From: Joel Sax <jsax@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker
Date: 05 Nov 92 17:48 PST
Subject: BEANITE QUAKERISM
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1744600017:000:3653
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jsax    Nov  5 17:48:00 1992


From: Joel Sax <jsax>
Subject: BEANITE QUAKERISM

The discussion about Pacific Yearly Meeting led me to dig into
the gen.quaker archives here at PN and resurrect an article
about the origins of PYM.

/* Written  6:52 pm  Feb 22, 1991 by jsax@igc.apc.org in igc:gen.quaker */
/* ---------- "BEANITE QUAKERISM" ---------- */
BEANITE QUAKERISM

((A very brief account)

from Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practise:

"Pacific Yearly Meeting traces its beginnings to the forming
of College Park Meeting during the 1880s in San Jose,
California, under the leadership of Joel and Hannah Bean.
Around this Meeting developed the College Park Association
of Friends.  The movement, led by Joel Bean, represented
an effort to continue traditional Quaker practices among
Friends in San Jose as opposed to the pastoral pattern
which had recently come into Quakerism in Iowa and other
parts of the West.  The College Park Association, in turn,
introduced certain new patterns of its own in the development
of Quakerism in America.  See QUAKERS IN CALIFORNIA:  THE
EFFECTS OF 19TH CENTURY REVIVALISM IN WESTERN QUAKERISM,
by David C. LeShana, especially chapters 4, 5, and 6 for
the story of Joel and Hannah Bean and the controversies
in which they were involved."

Beanite Quakerism was, in other words, a reaction to
"Church" or "Evangelical" Quakerism in the West.  Interestingly,
the Beans represented a return to traditional Quaker roots.
Where evangelical Friends had brought ministers back into
the Meeting and formed Churches, the Beans and their fellow
Friends sent them out again and formed Meetings.  An interesting
symbol of this revival of conservative practices among
evangelical Friends is the San Jose Meeting House.  This 
building resembles nothing more than a traditional Church
with the steeple removed.  (It is the oldest Meeting House
in California and so marked with a plaque.)

The unique contribution of the College Park or Beanite Friends
was a discipline which in terms never before matched for
brevity, defined the Friends outlook:

Discipline of the College Park Association of Friends

1.  DOCTRINE - Friends believe in the continuing reality
of the living Christ, available to all seeking souls.

2.  WORSHIP - The worship of God is in spirit and in truth
and shall be held on a basis of the leadership of the Holy
Spirit.

3.  MINISTRY - All members and all Attenders are free to
participate vocally in Meetings, under a sense of God's
presence.

4.  MANNER OF LIVING - Friends are advised to conduct
their private lives with simplicity and directness, ever
sensitive to the world's needs and eager to engage in
service.

5.  RELATION TO STATE - Friends are urged to feel their
responsibility to the nation, and at the same time to
recognize their oneness with humanity everywhere,
regardless of race or nation, abstaining from all hatred.

These five principles were the sum total of Beanite theology.
They combine the determination of the Hicksites to have
Meetings which were free from the control of Elders with
the Christian devotion of the Wilburites and the Evangelical
Friends.  As College Park Association grew and became
the Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of 
Friends, these principles were largely replaced by more
Hicksite and Universalist tendencies among Western Friends.
I, myself, find much to commend in this version of Quakerism
(though I might add a point about Quaker pacifism).  

Those five principles were the first words about Quakerism
that I ever read and I found myself in complete unity with
them from the moment I first read them.  

That is why I call myself a Beanite.

Joel GAzis-SAx

Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker