Ohio Yearly Meeting's Podcast

EOF03B The Eye of Faith, A History of Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative. Chapter 3 Part B Refining the Form: 1828-1845

• Bill Taber

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This episode continues reading Chapter 3, "Refining the Form: 1828-1845," which examines the theological tensions that nearly split our community.  Note that it was erroneously published before the start of chapter 3.

• Elisha Bates, once a respected Quaker minister from Mount Pleasant, repudiates traditional Quaker views on spiritual inspiration and even receives water baptism
• The Meeting for Sufferings responds with essays defending Quaker doctrines of "divine light, inwardly revealed" as the foundation of true religion
• Joseph John Gurney's visits to Ohio in 1837 further polarizes Friends into two distinct theological camps
• Differences emerge between "Gurneyite" Friends who emphasize the Bible as first rule of faith and "Wilburite" Friends who prioritize the inward Christ
• The Gurneyites welcome intellectual study, activism, and cooperation with other Christians, while Wilburites fear any change that weakens Quaker distinctiveness
• Joseph Edgerton's journal entries reveal deep concern about "a spirit which is weary of the plainness and simplicity of the truth"
• Tensions escalate when Ohio ministers visiting New England are denied returning minutes after associating with John Wilbur
• Ohio Yearly Meeting faces a decade of irreconcilable tensions over theological teachings and disciplinary procedures

"Art thou in the darkness, mind it not, for if thou dost, it will feed thee more. But stand still and act not, and wait in patience till light arises out of darkness and leads thee." - James Naylor, 1659

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To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

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Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Dicipline.

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Chip Thomas:

Hi, this is Chip Thomas. Friends have heard my voice in introducing many of the Ohio Yearly Meeting podcasts. Before this episode begins, I want to offer some brief comments. Back in 11th month of 2023, I started a project reading Bill Tabor's Eye of Faith a history of Ohio Yearly Meeting. Unfortunately, other projects and responsibilities interfered and after three episodes, the undertaking languished. I am now pleased to announce that Kent Palmer has agreed to take over the responsibility for reading Bill's work. Kent has experience with digital productions and it is a real blessing that he is able to step in. Thee may want to go back and listen to the three episodes we published in the 11th and 12th month of 2023, but in any event, I am sure that thee will enjoy Kent's efforts.

Paulette Meier:

Art thou in the darkness, mind it not, for if thou dost, it will feed thee more. But stand still and act not, and wait in patience till light arises out of darkness and leads thee.

Kent Palmer:

In this podcast we are continuing to read from the Eye of Faith a history of Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative, by William P Tabor Jr. Chapter 3 is titled Refining the Form 1828-1845. And in this podcast we will finish reading Chapter 3. Meanwhile, elisha Bates of Mount Pleasant had been developing a theology and a viewpoint along different lines. Like Gurney, he had written approved doctrinal works during the 1820s to counter a growing Hicksism. He had also came into the national Quaker leadership at the Conference of 1829. He had long been recognized minister when Ohio Yearly Meeting of Ministers and Elders gave him a minute liberating him to travel to England in 1832, the last year that the yearly meeting's printed minutes bear the mark printed by Elisha Bates, mount Pleasant. Between that first trip to England and the second which quickly followed, elisha Bates performed perhaps his last service to Ohio yearly meeting in conveying an English request to several American yearly meetings for Indian work and a bequest of 250 pounds for the boarding school being planned at Mount Pleasant. Like Isaac Crudson, leader of a group who were to be known as Beaconites, bates, the leader who had tried and failed to shout down and order out the Hicksites in 1828, came to repudiate the traditional Quaker view of immediate inspiration by the Holy Spirit as unbiblical. He even received baptism on his second English trip. By May of 1835, his estrangement from the main body of Orthodox Quakers had gone far enough that he sent a request to be released from membership on the Meeting for Sufferings, which, in that year, produced an essay against beaconism which was bound into the yearly meeting minutes. The essay speaks of sentiments calculated to weaken the faith of our members in the fundamental doctrines of the universality of divine grace and the influence of the Holy Spirit on the mind of man as the primary rule of faith and practice, and to undervalue some of those Christian testimonies which, under its guidance, are worthy predecessors in the truth, were led to promulgate to the world and which we are clearly set forth by our blessed Lord and his Apostle in the Holy Scriptures.

