William Penn Lecture
1958
Peace and Tranquility:
The Quaker Witnesses
Delivered at
Race Street Meeting House
Philadelphia
by
Ira De A. Reid
WILLIAM PENN
Friends said he was a "man of great
abilities; quick of thought and of ready utterance; full
of the qualification of true discipleship, even
love without dissimulation; as extensive in charity
as comprehensive in knowledge, and to whom malice and ingratitude were utter
strangers, ready to forgive enemies, and the
ungrateful were not excepted."
Caroline Jacob
Builders of the Quaker Road
Chicago, 1953. p. 59.
Friends, I am certain will understand me when I
say that it was with fear and trembling that I approached
the acceptance of this opportunity to commune with
them through the William Penn lecture. I have experienced
the Society's addiction to the "form of sound words." I was
not so certain that I, at once a member of the Society and
a social scientist, could adequately express the fullness of
what I sensed and thought in the language to which they
are accustomed in such a lecture. In fact, I believe that I
have experienced what many have thought during the
"hushness" of a meeting for worship "How can I acceptably say
what weighs heavily on my heart and mind?" I found a sort
of negative sanction in an advice given by William Penn
in which he cautioned that we not let this rightful
concern become a "verbal orthodoxy."
Peace and Tranquility
I have selected as my theme for this lecture two
secrets of the Society of Friends "Peace" and "Tranquility." I
do not regard them as the same in either faith or practice.
Peace I regard as a sort of harmony or concord between and
among individuals and states. Tranquility is a state of being
inwardly quiet, undisturbed, and calm. The former obtains for
man in his collective capacities and roles. The latter is that
quality which obtains for man unto himself and himself alone.
The former is attained when man works for concord among
his fellow men; the latter is attained only when one seeks
and finds the "that" which is of God in every man. The former
is made evident in the ways of men and the goals they
seek; the latter in the ways and faith of the individual.
Both witnesses are parts of the secrets of the religion that is
called Quakerism.
For about three-quarters of a century the study
of religion and religious groups has enjoyed the fruit of
work done with accuracy and enlightened by a critical
appreciation of religious ideas and institutions. Aided by the progress
of various sciences, it has achieved a more direct and
adequate understanding of religions' growth, cultural forms and
social functions, as well as its bodies of belief, doctrine and
ideals. The subject, as it can now be pursued, is an
important contribution to any liberal study of man and society.
In the exciting volume The Varieties of
Religious Experience, William James offered a case-book of
individual religious experience, describing, to use his own
words, "experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far
as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to
whatever they consider the divine." That book, written from
the viewpoint of individual psychology of the early 1900's
and approaching a clinical description of the religious life, is
of the greatest value. But James is at pains to say that
he omits from discussion that great portion of the subject
which involves an analysis of the social scene in which
religion takes place that is the religious tradition, institutions
and arts, and what groups of men and women do in
expressing and cultivating what they together hold as sacred.
This corporate feeling and action this "togetherness" of
religious behavior is the framework within which I should like
to consider the two witnesses of Quaker religious life.
Friends As Seen By Others
Some twenty-five years ago two philosophers of no
mean academic repute described the Society of Friends in
the following language:
The Friends, or Quakers, represent the extreme left wing of Protestantism. Growing out of
the turbulent seventeenth century with its
religious wars and intolerances and its social
unrests, Quakerism has survived and gains new power
from every recurring period of distress and conflict.
Two very different characters were primarily responsible for the growth of the Society of
Friends: George Fox, a mystic and missionary, a
preacher and prophet to the oppressed, and William
Penn, a wealthy, influential business man and
politician, who came to respect and employ Quakers
because of their sobriety, peaceableness, thrift and
devotion to their democratic ideas.
Until 1660 the Friends were largely taken from the ranks of the disinherited and
discontented, who hoped, by intensive missionary preaching
and by apocalyptic prophesy, to establish the
Kingdom of God in England; but severe persecution,
fanatic demonstrations and opportunities for
emigration induced them to adopt more passive tactics.
Penn's "holy experiment" in Pennsylvania finally
gave them a place to apply their principles
unmolested. The most famous of the American Quakers
was the itinerant missionary, John Woolman (1720-1772) whose journal is a classic exposition
of Quaker principles and policies.
