Lucretia Mott, Liberal Quaker Theologian-- page 4
 

Similarly, after the Civil War, the Hicksite yearly meetings began slowly but surely chipping away at the authority and central roles of ministers and elders, and by the 1880s the "chosen people" language disappeared from their books of Discipline. This process has not been documented in detail, but the trajectory is clear in their pages.

Creeping respectability did not "mellow" Lucretia in old age, or dilute her radical theology; by no means. Nor did it make her any more eager for the limelight. In 1869, when she found that a New York City reception for her was "to be made a great affair," she wrote to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were organizing it, and declined. "I shall stick to that . . ." she wrote her family, "I will not be lionized when I can avoid it." (Palmer 411; emphasis in original)

For that matter, in her last years she found new allies coming from an old locale. Up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a minister named William James Potter had taken the pulpit of that same Unitarian Church populated by former New Light Quakers. Potter himself had been born and raised a Friend, and left the Society as a young man after defying the intellectual restrictions of his Quaker schooling and reading the works of Channing. Later he often listened to Theodore Parker preach; and as a minister he worried aloud about conservative tendencies in the growing Unitarian denomination, comparing them to the rigidity that had overcome New England Quakerism in his youth.

In 1867, Potter feared that conservatives were maneuvering to enforce an exclusively Christian orientation on Unitarian churches, so he resolved to found a "spiritual Anti-Slavery Society," which was called the Free Religious Association, and it was open to persons of all faiths. Is it any surprise that Lucretia was present and spoke at its first annual meeting (and many thereafter)? (Kellaway)

For that matter, after the Progressive surge abated, as it soon did, Joseph Dugdale did not disappear either. He moved to West Liberty, Iowa in 1862, and in 1863 returned to Hicksite Quakerism there (Janney 210-214). In 1875 he was "present at the creation" of Illinois Yearly Meeting (Ill YM Minutes).

From that yearly meeting emerged the idea for a General Conference of (Hicksite) Friends, and from within its fold came one Jesse Herman Holmes. Holmes was born and raised in Dugdale’s West Liberty, and found his way from the farm to a university education, and then to a long career at Swarthmore College (which Lucretia helped to found), and in the Hicksite Swarthmore Meeting. Holmes also had a key role in the growth of Friends General Conference (FGC), and, not least, served for twenty years as the last Clerk of the Longwood Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends. (Wahl 409-430)

Holmes brought all the strands of Lucretia’s legacy together in an almost preternatural fashion: a humanist theology, roots in both the Hicksite and Progressive camps, a long list of social concerns, and indefatigable energy as an advocate for this heritage. And nowhere was this confluence shown more clearly than in 1926, when Holmas was part of an FGC Committee which produced a Uniform Discipline for its seven member Yearly Meetings. (Fager 2004 42-46)

It was this Uniform Discipline which marked the final triumph of the Mott-Progressive agenda: it ended the "select meetings" and the recording of ministers; set out a congregational, Monthly Meeting-centered polity; it put social betterment at the top of the list of religious duties. Gone was any hint of Quakers as a chosen people: the Light Within each individual was the central reality of Quaker faith; God was left an undefined, impersonal immanence, Jesus an enlightened exemplar rather than a savior, the Bible one interesting collection among others – and all were shorn of the "miracles and superstition" that Lucretia so disdained. (FGC)

This Discipline even, in a fastidious, genteel way, endorsed Lucretia’s 1842 plea for "social mingling," commending "contact with those of all conditions of life . . . .Especially," it added with the appropriate touch of noblesse oblige, "is this true regarding those less fortunate than ourselves . . . ." (FGC 59)

This Uniform Discipline, and especially the essentially humanist, Holmes-drafted "Letter to the Scientifically Minded," which FGC issued shortly thereafter, breathe the spirit of the Ethical Culture Society, except that they retain the word "God," while similarly draining it of virtually all content. Such an association is not gratuitous: Felix Adler, the founder of Ethical Culture, was a longtime member of the Free Religious Association with Lucretia.

The Uniform Discipline’s outlook dominated the FGC stream of liberal Quakerism for decades. It has of late been undergoing change, but those recent changes are outside our purview here.

* * * * * * * * *

And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, our chain of evidence is long, and there are many twists and turns, but in the end it closes in on an inescapable conclusion: Lucretia Mott was a central figure in the theological revolution which forged liberal American Quakerism in the twentieth century.

Working with her co-conspirators, New England Unitarians on one side, Joseph Dugdale and the Progressives on the other, and advocating constantly and assertively for this internal reform for over forty years, from Boston south to New York, Washington DC and Richmond, and as far west as Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, she left indelible marks on her faith community, even as she also made it easy, all too easy, to overlook her fingerprints. After her death in 1880, the standard of progressive reform was carried forward by direct theological descendants, notably Jesse Holmes, until in 1926 its success was codified in the FGC Uniform Discipline.

If Lucretia had been a man, publishing her work in books, and thus allowed into the "official" theological discourse, this conclusion would have been obvious long ago. Nevertheless, it is clear.

And if theology were an actionable misdeed–as Lucretia’s own preaching often insinuated–she was as culpable for it as Channing or Parker, and as successful in her arena as they had been in theirs, perhaps even more so.

Motive, opportunity, and means. Lucretia Mott had them all, and she used them all. So despite her numerous denials, the inescapable verdict must be: guilty as charged.

Your honor, the prosecution rests.

WORKS CITED

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Cazden, Elizabeth, "‘Wicked Hard to Herd Up’: Independent Meetings and the Friends Fellowship Council," Quaker History 90 (Fall 2001): 1-14.

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Fager, Chuck. Shaggy Locks & Birkenstocks. Fayetteville NC: Kimo Press, 2003.

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Mott, Lucretia. "Memo on Self," in Lucretia Mott Speaking: Excerpts from the Sermons & Speeches of a Famous Nineteenth Century Quaker Minister & Reformer, compiled and edited by Margaret Hope Bacon (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #234, 1980)

Mott, Lucretia. Letter to her cousin Nathaniel Barney, June 7, 1847. Reproduced in the Lucretia Coffin Mott Correspondence. Winter 2000. p. 3. Pomona, CA: Lucretia Coffin Mott Project.

Palmer, Beverly Wilson. Selected Letters of Lucretia Mott. Urbana and Chicago: U. of Illinois Press, 2002.

Parker, Theodore. "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity," (1841) online at:http://online.sksm.edu/uuhp/syll/u_demo_b.htm

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White, Joseph Blanco. The Life of the Rev. Joseph Blanco White, Written by Himself. London: John Chapman, 1845.