"Wicked Hard to Herd Up": Independent Meetings and the Friends Fellowship Council

"Wicked Hard to Herd Up": Independent Meetings and the Friends Fellowship Council1 Elizabeth Cazden* In the views ofRufus Jones, Thomas Kelly, and other Quakervisionaries of the 1920s and 30s, the ideal Quaker meeting would be a holy spiritual fellowship hamperedby as little organizational apparatus as possible.2 The Utopian vision of an invisible spiritual fellowship is, however, a different question from the practical institutional arrangements needed to link togetherhundreds oflocal Friends meetings aroundthe world. The emergence ofindependent meetings, and the role ofthe American Friends Fellowship Council in shaping, nurturing, andrecognizing them, point outthe difficulties and opportunities presented by this tension. First, some definitions are in order. An "independent meeting" is a local Friends group that has no structural affiliation with any Yearly Meeting or Yearly Meeting-equivalent. There were also in the 1930s, and still are, "united meetings," which belong to more than one Yearly Meeting. Although Friends sometimes refer to them in one breath, they are sufficiently distinct to warrant separate treatment, and this paper is limited to the independent meetings. In the "classical" pattern for establishing a new Quaker meeting, one beginswithanexistingmonthlymeeting,whichcouldbecalled"OldTowne." Some ofits members move to "NewTowne." They request permission from OldTowne Monthly Meeting to hold meetings for worship in the new location, sometimes called an "allowed" or "indulged" meeting. Ifthe new group thrives, it can then ask its parent meeting for recognition as a Preparative or Monthly Meeting. If the Friends in NewTowne belong to more than one monthly meeting, they were supposed to obtain permission from all ofthose meetings.3 It is unclear whether these rules were generally honoredduringthe eighteenthandnineteenthcenturies, orwhethertherules needed to be restated periodically because people kept disregarding them. And ifone's home monthly meeting refused to recognize the new meeting (as, for example, Iowa Friends refused to recognize the College Park MeetingledbyJoelandHannahBeaninCalifornia), intheorythenewgroup was supposed to refrain from meeting, or at least refrain from calling itself a Quakermeeting forworship. The Beans ofcourse keptmeeting, publicly, and started a revolution in Quaker practice. In the 1920s yearly meetings ofall branches were dwindling in member- * Elizabeth Cazden is a lawyer and independent scholar based in Manchester, New Hampshire. She is currently working on Rufus Jones and on the history ofFriends in Cuba. Quaker History ship and somewhat in despair. But there were also new signs of life, often on their margins. With increased geographic mobility, particularly for more affluent and highly educated Friends, many meetings noted increased numbers of non-resident members, and wondered how to address their needs. Migrations particularly from rural to urban areas and college towns brought together Friends from various yearly meetings in cities and college communities.4 The shared crisis of the Great War and conscription, relief work in Europe, the All-Friends Conference of 1 920, and Young Friends conferences brought leading Friends from all branches together with a renewed vision of the message and appeal of Quakerism. Cross-branch friendships and marriages increased dramatically. The walls that had separated the conservative, General Conference, and Five Years Meeting circles of correspondence looked increasingly vulnerable and, to many Friends, pointless. Beginning before the turn of the century, Friends living apart from the meetings to which they belonged found ways to gather periodically for unprogrammed worship, social fellowship, and occasional speakers. These informal groups depended on a core ofone person, a hospitable couple, or a few persons, and on a convenient meeting place, either in someone's home or in a college or school building. They were somewhat fragile; a number of the groups met for a period of time and then stopped when a key person moved away. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, a small group of Friendsmetregularly forunprogrammedworship for about eighteenmonths in 1899-1900, in the home of a young Philadelphia couple, Alfred and Eleanor Garrett. The group also included a family from New England Yearly Meeting (Wilburite), now living in Boston, and a handful of members of Boston Monthly Meeting (Five Years Meeting). After the Garretts moved back to Philadelphia, however, the group had difficulty finding other suitable quarters, and ceased meeting.5 In the Connecticut Valley, an isolated member ofthe Yearly Meeting of Friends for New England (Five Years Meeting) periodically hosted gatherings to which...