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human estate on the world episode 25 the Quakers welcome to that episode of

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human estate on the world I am Dustin and joining me for the first little bit

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is me Kylie alright Kylie and how old are you bye do you go to school yes what

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great are you in oh well preschool all right and then what are you going to be

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in in the fall next year kindergarten yeah very nice so what's your favorite

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color well my favorite color is pink and that's my favorite favorite color

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all right and your favorite animal she doesn't bake cats and with a cat okay so

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basically all cats mm-hmm and all dogs all dogs or just our dogs dog dogs and

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all cats okay all dogs and all cats so your big big fan of the canines and the

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few lines mm-hmm boss even boss even Dustin how it is of quakes happen

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earthquakes the tectonic plates are constantly moving and our continents are

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sitting on top of the tectonic plates and pressure builds as plates bump into

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each other so earthquakes that we get around here are because the Pacific

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plate that is underneath the ocean is going under the North American plate

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which we live on top of and that subduction builds up pressure that causes

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earthquakes all over the western US really cool Dustin you can also call me

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daddy you know yeah you're on a podcast I mean podcast and you're not

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pretending you actually are on a podcast yeah yeah this is really cool daddy

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sometimes I call you daddy uh-huh so what do you want to be when you grow up oh

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well a mom and a ballerina okay and what's your favorite food oh well I can't

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aside there's too many choices choices so you like a variety of food mm-hmm all

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right and what's your favorite mythical creature mm-hmm those are the creatures

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that aren't real oh well unicorns unicorns very nice and your favorite TV

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show oh Legos you like all the Lego get back to the microphone you like all the

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Lego shows mm-hmm like even even yeah Ninjago and the Lego movies and Lego

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Star Wars and Lego Batman oh oh yeah guess what dad that song is very cheesy

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which song oh and the after song and from everything is awesome oh yeah

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everything is awesome is a pretty cheesy yeah because that's stupid cheesy song

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all right well Kylie thank you so much for joining me on the podcast you're

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welcome

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all right so friends I'm sorry this is taking so long I was supposed to talk

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about Quakers in the episode either before or after the shakers because I

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really wanted to have a Quakers and Shakers series the shakers were easy

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they're crazy they're consistent you know what's going on the religious

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society of friends it's taken me okay I did the shakers August 22 of last year

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and I have finally wrapped my head around it so the religious society of

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friends is the official name of the Quakers and if you talk about what

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Quakers are now good luck because are they Christian most of them are about

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90% of Quakers identify as Christian do they believe in God yeah a little over

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80% do are they a church sort of it's more a loose association of churches that

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have and other groups that meet periodically that get along do they have

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core doctrine mostly like some of the the general things that most Quakers can

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agree upon is that the local church has the power that at least some of the time

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they should sit quietly and wait for the spirit to move which in the case of

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Quakers that don't believe in God I don't know what that means they also are

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pretty much all pacifists and pretty much all believe that marriage is supposed

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to be for life most are anti-abortion but like that's really the core of what

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Quakers are it's it's those handful of beliefs with pacifism being one of the

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most core traditionally Quaker services their first day services because

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traditionally Quakers do not use the pagan names of the days of the week or

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months so the first day services was a group of Quakers coming together and

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sitting in silence until somebody felt compelled to speak about 11% of Quakers

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still have that as the primary form of worship it's what's called the unprogrammed

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services you will find Quakers like that in Britain Australia Canada and parts of

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the US about 89% of Quakers now have programmed services where they have

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pastors who preach they have music and they have a portion of the service where

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they sit in silence until somebody speaks Quaker governance is also kind of

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strange they the local Quaker churches or meetings can be called monthly meetings

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because once per month they get together for a business meeting where they conduct

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church business at those business meetings they sit in silence until

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somebody feels compelled to speak and there is a clerk present to help ensure

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that basically the debate doesn't happen you are not allowed to respond to

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something that somebody else says you can only speak an original idea that you

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feel compelled by God to speak no debate there's also no vote you have to the

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meetings have to sit and wait until they reach a point where there is a general

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sense of consensus on an action to be taken which is incredibly as somebody

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who carefully studied Roberts rules of order when actively involved in student

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government and clubs and college that hurts me at a very deep level like the

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way to make good decisions is through debate the way to actually agree on

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you know determine if people agree on something is to take a vote and they

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don't allow debates and they don't allow votes it's crazy at the regional level

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Quaker communities will send delegates to quarterly meetings so for example the

