Progressive Friends
The Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, were structured primarily by Yearly, Quarterly, Monthly and Preparative meetings.
The document said, "The true basis of religious fellowship is not identity of theological belief but unity of heart and oneness of purpose in respect to the great practical duties of life.
According to historian Christopher Densmore, Congregational Friends, "provided a platform for reformers who were otherwise Quakers, Unitarians, Spiritualists and Free Thinkers.
"[8] The call implicitly included the native Haudenosaunee people, who followed their own traditional religious practices and who were working with local Quakers to prevent their forcible removal from that area to lands farther west.
[11] Participants included such nationally known social reformers as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charles Lenox Remond, Samuel May, Amy and Isaac Post, and Gerritt Smith.
[12] Similar organizations were formed afterward in Michigan, Green Plain, Ohio; North Collins, New York, Chester County, Pennsylvania and several other places.
[14] The June 1848 separation that led to the formation of the Congregational Friends played an important role in initiating the first women's rights convention, held a month later in Seneca Falls, New York, four miles east of Waterloo.
[15] At least twenty-three of the one hundred signers of the convention's Declaration of Sentiments were from the Congregational Friends, nineteen of them from the Junius meeting near Waterloo.
[12] She later said, "The Quaker meeting-house at Junius, N.Y., was at one time the great centre and rallying point for all those interested in reforms of the day in both church and state.
[18] Frederick Douglass, a leading abolitionist who was formerly enslaved, attended several meetings as well, including those in June 1861 and 1866, when Friends of Human Progress discussed how to react to the outbreak of the Civil War and its aftermath.
According to the National Anti-Slavery Standard, Douglass spoke with "unrivaled eloquence" at the latter meeting in favor of a resolution for the enfranchisement of Black men and also one that said the "grand and fundamental idea" of equality and justice "will not have been practically carried out till woman, equally with man, shall have secured to her the power to cast her ballot.
Later known as the Friends of Human Progress, the organization met annually at the Longwood Meeting House near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a western suburb of Philadelphia.
[22][23] The new organization announced its principles in an "Exposition of Sentiments" that said, among other things, "We interrogate no man as to his theological belief; we send no Committees to pry into the motives of those who may desire to share the benefits of our Association; but open the door to all who recognize the Equal Brotherhood of the Human Family, without regard to sex, color or condition".
[25] Its annual meetings in the early years lasted for three or four days and involved hundreds of people attending lectures and picnics.
[26] Eusebius Barnard, Isaac Mendenhall, and other members of the congregation were active in the Underground Railroad and assisted hundreds of fugitive slaves to escape to freedom in Canada or the northern states.
This rejection of traditional practices undercut the authority of Quaker elders and ministers, resulting in restructurings along the lines envisioned earlier by the Progressive Friends.
The few remaining groups declined in vigor as new organizations emerged as centers for reform activity, such as Anthony and Stanton's National Woman Suffrage Association.
