"How Blessed It Is for the Sisters to Meet": Historical Roots of the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference

"How Blessed It Is for the Sisters to Meet": Historical Roots ofthe Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference Pamela Calvert* "Friends have no creeds to provide an anchor and guideline for their life together ; therefore, they keep their traditions alive by telling their story over and over again, which provides a reference point that is equivalent to the creeds for many denominations. " —Wilmer Cooper1 In 1985, two women met on the road. Geographically, they were neighbors in Oregon, but theologically they were from distant extremities oftheir shared Quaker tradition. Overcoming initial resistance and stereotypes , they found pleasure and enlightenment in one another's company, and when they returned to their homes they convened a small group of women to meet and share their spiritual journeys together. It took time for trust to form—there were nearly two centuries of bitter schisms among Friends to overcome—but they persevered. In time, they saw the value that this encounter might have for larger numbers of Quaker women. The first regional Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference took place in 1995, the fourth in 2002. Remarkably for an ecumenical Quaker gathering, but not without careful planning, it draws equal representation from liberal and evangelical Friends.2 Most of the blame, or credit, for Friends' estrangement in the west is generally placed at Joel Bean's door. Western liberal Friends may even call themselves "Beanite," as a regional refinement to the older eastern "Hicksite" tradition. This is at best a half-truth. Bean was certainly no Hicksite, and western liberal Friends are correct in distinguishing their historical origins from that tradition. They owe their polity and, for Bay Area Friends, their worship style to Bean's arrival here in 1882. However, the common beliefs and assumptions described in the Faith & Practice books of the western liberal yearly meetings would in certain respects be entirely alien to their "founding father." At the other extreme, evangelical Friends in the Northwest are scarcely more faithful to the spirit in which their community was first conceived by William Hobson. Although a willing participant in the early Holiness revivals embraced by Orthodox Friends, Hobson was in many ways very traditional, adamantly opposed to innovations such as paid pastors and congregational singing. In fact, Bean *Pamela Calvert is a member of Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting and an attender at Berkeley Friends Church. She is a Ph.D. student at Graduate Theological Union. 20Quaker History and Hobson had far more in common than they had differences. This may be a rather surprising notion to western Friends accustomed to thinking of one another in binary terms. To understand the chasm the women in Oregon were called to cross, we need to travel backward almost two centuries, and traverse three thousand miles. This article delineates the common Quaker world ofthe two founders, and shows when and how their paths diverged in the crucible ofrevivalism in late 19th century Iowa. It then maps out the development of the faith communities they founded—moving inexorably farther apart in response to disparate cultural influences, and resisting periodic efforts at "unity" in the wider Society ofFriends. Finally we arrive at that meeting on the road, which I suggest is a women's "borderland." Western Quaker History Although Friends have elevated denominational history to a virtual mania, there is still very little written on the west. The four major booklengthtreatments —David Le Shana's Quakers in California, Ralph Beebe's A Garden ofthe Lord, Errol Elliott's Quakers on the American Frontier, and Myron Goldsmith's dissertation William Hobson and the Founding of Quakerism in the Pacific Northwest—arose from the western evangelical Quaker tradition, were written in the 1960s, and each drew upon the prior works as source material, by and large embracing a romantic view of frontier exceptionalism in explaining the transformation wrought by Holiness revivalism in the 1860-7Os. This quote from Elliott is representative: "Friends were in an unmade land. ... In the main, little was given to them; they had to make it, from the tools they used to the houses they built and the farms they tilled. It would be strange indeed ifthey had not developed some spiritual innovations to meet...