Through the Flaming Sword

The liberal movement gets going

Shortly after the publication of A Reasonable Faith and The Gospel of Divine Help in 1884 and 1886 respectively, the liberal movement began gathering momentum. A key impetus was the Richmond Declaration issued from the Richmond Conference held in Indiana in 1887, which was endorsed by most American yearly meetings. But even many evangelical Friends in Britain were unnerved by the Declaration.

According to Kennedy in British Quakerism, when John Bevan Braithwaite brought it back to England for certification, “he stirred up a nest of opposition which would eventually prove to be a decisive factor in the overthrow of the evangelical oligarchy which dominated British Quakerism for half a century.” (P. 113) Many resisted the contents of the Declaration, but it was the move towards a Quaker creed—of any kind—that really exercised most British Friends, though even its writers had not intended the Declaration to be ‘a preliminary to Church membership, or to the holding of any office in connection with the Church.” (p 116-17)

London Yearly meeting considered the Declaration during its 1888 sessions. The meeting house was crammed with 1100 Friends “crowding every seat & aisle & doorway”. The debate lasted more than five hours. As reported by John W. Graham, one of the liberals, “The minute was most satisfactory. It gave no shadow of sanction to the document & said why—(1) We had never decided before the deputation went [to Richmond] that we wanted a creed. (2) We are not allowed to change this. (3) Many Friends object to its contents.” (p 117)

Quoting Kennedy:

“But a judgment had been made and it changed the British Society of Friends forever. The Angry God of the Age of Atonement (a reference to Boyd Hilton’s The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865, which figures prominently in my book on Quakers and Capitalism) had been ushered out of the large Meeting room at Devonshire House and replaced by a kinder, gentler but ultimately more elusive Deity. . . . The successful struggle of liberal Friends against the imposition of a credal statement, a pastoral system and other evangelical innovations as well as the expanding influence of ‘modern thought’ gave progressive young Friends increasing assurance that they were not only in tune with the times, but also with the future of British Quakerism.” (p 118)

In the next few years, William E. Turner, one of the authors of A Reasonable Faith, began publishing a new liberal Quaker journal, The British Friend (1891). John Wilhelm Rowntree, who would emerge as the movement’s leader, formed the Yorkshire Movement in 1893, along with JB Braithwaite’s son William Charles (author of the two histories, The Beginnings of Quakerism and The Second Period of Quakerism), WC’s fiancee Janet Marland, and Edward Grubb. These young people traveled throughout Yorkshire to galvanize youth and foster more thoughtful and stimulating vocal ministry.

And then came the Manchester Conference in 1895.