Friends for Seventy-Five Years

The BULLETIN of Friends Historical Association Vol. 49Spring Number, 1960No. 1 FRIENDS FOR SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS By Howard H. Brinton * I have been asked to make observations on such parts of modern Quakerism as have come within my own experience. I consent to do this, but not without hesitation, for it requires too often the embarrassing use of the first person singular pronoun. In writing my own retrospect I can understand why Quaker Journals were never — with a very few exceptions and these are modern — published until after the death of the journalist. In spite of the valid reason for this practice, I shall attempt to give you a few extracts from a never-to-be-written Quaker Journal of today. In the course of my seventy-five years I have come in contact with all known and some unknown groups that use the name of Friends, or Quakers, in the United States, Canada, England, Europe, and Asia. Three main types of Friends emerged in America in the nineteenth century, Hicksite, Wilburite, and Gurneyite, to *Howard Brinton, author of Friends for 300 Years and other important studies in Quaker thought and history, celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday on Seventh Month 24, 1959- He was asked to speak on "Friends for Seventy-Five Years" at the Annual Meeting of Friends Historical Association, held at the Race Street Meetinghouse, Philadelphia, on Eleventh Month 30, 1959. 4 Bulletin of Friends Historical Association use names given them by others, names which I shall employ for the sake of brevity, though they were not used by themselves. In the twentieth century these three are criss-crossed with other lines of division, resulting in a very complex situation which I fear may give my paper an involved and controversial character. To observe the requisite brevity I shall confine my reminiscences to four outcroppings of contrary opinions in our religious society. In order to preserve a slight appearance of unity in this paper, though not among Friends, I shall interpret these as varieties of a single difference of attitude which has always been with us and always will be — the difference between a religion which is inwardly directed toward the Divine Spirit within man and a religion which is outwardly directed toward historical events, beliefs, church authority, and social service. To state my own position at the start, I believe that in the main Quakerism is inwardly directed, but not exclusively so, for the inward must be checked and saved from vagueness and extreme individualism by some degree of dependence on history, reason, the authority of the whole group, and the consequences of social concern. Today, when unity is the watchword, even where unity does not exist, it is considered bad form to talk about differences, but historians should not fear to attempt to understand the differences of the past. Perhaps they should also be honest enough to face differences in the present. First, I may say that I was myself a product of the two parts of our Society which separated in 1827. I shall say little about this separation, as it has been dealt with at length by Quaker historians. (I am sorry not to say more about Race Street in this Race Street building.) Second, I observed in my early years the remnants of the Wilburite-Gurneyite controversy in Philadelphia (Arch Street) Yearly Meeting. This I shall deal with at more length because I believe that Quaker historians have not adequately portrayed it. Our three most widely read Quaker historians who have dealt with our later as well as our earlier history, Rufus M. Jones, Allen C. Thomas, and Elbert Russell, were all members of the Five Years Meeting. In my opinion they were not sufficiently aware of the Wilburite character of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Arch Street). Third, my middle years witnessed the Friends for Seventy-five Years5 fundamentalist and modernist tendencies in the Five Years Meeting which created differences now as intense as ever in some areas with possibilities of new separations. And fourth, I have participated in the partial fusion of two tendencies existing in the new non-pastoral meetings in America, one the trend toward complete freedom, individualism, and independence (what...