The Friends reject practically all of the traditional religious institutions
priesthood, professional ministry, sacraments, ritual, even
the authority of the Bible. They believe in a
radically democratic society and religion, in which
each person is guided by the indwelling Spirit of
God. Differences of opinion or conflicts of interest
are to be settled by peaceable discussion or
negotiation and mutual agreement. They oppose war,
slavery, inequality of the sexes and all institutions
which give one person absolute authority over
another. Their worship consists in meeting silently for
a period of prayer and meditation, followed by spontaneous addresses by members of
the Society.
There is no fixed creed.
Active philanthropy is one of the fundamental
principles of the Friends, and they have carried on
extensive works of education, charity and social
reform.1
In another volume on religions, one which
experienced 38 French editions before being published in English,
one finds the following description of Friends and their witnesses:
Reformed England has never lacked reformers. One of these George Fox, the founder of
the Society of Friends was imprisoned under
Charles II. He taught that the divine spirit acted
directly upon individuals, occasionally inspiring them
with a sort of convulsive shaking. People took
advantage of this doctrine to call the Friends
Quakers, although their worship is remarkably free
from fuss or affection. The Quakers are honest folk,
who know neither sacrament nor rites, whose lives
are simple to austerity, who neither swear nor
play, nor carry arms, nor dance, nor drink strong liquors. Their religious exaltation,
inoffensive enough, declares itself at their "meetings,"
when, amid a profound silence, one of the
congregation may begin to hold forth in the name of the
Holy Spirit. The most intelligent of the Quakers,
William Penn, the son of an admiral, was a creditor
of Charles II's government, which paid its debt
with a gift of land in America. Penn betook himself thither with a body of Friends in 1681.
The flourishing state of Pennsylvania preserves
his name, and its capitol (sic) Philadelphia,
reveres his memory. The Friends have always exercised
a certain influence in England and in the United States, where they cooperated with effect in
the movement for Negro emancipation. Quite
recently, they have had the honour of being the first
to rebuild houses in the devastated regions of
France (1915) and they have played a merciful part
in combating the famine in Russia (1922).2
These illustrations of the Quaker way are cited
because they give us an opportunity to see ourselves as others
see us. In the language of the social sciences they provide
a view of the "looking-glass self." This is the reflected self
of the Society, a self which seems to have three
principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to others,
the imagination of their judgment of that appearance, and
some sort of self-feeling that Quakers may have as a result of
this image, such as pride or mortification. The "other
persons" in whose mind we see ourselves, may make all the
difference with our feelings.
The "Looking-Glass Self"
But the "looking-glass self" does not reveal the
secrets of the Quaker religious life. These secrets include
our acceptance of the principle of the "Inner Light,"
our recognition of the power of the listening silence,
sometimes called the "hushness", our witnesses, our service, and
our "concerns" those costly inner leadings which may, in
the course of their fulfillment, take over the very life of the
one they engage.
The secret of the witnesses for peace and
tranquility rests in our knowledge that for nearly three centuries
they have been reasserted and revindicated by both revealed
and secular truth. We know that at times the words have
become but verbal orthodoxy. We know that these witnesses
have been challenged in our contemporary lives by the
dreadful potency of knowledge. We know that neither faith
nor practice has fully supported the import of the mighty
truths espoused by early Friends.
Today, Friends find it difficult to fully support a
theory that is at once scientifically tenable and
spiritually propitious. Though religiously the way seems open to
us, Friends are called upon to recognize the contemporary
nature of peace and tranquility, both of which are being affected
by the stark facts that for many people in this huge world
there is a richness of life and for others little or no life. For
others there is an atmosphere of apprehension in which there
is no full and free ventilation of controversial issues.
For many Friends and others, life itself has become
all foreground with no horizons, reducing the opportunities
in which man can at once come to terms with himself on
the one hand, promote the ways of affection and love, and
the ways of uninhibited exchange of thoughts and actions
(safe from intrusion, control, and free from the invasion
of authority) on the other. There exists within the problem
of peace among men a need for combining revealed
with experiential truth in order that the construction of a
peaceful society may be dared without apprehension.
On the other hand there seems to be a need for
a restatement of the Biblical expression "Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." In these times the
Great Emptiness in our individual lives, lives so devoid of
inward peace, the statement may be minuted to read "Let your
heart be troubled, but be you not afraid." Faced with
new challenges in a world at war with itself in deeds as well
as values; sensing man's loss of privacy in modern life,
his inability to be at one with himself, Friends are called
upon to follow another adventuring road that would permit
them to speak truth to our times, asserting new duties that
attend the new occasions for world peace, and witnessing to
ways in which the ancient good of spiritual certitude (which
stems from tranquility) can speak truth to Friends, to man and
to government where e'er they may be.
