This abridged version of “Roots and Flowers of Quaker Nontheism” was compiled for the convenience of students of Quaker nontheism. An ellipses ( . . . ) or brackets ([ ]) indicate where material has been omitted. The original is a chapter in Quaker and Naturalist Too (Morning Walk Press of Iowa City, IA, in 2014, is available from www.quakerbooks.org). The chapter includes text (pp. 65-103), bibliography (pp. 147-157), source notes (pp. 165-172), and references to 20 quotations that appear elsewhere in the book but are not in this abridged version.
This is a study of the roots of Quaker nontheism today. Nontheist Friends are powerfully drawn to Quaker practices but they do not accompany this with a faith in God. Nontheism is an umbrella term covering atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, pantheists, wiccaists, and others. You can combine nontheist with other terms and call yourself an agnostic nontheist or atheist nontheist, and so on. Some nontheists have set aside one version of God (e.g. as a person) and not another (e.g. as a word for good or your highest values). A negative term like nontheism is convenient because we describe our views so many different ways when speaking positively.
Many of the Quakers mentioned here were not nontheists but are included because they held views, often heretical in their time, that helped Friends become more inclusive. In the early days this included questioning the divinity of Christ, the divine inspiration of the Bible, and the concepts of heaven, hell, and immortality. Later Friends questioned miracles, the trinity, and divine creation. Recently the issue has been whether Quakers have to be Christians, or theists. All this time there were other changes happening in speech, clothing, marriage practices, and so on. Quakerism has always been in progress.
Views held today are no more authentic because they were present in some form in earlier years. However, it is encouraging to Quaker nontheists today to find their views and their struggle prefigured among Friends of an earlier day.
In the following excerpts we learn about Quaker skeptics of the past and the issues they stood for. These are the roots that support the flowers of contemporary Quaker nontheism. . . .
There were skeptical Quakers who asserted views such as that God created but does not run the universe, that Jesus was a man and not divine, that much of theology is superstition and divides people unnecessarily, and that the soul is mortal.
An example is John Bartram (1699–1777) of Philadelphia. . . . He was a farmer and perhaps the best known botanist in the American colonies. Bartram had a mystical feeling for the presence of God in nature and he supported the rational study of nature. In 1758 he was disowned by Darby Meeting for saying Jesus was not divine, but he continued to worship at that meeting and was buried there.
In 1761 he carved a quote from Alexander Pope over the door of his greenhouse: “Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, but looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.” In 1743 he wrote, “When we are upon the topic of astrology, magic and mystic divinity, I am apt to be a little troublesome, by inquiring into the foundation and reasonableness of these notions” In a letter to Benjamin Rush he wrote, “I hope a more diligent search will lead you into the knowledge of more certain truths than all the pretended revelations of our mystery mongers and their inspirations.” [#5] . . .
There were several Free Quaker meetings, the longest lasting being the one in Philadelphia from 1781 to 1834.
Barnard also wrote, “under the present state of the Society I can with humble reverent thankfulness rejoice in the consideration that I was made the Instrument of bringing their Darkness to light.” [#9] On hearing Elias Hicks in 1819, she is said to have commented that these were the ideas for which she had been disowned. He visited her in 1824, a year before she died.
David Duncan (c.1825–1871), a former Presbyterian who had trained for the ministry, was a merchant and manufacturer in Manchester, England. He married Sarah Ann Cooke Duncan and became a Friend in 1852. He was a republican, a social radical, a Free Thinker, and an aggressive writer and debater. Duncan began to doubt Quaker views about God and the Bible and associated the Light Within with intellectual freedom. He developed a following at the Friends Institute in Manchester and the publication of his Essays and Reviews in 1861 brought the attention of the Elders. In it he wrote, “If the principle were more generally admitted that Christianity is a life rather than a formula, theology would give place to religion . . . and that peculiarly bitter spirit which actuates religionists would no longer be associated with the profession of religion.” [#12] In 1871 he was disowned and then died suddenly of smallpox. Sarah Ann Duncan and about 14 others resigned from their meeting and started what came to be called the Free Friends.
The Progressive Friends at Longwood (near Philadelphia) were committed to peace, and the rights of women and blacks, and were also concerned about church governance and doctrine. . . . Between 1844 and 1874 they separated from other Hicksite Quakers and formed a monthly meeting and a yearly meeting. They asked, “What right had one Friend, or one group of Friends, to judge the leadings of others?” [#16] They objected to partitions between men’s and women’s meetings and the authority of meeting elders and ministers over the expression of individual conscience and other actions of the members. There were similar separations in Indiana Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) in the 1840s, Green Plain Quarterly Meeting in Ohio in 1843 and in Genesee Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) in northern New York and Michigan and in New York Yearly Meeting in 1846 and 1848.
