“Orthodox” Friends

A reader of this blog suggested that I investigate the origins of the term Orthodox, for those Friends who took the anti-Hicks side in the schism of 1827–8 and their successors.  There are some interesting questions connected with this term: Was it first applied by Hicksites to their opponents, with pejorative connotations — or was it something that Orthodox Friends chose for themselves?  Was it intended as implying that the Orthodox Friends held close to traditional Quaker doctrine — or rather that they were orthodox by mainstream Protestant standards? I am sorry to report that I have not been very successful in finding definite answers to these questions, but I thought it might at least be worth reporting what I did find.  If any readers know more, I hope they will fill in the gaps by commenting on this post.

The earliest occurrence of the word orthodox for opponents of Elias Hicks that I have come across is in the anonymous 1824 pro-Hicks pamphlet ‘The Misrepresentations of Anna Braithwait’ [sic]:

Among these for some time stood conspicuous ____ ____, who in a letter to a friend in this city, denounces Elias Hicks as preaching doctrines that tend to destroy the Christian Religion, merely on account of the testimony he bore, in common with many of his Brethren against Bible Societies, and some other similar associations, and to so great a height did he carry his malice that by the cry of heresy, he raised the standard of dissention for all the disaffected; accused Elias Hicks of preaching unsound doctrines and inculcating pernicious principles. Many of the weak members of his Society have been deceived, and the cry of ignorance and infidelity extended across the Atlantic. The sympathy of their wise and orthodox Brethren was excited into lively existence, and the poor, the savage, the unlearned society of Friends beyond the water has claimed their tender commiseration. Hence puffed up with high notions of superior understanding and cultivated mind, raised still higher by ideas of grovelling America, A. Braithwait left the soil of her native England, armed with full documentary evidence of her unity with the society at home, gifted by nature with unbounded assurance of mind and a countenance undaunted in what she considered the service of the Lord. She it was before whom the monster of infidelity was to wither and to die, who was to bring the American people into all the glorious consistency of the Mother Church.

This very early Hicksite application of orthodox comes across as contemptuous and sarcastic — but is really too early, I think, to be functioning as the name of a definite party in the controversy.  Rather, it seems merely to be an ironic description of the perceived self-righteousness and condescending attitude of British Friends. A clearer use of the term Orthodox to refer to an identifiable side in the impending schism appears in the New York religious newspaper The Telescope, April 1, 1826 (almost exactly a year before the actual separation took place in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting):

There is now a general commotion and overturning among the once peaceful people called Quakers.— Within a short period two rival parties have arisen in the society. The division seems mostly to have originated in a difference of sentiment, maintained and strenuously enforced by two noted preachers of that order, viz.: Elias Hicks, and Anna Braithwaite. The old party adhere to the tenets of the latter, and are denominated “Orthodox,” while the new party adhere to the sentiments of the former and are denominated “Reformers,” or “Hicksites.” The Orthodox side maintain that they themselves hold the principles of the founders of the society, and that the other party are rank Socinians, and no better than deists. On the other hand the Reformers accuse them of intolerance, bigotry, and desire “to lord it over God’s heritage;” and thus a constant warfare is maintained; each trying to gain the ascendancy.

Here, the word Orthodox appears to be an expression of the anti-Hicks party’s claim to represent traditional Quakerism, with no hint that it may have been interpreted as pejorative or sarcastic.

(A brief digression: It is interesting to note that this very early description of the controversy portrays the Orthodox side as conservative and the Hicksites as “Reformers.”  Many Friends today look back to Elias Hicks as the father of liberal Quakerism, a perspective that is reinforced in works like Bliss Forbush’s biography Elias Hicks: Quaker Liberal.  But it has been more popular among recent historians to paint Hicks as a conservative, attempting to maintain traditional Quietism against a rising trend of innovative Evangelicalism — see Larry Ingle’s Quakers in Conflict, for example.  It is perhaps worth bearing in mind that Friends on both sides of the schism took their positions for a variety of different reasons, and Hicks’ personal motivations may not have been representative of Hicksite Friends’ more generally.)

The only explicit explanation of the origin of the term Orthodox that I know of by a Friend of this era is offered by Hicksite James Cockburn, who in 1829 wrote:

The application of the term orthodox to a party in the society of Friends, appears to have arisen from the similarity of their assumptions and measures with those of the various sects who, at different periods of the church, have laid claim to this distinction, and on this ground have proscribed and persecuted others who have differed from them in opinion.

A Review of the General and Particular Causes which have Produced the Late Disorders and Divisions in the Yearly Meeting of Friends held in Philadelphia, p. vi

But Cockburn is highly partisan and his explanation should be considered in that light.