Continued: Beyond the Age of Amnesia: Charting the Course of 20^th Century Liberal Quaker Theology

By Chuck Fager

Indeed, there were among their number quite a few who retained their membership among the Hicksites, and moved freely back and forth between them. Lucretia Mott was one such: she was at the 1853 sessions which produced the Exposition, and returned frequently to their annual sessions, which were more like Chautauquas. But she did not "join" their group and leave the Hicksites behind; she didn’t have to. This easy movement back and forth was a weakness in institutional terms; but it was clearly instrumental in "spreading the virus" of Progressive thinking among the wider circle of Hicksite groups from which the Progressives had officially departed.

Moreover, this "virus" was not spread in one direction only, outward from Longwood. From early on, their assemblies also attracted Unitarians, not only to their audiences but also into their leadership: historian Albert Wahl identified Unitarian ministers as leaders in Longwood through most of the rest of the century and into the next one.

The course of this spreading influence has yet to be charted in detail; but there is no real doubt that it occurred, because by the time that Friends General Conference was officially called into being, in 1900, Progressive themes were woven indelibly into its fabric. Consider these comments by William Birdsall of Swarthmore College, in his address to the Conference:

More than any other thing, Quakerism maintains the importance of the individual. "The Kingdom of God," declared the Master, "is within you," and the Quaker accepts this declaration as constituting every individual a citizen of that kingdom. He may be unfaithful, he may, if he will, fling away his birthright and abandon the privileges of his citizenship, but it is a possession of which no man can rob him.

But the individualism of the Friend goes further than this. The sixty evangelists who, in 1654, went out of the north of England to preach a spiritual religion, proclaimed a single great spiritual truth. Upon it they based their religious system; it has been from the time of George Fox to the present the fundamental doctrine of Quakerism. It pronounces the worth of the individual to be supreme, holding that each human soul is imbued with the divine, and that every human being may drink for himself of the water of life. (FGC, 1900)

Along with this individualism, the old peculiarities were being swept away. An exchange from the transcript of the 1906 Conference seemed to me particularly arresting in this regard. I reproduce it here, with the words intact but with some imaginative editorial insertions, to highlight the process which is unfolding, that of the last vestiges of the "Peculiar people" being banished right before our eyes.

First, a minister rose to speak, one William Williams. I imagine him in a plain coat, with a beard, probably gray. Once on his feet, he looked up toward heaven for a moment, maybe two, eyes closed.

Then he opened them, but still gazed upwards. His hands reached out to grip the rim of the bench before him, and he began to speak. His message came forth in a kind of singsong, punctuated by long pauses, that was faintly reminiscent of Gregorian chant (or Walt Whitman). He had probably never heard either; but he had heard Quaker ministers speak this way, all his long life. He may also have rocked forward slightly at each point of stress in his phrases:

William Williams, Plainfield, N.J.:

    Quakerism...

    is the plain fulfilling and exemplifying...

    of the doctrine that the blessed Jesus declared...

    when he said...

    that the life which he gave...

    to his disciples...

    would be more abundant....

    It devolves very specially...

    upon the persons themselves...

    to strive for...

    this abundance...

    of life....

His words trailed off, and after another silent moment, Friend Williams sat down.

The next to rise was a formidable matron, Lavinia C. Hoopes, of West Chester, Pa. She was not at all pleased with what she has heard, or rather, the way she heard it. And she did not mince her words:

Lavinia C. Hoopes, West Chester, Pa.:

If Quakerism be a normal religion (which I believe it to be, or else I would not belong to this Society), it must express itself in a normal life. We have had much said here that has moved me strongly and has been most valuable; but I have just thought of a few of the little peculiarities that have been taken on by our Society, and which seem to me entirely abnormal; and the one that has seemed just now to be most present in my mind is that of the tone and manner which is often taken on by our ministers in speaking to us of the principles of Quakerism, or when moved by the spirit of truth.

The expression of the God in us that can never be away from us–this principle on which we are founded–should certainly express itself in a reasonable, rational tone of voice, without any of the eccentricities that seem to be a part of an old superstition.

I would call you to consideration of this subject as quite worthwhile; and if we have taken on mistaken ways, it is our business to drop them and reform our ministers. Some of them have already reformed. We desire a normal life, expressing itself in a simple, normal way, that when the stranger comes to our meeting–apart from consideration for ourselves and our members–when strangers come to our meeting they need not have to ask why this cadence, why this peculiar modulation, why this sometimes rapt manner. (Emphasis added.)