Quakerism `Set In A Larger Place'
Eighty-odd years ago John Greenleaf Whittier in a
series of letters to the Editor of the Friend's Review
in Philadelphia expressed his consummate faith in the Society while
saying "I am not blind to the shortcomings of Friends." He
expressed his concern that they had lost so much by coldness
and inactivity, by the overestimate of external observances,
and the neglect of their own proper work while serving as
the conscience-keepers of others. Whittier suggested
that Friends were too much "at ease in Zion;" that Friends in
the period of reconstruction in the United States had not
been active enough "in those simple duties which we owe to
our suffering fellow-creatures; that there had been a decline
in practical righteousness." But, said John Whittier, "if we
look at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not
in the central truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to
rightly comprehend it; in an attempt to fetter with forms and
hedge about with dogmas that great law of Christian liberty ...
If we did but realize it, we are `set in a large place'
(for) Quakerism, in the light of its great original truth is
`exceeding broad.' As interpreted by Penn and Barclay, it is the
most liberal and catholic of faiths. If we are not free,
generous, tolerant; if we are not up to or above the level of the age
in good works, in culture and love of beauty, order and
fitness; if we are not the ready recipients of the truths of
science and philosophy in a word, if we are not full-grown
men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but
in ourselves."3
Being `set in a large place' with a revealed truth
which is `exceeding broad,' Friends seemed called upon to
rethink their revered and ancient testimony on nonviolent forms
of peacemaking between states and within men. The
ever-changing lot of mortal man has in it the potency of
endless change. Always within it there arise disturbers
and disturbances of the peace. War is one of these
disturbers and disturbances. When a nation resorts to war it uses
a method of settling a dispute with another state. It may be
a dispute over "honor", or trade, or any of many vast concerns.
Today, it is a misuse of language to call these
disputes the causes of war. They are causes of war only if war is
an accepted mode of settling them. War has no cause
except the intention of governments, under whatever
conditions, to resort to war. As has been said so often, war is
an instrument of national policy and if men should decide
to abandon this instrument the alleged causes could
forever exist without producing the alleged consequences. War
has no cause except the intention of governments to resort to
it. The mode of war has changed enormously in its
character and in its consequences, and it is becoming
increasingly clear that the majority of men are developing an
increasing dread of it.
We all know that war has become intolerable
under the conditions of our civilization. We also know that
mankind has the continuing power to remake its social
institutions according to its needs. We know that nothing resists
the will to change these institutions except the
unwillingness to change them. Friends, it would seem, are called upon
to re-examine their peace testimony, to see to it that the
values of their ancient witness are not imprisoned within
the Society's traditions.
This concern becomes a heavy one when Prime
Minister Nehru says to a public meeting in New Delhi (January
30, 1958) that "the peace of the world is hanging by a
slender thread. It is not the big powers alone who are to
decide whether to have war or not. That is bad enough. But
now one man has been given responsibility which may
engulf the world in war. Thousands of pilots are flying
planes carrying atom bombs day and night. If any pilot lost
his mind or got flurried or misunderstood orders and
released the bombs, there would be a full-scale war." He added, in
a plea for effective disarmament, that the path of the cold
war "will not take the peoples of the world anywhere. If that
is so then the world will have to follow another path. What
is that path? It is clear that the path is one in which there
is no dependence on armaments. So we reach the
conclusion ultimately that the path shown by Gandhiji and Buddha
is the only path that can save the world from disaster."
(Italics mine.)4
At the 300th anniversary World Conference at
Oxford, 900 Quakers from 22 countries issued a message to
persons everywhere which said, in part, we seek "to substitute
the institutions of peace for the institutions of war." Is it
possible for our witness to the peace testimony to provide
such institutions for men everywhere? Is it not possible to
create a politics of peace as a living substitute for the politics
of war? As national politics based on war continues to
seep into every fabric of our everyday lives (at present offering
to the men and women of college age and intent an
opportunity to secure four years of college training at
government expense, providing they agree to give twelve years to
the armed services in return therefore) we must realize that
our ancient truth demands newer and broader
implementation. One wonders if a heart-felt concern expressed in
speaking truth to power is a full and sufficient method for
establishing and maintaining the truth of peace abroad and at
home. The peace testimony ceaselessly calls for that "and
something more" which is the essence of true religion.
