Howard Brinton: Quaker Journals

One of the great joys of Quakerism is that it is an experiential religion, an attitude more than a formalized theology. While mainstream Christian documents like the Apostle’s Creed may be a good guide to the religious controversies of Fourth Century Europe, weekly recitation doesn’t do much to tell us how to live as faithful ministers in a broken world crying out to be reborn. Quakers have a simple approach to the divine: we believe ministry should be directly inspired and ever new. Through long experience and heartbreak we’ve learned that we must wait for direction from Christ’s Spirit before acting out.

How then do we teach a religion that can’t be defined? We can try to categorize lists of religious behavior—what we call our testimonies. But even these can become rote lists and they soon enough turn into their own dead orthodoxy. A religion that depends on the ever-refreshing inspiration of the Holy Spirit can’t be pinned down.

So instead Quakers have learned to tell stories. Faithful Friends were asked by their Meetings to write down their life stories into the body of work we now call the Quaker journals. These weren’t like the celebrity bios that grace every modern-day newstand. They were spiritual biographies stripped of the juicy gossip of daily life and focused on struggle to be true to God. Through them, the journal writer share their glimpses of the Divine but also the struggle to get there.

One of the outstanding Quaker figures of our era wrote a guide to the old biographies as he neared the end of his life. Howard Brinton’s Quaker Journals (published in 1971) is a roadmap to the form: he dissects dozens of journals famous and obscure and traces the themes. The steps he outlines are the steps toward faithfulness. They are the guide to becoming a Friend.

Anyone who’s started down this path will recognize the landmarks of his chapter titles: “youthful frivolity,” “the divided self,” “unification through silence,” “adoption of plain speech, plain dress and simple living.” While these steps would be familiar to generations of faithful Friends (including today’s) they are rarely talked about today. One certainly won’t find them taught in most First Day Schools.

The Quaker culture at large always threatens to adopt the concepts of our surroundings. We think of self-actualization instead of self-abnegation when we run around trying to craft identities. We applaud the faux-rebelliousness of alternative fashion. We pat ourselves on the back when we let our children mess their lives up with sex and drugs. At its best Quakerism doesn’t condemn these practices so much as lift up the alternative: a path to God that requires listening to and obeying a force outside of ourselves.

Reading journals reminds us of that Quaker path. And that’s precisely what they’re intended for.

Reading the journals gives a thousand lessons in the attitude necessary to being a faithful Quaker. These are timeless. When a witch scare threatened to overtake Quaker Pennsylvania, William Penn asked an accused witch if she traveled by broomstick. When she informed him she did, Penn just replied, “Yes, I know of no law against it” and let her go. Thomas Chalkley talked about finding a job that left time for ministry: “So I went to my calling, and got a little money (a little being enough) which I was made willing to spend freely, in the work of service to my great master Christ Jesus.” Job Scott described the spiritual hangover from mindless partying: “Thus I went on frolicking and gaming, and spending my precious time in vanity. Often at night… I have returned home from my merry meetings grievously condemned, distressed and ashamed; wishing I had not gone into such company, and resolving to do so no more.”

The book has its flaws but they too are interesting and instructive. In his zeal to make Quakerism accessible, Howard Brinton sometimes stretches a claim of resemblance to a present-day spiritual movement. A few of the later chapters of Quaker Journals reach out to mid-Century followers of Gandhi and Freud and these passages have aged the least well. He weaves his arguments from the merest threads and it shows: early Friends didn’t think in terms of reincarnation or the id and you just can’t build a satisfying argument out of conjecture.

There’s a lesson that even Howard Brinton could only convincingly popularize Quakerism so far. In my writings I frequently reach out to the Emergent Church movement and other Friends do a similar outreach ministry to American Buddhists, radical environmentalists, the ecumenical movement, etc. I suspect our work in these fields will also feel dated in thirty years. The Spirit from which Quakerism springs forth is eternal and will outlive any of our trendy movements. We can only pander to spiritual fashion too much.

