Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - U for Uncomfortable

I'm running late according to my timetable for writing this blog and that makes me both uncomfortable and uneasy. The pressure to write comes only from within so you might say that I have only myself to blame, but that doesn't help to dispel the uncomfortable feeling.

Perhaps in Quaker terms it is good to feel uncomfortable, not to be complacent and content with things as they are. For myself feeling uncomfortable is often what pushes me into writing and also from time to time into spoken ministry. I know the feeling of sitting in meeting resisting the urge to speak until I feel so uncomfortable that I have to rise to my feet and say something. That is why the accounts of similar experiences of Friends in earlier times ring so true to me and are so helpful in my own spiritual journey. So many journals and spiritual autobiographies tell of struggles to remain comfortable and to ignore the nagging feelings of uncomfortableness, but faithfulness to the guidance of the Inward Teacher, the 'promptings of love and truth' in our hearts, brings ease and comfort - at least until the next time!

When early Friends spoke of having a comfortable time with others they were not talking of sitting in a warm room among people of like mind. They meant that they had been given comfort for their ills. The foundation of Quakerism for me is that if we are open to the Light we will be shown our darkness, those uncomfortable truths about ourselves that we find it hard to acknowledge, but that we will not be left there but brought to new life - challenged but also given comfort.

So eventually I became so uncomfortable that I sat down and wrote this and now I feel better - for a while at least.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - O for Obedience

St Martin of Tours, Chelsfield, Kent

Going to a family wedding last week reminded me of my own, almost 44 years ago. Chris and I were married in the Church of England parish church near my home and what a trial we must have been to the vicar! To begin with, although we knew that we wanted (and our families expected) a religious ceremony, our relationship to the church was ambivalent. I had been baptised into the Church of England but had refused to be confirmed as I didn't see why I needed any priestly intermediary between myself and God - you can see why I was so happy to find Quakers later on! Chris had not even been baptised as at the time of his birth his father was a Baptist, later becoming a URC minister. The vicar accepted my position but Chris had to produce a letter from his old college chaplain (at that time conveniently a bishop) to prove his qualifications.

On top of this we had the certainty of youth (we were 22 and 23) that we did not want to use the 'modern' marriage service but insisted instead on the traditional 1662 version, the language of which we both preferred. We swept aside the vicar's objections, assuring him that that we understood what we would be saying, even though it meant that I would promise to 'obey' my husband. After all it was a safe promise to make, as Chris would never ask me to do anything unreasonable!

Lucretia Mott

Looking back, a wife's obedience to her husband has indeed hardly figured in our marriage. I hope that we have so far managed to live up to the aphorism favoured by the American Quaker (and feminist) Lucretia Mott. 'In the true marriage relationship the interdependence of the husband and wife is equal, their dependence mutual and their obligations reciprocal'.

But perhaps the importance of the possibility of obedience was always there and it has always been an important part of my commitment to Quakerism. Our worship and testimonies are based on a willingness to be led by the Light, by our Inward Guide, into action and behaviour that, individually and corporately, we might not choose for ourselves. I know that when I have felt led into a new path on my spiritual journey at first it often seems impossible. The leading is not demanding, but it is insistent. It may recede from the forefront of my consciousness for a while but it does not go away. In the end, with the help of my friends, my family and my community, I have found a way forward in faith - I have obeyed. Corporately too Quakers have been led to positions which are often uncomfortable, which are sometimes too difficult for some individuals, but which are still spirit-led.

Obedience is not something to be entered into blindly but it is an important part of the Quaker way. As Isaac Penington put it in 1661, 'Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee'.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 18 - I for Isaac Crewdson

Kendal Quaker Meeting House

Isaac Crewdson was born in Kendal in 1780, the fourth child in a family of seven sons and two daughters. His parents, Thomas Crewdson and Cicely Dillworth were both from established Quaker families and Isaac was brought up strictly according to traditional Quaker ways and doctrines.

Isaac Crewdson

Isaac went into the prosperous family cotton business and in 1803 married Elizabeth Jowitt of Leeds and settled at Ardwick, Manchester. They had two children, a son who died in infancy and a daughter Margaret. Isaac was a prominent member of Hardshaw East Monthly Meeting and was recorded as a minister by them. Isaac was therefore at the centre of a close family and Quaker network where he might have remained, prosperous and comfortable, had it not been for troubling influences coming from America and from his own convictions.

