The Quaker Movement West

The westward movement of the churches has intrigued historians for several decades now, and new chapters in its history are still being written. Paralleling Frederick Jackson Turner’s general research into the development of the American frontier, church historians, among whom William Warren Sweet stands as dean, have traced the expansion and the influence of the major Christian bodies and have described their contributions to our national life.

It needs to be noted that the major denominations have in turn been significantly shaped by the westward trek of pioneering peoples. Only recently, also, have we come to realize the salutary contribution of even some of the more excessive and “irregular” types of religious expression to the general development of our nation. For the work of church historians in calling attention to this the Christian world is grateful.

In a doctoral dissertation Myron Dee Goldsmith traced the movement of Quakerism into the Pacific Northwest, Barry L. Callen in a master’s thesis traced the development and the idealism of the Church of God (Anderson). More recently, David C. LeShana, newly elected president of George Fox College in Newburg, Oregon, has published a detailed and well-documented account of the movement of the Society of Friends (Quakers) into California.

President LeShana’s volume, entitled Quakers in California (Barclay Press, 1969), traces the pilgrimage of Friends westward as a response to the revivalistic trend of the nineteenth century. His analysis of the basic dynamics of this movement guides his work as he traces the two groups of Friends that have come to exist in California.

LeShana points out that while economic opportunity was a factor in beckoning Friends westward, there had been an inner spiritual development, particularly in Indiana and Iowa, that supplied the dynamic for pioneering. It was within the Yearly Meetings of Friends in these states that the impact of revivalism was felt most vividly in the 1860s. Joseph John Gurney had, earlier in the century, brought to America the results of the Evangelical Awakening among Friends in England. It was he who shook Quakers out of their theological quietism into an awareness of the need for an articulated faith. And it was this revivalistic trend that enabled American Quakerism to move out of the weakness and discouragement that had followed the Hicksite separation of 1827–30.

Our author notes correctly that while interdenominational concerns (such as the anti-slavery movement and the establishment of the American Bible Society) brought Friends out of isolation and into cooperation with other Christian bodies, it was revivalism that brought them directly into the midstream of United States religious life in the mid-century and afterward. Friends evangelists such as David Updegraff and Allen Jay utilized the methods of Whitefield and Finney and witnessed remarkable movements of the Holy Spirit, with resulting increases in numbers.

Highly significant for this study is the fact that structured evangelism, emphasizing an articulated body of doctrine, proved highly offensive to the more traditional type of Quaker. It promised innovations for which older Friends were not prepared, and seemed to threaten their interpretation of George Fox’s teaching on “inner light” by making the Bible central for belief and by insisting upon a decisive personal conversion to Christ.

The newer preaching seemed designed also to modify unduly traditional Quaker patterns of worship, centering in the “silent meeting.” Balanced against this fear was the feeling of more progressive Friends that the introduction of, for example, the pastoral system was essential if Friends were to exist alongside other Christian bodies. It required no special vision to foresee division within the movement. This division was carried along in the westward migration of Quakers.

Some of those who insisted upon “traditional” Quaker practices and modes of belief moved to northern California. Among them were Joel and Hannah Bean, who hoped to escape the controversy, especially that concerning the “inner light.” But it could not be so, and the schism ultimately took on a geographical aspect. The center of gravity of Quakerism shifted to the southern part of the state, where migrations, plus the extension of the results of the revival movement of Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa Yearly Meetings of Friends (especially under the ministry of John Henry Douglas), led to the rapid establishment of new Friends Meetings.

Among the new centers of Friends activity were Pasadena, and especially Whittier, where the California Yearly Meeting was organized in 1895. The Meetings were now termed “churches” and the pastoral system adopted. The California Yearly Meeting was frankly “orthodox and evangelical in its position on all the great doctrines of the Church,” and retained its evangelistic stance. Leaders in the revival movement in the midwest provided much of the leadership to Friends in southern California.

Today the California Yearly Meeting, with a membership of some 7,500 in thirty-five churches, is still basically evangelical and missionary. (President Richard M. Nixon’s parents were active in the East Whittier Friends Church, where he himself still retains his membership). It sustains much of its original spiritual dynamic and is vitally concerned in social matters, notably the needs of Mexican-American and American Indian minorities.

Joel Bean and his associates reacted against the revivalist movement and formed an organization called (from 1889 to 1947) the College Park Association of Friends. Out of this came the Pacific Yearly Meeting of Friends, a federation consisting largely of unaffiliated groups arranged along traditional Friends lines. Doctrinal standards are not articulated, and meetings are unprogrammed. It now numbers 1,600 members, dedicated primarily to social service and interfaith understanding.

In Quakers in California, LeShana concludes that evangelism played a major part in making western Quakerism a force in American Christianity. This has involved many and profound modifications of traditional Friends customs and practice. But these modifications seem to have been shaped mainly by the impetus of New Testament Christianity.

LeShana’s book offers an effective refutation of the charge, frequently repeated, that revivalism is a phenomenon relevant only to “the wild and woolly frontier.” The development of southern California was effected by a restrained and even urbane form of pioneering. And within this context, public evangelism was as effective and salutary as it was on the frontier between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Perhaps it contains, after all, nothing essentially rustic or atavistic.

HAROLD B. KUHN

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