Talk:Joseph John Gurney

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[edit] Edits March 2006

_ _ I replaced the phrase

He was not a paid clergyman, as the Quakers did not have such people, but ...

by lengthening the sentence into

(This meant he was noted as a person gifted by God for preaching and teaching, but Quakers then neither explicitly designated individuals to take substantial roles in their worship, nor financially supported its ministers unless their travels in that role would otherwise have been impractical.)

Reading between the lines, i'd guess that Gurney supported his ministries of social activism and preaching with family money, tho sufficiently charismatic people without independent incomes would likely have been "released" from the constraints of their normal livelihoods to the extent that specific plans were inconsistent, by having expenses paid until they returned to their work. Quakers of the time would have insisted that the distinction between this and payment for preaching is clear-cut, and that the spontaneity and near-universality of ministry was a clear-cut matter, but there is some PoV involved to those assertions, and the version i replaced muddies the facts: e.g. it invites the inferences that

• the only difference was pay, and that there were a distinct "clergy" who, for free, were writing weekly sermons and administering the sacraments, and
• that the situation was the same at all times (except that Quakerism died out).
  

_ _ I dunno whether our other articles on Quakers cover this stuff adequately; the red lk for Quaker minister certainly raises the possibility that we don't.
--Jerzy•t 03:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)