But near what feels like an especially divisive election day, it seems worth posing his insights as a challenge for all of our partisan beliefs. While I am not a member of the Religious Society of Friends, I attended a college with Quaker roots and married a 22nd-generation Quaker. The Quakers have a term called a “query,” which refers to a question – sometimes a challenging or pointed question– that is meant to be used as a basis for additional reflection.
His list isn’t really in the style of classic Quaker queries (surprise). It’s the modern style of leading questions that get called queries. Too often this form ends up being a rather transparent attempt to impose a kind of political orthodoxy but Taylor’s questions feel refreshingly challenging and useful for whatever side or non-side one takes in politics. Hattip to Doug Bennett for the link.
As I see it, Quakers at their best have been about the work of the former for many years. And postmodernity offers a complementary philosophical and theological lens to Quaker faith and practice, even as it challenges our tradition to the extent that it makes universal claims, builds up its own dominant structures and narratives, and engages in oppression of others in the name of a greater good
Redditor havedanson has started a thread on Quaker vision:
Our faith is anything but respectable. So why do we act like it now? Why do we play respectability politics? Why are we ashamed to offend or want to be seen as the good people? Or are we more consumed with correcting each other than with changing the world?
This question is neither sarcastic nor rhetoric. As many people insist that violence and atrocities are an inherent part of religions, that religions would cause wars, I really want to know if that is the truth. Personally I believe religions can be peaceful, such as in the cases of the Quakers and the Baha’i, but I might be wrong.
The obvious answer should be “none.” Quakers are well-known as pacifists (fun fact: fake cannon used to deceive the enemy into thinking an army is more fortified than it actually is are called “Quaker guns.”) Individual Quakers have rarely been quite as united around the peace testimony as our reputation would suggest, but as a group it’s true we’ve never called for a war. I can’t think of any military skirmish or battle waged to rallying cries of “Remember the Quakers!”
Quaker guns at Manassas Junction, 1862. Via Wikimedia.
And yet: all of modern civilization has been shaped by war. Our political boundaries, our religions, our demographic make-up – even the languages we speak are all remnants of long-ago battles. One of the most influential Quaker thinkers, the eighteenth century minister John Woolman, constantly reminded his brethren to consider those luxuries that are the fruit of war and slavery. When we broaden the scope like this, we’ve been involved in quite a few wars.
We like to remember how William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania as a religious refuge. But the king of England held European title to the mid-Atlantic seaboard because of regional wars with the Dutch and Swedes (and later held onto it only after a much larger war with the Canadian French settlements).
The king’s grant of “Penn’s Woods” was the settlement of a very large war debt owed to Penn’s father, a wealthy admiral. The senior William Penn was something of a scoundrel, playing off both sides in ever-shifting royalist/Roundhead seesaw of power. When the musical chairs were over he was on the side of the winner, who owed him and later his son. The admiral’s longest-lasting accomplishment was disobeying orders and capturing Jamaica for the British (Bob Marley sang his songs of oppression and injustice in English because of Sir William).
By most accounts, William Penn the younger was fair and also bought the land from local Lenape nations. Mostly forgotten is that the Lenape and Susquehannock population had been devastated in a recent regional war against the Iroquois over access to beaver-trapping territories. They were now subject nations to the Iroquois Confederacy, which skillfully played global politics by keeping the English and French colonial empires in enough strategic tension that both left the Iroquois homeland alone. It was in the Iroquois’s best interest to have another British colony on their southern flank and who would make a better buffer than these idealistic pacifists? The Lenape land reimbursement was secondary consideration to continental politics from their perspective. (One could easily make a case that the biological genocide of indigenous America by diseases brought over by uncaring colonists was also a form of war.)
The thousands of acres Penn deeded to his fellow Quakers were thus the fruits of at least four sets of wars: colonial wars over European claims to the Delaware Valley; debt-fueled English civil wars; English wars against Spanish Caribbean colonies, and Native American wars fought over access to commercial resources. Much of original Quaker wealth in succeeding generations is indebted to the huge land transfer in the 1680s, either directly (we still hold some valuable real estate) or indirectly (the real estate’s sale could be funneled into promising businesses).
Not all of the fruits of war were secondhand and coincidental to Friends themselves. Many wealthy Friends in the mid-Atlantic colonies had slaves who did much of the backbreaking work of clearing fields and building houses. Many of those oppressed souls were put into bondage in Africa as prisoners of war (John Woolman would probably point out that slavery itself is a form of war). That quaint old brick meetinghouse set back on a flower-covered field? It was probably built at least in part by enslaved hands.
Today, it’s impossible to step free of war. Most of our houses are set on land once owned by others. Our computers and cell phones have components mined in war zones. Our lights and cars are powered by fossil fuels. And even with solar panels and electric cars, the infrastructure of the daily living of most Americans is still based on extraction and control of resources.
This is not to say we can’t continue to work for a world free of war. But it seems important to be clear-eyed and acknowledge the debts we have.
I’ve been mostly sitting out the Hillary vs Bernie debates. I’m in a late voting state and I have better things to do than get into Facebook flame wars. I have a natural political bias toward Sanders, but I respect Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments and would rather see a centrist than any of the increasingly-insane GOP candidates.
With that said, I’m noticing a number of retweetstorms of anti-Sanders quips filling my Twitter feed. I’m sure the infamous “Bernie Bros” exist, but most of the dismissive posts I see are from Hillary supporters. A lot of them seem to simply be mad that he would run (and be running so well). Others attack him for things said or done by supporters with no connection to the Sanders campaign.
