What if Quakerism was dominant in the South

So what would change in southern culture and attitudes if Quakerism was the majority denomination, instead of Baptists.
 
Probably firstly should ask how it would happen.

But probably Southerners would be much lesser gun maniacs and probably lesser racist. But they are still so religious as OTL Southerners.
 
So how would Quakerism become dominant in the South , and how would it affect later developments in history?
 
Probably firstly should ask how it would happen.

But probably Southerners would be much lesser gun maniacs and probably lesser racist. But they are still so religious as OTL Southerners.
Thank you for answering, this is the fastest reply I have gained in a thread before.
 
Since Quakerism is anti-slavery, I don't know how you expect it to get traction in the South, unless you mean a form of Quakerism that isn't vehemently against slavery and isn't pacifist, at which point it ceases to be the Quakerism we know.
 
If Southern slave-owners encourage Quakerism amongst their slaves as a means of passive control might this not lead to an increase?
 
Since Quakerism is anti-slavery, I don't know how you expect it to get traction in the South, unless you mean a form of Quakerism that isn't vehemently against slavery and isn't pacifist, at which point it ceases to be the Quakerism we know.

The Society of Friends aka "Quakers" arrived at its anti slavery stance after a extended internal debate of many years. It is orginal thinking of the latter 17th & early 18th Centuries 'Friends' both owned slaves and invested in the slave trade. At the end of the 'discussion' they came of a concensus that slavery or involuntary bondage was evil. I cant name names right now, but at the end of the change in the SoF a portion left the society & remained slaveholders, or investors in the slave economy.

Since the anti slavery question emerged out of British & northern colony Friends Meetings it is still likely to emerge, but with a large Friends population in the southern US the debate is liable to take a different course. Odds are the result will be a very high portion of slave committed Friends seperating in practice from the anti slavery portion. Since there were large swaths of the South that were not slave economy or culture those areas may very well remain in sympathy to the nothern & British SoF on the slavery question. In other words the plantation regions may seperate while regions like Applachia, or central & south Florida remain closer to the northern SoF.

Nothing earthshaking about such a split. The SoF has fragmented numerous times and ways. The bulk of modern Friends or Quakers look more like main stream evangelical churches with clergy, programed worship, a hirearchael structure, & some conservative doctrines that are at odds with the more traditional Friends Meetings in the US or UK.

Note that several other doctrines currently associated with the SoF are not original to their founding in the mid 17th Century. Passificism did not emerge as a belief for many decades, and is less prevalent than outsiders understand. The concern with prison and law reform did not emerge for nearly two centuries.
 
How can you get the Quakers to have the same spirited camp meetings and firey worship sermons that turned the South from an Anglican but mildly religious stronghold to the evangelical and strongly religious bastion it has been since?

Probably firstly should ask how it would happen.

But probably Southerners would be much lesser gun maniacs and probably lesser racist. But they are still so religious as OTL Southerners.

I wouldn't confuse modern Quakers with 18th/early 19th century Quakers. Look how so many denominations split over the slavery issue (especially Baptists)--these hypothetical Quakers could very well split over that issue too.

Since the anti slavery question emerged out of British & northern colony Friends Meetings it is still likely to emerge, but with a large Friends population in the southern US the debate is liable to take a different course. Odds are the result will be a very high portion of slave committed Friends seperating in practice from the anti slavery portion. Since there were large swaths of the South that were not slave economy or culture those areas may very well remain in sympathy to the nothern & British SoF on the slavery question. In other words the plantation regions may seperate while regions like Applachia, or central & south Florida remain closer to the northern SoF.

Weren't some of those regions already pretty separate, even religiously? A quick look at Appalachian denominations versus denominations in the rest of the South shows that Appalachia always had a unique flair to its Christianity compared to even the rest of the South.
 
How can you get the Quakers to have the same spirited camp meetings and firey worship sermons that turned the South from an Anglican but mildly religious stronghold to the evangelical and strongly religious bastion it has been since?

Quarterly & Yearly meetings are the venue that gets you half way there. & what became the Hicksite group was well formed before the 19th Century, so its possible groups like you describe could form.