Elias Hicks

A controversy had arisen among American Quakers between traditional 'Quietist' Friends who stressed the primacy of the Inward Light and Evangelical Friends who gave more weight to the authority of the Bible and to justification by faith in Christ. One party of traditional Friends were led by Elias Hicks of New York and in  time came to be known as Hicksites, while the other party were called Orthodox Friends. In America there were serious divisions and splits between the parties.

Isaac became convinced that the evangelical position was right and he was not alone in this. However his views gradually became more extreme. Joseph John Gurney, an influential Evangelical, says that around 1832 he remembered 'telling my friend Isaac Crewdson...that he and I had started our race from opposite points, had met, and crossed on the road.'

In 1835 Isaac published a pamphlet, A Beacon to the Society of Friends. This book was a systematic refutation of writings by Elias Hicks, couched in extreme terms which only served to polarise positions. In Isaac's view scriptural authority and authority derived from the Inward Light could not co-exist and he characterised the latter, upon which most of early Quakerism was based, as 'a delusive notion'.

Manchester Mount Street meeting house

The Beacon pamphlet precipitated serious disagreement and conflict among Friends. Even some of those who took an evangelical position themselves felt, like J.J. Gurney, that Crewdson was going too far and they tried to silence him rather than answer his published arguments. Some even burned his pamphlet rather than read it themselves or allow others to see it. In Manchester many Friends were reduced to tears by the debate and quite a few saw Isaac's treatment as persecution, even if they did not agree with him. Lancashire Quarterly Meeting did not know how to proceed so they appealed to Yearly Meeting. It appointed a committee to restore unity, a difficult task which they failed to accomplish. The committee, which contained several noted evangelicals including Joseph John Gurney, would not condemn Crewdson's doctrine but counselled him for 'practical' reasons first to withdraw his pamphlet and then to suspend his ministry - both of which he refused to do.

The next step was inevitable. In Manchester in1836 Isaac Crewdson and his wife, along with some fifty others, many of them members of his family, resigned from the Society of Friends. Families were painfully divided by the controversy and people were forced to take sides. There were other resignations, amounting to around 400 in all, in meetings throughout the country which included about 100 Friends in Kendal (one third of the meeting).

Isaac Crewdson in 1840

As part of their move away from traditional Quakerism many Beaconites felt that scripture required them to undergo water-baptism. Isaac was baptised and then officiated at several baptisms undertaken privately in the homes of sympathisers. Together with his brother-in-law William Boulton he founded a separate group who called themselves 'Evangelical Friends' but were generally known by Quakers and others as Beaconites, after Isaac's pamphlet. They first met for worship on 18 September 1836 at an infant school before opening their 600-seat chapel nearby in Grosvenor Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester on 17 December 1837. Here Isaac and William officiated and celebrated the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Evangelical Friends held a Yearly Meeting echoing the style of the official Quaker Yearly Meeting in London in 1837 and for a short while published a monthly journal The Inquirer.

Map of the Dissenters Cemetery

The controversy had a devastating effect on Isaac Crewdson's life. Because of the rifts in his own family he was obliged to retire from business and his health broke down. He died at Bowness near Lake Windermere, where he had gone hoping for a cure, on 8 May 1844 aged sixty four and was buried in the Dissenters Cemetery at Rusholme Road in Manchester (now Gartside Gardens) near his home.  The Beaconites did not flourish and their chapel, which was sparsely attended, was sold to the Baptists in 1844, the same year that Isaac died. Many of those who had resigned from the Society of Friends with Isaac moved on to join the Church of England. A substantial number joined the Plymouth Brethren and brought Quaker simplicity of worship to that movement.   


Perhaps if Isaac had not gone to such extremes in his views and expressed them so uncompromisingly or if the reaction to what he said had not degenerated into personal attack then a separation might not have taken place. After all at this time Evangelicalism was on its way to becoming the new orthodoxy for British Quakers. However it was perhaps the shattering effect of this comparatively small separation that held British Quakers back from fragmenting in the way that American Quakers did at this time.