Ask Tom: on leadership

How have Quaker ideas about leadership changed over time?

Do Quakers have leaders?

Do Quakers want leaders?

As long as I have been aware of Quaker affairs and concerns, those questions have been prominent. They hint at a tension that has been present since the rise of Quakerism 360 years ago.

The first generation of Friends grew up in a world in which leadership was based on social class and was largely hereditary. The king, by virtue of his lineage, was at the head of the nation. Below him were ranged nobles and gentry who were accustomed to deference from the common folk because some folk were gentle and some were common, and it was the natural order of the world that gentlemen should lead and others follow. The same was true in the church. Bishops were on a par with the nobility, and in the local parishes worship centered on the words and actions of the priest.

Early Friends challenged this order. They did not go as far some radicals of the 1650s and 1660s, who wanted no earthly king but Jesus. After some uncertainty, Friends did not try to overthrow the social order. But they wanted a new religious order, and overthrowing older patterns of leadership in that was central. Believing that Christ still came to teach His people, they believed that they could be led by Him just as the early Christians were. Looking to the model of the early church, they recognized that some might be called to preach publicly. But that calling did not confer priestly leadership or authority. And it was conceivable that anyone, male or female, might receive a calling to exercise it. The Light was their leader, as one of my favorite early Friends, Dorothy White, put it in 1662.

Friends have been grappling with this tension ever since. It became acute with the widespread adoption of the pastoral system in the late nineteenth century and the creation of Quaker organizations with paid staff. On one hand, Friends recognized that some of us have callings in which leadership is implicit. On the other hand, that early impulse survives, perhaps out a fear that to follow any earthly leader might limit the leadings of the Spirit. Every generation of Friends has wrestled with this challenge.

—Tom Hamm

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