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Allen’s Neck Friends
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Some Thoughts on the sort of Quaker Meeting We Are
Here are some of the characteristics of New England programmed meetings like Allen’s Neck: We are not all the same (and we are delighted by that fact); we are Christian Universalists (not just tolerant but accepting and welcoming); we welcome gays and lesbians; we are hesitant but struggling with the peace testimony; we are a mixture of liberals and conservatives, of curmudgeons and radicals drawn to Quaker silent waiting worship and programmed worship. Devotional practice tends to outweigh doctrinal considerations. I expect that if we put the Richmond Declaration from the late 1800’s on the Monthly Meeting agenda for approval, the conversation would be more difficult and upsetting than a conversation about same-sex marriage.New England is the place where in the early 1800’s a Friend named Wilbur from North Kingston, Rhode Island followed J. J. Gurney around New England protesting Gurney’s Church of England induced attempts to introduce Sunday School and Bible Study into Friend’s practice. Gurney was successful but 500 Friends followed Wilbur and split from the New England Yearly Meeting. The two yearly meetings were not reunited until the 1940’s. Wilbur wanted silent worship to be the door to the Scriptures and the inward teacher to be the guide not some Sunday School curriculum.
Here is what Rufus Jones has to say in The Trail of Life in the Middle Years.
I quote:
| The most striking single feature of the birth of Quakerism in the seventeenth Century has been its revolt from Calvinist theology. At every point George Fox broke with that system of doctrine. He boldly called the statements of his time man made notions, and he thought of the entire doctrinal structure as a new attempt at Babel-building, a new ladder to reach heaven. Fox proposed a way of life in the spirit to take the place of these complicated ladders of doctrine which seemed to him to be based not on experience but on texts and logic. |
Nonetheless it was Calvin, not Fox who was dominant, even among Quakers in America in 1894.
The Declaration of Faith, drawn up at the Richmond Conference in 1887 is strongly Calvinistic both in fiber and color and it is far removed in tone and quality from the spiritual outlook of the first Friends. (The trail of Life in the Middle Years, Rufus Jones, pp 56-57)
Jones goes on to point out some of the Revivalist tendencies that entered mid-western Friends culture in the 1870’s and 1880’s The increased emphasis on the magic of sound phrases and on literalism in the interpretation of Scripture.
We have mid-western Quaker proclivities marinated in New England sensibilities, punctuated with Wilbur and Gurney.
Peter| Be still and cool |
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