Jean Soderlund, Department of History, Lehigh University
7/18/96
Quakers and Ritual: An Uneasy Truce
Quakers come in many different stripes, with some central characteristics uniting the group. Soderlund herself is a lapsed Presbyterian.
Knows we have been looking at rituals, and at the way rituals help establish identity.
Q's rejected all sacraments and ritual in Eng. Worship consisted of waiting in silence for the world of God to come, which would come through the voice of a person. They rejected music, pastors, elaborate architecture, statues, crucifixes, altars. Over time they developed "elders" so that even at an early period, the religion was dynamic, and there was change. Q's rejected social ritual: hierarchical language, fancy dress, oaths. Leigh Schmidt gave you an article by Richard Bauman, which mentions the Q approach to this. Q's opposed such display of feasts as opposing FUN, in the process of trying to make each day a connecting one to God, and in so doing, establishing a different notion of time--maintaining constant time, rather than setting up an agricultureal calendar, punctuated by special times set aside to acknowledge God
Greider: how does this relate to notions of closeness to nature?
Ans.: I'm not convinced about this notion of Bauman's I think it's overstated
Rubin: what about Quaker grandees (as in Frederick Tolles, Meetin House and Counting House?
Ans.: many Q's, though, remain rural and plain--the Tolles argument can be misleading
Gallien: when I look at the Whitall family, I wonder how social class and geographic location affect the collection of people who have such a complex set of experiences
Ans.: the question here is to what extent Whitall's, or any ONE family is a good example
Lapsansky: take a look at Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family, and J. William Frost, The Quaker Family for some insight on this subject
Soderlund: A central belief of Friends is that the Divine Spirit dwells in everyone, and that therefore there must be equality. Also remaining open to God involves not having disguises (masks, clothing, "outer things" that would distract both the worshipper and God.
Barnes: Wasn't a primary concern to differentiate themselves from "false" relijgions, and the practices thereof?
Ans: yes, outer trappings get in the way of people getting to God/Truth
Prejsnar and Kanda get into a discussion of the "insider's" language
Soderlund: Q's got the the notion of "Truth" and publishers of "Truth" (missionaries)
talked about the "Light", "sense of the Meeting," and did, indeed, develop "insider's" language
Kray: when someone is trying to claim authority in the Quaker tradition, to whom do they allude?
Ans: George Fox, Robert Barclay, William Penn,
Brady: there are still disagreements about who is REALLY "authority",
Soderlund: the key issue IS what holds authority, and other dissenters did coalesce during the English civil war: Ranters, Diggers, etc. What Friends created were new rituals which helped to keep the institution from falling apart. Fox and Margaret Fell would formed Monthly Meetings in which they would evaluate the behavior of group members according to certain formulas. There were committees to visit families and "educate" them (eldering, it was called) and, in the absence of adherence to "discipline" people were disowned.
Lapsansky: mostly people are more measured for public behavior more than for public statements of belief.
Soderlund: yes. Occasionally people were disowned for belief, but not very often. And "marrying out" was definitely a cause for disownment but marriage is overseen by a hierarchy of the "weighty members" , e.g., William Penn and Guliema, his wife would sign at the top of marriage certificates
Barnes: to what extent was there a jockeying to have weighty friends come to your wedding
Gallien: How does income, class etc affect wedding guest list?
Ans: location, the "right" meeting and a high level of spirituality helped influence this
Miller: is there a prescribed text that ministers used
Ans: only in the diaries of the hearers: there is no offiecially-kept text
Lapsansky: shall we give Jean 10 minutes to develop an idea?
Soderlund: Yes, would like to talk about Q's and slavery as a way of thinking about how Quaker belief develops. Fox had raised concerns about not keeping slaves for more than a few years--the violence connected with it, as well as issues about the equality of souls. But many weighty, wealthy Q's held slaves (post 1680). The earliest recorded opposition to slavery is the Francis Daniel Pastorius (German) petitioned the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, using the "golden-rule" argument.
In New Jersey, Benjamin Lay came from the Caribbean, and made dramatic moves in meetings to show his opposition to slavery (1730s) . Soderlund thinks (but can't prove) his influence on John Woolman. For more of this story see Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: a Divided Spirit.
That problem of trying to allow each individual to speak his/her "truth" and yet not have the meeting be divided, is one dynamic of the development of Quaker practice, but until the 1750s, thre is no public agreement that slavery is wrong. But beginning then we work up to 1774, when there is a rule that slaves owned must be manumtted. Friends were expected to bring Blacks to meeting, but they were not full members, until 1793 when a part-black woman into the meeting. Friends did establish meetings for Blacks.
