Beanite Quakerism refers to the independent tradition of
Quakerism started by Quaker ministers
Joel and Hannah Bean in the
western United States
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau.
As American settlement i ...
in the late 19th century, and in a more specific sense refers to the three Western
yearly meetings that spring from that tradition.
The Beans were originally from
New Hampshire
New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
, but moved to
Iowa
Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...
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
Charisma () is a personal quality of magnetic charm, persuasion, or appeal.
In the fields of sociology and political science, psychology, and management, the term ''charismatic'' describes a type of leadership.
In Christian theology, the term ...
ones. The Beans eventually became alarmed by this phenomenon, and argued against it, but they preferred to work within IYM (Orthodox Friends) rather than splitting off as other Quakers did (forming
Conservative Friends
Conservative Friends are members of the Wilburite branch of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In the United States, Conservative Friends belong to three Yearly Meetings: the Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), the North Carolina Yearl ...
). 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 the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...
, 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 leaving
North Pacific Yearly Meeting as the only remaining unaffiliated Yearly Meeting in the west. The three meetings jointly publish the magazine ''Western Friend''.
References
External links
Pacific Yearly Meeting(Official Website)
North Pacific Yearly Meeting(Official Website)
Intermountain Yearly Meeting(Official Website)
Western Friend: – Official publication of the Beanite Quaker Yearly Meetings
Quakerism in the United States
Christian denominations founded in the United States