Weren't some of those regions already pretty separate, even religiously? A quick look at Appalachian denominations versus denominations in the rest of the South shows that Appalachia always had a unique flair to its Christianity compared to even the rest of the South.

Yep. The SoF meetings in the south were evolving from the start. They even evolved in part over the slavery question when the Abolition question first emerged
 
The Society of Friends aka "The bulk of modern Friends or Quakers look more like main stream evangelical churches with clergy, programed worship, a hirearchael structure, & some conservative doctrines that are at odds with the more traditional Friends Meetings in the US or UK.
I attended a Friends Church when I was very religious for about a year and a half centered around age 14.

I briefly wore a button to school which said "I Found It" and the answer to the question was "abundant life through Jesus Christ." Struck me as too much a rehearsed salesman-like response.

I concur.

The one different part of the church is that there's a quiet time after the collection and before the sermon. People can share a verse or two of scripture, can offer a prayer, can share an insight they've had. This period lasts ten minutes often less.

A lot of emphasis on personal piety, which means abstaining from even sexual thoughts, which is a trap any Buddhist would see through in a moment for it's just going to make it more exciting.

A friend once gave the analogy, you're running across a field and you slip on a rock. You might slip on the same rock getting up but that's different than just laying there. It was patently obvious that my friend was talking about masturbation. I mean, so obvious that it's not even an analogy.

Well, what's being left behind is about three dozen other topics in ethics and how we treat other people. For example, don't engage in proxy bullying. And if you laugh while someone else does the bullying, you are engaging in proxy bullying. Well, it's not a hundred percent deal where you're striving for perfection which is too high a standard and you're going to get down on yourself. Instead, it's more a skill of moving away from the poker hand quite a bit quicker and more confidently than average. You might even want to extend a hand out to the person being bullied. And there's ways of doing this effectively and ineffectively. No one likes receiving scraps of charity. It's more about being matter-of-fact that bullying is a waste of time, but that's only one of the skills.

And this is a great example of the type of thing which can be lost by focusing so much on not even having sexual thoughts. Some Christians live small truncated lives. Certainly not all, but some do. Maybe a result of any religion or philosophy trying to achieve perfection in one area of life to the exclusion of all others.

I'm impressed that we can list 20 different religions all of which have some version of the Golden Rule, often amazingly similar to the Christian version. I also think that Kantianism and utilitarianism are maybe B, B+ theories of ethics, and perhaps that's the best we can hope for.

These days I'm an atheist, sometimes comfortably, sometimes not so much. A cousin got sick, who I'm not particularly close with and that aspect does make it worse. I do worry about my own death. I wish there was an afterlife like in the movie Defending Your Life with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks, where sometimes you could pick within a range your own life to be reincarnated into, other times the cosmic lottery. And when you learned enough, you could move on to higher planes. Would like for this to be true, but don't think it is.
 
Last edited:
That sounds like the programed Friends I've met. My membership in the Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting, which is near the opposite end of the spectrum. Completely unprogrammed worship, no clergy, all decisions are reached by concensus (which takes forever). Nearly all the members are urban professionals, & educated, and many are business owners. Really strong on the social service thing & very soft on prostelyzing. There is a argument the unprogrammed Friends are not Christians since they do not recite or otherwise formally attach to the Niacene Creed.
 
since I'm no longer really a Christian, don't feel I can really say on last point. I do like the fact that a lot of different churches believe a lot of different things, and even people within the same church.

As far as consensus, I saw that when I was a member of the Green Party in 2000 & 2001.

People really want to believe in consensus.

Hoping people aren't going to object. This slight to medium conformist pressure. It could be worse, but it could also be a lot better.
 

Zek Sora

Donor
I think that's fairly unlikely, given the small numbers of Quakers that there were IOTL regardless; they were quasi-exiled to Pennsylvania because they didn't really fit in with the other Puritans, and I think that by the time they grew large enough to really spread, they had adopted their anti-slavery doctrines, which wouldn't exactly win them a lot of friends (heh) in the south.

(I am also a Quaker, and have been since kindergarten. I'm of the "unprogrammed" variety.)
 
