The 120-Year Revival

Chautauqua, Friends, and a Homecoming

This is a story of revival and homecoming. It is a story that has its roots in Friends practices and in the Sunday school and lyceum movements of the early- to mid-1800s.

The flourishing, fading, and flourishing again of Friends presence at the Chautauqua Institution is a story of way opening and synchronicity. A committed group of Friends leaned into abundance and had the capacity to get things done. 

I live about 90 miles from Chautauqua and attended concerts back in the 1970s, driving all the way home after every concert except one. One year, I stayed overnight on the grounds at the summer home of a colleague I knew from teaching. That’s important later in the story.

To begin the story requires an explanation of Chautauqua and the practices and experiences of Hicksite Friends in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

What is Chautauqua? In 1874, John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist Episcopal minister, and Lewis Miller, a businessman, agreed to run a two-week training camp for Sunday school teachers by the shores of Lake Chautauqua in western New York. While this doesn’t sound particularly visionary, these two men believed that it was “impossible to understand religious truth so long as it remained set apart from a general understanding of the world.” From the beginning, their curriculum included religion, education, arts, and recreation. These four subjects formed the pillars of Chautauqua, both then and now. 

In some ways, Chautauqua was a descendent of the lyceum movement, a movement prominent from 1826 to the Civil War. Lyceums offered a system of self-study, reading circles, and community discussion groups at a time when most people had neither the time nor the funds to pursue higher education. Building on that idea, Chautauqua expanded its offerings beyond Sunday-school teaching within the first decade of its existence. The programs at Chautauqua became so popular that the word chautauqua became synonymous with a series of lectures, entertainments, and performance. 

An openness to ecumenism was baked into Chautauqua. Within 15 years, several Protestant denominations began building denominational houses. These houses offered affordable housing, a chaplain of the week, guest rooms, and sometimes a communal kitchen. In addition, private summer and year-round homes, bookstores, restaurants, rooming houses, and hotels became part of Chautauqua. As historian and author David McCullough wrote, “There’s no place like it. No resort. No spa. It is at once a summer encampment and a small town, a college campus, an arts colony, a music festival, a religious retreat, and the village square.” I agree with McCullough: it is hard to describe. 

What were Friends doing at this time? Hicksite Friends began exploring Sunday schools, too, in the 1800s, though for very different reasons. In Deborah Haines’s excellent article about the formation of Friends General Conference (FGC) and Hicksite Friends, she describes a “First-day school” movement that begins at almost the exact time that Chautauqua is holding their first Sunday school assembly. However, the idea of religious instruction met with some resistance among Friends. Haines writes:

During the first decades after the great separation, the idea of any sort of formal instruction in Quaker beliefs and practices encountered considerable resistance in Hicksite circles. True religion, Hicksites believed, could only be learned through experience. Attempts to teach it with the aid of instructional materials tended toward notionalism, the arid dependence on intellect which George Fox had so firmly rejected.

In order to avoid meetings having to sponsor First-day schools, Friends held them in their own homes and soon opened them up to any and all who wished to attend. By 1890, there were over 8,500 pupils in Hicksite First-day schools and about 40 percent of them were non-Friends. This openness to non-Friends rose out of the same concern that Vincent and Miller had: poor children and adults, who had to work rather than attend school, had only one day a week to learn, and so attending these schools became a way to learn critical literacy skills alongside receiving religious instruction. According to Haines, this intermingling of non-Friends and Friends led to greater awareness of and concern for the poor and other marginalized groups. 

By 1900, six Hicksite yearly meetings had agreed to meet . . . at Chautauqua. This was a stretch for Chautauqua, as Friends had not been present at Chautauqua before, and Hicksite Friends had tended to gather in Quaker-friendly venues such as Philadelphia, Pa. In August of 1900, 2,000 Friends representing seven Hicksite yearly meetings (Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Genesee, and Ohio) came to Chautauqua for a week; at the end of the week, they formed Friends General Conference (FGC). The Quaker presence at Chautauqua had begun. 

The newspaper at the time offered this commentary about Quakers:

Friends have captured Chautauqua by their intense earnestness and enthusiasm and the practical Christianity as seen in their everyday lives. . . . [W]hen this conference comes to a close, Chautauquans will have learned many admirable things concerning the Society of Friends. From the expressions of the Friends, it is certain that they are finding more and more to admire at Chautauqua. 

