I’m currently working on an upcoming Friends Journal article that uses Quaker plain dates: e.g., 9th day of Sixth Month, 2021. I’m going down a bit of a rabbit hole looking up different Quaker style guides to figure out a consistent way of styling them.
I collect style guides and the only modern one I’ve found to address it is an early-aughts version from Friends General Conference, originally written in the late 90s by Barbara Hirshkowitz. Barbara more or less taught me everything I know about editing when we worked together at New Society Publishers in the early 90s. Bits of her personality come out in the guide so it’s fun to read it and remember her and later additions by Chel Avery are just as wonderful. I miss them both, both as editors and friends1
Early Friends were well known for their idiosyncrasies. They weren’t afraid of looking weird for a principle they believed in. They would risk imprisonment, illness, and death for these principles. For example, their radical belief in the equality of all people under Christ 2 led them to refuse to take off their hats in front of judges. Friends were hauled off to jail just for refusing this hat honor. Plain language, dress, and dates all set off Friends as a “peculiar people” who were easily recognizable for standing out. But this wasn’t necessarily a bad weirdness: it also reinforced their commitment to a radical integrity.
Succeeding generations of Friends chipped away and eventually dropped many of these peculiarities. Much of this was peer pressure I suspect: being strange got in the way of assimilating into the wider culture. Another motivation, especially among more evangelically minded Friends, was outreach. If we want to bring in the masses we should drop the silly, outdated markers that are secondary to the core message — that Christ has come to teach the people himself.
Another reason for the decline is ossification. It’s perhaps inevitable that every religious tradition will gradually forget why they do the things they do and start doing them simply because that is something they’ve always. Kids in Quaker First-day school will be told we don’t swear oaths or don’t gamble or vote in our internal decision-making because Friends don’t engage in those activities. Forgotten in this are the biblical and historical theological rationales for avoiding the practices. Margaret Fell described this process when she recounted the first time hearing George Fox preach: “We are all thieves; we have taken the Scripture in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves.” I think many Friends have taken our traditions mostly in words. It’s easy to abandon a practice you don’t understand.
So I thought I’d share my own personal test for deciding whether an old Quaker peculiarity is worth reviving. I’ve probably shared this before (the danger when someone with maybe twelve interesting ideas has a twenty-plus year old blog3). Here they are:
Can a peculiarity be explained to an outsider in a few sentences without the need to give any historical context?
Is it a practice that one could argue is applicable to any Christian?
I realize the Bible is a contest realm but could someone understand it from a straight-forward reading of the gospels in particular and maybe even more particularly the Sermon on the Mount , from which so many Quaker testimonies arise. One of my favorite Quaker interpreters is the Anglican antislavery activist Thomas Clarkson. He described Quaker practice for the education of his denomination — I think he thought some of the ideas were worth poaching. Is an old Quaker practice found in the gospels and could someone like Clarkson want to import it into their Christian tradition?
What babies in the bathwater are worth preserving with this test? Are there tests you use to think about Quaker practices?
- Chel was one of only a few professional Quakers who called me when I got unceremoniously canned from a Quaker job in 2006. The kindness of the gesture and the long-picture advice she gave were very pearls of great price.
- Until they discovered chattel slavery, ugg.
- Oh yes, I have talked about this before, 12 years ago!