Between 1863 and 1874 many of the Friends at Longwood were taken back into membership by their meetings. By the time of the birth of modern liberal Quakerism at the turn of the century, many Friends in unprogrammed meetings had become progressives.
“There is a broad distinction between religion and theology. The one is a natural, human experience common to all well–organized minds. The other is a system of speculations about the unseen and the unknowable, which the human mind has no power to grasp or explain, and these speculations vary with every sect, age, and type of civilization. No one knows any more of what lies beyond our sphere of action than thou and I, and we know nothing.” [#22] . . .
The conference of Friends in Manchester in 1895 was a clear declaration of their views, as was the first Summer School (on the British model) at Haverford College in 1900, the founding of Friends General Conference in 1900 and American Friends Service Committee in 1917.
Some Friends worked their entire lives to bring together dissident branches of the Religious Society of Friends. Examples are Henry Cadbury and Rufus Jones. They based their call for reunification on the same grounds that nontheist Friends rely on today. These included an emphasis on practice rather than beliefs; the idea that Quakers need not hold the same beliefs; describing Quaker beliefs in the meeting discipline by quoting from the writings of individuals; the idea that religiously inspired action can be associated with many different faiths; the love of diversity within the Religious Society of Friends; the view that religion is a matter our daily lives; and the emphasis on Jesus as a person rather than doctrine about Jesus.
These bases for reunification among Friends also serve to include nonmystics, nonChristians, and people of other faiths including nontheist faiths.
At regular intervals during the history of Friends there is discussion about whether we have to be Christian to be Quaker. This is often in the form of an exchange of letters in a Quaker journal. One such flurry was prompted by two letters from Watchman in The Friend in 1943 and 1944 (reprinted in 1994).
The Quaker Universalist Group was formed in Britain in 1979, and the Quaker Universalist Fellowship in the United States in 1983. Among the founders were nontheists John Linton and Kingdon W. Swayne. It is a diverse movement. For the early Friends universalism meant that any person could be saved by Christ. Today, for some Friends universalism is about accepting diversity of religious faith. For others it is an active searching for common aspects of different faiths. Universalism can also mean an effort to learn from each other and live together well and love each other, differences and all.
Over the years, many Quakers stood against the doctrinal views of their times. They represent a continual stream of dissent and a struggle for inclusiveness that started with the birth of our Society. What was rejected at one point was accepted later. Much of what Friends believe today would have been heresy in the past.
Through the years, certain traditions in the Religious Society of Friends have supported the presence of doctrinal skeptics. This included being noncreedal, tolerant, and universalist; concern for experience rather than beliefs; authority of the individual as well as the community, interpreting what we read; and the conviction that Quaker practice and Quaker membership do not require agreement on religious doctrine.
Many Quaker practices are typically explained in terms of God, Spirit or the Inner Light, such as worship, leadings, discernment, the sense of the meeting, and continual revelation. Nontheist Friends embrace the practices without the explanation.
This is a look at Quaker nontheism flowering today. Nontheist Friends, by and large, do not experience, accept or believe in a deity. As a negatively defined term, nontheism provides a broad tent for people who hold many different positive views.
In general, nontheists support diversity of thought in the Religious Society of Friends. They bless what theists and nontheists bring to their meetings and the opportunities that come with diversity. They have been cautious about forming their own organizations because they want to join rather than separate from theists Friends. They hope we will accept each other as Quakers, without adjectives.
The material gathered here represents the flowering of Quaker nontheism.
These Friends were humanists who showed a tender concern for religious skeptics but they did not publicly address the issue of nontheism. We do not know what their personal views were (or are) and it doesn’t matter. It is enough that they helped create the Religious Society of Friends of today that includes meetings that welcome nontheists.
The minute was not approved.
The first public expression of nontheism among Friends that I know of was the Humanistic Society of Friends, founded in Los Angeles in 1939. Many of the members had been Quakers, including their leader, Lowell H. Coate (1889–1973), but their literature did not mention Quakers. Coate later served as editor of The Humanist World, American Rationalist, and The Rationalist. The Society published The Humanist Friend, from 1939 to 1943, and continued as an organization until it became a chapter of the American Humanist Association in 1987. Three years later the chapter became a division of AHA. It was given responsibility for ministerial and religious humanism programs.
In 2004 and 2011-14 there were workshops at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, England, and in 2005 at Pendle Hill, a Quaker center for study and contemplation near Philadelphia. These were attended by about 30 people each time. A strong desire was expressed to support other Friends, whatever their religious views are, and to be supported in turn.
There have also been nontheist Friends events at Powell House in New York Yearly Meeting, Ben Lomond Quaker Center in Pacific Yearly Meeting, and in other locations.
There have always been nontheist Friends, although they have not always spoken out. There have also been Friends whose views were compatible with nontheism, such as the view that Jesus was human like the rest of us, or that the Inner Light can be identified with natural processes such as the human conscience.
