Quakers in Conflict, The Hicksite Reformation (review)

56Quaker History Quakers in Conflict, The Hicksite Reformation. By H. Larry Ingle. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. 310 pp. $29.95. Quakers in Conflict. The very words seem to be an oxymoron; and yet, as the dust jacket to H. Larry Ingle's book proclaims, the Hicksite reformation was "the single most influential development in American Quaker history." The Hicksite controversy offers a compelling example of the basic tension within Protestant Christianity between the individual's right to a personal faith and the church's need for doctrinal uniformity. The controversy was played out against the backdrop of rapid social changes and fast-paced economic development . Ingle's work draws on earlier studies of the Hicksite separation by Rufus Jones, J. William Frost, Robert W. Doherty, and Bliss Forbush. Like Frost, Ingle concentrates upon the dichotomies of outwardness vs. inwardness, scripture vs. the Inner Light, city vs. countryside, progressive capitalism vs. the traditional economic order, and, most significantly, on the issue of authority within the structure of the Quaker religious order. Ingle has divided his work into three parts: 1) the background to the separation up to 1819; 2) the internal struggle within the Society of Friends for control over doctrine between 1819 and 1827; and 3) the playing out of the separation within American Quaker Meetings following the split of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1827. His analysis calls attention to the personal characteristics of those men and women whose beliefs and actions shaped the rise and outcome of the controversy. In brief and cogent biographies he introduces such important figures as Jonathan Evans, the Philadelphia lumber merchant whom Ingle calls "the man at the center of orthodox power (p. 17), and Elias Hicks, the tall Long Island farmer who spoke like a latter day prophet (p.41). Ingle provides more detail on the historical events associated with the separation than have previous writers. He describes the growing evangelical concerns that infused the religious sensibilities of the literate, urban, elitist, economically progressive group of Quaker elders who controlled the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings. To this group's chagrin, the rural, non-elite majority in the Society declined to follow their leaders into evangelicalism. Instead, the majority clung the more tightly to what they saw as Quakers' unique contribution to Protestant thought, the individual's direct experience of the vitality of God through the Inward Light. Ingle calls this latter group "reformers" because they wished to restore the early character of the Society. It was a small group of Hicks's supporters in Wilmington, Delaware, who shaped reform sentiment into a distinct movement and developed tactics to counter the opposition of the Philadelphia elders. In 1821 Benjamin Ferris, one of the Wilmington reformers, writing under the pen name "Amicus," entered into an epistolary newspaper duel on theological issues in a Wilmington newspaper with a local Presbyterian minister who signed his letters "Paul." The views expressed by Amicus in the name of the Society of Friends annoyed the elders in Philadelphia and led through a succession of steps to the separation in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1827. In the period that followed, Quakers in New York, Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and elsewhere experienced their own regional separations, the western branches siding with the Orthodox, the eastern branches leaning more to the reformers. Quakers in Conflict is a well-written, clearly conceived, detailed account of the upheaval that Rufus Jones once called "the greatest tragedy of Quaker Book Reviews57 history" (The Later Periods of Quakerism, v. 1, 435). It is an excellent piece of scholarship when viewed from within the confines of Quaker history. But it will not occupy a major place among the growing body of historical and sociological scholarship that is seeking to interpret the religious enthusiasms of the 1820's within a broader social context. The book's strengths are narrative rather than analytical. Ingle is familiar with interpretive problems left unresolved by earlier scholars, but he has chosen not to attempt to resolve them. On one issue that has wider implications beyond Quakerism, Ingle notes that young people were particularly receptive to Elias Hicks's preaching. How can this be explained if Hicks is interpreted as harking back to...