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The Theology of the Inward Imperative: Traveling Quaker Ministry of the Middle Period

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The Theology of the Inward Imperative: Traveling Quaker Ministry of the Middle Period Quaker Religious Thought Volume 50 Article 2 1-1-1980 The Theology of the Inward Imperative: Traveling Quaker Ministry of the Middle Period William P. Taber Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/qrt Part of the Christianity Commons Recommended Citation Taber, William P. (1980) "The Theology of the Inward Imperative: Traveling Quaker Ministry of the Middle Period," Quaker Religious Thought: Vol. 50 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/qrt/vol50/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quaker Religious Thought by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ethics of four Quaker thinkers, scheduled for eventual publi- cation by Catholic and Quaker Studies, I found that individual religious experience was not the primary source for religious ethics in their thought. What I did discover was "a grounding The Theelogy of the I~wardImperative: of their religious thought in the life of the religious com- munity. I use this phrase in its broadest sense to refer both to Traveling Quaker Ministry of the Mddle Period the contemporary life of the community, in the writer's own time, and to the previous life of the community, as reported WILLIAM P. TABER both in Scripture and in the tradition of the church." This growing realization that theology can be meaningful and alive Recently I stood in an old, unused meetinghouse within only as it glows out of the past and present life of the com- the smell of the salt marshes in southern New Jersey. As I munity of faith was a primary motive in my decision, a year stood in the ministers' gallery and gripped the handrail, I ago, to move from southern Ohio, where I was isolated from any present-day Quaker community, to Portland, Oregon, even suddenly realized that Joseph Hoag, that rustic Quaker seer though that move meant giving up an academic career. from Vermont, had probably preached here. Then my mind Having personally experienced many of the anti-community was flooded with a sense of the great stream of divine caring pressures of contemporary life, including the disruption of which had flowed forth from that gallery across the years. The even the primary community of marriage, I needed all the names of many other ministers flashed through my mind, but more acutely to rediscover the roots of life in the faith of a I focused on just a few who might have been there: John people worshiping together. A further step in this direction Woolman, Elias Hicks, Thomas Shillitoe, and Joseph John finds me for the coming year sharing a house with four other Christians, three of whom are fellow-attenders of Reedwood Gurney. Perhaps you have also been gripped, in some old Friends Church. Having learned some of the pitfalls of too meetinghouse, by a similar momentary thrill of communion drastic a break with the existing culture, we are consciously with the mighty stream of life which once Rowed through that not an "intentional community" or commune, but simply a place. Perhaps you have also discovered that - if we allow the #group of Christians living together, sharing meals, common feeling of awe to take a deeper hold - the was becomes is, and tasks, and unpropimmed conversations on the meaning of a rich peace settles upon us in that dusty place. Afterwards, Christian life. when we step back outside into the sunlight of the twentieth The lesson I have been learning in recent years is that theoloqy is not simply an exercise of the head. All of life - century again, we are different people - not because we have including also the emotions, the sharing of joy and grief, felt c!ose to the past, but because something which was in worship and even ritual, the disruptions and the healings in that past is still alive and vital and flowing today, if we but our relations with our fellow Christians and our fellow human allow it to live in us and through us. It is in that spirit - beincs - is the stuff of theology. Indeed, such relationships that the wat can become is - that this paper will examine the are thr fabric out of which the life of the people of God will theology of evangelism and outreach of the traveling ministry be re-created and renewed, if such re-creation and renewal are of the middle period of Quaker history. to come at all. Even though the QTDG has been asserting the importance of religious thought in Quaker life for over It is not easy to say just when the era of Quietism, or the twenty years, we have always recognized that theo10,gy is an middle period, ends, for one can see survivals of Quietism instrument for the rebuilding of the church of Christ. -4 among Hicksite and Orthodox Friends well after the separa- theology that is severed from its roots in the life of the com- tions. If we agree with John William Graham and others that munity of faith, and from its service to that community, is psychic sensitivity is one of the characteristics of this type of no theology at all. minister, then Quietism had ended for most of Quakerism v. P. after the 1850s; he, at least, found little evidence of such gifts after that time.= However, he may not have been aware that Howard Brinton and others have noted that the inward Conservative Friends continued - in some measure - to imperative generally began to emerge in a much more painful embody the Quietist approach and the consequent psychic way during adolescence or early adulthood as the individual sensitivity well into the twentieth century? Thus, this paper struggled with a "divided self."' From George Fox onward, will deal with that stream of Quaker prophetic ministry which this time was usually stormy, lonely, and full of anguish. Here had its most characteristic flowering in the eighteenth century, again, the network of divinely inspired ministers might play but which has living links even up to the present time. an important role. Many of the journals record the awesome Just as this paper began with one of those mystical experience of having one's "state" spoken to in a meeting for moments in old meetinghouses, so I believe that the classic worship and the consequent awakening and encouragement way toward ministry and outreach in this period often began thus brought. The story of Samuel Bownas is still a good when a child felt a sense of the presence of God. Usually the example, because it continues to speak to Friends today: child was alone, and often out of doors, as John Woolman was On First-days I frequented meetings and the when he felt the divine sweetness. Having once been awak- greater part of my time I slept, but took no ened to this reality, some children, like Joseph Hoag, would account of preaching nor received any other bene- return many times to the woods in order to be alone. Most of fit, than being there kept me out of bad company, the future ministers we are considering were one, two, or sev- which indeed is a very great service to youth. eral generations removed from the beginnings of Quakerism, but one First-day, being at meeting, a young so that it is tempting to believe that something in the Quaker woman named Anne MTilson was there and climate made it possible for them to slip so early and easily preached; she was very zealous and fixing my eye upon her, she with a great zeal pointed her finger into this wider state of consciousness. However, not all of at me uttering these words much power, them were Friends as children, and Rufus Jones reminds us viz: - 'A traditional Quaker; thou comest to meet- that the "mystical type" often have opening experiences as ing as thou went from itt and goes from it as children. Even so, I hold to the theory that the powerful, thou came to it but art no better for thy coming; dedicated ministry of the Quietist era grew organically out of what wilt thou do in the end?' This was so pat a pervasive spiritual climate which often evoked such openings to my then condition that like Saul I was smitten in sensitive children long before the days of Sunday Schools to the ground.' and modern forms of Quaker education. The availability of Thus awakened, Samuel became one of the leading traveling solitude and wide out-of-door spaces seems to be an important ministers of the first half of the eighteenth century. If we can part of such nurture, as were the Quaker rhythms of daily trust the ministers' journals and the records of other Friends, silences and the meetings for worship. For many, the Bible many hundreds of Quaker youth have had their secret inward played a far more dominant role in shaping their consciousness journeys - with their guilts, anguishes, and noble strivings - than it could today, since there were so few other books and revealed through a minister during a public meeting or in the diversions. Finally, out of that climate came a network of more intimate and even more awesome "opportunity" (a pri- powerful examples, the local and traveling ministers, who could vate meeting with a family or a few people, usually in a home). develop far more resonance in a child than seems likely in More than one story is told of a youth outside of the room today's world.
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