I don’t know if it’s my observer bias given my politics and/or the makeup of friends but my distinct impression is that my Bernie-supporting friends are excited by Bernie and his ideas while my Hillary-supporting friends are mad at Bernie and his ideas and followers.
It seems like we’re undergoing some reassessment in terms of the Underground Railroad. A piece appearing in yesterday’s New York Times, “Myth, Reality and the Underground Railroad” by Ethan J Kytle and Carl Geissert, tell one narrative tells the story of one of the primary myth-makers of the 1890s:
Although Siebert tempered some of his contemporaries’ hyperbole, he nonetheless took many Underground Railroad stories at face value. Undaunted by a dearth of antebellum documentation — most railroad activists had not kept records in order to protect runaways and themselves — Siebert relied on the reminiscences of “‘old time’ abolitionists” to fill “the gaps in the real history of the Underground Railroad.”
That view largely held among scholars until 1961, when the historian Larry Gara published “The Liberty Line,” a slashing revisionist study that dismissed the Underground Railroad as a myth and argued that most fugitive slaves escaped at their own initiative, with little help from organized abolitionists. Scholarship on the topic all but dried up, as historians more generally emphasized the agency of African-Americans in claiming their own freedom.
That article focuses on Eric Foner, who’s just come out with a book that you might call a post-revisionist history, based on some recently-uncovered documents by little-known 19th-century abolitionist editor named Sydney Howard Gay. It’s on my to-read list. It’s nice to have some new documentary evidence, as it sometimes seems the Underground Railroad is the proverbial blank slate upon which we project our contemporary politics.
I’m currently reading “Philadelphia Quakers and the Antislavery Movement” by Brian Temple, an amateur South Jersey historian. It’s a useful lens. There are a handful of crazy cool stories of white Quakers, but it’s clear that much of the Quaker involvement is pointing runaways to the nearest African American town. But that’s where it gets interesting for me. So many of these towns seem to be on land sold them by a white Quaker farmer; they’re just a mile or two from a Quaker town, down a quiet secondary road where you can see anyone coming, alongside deep woods or marshes into which runaways can easily disappear.
It seems like one of the most important Quaker contribution to the Underground Railroad in South Jersey was participating in the founding of these towns: places where manumitted and self-freed African Americans could live in a self-governing and self-defensible community.
This raises lots of questions. There was one prominent South Jersey African American Quaker but he was the exception. And it’s often forgotten, but much of the source of Quakers’ wealth (the land they had to sell) was war and previous enslavement. But still, it seems like there might have been something resembling reparations going on here: forty acres and a mule and giving the freed Africans the space to minister their own churches and govern their own town. The historic black towns of South Jersey would make a great thesis for some hardworking grad student.
The racial politics of the twentieth century have not been kind to these towns (Ta-Nehisi Coates could write a new chapter of Case for Reparations based on them). Highways planners looking for routes close to the now-historic Quaker towns drew their lines right through the towns. Since most were never formally incorporated, zoning and school board battles with their surrounding township have taken away much of their autonomy. Many have been swallowed whole by mid-century sprawl and towns in more rural areas have depopulated. An old church is often the only visible remnant and sometimes there’s not even that.
My reading has stalled three-quarters of the way through Temple’s book and I’ve missed a few opportunities to see him present it locally. But I’ll try to finish and give a more comprehensive review in the near future.
John S made an interesting comment at the end of my last post (all ) about live twittering tonight’s Presidential Debate got me thinking about a Quaker response to the debates might be. As I’ve admitted I can be rather snarky and partisan. So I prepared some interesting quotes from some old Quaker tesimonies and have been sprinkling them throughout my twitter commentary.
1762: Friends ought not be active in electing to offices, the execution whereof tends to lay wast our Christian testimony
<1879: Members should maintain inoffensive, circumspect emeanour towards all men, manifesting peaceable spirit of Christ.
<1879: Friends should avoid those heats & controversies respecting the policies and govt’s of the world.
1874: The mere natural wisdom and will of man have no palce in the church of Christ.
1808: The preservation of love and unity is a duty in every state of religious attainment.
1853: It is upon the simplicity of the Truth as it is in Jesus that our testimony to plainness and moderation rests.
<1879: Friends are to avoid electing brethren to civil govt as may subject them to temptation of violating testimonies.
1808: Friends are not to unite in warlike measures, either offensive or defensive, we are subj of Messaih’s peaceful reign.
1843: Fds must decline acceptance of any office or station in civil govt w/duties inconsistent w/our religious principles.
1843: Friends warned vs. raising & circulating paper credit w/appearance of value w/o intrinsic reality.
1843: Friends should be open-hearted and liberal in raising funds for relief for members in indigent circumstances.
1843: So may we be living members of the Church militant on earth; and inhabitants of that city which hath foundations.
1853: The standards which the world adopts in pursuit of trade and desire for riches in not safe for disciple of Christ.
1853: May no Friends involve themselves in worldy concerns disqualify for right use of their time, talents & temporal substance.
The quotes are culled from “Christian Advices” (1879) and “Rules of Discipline” (1843), both published by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. I think these are Orthodox and Hicksite respectively, but I’m not an expert in the investigative details necessary to differentiate between yearly meeting publications. If anyone knows “Christian Advices” says it’s available from the Friends Bookstore at 304 Arch Street; “Rules of Discipline” is printed by John Richards of 130 N. Third Street.
