John Wilbur

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John Wilbur July 17, 1774 – May 1, 1856 was a prominent American Quaker preacher who was at the forefront of a controversy that led to a split in the Religious Society of Friends in the United States.

Wilbur was born to Quaker parents in Hopkinton, Rhode Island. He became a traveling speaker within the Friends movement.

In 1831 Wilbur went on a 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.

The main body of Friends were called Orthodox because they had remained orthodox in terms of Christian. 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 Jesus instead of a vital, direct experience of His 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 inner 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.

Wilbur returned to the United States in 1833. He became embroiled in a dispute with Joseph John Gurney, a Quaker minister from England who was speaking throughout the United States. Gurney had been heavily involved in the drafting of the London Yearly Meeting's epistle in 1836. In that epistle Friends in England officially voiced their adoption of the more Evangelical views that Wilbur had encountered and disapproved. During Gurney's sojourn in the United States, Wilbur made private comments against Gurney's views to some of his associates in the New England Yearly Meeting (the large body of Friends in that area) and acquaintances in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

In 1838 some members of the New England Yearly Meeting accused Wilbur of making derogatory statements against Gurney in violation of the principle of handling conflicts by going through the proper channels. They ordered the South Kingston Monthly Meeting (local body he belonged to) to discipline him. They would not do so. Then the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting (an intermediary group) laid down (dissolved) the South Kingston Monthly Meeting and put its members into the Greenwich Monthly Meeting. The latter meeting disowned Wilbur in 1843. This disownment was confirmed by his quarterly meeting and then by the yearly meeting as well.

Wilbur continued in the Friends movement with the support of many like-minded members. In 1845 about five hundred members of the New England Yearly Meeting joined Wilbur in forming an alternate yearly meeting of the same name. This branch of Quakerism was referred to as Wilburites in reference to him. It spread to other yearly meetings in the United States and eventually became known as Conservative Friends.