A tension lay at the heart of early Quakerism. Friends believed that revelation had not ceased when the last book of the Bible was written. This conviction shaped Quaker worship. Friends met with no one person appointed as the minister or pastor, confident that if God had a message for the assembled group, he would inspire someone to speak. That could be anyone, learned or illiterate, male or female. Friends did not limit their advocacy of their beliefs to vocal ministry. Significantly, friends named themselves “Publishers of Truth.” From the beginnings of the Quaker movement in the early 1650s, they were prolific publishers, turning out hundreds of pamphlets advocating Quaker views and responding to attacks.
On the other hand, friends both set boundaries and recognized that God had given some individuals “a gift in the ministry,” a gift for speaking and preaching during worship. Such friends became known as “Public Friends.” Although firmly believing that the Holy Spirit could lead friends to seemingly bizarre actions such as “going naked as a sign,” friends were also clear that Satan could mislead friends to inappropriate behavior, or that humans might mistake their own urges and inclinations for divine inspiration. Friends often admonished each other informally when they perceived another falling into error. In 1673, English Friends had created a body in London, the Second Day’s Morning Meeting, which was charged with oversight of publications in which friends averred to represent Quaker beliefs. As Spencer Wells notes, there is debate about whether the Morning Meeting acted more as a censor or as a group editorial committee. However, for an English Friend to go into print without the approval of this group was regarded as a disorderly behavior that could bring loss of membership.
This is a story that is well documented for English Friends. However, we have known much less about how such processes worked among colonial Friends. This is the gap that S. Spencer Wells attempts to fill, and he succeeds.
In the first section of his work, Wells rightly emphasizes that Friends saw self-control as an essential part of the regulation of Quaker expression, both oral and written. While today many Quakers emphasize “speaking Truth to power” as authority for caustic critiques of what they perceive as injustice, colonial Friends urged that no one should speak in worship unless absolutely certain of a divine leading. Friends gave considerable thought to identifying states of mind that were evidence that ministry was “rightly ordered.” Such self-control not only was evidence of obedience to the Divine Will; “Watching one’s tongue also bolstered spiritual community.” (18). However, friends sometimes failed to meet their own standards, as Wells shows in an extended discussion of the dispute between George Keith and other leading Philadelphia Friends in the 1690s. When they accused Keith of making “Friends stink, and become the song of drunkards,” Keith responded that they themselves were to blame, “as when the sun shines warm on a dunghill, the dunghill is to be blamed for the stink, not the sun” (30).
The second section of Wells’s work looks at attempts by colonial Friends to regulate publishing. The Morning Meeting in London attempted to exert control, but by the mid-eighteenth century, the six American yearly meetings had their own Overseers of the Press. In the colonies, oversight was varied. Manuscripts were endorsed and rejected; revisions recommended; and sometimes decisions were made that even though a work might have value, it was inexpedient to publish it.
Wells concludes with three illustrative case studies. From 1696 to 1707, Thomas and Esther Gilberthorpe, members of Chesterfield Monthly Meeting In New Jersey, contended with their monthly, quarterly, and yearly meeting over whether Esther had made unjust charges against another Friend and whether they were properly repentant when the monthly meeting found them in the wrong. John Buffin of Burlington, New Jersey, in the 1760s, felt led to publish several pamphlets, without review by the Overseers of the Press, because he thought they were part of a flawed structure that needed reform. He saw himself as reproving the corrupt; the leaders of the yearly meeting saw him as disorderly and saw that he was disowned. Wells’s final case involves North Carolina Friend Herman Husbands, who attained secular fame as a leader of the Regulator Movement of the 1760s and 1770s. Husbands was disowned by Cane Creek Monthly Meeting for his attacks on other Friends. He responded with a public attack on what he saw as Quaker suppression of religious speech and liberty.
One flaw, not critical but easily avoided, mars this work. Quakers did not use the normal names of months of the year. Thus, even today, in some Quaker record-keeping, January is the first month, July is the seventh month, and so forth. However, before 1752, England and its colonies followed the Julian calendar, where the new year began on March 25 and March was the first month, October was the eighth month, and so forth. This work converts the Quaker dates to the normal ones, and before 1752 does it incorrectly. Thus, for example, note 40 on page 25 correctly cites a volume of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Minutes for 1686–1734 regarding a case involving an outspoken Friend. The original record shows it as the 7th month 18, 1703. However, that would be September 18, not July 18, as Wells cites it.
This error does not affect Wells’s conclusions. He has shed useful new light on how colonial Quakerism functioned.