Inward Peace
I would speak of tranquility or inward peace
honestly, wistfully, and without fear. The Quaker doctrine of
inward peace, as Howard Brinton has so effectively de scribed
it, "is not a doctrine which is unique to the Society of
Friends." He states:
"In its general and essential character it
can be found in all the so-called higher religions.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the inward and the outward were
comparatively integrated. It was a time of social pioneering
in such fields as equality of sexes, races and
classes, simplicity of life, peace-making, prison
reform, reform of mental hospitals, abolition of
slavery, and education. Yet, it was also a time of
intense inwardness, when the primary emphasis was placed on divine guidance and the search
for inward peace. This inwardness increased men's sensitivity to moral evils, and enabled
situations to be faced freshly rather than through
the obscuring haze of conventional patterns.
Modern Quakerism, affected by the prevailing trends of our time, has lost much of
this inwardness. Activity continues to increase. Outward peace is sought as never before but
men search less intently for the inward peace which
is both source and goal of outward peace. ... In
recent years scientific skill has been largely used
for conflict, either to promote a militant
nationalism or to produce a restless insatiable desire
for possessions in order to increase the sale of
goods. This is not the road to peace. It is clear
evidence that the inner life is evaporating out of our
culture, that the soul which held the culture together
is vanishing, leaving outer force as a means of providing security and
unity."5
It seems that modern day Friends are called upon
to speak the truth of inward peace to the great emptiness
and aloneness of modern man. The absence of any source
of guidance and illumination, the absence of a spiritual
or philosophical certitude, which are said again and again
to typify Western man, reveal his necessity for being at
one with himself. In his "Democratic Vistas" Walt Whitman wrote:
I should say that only in the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of
individuality may the spirituality of religion come forth at
all. Only here, and on such terms, the meditation,
the devout ecstasy, the soaring flight. Only here, communion with the mysteries, the
eternal problems... Bibles may convey, and priests expound, but it is exclusively for the
noiseless operation of one's isolated self to enter the
pure ether of veneration, reach the divine levels,
and commune with the unutterable.
The tranquilizer of medical science may deal with the somatic aspects of this aloneness
and tension which contemporary man experiences but there are no substitutes for the loss of
privacy; the ways of love and affection; the
uninhibited exchange of thoughts safe from intrusion and control; for freedom from the invasion of
authority. There is no doubt that the dreadful potency
of knowledge, cast in an atmosphere of
apprehension, has made many afraid to express any kind
of independent judgment (particularly on economic and political questions) lest they be suspected
of being subversive.
The Quaker inward peace is at once scientifically tenable and spiritually propitious. It will
permit its holders to have a religion of healthy-mindedness rather than one of weary,
sin-sick souls. It will permit us to deal with the
uneasiness of man in society, and harrow the ground
whence comes solution for social problems. It will
provide the religious enthusiasm that makes one contemptuous of danger and willing to live
on chance. It will enable us to overcome the
current popular fear of intelligence as one of the
great dangers of our times. And since every
powerful emotion and truth has its own myth-making tendency, it will enable us to bear witness to
the necessity for making the attainment of peace a process that requires not only that we work
on and with governments, but that we also cleanse our hearts and minds of the poisons that
make military, economic, racial and religious
conflicts seem reasonable: pride, fear, greed, prejudice,
envy and contempt. As one of the Princeton
University Seniors wrote in that challenging volume
The Unsilent Generation, the development of
these qualities will enable one to have the unimpeachable integrity, the keenness of mind,
and the stability and balance needed in one's
approach to any problem.
The development and maintenance of an inward peace is an inescapable preliminary to the great mission
Friends have set for themselves in every community throughout
the world. This personal peace requires that each of us
within his or her own field of action the home, the
neighborhood, the city, the region, the school, the meeting, the factory,
the mine, the office, the union must carry into his
immediate day's work a changed attitude toward all his functions
and obligations. The collective effort of Friends cannot rise to
a higher level than his or her personal scale of values.
It underlies our testimony that once this change is effected
in the person, the group will record and respond to it.
