An Holy Experiment and the Separation of 1827-1828
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1 An Holy Experiment and The Separation of 1827-1828 Randal L Whitman 2020 William Penn seized the opportunity granted to him in 1681. The British Crown owed his late father, an Admiral of the Royal Navy, a considerable debt, and Penn persuaded His Royal Highness Charles II to pay it off by granting him Proprietary rights to Pennsylvania. In 1682, Penn set in motion what he called “an holy experiment:” a colony, run by Quakers, and dedicated to Quaker principles, yet open to all religions. In so doing, Penn let fly a flaming arrow which arced across the heaven of slow time to embed itself into Arch Street meeting house in Philadelphia, one-hundred-forty-five years later, at the opening session of the yearly meeting on April 16, 1827, and set it aflame. Mystical and Evangelical The flame of contention that drove Friends apart was at least in part doctrinal in nature. Howard Haines Brinton’s major work, Friends for 300 Years1, focuses considerable attention on what he calls the “tension” between the inward and outward aspects of Quakerism, otherwise called its mystical and evangelical aspects. Primitive is a term frequently used as a synonym for mystical in this context.2 Brinton suggests that the main attraction that George Fox’s new religion brought in the mid-seventeenth century was its strong dependence on inward revelation--that is, the individual’s self-discovery of God and God’s Truth within himself--as opposed to the individual’s dependence on outward authority—clergy and Scriptures. For poor, mostly illiterate or semi-literate peoples, this discovery was electrifying. Nothing goes to the head quite so well as the self-empowerment of having and finding God within one’s self. Nonetheless, Fox did not eliminate the Scriptures; he just deemphasized them, making them secondary sources of authority--secondary, that is, to the primacy of that of God within, or what Robert Barclay called the unmediated revelation of the Holy Spirit. 3 The ‘unmediated’ in his terminology, means ‘without the help of clergy or Scripture,’ and the Holy Spirit is the same as that of the Christian Trinity, which Quakers firmly believed in. That is, the “Inward Light” is the Holy Spirit illuminating the individual. Evangelicalism, on the other hand, includes the belief that the Scriptures are the “holy words of God,” and, in later (Gurneyite) form, the sole source of God’s Truth. Quakers tried to keep these inward and outward aspects in balance, strongly recommending that all Friends frequently read the Bible, but without regarding it as “the 1 Brinton, Howard H., Friends for 300 Years, Pendle Hill Publications, Wallingford, PA, 1952; A revised edition came fifty years later, Friends for 350 Years, Edit. By M. H. Bacon, Pendle Hill, Wallingford, 2002. 2The word “conservative” has been variously applied to both of these aspects, with the result that when someone refers to one side or the other as “more conservative,” I find it confusing. In essence, the Orthodox were conservative relative to Christian history, while Hicksites were conservative relative to Quaker history. 3 These are spelled out in great degree in Robert Barclay’s An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, published in 1676 and 1678 (Latin and English, respectively), but I strongly recommend Barclay’s Apology in modern English, by Dean Freiday, published in 1991 by the Barclay Press. Both are available in our (Germantown) meeting library. 2 fountain of truth.” They were not always successful. Brinton shows that all Quaker schisms emerged as stress-fractures along the mystical-evangelical line. One early schism, for instance, was brought about by the preachings of a powerful traveling minister named George Keith who traveled widely throughout Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) in the 1690s, saying that Friends had gone too far from traditional Christianity. Keith preached that by insisting on “that of Christ within”, Friends were in danger of losing the “true Christ without.” He earned quite a few adherents, including a number of members of Germantown Meeting. Keith was eventually labeled “schismatic” by PYM, and was refused the opportunity to preach. He returned to England where he was rejected also by London Yearly Meeting. He became an Anglican and ended his days as an Anglican Bishop. 