Friends returned in 1912 for a similar conference and received the same welcome. Following 1912 though, there is little mention of Friends: a lecture entitled “The Quaker Woman: An Instrument of Light” was offered at the Chautauqua Women’s Club in 1935 and is one of the only references I could find in the archives between 1912 and 1963. In 1963, Friends began holding meetings in various places on the grounds including the Hall of Philosophy. But the unassuming announcement in the list of weekly services read: “Quakers (Society of Friends), ‘Meeting for worship on the basis of silence in the Hall of Philosophy.’” It was the shortest announcement in the long list of religious services being offered. Later entries show Friends meeting in the Hall of Missions and the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle living room. In 1979, they were able to rent the Octagon House from the Institution. The Octagon House was about 300 square feet, and seating was mostly wooden high-school-classroom chairs with armrests attached. All materials had to be brought in before meeting and removed after worship was over. Though the worship space wasn’t ideal, Friends were present on the grounds. Between 1979 and 2017, in addition to holding weekly meeting for worship, Quakers at Chautauqua founded the Chautauqua Society for Peace, which held weekly presentations in the Hall of Philosophy; worked with the Department of Religion to co-sponsor events; and was a formative member of the Interfaith Alliance and its proposed interfaith house, the Collaborative Union, which in 2015 launched the program welcoming Homeboys to Chautauqua. Homeboys is the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. Each summer, several former gang members are invited to come to Chautauqua for enrichment and respite. Both Chautauquans and Homeboys (and Homegirls) are enriched by the interactions. None of these organizations or projects bear the Quaker name. Combing the archives using the search terms “Society of Friends” or “Quakers” turns up very little. Our Light wasn’t under a bushel basket, but neither was it a shining Light on a hill. We were a quiet participant in the collaborative projects mentioned above.

Then in the winter of 2017, the Octagon House was heavily damaged. The Institution informed Friends that the building, after its restoration, would be repurposed for use by the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. For the next two years, we were unhoused and met in several different locations, finally arriving in the living room of the Unitarian Universalist Denominational House, at their kind invitation. It was a bit awkward as resident guests had to avoid the living room during worship on Sunday morning. 

A committee of care was formed to explore options for what was then called the Summer Meeting at Chautauqua. Members from several local Quaker meetings came together. As we met in 2019 at a Friend’s kitchen in a home across the lake from the Chautauqua Institution, we could not have imagined the ways in which our work would bring about a revival of Friends presence on the grounds of the Institution. 

After careful discernment and conversations, two things were clear to our steering committee. We wanted a seasonal Quaker presence in the form of an experienced Friend, who could anchor meeting for worship and offer programs based on relevant themes, and we wanted a denominational house of our own. In late 2019, several houses came on the market at Chautauqua, one on the market at less than the expected price. It was a five-bedroom family home. Friends from several area meetings went to see the house, including myself. The real estate agent pulled up in front of the exact house where I had stayed for one night, 40 years ago: 28 Ames Avenue. With the help of an anonymous donor, the house was purchased. The revival had begun. We had a home. We only needed a Quaker Presence. She arrived.

Emily Provance, well-known to many friends as a traveling minister, agreed to come for much of the 2020 season. Emily would offer programs, anchor worship, and stay for as many weeks as she could. One steering committee member was very helpful in raising awareness of the potential needs of our guests and became our host  for the first year. She reminded us that some people need to sit in a chair to get dressed, that we should have a land acknowledgment, that the artwork on the walls should reflect various cultures, and that we should make our guests aware that some people were sensitive to smells. Kathy helped us practice true hospitality and became a wonderful presence at the house that first year (which turned out not to be 2020).

The house needed extensive renovations to make it more worship- and kitchen-friendly for the community. Deb and Ted First, members of the committee and year-round residents, explained what was needed to modify the house: “Transforming a single-family home, modest in size and over 100 years old into a multi-dimensional guest house with a full programmatic mission was a worthy challenge.” We took out walls to create multiuse space for eating, workshops, and worship. Extra bathrooms, handicapped accessibility, and energy-saving improvements were made. An outside gathering space was created. The front yard became a garden of native plants. We were ready for our first season, but in 2020, the entire institution shut down due to the pandemic. We waited.

