THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN QUAKERISM

THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN QUAKERISM

Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907

By Thomas D. Hamm

This book was published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington and Indianapolis in 1988, comprising seven chapters.

Comment

Reading this book leads me to imagine more deeply how the Quakers in the New World got a series of ‘conflict’ in the internal side of this religious group. In spite of its small amount when compared to the other denominations’ followers, this religious group had several times experienced change. And surprisingly, this happened due to the trigger coming from the internal. Although the change or schism happened figured by the internal figures, this actually happened, as Hamm explicity states, because of the influence of the external factors, one of which was the presence of evangelicalism as well as pluralism. This book therefore confirms the information stated by Noll and Holifield upon how strong the influence of evangelicalism was in America. Concretely, the Orthodox Friends had changed their ‘tradition’ in accordance with the mainstream tradition in Christianity, and this fact simply happened by 1900. Finally, I would like to say that the theology can change in any era, depending on the demand, challange of the era. In this regard, theology is fully close to reasonableness, as Holified once said.

Quotations

James Baldwin’s reminiscences are important, not only for what they tell us about nineteenth century Quakerism, but also for what they say about the relationship between the Quaker subculture and the larger American culture. During the mid-nineteenth century a combination of internal tensions, socioeconomic change, and the influence of non-Quaker religious thought, especially evangelicalism, subtly and gradually laid the groundwork for a near-revolution that during the 1870s would sweep away nearly all of the marks of Quaker distinctiveness. By 1900 the overwhelming majority of American Friends were no longer part of a sect but, instead, were part of a religious movement that had achieved denominational status (p.xiii-xiv).

That vision first began to disintegrate during the 1820s as the unity of American Quakerism crimbled in a bitter schism that in many ways resembled the conflicts between evangelicals and liberals in the larger religious world (p.xiv)

In the 1830s Orthodox Friends in the United States set out on a course that brought them under the powerful influence of the dominant evangelical culture of the United States. Evangelical norms and values slowly permeated Orthodox Quakerism, often so gradually and so subtly that many Friends were not entirely conscious of what was taking place. The result was, nevertheles, another schism. Evangelical influences culminated during the 1870s, when a group of young Quaker ministers brought the revival methods of the second-experience holiness movement into the Society of Friends. The holiness revival poduced a new factionalism among Orthodox Quakers, who spent the years from 1875 to 1895 attempting to reconcile those innovations with Quaker tradition. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most American Friends had become absorbed in the same questions of modernism and incipient fundamentalism that were troubling other Protestants. (p.xiv).

The aims of this study are to bring a new understanding of the diversity and complexity of American Quaker history; to shed new light on the background of Quaker benevolence and humanitarianism as well as to make intelligible a century of doctrinal debates that might otherwise leave the uninitiated mystified; and, above all, to show that nineteenth century Quaker history was in large part a series of interactions between American Friends and the larger political, social, and especially religious world. The reaction of Friends to those interactions and their influence determined the course of Quakerism (p. xv).

...[E]vangelicalism was also deeply influencing nonevangelical traditions and pulling them closer to the religious center. Orthodox Quakerism during the nineteenth century provides a striking example of that process (p.xv).

Perhaps no religious group in the nineteenth centurt examplifies that process so well as othodox Friends. The Society of Friends arose in seventeenth-century as a protest against the dominant religious culture of its day, fortifying itself not only behind a wall of separation from the world but also with doctrinal beliefs that set Quakers apart from nearly all other Protestants. (p.xvi)

During the eighteenth century American Friends underwent a process of internal reformation that strengthened those barricades and enlightened the Quaker sense of separateness and peculiarity. During the nineteenth century, however, in response to what a majority perceived as the invasion of outside heresies in the teachings of the minister Elias Hicks, Orthodox Friends reacted in a very different way. Their defense against contamination moved them significantly closer to the American religious mainstream (p.xvi).

In complex series of events, often intended to foster distinctive Quaker testimonies or to return to first principles, Quakers came to interpret their heritage in a way that reflected evangelical norms. This, in turn, set the foundation for the near-revolution of the 1870s, when teachings taken from the interdenominational holiness movement transformed the society (p.xvi).

By 1900, most members of the Society of Friends in the United States had moved closer to the American religious mainstream, but at the price of a splintering that resulted in an increasing diversity within American Quakerism that refected the larger religious world. Orthodox Quakers offer a remarkable example of the subtle means by which a dominant culture draws outgroups under its influence and closer to the mainstream (p.xvi).

The goal of Quaker religious life thus became to allow the seed of Christ, the Inner Light, to lead believers gradually into salvation. Friends sought not a crisis experience of a single new birth but gradual growth into holiness (p. 2).

The Quaker conception of baptism differed radically from that of most Christians. George Fox and the early Friends had rejected water baptism (along with the Lord’s Supper) as one of the Jewish ceremonies that the coming of Christ had superseded. The true gospel baptism, Foc had argued, was the baptism of the “Holy Ghost and with fire”. Friends saw that baptism as a peculiar visitation of God inwardly experienced to help with growth into holiness (p. 4).

Just Friends sought absolute solitude on occasion, they also sought to hedge themselves against the encroachments of the world in a variety of other ways. The hedges eventually hardened into a system of mores that Friends called the plain life. Carried forward from the seventeenth century, many customs of the plain life, such as the use of thee and thou instead of you in the second-person singular, the peculiar dress, and the refusal to remove hats, to use titles, and to take oaths, had their origins in principles based on Scripture (p. 5).

By 1800 the plain life had come to serve as a barrier around Friends, one that helped to keep them separate from the world and its distractions. Peculiar dress and speech gave Friends a reputation for being odd and kept them out of popular favor. Thus Friends avoided invitations and enticements that might involve them with the world (p. 5)

The meeting for worship was a logical outgrowth of the Quaker conception of religious life. Its medium was silence, ‘the most sublime part of our religious life’, as one enthusiastic Friend put it. Silence was in part the absence of all noise, since no one was to do anything in a meeting for worship without the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit (p.7).

The relationship between evangelicalism and Orthodox Quakerism has been at the center of historical debate for decades now. Some scholars have contended that an “evangelical invasion” of the society began early in the nineteenth century and that ‘invasion’ explains the reaction of orthodox friends to the ministry of Elias Hicks (p.20).

Written by: Dr. H. Nuriadi Sayip