FGC's "Uniform Discipline" Rediscovered

Abstract

FGC's "Uniform Discipline" Rediscovered Charles E. Fager* I One of the most thrilling feats of Quaker scholarship known to me is Henry Cadbury's discovery andreconstruction ofGeorge Fox's suppressed Book ofMiracles. While hardly in the same league, I felt the spirit ofCadbury's investigative eruditionhovering somewhere close by one morning this spring when, readingareportontheproceedingsofFriends GeneralConference for 1926, the following closing paragraph appeared: "The Discipline committee, appointed at Richmond in 1922, presented a printed report consisting of 140 pages. It presents a clear conception of Friendly faith, principles and business procedure, in modern language, so that not only those accustomed to Friends' expressions but any interested stranger can understand. The Conference passes this proposed discipline on to its constituent yearly meetings with the hope they will adopt it as way opens." (FI 7th mo. 31, 1926: 623) What this obscure paragraph disclosed was that FGC had once had a Uniform Discipline! The very idea seemed preposterous, utterly foreign to the pluralistic — notto say sprawling—ethos ofFGC as I have known itoverthepast 30years or so. Besides, while serving foralmost adecade on thatbody's Central and Executive Committees, I had never heard a single reference to any such document in any session, or read of it in any report or publication. There must have been some mistakeMoreover , such a project also seemed entirely out of step with what I knew of the Hicksite Quaker tradition of which FGC was the heir. Their forebears' opposition to Orthodox efforts to define and enforce religious uniformity was a key factor in the Separations of 1827-28 which brought theirbranch ofQuakerism into being. For thatmatter, controversy had long dogged the Orthodox yearly meetings own labors in this direction, most notably among those affiliated with the Five Years Meeting. That body's Uniform Discipline, developed in 1900, had been a source of endless controversy among its member groups, especially concerning the place of theRichmondDeclarationofFaithwithin it. ForFGC to nowbeundertaking something similarseemedtotally outofcharacter. (Mekeel, Chapters VII & VIII.) The staffattheFriendsHistoricalLibrary,whereIwasdoingthisreading, *Chuck Fager has written extensively on Quaker thought and history. He is a member ofState College (Pa.) Monthly Meeting, and teaches writing at Penn State University. 52Quaker History shared my puzzlement: they had not heard ofany FGC Uniform Discipline either. But Mary Ellen Chijioke, the FHL's very resourceful curator, went foraging in the depths oftheircollection, and soon returnedwith a 140-page volume bearing the nondescript title, "Suggested Revision ofthe Rules of Discipline and Advices ofthe Religious Society ofFriends." The date was right: 1926; but it was catalogued as a draft revision ofthe Philadelphia (Hicksite) Yearly Meeting's Discipline, a venture which was completed the following year. Closer inspection ofthe title page, however, showed this classificationto be in error. In small print near the bottom ofthe page was an overlooked, telltale notice: "Presented forconsiderationbytheRevision Committee ofPhiladelphia YearlyMeeting, appointed 1923, co-operating with the Uniform Discipline Committee, appointed 1923, by Friends' General Conference." And below that, in still smaller type: "This book is offered as the text for a Uniform Discipline for our [FGCs] seven Yearly Meetings." So there was the proof: FGC had indeed once had a Uniform Discipline. Or had it? How come none of us in the FHL Reading Room, some extremely knowledgeable about FGC history, had ever heard of it? Could the document, which was after all only "suggested" to the FGC yearly meetings for their "consideration," have fallen on deafears and been lost in some obscure eddy ofhistory? II Not at all, we learned. Soon there was a stack of these member yearly meetings' Disciplines on the table, and they yielded more remarkable facts: All were revised between 1926 and 1930, and all but one did indeed incorporate this Uniform Discipline, or almost all ofit. Yet for some reason, the FGC offering was not identified in them as an Urtext or archetype. (The variant was from New York Yearly Meeting, of which more presently.) This process was confirmed by a review ofthe FGC Central Committee minutes: They show that aUniformDiscipline Committee was appointedat sessions held in Richmond, Indiana, in 1922 (CC, 8/30/1922, 115), with William C. Biddle of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting as Clerk. Biddle reported on its work, including consultations with the member...