Since then nontheism has gradually emerged into public view. Survey data support the sense that there are nontheists in Quaker meetings today, and probably more than are generally known. Many of them may be silent for positive reasons, being comfortable in their meetings and having more important things to talk about.
It is good to work for acceptance of diverse philosophical points of view among Friends, especially views not held by the person speaking. Practices that facilitate the inclusion of one set of people, such as nontheists, are practices that are good for the meeting as a whole.
On these pages you have read about an incredible community of religious thinkers. It has been a joy for me to bring you together with them.
Please send additional material or references to www.nontheistfriends.org.
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(a) David Scofield Wilson, In the Presence of Nature (Amherst MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), 92. (b) John Bartram to Peter Collinson, June 11, 1743, William Darlington and Peter Collinson, eds., Memorials of John Bartram and Humphrey Marshall (New York: Hafner, 1967), 164. (c) John Bartram to Benjamin Rush, December 5, 1767, Thomas P. Slaughter, The Natures of John and William Bartram (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) 62.
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Christopher Densmore, “Be Ye Therefore Perfect: Anti–Slavery and the Origins of the Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends in Chester County, Pennsylvania,” Quaker History 93, no. 2 (2004), 28–46.
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(a) Christopher Densmore, “Be Ye Therefore Perfect,” 41. (b) Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Friends, Exposition of Sentiments (1853), http://www.quest .quaker.org.
(a) Lucretia Mott to Mary P. Allen, June 5, 1877, in Anna Davis Hallowell, ed., James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890), 460. (b) Lucretia Mott, “When the Heart Is Attuned to Prayer,” in Dana Greene, ed. , Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons (NY: Edwin Mellen, 1980), 302. (c) Lucretia Mott to James L. Pierce, January 15, 1849, in Anna Davis Hallowell, James and Lucretia Mott, 315.
Lucretia Mott, in Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James and Paul S. Boyer, Notable American Women 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975), 592–95.
Lucretia Mott, address at annual meeting of the Free Religious Association, June 2, 1871, in Anna Davis Hallowell, James and Lucretia Mott, 551.
Lucretia Mott, conversation with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1840, in Anna Davis Hallowell, James and Lucretia Mott, 188.
(a) Susan B. Anthony, “Divine Discontent,” in Lynn Sherr, Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony In Her Own Words (NY: Random House, 1995), notes 17, 20, 6, and 32. (b) Susan B. Anthony, address to Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends at Longwood, PA, 1873, in Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends Held at Longwood, Chester County (NY: Baker & Godwin, 1873) 56.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815–1897 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), 44.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Pleasures of Age,” speech on November 12, 1885, The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 4, ed. Ann D. Gordon (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 459.
Joseph Rowntree, Memorandum on the Declaration of Christian Doctrine issued by the Richmond Conference, 1887 (York, UK, 5th month 10, 1888).
William Littleboy, The Appeal of Quakerism to the Non–Mystic (Harrowgate, UK: Committee of Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends, 1916). Reprinted by the Friends Literature Committee, Yorkshire, 1938, and by Friends Book Centre, London, 1945.
Henry J. Cadbury, Quakerism and Early Christianity (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957).
(a) John Linton, “Quakerism as Forerunner,” Friends Journal 25, no. 17 (October 15, 1979): 4–9. Reprinted as Quakerism as Forerunner, pamphlet #1 (London: Quaker Universalist Group, 1979). Also in Quaker Universalist Fellowship, The Quaker Universalist Reader Number 1: A Collection of Essays, Addresses and Lectures (Landenberg, PA: printed by author, 1991), 1. (b) Daniel A. Seeger, “Is Coexistence Possible?,” Friends Journal 30, no. 12 (1984): 11–14. Also in Quaker Universalist Reader Number 1 (Laudenberg, PA: Quaker Universalist Fellowship, 1986), 85.
Jesse Holmes, “To the Scientifically–Minded,” Friends Intelligencer 85, no. 6 (1928): 103–04. Reprinted in Friends Journal 38, no. 6 (June 1992): 22–23. Also published as To the Scientifically–Minded (Philadelphia: Friends General Conference, undated), and A Los Intellectuales (Philadelphia: Friends General Conference, undated).
(a) Jesse Holmes, The Modern Message of Quakerism, Philadelphia: Friends General Conference, 1912. Also published as What is Truth? Philadelphia: Friends General Conference (undated). (b) Jesse Holmes, “The Quakers and the Sciences,” Friends Intelligencer 88, no. 6 (1931): 537–38.
Jesse Holmes, “‘Our Christianity’?” Universalist Friends 39 (Fall & Winter, 2003): 15–22.
