Here are two great pieces about the history of clearness committees and how they are used today.

Clearness Committees and Their Use in Personal Discernment
by Jan Hoffman, New England Yearly Meeting

This is an excerpt from a piece by Tom Hamm published in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Quaker Life.

What is the history of clearness committees among Friends?

“Clear” is a good Quaker word whose use goes back to the beginnings of the Society of Friends. In 1670, for example, when William Dixon appeared before the monthly meeting of Friends in Lincolnshire, England, and declared that he wanted to marry Elizabeth Harpam, the monthly meeting “advised him to wayt theyr answer until the Meeting following . . . that they might have tyme to enquire whether they both was cleare from all others.” This was a meaning that would have been familiar to all Friends until the late nineteenth century. Committees appointed to determine “clearness” were making sure that Friends who wished to marry did not have another spouse in the next county or had not left a string of broken engagements.

Another use that often appears in early Quaker writings, especially after 1700, is in the sense of knowing with some confidence the Lord’s will in a given matter. Typical is the minister Mary Peisley Neale, writing in 1753 about whether to visit America: “On more deeply centering to the root of life, in humble resignation to the divine will, I found it my duty to continue some weeks at London, and not being clear of that city was, I believe, the cause of my not seeing my way clear to Charlestown, I therefore concluded to stay the Lord’s time, and when I found my spirit clear, took my passage with my dear companion Catherine Payton for that port.”

By the twentieth century, as Friends generally loosened the marriage rules, “clearness” for marrying in meeting faded. But the renewed interest in Quaker history due to the work of Friends such as Rufus Jones and Elbert Russell helped revive an interest in the idea of “clearness” as a process of group discernment. The first reference that I have found to a “clearness committee” as a group to be requested by an individual Friend for advice and counsel in a variety of situations is in the 1955 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice, but that suggests the process had some standing and vibrancy. My sense today is that Friends of all persuasions, liberal and evangelical, unprogrammed and pastoral, make at least some use of clearness committees.