4 I will come back to Keith a little later, for he plays a role in our tale. The coming Separation will be far more complex than just a doctrinal controversy, but I want you to keep an eye on the mystical/evangelical dimension as we move forward in time. Five starting conditions to remember I believe that the Hicksite-Orthodox split was essentially inevitable from the day that Penn stepped down to Pennsylvania shore from the ship Welcome in 1682. Several things, however, must be clear concerning the starting conditions of Penn’s Pennsylvania Province in order to understand what happened. First, many sects seek to separate themselves from the World, using the term to mean the physical and mundane community of humanity, as opposed to the spiritual; they see the World as the source of all Sin. For instance, The Pietists, a Lutheran sect, came to Germantown and set up an ideal community of Hermits on the Wissahickon Creek, distancing themselves literally from contamination of the World (see The Settlement of Germantown). Also, the Amish are a sect, descended from Old World anabaptists, who have more or less successfully separated themselves from the World and continue to do so today as best they can. George Fox, in contrast, very deliberately insisted that Friends must live their faith in the World, openly and frankly; they must integrate with the World, mixing with the social order they find, while keeping their Faith. However, Fox never mentioned Government; I imagine he never considered the possibility of Friends being in government. William Penn, however, raised the stakes: he put his Quaker colonists in charge. This was really the heart of Penn’s “experiment.” In 1682, Penn expressed his conviction that government “was part of religion itself, a thing sacred in its institution and end,” and therefore no less an appropriate task for Godly folk to undertake. Penn declared, “There are another sort of persons, not only fit for but necessary in [outward] plantations, and that is Men of universal spirits, that have an eye to the Good of Posterity, and that both understand and delight to promote good Discipline and just Government among a plain and well intending People; such persons may find Room in Colonies for their good Counsel and Contrivance, who are shut out from being of much use or service to great nations under settl’d Customs.”5 That is, Quakers have the Right Stuff and this is the Right Place. 4 See the account in The Settlement of Germantown for fuller details. Keith is regarded by J. William Frost as one of the only three well-trained Quaker theologians (with Penn and Barclay) of the time. 5 Quoted in Tolles, Frederick, Meeting House and Counting House, W.W. Norton &Co., New York, 1948. Page 10. 3 The second thing to be understood is that Penn’s Quaker colonists were almost all uniformly poor folk. 6 They mostly came from areas in England that were notably poverty- stricken. In areas where there was somewhat more money, English oppression against them was both legal and economic; they were being fined into poverty if they were not already there, and sheriffs were instructed to confiscate, for sale to pay off the fines, especially those goods and tools essential to making a living. Being poor also meant that almost all the immigrants were uneducated in any formal sense, likely minimally literate, and no teachers themselves, although most had learned some basic skills, and could be considered basic artisans, able to make something. They had ministers among them, poor people like themselves, also without formal education, and probably little more literate, but who had demonstrated skills of reaching the Light Within, and articulating their faith and purpose. What all these poor people brought with them were the hard principles of Quakerism: industry, frugality and above all else honesty. These were no “huddled masses yearning to be free;” they were toughened in spirit and faith by years of adversity and repression. They were precisely what Penn wanted. The third condition, essentially a corollary to the uniform poverty of the incoming settlers, was almost a complete lack of people of any higher class, aside from Penn himself, discussed below. The importance of this lack is easily explained: the principal reason that upward mobility was slow in European cultures was the determination that upper classes maintained to prevent those from lower stations from rising into theirs. Furthermore, everybody took for granted that class structure was just the way things were. Even George Fox acknowledged that social order should be maintained. But again, just as he may not have considered the possibility of Friendly government, surely, he also never considered what would happen if there was no social order. The absence of any kind of a middle class meant that there was no bar whatsoever to upward mobility in Penn’s new province. The phrase ‘nature abhors a vacuum’ applies here; the Quaker poor were poised to experience explosive upward mobility. The fourth circumstance, completing the incipient class structure of the new city, was William Penn himself, who was that most unusual creature, a convinced Quaker who was born and bred of the British upper middle class, a group whose principal characteristic is its sense of entitlement.7 Penn’s own love of wealth and position was inbred and a fatal seed of future separation.