History
The Society of Friends suffered a series of schisms in the early 19th Century. The first divided "Hicksite" Quakers, who believed the inward light was more important than scriptural authority, from "Orthodox" Quakers, who emphasized Biblical sources. The second divided the Orthodox branch into "Wilburite" or conservative Friends, who preferred a quietist approach and disavowed Biblical inerrancy, from "Gurneyite" Friends, whose approach was deeply influenced by evangelical movements in other Protestant denominations, especially the ideas of John Wesley. These Gurneyite Friends formed Five Years Meeting (renamed Friends United Meeting in 1965) as an association of yearly meetings following the adoption of the Richmond Declaration in 1877.
After World War I, growing desire for a more fundamentalist approach among some Friends began to split Five Years Meeting. In 1926, Northwest Yearly Meeting withdrew from the organization, bringing several other yearly meetings and scattered monthly meetings. In 1947, the Association of Evangelical Friends was formed, with triennial meetings which lasted until 1970. This led in turn to the 1965 formation of the Evangelical Friends Association, a precursor to today's Evangelical Friends Church International, formed in 1989.
Read more about this topic: Evangelical Friends International
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (18741946)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)