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.

I had a few min­utes before wor­ship at Crop­well Meet­ing this morn­ing and so turned to the book­case — a place you’ll often find me in in-between times at church­es of all sorts. There was a slim, dark vol­ume with no dis­cernible title on the spine, a mys­tery book. I pulled it out and it was a 1935 copy of Philadel­phia Faith and Prac­tice.

On the inside-front cov­er was the name of its orig­i­nal own­er, who had a sur­name famil­iar to any­one who has wan­dered the grave­yard out front. Near the begin­ning was a his­to­ry of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing which abrupt­ly end­ed in the ear­ly 1800s, just before the Great Schism. It’s as if his­to­ry end­ed there. Only the pub­li­ca­tion address let on to those in the know that this was the Ortho­dox Year­ly Meeting.

As I start­ed read­ing pas­sages I was struck by how well writ­ten it is. I don’t know why that should be sur­pris­ing as Philadel­phia Ortho­dox had Friends like Rufus Jones, Thomas Kel­ly, and Howard Brin­ton. I guess I wasn’t expect­ing the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion to be free of stilt­ed nine­teenth cen­tu­ry prose.

Here’s a pas­sage from the begin­ning of its “Wor­ship and Min­istry” sec­tion that spoke to me:

Our con­cep­tion of wor­ship is based on a deep-seated faith that God is Spir­it, as Christ taught at Jacob’s well, and that man, as spir­it, can respond to Him and enter into direct com­mu­nion and fel­low­ship with Him. This faith in the near­ness of God as Spir­it sprang out of a fresh and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of God in the lives of George Fox and the ear­ly Friends. They felt that they found Him as they walked in the fields or as they sat in the qui­et of their meet­ings and they arrived at an unwa­ver­ing cer­tain­ty of the real pres­ence of God in the lives of men, which gave them unusu­al inner strength and spir­i­tu­al power.

I appre­ci­ate that it clear­ly maps out how God and Humana inter­act, tying it with­out much arti­fice to a par­tic­u­lar pas­sage in the gospels. And then it gets real with the image of seek­ers walk­ing the fields look­ing to com­mune with God: such a human depic­tion. I’ll be check­ing out whether I have a copy of this F&P in my home library. It seems we’ll worth a read.

A ran­dom Google search while wait­ing for my fam­i­ly to pick me up from Crop­well turned up this 1922 edi­to­r­i­al in The Friend. This appar­ent­ly is the dis­cus­sion lead­ing up to the new F&P that sur­prised me!