In a recent Red­dit thread, an ex-Catholic inter­est­ed in Friends asked whether the Quak­er­S­peak video “9 Core Quak­er Beliefs” was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Friends. Long­time Philadel­phia Friends might rec­og­nize that title as part of Arthur Larrabee’s long­time work to com­pile some agreed-upon list of Quak­er beliefs that we can use in out­reach and messaging.

But to some­one with­out con­text, he’s just some schmoe on YouTube. 

Quak­erism is well-known for being creed­less. It’s easy to argue that it’s any­thing you want it to be. Plen­ty of peo­ple are drawn more to our com­mu­ni­ty than to the his­toric beliefs of Friends. At one point, not that long ago even, one could point to Robert Bar­clay’s Apol­o­gy as a the­o­log­i­cal state­ment accept­ed by most Friends. No longer. Unpro­grammed Friends have large­ly giv­en up even on the elders who once tried to main­tain ortho­doxy (some­times over­ly so and often to ill effect). Nowa­days “What do Quak­ers Believe?” eas­i­ly morphs into “What Do I Believe?”

In the Lib­er­al U.S. Quak­er world it used to be that you could legit­imize some hith­er­to out­sider belief by start­ing a web­site, pre­sent­ing it as a work­shop at a few suc­ces­sive FGC Gath­er­ings, and get­ting an arti­cle pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal. Nowa­days a pop­u­lar YouTu­ber like Jes­si­ca Kellgren-Fozard will get much more reach than any insti­tu­tion­al out­let: her 2018 video Oh God… Let’s Talk About My Reli­gion has got­ten 530k views and 3,885 com­ments. Is she the most learned rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Quak­erism? A record­ed min­is­ter in her year­ly meet­ing? Did she vet her views with her meet­ing before post­ing the video, as Friends used to have to vet books pre-publication? No, no, and no, but she’s done a lot to get us out there in front of seek­ers and is, de fac­to, a rec­og­nized author­i­ty on Friends to hun­dreds of thou­sands of people.

Art Larrabee, of the Quak­er­S­peak video (cur­rent­ly at 241k views for those keep­ing score), is an inter­est­ing coun­ter­point. He’s held a vari­ety of lead­er­ship posi­tions among Philadel­phia Friends and has been a sought-after work­shop leader. Art start­ed his list of core beliefs while he was the chief exec­u­tive of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. In this role, he was often called on to be a spokesper­son for Lib­er­al Friends. He has writ­ten about the back­ground of this list:

Sev­er­al years ago, way opened for me to share with PYM’s Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee a life-long frus­tra­tion that I could not artic­u­late the core beliefs of our faith com­mu­ni­ty with any con­fi­dence that what I might say would be shared by oth­ers. At the time, I was feel­ing let down by my faith com­mu­ni­ty and that our fail­ure to name col­lec­tive­ly held, core beliefs con­tributed to a loss of ener­gy among us. I also felt that the absence of a state­ment of core beliefs inhib­it­ed our abil­i­ty to eas­i­ly and effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate to oth­ers about our Quak­er faith. In my pro­fes­sion­al life before becom­ing Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, I some­times found myself want­i­ng to invite friends in law and busi­ness to come to meet­ing for wor­ship but I could nev­er quite fig­ure out what I could say with any con­fi­dence when asked, “What do Quak­ers believe?” What was I invit­ing them to? Yes, I could try to say what I believed, but I could not tell them what we believed as a com­mu­ni­ty. I want­ed some­thing I could hand to those I thought might be inter­est­ed and say, “This is what’s at the core of our faith. There is more to Quak­erism than this, but this is a place to begin.”

Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee invit­ed me to try my hand at draft­ing such a state­ment and on sev­er­al occa­sions they have seen pri­or ver­sions of what I am pre­sent­ing today. I have shared ear­li­er ver­sions of this work with two quar­ter­ly meet­ings, three or four month­ly meet­ings, the res­i­dents of a retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty and Inter­im Meet­ing. With each pre­sen­ta­tion, sug­ges­tions have been made which have found their way into the document.

The results in a very thought­ful, threshed-out list. It might be the most care­ful dis­til­la­tion since Howard Brin­ton dashed out Friends for 300 Years in 1952. And yet: as far as I know, the nine beliefs list was nev­er for­mal­ly adopt­ed by any Quak­er body. Years lat­er, it’s still only a list of what Art Larrabee believes oth­er Friends believe. His author­i­ty is the respect he has, which is real­ly not all that dif­fer­ent than the source of author­i­ty for a pop­u­lar YouTu­ber. In some future revi­sion of Faith and Prac­tice both Larrabee and Kellgren-Fozard is sure to be quot­ed in the extracts sec­tion. But even there, their words will be pre­sent­ed as inter­est­ing view­points, not canon­i­cal statements.

It’s a hell of a way to run a reli­gion, per­haps, but it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing cul­ture we’ve devel­oped to com­pen­sate for our rejec­tion of creeds.