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Quaker communities in Greenleaf Idaho and Newburg, Oregon are both part of the

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Northwest quarterly meeting for the evangelical Quakers and that quarterly

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meeting is part of a higher organization that is called an annual meeting and

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there is also even higher levels such as the Friends Worldwide Committee for

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Consultation which is the highest level of Quaker organization it is a very

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loose association as you can imagine and they hold what is a triennial meeting

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so every three years they used to be five-year meetings but now they're

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three-year meetings which is yeah the Quakers are bizarre at present within

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the the broader overarching umbrella of Quakers there are evangelical Quakers

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which make up about 88% of all Quakers and they have their own

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international organization with the Evangelical Friends Church International

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which has annual meetings for evangelical friends churches in other countries

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like in the US and most notably Kenya at present there are about 377

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Quakers around the world in total with 146,300 of those in Kenya and 76,360 in

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the United States there are also tens of thousands in Burundi and Bolivia

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there's also about 35,000 in Burundi and 22,000 in Bolivia and also over 5,000

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Quakers in Guatemala the United Kingdom Nepal Taiwan and Uganda so they're

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spread out a lot there is a tendency for Quakers to be consolidated in Quaker

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communities or specific cities a lot of these were founded as kind of Quaker

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settlements most notable for the Quaker settlements would be Philadelphia

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Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania as a whole Newburg, Oregon, Greenleaf, Idaho,

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Whittier, California and Friendswood, Texas you can also find significant

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amounts of Quakers or Quaker influence in Richmond, Indiana, Birmingham, England

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Greensboro, North Carolina and Ramallah, Ramallah, Palestine

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all right and I've mentioned the the evangelical Quakers I've mentioned the

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program services the those two generally are the same the ones who are

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evangelical tend to be the ones are are the ones who have pastors and have

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sermons and songs the Quakers that still have unprogrammed services tend to be

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liberal fitting a lot more closely in line with mainline Protestants like the

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United Methodist and Episcopal churches or even with liberal Christianity and

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just liberal religion like the Church of Christ and Unitarians there's a lot of

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variability and with that variability if somebody just says that they're Quaker

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you know almost nothing about them and that really makes sense the when you

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have a structure that doesn't allow debate that has been around since the

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1650s that allows anybody to speak and that vest all control at the local level

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that is a system that very easily can be that can be adjusted or modified along

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with major cultural events like the first and second grade awakenings and the

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modern evangelical movement so let's get into a little bit of history the Quakers

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didn't arise out of a vacuum they came out of the English Civil War this was a

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time period in England where the Puritans had taken over the country they

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had overthrown the king and George and Oliver Cromwell was Lord

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Protector of England so the Catholic Church was in even more trouble than it

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had been under the Protestant Kingdom and the Church of England was in well

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definitely some trouble and there were a bunch of people that just who had been

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Puritans who didn't like them anymore one of them was George Fox he claimed to

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have a revelation a vision that quote there is one even Jesus Christ who can

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speak to thy condition end quote based on that he became convinced that you

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don't need clergy that all believers are priests so the priesthood of all

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believers and that everyone needs to have a direct experience and communication

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with God so he started preaching he would travel around through Puritan

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churches and preach his his version of things and as he started to convince

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people they would go on and preach as well and the early Quakers were loud they

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were boisterous they would preach in churches they would preach in courtyards

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they would preach in the city square at markets at festivals at fairs at anywhere

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they could find people and by 1680 in 1650 George Fox was arrested and taken

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before the magistrates Gervais Bennett and Nathaniel Barton on the charge of

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blasphemy and according to his own autobiography magistrate Bennett quote

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was the first that called us Quakers because I bade them tremble at the word

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of the Lord end quote it was a pejorative at that time Quakers were

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describing themselves as you know true Christians saints children of the light

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and friends of the truth and settled eventually on preferring to call

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themselves friends and the Society of Friends and eventually the religious

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Society of Friends but eventually they came to embrace the term Quaker in 1662

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there was official persecution of Quakers with the Quaker Act of 1662 and

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the Coven Sinticle Act of 1664 and that persecution was relaxed after the

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declaration of indulgence in 1687 and it was absolutely stopped under the

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act of toleration in 1689 and by that time an aristocratic Quaker by the name

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of William Penn established Pennsylvania as an explicitly Quaker Commonwealth

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and prior to the act of toleration there were Quakers in Massachusetts who

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were executed and Quakers throughout England and Wales were routinely

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arrested, logged and faced all sorts of punishments. Of note the early Quakers