Fortunately, most of ¬_Quaker Journals_ is good old fashioned Quaker storytelling. Which is a radical act in itself as it reminds us that we too are living our stories. The Quaker approach to journal writing and reading is the ultimate intergenerational experience: these accounts allow us to become friends to long-dead Friends. When I read old journals I often have a wry smile on my face in the recognition of some common issue. Despite all our modernity, the struggles to being a faithful follower of God today are not so different from what they’ve always been. Through example, the journal writer is consoling us, understanding us and letting us know its okay to suffer from non-recognition, set-back and doubt.

For the truth is that there was never really any “golden age” to Quakerism. We’ve always been struggling, bumbling about and making mistakes. Long-dead Friends remind us even that those heroic Quaker acts of the past were made by people as flawed as we are—and as ready to live into Christ’s way as we are.

Quaker journals remind us of our approach to other spiritual writing. Brinton starts off his chapter on “the divided self” with an account from Paul. The Bible can be seen as a collection of journals: within its pages are hundreds of stories of people seeking (or fleeing from!) the Divine. I don’t expect John Woolman to be perfect or completely right about everything and I don’t expect Paul to be either. Friends don’t read the Bible for its literalness or to glean specific rules, but to connect with those who have come before us. Their story is ours too. The Bible and the Quaker journals are read with the same attention to the Light. The journals themselves are a kind of scripture: additions to the story of a people engaged in a great spiritual journey.

Brinton’s Quaker Journals is a great introduction to one of our oldest form of religious education. He’s a engaging writer and his frequent extracts from journals is at turns inspiring and funny.

One has to wonder at the renaissance of writing our spiritual lives down that is happening with these interlocking networks of blogs. I don’t think we’re writing journals. But with Quaker Ranter I’ve gotten much more experienced in sharing my openings and I’ve exercised the part of my soul that longs to share the joy I’ve experienced. Might we see a renewal of Quaker journals twenty to fifty years from now when we start reaching our twilight years?

There’s a funny bit of coincidence in me reading this book at this time. Last week I got a call from Geoffrey Kaiser, the faithful Friend who put together the amazing “Quaker tree” poster of our history and the same faithful minister who labored with FGC Friends in the 1970s to help forge our acceptance of gay and lesbian Friends as full members of our religious body. Geoffrey’s deaccessioning some of his possessions. One is the chart, unavailable for about five years and now given to FGC (it’s at the printers now!). The other collection he gave way was about nine feet of mostly-nineteenth century journals. We drove the 180-mile trip to his and his partner Bruce Grimes’s house on First Day and it was a hoot. Geoffrey went through every book with me, essentially giving me a syllabus. His books are full of marginal notes (yes, luckily he scrawled on even the ancient ones!) so it will be like having him there over my shoulder as I read! It’s quite a gift. My “now reading” list might get a bit obscure for awhile.

PS: One thing that Geoff mentioned a few times was that there’s a book to be written about the early gay rights movement among Friends. He and Bruce took meticulous notes, now housed at Swarthmore. This isn’t just an issue for Quakers: many of the challenges they faced echo the debates now happening on the national stage, especially the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. All Americans could learn a lot by understanding how FGC Friends wrestled with this landmark change.

Other books by or about Howard Brinton

• Friends for 300 Years, Brinton’s tour de force vision and introduction to Quakerism helped redefine late 20th Century liberal Friends.


• Guide to Quaker Practice, Howard’s booklet on worship, structure, business, committees, etc.


• -Living The Peace Testimony: The Legacy Of Howard And Anna Brinton. Anthony Manousos’s recent pamphlet on the Brinton’s peace efforts. Anthony edits “Friends Bulletin,” the periodical of Western US Friends founded by the Brinton’s. They also play a big role in the Western Quaker Reader he compiled in 2000.