Be Ye Therefore Perfect: Anti-Slavery and the Origins of the Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends in Chester County, Pennsylvania

Abstract

Be Ye Therefore Perfect: Anti-Slavery and the Origins ofthe Yearly Meeting ofProgressive Friends in Chester County, Pennsylvania Christopher Densmore* Introduction The 1 806 and later editions of the Rules ofDiscipline of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends included a clear statement ofthe long-standing Quakerposition onhuman slavery. Members were exhorted "to be no means accessory to this enormous national evil, but to discourage it by all the justifiable means in their power."1 Despite the long-standing agreement on the evil ofslavery, Friends in the three decades prior to the Civil War were divided on the wisdom ofjoining with nonFriends in the organized anti-slavery movement. The division ofsentiment on participation in the anti-slavery movement, and related questions of church polity, led to a division among Hicksite Quakers of Western Quarterly Meeting in Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1 85 1 , and two years later, in 1853, to the establishment ofthe Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends, also known as Longwood Yearly Meeting. The separation in Western Quarter was the last ofa series ofdivisions thatbegan with splits in Indiana Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) and Green Plain Quarterly Meeting (Hicksite) in Ohio in the early 1 840s and continued in the separations of Genesee Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) in Upstate New York and Michigan in 1 848.2 Reform-minded Friends in Western Quarterly Meeting were well aware ofthese earlier splits in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and New York. In the context ofradical Quaker reform activities, the question ofwhy Western Quarterly Meeting split in 1 85 1 is perhaps less interesting that the question ofwhy it did not do so in 1845.3 Perfectionism and Progress To understand the issues troubling Quakers in the 1 840s and 1 850s, it is useful to consider the issues within the context ofQuaker religious thought. George Fox and the early Quakers held that is was possible for those who attendedto the light ofChristwithin to obey the promptings ofthe spirit. Fox decried those preachers ofhis day as preaching sin who denied that people could follow the will ofGod. Fox took literally the closing statement ofthe Sermon on the Mount, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48 KJV). As Robert Barclay stated in the * Christopher Densmore is Director, Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. Be Ye Therefore Perfect29 Apology for True Christian Divinity ( 1 676), those whose hearts were obedient to the truth could "be free from actual sinning and transgressing of the law ofGod, and inthatrespectperfect; yet doth this perfection still admit of a growth. . . ." (Prop. 8). Friends were well aware that they had gone beyond their predecessors in the work ofreformation. Fox's prophetic "openings" had led him and other Friends into practices that were distinct from the teachings oftheir day. In the years between the 1 640s andthe 1 840s, Friends had further, by their own lights, perfected their forms of expected individual behavior and church discipline. Perhaps nowhere was the sense ofprogress better demonstrated than in the growth ofthe Quaker testimony against human slavery. Friends ofthe 1 830s and 1 840s were aware that earlier Quakers had held slaves and that John Woolman's leadings on the subject were at first rejected by many considered at the time to be weighty Friends. In the context ofthe 1830s and 1840s, some Friends saw Quaker perfectionism as best expressed in a Society ofFriends as a "peculiar people," withdrawn and guarded from "the world." Others were equally convinced that the Quaker heritage required active involvement in efforts to reform the world. Where do perfectionism, reformation and progress reside? For Friends, it resided both in the individual, as each he and she understood themselves to be morally accountable and to have access to divine guidance, and it existed in the corporate institution ofthe Religious Society ofFriends, in its meeting houses, its schools, itspractices, and its bookofdiscipline. Butwhat happened when individual Friends believed that they had seen farther than the society at large? The Literature of Schism The separation in Western Quarterly Meeting was only one ofa series of separations and divisions which splitNorthAmerican Quakerism inthe 1 9th century. In thepast fourdecades, scholars, beginning with Robert Doherty's...