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would often have women preach and viewed women as having a very important and

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special place in the community where they were in charge of the community's

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management of family and households and marriage and were able to form women's

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councils to kind of manage make sure the Quakers within their community were

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living up to the standards and much of those standards was that Quakers were

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supposed to have plain speech plain dress and simple lives they're expected

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to be honest and any business dealings honest and everything generally

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expected to be you know upstanding members of the community. By the time of

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the American Revolution Quakers had entered into a quietism period where

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they stopped being quite so loud and did not accept disruptive or unruly

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behavior and they spent less time trying to convert others and also stopped

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allowing members to marry outside of the Quaker Church. As a result numbers

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dropped in England and Wales for example they went from a 1680 peak of

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60,000 down to under 20,000 by 1800 and by under 14,000 by 1860. Throughout the

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19th and 20th century there were splits within the Quaker movement during the

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American Revolution. Some American Quakers started splitting out from the

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Society of Friends to form the free Quakers and the universal friends and

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over the next 200 years there were numerous other splits within Quakerism

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with the Huxsite Orthodox split which was largely over economic socioeconomic

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issues with the Huxites being rural and poor and the Orthodox Quakers being

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urban and wealthy. The Orthodox Quakers wanted to turn their group

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into a more formal church with mainstream Protestant orthodoxy and the Huxites

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opposed that and explicitly viewed the Bible as being second to God's light

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within each member. So the Huxites and the Huxites today are represented by the

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Friends General Conference. The Orthodox Quakers then split again with the

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Beaconites where Isaac Prudson, a minister, Quaker minister and Manchester

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England, wrote a book called A Beacon to the Society of Friends where he argued

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that inner light was what mattered, not a religious belief in salvation by

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atonement. So he resigned from the religious Society of Friends and took 48

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members from the Manchester meeting and about 250 other Quakers with them in

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1836 and 1837. Some of them joined the Plymouth Brethren. After that there was

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the Gurneyite conservative split. This was with Orthodox Quakers becoming more

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evangelical as a result of the influence of the Second Great Awakening.

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Joseph John Gurney led that move and they held revival meetings in America

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and in Britain. They definitely fell in with the holiness movement and the

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Gurneyites formed, well, the Gurneyite split again with one group forming the

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Friends United Meeting and the other forming the Evangelical Friends

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International with both the Gurneyite and Evangelical branches being

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Evangelical. The Quakers who opposed the Orthodox Quakers who opposed the move

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towards Evangelicalism were led by John Wilbur who formed the Fritschlie

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General Meeting and is now represented by the Conservative Friends. So as a general rule of thumb,

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the Friends General Conference are the liberal and unprogrammed Quakers,

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the Hicksites, and the Conservative Quakers are also pretty liberal. Not as liberal as the

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Friends General Conference Quakers, the Hicksites, but way more liberal than the Evangelical Quakers.

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And it's all that being said, if you encounter a Quaker outside of England or Australia,

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chances are that Quaker is probably an evangelical part of the Evangelical Friends International.

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Evangelical Quakers, you should be focusing on the word Evangelical, not Quaker or Friends,

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because they are young Earth creationists, they believe in abstinence before marriage,

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marriage for life, their anti-abortion, their anti-alcohol tobacco and drugs,

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and pacifists, and otherwise basically just Evangelicals. If you happen to have

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conservative Quakers around you, they're going to look a lot more like mainstream Protestants.

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And if you have Hicksite Quakers around you, they're probably going to be really liberal

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and may even be atheists. And on a personal note, my grandpa Williams was born and raised Quaker.

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He was born in Kansas and his family moved to Caldwell, Idaho when he was a young child,

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and he attended the Quaker school in Greenleaf, Idaho about six miles away. So about

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Greenleaf being about 35, 40 miles away from Boise. I do know that at some point as an adult,

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he converted to the Adventist church, I do not know if his parents were converts

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or multi-generational Quakers. But it's still an interesting family connection.

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And as I've learned more about various ancestors, I've found that I have had ancestors who have

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been a part of basically every major Protestant group. And I definitely find that pretty interesting.

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So I hope this hasn't been too confusing. I personally find the Quakers confusing.

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I've been wanting to get this out. I've been wanting to do the Quakers and Shakers for

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like eight years. And I'm finally getting it done. And I'm not going to bother trying to

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make more sense of it than this. The Quakers are a confusing mess because they have a system of

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governance that involves not debating things and

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And until next time, remember not all those who wander are lost.