Gra­ham Tay­lor with a well-cited arti­cle on the proto-socialism of ear­ly Friends. There’s a bit of anachro­nis­tic think­ing going on here, which he admits to. But it’s also the case that a lot of Quak­er his­to­ry is viewed through the lens of lat­er Quak­ers and often ignores what was hap­pen­ing out­side of Quak­erism at the time. This can lead to bad his­to­ries. I’m not sure I buy some of Tay­lor’s argu­ments but it’s a good exer­cise and Fox cer­tain­ly did talk about eco­nom­ics as part of his call for justice.

George Fox – The First Quak­er Socialist? 

by Gra­ham Tay­lor. What fol­lows is the lec­ture I deliv­ered to the Quak­er Social­ist Soci­ety on 04 November,…

Quak­er Social­ist Society 

Decem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal is online and looks at “Spir­i­tu­al Opti­mism vs. Spir­i­tu­al Pes­simism.” I wrote the open­ing col­umn this month and explained why I want­ed to see Quak­ers tack­le this. It seems to me that hope and pes­simism are atti­tudes that tran­scend typ­i­cal reli­gious and polit­i­cal divi­sions. Pick a top­ic or dis­sect a social group and you can usu­al­ly find among them peo­ple who are undaunt­ed by the chal­lenges ahead and oth­ers wor­ried to the point of paral­y­sis. Our reac­tions to Covid these past five years have exposed these fault lines, as is our respons­es to the recent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. I wrote:

Has there ever been an age in human his­to­ry in which we could be pure­ly opti­mistic or pure­ly pes­simistic? Quak­er founder George Fox wrote that his min­istry arose “when all my hopes in [preach­ers and expe­ri­enced peo­ple] were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could tell what to do.” He famous­ly found inspi­ra­tion, guid­ance, and courage in “one, even Christ Jesus,” who could speak to his con­di­tion. What keeps us going today in a world always ready to implode or blossom?

Where Do We Find Our Hope? 

Explore how Quak­er prin­ci­ples inspire hope, action, and resilience in times of cli­mate cri­sis and social upheaval, balancing…

Friends Journal 

I very occa­sion­al­ly do a book review for the mag­a­zine. My col­league Gail thought I might be inter­est­ed in this biog­ra­phy of the longest-serving edi­tor of our British coun­ter­part, The Friend, so I reviewed A Friend in Deed: The Life of Hen­ry Stan­ley New­man.

The part of Hen­ry Stan­ley New­man’s life that I found most fas­ci­nat­ing was his generation’s abil­i­ty to bend tech­ni­cal­i­ties almost to the break­ing point in order to main­tain for­mal uni­ty. As a young man, he rebelled against the stodgy and insu­lar Quak­erism of his upbring­ing and found a way to cre­ate a par­al­lel spir­i­tu­al life based on Evan­gel­i­cal prin­ci­ples. In mid­dle life, estab­lished and respect­ed, he faced chal­lenges from a ris­ing young Lib­er­al fac­tion and man­aged to stay engaged enough to keep them with­in the fold of main­stream British Quak­erism. In the Unit­ed States, these same shifts toward first evan­gel­i­cal and then lib­er­al the­olo­gies result­ed in schisms, many of which still divide Friends.

Almost twen­ty years ago I vis­it­ed a small Mid­west­ern U.S. year­ly meet­ing that real­ly felt like a fam­i­ly, both in its bonds and its dys­func­tions. I liked it. One of the most respect­ed mem­bers was gay and at some point in ear­li­er ses­sions he had been nom­i­nat­ed to be the year­ly meet­ing clerk. This was a non-starter for a mem­ber church that was also affil­i­at­ed with an Evan­gel­i­cal year­ly meet­ing. After some back and forth he was was approved as an assis­tant clerk, a solu­tion every­one could live with. Log­i­cal­ly it makes absolute­ly no sense — if gay­ness pre­cludes one from one year­ly meet­ing lead­er­ship posi­tion it should pre­clude them from any. But the year­ly meet­ing want­ed him and found a way to make it work and he cheer­ful­ly accept­ed the log­i­cal irony of the sit­u­a­tion. (The sit­u­a­tion didn’t last and the dual-affiliated meet­ing even­tu­al­ly had to make a choice and dis­af­fil­i­ate from one of its year­ly meetings.)

There’s an impulse toward puri­ty that wouldn’t have allowed these kinds of nego­ti­at­ed com­pro­mis­es. A young New­man, start­ing Evan­gel­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions left and right that were nom­i­nal­ly out­side of Quak­er struc­ture but full of Quak­ers, would have been dis­owned. The Mid­west year­ly meet­ing would have splin­tered over the Lib­er­al’s insis­tence of a clerk sta­tus or the Evan­gel­i­cal’s insis­tence on no sta­tus. Don’t get me wrong, I cer­tain­ly under­stand puri­ty: some­times we need to make a stand. But some­times it’s more impor­tant to be a log­i­cal­ly incon­sis­tent fam­i­ly than to be alone in our cor­rect­ness. Hen­ry Stan­ley Newman’s com­pro­mis­es is an inter­est­ing mod­el for us, still.

REVIEWED: A Friend in Deed: The Life of Hen­ry Stan­ley Newman 

Mag­gie Waldman’s biog­ra­phy of Hen­ry Stan­ley New­man reveals how his pas­sion for edu­ca­tion and mis­sion­ary work helped shape…

Friends Journal