Ritual begins to occur as Friends adopt these political positions: anti-war and anti-slavery . Friends can't embrace the rituals of war, so they channel these energies into anti-slavery and marrying-out concerns to secure their communities.
What do we learn from Woolman and Whitall about what reality is,(and how much can we trust these documents not to give students a misinterpretation of this group that many people will not be familiar with: this is the area where we must be careful
Elrod: How about Q autobiography tradition to help shape the story
Ans: one of the first things early Quakers did was establish something called "Overseers of the Press" to review what would be published, and that's how Sandiford and Lay got into trouble for they wanted to publish anti-slavery "Truth" long before the group had concluded that anti-slavery was "Truth"
(Chinery: That's so CAATHOLIC!!)
Glass: only men become ministers?
Ans.: anyone could be. Let's talk abut official positions: overseers, ministers, elders, (all of these are women and men's roles)
And there's a differnt trajectory and a different pool from which ministers and overseers and elders come. Mnisters are usually "called" quite young. And there is no real need for economic leadership here. Elders, however, come with age/money.Missionaries are simply travelling ministers
Chinery: who's responsible for care of the meetinghouse?
Ans: Men do physical plant; women responsible for daily care.
Crowley: are experiencs of "visions" something that are simply private, or do they have public meaning as well?
Ans: see Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women, and Carla Gerona (a Hopkins dissert. forthcoming) talk about the importance of early Q's as prophets: what they say/see in dreams (moreso than "visions") is more important, and they write this down and/or take this to the community
Rubin: there are a number of similarities with Amish. Janice Eglin has done some ethnography among Amish in Ohio, and finds that the call to interpret the Word has brought personal crisis. How does Q-ism deal with the emotional and temporal stress of taking on leadership in the church.
Lapsansky: investigate the notion of a "released Friend"
Soderlund: Q's don't seem to have this crisis, because they feel that they have made a choice. Ministers can retire for some years, then pick it up again. The Amish situation seems to be one of assignment (being "chosen") and they don't have the sense of choice.And some Q's don't follow the call.
Montgomery: was there some sort of ordination service for ministers, or elders, some ceremonies?
Ans: recording in the minutes, but no ceremony (Q's always keep minutes, though not always in as detailed a way as one might wish.) Meeting would decide on a minister and "record"
Montgomery: the approval of this is in itself, a ritual
Brady: anyone who wanted to could bring a concern and call a meeting, so a lot of decision-making takes place in this rather nebulous way
Soderlund: the structure of Monthly meetings had already been set by the end of the 17th century. The structure is set by then
Lapsansky: two good readings on the structure: the front pp of the Guide to the Records of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and When Friends Attend to Business.
Piar: they were quite exclusivist, as shown by Mary Dyer who wants everyone to be like her?
Ans: yes.
Sicius:I have sometimes used Quaker documents in the classroom, and some of the words are loaded: words like "liberty" come from the dynamics of the society around them.
Ans: yes, Friends were unable to really separate themselves from context.
Kanda: to what extent is the pietistic language typical of the Friends of that day?
Harvey: thinking about John Woolman's words in the classroom, you could take this document and it is as much a 19th c. Methodist experience
Soderlund: let's look at Ann Whitall, who does what?
Jensen: suffered a lot!!
Gallien, Crowley, Jenson Montgomery and Piar and Sicius, got into a discussion of the limitations/opportunities connected to a "calling".
Soderlund: I have some trouble with the idea of women using minisry to escape housework, when we don't talk of men going into ministry to escape field-work
Rubin, Brady and Soderlund and others shape a discussion about women's roles in general
Soderlund: gender roles and how they play into religious experience will be the topic for next session.
After lunch:
Prejsnar makes plan to get group together to attend the obun festival in New Jersey.
Soderlund has published an raticle in William and Mary Quarterly on Women's authority in four meetings in the Phila area. Phyllis Mack talks about how Quakerism comes out of a woman's tradition of "ministering" in England.
Women were in the forefront of developing this religion. Then with the institutionalization of the religion, there came a change in women's roles, and women's power changes and is somewhat diministhed, though women do continue to be ministers and to have a public voice, unlike in Methodist and Baptist traditions. At the same time, the men's meetings and women's meetings develop, and the idea of controlling behavior becomes split between the two sides. Ideally, the women/men were to be equal: men overseeing men, women overseeing girls. But when came to policy-setting, men's meetings have more authority.