This rebuke may have seemed too harsh to some; and the next speaker, Catharine DePeel, perhaps was seeking to soften its blow:

Catharine DePeel, Genoa, Neb.:

I will give you a little of my experience. There are some here that know me–some that knew me when I wore a Quaker bonnet. I loved that Quaker bonnet and wore that Quaker bonnet just as long as I could, until the spirit within me said, "Lay it aside; because of it your light is hid under a bushel." I felt that it was a peculiar heritage of the Society of Friends that kept them from growing and spreading as they would. Our principles are beautiful, and every one loves them that hears them; but it was these few peculiarities which built up a wall between us and our fellowman. (All quotes: FGC, 1906, 11)

One person who probably sat listening to this exchange from a facing bench was Henry Wilbur, the first General Secretary of FGC. Wilbur was an organizational activist, as well as a prolific pamphleteer, and the sparkplug of FGC’s active Advancement Committee. Wilbur continued at the hub of FGC’s development until his sudden death at the conference in 1914. (Anon., "A Twentieth Century Friend,"1914)

Wilbur was a New York native, whose career had all the marks of the Progressive outlook: family involvement in abolitionist and Underground Railroad work before the Civil War; devotion to the postwar reformers’ crusades for Prohibition, women’s suffrage, peace, and continued aid to the recently freed citizens of color. His religious views were quite compatible as well. In an undated pamphlet, Friendly Fundamentals, he laid them out clearly:

        –Individuality and the Inward Light as the keystones: "Fox," he declared, "seldom spoke or wrote that he did not affirm the presence of the Spirit, always insisting that it was IN men, and in ALL men....Nowhere else is the same emphasis given to the value of individual initiative as in the Society of Friends."

        – A decentralized, desacralized polity: "At its best, the meeting for worship is a spiritual democracy." (Wilbur, 1911? 3, 5) A parallel 1913 statement added, "We may express ourselves in religious organization through such forms as from time to time seem best to meet our needs, but ceremonial religion alone does not meet any important human need."(FGC 1913, 1)

        – Hostility to church elites: "That is, there is no preferred class in the Society to do the thinking and exercise influence for the members....(Wilbur, 1911?, 8)

        – Indifference to other theological doctrines: "Giving full and free range to that spirit in man, which the inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding, we need have no vital concern over mysterious theories about virgin birth, arbitrary plans of salvation, or ingenious schemes for an outward sacrifice big enough to satisfy the offended sense of divine justice...."

        – "Reform" at the center: "[We believe that] concerned action by the individual is the divine plan for leading the race to spiritual light and liberty...our methods and machinery are broad enough and flexible enough to make our places of worship and the meetings themselves, centers for considering and supplying the varied needs of every community where the Society now has or may have had a habitat. This is true whether the local needs are spiritual, social, ethical or civic, or all four combined."(Ibid., 10, 11)

Wilbur’s record was as good as his word. He was, for instance, the founding President of a group called the National Federation of Religious Liberals, an interfaith but heavily Unitarian group which was organized in Philadelphia’s Cherry Street Meetinghouse in 1908. (Anon, "The National Congress") He was also the President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, a body which one might have thought would have been laid down in 1865, but which persisted, as "a Friend of the Negro." (Wendte)

And Wilbur had, as late as 1913, been a featured speaker at the Longwood Progressive Yearly Meeting. That the General Secretary of FGC would mount its platform should show that the Progressive "separation" was not of the sort that had gone before, between Orthodox and Hicksite, or Gurneyite and Wilburite. (Anon., "Longwood Yearly Meeting")

Moreover, where Wilbur left off, Jesse Holmes picked up the threads, and was if anything, more vocal and visible as the voice of "Progressivism" in FGC circles. Indeed, by 1926, when the FGC Uniform Discipline–which he helped draft–was adopted, its key passages reiterated the main points cited above, and in my view mark the culmination of what can rightly be called The Progressive Reformation of FGC Quakerism.

Gone from its pages, and in turn from the Disciplines it shaped, are: any mandate for peculiarity and separateness; ministers and elders; the subordination of individuals to the group, and likewise, of monthly to yearly meetings; and any but a vestigial Christian identification.

No wonder the Longwood Progressive Yearly Meeting closed down in 1940; its work was essentially done. And given its founders’ studied indifference to organizational forms, the fact that its success was achieved by absorption into another body would not, I think, have disappointed them.

There was, of course, another side to the Progressives’ decline, which for the sake of truth needs to be mentioned here. While their manifestos heaped ridicule on "priestcraft" and "superstition," and they eschewed ritual formalities in favor of reform lectures, the Progressives did not thereby succeed in thus banishing the sacred. Quite the contrary: shoved out their front door, the sense of the mysterium came flooding back in 1848 through a side entrance, on a tidal wave of Spiritualism, claiming to offer direct contact with the dead. Before long the Progressive Friends circles were teeming with mediums who rapped and scribbled seemingly nonstop with and on behalf of the dead.

The arrival of the mediums did not mean a dilution of the Progressives’ reforming zeal, at least verbally; to the contrary, many of their "spirit messages" yielded posthumous endorsements for it from the shades of former adversaries.

One remarkable figure in this tendency came not from Longwood but from Rochester, New York, where there was another significant Progressive separation in the Hicksite Genesee Yearly Meeting. Isaac and Amy Post of Rochester had been prominent Genesee Friends, who left when their abolitionist fervor proved too much for the Hicksite establishment. They often took part in the Progressive meetings in the area.