Henry J. Cadbury, “My Personal Religion,” Universalist Friends 35 (Fall–Winter 2000): 22–31, with corrections in 36 (Spring-Summer 2000): 18. For another interpretation of Cadbury’s writings, see Paul Anderson, “Is ‘Nontheist Quakerism’ a Contradiction of Terms?” Quaker Religious Thought 118 (May 2012): 5–24.
Henry J. Cadbury, Quakerism and Early Christianity, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), 47–48.
Arthur Morgan, “Universal Brotherhood in Religion,” Friends Intelligencer (October 17, 1953): 558 and 564.
Arthur Morgan, letter, The New Humanist, 6 (May–June, 1933).
(a) Claire Walker, “Must We Feel Comfortable?” Friends Journal 9, no. 15 (August 1, 1963): 334. (b) Joseph Havens, “Christian Roots and Post-Christian Horizons” Friends Journal 10, no. 1 (January 1, 1964): 5–8. (c) Lawrence McK. Miller, Jr., “The ‘Honest to God’ Debate and Friends” Friends Journal 10, no. 6 (March 15, 1964): 124–26. (d) Letters by Howard Kershner, Albert Schreiner and Mary Louise O’Hara in Friends Journal, April 1, May 15 and July 15, 1964. (e) For more on this, see: Os Cresson, “Reviews of Publications on Quaker Nontheism in the 1960s” (unpublished manuscript), http://nontheistfriends.org.
Workshop for Non-Theistic Friends, “Seekers Beyond Tradition” Friends Journal 22, no. 19 (November 15, 1976): 586–87. Slightly edited version of unpublished report by participants in the Workshop for Non-Theistic Friends held at the Friends General Conference Gathering, Ithaca NY, June 26–July 3, 1976, http://www.nontheistfriends.org. Workshop also described in Robert Morgan, “Some Surprises For Us?” Friends Journal 22, no. 19 (November 15, 1976): 582–83.
John Linton, letter, “A Universalist Group,” The Friend 136 (April 21, 1978): 484. See John Linton, letter, “A Universalist Group” The Friend 136 (October 20, 1978): 1315.
John Linton, “Quakerism as Forerunner,” Friends Journal 25, no. 17 (October 15, 1979): 4–9. Reprinted as Quakerism as Forerunner, pamphlet #1 (London: Quaker Universalist Group, 1979). Also in Quaker Universalist Fellowship. The Quaker Universalist Reader Number 1: A Collection of Essays, Addresses and Lectures (Landenberg, PA: printed by author, 1986), 1–13.
Kingdon W. Swayne, “Confessions of a Post–Christian Agnostic,” Friends Journal 26, no. 3 (February 15, 1980): 6–9. Also in Quaker Universalist Fellowship. Variations on the Quaker Message (Landenberg, PA: printed by author, 1990), 1–6.
Kingdon W. Swayne, “Universalism or Latitudinarianism?,” Universalist Friends 7 (1986): 8–11.
(a) David Rush, “Facts and Figures: Do Quakers Believe in God, and if They Do, What Sort of God?,” in David Boulton, ed., Godless for God’s Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism (Dent, Cumbria, UK: Dales Historical Monographs, 2006), 91–100. Also see Mark S. Cary and Anita L. Weber, “Two Kinds of Quakers: A Latent Class Analysis,” Quaker Studies 12/1 (2007): 134–144. (b) David Rush, “They Too Are Quakers: A Survey of 199 Nontheist Friends,” The Woodbrooke Journal 11 (Winter 2002). Reprinted as They Too Are Quakers: A Survey of 199 Nontheist Friends (Millsboro, VA: Quaker Universalist Fellowship, 2003).
(a) Robin Alpern, “Reflections on a Decade of Nontheism Workshops” (unpublished manuscript, 2007), http://www.nontheistfriends.org. (b) David Boulton, “Nontheism Among Friends: Its History and Theology” (paper delivered at the Quaker Theological Discussion Group meeting at the American Society for Biblical Literature Conference, San Francisco CA, November 2011).
David Boulton, ed., Godless for God’s Sake.
Chuck Fager, review, “Godless for God’s Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism,” Quaker Theology 13 (2007), http://www.quest.quaker.org.
Henry Cadbury (?), “The Separation in the Society of Friends, 1827.” Friends Intelligencer 71, no. 9 (Second month 28, 1914): 129–132. Also published as Henry Cadbury (?), Differences in Quaker Belief In 1827 and To–Day (Philadelphia: Biddle Press, 1914).
Margaret Hope Bacon, Let This Life Speak: The Legacy of Henry Joel Cadbury (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 26.
Spiritual Nurturance Committee of Quaker Earthcare Witness, “Statement on Unity with Diversity,” BeFriending Creation 26, no. 3 (May–June 2013): 9, http://www.quakerearthcare.org.