Quaker Institutional Structures

Abstract

The establishment of the Gospel Order made possible the travelling ministry and political activity of the Josiah, from the approval and sup- port of Thomas Chalkley, William Ellis, Aaron Atkinson, and Thomas Turner to regular correspondence and lobbying in support of Maryland Friends. The following three chapters explore the activity of the London Yearly Meeting and its constituent meetings and their impact on emerg- ing Quaker trans-Atlantic networks, examining how these meetings created and maintained a trans-Atlantic community with the goal of a unified faith. The Second Day’s Morning Meeting (Morning Meeting) and the Meeting for Sufferings, collectively known as the ‘London meet- ings for discipline’,¹ became essential to the flow of communication between London and more distant meetings, and chapters 1–3 describe how the meetings developed and utilized networks to enable com- munication. The structure of communication that developed between the London Yearly Meeting and colonial meetings required a level of control by the meetings for discipline over the religious message dis- tributed throughout the Quaker Atlantic world. Furthermore, reception and acceptance of that message by colonial Friends relied on a sense of community strengthened by the London Yearly Meeting’s networks. These trans-Atlantic networks were tested several times when colo- nial Quakers were challenged from within, but also by forces from outside the faith, and those situations allow historians to assess the London Yearly Meeting’s levels of control over the trans-Atlantic reli- gious message.