Question, why does gender remain so present in this religion where, as Fox said "religion had no sex." Why is there the physical separation? (Remember, there is a door that can be drawn between women's side and men's side for business meetings. When there was not such, women petitioned MEN for separate space in which to meet. )
Gallien: a growing body of literature, Ruth Tucker, Nancy Hardisty and others that suggests that by end of the 19th c., many more women were being turned out to be ordained ministers in Congregational, Methodist, Baptists , but the info hasn't been brought forth by historians yet
Kray: been reading margaret Fell on women, calling for women's roles. Where can I find other folks on this?
Lapsansky: Women's tracts on this subject can be seen in the Haverford Special Collections Jenks Collection of more than 1000 17th century religious tracts(many have just been microfilmed)
Prejsnar and Soderlund and Kanda get into discussion of women's role and authorty and focus:
Ans: look at Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women, on this subjcet
Brady: this pattern of women being involved in early development, then marginalized as the institution becomes more formal is a repeated one. Printed version, Hidden in Plain Sight, (recent publication) helps to put these in context
Gallien: Hannah Whitall Smith sold over 2 million copies of her book on the holiness movement
Lapsansky: there are many patterns that match this in other historical phenomena (e.g., African Americans in the development of post-CW west were also not so marginalized until after Western society became "jelled"
Soderlund: to what extend is Whitall Smith's reality useful for understanding Q women and/or the household/gender experience
Harvey: p. 8b of the document talks about her concern that her husband is taking the children fishing on Sat, and taking himself fishing on Sun. But what does she have that sets her apart?
Montgomery: she has theoretical authority to call the religious community to discipline him and she has a moral authority.
Barnes: can we return to the authority of women. To what extend did a hierarchy emerge? A wife of a weighty male member can gain authority from her husband's position that placed her above another woman who was, say, a minister?
Helmer: when you went to another meeting, how were papers of introduction done?
Ans: clerk of one's Monthly Meeting might write a travelling minute, or a certificate
Lapsansky: look for Neva Specht's (Univ of Del. diss. coming) work on how meetings handle this in the transition from one place to another
Miller: how do we know how many women/men are actually attending churches.
Gallien: there is dissert. work
Glass: one example is membership roles of Bethany
Miller: but that doesn't measure who is actually sitting in the pews
Gallien: Peggy Bendroth, diss. at Yale , Fundamendalism and Gender, 1875-Present and Kathryn Long, The Power of Interpretation: the Revival of 1857-59. (Oxford 1997: Duke Phd, 1993)
Harvey: there are three questions on the table now: the feminization of church culture, membership roles, and attendance of various groups
Glass: there is some literature...
Miller, My question is about what do we actually know when we "know" who is there: we are assuming that the church is highly feminized
Montgomery: I, too, think we need to be careful about generalizations
Kray: Orthodox Judaism rewards men, and the result is a high concentration of men in the group
Brady: I'm concerned about what Quaker men's values were being held as standards in the Q. community
Sicius: pacifism is one
Barnes: we need to identfy the social dynamics underneath the numbers , and one way to look at membership is dues-payment and/or clique control at various times
Lapsansky and Montgomery get into a discusssion about the difference between numbers and participation vs decision-making power.
Soderlund: if we return to Hannah Whitall Smith...
Gallien: ...can we look at voluntary associations that came out of Q to get at this?
Ans: yes, there is that, and Marilyn Brady has looked some at that (Poor Relief in 18th c.)but I don't know about the degree to which they gain authority in Q meeting because of it?
Brady: these are young women, dependent upon the Q community for the resources to do their work, but I don't see them becoming more "powerful" withn their meetings because of it. They empathize with other powerless people in their setting.
Gallien: Edith Blumhofer's research about black women suggests that these women met with and near the pastor and exert ed their influence through voluntary associations within the church.
Soderlund: difference between power and influence, authority
Crowley: having control of the budget is one way to figure out power.
Kray: funding power may provide, in fact, more power than a group may wish to exercise
Lapsansky: are there points we want to make to come to closure?
Harvey: can we come to closure about the difference between power, influence, authority
Montgomery: I think many groups have more power than the group chooses to exercise
Brady: spiritual and religous authority is NOT equal to political/social authority
Lapsansky: How do we help our students understand the fundamentalist draw, so that we can help our students understand the importance of religious power within the political/social context?.
Elrod: With Quakers, we are looking aat how highly-structured, demanding settings, which are atypical.
Piar: Why conservative Churches are Growing is a good study shows that such churches are growing, while less-structured ones are not growing.
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This page updated 11/96.