Our Witness
Today many of our best plans miscarry because
they are in the hands of people who have undergone no
inner growth. Many of these folk have shrunk from facing
the world of crisis, having no notion of the manner in
which they themselves have helped to bring it about. Into
the situations of housing, human relations, pacifism,
and disarmament, for example, they carry only a
self-concern. Their hidden prejudices, their glib hopes, their archaic
and self-centered desires all indicate that they are not
sensitive to the compellings that gave us the heritage of Fox or
Penn or Woolman. By closing their eyes, by being silent they
seek to avoid the nightmares of human existence by resting
in the bosom of their dreams. There is no peace-making
in such behavior. Each man and woman must first
assume his religious and social burden alone and together.
Our witness tells us that we need not wait for
nuclear warfare to strike us before we strip our lives of
these superfluities; we need not wait for events to bend our
wills to unison. Wherever we are, the worst has already
happened and we must meet it. We must simplify our daily
routine without waiting for legislation; we must take our
political and public responsibilities without having to take
the negative action of being "against" nuclear testing, the
death-use of science, the military-moulding of education. We
must work for the unity and effective brotherhood of man
without letting further wars, acts of congresses, decisions of
courts, prove that the current pursuit of power, profit and
all manners of material and social aggrandizement
are treasonable to both Divinity and Democracy. The
testimony of inward peace calls for a rebuilding of ourselves, which
is no easy formula. For it is not enough for us to do all that
is possible: we must do that which seems impossible,
bringing to every activity and every plan a new criterion of
judgment a criterion obtained from within.
Four Roads
If the mission of Friends is as George Fox
expounded it; if the qualities of Friends are as William Penn
described them; if the responsibility of Friends is as John
Woolman lived it, then the challenge to Friends is to develop
and maintain a constancy between their religious beliefs
and their social practices. John Woolman in a testimony
before a Meeting of English Friends suggested that if they were
to attain the right true ends of peace they must travel
four roads The Damascus Road with its drawings,
concerns the awakenings; The Jerusalem Road,
a journey requiring conscience and a complete commitment to a
rightly fashioned life; The Jericho Road with its action and
service in the cause of one's belief; and The Emmaus Road,
the way of true fellowship with one's fellowman.
Damascus was the oldest continuously existing city
in the world. It was the scene of Paul's conversion. It was
also an oasis of living green between the Lebanon range and
the desert. Mohammed refused to go there, saying when
asked for a reason, "I shall have to go to heaven when I die; so
why should I enter Damascus now." Jerusalem, then sacred
to Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans alike, stood on
two rocky hills. Enclosed by walls, and pierced by eight gates,
it was difficult to reach. Jericho was always being sacked
and rebuilt, requiring incessant activity to stay in the same
place. The Emmaus Road a not much traveled road on which
the Apostles communed together, reasoned, and discovered
their religious insights. It was here, Luke reports, that the
Apostles discovered Jesus as one "who was a prophet mighty in
deed before God and all the people."
Friends have traveled these adventuring roads
with respect to many phases of human existence. They
have spoken truth to ecclesiastical power and have been able
to develop and maintain a religious amity that is at
once peaceful and peace-promoting. They have been inventive
in their ability to survive without creed and strangling
theology. They have spoken truth to political power
and have been able to maintain the dignity of a precious religion in
having their views on oath-taking and military service accepted
as individual and religious rights that should not be
impaired. They have established, and in some instances kept
open, channels of international peace when governments
have failed to do so. They have spoken truth to
tribal power which permitted the exploitation of racial and ethnic groups
and have thereby promoted the causes of racial peace and
human dignity. They have spoken truth to economic power,
and have taken stands on the exploitation of human labor,
the manufacture of armaments, and the profits derived
from each. And they have spoken truth to their Meetings,
causing members to act within the spirit of the Society in matters
of membership, marriage, education and other problems of
the social order.
All of these have been great testimonies to the
witnesses of peace and its abiding nature. These facts do
illustrate that Friends can achieve peace once they are so
minded. They further indicate that a peace witnessing once
projected and sustained does not last for all time. There is ever
the urgency that the cause of peace must remain under
the watchful care of Friends concerns. Thus, today, the
cause of peace may be observed in noting that there remains
a need for demonstrating the peace testimony in the
relations between church and state here in Philadelphia, in the
United States, and throughout the world. The peace truth
must again be demonstrated to political power as the
increasing demands of the military order are superimposed on
the normal activities of citizenship.
