Comment by James Works on 12th mo. 14, 2010 at 10:57pm

Do you know the beautiful Randall Thompson composition based on this painting, called (of course) "The Peaceable Kingdom?"  If you don't, you'll enjoy taking time to listen to it.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 12th mo. 16, 2010 at 12:14am

Is "a message" necessarily verbal?

Comment by jeremy hardin mott on 1st mo. 31, 2011 at 3:46pm

Friends who were read out of meeting were not being "excommunicated."

We do not believe that any person is cut off from God.  A Friend who was

disowned, or read out of meeting, might still attend meeting for worship,

and many did so.   The only thing such Friends could not do was to

attend meetings for business.  The problem with disownment is that

 it was used for so many minor offenses against the discipline, such as

marrying out of meeting and---perhaps---making a living from art.

Jeremy Mott

Comment by Kevin Camp on 1st mo. 31, 2011 at 3:49pm

I see what you're saying.  However, as I understand it, in those days, Meeting for Business was the focal point of Meeting.  I don't associate excommunication as being cut off from God as it is from being shunned from a community, like a Monthly Meeting.

Comment by jeremy hardin mott on 1st mo. 31, 2011 at 5:28pm

Actually,  I  think we are both right.  In other churches, e.g. Roman Catholic,

                     excommunication means being cut off from God----something the

                    church was (and is) thought to have power to do.  Friends never

                    thought this.  However, we did, as you say, drive people out of

                   our community by driving them out of business meetings.

                   There are some amusing stories about Friends who had been

                   disowned who continued to remain Friends.  For example,

                   in a small town near Atlantic City, Friends met in the home

                   of the wealthiest member.  He was disowned, no doubt for

                   some minor reason.  He continued to attend meeting for

                   worship, in his own living room.  When it was time for

                   meeting for worship, he would go upstairs, where he

                  couldn't even hear what was happening!  

                  There was also Isaac Hopper, a radical abolitionist, who

                  was disowned twice for his abolitionist activism.  On the

                  second occasion, in the 1840's (I think), he lived in New

                 York City, and (among other things) was co-publisher

                  of an abolitionist newsletter.   While he was away on a

                  business trip to Europe,  the other publisher, or maybe

                  the  editor, published a piece accusing George White, a

                  minister in the meeting, of making his living from owning

                  a chain of "'dramshops."  Isaac Hopper refused to apologize

                  on behalf of the other employees of his newspaper, so he

                  was disowned (after a great debate).  He was also a recorded

                  minister  (like George White), so he continued to sit on the

                  facing bench of the Hicksite meeting in New York City for the

                  rest of his life.  His daughter and son-in-law, however, were

                 so angry at the way he was treated that they resigned from

                 Friends.  The whole brouhaha was still being debated in

                 Hoppers' meeting until well into the 1900's!  No apology

                 from the meeting was ever forthcoming.  One thing is

                 quite certain.  These disownments hurt Friends dreadfully.

                  When Hopper was disowned, several thousand Friends

                  in New York Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) resigned or dis-

                 appeared.  As a matter of fact, the whole Hicksite group

                 of Friends in Vermont (then part of  N.Y.Y.M.) was gone.  

                 It's comforting to know that our early artists, Edward Hicks

                 and J.Boies Penrose, were never disowned.

                                    Jeremy Mott 

Comment by Paula Deming on 1st mo. 31, 2011 at 5:52pm

Kevin,

Thank you for this excellent piece. And Jeremy, thank you for bringing it to our attention again. I find it very illuminating

I have two personal stories about Friends being written out of meeting; neither is pretty:

An ancestor of mine donated the land for the meetinghouse. A few years later, he took an oath of loyalty during the Revolutionary War. He was written out of meeting for his trouble and wasn't allowed to be buried in the meeting's graveyard. (His family was buried there.) There is a plaque on the meetinghouse telling the story. It's Sandy Spring Friends Meeting in Maryland, and my ancestor was James Brooke.

A century later, my great grandfather was disowned for marrying a nonQuaker. Unlike his ancestor, whose descendants continued in the faith, my great grandfather ended our line. My grandmother apparently considered herself a Quaker, but the children were brought up in mainline Protestant churches. Is that what the disowning Friends had intended??

Comment by jeremy hardin mott on 1st mo. 31, 2011 at 7:18pm

Kevin, I am also thankful for this very good piece.  In my most recent comment, of course

              I meant that the Friend on the Jersey shore had to hole up in the upstairs of his

              house during meeting for business, not meeting for worship.

             Like Paula, I have stories of ancestors who were disowned----two of them.

             On my father's side, as far as we know, practically all the Motts from New Jersey were

             disowned, for one thing or another, long before the Civil War.  A collateral  ancestor

             of mine, Gershom Mott, was the highest-ranking Union officer from New Jersey

              in that war; but several generations before him seem not to have been Friends.

              More disturbing, perhaps, is things that happened on my mother's side of the

              family, in Iowa.  A great-grandmother of mine, named Brown, was disowned

              for marrying out.  (This probably accounted for some of the New Jersey dis-

              ownments as well.)   Her non-Quaker husband had become convinced that

              Quakers were a fine people;  so he and his friends held silent meetings for

              worship, for men only, in his house.  If this couple had been taken in by

              Friends, surely they would have learned that both sexes can respond to

              the Spirit.  And maybe they and their descendants would have remained

              Friends.  As it was, both my mother and my father were convinced 

              Friends, who joined because they were pacifists in World War II.

                         Friends still frequently disown other Friends, even though  we

               may not admit it.  In many meetings, someone who speaks of Jesus

               or Christ may  be eldered.  (And in some Quaker churches, the

               reverse may happen.)   I believe that in most "liberal" meetings,

               someone not a Democrat will be in big trouble.    This kind of

               concern for Quaker "purity" has divided, and even destroyed,

               entire yearly meetings on occasion.  We certainly know how

               to chase people away.  We need to figure out how to attact

              people and keep them in.,

                          Jeremy Mott

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