Beanite Quakerism refers to the independent tradition of Quakerism started by Quaker ministers

Joel Joel or Yoel is a name meaning "Yahweh Is God" and may refer to: * Joel (given name), origin of the name including a list of people with the first name. * Joel (surname), a surname * Joel (footballer, born 1904), Joel de Oliveira Monteiro, Brazili ...

and Hannah Bean in the

western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the We ...

in the late 19th century, and in a more specific sense refers to the three Western

yearly meeting Yearly Meeting is a term used by members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, to refer to an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches within a geographical area. The constituent meetings are called Monthly Meetings in ...

s that spring from that tradition. The Beans were originally from New Hampshire, but moved to

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...

and joined the Iowa Yearly Meeting (IYM) in the late 1850s.{{cite web , url=http://quaker.org/legacy/liberal-history/bean.html , title=Joel & Hannah Bean – Reluctant Rebels , first=Chuck , last=Fager , website=quaker.org They had not intended to start a new tradition of Quakerism, but in the 1870s and 1880s, an evangelical "revival" movement spread to Iowa Quakers, who by degrees abandoned traditional Quaker beliefs and practices in favor of more charismatic,

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

ones. The Beans eventually became alarmed by this phenomenon, and argued against it, but they preferred to work within IYM rather than splitting off as other Quakers did (forming

Conservative Friends Conservative Friends are members of a certain branch of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In the United States of America, Conservative Friends belong to three Yearly Meetings, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa. English Friends affiliated wi ...

). But the new revivalist majority in IYM continued to press them, finally denouncing their views in the 1881 yearly session. The Beans shortly moved to

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

and started a meeting there; still not wanting to break fellowship with their Yearly Meeting, they retained their membership and formed the meeting under the care of Iowa Yearly Meeting. But IYM sent two revivalist ministers to California after them, who caused a split in the meeting. The Beans and their supporters withdrew again to form another meeting, in a building they built themselves, and again applied for recognition by IYM. But IYM officially disbanded the Beans' meeting, after sending them a list of doctrinal questions to which the Beans' meeting did not give satisfactory answers, and over the next few years officially purged them as ministers and then as members. Being forced by IYM to be on their own, the Beans thus became innovators. In 1889 they reorganized their local meeting as the College Park Association of Friends, which over the following decades became the hub of otherwise-unaffiliated Quaker meetings that appeared in the West, which later grew to be what are now known as Pacific Yearly Meeting, North Pacific Yearly Meeting, and Intermountain Yearly Meeting Eventually Pacific Yearly Meeting and Intermountain Yearly Meeting joined

Friends General Conference Friends General Conference (FGC) is an association of Quakers in the United States and Canada made up of 16 yearly meetings and 11 monthly meetings. "Monthly meetings" are what Quakers call congregations; "yearly meetings" are organizations of mon ...

leaving North Pacific Yearly Meeting as the only remaining unaffiliated Yearly Meeting in the west. The three meetings jointly publish the magazine ''Western Friend''.

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