by Marshall Massey

The word "eldering" is frequently misunderstood in modern Quaker contexts — sometimes used as a verb for any correction of disorderly behavior, sometimes confused with pastoral care, sometimes wielded as a blunt instrument by self-appointed arbiters of community standards. In this October 2003 post to soc.religion.quaker, Marshall Massey offers a precise history of what eldership actually was and how it came to be so distorted.

Drawing on Howard Brinton's Guide to Quaker Practice, Thomas Clarkson's Portraiture of Quakerism (1807), Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's 1806 Rules of Discipline, and a London Yearly Meeting circular of 1871, Massey traces two distinct Quaker offices — elders, responsible for overseeing ministry and worship; and overseers, responsible for moral discipline and pastoral care — showing how both roles were carefully regulated for two centuries before the 19th-century progressive movement dismantled those safeguards. The result, he argues, was the modern phenomenon of self-appointed "elders" who had no grounding in the tradition they claimed to represent.

Beginning around 1690, that is, in the time of William Penn, elders lost their responsibility for correcting "disorderly walkers", and became specialists in overseeing the ministry and worship of the meeting — including not only dealing with disruptions of worship, but also making arrangements for meetings, and most importantly, nurturing new ministers. Howard Brinton described the duties of the elders in his Guide to Quaker Practice, 2nd edn. (1942, 1955), p. 32, as follows:

The main duty of elders is to promote conditions favorable to the success of the meeting. Their special concern is the ministry. They should be qualified to advise those who speak in meeting, encouraging a ministry that is helpful and rightly based and discouraging whatever is distancing and gives evidence of having arisen from a mistaken zeal. If the elders feel that certain members are withholding what should be given to the meeting or are not diligent in developing their gifts, they should offer encouragement. They must also deal firmly with persons who abuse the freedom of the meeting with long and burdensome discourse.

The task of dealing with "disorderly walkers" was reassigned, meanwhile, beginning around 1690, to a new class of people, the overseers. (Thus: Wilmer A. Cooper, A Living Faith. An Historical and Comparative Study of Quaker Beliefs, 2nd edn. [Friends United Press, 1990, 2001], p. 105.) The overseers oversaw the moral discipline and pastoral care of all members; as Philadelphia Yearly Meeting put it in its 1806 Rules of Discipline, the overseers'

duty it is to exercise a vigilant and tender care over their fellow members; that if any thing repugnant to the harmony and good order of the society appears among them, it may be timely attended to and not neglected. And to prevent the introduction of all unnecessary and premature complaints to meetings of business, it is advised that if any member shall have cause of complaint against another, that it be mentioned to the overseers....

To this end the overseers, in all yearly meetings, made a practice of visiting every family in the meeting at least once a year, and laboring in a loving and sympathetic fashion with those who were out of unity with the discipline. (Howard Brinton, Friends for 300 years, p. 120.)

Thomas Clarkson, the Anglican who wrote A Portraiture of Quakerism in 1807, described the qualifications of a capable Quaker overseer:

The persons to be chosen overseers are to be, by the laws of the Society, "as upright and unblamable in their conversation as they can be found, in order that the advice, which they shall occasionally administer to other friends, may be the better received, and carry with it the greater weight and force on the minds of those whom they shall be concerned to admonish." ...It is expressly enjoined them, that "they are to exercise their functions in a meek, calm, and peaceable spirit, in order that the admonished may see that their interference with their conduct proceeds from a principle of love, and a regard for their good, and preservation in the truth." And it must be observed ... that any violation of this injunction would render them liable to be admonished by others, and to come under the discipline themselves.

For two centuries and more, Friends were careful about who they allowed to play "overseer" or "elder", precisely because of this problem. Thus the 1806 Philadelphia YM Rules of Discipline advised that meetings choosing elders should "tak[e] care that the Friends chosen ... be prudent, solid Friends, and that they do carefully discharge the trust confided to them", and that overseers should be "faithful and judicious men and women". The appointment of a Friend to the position of elder or overseer was an act of immense gravity, and Friends who received such appointments recorded them as milestones in the pages of their journals.

But beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, the careful controls that prevented the spiritually unseasoned or socially unskilled from usurping an elder's or overseer's role, began breaking down — as a result of the same progressive movement that also brought about the abandonment of plain speech and plain dress, the neglect of the practice of recording ministers, and the discontinuance of facing benches. We can see the process already underway in a letter that London Yearly Meeting addressed to its overseers in 1871:

[Let not] Friends in the station of overseer ... take a limited view of their duties.... To them is committed the oversight of the flock, in the love of Christ. [Let them] give themselves to this ... duty in faith and prayer, seeking, in the wisdom of God, to encourage all in the right way of the Lord; to bind up that which is broken; to bring home the wanderers; to visit the sick and the afflicted; and to extend a loving care over the young and inexperienced. Desirable as it is that some should be specially entrusted with these duties, an earnest concern has prevailed that all may take their right share in the privilege of watching over one another for good.

Well-intentioned words, these, but they ultimately led to the problem of self-appointed "elders" who gave a bad name to the entire concept of eldering.

Colophon

Written by Marshall Massey in soc.religion.quaker, October 19, 2003, in response to a discussion about the proper scope and authority of eldering within Quaker meetings and online communities. Massey was one of the group's most consistently scholarly contributors, and among the few who wrote from deep historical knowledge of early Friends' governance.

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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