No More Quaker Heroes - or Villains

  A Book of Quaker Saints by Lucy V. Hodgkin

 

 illustrated by F. Cayley-Robinson

A Yearly Meeting preparation session on 'Uncomfortable Quaker Histories' which I attended on Zoom yesterday allowed me to revisit work I have done myself on challenging Quaker myths and legends and got me thinking about how to take this forward.

We were presented with stories of Quakers in Lancaster and in America (including William Penn) who had been profitably engaged in the Atlantic slave trade and who had not always been challenged effectively by their contemporaries. We were also reminded of the ambivalent attitude of some Friends in the past to the poor - only to be helped if they were suitably grateful and knew 'their place' and never wholly accepted as equals. In this context we were asked if a testimony to equality had ever existed.

Back in the 1980s I gave a series of talks on Quaker Myths and Legends, questioning assumptions that were taken for granted at the time such as equality between men and women and how the peace testimony came about. In 1986 I was part of the group who wrote and presented the Quaker Womens Group Swarthmore lecture 'Bringing the Invisible into the Light'. As well as questioning whether equality had always been an integral part of the Society of Friends, the lecture included examples of painful personal experience such as domestic violence among Friends. The lecture was welcomed by many but also provoked very strong negative reactions - disbelief that Quakers could act in this way and denial that Friends were not always perfect in their relations with others. A lot of the discomfort stemmed from our audacity in challenging some Friends' established world view.

We are now looking at our past again through the lens of sexism, racism and classism and what we are finding is uncomfortable. I would say that this is what an honest study of the past should be. There never were Quaker Saints. Quakers have always been humans with human imperfections, shaped by the wider society they found themselves in but also by changes in the practices and attitudes of the Society of Friends through the centuries. I think it is better and more helpful to identify with past Quakers who were not perfect than to put heroes and heroines on a pedestal from which they may come crashing down. We may feel shame at the actions of Friends in the past and seek in some way to make amends but I believe that we should also try to reach for understanding, to learn where we are going wrong now and how we may change and improve.

We may remove the name of William Penn from a room in Friends House but I hope we can continue to give him his due and not reject him totally as a Quaker villain. We should not reject his writings because of some aspects of his life because his words are still valuable. When my meeting was reading through Quaker Faith and Practice several years ago as part of the revision process I was surprised to find that the extracts Friends found most helpful were not the most modern writings but those by William Penn and Isaac Penington. 

We need meticulous research, such as we were presented with in the preparation session, looking in detail at Quaker links to slavery, attitudes to the poor and other marginalised groups. The more we learn the more we can understand rather than only condemn. Local studies are a good start but these themes also need to be seen in a wider context - for example the way in which womens' meetings evolved, their purpose and their influence.

I have tried in my biographical posts on this blog to include a broad range of past Quakers, including women of course but also lower class Quakers without much money. There are also 'difficult' Friends and those with mental health problems. Just a few examples are Ruth Follows, Thomas Shillitoe, Benjamin Lay and his wife Sarah, Josiah Langdale and Rebecca Jones. James Jenkins was trying to write honest rather than idealised testimonies to Friends he had known in the 18th century, There is much more work to be done to bring invisible poor Quakers, Quaker servants and Quaker people of colour into the light, but a start has been made.

If there is one lesson we can learn from the past it is that there should be no more Quaker Saints. We must do away with Quaker heroes but I hope we will not go to the other extreme and cast Friends as villains. Idealising the past makes us unable to face reality but so does seeing it only in black and white rather than in Quaker gray.
.

Recorded ministry - some thoughts

Meeting by John Perkin

I have been following the conversation about recorded ministry on social media with interest. Sam Barnett-Cormack has done a good job of summing up what has been said here and has continued the debate. As well as commenting on other posts I find that I have just a few things to add, partly from my research and partly from my own experience.

First it may be useful to look at why ministers were first recorded. This practice arose in the UK in the18th century out of a problem (as so many Quaker practices have)! There were complaints that some people had represented themselves as ministers without the backing of a meeting and were travelling around the country asking for financial support in the places they visited when some of them were not even recognised as Friends. To deal with this a system was agreed whereby if a Friend was recognised by their meeting as having a particular gift for vocal ministry then their name was sent to the Yearly Meeting in London and 'recorded' in a book so that their qualification for support could be checked.

Not all recorded ministers travelled outside their local meetings but if they were moved to do so they had to obtain a certificate from their meeting which would be quite specific about where they might go. This certificate could be presented to the Friends they were travelling among to obtain hospitality and assistance in their journey, such as the provision of a guide and a horse, the expense of which could be claimed from the meeting visited if necessary. The practice was rooted in practicality as well as answering divine inspiration.

The impetus for recognising that a minister should be recorded always came from their meeting not from themselves. This was very far from a modern job application. Being called to the ministry was not a small undertaking as it could involve very arduous travel and prolonged absences from home and many ministers' journals contain accounts of long, anxious hesitation before a calling was acknowledged. Ministers did not act alone and usually travelled with a companion, another minister or a younger Friend. They were also answerable to their meetings and to their fellow ministers, some of whom were more encouraging than others. Samuel Bownas had experienced his own difficulties and in 1750 he published a self-help book A description of the qualifications necessary to a Gospel Minister which still has things to say to us today.

