Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 41 - U for Unquakerly

I have a problem with the word 'unquakerly'. It derives from the word 'quakerly' or 'quakerlike' - looking or behaving like a Quaker - but what does a Quaker look like today and how does a Quaker behave? Does it hark back to Whittier's 'Quaker of the olden time' and is 'being quakerly' the same for everyone?

One of the things that makes me uncomfortable about the word 'unquakerly' is that it is always used as a criticism. The person using it assumes that they know what 'quakerly' is and what it is not. Over the years many different things have been called 'unquakerly' - violence, conflict or disagreement of any sort, anger - colourful clothes, make-up, jewellery - drinking, gambling - dancing, singing, learning to play an instrument - programmed worship, Quaker pastors - paying taxes, not paying taxes. The list is endless and endlessly contradictory.

Most Quakers try their best to follow their leadings, to be guided by their Inward Teacher and their community. This endeavour is helped by mutual encouragement, not by criticism and by being divided into 'quakerly' and 'unquakerly'. For me the use of the word 'unquakerly' about someone else is where our famous Quaker tolerance breaks down.

Of course each of us is aware of our own lapses and failings and we can use the word 'unquakerly' defensively against ourselves, jumping in to criticise ourselves before others can do it. But rather than being negative there is a debate to be had about those positive quakerly qualities that we have in common.
 
I have another blog dedicated to the crafty things I make and perhaps some of them are rather unquakerly. On the one hand I am recycling material and making things rather than buying them, but on the other hand my beading is very sparkly and over the top and I enjoy it so much! For myself I think that the word 'unquakerly' is a bit like the word 'feminist.' It makes me want to say "This is what an unquakerly Quaker looks like - let's explore what that means!"

Quaker Alphabet Week 9 - E for Solomon Eccles

A consort of viols by Freyse, German, mid-17th century

Solomon Eccles, sometimes called Eagle, was born around 1618 in London where his father was a professor of music. Solomon became a composer and taught the virginals and viol, making a good living from his profession. Although brought up in the established church Solomon was dissatisfied and, following the spirit of his times, pursued religious truth through several different denominations, becoming a Presbyterian, an Independent and a Baptist before being convinced by Quakerism around 1660.

Title page of A Musick -Lector

On becoming a Friend Solomon came to see  music making as a vanity which he must renounce. He sold all his books and instruments for a considerable sum but then began to be afraid that they might injure the morals of the purchasers. He therefore bought them back and burned them publicly on Tower Hill. To support himself Solomon learned the trade of a shoemaker. In 1667 he published a tract A Musick Lector:OR,The Art of MUSICK that is so much vindicated in Christendom, discoursed of by way of Dialogue, between three men of several judgments. [a musician, a Baptist and a Quaker]

Like other Friends at this time Solomon was given to preaching not only by words but by acting out his message through 'signs'. In 1662 he sat in the pulpit of a church making shoes in order to show that it was not a special place. He was thrown out of the church but  returned the next day, this time reaching the pulpit by jumping from pew to pew. After this startling demonstration he was, perhaps unsurprisingly, arrested and imprisoned.

Perhaps Solomon's most famous 'sign', reported by both Samuel Pepys and Daniel Defoe, was to walk naked or semi-naked with a pan of fire and brimstone balanced on his head, threatening passers-by with the fate of Sodom if they did not repent. Solomon began acting out this 'sign' in London in 1665 so that some saw it as a prophecy of the Great Fire, but he continued with it in 1667 in Scotland when he denounced the worshippers in a Catholic church and later in Cork, where he exhibited himself stark naked and was flogged through the town and expelled.

Solomon Eagle, 1843 (oil on canvas), Poole, Paul Falconer (1807-79) / Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust

Although his actions seem extreme Solomon was very clear that he was only acting as God commanded him and against his own will. In 1677 he wrote, 'I can truly say this, that I have strove much and besought the Lord that this going naked might be taken from me, before ever I went a sign at all.'

Solomon Eccles was not solely a person of extremes. George Fox trusted him and took him to the West Indies in 1671 where Solomon was very useful in organising Quakers in Barbados and Jamaica. In 1672 he went to New England but was arrested at Boston and banished. Solomon came back to England in 1680 and died in Spitalfields in London around January 1682 aged about 64. His three sons did not follow their father into Quakerism and all became musicians.

Solomon Eccles was much more than an eccentric but rather, as William Sewel who knew him well, said 'an extraordinary zealous man and what he judged evil he warmly opposed, even to the hazard of his life.' In the present day the story of Solomon Eccles has inspired the American Quaker Jon Watts to write a song about him.

