by John Punshon

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review by Riley Case

ROGER FINKE and Rodney Stark in their study, The Churching of America 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (Rutgers University Press, 1992), use the Quakers as an example of their sociological thesis, i.e., religious groups with a strict and otherworldly faith tend to flourish while those who compromise strictness to become respectable and acceptable to modern society tend not to flourish. When Quakers were being hunted down in Massachusetts; when Quakers were operating the underground railroad in Indiana; and when Quakers were being thrown in jail in New York for defying “worldly” ordinances (as was a relative of mine who in the colonial period considered he had been married by God and did not need to secure a marriage license from the state), they gained converts and made an impressive impact on American society.

But Quakers got respectable, and wealthy. Starke and Finke quote sources indicating that by the early 1800s 13 percent of the Quakers in Philadelphia were considered “gentlemen” as compared with two percent of non-Quakers. Forty-five percent of the Quakers were merchants, businessmen, or in professions, compared with 28 percent of non-Quakers. By the time of the Hicksite separation, Quakers were already in decline as a denomination.

So, who are the Quakers?

At Conner Prairie Farm, a reconstructed 1830s pioneer-era village in Fishers, Indiana, the featured “church” is a Friends church. The hundreds of school children who pass through the village each week visit the Quaker meetinghouse and learn from volunteer “pioneer Quakers” in costume that “the Friends” are simple-living people who are kind to Indians, who worship in silence, do not believe in war, teach that all people are equal, and do not take their hats off to people to show that no one is better than anyone else. (They also learn that one of the reasons the “elders” sit up front facing the people is so they can wake you up if you happen to fall asleep during worship.)

What the same children learn if they happen to visit one of the area Friends churches on the following Sunday is that modern-day Quakers are not known for any of those things. In fact, Quakers look and act a lot like—well, United Methodists. In other words, they tend to be just like everybody else. They are not persecuted, are not thrown in jail, and are not known for any controversial beliefs. They are the same respectable people like their neighbors who belong to the local Kiwanis Club, drink coffee at the coffee shop, and serve chicken and noodle dinners at the church.

Punshon's thesis

John Punshon is concerned about these things and wants to challenge the people called Quakers to do something about it. He would like for the Friends Church, or at least evangelical Friends, to recognize its inheritance, come to terms with whatever needs to be discarded, and set a direction for the future. More specifically, (check out the last ten pages for this analysis), he wants evangelical Friends to see themselves as an integral part of the evangelical Christian community, rejecting, on the one hand, a rigid fundamentalism, and using Quaker distinctives to discover, on the other hand, the unique theological and sociological niche that will enable Quakers to grow and be a significant force in American Christianity.

The task is formidable. The issues that gave life to Quakers are no longer serious issues in the Church. Quakers in seventeenth century England reacted against dead church ordinances, Christianity linked with privilege, the hierarchical ordering of society, war as a way of life, and the neglect of the poor and disinherited. They gave to the world “the inner light,” the idea of discernment, and simple living.

The success of early Friends

From one perspective Quakers were successful. John Wesley, among others, expressed an indebtedness to the Quakers. For sure he shared with Quakers a basic Arminianism. On American soil, the Quaker presence influenced the whole evangelical movement. American frontier religion abandoned sacramentalism, disdained hierarchical church structures, stressed religious experience over cold tradition, took the clergy off pedestals, offered an egalitarian way of running the church, began keeping spiritual journals, and propagated a Spirit-centered religion.

Quakers are sometimes reluctant to take credit for such things. We all, Quaker and non-Quaker, have benefited from the Quaker forebears. But to bank on these things is not particularly helpful at the moment. It is worthwhile to note this glorious past, but it does not address the present crisis in the Friends Church, i.e., why the Friends Church is not doing better.

Two themes

In the book, Punshon develops two main themes. He offers a primer of the evangelical Quaker faith that examines the origins and history of the Friends Church. Friends need a refresher course on who they are, where they have been, and what they believe. He suggests that a true understanding of history places the Friends Church firmly on an evangelical and biblical basis, but with a unique Friends character. He then seeks to place that Friends faith in the context of the larger evangelical subculture, suggesting that the Friends Church is uniquely situated with an understanding of discipleship and a vision of Christianity that can enrich the larger evangelical world (and, hopefully, to grow).

An important part of that Quaker vision for Punshon is the idea of the covenant:

Many of the doctrines and practices that came to distinguish Friends only make sense if they are seen to derive from one central principle. On this view, the testimonies, Friends principles of worship, church order, and personal morality—the distinctives, in a word—all stem from the covenant. A recovery of Friends covenantal vision does not require a return to every detail of traditional Quakerism, for that is both impossible and undesirable. But it would enable Friends to establish a realistic balance between the corporate and individual dimensions of the faith and thereby provide a significant counterweight to the excessive individualism often encountered in the wider evangelical world. (p. 19)

But, does it have appeal?

As an outsider, I confess I don't quite understand how this “preaches.” Intellectually the idea of the covenant makes a great deal of sense. Quakers who gather for worship ought not to be just a gathering of individuals who happen to be in the worship service together because they like the praise band or because the children like the murals on the nursery wall. They should be there because they are convinced that the Quaker way of doing Christianity is not only personally satisfying but biblically correct. This would include an emphasis on spiritual discernment, on an egalitarian way of conducting church business, of believing that Christian witness is made not just by the individual but by the community, of an openness in worship which is Spirit-led, and of a bonded community. All of this is predicated on the preaching and teaching of evangelical theology.

That is all well and good. The question, however, is whether it is enough to inspire a Quaker family moving to a new community to pass ten other evangelical churches on a Sunday morning to commit themselves to a Friends Church; or better, to inspire that family to purchase their home in a neighborhood where a Friends Church is located.

Is there a place for denominations?

The church-growth people do not speak much of denominational distinctives. Denominational labels do not always wear well, which is why some mega-churches hide their denominational affiliation down near the bottom of the third page of the Sunday bulletin.

But Punshon—and some of the rest of us also—believe that the larger Christian Church is enriched, and not diminished, when each group builds on that which has been its strength in the past, and, led by the Spirit, is able to update and apply its distinctive to the present culture. In other words, Quakers should be Quaker, United Methodists should be United Methodist, and Presbyterians should be Presbyterian.

Words and meanings

Punshon tries something a bit different with this kind of book by including a glossary. One might hope that we all know exactly what is meant when such ideas as imputed righteousness, new paradigm churches, Pelagianism, premillennial dispensationalism, and postmodernism are being discussed. Realistically, however, even the best-trained among us need help with understanding big, long church words. One can get a good education just by reading the glossary.

My advice to Friends? Go for it.

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