There was no initial intention to mark the recorded ministers out as superior, rather as people trying to be faithful to their calling. As time went on however in some cases the respect demanded for the calling could look to others like respect demanded for the person. In the mid-eighteenth century Catherine Payton Phillips was called 'a Great Autocratrix' by the young James Jenkins, although he was hardly an unbiased observer and in the nineteenth century James Bevan Braithwaite earned the nickname of 'the Quaker Bishop'!

Eventually in the early twentieth century it was felt that meetings had come to rely too much on recorded ministers and that if they were not present then no vocal ministry would be heard. There was a movement to share the responsibility for vocal ministry more equally between all members and in the UK the practice of recording ministers was officially discontinued in 1924. Since then not only have attitudes to recorded ministers changed but so has vocal ministry itself - in length, form and content - especially among 'liberal' Friends.

Part of the problem with reviving recorded ministry is that in the past ministers were recorded for life. It was possible to withdraw approval from ministers by refusing to issue them with certificates (as happened in the case of May Drummond) but this was rare. Indeed those Friends who had been recorded before 1924 in London Yearly Meeting remained officially ministers until they died and Neave Brayshaw in his book The Quakers mentions that they were qualified to attend Meeting for Sufferings in that capacity and that some were still doing so in the late 1940s and early 1950s!

The change to limited terms (usually triennial) for elders and overseers, who were also once appointed for life, has been a good and helpful reform which I don't think anyone would wish to go back on. Perhaps the way to look at any revival of recorded ministry is through a short-term, project-based approach. The Joseph Rowntree Quaker Fellowships were set up in this way by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. When I was a fellow in 1994-1995, touring the UK with workshops on spiritual autobiography, I resisted the description of what I was doing as 'travelling in the ministry' but perhaps I was wrong to reject the label so vehemently. I was not acting entirely independently as I was answerable to the trust, who supported me financially, and I also had a support group, drawn from my meeting and more widely, who gave me spiritual and emotional support, although not a certificate!

Lastly, I have also wondered whether blogging can be a kind of ministry. Here are some thoughts on Quaker blogging which I hesitantly shared ten years ago! I have aways seen my blog as an extension of my spiritual autobiography project. Should I only have to listen to readers' comments or should I be open to discipline from the meeting or from another support group? Is there a difference between a Quaker blogging and a Quaker blog? There are a lot of questions about recorded ministry still to be considered.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - J for James Jenkins

I wrote a little about James Jenkins last year in my post about his father Zephaniah Fry but I am glad to have the opportunity now to say more about him. As I said before James was born in 1753, the illegitimate son of Zephaniah Fry of Chippenham and his servant Ann Jenkins. Both his parents were disowned by the Society of Friends for adultery, although Zephaniah was readmitted after only two years.

James's father wanted no contact with him and his mother was not allowed to bring him up. He was raised by a non-Quaker nurse in a village near Bristol until he was ten when he was sent to London as an apprentice to John Fry, a cheese dealer. At first James was ignorant of any family connection but eventually his master's brother told him, 'We are both thy kindred, being nearly related to thy father.' Later his master's father, another John Fry, called him nephew, a name that James received 'with surprise and pleasure'.

High Flatts Meeting house

James was ashamed of his illegitimacy and felt that he had to earn acceptance from his newly-
discovered family by making every effort to please them. He began to attend Quaker meetings and his master sent him to school, first in London and then for three years boarding at High Flatts in Yorkshire, an isolated place which James described as ‘a desolate area of rough moorland about fourteen miles long and seven in width’. After this limited education James was bound apprentice in 1768 to Hannah Jesup, a widow in the grocery trade at Woodbridge in Suffolk. When after three years Hannah married an Irish Quaker, Robert Dudley, James went with them to Clonmel in Ireland.

In Clonmel James blossomed. He became an ironmonger, made friends with other young Quaker men including Robert Dudley's son from his first marriage, began to read more widely and started a common-place book. It was in Ireland too that James joined the Society of Friends and he always judged Quakers against the standard of what he found there. Although Irish Friends rigidly enforced ruled of dress and conduct, because they were a small and isolated community they also cared personally for one another. In Ireland young Quakers like James were welcomed, consulted and made to feel important whereas in England James was not allowed to be more than an observer of the Quaker scene.

Clonmel Quays

When James completed his apprenticeship in 1773 he became clerk to a firm of Quaker merchants in Waterford. After seven years he had accumulated savings of £300 and joined in a partnership with other Friends selling Irish cheese to England, but the enterprise failed and he lost most of his capital. For the next fifteen years James led a precarious existence in business in England in various capacities, using all his Quaker connections but finding it hard to make ends meet.

James's financial position was not helped by the fact that he had taken on family responsibilities. He married the Irish Quaker Elizabeth, or Betsy, Lamb in 1780 without a dowry but with the promise of a substantial legacy from her father Benjamin which never materialised. on top of this Betsy suffered from ill-health for twenty years, her various complaints exacerbated by almost constant childbearing. She suffered thirteen miscarriages and bore ten children of whom seven died young, leaving three sons who survived into adulthood and died in 1806 at the age of 47.

