"The Blessed Community": The Mutual Influences of Friends General Conference and the New Meetings Movement, 1915–1945

In 1939 Thomas Kelly envisioned “the blessed community,” a community of people gathered by God who combined a mystical, non-dogmatic religion that could potentially transform both individuals and society. While this community certainly transcended Quakerism, Kelly hoped that it would inspire and transform his own religious society.1 This paper uses the phrase as a way to describe the appeal of Quakerism to newly convinced North American Friends who began to form new unprogrammed meetings in the period between the two world wars. These new Meetings significantly expanded and transformed Quakerism, and Friends General Conference, the primary umbrella organization for unprogrammed North American Quakerism, in particular. Thomas Kelly grew up among and worked primarily with “Orthodox” Friends, one of the two major branches resulting from the Hicksite-Orthodox schism begun in 1827. Yet Kelly’s vision of a blessed community attracted Friends who often professed an ecumenical desire to move beyond the old division of Friends. The same holds true for the vision of Rufus Jones, another Orthodox Friend who enthusiastically envisioned a Quakerism that drew many adherents to Friends’ Meetings. Some joined established Meetings, while others formed new Meetings. Many of these new Meetings eventually affiliated with Friends General Conference, the organizational outgrowth of the Hicksite branch. Yet this inspirational description of what Quakers might become, which was articulated by Kelly and Jones, remains a common heritage of both of these major branches of Quakerism. The new Meetings that began forming in the period between 1915 and 1945 came to organizational maturation and wider Quaker affiliation primarily after World War II. This paper focuses on the rise of these new Meetings and, in particular, the role of Friends General Conference in nurturing them. It is part of a larger project tracing the transformation of FGC and liberal Quakerism in the twentieth century.