Kent Palmer:

The essay holds to the Christian principles which our religious society has always held and maintained, since it pleased the Lord to first to gather us as a distinct people. As a distinct people, it directs the readers to Christ Jesus, the Rock of Ages, abundantly testified of in the scriptures of truth and inwardly revealed by the Holy Spirit to the humble believing soul. It insists that the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. This divine light, inwardly revealed, is the foundation of all living experimental religion, which can lead from a dependence on a mere outward profession, however sound in its doctrines, to an inward, practical acquaintance with the cleansing and sanctifying operations of the Holy Ghost. While the essay affirms that in the outward work of Christ, it insists that the way to come to that faith is to receive and obey the manifestations of his divine light in the conscious, which leads men to believe and value and not to disown or undervalue Christ as the common sacrifice and mediator. Youth are urged to seek retirement and quietude of mind and cultivate an acquaintance with their Lord and Savior as he is pleased to reveal himself in their hearts. The state of silent introversion and waiting on the Lord to be a suitable qualification for the profitable perusal of the precious pages of Holy Scripture, a practice which we recommend to the daily observance of all.

Kent Palmer:

By 1836, the Meeting for Sufferings included in its record a three-page essay to refute Elisha Bates' recent pamphlet. Elisha Bates' Vindication Received. The essay, which would have been read in yearly meeting along with all other business transacted by the meeting for sufferings. That year concludes. It is the judgment of this meeting. That Short Creek Monthly Meeting, to which the author ebates belongs, ought to take notice of the case as the discipline directs. Short Creek did its duty, but the disownment of such a giant must have been difficult for, as Anne Bransion noted in her journal, he had many devoted followers. The Meeting for Sufferings in 1839 purchased 500 copies of an essay on baptism by Enoch Lewis in an effort, no doubt, to bolster the official view. In 1840, the Meeting for Sufferings found it necessary to devote five manuscript pages to the rise and the fall of Elisha Bates. It may be that his views were never entirely forgotten, for some use of outward sacraments or ordinances began in the Gurneyite wing of Ohio Yearly Meeting about 40 years later.

Kent Palmer:

Although the bulk of American Orthodox friends in the 1840s would probably have accepted the following statement about Bates, it has the ring of Wilburite complaints about many Gurneyite ministers. It states that within a short time he became vehement and confident, resting much on the force of his own abilities. Instead of speaking tremblingly as at the beginning, he gradually lost the unction and savor of divine life, so that his ministry became wordy and dry, not ministering grace to the hearers, not being a demonstration of the spirit and power. But by 1840, ohio Quakers had to deal with an even greater giant, joseph John Gurney, who had been liberated for the trip to America by a closely divided meeting of ministers and elders which met for several days on the question. News of that disunion circulated widely as soon as he had reached America and it must surely have been known when he attended yearly meeting at Mount Pleasant in 1837, the second year that the yearly meeting ordered the London Epistle printed with the minutes, as it contained a good statement on the Holy Spirit and the sacraments. Like other American yearly meetings, ohio had frequently ordered separate copies of the London Epistle printed for wide distribution, but it was rare to print the epistle with the minutes.

Kent Palmer:

The Epistle of 1837 said in part the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and its perceptible guidance, as ever held by our society, is no dream of the mystical philosophy we regard it as the one great feature of the new covenant, and its object is that the knowledge of God and that living energy which he alone can give, by which the lusts of the flesh are resisted and the Christian soldier is directed and strengthened, are views of the free and immediate operation of the Holy Spirit of the presidency of Christ in the church, of that which constitutes the call and qualification of all true gospel ministry, of the worship of God in spirit and truth, of the baptism which now saveth, by which the true believers are baptized into one body, of that which constitutes the true supper of the Lord, in which those who belong to him by faith in his mediation and atonement do feed upon his body and blood and know it to be meat indeed, and drink indeed, remain unchanged. Like most travelers who have left any impression of Mount Pleasant, gurney was impressed with the beauty of the location. Beyond that, his account of Ohio is very short, as was his stay there. No record survives of encounters in Ohio like those he had with John Wilbur and with the young blunt thomas gould in new england, who had responded to an overture of friendliness from gurney with the words I wish no discussion, I have asked for no such thing, but only for thee to condemn such parts of them, that's Gurney's writings, as contrary to our acknowledged principles and have given friends so much uneasiness, both pointed and preaching, and some plain interviews asking if he had yet repudiated his innovations and deviations. Joshua Mall's admitted Weberite account of Gurney's visit pays tribute to his gifts and his evident following.

Kent Palmer:

In Ohio I had some opportunity of being in the company of Joseph John Gurney. He was an intimate with my cousin Benjamin Wright, staying a while in his house and with him he visited at our house In person. He was a large, fine-looking man, smooth and plausible in his manners, learned and eloquent. Smooth and plausible in his manners, learned and eloquent. He had many admirers among the members of Ohio, yearly Meeting many advocates of his doctrines and of his cause. Those who had manifested a disregard for the plainness and simplicity of our profession and many who had spoken in varied measures, the testimonies and practices of friends and had shown that they lightly esteemed the discipline became his adherence. Others who had been esteemed as consistent, sound friends in profession and appearance became his followers, having evidently been caught, as was said, by Joseph Evans, with his affability, his politeness and his seemingly accordance with our religious tenets. Those who, united with him, professed not to know or believe that he was unsound in the doctrines of the society or different in principles from primitive friends, there being but few who had seen his writings and not many perhaps qualified, as were Jonathan Evans, john Wilber and other true friends, to taste words that the mouth tasted meat.

Kent Palmer:

Jj Gurney's discourse were listened to with evident satisfaction and, coming from London Yearly Meeting which as a body was highly esteemed by friends in this country, he was much looked up to. His certificate had the deceptive appearance of having been issued through the united action of friends in London meeting and so it was that he, for the most part, passed smoothly along through the meetings of this land, but not all were carried with the current. There were amongst us some honest-hearted, true friends who viewed with apprehension and with troubled feelings the dissolution which they feared and believed would follow upon the teaching and spread of the unsound and dangerous doctrines held forth by JJ Gurney, they being satisfied that his ministry was not accompanied with gospel life and power. There were some who could testify, as did a dear aged female friend who said to my wife and myself that the first time she was in JJ Gurney's company, though she knew not then who he was, his presence struck at the life in me. Early in 1837, yearly meeting, joseph John Gurney opened a concern to visit the women's meeting but due to a strong lack of unity expressed by the men's meeting at this point, he was not liberated. In a later meeting, after permission had been granted by another minister to visit the women's meeting, joseph John renewed his request, saying that in raising his concern earlier he had missed the proper time. Having taken the seed time for the harvest, the men's meeting gave in and allowed him to accompany the other ministers to the women's meeting.

Kent Palmer:

As Mull himself indicates, many friends of Ohio did not have dark forebodings and fears about Joseph John, and we can imagine that even in 1837, they were becoming impatient with the plain spoken, inflexible withholding of unity from gifted, accomplished and forward-looking friends like the Gurneys and the Fries. Many must have felt then, as Russell says, that Gurney gave the rising generation of young friends a new ideal of personality and character, releasing them in large measure from the paralyzing fear of creaturely activity, gave a vigorous impetus to education and especially promoted the study and teaching of the Bible. Young friends had no uplifting interest or enthusiasm in a society still desolated by the Hicksite-Orthodox separation. Their horizon was limited by ignorance both of the Bible and of the world, and they either rested apathetic or under the bounds of the society's ancient traditions, or else sought vaguely for an opening for life and service outside of the society. To those he gave a vision of new personalities. He illustrated in his own princely character the possibility of a new type of Quaker manhood and culture. He gave them new subjects to think about and new movements to work for. That enabled them to forget in a measure the old petty strife the old petty strife.

Kent Palmer:

Rufus Jones, in the later periods of Quakerism, gave a good analysis of the theological innovations of Joseph John Gurney and of the Wilburite objections to his theology. Actually, wilburite and Gurneyites were near agreements on most theological issues, but they differed in emphasis, interpretation and practice. Each believed in the standard Orthodox truth enunciated by their Orthodox American yearly meetings in 1829. Each believed in the Bible as revelation and each believed in Christ as Savior and inward teacher and guide. In general, the Gurneyite tended to make the Bible the first rule of faith, while the Werberites tended to make the guidance of the inward Christ the first rule of faith. This difference and theological emphasis gradually led to others, as the Gurneyites tended to understand the scriptures more literally and began to stress the importance of systematic Bible study and teaching, while the Wilburites drew back from such intellectual study of religion as creaturely activity which would cause people to think that the reality of the Spirit could consist in words or ideas, even the correct ideas.

Kent Palmer:

Differences in practice and temperaments complicated the original theological differences. For example, the Gurneyites seemed more interested in reducing the cultural distance between Quakers and other Christians and they welcomed chances to work with them. They also welcomed intellectual study, both for religious and practical reasons. On the other hand, the Wilburites were fearful of any change which lowered the cultural hedge which kept Quakers apart from the world. They were suspicious of advanced education and they felt that religious lectures or the Bible schools initiated by Gurney and others were inventions of the devil to take friends away from the inward guide. The Gurneyites seemed to have had, by temperament, more interest in experiment and activity and especially in good works like those carried on by other evangelical Christians. On the other hand, the Wilburites feared to move on any new project unless sure it had been immediately inspired by the inward Christ.

Kent Palmer:

Long before the 1854 separations, wilburites, like Anna Branson, joshua Moll, joseph Edgerton and John Wilbur, thought that many Gurneyite ministers were acting and speaking from knowledge and self-will rather than from inspiration. The Wilburites believed the rightly concerned elders and ministers could feel when a message, regardless of its content, was coming from the true source. Gurney's presence encouraged the polarization of Ohio Friends into two groups. The groups which would come to be called Gurneyite included the more activist Friends who preferred to liberalize the Quaker practice and those who accepted Gurney's evangelical views, while those friends who held to the good old ways began to act increasingly as if the others were not true friends and hence not worthy to hold responsible positions on committees or as officers of meetings. By 1840, tensions regarding the direction of Quakerism, which had been present from even before the Hicksite separation, had increased to the point that it could be said that the society was made up of two distinct factions, each of which its own party characteristics.

Kent Palmer:

Officially, the yearly meeting stayed clearly aloof from the evangelical surge sweeping through most of the rest of Orthodox Quaker's world except Philadelphia. The advices of 1840, bound into the minutes, cautioned friends, in an obvious reference to evangelical preaching, to seek a worship which awaits the rising of divine life, with a special concern for the ministry to be preserved in that life and authority which is truly the Lord's appointment. A passage from William Penn was applied to the conflict of the day it is not our parts or memory, or the repetition of former openings in our own will and time which will do the Lord's work. A dry doctrinal ministry, however sound in words, can reach but the ear and is a dream at best. The same advises state that we have been led into exercises on account of some of our members mingling in the political association and conflicts that abound at the present day. May all dear friends keep in the quiet habitation, aloof from the noise and commotion so bivalent in the world. For the church of Christ is represented as a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. The advice specifically enjoined friends from mixing with others for the promotion of temperance, abolition of slavery and so on, called to move under the guidance of him. We cannot, as we conceive, unite with those in these and like concerns who are not brought into the same belief, without endangering our testimony to the doctrine of the Christian faith and, as we fear, will pave the way to abandon the dignified standard to which we are called. The meeting for sufferings, at session of two days, after it had adopted a five-page minute on Elisha Bates, whom some early Wilburites regarded as an example of the logical evolution of Gurneyism, adopted a very short minute which nevertheless says much about the official positions of the yearly meeting in 1840. A proposition from the meeting of suffragettes for New York was received offering to us to purchase a number of Joseph John Gurney's distinguishing views, which is undergoing a reprint in the city On consideration way, does not open at present to circulate the report.

Kent Palmer:

From 1840 to 1845, the polarization of the traditional Wilburite view of Quakerism and the evangelical evolutionary that is, the evolutionary in terms of practice Gurneyite view had reached to the point of separation in New England. As efforts were being made during these years to silence John Wilber. Friends in Philadelphia and Ohio were well informed of the struggle through the letters of Thomas Gould and probably others. Joseph Edgerton, for example, would have been quite interested in the New England question as he had dined with our dear friend John Wilbur at Hopkington on a visit to New England in 1839. He apparently established ties with some in New England where yet a remnant is preserved and appears firmly attached to the old way.

Kent Palmer:

Even in 1839, there had been much in New England to disturb him. In yearly meeting that year he felt that a spirit appeared that wanted more liberty to join in the popular associations of the world, especially the abolitionist societies. But through holy help it was in a good degree chained down. Later he said my mind is often clothed in mourning on account of the many deviations from primitive purity. The young people are soaring above the divine witness in their own minds.

