2017 QSRA Conference
2017 Quaker Studies Research Association Conference
‘Identities, Dislocation, and Migration’
Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, Birmingham UK
5 July 2017
Timetable
10.00 am: Welcome and introduction
Ben Pink Dandelion
10.15 -11 15 am: Session 1: Individuals
· 'Wearing the Quaker Persona' and 'Shape-shifting of the Religious Society of Friends over time'. – Anne Wrightson
· Moving without Leaving: Dual Belonging among Friends – Rhiannon Grant
11.15-11.45 am: morning drinks
11.45 am – 12 45 pm: Session 2: Institutions
· The Journey from London Yearly Meeting to Britain Yearly Meeting Gathering: 1986 to 2015 – Penelope Cummins
· Dislocating the Established Order: Revealing Quaker Identity through Discernment or Devolvement – Dale Andrew
12.45-2.00 pm: Lunch
2.00-2.30 pm: QSRA AGM
2.30-4.00 pm: Session 3: In the Atlantic world
· William Rotch and his Family’s Move from Nantucket to Dunkerque, France, from 1786 onwards – Jeanne-Henriette Louis
· In Search of God or Mammon? A Re-appraisal of Quaker Transatlantic Migration and the ‘Holy Experiment’ – Andrew Fincham
· Quaker Systems in the British Empire: Meeting for Sufferings, The Board of Trade, and the Challenge of Managing Colonial Networks – Elizabeth Cazden
4.00 pm: Tea and departures
‘Identities, Dislocation, and Migration’
Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, Birmingham UK
5 July 2017
Timetable
10.00 am: Welcome and introduction
Ben Pink Dandelion
10.15 -11 15 am: Session 1: Individuals
· 'Wearing the Quaker Persona' and 'Shape-shifting of the Religious Society of Friends over time'. – Anne Wrightson
· Moving without Leaving: Dual Belonging among Friends – Rhiannon Grant
11.15-11.45 am: morning drinks
11.45 am – 12 45 pm: Session 2: Institutions
· The Journey from London Yearly Meeting to Britain Yearly Meeting Gathering: 1986 to 2015 – Penelope Cummins
· Dislocating the Established Order: Revealing Quaker Identity through Discernment or Devolvement – Dale Andrew
12.45-2.00 pm: Lunch
2.00-2.30 pm: QSRA AGM
2.30-4.00 pm: Session 3: In the Atlantic world
· William Rotch and his Family’s Move from Nantucket to Dunkerque, France, from 1786 onwards – Jeanne-Henriette Louis
· In Search of God or Mammon? A Re-appraisal of Quaker Transatlantic Migration and the ‘Holy Experiment’ – Andrew Fincham
· Quaker Systems in the British Empire: Meeting for Sufferings, The Board of Trade, and the Challenge of Managing Colonial Networks – Elizabeth Cazden
4.00 pm: Tea and departures
Abstracts of presentations
10.15 -11 15 am: Session 1: Individuals
Wearing the Quaker Persona' and 'Shape-shifting of the Religious Society of Friends over time' – Anne Wrightson
During a seminar presentation on “New Monasticism” by David Walker (Anglican bishop of Manchester) I was surprised by recognition, a deep feeling that “This is describing us!”: strong parallels and echoes in my own experience of being a Quaker in Britain Yearly Meeting today. Conversations with David and others, and reviewing recent writings, confirmed this impression and motivated a more systematic study. To make an initial study tractable the scope is restricted to current practice and writings (c. 2010-present), Britain Yearly Meeting, and movements associated with the Anglican church in Britain.
The approach taken is empirical theology (aligning with the theme of “micro-level patterns and processes of identity formation and group formation” in the stated scope of the Journal of Empirical Theology http://www.brill.com/journal-empirical-theology ) and phenomenographic method, providing qualitative analysis of ways that people describe their experience and understanding of phenomena and situations. The sources used are mostly writings that have a pastoral or expository intent.
Despite significant differences in ecclesiology, rationale and practice, interesting parallels can be seen in the following areas:
Moving without Leaving: Dual Belonging among Friends – Rhiannon Grant
A spiritual journey is usually understood as linear. A religion is usually understood as distinct and non-overlapping. Looking at the stories of Quakers who practice dual or multiple religious belonging, however - whether they are Quaker and Buddhist, Quaker and Anglican, Quaker and Pagan, or another combination - undermines these usual understandings. How can people move into new religious arenas, such as another religious tradition, without leaving the one in which they previously felt at home? This process, inadequately described by conventional ways of speaking about religion, results in a true multiple religious belonging in which an individual is fully at home in two or more religious traditions. To dig deeper into the questions raised by the process of arriving in multiple religious traditions, this paper explores alternative ways of conceptualising religious identity, spiritual development, and the acts involved in ‘belonging’ to a religious community in order to shed light on the nature and experience of multiple religious participation. A series of analogies, drawing on other areas of life - including sexuality, ethnicity, and performance - will open up the debate about how multiple religious belonging can occur and why it is becoming more common. In particular, this paper will consider whether there is something about Quakerism which makes it easier for Friends to both move and stay, exploring other religious traditions while remaining firmly rooted in Quaker identity and practice.
11.45 am – 12 45 pm: Session 2: Institutions
The Journey from London Yearly Meeting to Britain Yearly Meeting Gathering: 1986 to 2015 – Penelope Cummins
For an individual, a group or an institution, change, from one year to the next, can be almost imperceptible. For a religious group with a 350-year history, even the alterations over the course of a decade can be difficult to identify. Are these real changes, or are they merely slight shifts in emphasis or in the style of proceeding?
This paper looks at the most recent thirty-year period in the Religious Society of Friends in Britain, and asks what changes are discernible over that period in the role, function and content of the Yearly Meeting, the annual national gathering of Quakers.
It charts the main agenda items for each of the Yearly Meetings in that period, and through interrogating the Yearly Meeting proceedings and other published sources, seeks to identify what trends or step-wise changes have occurred over that time. These include shifts in the role of the Yearly Meeting as an event in the life of the Society of Friends in Britain, in the management of sessions and in the content of the meeting. It is suggested that these features are attributes not just of the functioning of an annual event, but also of the changing nature of the Society of Friends in both theological and sociological terms.
The discussion is framed by the theoretical understanding of Bruce and Voas concerning the spread of secularism, and by Heelas & Whitehead’s observations concerning the distinction between generalised spirituality and religious practice.
Dislocating the established order: revealing Quaker identity through discernment or devolvement – Dale Andrew
“...it is quite as important to know when to quit an enterprise as it is to know when to begin, but it is far more difficult to quit.” These musings of Clarence Pickett are drawn from the 1953 autobiography of the American Friends Service Committee’s Executive Secretary. They foreshadow a later policy of devolvement: programs should be pioneer in nature and from the outset involve local organizations to facilitate transitioning. British Friends, on the other hand, have not had a formal policy on exiting. Rather the Friends Service Council, and today’s Quaker Peace and Social Witness, have followed the Quaker practice of listening to concerns and gathering information that feed into discerning the sense of the meeting on whether to lay down. Were these considerations implicit in 1919 when the infant AFSC moved out of international reconstruction work in northern France after its baptism of fire? Or withdrawing from famine and medical relief in Central and Eastern Europe where British and American Quakers were active? Or were other geopolitical considerations dominant? Friends International Centres blossomed in the 1920s in Geneva, Paris, Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin and Moscow, based on the Carl Heath “Quaker Embassy” model to promote reconciliation after the War. Dislocation of the established order resulted in closing these European Centres between the late 1930s and 1942, except for Paris that operated with AFSC support until 1963 and through 1974 when Britain Yearly Meeting withdrew. Examination of FSC and AFSC decisions to exit, following the practice of discernment to lay down, or according to a policy of devolvement, reveal differences in Quaker identity between the London and Philadelphia groups, although can explain only part of the transitioning decisions.
2.30-4.00 pm: Session 3: In the Atlantic World
William Rotch and his Family’s Move from Nantucket to Dunkeque, France, from 1786 onwards – Jeanne-Henriette Louis
We are not ignorant about William Rotch and his family, who migrated from Nantucket to Dunkerque, in France, from 1786, and lived there for several years, as the joined bibliography will show.