Nothing earthshaking about such a split. The SoF has fragmented numerous times and ways. The bulk of modern Friends or Quakers look more like main stream evangelical churches with clergy, programed worship, a hirearchael structure, & some conservative doctrines that are at odds with the more traditional Friends Meetings in the US or UK.

Basically, some of the Friends groups which largely overlapped with conventional evangelical Christianity got involved with missionary ventures. None had an especially overwhelming effect on their destinations, but the Quakers are such a tiny group that it dramatically altered the proportions. A bare majority of Friends are now in Africa - mostly Kenya.

Note that several other doctrines currently associated with the SoF are not original to their founding in the mid 17th Century. Passificism did not emerge as a belief for many decades, and is less prevalent than outsiders understand. The concern with prison and law reform did not emerge for nearly two centuries.

I'm not sure that's true. Quakers sprang from a reaction to the English Civil War, more or less in line with the Anabaptist movement on the continent. William Penn was already inviting pacifist religious groups to Pennsylvania and reforming its prisons not so long after. Perhaps you could say it took that long for all Quakers to rally around those causes, but pacifism was a presence in the movement from its outset.

I attended a Friends Church when I was very religious for about a year and a half centered around age 14.

I briefly wore a button to school which said "I Found It" and the answer to the question was "abundant life through Jesus Christ." Struck me as too much a rehearsed salesman-like response.

I concur.

The one different part of the church is that there's a quiet time after the collection and before the sermon. People can share a verse or two of scripture, can offer a prayer, can share an insight they've had. This period lasts ten minutes often less.

A lot of emphasis on personal piety, which means abstaining from even sexual thoughts, which is a trap any Buddhist would see through in a moment for it's just going to make it more exciting.

A friend once gave the analogy, you're running across a field and you slip on a rock. You might slip on the same rock getting up but that's different than just laying there. It was patently obvious that my friend was talking about masturbation. I mean, so obvious that it's not even an analogy.

Well, what's being left behind is about three dozen other topics in ethics and how we treat other people. For example, don't engage in proxy bullying. And if you laugh while someone else does the bullying, you are engaging in proxy bullying. Well, it's not a hundred percent deal where you're striving for perfection which is too high a standard and you're going to get down on yourself. Instead, it's more a skill of moving away from the poker hand quite a bit quicker and more confidently than average. You might even want to extend a hand out to the person being bullied. And there's ways of doing this effectively and ineffectively. No one likes receiving scraps of charity. It's more about being matter-of-fact that bullying is a waste of time, but that's only one of the skills.

And this is a great example of the type of thing which can be lost by focusing so much on not even having sexual thoughts. Some Christians live small truncated lives. Certainly not all, but some do. Maybe a result of any religion or philosophy trying to achieve perfection in one area of life to the exclusion of all others.

I'm impressed that we can list 20 different religions all of which have some version of the Golden Rule, often amazingly similar to the Christian version. I also think that Kantianism and utilitarianism are maybe B, B+ theories of ethics, and perhaps that's the best we can hope for.

These days I'm an atheist, sometimes comfortably, sometimes not so much. A cousin got sick, who I'm not particularly close with and that aspect does make it worse. I do worry about my own death. I wish there was an afterlife like in the movie Defending Your Life with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks, where sometimes you could pick within a range your own life to be reincarnated into, other times the cosmic lottery. And when you learned enough, you could move on to higher planes. Would like for this to be true, but don't think it is.

It must be so strange to encounter Quakers through a conservative/structured context like that. Friends Church! At that point, they're just a really quirky protestant sect, rather than arguably being so fundamentally different that they qualify as a branch of Christianity alongside Mormonism and Protestantism itself. I spent some time with the "Religious Society of Friends (Conservative)" when I taught in Appalachian Ohio, and while they are very good people, at times it seemed I had no more in common with them than I had with any other peace sect - the Amish, or more strict Mennonite groups.