Does this warrant more precise political action in
a Friendly manner? Truth must be spoken to the
prejudicial and discriminatory aspects of tribal power wherein
racial and ethnic groups continue to experience social
indignities and denials that are creating new human disunities in
Africa, Asia, and the United States. The demonstration of this
truth must be based on the fact that the nearer we come to
making men free of the disabilities we have heaped upon them,
the more closely our actions will affect our own private
lives. The difficult witness lies ahead. Friends have been wary
in speaking truth to economic power. Are there no
problems? Or are these problems of economic peace too close
for comfort? No matter what our answer we may find a
leading in the historic experience of our Society.
John Greenleaf Whittier
Eighty-odd years ago Whittier wrote in the
above-mentioned letters to the Friends' Review
that:
The present age is one of sensation and excitement, of extreme measures and opinions,
of impatience of all slow results. The world about
us moves with accelerated impulse, and we move
with it: the rest we have enjoyed, whether true or
false, is broken; the title-deeds of our opinions,
the reason of our practices are demanded.... It is charged that our Society lacks freedom
and adaptation to the age in which we live, that
there is a repression of individuality and
manliness among us. I am not prepared to deny it in
certain respects. But if we look at the matter closely,
we shall see that the cause is not in the central
truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly
comprehend it. . .6
I think we can say that the great secret or the
central truth of Quakerism continues to survive and that its
ability to speak truth to all times lies not so much in lamenting
the "low condition" of life around us as in what Whittier
called the world's need for the Society of Friends as "a
testimony and a standard" to which it might repair. Again, the
history of our Society indicates how the way may open on any
issue of human and religious concern.
John Woolman
In an introduction to one of the editions of
John Woolman, Whittier wrote about a Yearly Meeting held
in Philadelphia in 1758, exactly 200 years ago.
That assemblage, he said, "must ever be regarded as one of
the most important religious convocations in the history of
the Christian Church. Speaking of the concerns of
Woolman, and his few but earnest associates in the cause for
the elimination of "the mischief of slavery," Whittier writes:
A deep and tender interest has been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with
varied feelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt that
the time had come for some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in
the Valley of Decision.... When the important
subject came up for consideration, many faithful
Friends spoke with weight and earnestness. No one
openly justified slavery as a system, although
some expressed a concern lest the meeting should
go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many members of the Society. It was also
urged that Friends should wait patiently until the
Lord in His own time should open a way for the deliverance of the slave.
This was replied to by John Woolman. His solemn and weighty appeal was responded to
by many in the assembly, in a spirit of sympathy
and unity. Some of the slave-holding members expressed their willingness that a strict rule
of discipline should be adopted against dealing
in slaves for the future. To this it was answered
that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually until a searching inquiry was made
into the circumstances and motives of such as
held slaves.
At length the truth in a great measure triumphed over all opposition; and, without
any public dissent, the meeting agreed that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to
others as we would that others should do to us
should induce Friends who held slaves `to set them
at liberty, making a Christian provision for
them,' and four Friends . . . were approved as
suitable
persons to visit and treat with such as kept
slaves, within the limits of the meeting.
This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed.... The number of slaves held
by members of the Society was very large. Isaac Jackson, in his report of his labors among
slave-holders in a single Quarterly Meeting, states
that he visited the owners of more than eleven
hundred slaves. From the same report may be gleaned
some hints of the difficulties which presented
themselves. One elderly man says he has well
brought up his eleven slaves, and `now they must work
to maintain him.' Another owns it is all wrong,
`but cannot release his slaves; his tender wife
under great concern of mind' on account of his
refusal. A third has fifty slaves; knows it is wrong,
but can't see his way clear out of it. `Perhaps,'
the report says, `interest dims his vision.' A fourth
is full of `excuses and reasonings.' `Old Jos.
Richison has forty, and is determined to keep them.'
Another man has fifty, and `means to keep them.'
Robert Ward `wants to release his slaves, but his wife
and daughters hold back.' Another `owns it is
wrong, but says he will not part with his negroes
no, not while he lives.' The far greater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and
agree to take measures for freeing their
slaves.7
With this example of Friends preventing their
values and concerns from becoming imprisoned within their
own traditions may we dare suggest that Quakerism today
can speak to our times? Are we sufficiently convinced to see
in our witness the making of yet another "holy
experiment"? The evidence is clear our religion is meaningless unless
it is responsive to our own experience.
