Primitive Quakers

Dear Friends,

This monograph turns the history between Conservative and Orthodox Quakers on its ear by following the thread of the 'primitive' through their histories. I came to read a published history recently and found that I read it as a primitive Quaker in a way that was probably different from that intended. Emblematic of the 'Primitive' perspective is the essential spiritual discipline or spiritual practice within the Quaker meeting for 'worship'. To my eye there is history in the rise and fall in the primacy of that practice. For instance, this excerpted paragraph from within the essay speaks to that thread as an introduction:

“Regular mid-week meetings for worship, held during the day on the fourth or fifth day of the week, were a powerful unifying force among traditional Friends. The effects of commerce and wage labor, along with increasing assimilation to the world, led to the decline of mid-week meeting as a general practice among Conservative Friends. A number of meetings still hold mid-week meetings for worship, but these are not as faithfully attended as First-day meetings.”

Hence comes,

A Short History of Primitive Quakers:

Excerpting “Primitively” from “A Short History of Conservative Friends”:

“As the first generation of Friends had passed away in the early 1700s, the Society had increasingly become a hereditary group defined less by its [essential practice] faith than by its way of life. The institution of birthright membership produced many nominal members who did not share the experience of convincement that had gathered early Friends.

Rather than seeking a renewal of faith within the Society, however, the leadership attempted to deal with the problem by tightening enforcement of the Discipline that governed details of Friends' outward conduct. Plainness of dress and speech became the hallmarks of a "consistent" Friend. The plain life, at its best, served to protect the inward and outward life of Friends from corruption by the world's temptations.

Increasingly, however, husbandry of the "hedge" became the chief work of the Society's leaders. The result was, predictably, a strict but often empty way of life.

An early evidence of Orthodox concern and influence was Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's adoption of a new Discipline in 1806, in which denial of the divinity of Jesus, the immediacy of divine revelation or the authority of Scripture were made disownable offenses.

Friends who sought to maintain the traditional doctrines of Friends were alarmed at London Yearly Meeting's general epistle for 1836, which for the first time presented the Evangelical views as the official position of Friends. A paragraph on the Holy Scriptures stated that they were "the only divinely authorized record of the doctrines of true religion" and "the appointed means of making known to us the blessed truths of Christianity."

William Hodgson captures the conservatives' objections to these statements:

[They are] a direct abandonment of the principle always promulgated in [early Friends'] writings, that "the appointed means" for the soul of man to obtain a saving knowledge of God, is a being taught in the school of Christ, through obedience to the "Inspeaking Word," and faith in the revelations of His Holy Spirit immediately in the heart; which will always be consistent with Scripture.[2] -Hodgson

Conservative Friends suspected that the Evangelical doctrine of justification through faith alone was weakening Friends' understanding of the importance of a life sanctified in "bearing the cross." They saw a tendency among the Evangelicals to elevate the Holy Scriptures above the guidance of the Holy Spirit as a religious authority. They feared that these trends, if they became dominant, could undermine the foundations of Friends' belief. Ann Jones, a conservative minister, expressed these concerns at London Yearly Meeting in 1836:

“There are some among you who are encouraging a carnal wisdom, a head knowledge, an outward learning, which exalteth itself and is ever endeavouring, in its own strength, to find out the way of salvation by the study of Scripture. This spirit has spread even among those who are making a very high profession - men who are robbing Christ. They talk much of a belief in the atoning sacrifice, but are setting at nought and despising Christ in his inward and spiritual appearance.... The Lord hath a controversy with the spirit which hath crept into this Society, and which is sitting in the judgment-seat.”[1] -Ann Jones

... if we as a people, were to change the place of the Scriptures, and exalt them above, and put them in the place of the teaching of the spirit of Christ, ... it must inevitably, and that before long, completely overturn and change our ancient faith and practice, concerning both silent worship, and the need there is of a continually renewed qualification in a gospel minister.[3] -Wilbur

The other party, concerned with faithfulness at all costs to what they saw as the pure Friends tradition, were not averse to schism if it seemed necessary in order to preserve Friends' testimonies. They viewed the first group as compromisers, and derisively labeled them "Middleites." Philadelphia Yearly Meeting came in for particular scorn for allowing a Gurneyite party to continue in its midst. The more purist party came to be called "Primitive Friends" for their unbending desire to preserve the "ancient testimonies" of Friends. (For convenience, the unfortunate terms "Primitive" and "Middleite" will be used hereafter to distinguish these groups.)