This stay in Dunkerque was meant to be permanent: France was more hospitable to Nantucketers than England (a former enemy) and the French government made many efforts to make these new immigrants feel “at home”. But it turned out that this whaling colony was dislocated in 1793, and left Dunkerque in 1794.
This essay, written by a French researcher, will examine some of the reasons why the previous plan was altered, and who were some of the losers.
Louis XVI had played an important role in attracting the whale-hunters to France and revive the past whaling activities of the Bay of Biscaye and of Lorient. He made sure that the whalers would feel comfortable, not only from a religious viewpoint, but also for their sea activities. The first years were promising. But the outbreak of the war with Prussia put an end to this comparatively peaceful period iin Dunkerque. So dit the outbreak of the Terror. The Nantucket group left Dunkerque for Nantucket, and Milford Haven, in Wales.
So, the first loser was William Rotch and his family, disappointed by the violence of the French revolution. They found that the French were too nationalistic. Whale-fishing was a loser too.
But religious peace was also a loser. The case of Huguenots had progressed with the Edict of Tolerance in 1788, but it would have progressed more, had the Nantucket Quaker presence lasted.
In Search of God or Mammon? A Re-appraisal of Quaker Transatlantic Migration and the ‘Holy Experiment’ – Andrew Fincham
The motivations of Quaker transatlantic migrants have traditionally been characterised as primarily religious, but with commercial aspects (Jones 1911; Tolles 1948; Landes 2015). During the long eighteenth century, the religious discipline of the Society of Friends both evolved and expanded, with an ever increasing volume of Advices issued by both London Yearly Meeting and that of Philadelphia.
Marrietta has proposed (1989) that there was increased Discipline in American Quakerism from 1750, and more recent claims that there was little discipline in American settlements before the end of the eighteenth century (Sahle 2015) seem to imply that Transatlantic Quakerism was pursued under a very different Discipline to that of England and Wales at the same period.
No comparisons have yet been made between the Books of Discipline prevailing under these two Yearly Meetings during the period.
This paper introduces the key similarities, differences, and trends between the two sets of Advices across the period, and draws some conclusions as to the relative importance for Transatlantic migration of aspects of Quaker discipline between the1 Toleration Act (1689) and the last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century.
Quaker Systems in the British Empire: Meeting for Sufferings, The Board of Trade, and the Challenge of Managing Colonial Networks – Elizabeth Cazden
This paper argues that the mechanisms developed by London Meeting for Sufferings for management of the far-flung Quaker network paralleled, and may have simply copied or adapted, mechanisms developed in the same era by Parliament and the Lords of Trade / Board of Trade to manage the growing secular British empire. They reflect the same conception of the metropole directing the colonial periphery, and similar procedures for gathering information into the central body and disseminating instructions or “advices” out to the colonies. In some cases, the two systems were administered by the same individuals; in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, in particular, the colonial government was dominated by Quaker leaders. London Quaker merchant Richard Partridge (1681-1759) served for decades as correspondent between Meeting for Sufferings and colonial meetings, and as agent for several colonial governments before the Board of Trade, and as representative of the interests of the Meeting for Sufferings before Parliament and other government bodies.
This history suggests that some of the procedures we cherish as “distinctively Quaker” may instead be the fossilized remains of an essentially secular empire-building project. This raises questions about the usefulness of those structures and processes in an era when many Friends are actively committed to dismantling colonial structures and attitudes.
10.15 -11 15 am: Session 1: Individuals
Wearing the Quaker Persona' and 'Shape-shifting of the Religious Society of Friends over time' – Anne Wrightson
During a seminar presentation on “New Monasticism” by David Walker (Anglican bishop of Manchester) I was surprised by recognition, a deep feeling that “This is describing us!”: strong parallels and echoes in my own experience of being a Quaker in Britain Yearly Meeting today. Conversations with David and others, and reviewing recent writings, confirmed this impression and motivated a more systematic study. To make an initial study tractable the scope is restricted to current practice and writings (c. 2010-present), Britain Yearly Meeting, and movements associated with the Anglican church in Britain.
