The following is excerpted from "Gospel Order And Community As
Testimony" by Donne Hayden of Cincinnati Monthly Meeting.

[Sandra Cronk tells a true story in Pendle Hill Pamphlet #297 on
Gospel Order.]  It happened in Pennsylvania, around the time of the
Revolutionary War, perhaps the last time period in which Friends
understood, embraced and truly tried to live according to gospel order.

Two Quakers, Richard Barnard and Isaac Baily, lived on neighboring
farms. Richard Barnard opposed the Revolutionary War and was a
"wartax refuser," that is, like many Friends at the time, he refused
to pay taxes that directly supported military action.  Isaac Baily,
on the other hand, was a strong proponent of the revolution; he was,
in general, known "as a contentious man, often involved in disputes
with his acquaintances and even with his meeting." Needless to say,
they were not very compatible neighbors.

At one point, a dispute arose over property rights and the waterway
that ran between the two farms. Isaac Baily, in a fit of anger, went
out and "dammed up the waterway." Richard Barnard did what he could.
Because "peacemaking and reconciliation was very important" to him,
as was gospel order, so "He tried every conceivable method to work
out a satisfactory solution with his neighbor."

He went to talk to Isaac, and when that did no good, Barnard asked
some other Friends to go with him to talk with Baily, but Isaac Baily
refused to budge. Barnard took the Issue of the dammed waterway" to
their Meeting, which discerned that he was in the right, and Isaac
Baily was wrong. This had no effect on Baily, who refused "to remove
the dam or be reconciled" to his neighbor.

Richard Barnard was deeply troubled and unsettled by the conflict
with Baily, and one day when a travelling minister came to visit him,
Barnard "opened his heart to the minister." After he had described the
problem, the minister said to him, "There is more required of some
than of others." That really struck Barnard, and he thought "What
more could I do?  Is more required of me?" He held this question up
to the Light and asked God for "direction and guidance."

The answer he received was odd and unusual. In gospel order, he was
required to give up "claims of being right," go "to his neighbor
in humility and forgiveness," and wash Isaac's feet.  A strange
idea; Quakers didn't do this—some other groups did, but Quakers
didn't. The idea was so strange that Barnard tried to put it aside,
but it kept coming up, and he finally realized he could not ignore it.

So early one morning, he "filled a bowl with water from the [disputed]
waterway," took the bowl to Isaac's house, knocked on the door, and
when Isaac— who was still in bed—called out from upstairs, "Who's
there?" Barnard entered the house and went up to Isaac's bedroom. He
told his surprised neighbor how "how painful the strained relationship
had been for him" and that "following God's leading, hoping they
could be reconciled," he wanted to wash Isaac's feet. Isaac refused,
of course; "Don't you touch my feet!" he sputtered, but Richard
Barnard—who was, after all, being led by the Spirit— persisted,
and "gradually Isaac became quiet and let Barnard complete the
washing." After Barnard had dried his feet, Isaac walked downstairs
with him and saw him out the door.  "Later that day Isaac took a
shovel to the waterway and dug away the dam."

And that's how gospel order works.  The two men remained close friends
for the rest of their lives.  Too idealistic, we say. We could never
achieve such a community, characterized by mutual affection, peace,
unity, lack of ego—we're talking about perfection here. And that is
true. The early Friends got in a great deal of trouble with religious
authorities for the suggestion that human beings could achieve the
"perfection" referred to in Matthew 5:48: "Be ye therefore perfect,
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." The word translated
as "perfect" (telios) has the sense in Greek of lacking "nothing
necessary to completeness."

This verse follows right after Jesus' stunning admonition to "Love your enemies, 
and pray for your persecutors; only so can you be the children of your heavenly
Father" (REB).

Then Jesus comments that God's sun shines on the good and the evil,
and God's rain falls on the just and the unjust, the implication
being that God loves me and my enemy. Only through loving completely,
as God does, can we achieve what Fox refers to as "the Lord's power
and truth"; only in the spirit of gospel order can we have love,
unity and peace in our communities.  And that is how the testimony
of community began among Friends.