Growing up in the eastern Meetings, the kind of puritanism you describe seems almost absurdly opposed to the people I grew up with. In Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Georgia I found it different. Nor does that mesh much with Italian, British, or Hong Konger Quakers I've socialized or sat with. [I did once meet a Hong Konglish Quaker who was a fervent Trump supporter and climate change denier, but that's an altogether different flavor of bizarre.] I mean, I grew up taking it for granted that while Christianity and Buddhism were mutually incompatible, Quakerism and Buddhism certainly weren't. There was a Buddhist nun in our meeting for some time, and I heard word occasionally of another meeting where there was some distress (of the gentle, verbal kind Quakers tend to) that some outspoken Wiccans were being a little more Wiccan than Quaker in their messages.

I keep coming back to that puritanism in your post and laughing out loud. When I was a teenage Friend it was generally understood that someone was getting laid at any really big Young Friends overnight event, and this was in no way viewed as hypocrisy. It was a bad idea, sure, the event organizers sought to avoid it, but no one was stopping the religion bus to weep over it. How many Young Friends does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Young Friends don't screw in lightbulbs - they screw in sleeping bags. I heard that a lot, though it wasn't my scene.

We put our emphasis on personal piety to what I believe were more constructive ends. Sorry you ended up with a sort that didn't suit you. Didn't do much lasting damage, at least, to judge by your message.

To the extent that I'm still Quaker, it's for two reasons: Why that and not something else.... because after growing up without being told by an authority figure what to think of God, morality, and spirituality, I simply can't abide the experience of a priest (or equivalent) lecturing at me. The second, though, is more practical - Quakers produce good results. Few religions sound bad on paper, but few indeed have compromised power for principle so little. In that sense I suppose it's more that I trust Quakers to do the right thing where I expect many faiths to get misled by doctrine.
 
There was a Buddhist nun in our meeting for some time, and I heard word occasionally of another meeting where there was some distress (of the gentle, verbal kind Quakers tend to) that some outspoken Wiccans were being a little more Wiccan than Quaker in their messages.

For several years we had a Episcopalian priest attend our meetings once a month. She was a sort of assistant in the church and ducked out once a month to worship with us. & yeah, when the visiting grad students speak during worship you hear a lot of stuff you'd not 'had from Fox'.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Probably firstly should ask how it would happen.

But probably Southerners would be much lesser gun maniacs and probably lesser racist. But they are still so religious as OTL Southerners.
Please don't drag current politics into a PRE-1900 discussion.
 
. . . When I was a teenage Friend it was generally understood that someone was getting laid at any really big Young Friends overnight event, and this was in no way viewed as hypocrisy. It was a bad idea, sure, the event organizers sought to avoid it, but no one was stopping the religion bus to weep over it. How many Young Friends does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Young Friends don't screw in lightbulbs - they screw in sleeping bags. I heard that a lot, though it wasn't my scene. . .
Not really my scene either. I tend to be a one true love kind of guy, although I have rather wild fantasies. Just want one particular person to enjoy them with! And I think this combo is not all that rare.

Plus, I'm probably either 'Spectrum' or maybe 'Spectrum-friendly,' meaning Aspergers-Autism Spectrum. Which in a relationship means I need a shitload of alone time and someone needs to understand that going in. You have probably heard that a number of famous people from history are thought to probably be on the autism spectrum. The next step is that someone shouldn't have to be famous in order to be treated with equal respect and courtesy, and that's perhaps where the stage for Autism Rights is in the UK, and I hope my U.S. will not be too far behind.

I met a ladyfriend when I was 26 in a chess club, even though I'm only a mediocre player. And she was a stone fox. At 30, she was a few years older than me, which I liked. And similar to me, she was a creative, quirky person, which I liked a lot! In fact, I wished someone in a book or on TV or maybe someone in my extended family had just very matter-of-factly given the advice to be open to girls a little bit older than myself.

And I worry about date rape and acquaintance rape. This was beginning to be talked about when I first went to college in the early 80s, one brave newspaper article, written by a guy to his credit. In some cases, like in the movie Saturday Night Fever where Tony tries to rape his dance partner, the guy is genuinely stumped. Or he perceives loss of status in the eyes of his peers. I mean, some friends they are, right? In other cases, I think the guy knows exactly what he's doing and is taking advantage of gray area. I understand that in some of this, the guy is counting on grudging admiration from other guys, and this part can very much change.
 
Top