"The Other Branch:" London Yearly Meeting and the Hicksites, 1827-1912 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES51 "The Other Branch:" London Yearly Meeting and the Hicksites, 1827-1912 By Edwin B. Bronner. London: Friends Historical Society, 1975. Pp. ix, 67. $3.00. In this small volume, published as a Supplement to the Journal of die Friends Historical Society, Edwin B. Bronner has traced the slowly changing attitudes of English Friends and of London Yearly Meeting toward the large group of Friends known as Hicksites. The substance of the book was given as a presidential address to the Society in London and later to the Friends Historical Association in Philadelphia. When the Great Separation took place in 1827-28, London Yearly Meeting had become deeply tinged with Evangelicalism. Hence it saw the division among American Friends as one between adherents of Christian and Quaker orthodoxy and persons affected by deistic and unitarian tendencies . The Yearly Meeting therefore decided to maintain correspondence exclusively with the meetings which it recognized as "orthodox" and to refuse religious fellowship with those whom it regarded as Separatists and upholders of "antichristian doctrines." The Hicksites attempted to defend themselves, asserting that they were good Quakers and victims of misunderstanding and ecclesiastical oppression, but their protests were disregarded and they were effectively ostracized. The leaders of London Yearly Meeting doubtless supposed that the Hicksites would eventually wither away, just as the Keithians and other schismatics had done, but this did not happen. The "Hicksite" Yearly Meetings in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York were much larger dian the corresponding "Orthodox" meetings and gave no sign of losing strength. From time to time English Quakers visiting in America came in contact with Hicksites and found them much like other Friends. When a second series of separations took place among Orthodox Friends in the middle and latter part of the century, London Yearly Meeting sided with the Gurneyite or Progressive party and disavowed the Wilburites or Conservatives. But many English Friends were deeply disturbed by the revivalistic practices of these "Orthodox" Friends in the Midwest and the growth of the pastoral system in their meetings. They sympathized with the Wilburites and Conservatives who protested against these developments, and increasingly they came to realize that the Hicksites too upheld familiar Quaker practices and testimonies. This volume provides many fascinating examples of diese slowly changing attitudes. But it was one thing for individual Friends to change dieir attitudes; it was quite another for London Yearly Meeting to change its official policies. These actions came much more slowly and required great changes in the Yearly Meeting itself. This transformation came in the 1890's and the early years of the present century, as Evangelicalism gradually gave way to more liberal theological viewpoints, greater concern with social issues, and wider tolerance of differences within the Society of Friends. Edwin Bronner tells the whole story, and he tells it extremely well. Swarthmore, Pa.John M. Moore ...