Friends Among Us - Part II
In my last article, Quakers were confronting the issues of slavery and service in military service in the Civil War. any meetings in the North were divided over the issue of service. Some felt that the traditional pacifist belief was the right one, even though they abhorred slavery. Many Quaker women served as nurses to wounded soldiers on both sides. After the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, Friends raised money for freed slaves’ food, shelter, and clothing. After the war Friends went south to open schools for freed blacks and provided tools to help them establish homesteads. Other Quakers felt the Civil War was justified and, for example, Indiana Quakers sent more than 1,000 men to the Union Army.
The late 1800s were a time of division for the Society of Friends in other ways. It was a time when Protestant Evangelism was sweeping the United States and England. Some Quakers separated from traditional meetings and formed their own groups.
In the 20th Century these groups agreed to disagree and came together to work on service projects and other areas of common ground. Today there are four groups of Quakers. The largest group, the Pastoral, hires pastors, sings hymns and has a programmed worship pattern. The Conservative group maintains plain ways and has unprogrammed traditional Quaker meetings. The Hicksite Friends also have unprogrammed meetings and have a wider theological spectrum. Dan and Mathilda belong to this group. Finally, there are Evangelical Friends who have programmed services and are Christocentric.
Friends can be found all over the world. Africa has the largest number – around 120,000 thousand, most of them in East Africa. Altogether, around the world, there are about 300,000 Friends of which almost 100,000 live in the United States and Canada.
Rufus Jones, 1863 – 1948, describes his experiences as a boy in Quaker meeting. “I thought of God as a Presence in our midst with whom I could commune without any ladder. I learned to swim and to enjoy silent worship at about the same time. I knew that there was a meeting place within where Spirit met with spirit. I knew it just as certainly as I knew that the water in our lake was buoyant and held up the young swimmer instead of drowning him. The whole burden of worship was thrown upon each individual soul. One could be vacant and unconcerned with an empty mind, or one could mount up as with wings of eagles . Whatever was done in this period of silence had to be done by the person himself. It was once more like swimming. Nobody could do it for you. You either did your swimming or your worshipping yourself, or it wasn’t done.”
Weddings between Quakers are important occasions. All of the members of the meeting unite and give the man and woman permission to be married. Everyone signs their marriage certificate. The couple stands together facing the meeting. Then they say their vows. Mathilda’s and Dan’s vows and signatures form their marriage certificate which is framed on the wall in their living room.
Rufus Jones remembers that another interesting event in meeting was the liberation of ministers for religious service “to other parts.” For example, a woman would come forward with a companion and face the meeting to say that for a long time the Lord had been calling her to service in a distant yearly meeting; that she had put it off, but her mind could not get any peace, and she had come to ask Friends to release her for this service. One after another, the Friends would “concur in this concern,” and the blessing of the Lord would be invoked upon the messenger who was going forth.
During World War I, Rufus Jones helped formed the American Friends Service Committee. Its members drove ambulances, worked in hospitals, built temporary housing and distributed food and clothing to those displaced by the war.
After the war, Herbert Hoover, a Quaker who would later become president, asked the AFSC to supervise large scale relief efforts in Germany. By summer of 1920, more than 600,000 German children, pregnant and nursing mothers were given one meal a day. The U. S. government provided the food; the German Government provided the transportation and thousands of volunteers and AFSC representatives ran the program. In 1921 AFSC representatives went to Russia to work with famine victims. During World War II, many Quakers were Conscientious Objectors and performed alternative service.
Today most Quakers dress like everyone else, appreciate music, the theatre, and the arts. They have found some unity in the midst of their religiously diverse beliefs, and come together to work for peace and justice, and support for the poor.
Mathilda Navias and her husband, Dan Bell, came to Tiffin three years ago from Harrisonburg Virginia. Dan teaches math at Tiffin University. Mathilda plays the mountain dulcimer professionally. She has made a CD of 30 hymns from a Quaker hymnal. “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”, and “The Lord of the Dance” are two that our readers might recognize. Dan Bell traces his Quaker roots to his ancestors who came to America on the second trip that William Penn made to this country. Mathilda’s parents converted to the Society of Friends as young adults. Mathilda and Dan met at Earlham College, a Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana. Their daughter, Eliza Navias-Bell spent her senior year at Columbian High School and will be a junior at Earlham College in the fall. The family enjoys re-enactments of Medieval and Renaissance eras, and Dan participates in Ritz Theatre productions.
Meetings are held several times a year in Tiffin and all are invited to attend.
– Mary