Kent Palmer:

In his extensive travels to other yearly meetings during the difficulties in New England, joseph Edgerton became increasingly troubled, suffering in large measure dealt out to the faithful members of our religious society a spirit in the camp which leads to the mixture. Yet it is a comfort to find a remnant in most places who I trust will not be driven from the good old way. The following passage is often repeated, with variations, as a sad refrain in the letters in his journal he bemoans A spirit which is weary of the plainness and simplicity of the truth, leading into the world its riches, its fashion, its costumes, together with its flatteries which eat up every green thing where it goes. And yet there is a remnant as the two or three berries at the top of the uppermost bough, at the top of the uppermost bow, up and down in the different meetings unto which we have felt nearly the Wilburite term for closely united in the covenant of life. Visits in 1842 to a boarding school in Canada and one in New England and one in New York, led him to verbalize the attitudes which would govern some Wilburite schools for nearly a century. He was sad about one of these schools, it having been open to those who are not members of our religious society and thereby is very crippled concern. At the Nine Partners Boarding School in New York State he grieved at great departure from our peculiar testimonies. It is only as yearly meeting boarding schools are conducted under religious feeling and weight that the object can be reached that those who have immediate oversight thereof are not consistent members and testimony bearers. Such schools prove merely a nursery of pride and vanity, and our dear youth will soar above the divine gift, take wings and lead the society. He first mentioned Gurneyism in 1843, writing. There is at work in various places an overactive spirit, an abolitionism, temperancism, the gurneyism which, like the locust, the canker worm and the caterpillar, are ready to eat up every green thing. The overactive, restless spirit that is unwilling to come under the circumscribing limitations of the cross of Christ, in which strikes the very heart of Cracorism, is much to be dreaded. Nevertheless, there is such a remnant.

Kent Palmer:

Joseph Edershon's published journal records his interest in the New England question in an 1842 letter about the actions against John Wilbur, although admitting that Wilbur might have been a rather irritating prophet. How far he may have acted imprudently? I know not, but Joseph made it clear that he, like Wilbur, opposed any changes in Quakerism so far as that spirit is yielded to. That would have Quakerism changed so as to be a little better suit what is called the religious world. We should grow weaker and weaker. He cautioned about the difficulty of other yearly meetings would face if Wilbur was disowned, suggesting it as a step which the faithful friends in other yearly meetings cannot recognize.

Kent Palmer:

The mind of many friends in Ohio have been made and on account of it, when Joseph Edgerton was liberated to visit New England in 1844, after this disownment of Wilbur, he knew the troubles lay ahead, for like a true Wilburite he would have to say whatever came to his lips, however it might condemn the New England leadership. He also knew that his friend Benjamin Hoyle, a prominent minister and Ohio Yearly Meeting clerk from 1838 to 1858, an assistant clerk for six years before that, had visited New England Yearly Meeting a year earlier and had come home without a returning minute because he had associated with friends and sympathy with Wilbur and had made plain his own support of Wilbur's cause. On the way Joseph wrote Wilbur's cause. On the way Joseph wrote. I tried to keep the sap cloth within as much as possible. Oh truly, the spirit beareth witness that bonds and afflictions await they did, according to a Gurneyite account.

Kent Palmer:

About 10 years later he encouraged the disaffected party there, not only receiving no returning minute, but was requested by friends not to travel as a minister within their limits. The editor of his journal put it differently owing to the well-known differences in our society and the points of doctrine which then existed there, the prosecution of his concern was opposed, to which he submitted in accordance with disciplinary order and left his burden with them. At this, stillwater Quarterly Meeting sent a reference to Ohio Yearly Meeting, reporting that two of its prominent ministers, one of them clerk or assistant clerk of the Yearly Meeting for over 10 years, had been turned away from New England without returning minutes. Thus, confronted by what members already knew, ohio Yearly Meeting began 10 years of irreconciled tensions over the New England question which, said the Gurneyites, was only a matter of discipline and order, while the Wilburites insisted that the unsound doctrines and innovations fostered by Joseph John Gurney were the only real issues.

Kent Palmer:

This concludes the reading of Chapter 3, refining the Form 1828-1845, from the Eye of Faith. We'll begin reading Chapter 4 in the next podcast. The podcast we just heard was a production of Ohio Yearly Meeting. It was read by Kent Palmer. The words from our introduction were written by James Naylor in 1659. The music was composed and sung by Paulette Meyer. More information at her website, wwwpaulettmeyercom.

Paulette Meier:

Art thou in the darkness, Mind it not, for if thou dost, it will feed thee more. But stand still and act not, and wait in patience till light arises out of darkness and leads thee.