On the Transformative Power of Covenant in Quaker Life

by Marshall Massey

What is the difference between a gathering of individuals who share beliefs and a genuine religious community? In April 2004, Marshall Massey — a historically grounded Quaker theologian and longtime contributor to soc.religion.quaker — returned from the Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) Midyear gathering with an answer drawn from concrete experience.

The Iowa Conservatives are a small, declining yearly meeting that had, unexpectedly, begun to grow again: entire worship groups in Madison, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota — cities with large, thriving liberal Quaker meetings of their own — were seeking affiliation with the distant Conservative body. Massey sat across a dinner table from one of the Minneapolis Friends and asked her why. Her answer, and what followed in meeting for worship that weekend, forms the heart of this post.

Massey closes with a theological reflection on covenant — not as rules and contracts but as the choice, made and followed through upon, to love one's neighbor as oneself. This is one of the most sustained pieces of writing on the meaning of Quaker community produced in the early-internet era.

I just returned from Iowa (Conservative) Midyear Meeting, which is an annual day-and-a-half-long gathering of the members and attenders of Iowa (Conservative) during a weekend in the spring. This is an event held in addition to the regular yearly sessions of Iowa (Conservative), which occur in late July or early August.

It is an interesting thing about Iowa (C). It has been gradually losing members, year after year, for many years now, as deaths and moves of Friends away from the region have not been balanced by births, convincements, and moves of Friends into the region.

Last year, however, Iowa (C) grew slightly — because an entire group of people in Madison, Wisconsin (where there is already a huge and thriving monthly meeting associated with Northern Yearly Meeting) decided to organize as a worship group under the care of an Iowa (C) monthly meeting.

This weekend there were representatives of three families from the Minneapolis / Saint Paul region — where there is another thriving monthly meeting associated with Northern YM — who are talking about doing a similar thing: organizing as a worship group under the care of another Iowa (C) monthly meeting.

These two groups represent a trend that has been under way for many years now, of people from the Hicksite/Beanite branch of Quakerism wanting to move to the Conservative branch. It is the first time in a long time, though, that this attraction has been strong enough to overcome the demographic factors causing Iowa (C)'s decline.

Yesterday I found myself sitting across a dinner table from one of the representatives of the little Minneapolis / St. Paul group. And so I availed myself of the opportunity to ask her why she felt drawn to the Conservative strand.

I have visited Northern YM in the past; I have even been a featured speaker both at its annual sessions and at a special gathering of the monthly meeting in Minneapolis / St. Paul. I find much in that community that I really, truly like. (The woman sitting across from me agreed.) So why the restlessness? Why the wish to affiliate instead with another yearly meeting further away?

The woman answered that the existing Minneapolis / St. Paul meeting, for all its wonderfulness, struck her as a group of individuals, rather than as a community engaged in a spiritual life together. And she then ran down a whole list of examples of what she was talking about, and contrasted them with what she found in Iowa (C). She talked, for instance, about how decisions in Iowa seem to draw in everybody, whereas in Minneapolis / St. Paul there are so many who simply won't bother, for one reason or another, to be involved.

I had to agree, having been struck by a similar contrast myself between the big monthly meeting (Beanite) that I'd attended for nearly a quarter century in Denver, and the Iowa (C) community.

Today, at First Day meeting for worship, the clerk of Iowa (C) — Deb Fisch, who is also well known in FGC circles because of all the work and public speaking she's done there — was moved to stand and minister near the close of the meeting. She spoke about how she had recently been a visitor at a very large monthly meeting in Philadelphia. It is the custom at that monthly meeting that the children are absent at first day school during most of the meeting for worship, and then only join the meeting for worship near the end.

Seeing the kids troop into the last minutes of meeting for worship like that, Deb had recalled how when she was a member in Paullina, Iowa (C)'s monthly meeting, the children had been simply expected to worship with the adults through the whole hour of worship, and had thought nothing of it. She had then turned to her traveling companion, a very young woman from Iowa (C), and had brought up this recollection — which her companion could of course share — and had asked her which approach she preferred. The young woman had replied that she much preferred Iowa (C)'s approach; she had said, "I won't pretend there weren't lots of times when being a kid sitting through a whole hour of worship was very hard — but it left me completely sure that I was welcome to be fully a part of what the adults were doing."

Deb then went on to talk about how she has visited so many Friends meetings around the world, and found so much to like in each one, and has been gone for such great lengths of time from Iowa (C) — and yet, each time she returns, she feels so strongly that this is her only real home, because she is greeted not just with variations on "How nice to see you; it's been a while," but with loving and totally unfeigned and very detailed interest in her self, her life and her projects.

It's much the same thing that the woman from Minneapolis / St. Paul had been telling me earlier.

Now, Deb stood and spoke these words in meeting for worship, in part (I think) because of what the minister before her had said. The minister before her was a very young man, someone of middle school age in fact. He stood and told our meeting for worship that he had been about to skip meeting and spend the hour playing in the playground outside, when something had suddenly directed him to enter the meeting house and worship instead, and he had obeyed. He said, "I hope that each of us has some time in our lives when we feel someone or something telling us what to do, and guiding us to happiness, just like that."

That this very young man was in a community where he could feel such a motion and feel comfortable enough to obey it without question, was an expression of that same truth, too.

I'm not saying all this to praise the Conservative strand and put down the Hicksite / Beanite strand. As a matter of fact, the Philadelphia meeting that Deb Fisch had visited has a heritage much closer to Conservativism than to Hicksism / Beanism. But these three experiences all do say something about the power and magic of a true religious community.

Community is a choice we make together. And when we make it, and follow through on it, something deeply transformative begins to flower in our lives. It can happen so softly and subtly that we are utterly unaware of what a treasure we have received until, for some reason, it is taken away from us. But it is no less tremendously important just because it is so soft and subtle. And it draws people powerfully — sometimes from hundreds of miles away, as in the case of the people from Madison, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis / St. Paul, and sometimes simply from the playground just outside the meeting house.

When our Hebrew-Jewish-Christian-Quaker tradition talks about "covenant", it isn't talking about contracts and rules, but about that choice, made and followed through upon. That choice, made and followed through upon, is half the totality of the spiritual practice of Friends. Another way we describe it is, "loving our neighbor as ourselves."

Without that choice, made and followed through upon, Christ may manifest to us as individuals, but he does not manifest in our midst in power and in glory.

Without that choice, made and followed through upon, no matter how fine our private spirituality may be, our religion is dead in reality, and persists only as a slowly dissipating semblance of its past.

But when that choice is made and followed through upon, the whole world is drawn by the heartstrings.

Colophon

Written by Marshall Massey and posted to soc.religion.quaker in April 2004. Massey was a historically grounded Quaker theologian and a longtime participant in the newsgroup, known for his careful engagement with the history of Quaker practice and his affiliation with Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative).

The Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) is one of three surviving Conservative yearly meetings, alongside North Carolina and Ohio (Conservative). Conservative Friends maintain unprogrammed worship, traditional plain speech, and a strong emphasis on corporate discernment; they differ from other branches primarily in their adherence to early Quaker Christology and practice.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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