The Symbols Of Religion
There is no doubt either in my mind or my heart
that Quakerism can speak to the condition of modern man.
The witnesses of peace and tranquility are universal
and unequivocal. They permit no compromise with evil
or inequality or the power that destroys. They permit
an outreach of the Society of Friends that is greater than
any we have yet experienced. It is an outreach based on
religion but which is in accord with the expansion of experience
and knowledge.
Through this testimony we can speak in many
tongues to many peoples. Because our witness is not dogmatic,
it may speak in many tongues to many peoples. Because
our society is free to grow it may invest with a new grandeur
the tenets and turning points in the life of man birth,
death, marital union, and the seasons and the times of joy
and sorrow. Because its source is divine, the testimony
will search out wisdom and through all change bring man
closer and closer to the eternal.
But religious associations are prone to
communicate in what Penn called "verbal orthodoxy" and what
behavioral scientists call the language of sensation. By the light of
the symbols of religion Friends enter into the darkness of
social problems. Their symbols are not always the knowledge
of reason. They are those of belief. The symbols tell
the unbelievers nothing, but they inspire and inspirit the
elect. We believe in them at our own risks. We know this and
we are not afraid.
But the social scientist must avoid the language
of sensation if he is to correctly appraise the social scene
in which the Society of Friends operates. He assumes,
however, that the Society, as an on-going social institution,
operates within the realm of the social and is knowledgeable in
the language of fact and reason. He recognizes that Friends
must operate their testimony on two levels of truth that
which is revealed and religious on the one hand, and that which
is secular and demonstrable on the other. Neither context
is sufficient unto itself for indicating the responsibility
that the peaceful approach to life entails. To the social
scientist who is also a religionist, the peace testimony is a matter
of revelation and belief on the one hand, and a matter
of cultural characteristics on the other. Our witness for
peace between governments, among men, and within
man, demands that we look at the collective challenges
which face us.
World Religions
For hundreds of millions of people throughout the
world Christianity is not the sole answer to the problems for
which they deem to need supernatural or supra-social
answers. So long as the world remained in relative isolation
this conflict of world religions was not so apparent.
Today, however, it seems urgent that there be some sort of
organized unity if they are to fulfill a social need. Are conflicts
among world religions necessary? Is the rise of Communism as
a secular religion a threat to organized religious belief? A
threat to peace? Can the Society of Friends demonstrate its
peace testimony outside the language of sensation?
Equality
Let us examine the problem of leadership within
the context of leadership. This is a major force and factor
in effecting adjustments in the modern world. Yet, it is
curious how little has been done to clarify, and how much has
been done to confuse the meaning, the bearing, and
the application of this most common word in the vocabulary
of the behavioral sciences.
In the religious context, equality is sanctioned
and approved outside of the social context. In the
political context, equality is asserted as a right, a demand, as a
fact. In other words, it is a demand that inequalities be
removed. But what kinds of inequalities? and on what grounds?
There are inequalities in every human society. And, to
complicate the problem, there are endless differences. There
are differences of interest, differences of dispositions,
differences of taste, differences of outlook, none of which can be
called inequalities. But at times it is difficult to draw the
line between inequalities and differences.
What, for example, is meant by the assertion of
equality as a right? It must mean one of three things that
equality of opportunity should be provided, that equality of
treatment should be established, and that equality of equipment
should be instituted. Equality of opportunity expresses a
genuine ideal. Equality of treatment must somehow include
different treatment. Does it mean equity or the provision for all of
the social conditions under which they can enjoy as much
well-being as possible, thereby fulfilling their own lives?
Equality of equipment has been described as the most soulless
and most dangerous of all the claims made in the name
of equality. It bids men divide things equally. It offers
no explanation why unequal men should possess equal
things. What is its end? Of what benefit is it to society? It is
grossly materialistic and utterly inapplicable to spiritual
and intellectual good, but also to the most double-edged of
all the possessions of men power over other men? To
whom should this equality be given? Are we assured of peace
once it has been granted?
Peace
Peace! The rise of sects and secular religions and
beliefs, along with the growing competition, real and
imagined, between church and state, represent one of the more
deep-seated forces at work in world societies. How shall these
be dealt with? By whom? In an era of wide knowledge and
space-conquering technology may it be assumed that there is
a decreasing need for religion in the lives of world
peoples? May any significance be attached to the fact that
humanistic and ethical religious groups have had a significant
increase in adult memberships in the United States within
recent years?
