteenth century Quaker life:

• He was a horticulturalist, first moving to the Portland, Oregon, area and then to a small town near Oakland, California. Friends had long been interested in botanical affairs. Roughly a century earlier John Bartram was considered one of the greatest botanists of his generation.
• Luelling moved from Indiana to Salem, Iowa in the 1830s and became a staunch abolitionist, even building hideouts for the Underground Railroad in his house. Wikipedia reports he was expelled from his meeting for this.
• He got Oregon fever and moved his operation out there.
• At some point in this he became interested in Spiritualism and its offshoots like the Free Love movement. This was not a Quaker movement but the modern American movement started with the Fox Sisters in Upstate New York and was heavily promoted by Quaker Hicksites Amy and Isaac Post.

If you want to know more about Luelling’s “sex cults,” this article in Offbeat Oregon feels much better sourced: The father of Oregon’s nursery industry and his “Free Love” cult:

The “free love” thing is far from new. Over the years, especially in the American West, at least half a dozen generations have produced at least one “daring” philosopher who calls for a throwing-off of the age-old yoke of marriage and family and urges his or her followers to revert to the mythic “noble savage” life of naked and unashamed people gathering freely and openly, men and women, living and eating and sleeping together with no rules, no judgment and no squabbles over paternity.

He’d also started his very own free-love cult — “The Harmonial Brotherhood.” Luelling’s group made free love the centerpiece of a strict regimen of self-denial that included an all-vegetarian, stimulant-free diet, cold-water “hydropathy” for any medical need, and a Utopian all-property-in-common social structure.

Portland Friend Mitchel Santine Gould has written about some of these currents as well. His LeavesofGrass.org site used to have a ton of source material. Digging into one day it seemed pretty clear that the Free Love movement was also a refuge of sorts for those who didn’t fit strict nineteenth-century heterosexuality or gender norms. Gould’s piece, Walt Whitman’s Quaker Paradox has a bit of this, with talk of “lifelong bachelors.”

Many of the Spiritualist leaders were young women and their public lecture series were pretty much the only public lectures by young women anywhere in America. If you want to learn more about these developments I recommend Ann Braud’s Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. These communities were very involved in abolitionist and women’s rights issues and often started their own yearly meetings after becoming too radical for the Hicksites.

And lest we think all this was a West Coast phenomenon, my little unprepossessing South Jersey town of Hammonton was briefly a center of Free Love Spiritualism (almost completely scrubbed from our history books) and the nearby town of Egg Harbor City had extensive water sanitariums of the kind described in these articles.

Just about each of us at the table were coming from different theological starting points, but it’s safe to say we are all “post” something or other. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our churches have been providing aren’t working for us. We are all trying to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one another in our church communities. There’s something about building relationships that are deeper, more down-to-earth and real. Perhaps it’s finding a way to be less dogmatic at the same time that we’re more disciplined. For Friends, that means questioning the contemporary cultural orthodoxy of liberal-think (getting beyond the cliched catch phrases borrowed from liberal Protestantism and sixties-style activism) while being less afraid of being pecularily Quaker.

Rich the Brooklyn Quaker was recently asking about early Friends views of atonement and heaven and hell and it’s a great post, but so is Marshall Massey’s comment about how later Friends altered the message in distinctly different ways. The different flavors of Friends have spent a lot of energy minimizing certain parts of the Quaker message and over-emphasizing others and maybe the truth lies in some of the nuances we long ago paved over.

I have a working theory that a movement of “Convergence” will feel suspiciously liberal in evangelical circles, suspiciously evangelical in liberal circles, and suspiciously worldly in Quaker conservative circles. But that’s almost to be expected. The work to be done is different depending on where we’re starting from.

I don’t think Friends are alone in these kinds of matters. I see this phenomenon in other religious denominations–the post-Evangelicals I broke pizza with back in 2003 weren’t Quakers. But Friends might have a better way out of the existential puzzles that arise. For we (generally) believe that our action should be motivated first and foremost by the direct instruction of the risen Christ working on us now. That means we can’t rely on canned answers. What worked in the past might not work now. The faith is the same. But what needs to be done and what needs to be preached is very much a here-and-now kind of proposition.

I can’t help but think of Howard Brinton. Back in the 1950s his generation managed a reunification of East Coast Quaker factions that had been warring for over a century. One way they did it was hanging out together and then redefining what it meant to be a Friend. In Friends for 300 Years, Brinton argued that tests for membership shouldn’t look at one’s beliefs or practices. It was a truce and I’m sure it made sense at the time: there was a fairly strong consensus on what Quakerism meant and the fights at the edges over details were distracting. Fifty years later, there’s little consensus among Philadelphia Friends and even those in leadership positions are loathe to talk about faith or practice except in a kind of code. I can’t think of a single Philadelphia Friend who publicly expresses Quaker belief with the clarity or passion of mid-century figures like Brinton, Thomas Kelly or Rufus Jones.

What worked in the past might not work now. What sounds like old hat to to us might be very liberating for others. Convergence isn’t very new. It’s just keeping ourselves from ossifying into our own human concepts and staying open to the direct Christ. It’s finding a way to maintain that crazy balance between tradition and the inward light. Same as it ever was.

Students of late-20th Century Quaker history can see the progression of Friends General Conference from a very Philadelphia-centric, provincial body that had its annual gathering at a South Jersey beach town to one that really does try to serve Friends across the country. There’s losses in the changes (alumni of the Cape May Gatherings all speak of them with misty eyes) but overall it’s been a needed shift in focus. In recent years, a disproportionate number of Gathering workshop leaders have come from the “independent” unaffiliated yearly meetings of the West. It’s nice.

Joe G has been sending me emails about his selection process (it’s almost real-time as he weighs each one!). It’s helpful as it saves me the trouble of sorting through them. It’s usually tough to find a workshop I want to take. A lot of Friends I really respect have told me they’ve stopped going to the Gathering after awhile because it just doesn’t feed them.

It’s a shame when these Friends stop coming. The Gathering is one of the most exciting annual coming-together of Quakers in North America. It’s very important for new and/or isolated Friends and it helps pull all its attenders into a wider Fellowship. Intervisitation has always been one of the most important tools for knitting together Friends and the Gathering has been filling much of that need for liberal Friends for the last hundred years.

I’ve been having this sense that Gathering needs something more. I don’t know what that something is, only that I long to connect more with other Friends. My best conversations have invariably taken place when I stopped to talk with someone while running across campus late to some event. These Opportunities have been precious but they’re always so frantic. The Traveling Ministries Program often has a wonderful evening interest group but by the time we’ve gone around sharing our names, stories and conditions, it’s time to break. I’m not looking for a new program (don’t worry Liz P!, wait it’s not you who has to worry!), just a way to have more conversations with the QuakerQuaker Convergent Friends–which in this context I think boils down to those with something of a call to ministry and an interest in Quaker vision & renewal. Let’s all find a way of connecting more this year, yes?

For those interested I’ve signed up for these workshops: Blessed Community in James’ Epistle (led by Max Hansen of Berkeley Friends Church, Deepening the Silence, Inviting Vital Ministry (20), and Finding Ourselves in the Bible).

Related Entries Elsewhere:

• Robin
• LizOpp