Lessons from 1842, when Indiana Friends were torn between antislavery and partisanship.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to revisit that 19th century advice, and step back. I’ve seen too much of the corrupting influence of partisanship. I’ve seen too many arguments from people who know better about which people are not really people. I’ve too many friends who have become political arguments which do not respect their humanity.
I talk with Lynette Love, who’s written an article about a post-Civil War school in South Carolina that was started by Friends.
We discuss the life and impact of Cornelia Hancock, a Quaker nurse during the Civil War who played a significant role in establishing Freedmen Schools in South Carolina. The discussion covers Hancock’s bravery, the humanitarian crisis of contraband during the war, and the legacy of education for freed slaves. Lynette also addresses the current controversies surrounding her book about this history, touching on themes of censorship and the importance of remembering the full scope of history, including its darker aspects.
In today’s political climate, not everyone is comfortable with that full scope. A report in the Charleston Post and Courier last month says that Love’s book has been flagged under Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s May 2025 order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Here’s a clip of Lynette and I talking about this.
Nice detective work in this article by Jim Fussell. In recent years, we’ve flipped the traditional script of Friends as unalloyed saviors for their work on manumissions and the abolition of slavery. We now affirm that many held slaves beginning in 1655, when Quaker missionaries Ann Austin and Mary Fisher landed on the heavily enslaved island of Barbados and convinced a number of the White enslavers to become Friends. A few years later Mary Fisher then went on travel to Turkey to try to convince the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Despite her amazing bravery, in her will Fisher named a “Indian girle Slave, named Reigner.” .
We now talk about the era in which Quakers were slaveholders but Jim goes a step further to talk about the enslaved Africans’ resistance to Quaker enslavers. In an era in which we’re once more apparently debating if violence against property is okay, the story of two enslaved women, Grace and Jane, burning a plantation tobacco barn seems almost quaintly direct action.
Jared is an atheist YouTuber whose schtick is visiting different churches. I’ve watched him before so was thrilled to see he’s now visited Friends.
He’s very good at observing and understanding and explaining what he’s seen. There’s no substantive inaccuracies here. He had a deeply moving experience that he says he won’t forget.
That said, he felt disappointed that the meeting he visited wasn’t more distinctly Quaker, calling it a “bait and switch almost.” The only ministry was political and while he does a good job defending the speaker’s compassion he says that it felt “solemn but not sacred” to him, which I think is a fascinating way of putting it:
I’m really interested in the handful of people who feel like they’ve touched God. I don’t, but It’s still a profound thing to talk to somebody who’s don’t that.
He grew up Pentecostal and knew that there was a lot of crossover with early Friends. That’s what he was looking for. I think his observations on this was probably pretty fair for most Liberal Friends meetings today. I think there are other seekers like him wanting to experience something more distinctively and religiously Quaker. Overall, an awesome video, very recommended.
Great story in Hidden City Philadelphia about Quaker aid to government-displaced Japanese Americans during WW2. A coalition of peace activists, Quakers, and religious progressives opened a hostel in West Philly and organized college admissions to area schools.
Over on Reddit, a discussion trying to square our oft-quoted advice to see “that of God” with the arrival of secret police on U.S. streets.
I don’t think Quakers’ historical memory always serves us very well. In 1656, George Fox wrote a letter from Launceston Gaol, a portion of which is quoted in every edition of Faith and Practice. It’s been reproduced as giant posters and the key phrase has become one of the go-to elevator pitches for modern Friends. It tells us to “be patterns” and “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one; whereby in them ye may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you: then to the Lord God you shall be a sweet savour, and a blessing.”
We’ve taken one paragraph from one letter as a mission statement and now we get people wringing their hands trying to reconcile this Pollyanna-style niceness with the horror we see in the world. You get Friends valiantly trying (and mostly failing) to see “that of God” in ICE agents, terrorists, or authoritarian political leaders.
I think a big part of the problem is that Quakers have overall been a comfortable, well-off people for a long time. We’ve spent much of the last 300 years mostly remembering the happy-feeling stuff. Fox and his fellow early Friends were wary of “the world,” seeing it as a fallen place that we could transcend only with the guidance and healing powers of the Living Christ. Yes, he talked about being patterns in that letter, but way down. The letter actually started off in a thunderous manner that quite frankly, I think perhaps speaks more clearly to our time:
Dwell in the power of life and wisdom, and dread of the Lord of life, and of heaven and earth, that you may be preserved in the wisdom of God over all, and be a terror and a dread to all the adversaries of God, answering that of God in them all, spreading the truth abroad, awakening the witness, confounding the deceit, gathering up out of transgression into the life, into the covenant of light and peace with God. Let all nations hear the sound by word or by writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue, nor pen; but be obedient to the Lord God. Go through the work, and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and trample down all that is contrary.
