"In One Spirit"

The quiet worshipers who call themselves Friends examine their consciences at regular intervals with some searching "Queries." Sample: Are Lone and unity maintained among you? Last week, for the first time in 119 years, Friends of both "branches" could answer: Yea. The Great Separation, which has . divided "Orthodox" and "Hicksite" Quakers, seemed all but ended.

To bring about the reunion, the Quakers had set up a joint body--the Philadelphia General Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends--and invited Quakers from far & near to attend. The Hicksites' red brick, wide-eaved meetinghouse was filled, to near capacity (1,400) with sober Friends. On its cushioned brown benches they "centered down" before each session in the vibrant silence characteristic of Quaker worship.

They worked slowly but smoothly through their business meetings in traditional Quaker fashion--without votes or minorities.*

In the long silence of worship which began the Meeting, Quaker Patriarch Rufus M. Jones, 83, rose to utter words which must have echoed in the meditations of the many who heard him: "I am thrilled with a sense of joy at something triumphant that has happened toward the end of my long life. . . . My heart is filled with thanksgiving and high rejoicing that we are met as we have met, completely in one spirit, under one Father, as brothers and sisters."

Authority & the Inner Light. For most modern Quakers, the schism's cause was as archaic as broad-brimmed hats and grey bonnets. But in the early 19th Century, winds of doctrine blew hot and strong upon the Society of Friends in the U.S.

In the plain country meetinghouses, Quaker farmers and their families still worshiped according to the precepts of their 17th Century English founder George Fox, waiting in "living silence" for the Inner Light to quicken in them direct awareness of God's will. They felt no need of dogmas, ritual, or "hired priests." They studied their Bibles for spiritual inspiration rather than as final, unchangeable authority as to the nature and will of God.

But to prosperous, cultured city Friends, surrounded by the institutions of conventional Protestantism, the country cousins began to look increasingly like religious radicals. Under the influence of the Wesleyan "Evangelical Movement," with its emphasis on Scriptural authority, the Fall of Man and the Atonement of Christ, many (but not all) city Quakers came to lean more & more on formal theology. On visits to the cities for Yearly Meeting, country Friends began to feel uncomfortable. The center of the religious crisis was the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

In this surcharged situation a fervent voice suddenly spoke out. For most of his life Elias Hicks, a Long Island farmer, had been a respected though not particularly distinguished Quaker minister.* But in 1815, at the age of 67, he was moved to preach against the evangelistic doctrines which he felt were threatening Quaker mysticism./- At the Yearly Meeting of 1827, differences were too deep even for Friendly reconciliation: country Quakers withdrew to form a separate meeting. Though they never formally accepted the teachings or leadership of Elias Hicks, the seceders were known as "Hicksites" for want of a better label.

New Era? From Philadelphia the split spread, resulting in bitter lawsuits, un-Quakerly polemics. Even today some Orthodox Friends look askance at the indifference of many Hicksites to formal theology. Some Hicksites feel an "uneasiness" at Orthodox attitudes. But the conciliatory principles of Friends, and above all the joint management of such Quaker ministrations as the American Friends Service Committee, have made a healing of the breach inevitable, however slow.

Even the most optimistic Friends expect that it will be a number of years before the two Yearly Meetings will have delegated all their functions and responsibilities to the General Meeting. But most welcomed the first General Meeting as the beginning of a new era of Quakerism. From their new-found unity they look for a surge of power with which to tackle their biggest piece of unfinished business --carrying the spiritual testimony of the Friends as widely and as well among the "world's people" as they have carried their services to suffering humanity.

* Quakers handle the Society's business without resort to parliamentary procedure. Action must be taken unanimously, or not at all; for each meeting a Clerk is appointed to gather the "sense of the meeting" on a given subject, reduce it to a minute for the meeting's approval. Quakers find the method makes up in unity for what it loses in dispatch. Its one big failure: the Hicksite-Orth-dox schism.

*The traditional Quaker ministry is unpaid, drawn from the rank & file of the meeting, any member of whom could theoretically qualify. But today many meetings -- chiefly west of the Appalachians -- employ regular pastors /- One non-Quaker deeply affected by Elias Hicks was Walt Whitman. He considered Hicks's preaching one of the great experiences of his boyhood, kept a picture of Hicks in his bedroom as long as he lived.

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