James's prosperity improved in 1795 when he was employed by his uncle John Fry's stock brokerage
firm after Joel Cadbury, who had a prior claim as a son-in-law, withdrew because he could not cope with the chaos and uncertainty of the market. Although many Quakers disapproved of dealing in stocks, seeing it as a form of gambling, James discovered that he had a talent for it and became a prosperous broker. In 1819 he retired to Folkestone and left his flourishing business to his sons. Unfortunately they did not inherit his ability and within five years they went bankrupt and were disowned by Friends.

Folkestone Harbour

These further financial difficulties, together with the early death of two of his sons, were a great blow to James but he rallied and managed to somewhat recover his fortunes. When he died in 1831 at the age of 78 he was described by Kent Quarterly Meeting as 'Gentleman', an epitaph which would have given him great satisfaction.

James Jenkins left little behind him financially but his great legacy is a manuscript, Records and Recollections which he left for safe-keeping to a fellow-Quaker who made sure that it was preserved and passed down from generation to generation until it was deposited in Friends House Library in 1918 and eventually published in a scholarly edition in 1984.

James had kept a diary for many years and used it to compose the story of his own life and to comment on the state of the Society of Friends as he saw it. His own history had brought home to him the hypocrisy that could be part of Quakerism in his time and he was concerned to be an objective observer and tell the truth. He therefore wrote 'alternative testimonies' on Quakers he knew when they died as an antidote to the bland hagiographies which were approved by the British Quaker establishment. He described their physical appearance, their idiosyncrasies of speech and behaviour, their good points and their failings. James retained a respect and love for Quakerism while still pointing out what he saw as abuses. His writings give us another view of 18th century Friends, showing them as fallible individuals rather than impossibly good role models, and James thereby does both us and them an invaluable service.

Quaker Alphabet Week 11 - F for Ruth Follows

Basket makers in 20th century Castle Donnington

Ruth Follows was born on 7 January 1718 in Weston, Nottinghamshire, the sixth of the seven children of  Quaker parents, Richard Alcock (d. 1757), and his wife Ruth (c.1687-1738). Although brought up as a quaker, Ruth was thrown off balance for a while after her mother’s death. As she puts it, 'I left her counsel behind me, trod her testimony under my feet and took a large swing at vanity’ but soon realised her fault and returned to the fold. Her reformation was aided by her marriage, aged about 23, to George Follows (c1717-1803), who she calls ‘a young man far more worthy than myself’. They lived in Castle Donnington, Leicestershire where together they struggled to gain a basic living at George’s trade of making baskets out of osiers (rushes) and Ruth gave birth to four sons.  

A family works at stripping osiers

Gradually it became clear to Ruth that she was being called to become a Quaker recorded  minister, as her mother had been before her. She struggled against this conviction both because her children were still young and because she knew that few working-class Quakers of very limited means like herself travelled in the ministry, but eventually she accepted the responsibility at the age of thirty.

Osier basket

For much of the next forty years Ruth travelled extensively throughout Great Britain, often leaving her children in the care of her always supportive husband and writing long and affectionate letters home. She usually travelled with younger women ministers who derived much support from her company. In 1761-2 and again in 1782-3 she visited Ireland and was particularly troubled by what she saw as Friends’ excessive worldliness there.

Ruth’s ministry sometimes lay in silence, directing those who came to hear her back within themselves to dependence on Christ the Inward teacher rather than on human ministry. On other occasions, when she perceived a fault, Ruth spoke out as ‘a sharp instrument in the Lord’s hand’, although she was always encouraging to the faithful.  

18th century Newfoundland

Two of Ruth’s sons, George (1742-1766) and Joseph (1751-1809), gave her considerable cause for anxiety by their youthful wildness, keeping bad company and drinking heavily, but both reformed under the steadying influence of Friends. Joseph worked for three years for a Quaker master in Newfoundland and on his return to England settled down in the family business. He became a Quaker minister himself and in 1793 accompanied his mother on one of her last journeys in the ministry.

Castle Donnington in the 19th century

Towards the end of her life Ruth became increasingly infirm and after a journey to Yearly Meeting in London in 1795 remained at home, receiving visiting Friends and faithfully attending local meetings. She had a wide network of friends who valued her and her name is often mentioned in their correspondence and journals. James Jenkins, not known for his charitable judgments on his fellow Quakers, described Ruth as ‘highly esteemed both as a minister and as a woman extremely amiable in private life'. He also says that she ‘was one of the most musical preachers I have ever heard - even in old age she used to exalt a clear strong voice into strains of delightful melody.’ George Follows died in 1803 and five years later, on 3 April 1808, Ruth died, aged 90, and was buried in the Quaker burial ground at Castle Donnington.

Ruth Follows’ spiritual autobiography and letters were assembled after her death and published twenty years later, in 1829, at the instigation of those who still valued her memory as Memoirs of Ruth Follows. Extracts from this book and some unpublished letters can be found in the anthology Strength in Weakness.