2023: Virginia Schelbert, Let Your Life Speak
2022: Frank Young, Listening, Learning, Loving, and Laughing
2021: Phyllis Reynolds, Healing and Wholeness
2020: David Shiner & Nancy Wallace, From Sleepiness to Light
2019: Gwen Weaver, “What Canst Thou Say?”
2018: Bonni McKeown, This Little Light
2017: Alice Howenstine, Life is a Gift and a Responsibility
2016: Nancy Duncan, Journeys with Bodies and Souls
2015: Fernando Freire, My Family, My People, My Life
2014: Judy Jager, To Listen with My Whole Heart
2013: Sarah Pavlovic, With Open Eyes and Open Heart
2012: Mark Mattaini, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself …”
2011: Dick Ashdown, Quaker Roots in Nurturing Soil
2010: Tom Paxson, Opening Oneself to God
2009: Janice Domanik, Anatomy and Physiology of Spirit
2008: Elizabeth Mertic, Joy Like a Fountain
2007: Margaret Katranides, Knowing and Not Knowing
2006: David Rutschman, Honrar la Vida
2005: Clance Wilson, This is My Father’s World
2004: Janet Means Underhill, The Mystery Of It All: I Give Thanks
2003: Chris Jocius, Friends and Strangers: A Time of Gifts
2002: Roxy
2001: Marlou Carlson, Seek Ye First The Kingdom
2000: Katherine Trezevant, Hearing and Giving Voice to the Spirit
1999: Paul Schobernd, When You Dance With God, Guess Who Leads?
1998: Maurine Pyle, Follow Me
1997: Marti Matthews, As If We Are Perfectly Safe: on Fear, Faith and Destiny
1996: Tom Stabnicki, I Saw It Shine Through All
1995: Judy Gottlieb, Flow Afresh In Me
1994: Pat Wixom, Awakening To The Life Within
1993: Blanche V. Frey, Ruminations On Faith
1992: Bill Howenstine, Loving the Universe
1991: Eldora Spiegelberg, Walk Cheerfully Over All The Earth
1990: Mary Fyfe, Creativity and Spirituality
1989: Carolyn Wilbur Treadway, Healing Our Inner Violence
1988: Richard Boyajian, Where Have I Come From? Where Am I Going?
1987: Franky Day, Leadings and Pushings
1986: David Hadley Finke, Angels Watching Over Me
1985: Agnita Wright Dupree, Widening The Circle
1984: James L. Garretson, First The Kingdom
1983: Robert L. Wixom, Seeing Together — The Seen And The Unseen
1982: Betty Clegg, The Eloquence Of Silence
1981: Flora McKinney, Lest Ye Become
1980: Richard B. Haworth, Together
1979: Rebecca Caudill, From Hardshell Baptist To Quaker
1978: William O. Brown, Transcendence In The Pursuit Of Wholeness
1977: Robert Clark, The Most Exciting Adventure
1976: Alice Walton, Quaker Saints
1975: Kale Williams, Great Tides Of Human Yearning
1974: Royal Buscombe, A Little Lower Than the Angels
1973: Helen Jean Nelson, Let There Be Light
1972: Dorothy Nash (not published)
1971: Elizabeth Watson, You, Neighbor God
1970: Thomas Forsythe, Loving Reason
1969: Lucretia M. Franklin, Reflections
1968: Doris Peters, As the
1967: Orval Lucier, The Seed
1966: Francis Hole, When God First Begins to Taste Sweet (not published)
1965: Rachel Fort Weller, Contemplation in a
1964: Gilbert F. White, Sharing the Earth’s Riches
1963: Sylvia Shaw Judson, Universal or Particular?
1962: Robert Oakes Byrd, A New Heaven
1961: Mulford Sibley, Conscience, Casuistry, and Quakerism
About the Plummer Lecture
Beginning with the 1961 sessions, the Illinois Yearly Meeting of Friends proposed to annually honor its first Clerk by designating the principal or keynote address, the Jonathan W. Plummer Lecture.
Jonathan Wright Plummer, acknowledged by Quaker Torch Bearers as the father of Friends General Conference, was born in 1835 at Richmond, Indiana. He died in 1918 at 83 years of age and lies interred at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.
When he was 39, he moved to Chicago, where he was first with E. R. Burnham & Son, wholesale druggists. Later, this was the Morrison-Plummer Company, wholesale druggists, and it is now known as McKesson & Robbins.
He introduced profit-sharing in his business and he practiced tithing, giving one-tenth of his private income and one-tenth of the income from his drug business. He also loaned money freely to people in need. He advocated prison reform.
“He did go to Meeting, headed committees of action, and notably in 1878 wrote letters which were albatrosses about the neck of pious epistolary correspondence. Illinois Yearly Meeting, which he helped to create in 1875, was housed in the country near McNabb, Illinois. Here he came once a year by train to meet with Friends from 10 neighborhoods of Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, as well as with spiritual leaders from other Yearly Meetings.
“In 1878 he came with a project as clear as a blueprint. Its framework was a conference and its aim to coordinate widely scattered activities… Jonathan Plummer desired a conference that would consider all the social testimonies of Friends. As a result, minute 52 of Illinois Yearly Meeting’s proceedings in 1878 set him at liberty to prepare an address of invitation to the several Yearly Meetings for holding a general conference once in five years or oftener.”
He gave the opening address at the World’s Parliament of Religions (held during the ’93 Fair), expressing hope for greater helpfulness and for co-operation among all faiths.
“He was not a pronounced religious mystic, as were many earlier Quakers. He listened to the ‘still, small voice,’ and this prompted both charity and vocal ministry.
“He measured up to the test of greatness set by Goethe in that he expressed clearly what others felt but were unable to express. He lived in the midst of what shall not pass away. Whoever is the messenger of its truth brings surprises to mankind. Such was Jonathan W. Plummer.”
(From Illinois Yearly Meeting Minutes, 1960, by Harold W. Flitcraft)
Who Was Jonathan Wright Plummer?
By Maurine Pyle
I have posed that question to many weighty Friends outside of Illinois Yearly Meeting and so far no one has been able to answer. We know about Jonathan Plummer because of the blurb (above) on the back of each Plummer Lecture, the spiritual journey story told by a selected ILYM Friend each year. Elizabeth Warren, a member of Lake Forest Meeting, has recently published his biography in her book titled Jonathan Wright Plummer: Quaker Philanthropy.
Jonathan Plummer was praised as one of the pioneers of the renaissance of the Society of Friends at the end of the 19th Century. He thought people should act on their faith, a venerated Quaker principle. He brought together seven yearly meetings from Illinois to Philadelphia and New York to devise ways to carry out Quaker testimonies, as they are called. These included urging peaceful relations among men, giving aid and comfort to the poor and those in prison, helping working women, children, and those needing education. The Quaker opposition to the death penalty for convicted criminals was also on the agenda of the organization he founded, the Friends’ Union for Philanthropic Labor. The Union evolved into the Friends General Conference whose work continues today.
Who was Jonathan Plummer? He helped found Illinois Yearly Meeting, founded Friends General Conference, and co-founded the World Parliament of Religions. He is someone you should know. To purchase a copy of Betsy’s book, contact her at e.c.warren©comcast.net.