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.” 

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 the younger lib­er­als and man­aged to stay engaged and keep them with­in the fold. In the Unit­ed States, these same ten­den­cies toward first evan­gel­i­cal and then lib­er­al the­olo­gies both result­ed in schisms, many of which still divide Friends here. 

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 ear­li­er he was nom­i­nat­ed to be the year­ly meet­ing clerk. This was a non-starter for a mem­ber church that 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 posi­tion it should for any. But the year­ly meet­ing want­ed him and knew he’d be good in lead­er­ship and found a way to make it work and he cheer­ful­ly accept­ed 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 woudn’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 an insis­tence of a clerk sta­tus. 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