Comments on: The New Quaker Histories https://www.quakerranter.org/the-new-quaker-histories/ A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Sat, 10 Feb 2024 21:14:14 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.4 By: Don McCormick https://www.quakerranter.org/the-new-quaker-histories/#comment-948740 Sat, 10 Feb 2024 21:14:14 +0000 https://www.quakerranter.org/?p=151072#comment-948740 Perhaps representatives of Quaker magazines could contact the authors of their favorite chapters in these books and invite them to submit an article that presents the essence of their chapter in prose that is friendly to the non-academic. Or “The New Quaker Histories” can be the theme for an issue of a Quaker magazine. The producers of the many Quaker podcasts could also interview these authors.

I may be wrong, but it seems like Quaker publications largely rely on the supply side of the supply and demand dynamic of articles on the new Quaker histories. The supply of these articles depends upon the initiative of academics. I suspect that if the publishers and editors create a demand for these articles by inviting authors to submit work, the ideas in the new Quaker histories will reach a lot more people.

]]> By: John Jeremiah Edminster https://www.quakerranter.org/the-new-quaker-histories/#comment-948737 Sat, 10 Feb 2024 05:34:19 +0000 https://www.quakerranter.org/?p=151072#comment-948737 I am an 80 year-old Conservative Friend with an M. Div. and a persistent lively interest in matters that might be called “scholarly,” but no credentials that would allow me access to academic libraries or “gated” online resources. So I cherish and publicize, when I can, all the “ungated” online resources I know about, like the Digital Quaker Collection (http://dqc.esr.earlham.edu/), which contains the little 1836 pamphlet, “Brief Remarks on Impartiality,” in which Joseph John Gurney dealt the death-blow to the Christian Universalism of George Fox and the Early Friends (except for the Hicksites and Wilburites who couldn’t buy Gurney’s peculiar reading of Colossians 1:23). That’s how we got some Quakers who say we need the Bible for our salvation, and some who don’t. I want *all* Friends to know this part of our history. I want *all* Friends to get the benefit of my M. Div. I got it to share with *them.*
When I saw _The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830 – 1937_ priced at $125, I was unhappy, but I dug deep into my pockets and bought one, sensing I’d soon need to have read the book. Sure enough, it gave me an answer to why all sorts of Friends celebrate our testimony of Immediate Revelation, *but* explained why, on the other hand, I’ve never heard a Friend rise in Meeting and say, “The Lord just spoke to me and said.…”
This shyness about claiming to have personally *gotten* an immediate revelation is not just from modesty, but surely also because, under the lingering influence of 19th-century literature on religious insanity, we’ve been frightened away from making such claims: we don’t want the other Quakers in the room to think we’re crazy.
Richard Kent Evans’s admirable chapter in _The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity_, “Quakers and ‘Religious Madness’,” sheds some light on how we got our now-fashionable reputation for being “mystics” — but mystics of the “right” kind. To Quaker alienist Daniel Hack Tuke, whose _Manual of Psychological Medicine_ was published in 1858, “A diseased mind saw angels, heard the voice of God, or uttered prophecy” (p. 126). OK, Dr. Tuke, got it: I’ll boast about us Quakers enjoying immediate revelation, but I won’t mention our hearing God’s “voice.” I’ll talk about “messages” given in Meeting, but won’t pretend that any of them constitute “prophecy.”
Rufus Jones took our ancient testimony of continued “immediate revelation,” for which George Fox and the early Friends had fought so valiantly, and helped make it acceptable in the hard-headed world of the twentieth century. This new book gives a lot of good, scholarly attention to Jones. Part of Jones’s strategy was to distinguish between “positive” and “negative” mysticism: “Positive,” or, as he elsewhere calls them, “affirmation mystics,” “are bent on having a firsthand experience of God — but not just for the joy of having it. More important than vision is obedience to the vision. There are battles to fight and victories to win.” (Jones, _Social Law in the Spiritual World_ (1923), excerpted in Kerry Walters, ed., _Rufus Jones: Essential Writings_ (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 89.)
OK, Rufus, got it: I’ll teach the First-Day School kids that any *genuine* firsthand experience of God will give them a battle to fight and a victory to win!!But what if they get an experience like Ezra’s (9:4), that simply makes them “sit appalled until the evening sacrifice?” What if the prophetic message from God is. “Behold, the day is coming that shall burn as an oven?” (Malachi 4:1.)
I must say that I got my $125 worth of wisdom from buying that $125 book! But Friend, don’t lament if you don’t have $125 to spend on your own copy! Because you can get the testimony of the Apostle James for free: “If any of you lack wisdom, let them ask of God, that giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not” (James 1:5).
I can tell you, Friend, that I’ve heard the voice of God, right in that heartland of liberal Quakerism, New York City’s Fifteenth Street Meeting, and I’m not insane! On one occasion, that Voice told me, “That sin is forgiven! Put it away!” On another occasion when I was afraid of giving way to a temptation, I heard, “I will not let you fall into sin.” How good is that? If you haven’t heard God’s voice yet, try asking God to always override your own selfish, foolish will when it disagrees with God’s will. Tell God you want to be God’s slave, and always do what God wants! You’ll be surprised what happens next.

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