In 2021, the summer season was held with restrictions, such as required vaccination cards and 50 percent occupancy rates. Emily was available for the entire summer and held programs almost every day. This included meeting for worship, social hours, lunch-time programming, worship sharing, and intergenerational storytelling. Emily created a digital presence for us, too, writing a weekly blog and posting on social media. Our programs appeared on the various calendars and in Interfaith News. They were well-attended. 

The pandemic delayed the entrance of Quaker House as the twelfth denominational house by a year, but it did not deter us or reduce our enthusiasm for the project. The revival had begun, even after a year of limited capacity due to COVID restrictions. 

Emily had other commitments, so after the 2021 season, we needed another Friend in Residence. Shari Castle, a member of our steering committee asked her sister Gretchen, dean of Earlham School of Religion (ESR), if she could think of someone. Not long after, Gretchen overheard the word “Chautauqua” in a conversation. Kriss Miller, a student at ESR, was part of that conversation. When she heard about the job, Kriss was sure that this was a leading. The Quaker House Steering Committee later scheduled a phone interview with Kriss and her husband, Gary, and all agreed that she and Gary would be perfect for the Quaker House. Kriss’s home is in Kansas City, she was student in Indiana when she heard about it, and she had deep roots at Chautauqua from her grandmother. This roundabout way of discovering our new Friends in residence is one example of how way has opened when we needed it.

Kriss and Gary have made Quaker House a much-loved destination and have made our space welcome to all. Gary is a musician and travels to the central plaza to make music with others, bringing a suitcase full of small instruments so that audience members can play along. On Wednesdays, Gary roasts corn on the grill in the back, and people stop by for casual conversation. Kriss is a multimedia artist, and her openness, kindness, and listening ability have added much to the house and been well-attended. One year she focused on mending (as metaphor and literal repair of clothing); last year’s focus was on knitting our communities together. 

One of the best things about Quaker House is that we get so many visitors who are curious about Quakers. They come for worship, some returning summer after summer, even though they attend another church at home. The peace, invitation to, and genuine interest in our guests is evident to all who come through our door. 

In 2022, we instituted another program called “The Friend of the Week.” We invited Quakers whose work in the world related to the weekly theme for a week at Quaker House. During the week, they gave two lunch-time talks: one about how their faith informs their work and the other, a reflection on the theme as it intersects our Quaker testimonies. Another way in which Chautauqua and Friends have interacted to the benefit of both is the development of the Church of the Wild. Kriss, our Friend in residence, went to hear Victoria Loors give a talk at Chautauqua about the Church of the Wild. Kriss was deeply moved by the talk and now offers a weekly Church of the Wild experience during the season. Initially sponsored by Quaker House, the Institution has now become a sponsor of the event. Kriss also is very involved in the Association of Denominational Houses and Religious Organizations. In 2025, she will be a co-president of the organization. Quaker House also has a strong relationship with the African American House on the grounds, which offers a gathering and educational space for People of Color and their allies. Quaker House, at only four years old, is already deeply embedded in the life of the Institution.

This revival and vibrant new life for Friends at Chautauqua would not have been possible without a strong committee of believers in Quaker process. Every person on the committee brought a needed skill and fully respected the skills of others. It all felt well-led, and I am grateful to the committee and to our Friends in residence who bring so much to Quaker House. When we started in 2019, we tasked ourselves with coming up with a mission statement, and at a Zoom meeting, Emily Provance stated, “At the intersection of Chautauqua Institution and the Quaker faith, we have found a source of the living water. We invite others to this place.” 

I am still astonished at how much flourishing has come about from having a home of our own, a skilled Quaker presence, and week-long hospitality experiences available to all. Currently about half of our guests are returning guests. Our meeting for worship has about 20–30 percent non-Quaker attenders, and these folks reflect on what a deep and peaceful experience it is. When you add up the attendance at all our programs during the season, we had over 1,100 people in all. This doesn’t include the number of casual visitors who stopped by. Over 120 years since Friends first gathered at Chautauqua, we have been faithful to our sense that a denominational house was needed at Chautauqua. It has enriched the life of the Institution, as well as our own.