John Wilbur (Quaker minister)

John Wilbur (July 17, 1774 – May 1, 1856) was a prominent American Quaker minister and religious thinker who was at the forefront of a controversy that led to "the second split" in the Religious Society of Friends in the United States.

Wilbur was born to Quaker parents in Hopkinton, Rhode Island. Wilbur was recognized as an Elder in 1802 and acknowledged as a minister in 1812. Always intellectually inclined, Wilbur was the teacher of the local Friends school for many years. In 1822, Wilbur was appointed to an important committee of New England Friends to investigate the "new light" movement in Lynn, Massachusetts. He made a handful of travels in the ministry, for which he became known as an exponent of traditional Quakerism.

In 1831, Wilbur went on his first trip to England and encountered a growing Evangelical thrust among the Friends there, which made him uneasy. Friends had already come through a schism a few years earlier involving Elias Hicks, who was disowned and started a new branch of Quakerism. Hicks had been teaching doctrines that are regarded as heretical by mainstream Christianity, basing his views on personal revelations from God. During this British trip, Wilbur wrote a series of letters to George Crossfield; these letters were well-received statements of Quaker doctrine and have been in print continuously since that time.

The main body of Friends were called Orthodox because they had remained orthodox in terms of Christianity. But now Wilbur believed that some Orthodox Friends, especially those in England, were so alarmed about Hicks's perceived heterodoxy that they had gone too far in the other direction. He saw that this group of Friends was abandoning the traditional Friends practice of following God’s immediate, inward guidance in favor of using their own reason to interpret and follow the Bible. They were stressing a cold intellectual acceptance of the Bible instead of a vital, direct experience of the Holy Spirit in one's heart. Wilbur quoted early Friends, such as Robert Barclay, William Penn, and George Fox to make his case that the traditional view of Friends was that the inward light takes priority over the text of the Bible. At the same time, he agreed that the Bible was inspired by God and was useful as a guide, as had the early Friends.

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