Religious Society

The name “Religious Society of Friends” is not as ancient as some Friends may believe: the earliest published occurrence I have found is from Some Account of the Life and Religious Labors of Sarah Grubb, from 1794.  Pages 230–232 include a 1790 letter to King Leopold II of Hungary, signed by Sarah (Tuke) Grubb and three other Friends, with the notation “Members of the religious society of friends in those countries and Great Britain, commonly called Quakers.”

A slightly earlier apparent occurrence is quoted in Weatherill’s History of The Religious Society of Friends Called by Some The Free Quakers, in the City of Philadelphia (1894).  Interestingly, the quote is not even taken from a Quaker source, but from a 1786 act of the City of Philadelphia, granting the use of certain city lots as a burial ground for the “Free Quakers” — a breakaway group which separated from the main body of Friends to fight in the Revolutionary War: “Whereas the Religious Society of Friends called Free Quakers in the city of Philadelphia, presented a petition to this House…”  Weatherill also reports that the original minute book of the Free Quakers, dating to 1781, refers to them as “The Religious Society of Friends, by some styled the Free Quakers.”

But even if the formal name “Religious Society of Friends” dates from more than a century after the beginning of the Quaker movement, Friends had been using the phrase “our religious society” to refer to the Quaker community as a whole for much longer.  The earliest occurrence of this I have been able to find is in Extracts from the Minutes and Advices of the Yearly meeting of Friends held in London — published in1783, but quoting advice from London Yearly Meeting issued in 1692:

ADVISED to watch against all tale-bearing and defaming friends or others, or evil-speaking tending thereunto; and shut out all occasions of offences, contentions, and divisions, and to put a speedy stop thereto, passing righteous  judgment upon all, who appear instruments of divisions and offences, contrary to that peaceable truth and gospel we profess to be guided by. Be kind and tender-hearted one to another, earnestly labouring for universal love, union, and peace in our religious society.

The Quaker use of the phrase “religious society” as a term for any outward, visible denomination (and not just the Quakers in particular) can be found even earlier, for example in Penn’s 1673 The invalidity of John Faldo’s vindication of his book, called Quakerism no Christianity:

If he doth not mean, That we deny a Visible Religious Society to be a Church, what makes him to infer our Denial of a Gospel-Church, from our asserting it to be Invisible.

Penn actually uses this term in a number of places, and can probably be credited with introducing it into Quaker usage.