A notable virtue of the Primitive and Otisite meetings was their refusal to enter into the bitter and degrading property disputes that typically marked divisions among Friends. These meetings were content to withdraw and attempt to start afresh, leaving behind without argument their former meetinghouses and even the names of their former Yearly Meetings.

Since Wilburite and Gurneyite Friends did not differ on most of the doctrines of the Christian faith, many have found their differences hard to understand. The Gurneyites themselves seem to have been perplexed at times: an Ohio Gurneyite said of the Wilburites in 1860, "No one can get any good reason for their bitterness out of them."5 A modern Friend, even one with Conservative sympathies, might have difficulty distinguishing between the Wilburite and Gurneyite Friends of the 1840s and 1850s. All were orthodox Christians, all upheld the traditional Friends' ways of worship and ministry, all continued to live the plain life. Gurneyite Friends quickly moved to set up the First Day and Bible School classes so strongly opposed by Wilburites, but otherwise there was little outward difference between them. Ann Branson, a minister in Ohio Yearly Meeting at the time of the separation, recognized this outward similarity and viewed it as one of the dangers of Gurneyism for Friends:

Gurneyism was a more specious snare to lay waste Quakerism, than ever Hicksism was. Hicksism is open infidelity, but Gurneyism is calculated to slide us off the foundation so imperceptibly that we shall not know it.[6]

Beginning in the 1860s, rapid changes in the Gurneyite world richly confirmed Wilburites' warnings of where Gurneyite doctrine would lead.

IOWA YEARLY MEETING. A revival meeting at Bear Creek Meeting in 1877 produced a separation in Bear Creek Quarterly Meeting that rapidly spread through the rest of Iowa Yearly Meeting. Thomas Hamm gives a vivid picture of this revival:

Benjamin B. Hiatt... called on all who wished to lead a new life to come to the front seats. About twenty people scrambled forward, some climbing over the benches - Friends who remained at their seats were visited there by others and had prayer groups form around them. Some prayed aloud, some wept, some broke out in anguished testimonies, some sang snatches of hymns. Horrified, conservative Friends began to move toward the doors of the meeting house. As they did, one elderly woman climbed upon a bench and spoke in meeting for the first and only time in her life: "The Society of Friends is dead. This has killed it."[4]

Conservative Friends formed a separate Bear Creek Quarterly Meeting in Fifth Month 1877. Thus the Yearly Meeting, held in Ninth Month 1877, received reports from two Bear Creek Quarterly Meetings. When the Yearly Meeting rejected the conservative body's report, conservative Friends withdrew and formed their own Yearly Meeting. Their opening minute summarizes the concerns of the conservatives of this period:

In consideration of many and various departures in Doctrine, Principle and Practice, brought into our beloved Society of late years by modern innovators, who have so revolutionized our ancient order in the Church, as to run into views and practices out of which our early Friends were led, and into a broader, and more self-pleasing and cross- shunning way than that marked out by our Saviour, and held to by our ancient Friends... And who have so approximated to the unregenerate world that we feel it incumbent upon us to bear testimony against all such degenerate innovations in order to maintain our ancient Doctrines, Principles and Practices, and sustain the Church for the purpose for which it was so peculiarly raised up.[5]

WILBURITE RECOGNITION. Ohio Yearly Meeting, which had not recognized any of the earlier Wilburite separations, was more welcoming in its attitude toward the new conservative Yearly Meetings. In 1881, the Yearly Meeting appointed a committee to consider "the situation of the remnants of Friends in various parts of the land." Members of the committee visited the new Yearly Meetings and in 1883 recommended that Iowa, Kansas and Western Yearly Meetings be acknowledged. The recommendation was "very fully united with" by the Yearly Meeting. In 1885, the Yearly Meeting united with the committee's recommendation that New England Yearly Meeting (the Kingite branch) and Canada Yearly Meetings also be recognized. Ann Branson was active on the committee, and her Journal for 1882 records:

I ventured to express in this committee my belief, that our Yearly Meeting ought to place on its records a Minute, stating that we as a Yearly Meeting had grievously erred in not having, many years ago, recognized officially the Smaller Body (so called) of New England, as the legitimate Yearly Meeting. That I believed it was human policy, and a fearful cringing spirit, that prevented us from doing our duty towards these Friends. And now, after a lapse of thirty-six years, they having become very much reduced, and somewhat scattered, no doubt in a great measure, owing to the indifferent treatment they have received from their brethren of Ohio and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings, some want to send a committee to see if they are in a condition to be acknowledged as a Yearly Meeting.[6]

The suggested apology was never made, but the Yearly Meeting's acceptance of New England Yearly Meeting along with the four new conservative Yearly Meetings was a belated acknowledgment of the Primitive position that the Yearly Meeting had rejected in the 1850s.

It is tempting to wonder whether early recognition of the smaller bodies of Wilburite Friends by Ohio and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings might have helped to bring about a stronger, more united, and more influential Wilburite branch of the Society of Friends. We might also wonder whether, if Orthodox Friends had not separated at all during this period, a conservative presence could have prevented the wholesale departures from Friends' practice and belief that emerged in the Revival period. These questions are intriguing but unanswerable.

**

CHANGING CUSTOMS. Throughout the twentieth century, many of the "ancient landmarks" that had distinguished Conservative Friends vanished. Some changes (such as the elimination of Friends' elementary schools) were driven by economic necessity; others (such as the abandonment of separate men's and women's business meetings) resulted from a deliberate decision that a practice had outlived its usefulness. In some cases (such as the abandonment of plain dress), change simply crept in over time without conscious choice.

At the beginning of the twentieth century plain dress was disappearing; by 1950, it was rare. In Ohio Yearly Meeting, which changed most slowly, the Query on "plainness of speech and apparel" was answered year after year with phrases such as "Plainness of speech and apparel, as recommended by the discipline, is much neglected."[5] The revised Book of Discipline approved in 1963 finally dropped all mention of plain dress and speech, substituting the Query "Do we observe simplicity in our manner of living, sincerity in speech, and modesty in apparel?[6] The great majority of Conservative Friends today dress simply and modestly, but are otherwise outwardly indistinguishable from their non-Conservative neighbors. For all but a few Conservative Friends, the plain speech has become an insider's language, used in the family and with other Conservative Friends, but not in conversation with the outside world.

Regular mid-week meetings for worship, held during the day on the fourth or fifth day of the week, were a powerful unifying force among traditional Friends. The effects of commerce and wage labor, along with increasing assimilation to the world, led to the decline of mid-week meeting as a general practice among Conservative Friends. A number of meetings still hold mid-week meetings for worship, but these are not as faithfully attended as First-day meetings.

NEW MEETINGS, NEW THEOLOGIES. A phenomenon unique to the twentieth century has been the proliferation of independent, "unprogrammed" meetings, most of them urban or associated with college campuses. These meetings were often founded by Friends living at a distance from an established meeting, but they typically attracted members who were new to Friends. The Civilian Public Service camps in World War II and the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s brought in newly convinced Friends with a strong concern for social action. The theology and spirituality of these meetings were strongly influenced by writers such as Rufus Jones and Howard Brinton, who characterized Quakerism as a form of Christian mysticism. Most meetings were liberal in theology, politics and ethics. In many, Christian profession was no longer seen as a condition of membership, and some began to assert, for the first time in the history of any Friends body, that Quakerism was not essentially a Christian faith. Some of these meetings remained independent and unaffiliated. Some joined existing Hicksite Yearly Meetings, while others formed entirely new Yearly Meetings.

In Iowa and North Carolina Yearly Meetings, this movement produced an influx of new meetings, which brought both new energy and a substantially more liberal orientation. It would be inaccurate to view this process simply as a liberal invasion: those who joined Conservative Yearly Meetings were attracted to what they found in Conservative Friends, and were influenced by them.

These meetings might best be described as "neo-Primitive" in their concern not to be united with "compromised" Yearly Meetings.”

Excerpts abridged from:

http://snowcamp.org/shocf/shocf.html

Edited by

Doug Hamilton

Quaker

Fairfield, Iowa

2011