Quaker Meeting House in Burlington, New Jersey, to Present Deep River Spirituals Concert

The Burlington Friends Quaker Meeting House will host Deep River, a concert of Negro Spirituals, at 1 p.m. Saturday. The Burlington center is co-sponsoring the event with the Essence of Harmony Choral Society, which is made up of Black and white singers. Its founder, Cherisse Bonefont, said she started the choir “to showcase these songs that are so important to our nation’s history.”

Bonefont said her study of the spirituals led her to think about “what our ancestors had to go through during this time of enslavement and how these songs carried them through.” She added, “It’s amazing to me and it honors them and it ultimately honors myself to sing these songs.”

Delores “Dee” Corbett, the center’s director, said the concert serves two purposes: to recognize Black History Month and to raise funds for the meeting house and conference center at 340 High Street, a few blocks from the Delaware River. Corbett, a human resources consultant and owner of an insurance brokerage firm, began as director last April. She grew up attending Pentecostal churches in Texas and later in California, and moved to New Jersey roughly 25 years ago.

For the last seven years, Corbett and her husband, Al Corbett, have taken part in regular Sunday worship at the Mount Holly Quaker Meeting. Corbett said they are “attenders” but not “officially Quakers.” The couple’s interest in the Society of Friends grew out of their study of the Underground Railroad, the network of safe houses, trails and boat routes that helped enslaved people seek freedom. That study led them to ask why some Quakers, as early as the late 1600s, were speaking out against slavery. “What attracted me is the history of some Quakers who were willing to speak out against fellow Quakers and make personal sacrifices to stand against slavery,” Corbett said.

Bill Robbins, clerk of the Burlington Quarterly Meeting, which has oversight responsibilities for the Burlington Meeting House, said, “The Quakers in America came early to an enlightened understanding of the importance of equality, not just racial, but gender.” The source reports that in 1688, Francis Daniel Pastorius and other Quakers in Germantown, then a suburb outside Philadelphia, wrote the first public petition protesting slavery from a religious institution in the English colonies. The petition was read aloud at the Burlington Meeting House, where the Burlington/Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was held at that time. Protecting those who cannot defend themselves was at the heart of that early witness (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Robbins, who also worships at the Mount Holly Meeting House, came to know the Corbetts and encouraged Dee to apply for the Burlington position. He noted that the Burlington Quaker Meeting, founded in 1677, is the second-oldest Quaker settlement in the United States, after the Salem, N.J., Quaker Meeting, which was the first. He said both New Jersey settlements predate the Philadelphia Quaker settlement, noting that William Penn did not arrive in Philadelphia until 1682.

The source also states that the Burlington Meeting House had been “laid down” for several years, meaning that no regular Sunday worship gatherings were taking place.

Source: Read the original report