The point of this extended discussion of gospel order and Quaker process is not to beat one set of principles and practices with the other. It is to show that Quakerism is, as usual, at a crossroads in dealing with issues of authority and power in church governance; to point out the directions Quakers have taken and seem to be taking; and to offer some assessment of the costs of traveling one way or another. Quakerism has always struggled to find the right balance between affirming the autonomy of the individual following his or her own conscience, and affirming the authority of the group to determine what a true leading of the Spirit is. “The authority of our meetings is the power of God,” asserted that the autonomy of the individual had to yield to the authority of the believing fellowship. The assertion did not end the debate; liberal Quakerism is still reacting to the trauma (more imagined than experienced by contemporary Quakers) of nineteenth-century separations and wholesale disownments.