The Significance of Early Quakerism for Contemporary Ecclesiology

A wise teacher used to declare regularly to her undergraduates: “You will never understand America unless you read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.”  She was suggesting that the Puritan influence of New England remains more broadly a part of the American mentality than perhaps is recognized.  To the extent this is the case, how much more so does it persist in Christian religious attitudes?

 In 1660, the Boston Puritan community publicly executed Mary Dyer near Boston Commons. She was a convert to Quakerism and former member of their community. She was defiant, to be sure, but the question arises why the burgeoning Quakerism was a threat to the Boston Puritan community in the first place.

This paper will draw upon the historical events of Mary Dyer, along with Anne Hutchinson, and their conflict with the Puritan community, to suggest that five themes were going forward in the emerging Quakerism vis-à-vis Puritanism. These themes remain relevant today: (1) a challenge to the notion of religion as ethics; (2) a challenge to the scapegoating tendency of certain religious attitudes; (3) a priority given to the role of experience as foundational to religious understanding; (4) a rise in the authority of women’s voices in religious matters; and (5) an ecclesial understanding of friendship.

With respect to the first, Hans Urs Von Balthasar (d. 1988) blames Kierkegaard for separating aesthetics from the ethical and religious spheres and contributing to the eclipse of transcendental beauty. Balthasar’s analysis overlooks the possibility of the spheres as differentiations of consciousness, and he also overlooks an important development going forward in Kierkegaard: the differentiation of ethics from religion. This differentiation is important to maintain the integrity of religion from being reduced to ethics. Conversely, the sublation of ethics into the religious sphere enables the letter of the law to be guided more fundamentally by the spirit of the law. The conflict between the Puritans and the Quakers reflects the latter’s contribution to this differentiation of religion from ethics as an early example of this development.

Second, the scapegoating mechanism has been identified and developed by Rene Girard (d. 2005). The stigmatizing and shunning of Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s novel is a classic example of the scapegoating mechanism. The community’s admonitions against adultery are an external control against coveting another’s spouse. More precisely, for Girard, these controls would seek to contain mimetic rivalry that is fueled by envy.  The result of mimetic rivalry leads to violence directed at an innocent person.  The rise of Quakerism in New England confronts Puritanism as a competing faith. New World expansionism and geography will no doubt play a part. Nevertheless, Mary Dyer is a victim of this rivalry. Nevertheless, the Quaker commitment to nonviolence and peace would, in turn, challenge the scapegoating tendencies of Puritanism.

Third, going forward in the emergence of Quakerism is the priority of religious experience as foundational to faith. The Inward or Inner Light of Quaker theology represents a shift to interiority and an inner authority that would collide with the Puritan emphasis on external criteria and conformity to communal norms as the basis of faith. By contrast, this shift to internal criteria as reflective of the true criteria for faith is one that will not show up in the official Roman Catholic teaching until Vatican II.

Fourth, the controversies that Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson were embroiled in with the Puritan community of their time reflected a resistance to the spiritual experiences and authority of women in that patriarchal context. In this sense, these two figures were ahead of their time.

Finally, the Religious Society of Friends that Quakers officially named themselves reflects an alternative ecclesial model to hierarchical models. An exploration of the history of that model can inform a broader ecclesial understanding of friendship in other Christian denominations.

This paper is part of a larger one, but the presentation will briefly summarize the thesis and the five themes within parameters of a fifteen-minute format.