About this Site
Most people do not readily think of the arts in connection with the Society of Friends. And with good reason; no other Christian group maintained an antipathy to the arts so intensely, so consistently, and so long.
However, the picture is much more complex than that. "On the evidence we have," Ormerod Greenwood wrote, "it seems to me that in some ways, in spite of their asceticism, our ancestors were closer to the artistic experience than we are: that is, to the beauty and mystery revealed by the imagination. They built finer meeting-houses. . . ."
Today it seems clear that many of their premises were valid, but factors specific to their time and place caused them to draw the wrong conclusions from them—resulting in what Greenwood called "a grave misreading of the Divine purpose."
Beyond Uneasy Tolerance is intended to provide an overview. It tells a dramatic story: the antipathy to the arts, the gradual growth of protest, the founding of the Quaker Fellowship of the Arts in Britain in the 1950s, and the subsequent search to discover and articulate the ways in which Quaker spirituality and the arts can strengthen each other. An expanded version is available in pamphlet form.
I am immensely grateful to the Literature Committee of Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker Home Service for permission to reproduce the entire text of Frederick J. Nicholson's landmark work from 1968, Quakers and the Arts: A Survey of Attitudes of British Friends to the Creative Arts from the Seventeeth to the Twentieth Century. Despite its age and the limitation of its scope to Britain, it remains the most comprehensive resource on the history of Friends' relation to the arts.
In the future I hope to add significant writings on the arts from all periods of Quaker history—as leadings, time, availability, and permissions allow.Since launching this site a year ago I have felt led to add a biographical section on Quaker artists of the past. I do not yet know what it will look like, but a bibliographical approach comes most naturally to me.
My own experience in delving into Friends' relation to the arts has been like struggling with a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. I hope the bits and pieces I am able to provide here will provide glimpses of what to me is an endlessly fascinating picture.
Esther Greenleaf Mürer
August 2000