The approach taken is empirical theology (aligning with the theme of “micro-level patterns and processes of identity formation and group formation” in the stated scope of the Journal of Empirical Theology http://www.brill.com/journal-empirical-theology ) and phenomenographic method, providing qualitative analysis of ways that people describe their experience and understanding of phenomena and situations. The sources used are mostly writings that have a pastoral or expository intent.
Despite significant differences in ecclesiology, rationale and practice, interesting parallels can be seen in the following areas:
- Individuals’ spiritual seeking and fulfilment
- Being in the world yet not of it; identity as a separate yet embedded community
- Liberation and social action, individual and corporate
- Rules of life and holding each other to account
- Membership and affiliation, including dual membership and community with diversity of belief
- Variable significance of gathering and location
Moving without Leaving: Dual Belonging among Friends – Rhiannon Grant
A spiritual journey is usually understood as linear. A religion is usually understood as distinct and non-overlapping. Looking at the stories of Quakers who practice dual or multiple religious belonging, however - whether they are Quaker and Buddhist, Quaker and Anglican, Quaker and Pagan, or another combination - undermines these usual understandings. How can people move into new religious arenas, such as another religious tradition, without leaving the one in which they previously felt at home? This process, inadequately described by conventional ways of speaking about religion, results in a true multiple religious belonging in which an individual is fully at home in two or more religious traditions. To dig deeper into the questions raised by the process of arriving in multiple religious traditions, this paper explores alternative ways of conceptualising religious identity, spiritual development, and the acts involved in ‘belonging’ to a religious community in order to shed light on the nature and experience of multiple religious participation. A series of analogies, drawing on other areas of life - including sexuality, ethnicity, and performance - will open up the debate about how multiple religious belonging can occur and why it is becoming more common. In particular, this paper will consider whether there is something about Quakerism which makes it easier for Friends to both move and stay, exploring other religious traditions while remaining firmly rooted in Quaker identity and practice.
11.45 am – 12 45 pm: Session 2: Institutions
The Journey from London Yearly Meeting to Britain Yearly Meeting Gathering: 1986 to 2015 – Penelope Cummins
For an individual, a group or an institution, change, from one year to the next, can be almost imperceptible. For a religious group with a 350-year history, even the alterations over the course of a decade can be difficult to identify. Are these real changes, or are they merely slight shifts in emphasis or in the style of proceeding?
This paper looks at the most recent thirty-year period in the Religious Society of Friends in Britain, and asks what changes are discernible over that period in the role, function and content of the Yearly Meeting, the annual national gathering of Quakers.
It charts the main agenda items for each of the Yearly Meetings in that period, and through interrogating the Yearly Meeting proceedings and other published sources, seeks to identify what trends or step-wise changes have occurred over that time. These include shifts in the role of the Yearly Meeting as an event in the life of the Society of Friends in Britain, in the management of sessions and in the content of the meeting. It is suggested that these features are attributes not just of the functioning of an annual event, but also of the changing nature of the Society of Friends in both theological and sociological terms.
The discussion is framed by the theoretical understanding of Bruce and Voas concerning the spread of secularism, and by Heelas & Whitehead’s observations concerning the distinction between generalised spirituality and religious practice.
Dislocating the established order: revealing Quaker identity through discernment or devolvement – Dale Andrew
“...it is quite as important to know when to quit an enterprise as it is to know when to begin, but it is far more difficult to quit.” These musings of Clarence Pickett are drawn from the 1953 autobiography of the American Friends Service Committee’s Executive Secretary. They foreshadow a later policy of devolvement: programs should be pioneer in nature and from the outset involve local organizations to facilitate transitioning. British Friends, on the other hand, have not had a formal policy on exiting. Rather the Friends Service Council, and today’s Quaker Peace and Social Witness, have followed the Quaker practice of listening to concerns and gathering information that feed into discerning the sense of the meeting on whether to lay down. Were these considerations implicit in 1919 when the infant AFSC moved out of international reconstruction work in northern France after its baptism of fire? Or withdrawing from famine and medical relief in Central and Eastern Europe where British and American Quakers were active? Or were other geopolitical considerations dominant? Friends International Centres blossomed in the 1920s in Geneva, Paris, Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin and Moscow, based on the Carl Heath “Quaker Embassy” model to promote reconciliation after the War. Dislocation of the established order resulted in closing these European Centres between the late 1930s and 1942, except for Paris that operated with AFSC support until 1963 and through 1974 when Britain Yearly Meeting withdrew. Examination of FSC and AFSC decisions to exit, following the practice of discernment to lay down, or according to a policy of devolvement, reveal differences in Quaker identity between the London and Philadelphia groups, although can explain only part of the transitioning decisions.
