In my studies, not until the emergence of Howard Brinton does Jones’s mystical approach begin to be very visible. there. And Brinton had learned from Rufus’s critics as well, and his mysticism was more nuanced. He argued that Quakerism was a "group mys-ticism, grounded in Christian concepts. (xiii), and with evangel-istic, rationalist and humanitarian aspects as well. But for him, the Quaker balance of these elements was not equality: "The mystical," he insisted, "is basic." (203) While devoting much space to Fox, Brinton’s sketch of early Quakerism put Fox firmly in the context of the movement, not as some solo creator ex nihilo. Brinton also renewed Robert Barclay’s insistence that Quakerism was a third form of Christianity, neither Catholic or Protestant. (x-xiii)

Further, in the closing pages of the book Brinton presents a modulated but very trenchant critique of the reigning skeptic-humanist ethos of the FGC stream: "too great an emphasis on ratio-nalism," he noted, "results in a cold, intellectual religion which appeals only to the few; too engrossing a devotion to the social gospel results in a religion which, in improving the outer envir-onment. ignores defects of the inner life which cause the outer disorder." (203)

He also predicted that "Signs are now apparent in the Society of Friends that what has been called the modernistic period is drawing to an end." (Brinton: 1952, 203, 201) It was to take a couple more decades for this shift to come about, but he was basic-ally right. (I regret that I can’t do more here than hint at the lasting value of Brinton’s example of scholarship, plain speaking, and spiritual depth; fortunately, our Friend Anthony Manousos is at work on a full-fledged biography of Howard and Anna, and I look forward eagerly to reading it.)

The next of our "Bs" is Hugh Barbour, whose major work, The Quakers in Puritan England, again challenged the bland anti-intellectualism of the Age of Amnesia, and advanced the work of a group of Friends who saw opportunities to meld the Society into the burgeoning Mainline alliance that was coalescing into the national and world councils of churches. But to cement this connection, which included both FGC, Canadian, and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings, te Yale-educated Barbour took a very different tack than Barclay-Brinton. He emphasized the continuities and parallels between early Friends and their Puritan counterparts, the ancestors of the Mainline. "Both groups," he wrote, "actually stemmed from the same traditions, and most of their crucial doctrines were the same." Their differences were more matters of "mood and method." (Barbour: 135)

Hugh’s book made some good points–of course early Friends were in many respects products of their times. Yet his analysis has not worn well, at least for me: if Friends were only Puritans in broadbrims and bonnets, why the fierce and unremitting opposition between the two groups? And can we really think a Puritan doctrine like predestination, which Friends vehemently condemned, as not somehow "crucial"?

This thesis had already been undermined in the late 1930s, by an unfairly neglected scholar, Rachel Hadley King, whose doctorate was also from Yale. Based on a careful examination of Fox’s formative writings, she concluded that ‘Fox’s repudiation of Puritanism is not a repudiation of merely superficial details, but a denial of the fundamental Calvinistic assumption of the bondage of the human will and the complete depravity of human nature." (Hadley: 43)

There is an unfortunate slighting of history in this accommodating Quakers-as-Puritans view. As the British scholar Barry Reay remarked, "When reading such work one could even be forgiven for forgetting that there was, after all, a revolution in the middle of the seventeenth century, and that the Quakers were a product of that revolution."(Reay: 3). I believe Douglas Gwyn (Gwyn:1984) Melvin Endy has also made a very effective critique of this position, and am persuaded that, despite the surface and cultural similarities, Quakerism and Puritanism were two very different animals. (Endy: 1999)

These theological/historical doubts have been reinforced by the record of recent history: the Protestant Mainline may have seemed the wave of the future in the fifties, but is in a state of near-collapse today. It now offers Friends more of a cautionary tale about the perils of assimilation than a rejuvenating pathway into some notional Protestant "mainstream.."

Contra Barbour, I believe it is the discontinuities between liberal Quakerism and mainstream Protestantism that are more the sources of our vitality, and they are what will enable us to thrive despite the Mainline’s collapse. Rachel Hadley King, for instance, discovered in her studies that, as she put it with some consternation, "Fox’s central position can be held without reference to historical Christianity. His theory that the universal saving light within is the only teacher and authority is too general to be specifically Christian." (King: 161) Lots of what are derisively called "Universalist" Friends have noticed this too; but she wrote that in 1940.

Of course, this extended debate with Hugh Barbour’s work only shows the rare quality of his scholarship and how far beyond the age of amnesia he had advanced. Would that there had been a few more scholars prepared and interested enough to take him on a generation earlier and from within the liberal stream, we would all have been better off.

But such scholars and thinkers were all too few, which brings me to the "C" on this list, and the sparkling figure of Henry Cadbury. His role in pointing beyond the anti-intellectual liberal ramparts was more muted and subtle, and I’ll focus here on what seems to me his primary contribution, the recovery of the substance of Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles,’ first published in 1948. This extraordinary feat of scholarly detective work tentatively lifted the curtain on two features of Fox long neglected by liberals (and others): first, the plentiful presence of the miraculous in his early career, and second, his clear proclivity, along with his editors to alter, rewrite, and to speak bluntly from my background as a journalist, to falsify the early Quaker record for public relations purposes.

                                                                more >>
<< Back