Elias Hicks - Disputes Among Friends

Disputes Among Friends

Controversy over Hicks's teachings interrupted the normal calm of the Religious Society of Friends in Philadelphia. For more than five years, elders of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had tried to prevent Hicks from propounding his views in the city's meeting houses, producing sharp differences within that yearly meeting; these differences came to a head in April 1827 when the society divided. By 1828 there were two independent groups, both claiming to be the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Other yearly meetings split along similar lines during subsequent years, including those in New York, Baltimore, Ohio, and Indiana. Those who agreed with Hicks were generally called Hicksites, and his detractors were called Orthodox Friends. Each side considered itself the legitimate heir to the legacy of such earlier Friends as George Fox, Margaret Fell and Robert Barclay.

The split was not purely doctrinal. It reflected tensions that had been growing between the elders—who were mostly from the cities—and Friends who lived farther away from major communities and Meetings. Hicksite Friends were mostly country Friends; they perceived urban Friends as too worldly. In contrast to the Philadelphia Friends, many of whom were wealthy businessmen with refined tastes, many of the country Friends kept to traditions of "plain speech" and "plain dress." By this time, these practices could be described as a sort of jargon and a sort of uniform, respectively.

Many scholars have written about various aspects of these controversies. A good short summary is Larry Kuenning's "Quaker Theologies in the 19th Century Separations", but for more depth, see H. Larry Ingle, Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation (Philadelphia: Pendle Hill, 1998).