QUAKER JOURNEY 277 The Quaker Journey and the Framing of Corporate and Personal Belief Douglas A. Kline Abstract The British Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) illustrates the management of personal and corporate belief and experience without the use of creedal statements or centralized religious authority. This builds on the work of anthropologists like James Fernandez and Peter Stromberg who introduce forms of consensus responsible for maintaining unity in religious communities. While their work expanded anthropological understanding on diverse interpretations of common symbols, this article builds on their observations to show how the use of tropes also encourages unity. Quakers incorporate diversity and a notion of continuing revelation into their communal belief system, and individual participants are encouraged to explore personal belief. Since the Quaker corporate belief model accommodates change, tensions shift to maintaining identity among the theologically diverse interpretations of truth. To accomplish some homogeneity Friends also employ a journey trope to frame diversity and manage the potential tension between corporate and personal understanding. [[Britain, Quaker, belief, trope, diversity, consensus]] As we wait patiently for divine guidance our experience is that the right way will open and we shall be led into unity. —Advices and Queries 14, Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995 Members of the Religious Society of Friends (often called Quakers) are faced with a chal- lenge: they must attempt to maintain a level of doctrinal unity while also recognizing the variety of beliefs within the Quaker community. The diverse religious understanding fea- tured in this case is reminiscent of that presented by James Fernandez (1965) and Pe- ter Stromberg (1981) who report on forms of consensus—social, cultural, symbolic, and structural—that serve to maintain social unity despite diverse individual interpretations of shared, sacred symbols. Since their analyses do not account for the quality of diversity found in this ethnographic case, I posit a theoretical advance that extends the scope of psychologi- cal anthropology to address a larger range of forms for consensus maintenance. I argue that discursive figures—in this instance a journey trope—can work to encourage consensus when diverse personal belief models challenge a unifying corporate belief model. Belief became a fascination early in my fieldwork, as I became aware of the implications resulting from the liberal theology found in British Quakerism. Understanding Quaker belief requires an examination of the relationship between the beliefs that are individually held and those beliefs that are corporately endorsed. This case presents an interesting opportunity ETHOS, Vol. 40, Issue 3, pp. 277–296, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. C  2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1352.2012.01258.x Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology