I could probably start a column of Quaker pet peeve of the day. I especially get bent out of shape with misremembered history. One peeve is the myth that Quaker clearness committees are ancient. These committees are typically convened for Friends who are facing a major life decision, like marriage or a career. Parker Palmer is one of the most well-known practitioners of this and gives the best description:
For people who have experienced this dilemma, I want to describe a method invented by the Quakers, a method that protects individual identity and integrity while drawing on the wisdom of other people. It is called a “Clearness Committee.” If that name sounds like it is from the sixties, it is — the 1660’s!
While it’s true that you can see references to “being clear” in writings by George Fox and William Penn around issues of early Quaker marriages, what they’re describing is not a spiritual process but a checklist item. By law you could only get married in England under the auspicious of the Church of England. Quakers were one of the groups rebelling against that. This meant they had to perform some of the functions typically handled by clergy – and nowadays by the state. One checklist item: make sure neither person in the couple is already married or has children. That’s primarily what they meant they asked whether a couple was cleared for marriage (Mark Wutka has found a great reference in Samuel Bownas that implies that the practice also included checking with the bride and groom’s parents).
One reason I can be so obnoxiously definitive about my opinions is because I have the Friends Journal archives on my laptop. I can do an instant keyword search for “clearness committee” on every issue from 1955 to 2018. The phrase doesn’t appear in any issue until 1969. That article is by Jennifer Haines and Deborah Haines. Here it is, the debut of the concept of the Quaker clearness committee:
We were challenged repeatedly to test our lives against our beliefs. We labored long over concerns raised by our belief in the way of peace. We agreed to urge that each Monthly Meeting, through a clearness committee or other committees, take the responsibility for working through with Friends the tensions raised in their lives by the Quaker peace testimony. To this committee could be brought problems created by draft or employment in institutions implicated with the military and the question of whether applicants for membership who find themselves in opposition to the peace testimony should be accepted.
The context suggests it was an outgrowth of the new practice of worship sharing. I did do a deep dive on that a few years ago in a piece that was also based on Friends Journal archives. Deborah Haines continued to be very involved in Friends General Conference and I worked with her when I was FGC’s Advancement and Outreach coordinator and she the committee clerk.
In the early 1970s the references to clearness committees continued to focus on discernment of antiwar activities. Within a few years it was extended to preparation for marriages. A notice from 1982 gives a good summary of its uses then:
Meetings for clearness, for friends unfamiliar with the term, are composed of people who meet by request with persons seeking clarity in an important life decision — marriage, separation, divorce, adoption, resolution of family differences, a job change, etc.
Notably absent in this list is the process for new member applications. The first use of the term for this process in the FJ archives came in 1989! Why did it take twenty years for the concept to be applied here?
Why does it matter that this isn’t an ancient practice? A few things: one is that is nice to acknowledge that our tradition is a living, breathing one and that it can and does evolve. The clearness committee is a great innovation. Decoupling it from ancient Quakerism also makes it more easily adaptable for non-Quaker contexts.
Worship sharing came out of the longtime work of Rachel Davis DuBois. I would argue that she is one of the most important Quakers of the twentieth century. What, you haven’t heard of her? Exactly: most of the most influential Friends that came out of the Hicksite tradition in the twentieth century didn’t develop the cult of personalities you see with Orthodox Friends like Rufus Jones and Howard Brinton. It’s a shame, because DuBois probably has more influence in our day-to-day Quaker practice than either of them.
Other links: This has turned into an awesome thread on Facebook (it’s public so jump in!). There was also a good discussion on worship sharing on QuakerQuaker a few years ago: When did Quakers start worship sharing? Back in 2003, Deborah Haines wrote about Rachel Davis DuBois for FGConnections, the awesome magazine that Barbara Hirshkowitz used to produce for FGC. I posted it online then, which is why I remember it; Archive.org saved it, which is why I can link to it.
Caveats: Yes there were Quaker processes before this. On Facebook Bill Samuel quotes the 1806 Faith and Practice on the membership process and argues it’s describing a clearness committee. I’d be very surprised if the 1812 process had anywhere near the same tone as the modern-day clearness or even shared much in the way of the philosophical underpinning. I decided to pop over to Thomas Clarkson’s 1806 A Portrait of Quakerism (discussed here) to see how he described the membership application process. I often find him useful, as he avoids Quaker terminology and our somewhat unhelpful way of understating things back then to give a useful snapshot of conditions on the ground. In three volumes I can’t find him talking about new members at all. I’m wondering if entry into the Society of Friends was more theoretical than actual back then, so unusual that Clarkson didn’t even think about.