Peace! Popularly known as Neo-Malthusianism,
the cosmic scare represents a resurging fear that the earth
is becoming over-populated and that there will not be
enough resources to go around within a few years by the
year 2000 A.D. say some experts. Such points of view have
great meaning for peace and for our efforts to aid
underprivileged sections of the world where there is a very high birth
rate. The significance of the problem, however, lies in the way
in which we have been able to prolong human life. We
have never had a complete world census of the number of
peoples being born. We know to a relatively accurate degree
the numbers of peoples dying. Yet, the vital index of the
world, that is the excesses of births over deaths, the increased
life span, and the increased mobility of all peoples have
given rise to one of the most significant problems of modern
times problems that have so far defied peaceful solutions.
Peace! The isolation of the modern world that gave
rise to what we now call races of mankind, each living in
his own tribal lair, has given place to a new world in
which tribalism, whether it be nationalism, regionalism,
or ethnocentrism, has become outmoded. The Bandung Conference of Asian and African people, the world's
reaction to the problems of South Africa, the decisions of the
United States Supreme Court on the segregation of persons of
color all indicate the death of the tribe as a principle of
social order. Meanwhile, there is arising in the world a new set
of governments such as the countries of the Southeast
Asian area, the growth of West African independent
governments, and the rise of the West Indies Federation. When these
are coupled with the rise of marginal peoples those of
mixed bloods and mixed nationalities, the problem takes
on immense proportions.
Peace! The dilemma of political power in the
modern world is that of proving its infallibility the correctness
of its power use. To what sorts of political beliefs should
modern man ally himself? This is a crucial question for the
one-half of the world that is in political turmoil. It is also evident
in certain areas of the United States. Can religious and
social leadership spell out ways in which modern man may
resolve this important dilemma? The quantity and quality of
our loyalties continue to vary and make necessary
the development of authoritarian or psychological
techniques for capturing men's minds and beliefs.
Peace, Power, and Loyalty
Power and its use presents one of the most
challenging aspects of contemporary living. The conditions under
which many people live are obscure, unjust, and stupid by
modern standards. Loyalty to the existing order is no longer the
one and only criterion for group existence. There seems to be
a need for "lamps unto one's feet." But much of the world
has had no experience in such planning or programming,
and has not realized the necessity for dealing with such tasks.
As the social scientist looks at these aspects of the
world order, he realizes that throughout the world there is a
search for both sacred and secular peace. The dynamic nature
of world societies requires that any group that attempts
to deal with these ongoing changes needs a living
opinion, which will be viable in its clash with other living
opinions and which will undergo constant reinterpretation.
The Dynamics Of Peace
The dynamics of peace is the perpetual challenge
of the Society of Friends. It is to be ever alert to the
problems man faces as he tries to achieve a sane and healthy
balance between the world-he-believes-in and the
world-he-lives-in. Failure to achieve this balance is ever a clear and
present danger to humanity.
The witness of Friends has provided comfort where
there was despair, and hope where there was uncertainty. To
the present and the future, girded with the quest for world
peace and an inward tranquility, Friends seemed called upon
to continue their witness and to encompass this witness
with two safeguards. The one is courage which stems from
their inward peace and which will give them that courage
which Plato described as "Wisdom concerning dangers." The
second safeguard is contained in Timothy's letter to the
Christian church in Laodicea. The church was advised to be
spiritually and socially keen and alert and to keep its "commission
free from stain." How better can one translate into effective
social action that which is of God in every man?
Notes:
1. Friess, Horace and Schneider, Herbert W. Religion
in Various Cultures. New York. 1932, pp. 453-454.
2. Reinach, Salomon. Orpheus: A History o/ Religions.
New York. 1930. (Translated from the French by
Florence Simonds.) p. 358.
3. The Writings of John Greenleaf Whittier.
(Riverside Edition) Boston. 1889. Vol. VII. "The Society of Friends." pp.
305-314.
4. "Atom Bomb in Asia Would Be Dangerous."
India News. Vol. 3, No. 3. (Information Service of India, U.S.
Embassy of India). February 15, 1958.
5. Brinton, Howard. "The Quaker Doctrine of Inward
Peace." Pendle Hill Reader. Herrymon Maurer, Editor. New
York. 1950. pp. 95-120.
6. Whittier, loc. cit. p. 308.
7. Whittier, loc. cit. p. 329, ff.