Quaker Alphabet Week 2 - A for Arts

The Presence in the Midst by J Doyle Penrose 1916

Quaker attitudes to the arts have changed considerably over the years. I have only space here for a short survey but will return to various aspects of the subject over the course of the rest of the Quaker Alphabet.
 
George Fox had a very definite 'puritan' view of the arts. To him these 'jests and toys' were nothing but a distraction from God and Truth and as such were to be entirely avoided by Friends. The only purpose of sports, games, poetry, plays and music as far as he and other early Quakers were concerned was to while away time that should be dedicated to a higher and more serious end. Another objection to the arts was that they were not true. Plays were particular offenders here as not only was the story being told not real but actors dressed up and pretended to be someone else!

Although poetry was allowed to sometimes have a serious purpose, composing it for any but a private audience was frowned upon. The works of Mary Southworth Mollineux (1651-1696) for example were only published after her death, although Fruits of Retirement: or Miscellaneous Poems, moral and divine did go into six editions in the course of the 18th century. Religious poetry was popular among Friends but was not often published, usually being privately circulated and copied into personal commonplace books and journals - which is how much of it survives.

Elizabeth Fry

Both listening to and making music, even privately, were also not approved. This was one of the arts, together with dancing, which Elizabeth Gurney Fry (1780-1845) found most difficult to let go of when she turned from the less strict Quakerism of her upbringing to the 'true' Quakerism of her adult life. In Feb 1799 she wrote "How much my natural heart does love to sing: but if I give way to the ecstasy singing sometimes produces in my mind, it carries me far beyond the centre; it increases all the wild passions, and works on enthusiasm. Many say and think it leads to religion, but true religion appears to me to be in a deeper recess of the heart, where no earthly passion can produce it." Her scruples did not entirely disappear however and in 1833 she writes, "My observation of human nature and the different things that affect it frequently leads me to regret that we as a Society so wholly give up delighting the ear by sound. Surely He who formed the ear and the heart would not have given these tastes and powers without some purpose for them."

John Pemberton 1727-95

Paintings were seen as superfluous decoration and portraits were particularly frowned on as leading to personal vanity. This is the reason why there are so few contemporary representations of Quakers in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Those that exist are often done by outsiders who were seldom sympathetic to their subjects. In the later 18th and 19th centuries however the practice of cutting silhouettes became popular and these met with more approval from Friends. Occasional sketches done without the subjects' knowledge have also survived to give us an idea of what particular Quakers looked like.

As time went on however a different attitude to the arts began gradually to spread among Friends. As with other changes in Quaker practice much evidence of this change comes from the attempts by official bodies to stop it! In 1846 for example London Yearly Meeting minuted "We believe [music] to be both in its acquisition and its practice, unfavorable to the health of the soul. . . . Serious is the waste of time of those who give themselves up to it." At about the same time the influential journal The Friend (Philadelphia) expounded "Sorrowful it is, that even some in conspicuous and influential stations, have actually "sat" for their portraits; and this, not for the hasty moment of the daguerreotypist (questionable as even this prevalent indulgence is), but patiently awaiting the slow business of the limner. Shallow indeed must be the religion of him who knows not that in himself, as a man, dwelleth no good thing."

On the other side some spoke up for the seriousness and spiritual value of the arts. In 1895 William Charles Braithwaite wrote "It needs to be recognized that our Society has not escaped the tendency to narrow down spiritual action to certain prescribed ways as a substitute for the reality of the spiritual life. For example, while Friends have been among the pioneers of modern science they have, until recent years, repressed all taste for the fine arts. These, at their greatest, always contain some revelation of the Spirit of God, which is in the fullest harmony with our spiritual faith. In the fields of music, art, and literature, as in others, Friends may witness to the glory of God and advance that glory by their service."

Penn's Treaty with the Indians by Benjamin West

By the beginning of the 20th century this view was beginning to be more accepted. An example of this is the popularity of the 1916 painting by James Doyle Penrose The Presence in the Midst which makes explicit the presence of Christ in a meeting for worship (see top). It joined representations of William Penn's treaty with the Indians and engravings of a portrait of Elizabeth Fry on the walls of many Meeting Houses in the UK and America.

In the 1970s and 1980s British Quakers set up a Quaker Fellowship of the Arts and The Leaveners continue to encourage Friends to engage in both music making and theatrical performance. There are now many Quaker artists, both amateur and professional, expressing their faith through what they make and what they do. 

Quaker Silence by John Perkin