None of this is practical advice for what to do if you see secret police jump out of unmarked van to kidnap someone off the street. But what if our editions of Faith and Practice all advised us to a terror and dread and to walk the earth treading and trampling on all that is contrary to divine love? Toward the end of the letter, Fox advised us to “be obedient to the power, for that will save you out of the hands of unreasonable men and preserve you over the world to himself.” May it be so.
Other commentaries: Simon St. Laurent (2007), Stuart Masters (2016), Mark Wutka (2018) and Lewis Benson’s brilliant 1970 essay “ ‘That of God’: What Did George Fox Mean by It?” Also, John Andrew Gallery has a recent Pendle Hill pamphlet on the essay, which I haven’t read but assume is worth reading.
Update: in the Reddit discussion KeithB said that he wondered if there were Quakers out there looking for justification to tangle it up with ICE officers. Pretty much as we were talking, word came out that the son of well-known Philly-area Quaker family being arrested at his home in Portland, Oregon, on suspicions of participating in violent anti-ICE protests a few weeks ago.
The prosecutors have released a bunch of pictures of violent activity being perpetrated by someone who looks like the accused, with a similar arm tattoo. That protestor used a stop sign as a battering ram, and then threw a brick at an ICE agent that hit his head, drew blood, and required medical attention. I sure hope it’s not a Quaker in those photos and that his defense attorneys can prove it. Tread and trampling is not a license for assault.
I jest. Jason wouldn’t use an outdated metaphor from the last century like “blogroll.” He’s calling it a rolodex instead! (Just polled the 14 year old who has no idea what a rolodex is, naturally).
For those that don’t know, Jason Kottke publishes an old-school blog, almost as old as mine.1 He’s does a great job highlighting all sorts of interesting links and videos and it’s been one of my essential daily reads for a long, long time (I first mentioned him on my blog 18 years ago). I’m a monthly subscriber, happy to give my little bit.
He’s been experimenting with blogging communities all this time and there’s a lot of good innovation continuing lately. From the post:
The Rolodex is part of this “strategy” of relationship-building and strengthening of trusted sources of information. You readers are curious about what I read and pay attention to, I enjoy linking to things I like (duh), and I believe it’s more important than ever for those sites who traffic in knowledge & curiosity and care about humans to acknowledge and stand with each other. As I wrote last year, we are not competitors; we are collaborators
It feels like sites like his are reinventing the early 2000s. Social and search are failing us so we’re reinventing blog rolls (a blog author’s list of favorite sites). It was fun watching this build organically back in the day but I wonder if we can recapture the magic.
The comments thread on my personal blog used to be a lively back-and-forth, with a solid community of regulars and a few dozen-or-so active blogs that all linked to one another. Nowadays I’m lucky if I get a few comments all year. Comments are also dropping away in the niche-but-longstanding print/online publication I work for, especially worrisome as they’ve been basically powering our letters-to-the-editor column for the last dozen years. I wonder if people are just more reticent to share outside of established bulletin-board-esque websites (eg Facebook, Reddit, Substack). Glad to see it’s working on Kottke!
I’m pretty used to the standard rhetorical paths of Quaker stories after so many years as an editor but every once in a while one comes along and knocks my socks off.
I’ve written before2 that I’m not a fan of the “when to speak in meeting” flowcharts Friends sometimes post in the meetinghouse to discourage vocal ministry. One is expected to test an incoming message against half a dozen queries and only speak if they can clear them all in the space of an hour. A lot of newcomers see these and decide to just keep quiet.
Christine Hartmann was just one of these new attenders. She writes “after studying all this, I decided to hold off speaking in meeting, if at all possible, for fear of getting it wrong.” She was so careful and so scrupulous that her silence almost cost her her life. I’m not kidding. Literally. Read the article. Wild, wild.
(Yes, there are disruptive newcomers who give inappropriate ministry in Quaker worship. In my experience they’re rarely the ones sitting down and studying flowcharts. The visitors these charts deter are the careful and thoughtful ones who are already tying themselves in knots wondering whether they should speak. These are the folks you want to encourage.)
Michael’s ‘Deep Thoughts’ 
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