2.30-4.00 pm: Session 3: In the Atlantic World
William Rotch and his Family’s Move from Nantucket to Dunkeque, France, from 1786 onwards – Jeanne-Henriette Louis
We are not ignorant about William Rotch and his family, who migrated from Nantucket to Dunkerque, in France, from 1786, and lived there for several years, as the joined bibliography will show.
This stay in Dunkerque was meant to be permanent: France was more hospitable to Nantucketers than England (a former enemy) and the French government made many efforts to make these new immigrants feel “at home”. But it turned out that this whaling colony was dislocated in 1793, and left Dunkerque in 1794.
This essay, written by a French researcher, will examine some of the reasons why the previous plan was altered, and who were some of the losers.
Louis XVI had played an important role in attracting the whale-hunters to France and revive the past whaling activities of the Bay of Biscaye and of Lorient. He made sure that the whalers would feel comfortable, not only from a religious viewpoint, but also for their sea activities. The first years were promising. But the outbreak of the war with Prussia put an end to this comparatively peaceful period iin Dunkerque. So dit the outbreak of the Terror. The Nantucket group left Dunkerque for Nantucket, and Milford Haven, in Wales.
So, the first loser was William Rotch and his family, disappointed by the violence of the French revolution. They found that the French were too nationalistic. Whale-fishing was a loser too.
But religious peace was also a loser. The case of Huguenots had progressed with the Edict of Tolerance in 1788, but it would have progressed more, had the Nantucket Quaker presence lasted.
In Search of God or Mammon? A Re-appraisal of Quaker Transatlantic Migration and the ‘Holy Experiment’ – Andrew Fincham
The motivations of Quaker transatlantic migrants have traditionally been characterised as primarily religious, but with commercial aspects (Jones 1911; Tolles 1948; Landes 2015). During the long eighteenth century, the religious discipline of the Society of Friends both evolved and expanded, with an ever increasing volume of Advices issued by both London Yearly Meeting and that of Philadelphia.
Marrietta has proposed (1989) that there was increased Discipline in American Quakerism from 1750, and more recent claims that there was little discipline in American settlements before the end of the eighteenth century (Sahle 2015) seem to imply that Transatlantic Quakerism was pursued under a very different Discipline to that of England and Wales at the same period.
No comparisons have yet been made between the Books of Discipline prevailing under these two Yearly Meetings during the period.
This paper introduces the key similarities, differences, and trends between the two sets of Advices across the period, and draws some conclusions as to the relative importance for Transatlantic migration of aspects of Quaker discipline between the1 Toleration Act (1689) and the last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century.
Quaker Systems in the British Empire: Meeting for Sufferings, The Board of Trade, and the Challenge of Managing Colonial Networks – Elizabeth Cazden
This paper argues that the mechanisms developed by London Meeting for Sufferings for management of the far-flung Quaker network paralleled, and may have simply copied or adapted, mechanisms developed in the same era by Parliament and the Lords of Trade / Board of Trade to manage the growing secular British empire. They reflect the same conception of the metropole directing the colonial periphery, and similar procedures for gathering information into the central body and disseminating instructions or “advices” out to the colonies. In some cases, the two systems were administered by the same individuals; in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, in particular, the colonial government was dominated by Quaker leaders. London Quaker merchant Richard Partridge (1681-1759) served for decades as correspondent between Meeting for Sufferings and colonial meetings, and as agent for several colonial governments before the Board of Trade, and as representative of the interests of the Meeting for Sufferings before Parliament and other government bodies.
This history suggests that some of the procedures we cherish as “distinctively Quaker” may instead be the fossilized remains of an essentially secular empire-building project. This raises questions about the usefulness of those structures and processes in an era when many Friends are actively committed to dismantling colonial structures and attitudes.