The Posts were among the first to jump on the Spiritualist bandwagon, and before long Isaac’s writing hand was being taken over by a long list of spirits. A fascinating collection of these messages was published in 1851 as Voices From the Spirit World. In its pages Post recorded visitations by a long list of prominent Friends, from Fox and Penn to Elias and Edward Hicks, plus several others less well-known. All of them assure Post that his Progressive sentiments are quite correct and the wave of the future; many criticize and lament their own "sectarian" notions when alive. (He also heard from George Washington, Ben Franklin, Voltaire, Swedenborg, and other notable figures.)

This Spiritualism was greeted with hoots of derision from many outsiders. For that matter, it divided many of the Progressives’ putative allies as well. In 1852, Lucretia Mott, "as to Spiritual manifestations," wrote privately to a Friend:

I agree ...that the Subject ought not to be treated with ridicule, or as wilful deception–but it requires more faith than I can command, to receive it as direct communion with the departed. There is a grossness about it, not suited to the imagined aerial State of the "just made perfect". Still the developements [sic] are wonderful, & some of them of an enlightened character. [Her husband James Mott] attended a circle for 10 weeks last winter, & was much interested. I have never witnessed anythg. of the kind. Is there not reason to fear the effects of such frequent reveries, on Isaac Post’s mind? A Mrs. Taft of Mass. has lately become quite insane, from that cause. (Mott, 1852)

Historian Christopher Densmore writes of the Rochester area groups:

For years reformers including the likes of Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Stanton came to Collins for the annual meeting and shared the speakers’ platform with spiritualist mediums. At the annual meeting 1857, held at the Hicksite meeting house which still stands on Route 60 a mile south of North Collins, Susan B. Anthony disputed the nature of women with spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis. Davis maintained that women should be given rights because they were morally superior to men. Anthony was a firm believer in the equality of men and women. (Densmore)

Researcher Mitch Gould points out that the 1857 meeting, which the Posts attended, was also the last of the Collins group, at least for which there are any records. Evidently adding Spiritualism to its formal agenda was not a big success. (Gould)

The pervasive presence and impact of spiritualism on the suffrage movement was virtually suppressed by its early historians (Gould), and the phenomenon goes all but unmentioned in the standard Quaker historians’ brief treatments of the Progressives. But its persistence in these circles is confirmed, long after the Posts and Motts left the scene.

Indeed, it even extended to the redoubtably "scientific minded" Jesse Holmes, the last Clerk of Longwood. In a memorial tribute his Swarthmore faculty colleague Brand Blanshard noted:

He had an intense interest in the phenomena of spiritualism, and I have more than once attended a seance with him at which amazing results gained by the mediums were quietly punctured by his sympathetic but exacting criticism." (Holmes, 119)

For that matter, if the Progressive bodies are long gone, their spiritualist legacy continues among Friends. In 1980, a group produced a volume of messages purportedly dictated by Jesse Holmes himself from "the other side." (Holmes) More recently, in 1995, I myself was quietly conveyed to a house in Swarthmore, not ten blocks from the college, to take part in a session with a medium who visited that area regularly, if quietly, to service a sizeable clientele. And not least, week-long workshops on "past lives" show up frequently on the menu at FGC Gatherings; one is on the approved list for 2001.

One final point: While emphasizing here the Progessives’ key contribution to the shaping of liberal/FGC Quaker religious thought in the twentieth century, I do not mean to suggest theirs was the only important thread in its tapestry. By no means; they have been highlighted here to begin to redress their neglect and even suppression by earlier writers. As my own and others’ studies of this era are continuing, it is our hope, as way opens, to further lift the fog and fill in the picture.

Moreover, a more fully-nuanced treatment of this spiritualist Quaker stream is beyond our ken at this point. But on the face of it, the conclusion seems likely that the Progressive Friends movement, while achieving most of its goals in the long run, itself died from a kind of embarrassment at the crudity and silliness of its inability to escape the sacred and "superstition" it had so solemnly eschewed.

WORKS CITED

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--------. "Longwood Yearly Meeting," Friends Intelligencer, 6/7/1913, p.361.

--------. "The National Congress," Friends Intelligencer, 5/8/1909, p. 289.

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Fager, Charles E. "FGC’s ‘Uniform Discipline’ Rediscovered," Quaker History, 89 (2000): 51-59.

--------. "Friends As a Chosen People," in The Harlot’s Bible and Other Quaker Essays. Bellefonte, PA: Kimo Press, forthcoming.

--------. Without Apology: The Heroes, the Heritage and the Hope of Liberal Quakerism. Bellefonte, PA: Kimo Press, 1996.

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Mott, Lucretia. Letter to Nathaniel Barney, dated June 7, 1847. Reproduced in the Lucretia Coffin Mott Correspondence, Winter 2000, 3. Pomona, CA: Lucretia Coffin Mott Project.

--------. Letter to John Ketcham, 30 August 1852, Mott Collection, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. On the web at: http://womhist.binghamton.edu/mott/doc10.htm

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Wilbur, Henry W. "An Estimate by the President of the Congress," Friends Intelligencer, 5/8/1909, 290.

--------. Friendly Fundamentals. Philadelphia: FGC Advancement Committee (1911?).