The Ward Lecture 1956
Quakerism and Politics
Given at
Guilford College on Founders Day
November 9, 1956
Guilford College, N.C.
by
Frederick B. Tolles
Quakerism and Politics
Though we are cautioned in our books of
discipline against observing special "times and seasons," Friends
have been busy during the past few years celebrating a series
of significant anniversaries, and more are in the offing.
In 1948 North Carolina Friends observed the two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary of their Yearly Meeting. In 1952 we
all united in celebrating the three hundredth birthday
of Quakerism in England. Two years ago, Irish
Friends observed the tercentenary of Quakerism in Ireland.
This year Friends in New England honored the first
Quaker "Publishers of Truth" who arrived in North America
three hundred years ago. Next year, the two hundred and
seventy-fifth anniversary of William Penn's coming to the
Delaware Valley, and the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
birth of John Greenleaf Whittier, the Quaker poet, will, no
doubt, be noticed with suitable ceremonies. I should like to
call your attention to two minor Quaker anniversaries that
occur this autumn. Neither is likely to attract much
public attention. I mention them chiefly because they have
a striking relevance to my theme.
I
It was three hundred years ago, in October 1656,
that George Fox had a memorable interview with
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England. It was one of the
great moments of a great century, for here, face to face, were
two of the most powerful personalities of the age, the one
the military dictator of the British Isles at the pinnacle of
his worldly power, the other a crude, rustic preacher who
had just spent eight months in one of England's foulest
prisons. They met in Whitehall, at the very heart of the
British government. Fox bluntly took the Protector to task for
persecuting Friends when he should have protected
them. Then characteristically he set about trying to make
a Quaker out of Cromwell, to turn him to "the light of
Christ who had enlightened every man that cometh into the
world." Cromwell was in an argumentative mood and took
issue with Fox's theology, but Fox had no patience with
his objections. "The power of God riz in me," he wrote, "and
I was moved to bid him lay down his crown at the feet
of Jesus."
Cromwell knew what Fox meant, for two years
earlier he had received a strange and disturbing missive in
which he had read these words:
God is my witness, by whom I am moved to give this forth for the Truth's sake, from
him whom the world calls George Fox; who is the
son of God who is sent to stand a witness against
all violence and against all the works of
darkness, and to turn people from the darkness to the
light, and to bring them from the occasion of the
war and from the occasion of the magistrate's
sword...1
The man who persisted in calling himself the "son
of God" _ he later acknowledged that he had many brothers
_ was demanding nothing less than that the military ruler
of all England should forthwith disavow all violence and
all coercion, make Christ's law of love the supreme law of
the land, and substitute the mild dictates of the Sermon on
the Mount for the Instrument of Government by which he
ruled. In a word, Fox would have him make England a kind of
pilot project for the Kingdom of Heaven. Fox was a
revolutionary. He had no patience with the relativities and
compromises of political life. His testimony was an
uncompromising testimony for the radical Christian ethic of love and
non-violence, and he would apply it in the arena of politics as
in every other sphere of life. It is not recorded that Cromwell
took his advice. Neither is it recorded that Fox ever
receded an inch from his radical perfectionism. The
absolute demands he made upon Cromwell just three hundred
years ago may stand as one pole of Quaker thought on politics.
Now I would draw your attention to another
anniversary we might appropriately observe this autumn. It was
just two hundred years ago, in October 1756, that the
Quakers abdicated their political control of Pennsylvania, and
the "Holy Experiment" in government in the Valley of
the Delaware came to a close. For three quarters of a
century, first in West New Jersey, then in Pennsylvania,
Friends had been deeply involved in the day-to-day business
of politics _ winning elections, administering local
and provincial government, struggling for power
among themselves, contending with non-Quaker
politicians, squabbling with neighboring provinces, wrangling with
the imperial authorities in Whitehall. Though William
Penn had founded his Quaker Utopia by the Delaware on
the proposition that government was "a part of religion itself,
a thing sacred in its institution and end," neither he nor
his successors had pretended to maintain George Fox's
absolute witness.
As office-seekers they had often fallen short of
perfect Christian charity in their relations with their
opponents. As office-holders they had often found it necessary
to compromise their highest principles in order to stay
in office. As judges they had sentenced men to death.
As legislators within the British Empire they had
appropriated funds with which the Crown had carried on its wars
with France and Spain. In some degree every one of them
had come to terms with the world, had compromised the
purity of his religious testimony as a Quaker. But they had
created in the American wilderness a commonwealth in which
civil and religious liberty, social and political equality, domestic
and external peace had reigned to a degree and for a
length of time unexampled in the history of the Western world.
When the Quaker lawmakers of Pennsylvania, just
two hundred years ago this autumn, stepped down and gave
the province of Pennsylvania into the hands of "the
world's people," something went out of American political life
_ something that we have been two hundred years trying
to restore.2 The relative testimony of the colonial
Pennsylvania politicians may stand for us as the other pole of
political thought and practice in the Society of Friends.
Between these two poles Quaker political attitudes
and behavior have oscillated, and the main purpose of
this lecture is to trace historically the path of that
oscillation, to underline some of the dilemmas in which Friends
have found themselves in relation to politics, and, if possible,
to draw from the record some conclusions which may
have contemporary relevance.
II
We must begin by recognizing how thoroughly
primitive Quakerism shared the spirit of millennial hope,
the exhilarating atmosphere of expectancy that marked
the middle years of the seventeenth century. It was a
period, like the early years of the Christian church itself,
when many religious people in England looked for the
imminent return of Christ on the clouds of glory and the
prompt establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It
was the period of the Barebones Parliament, that
curious collection of assorted fanatics who hoped to usher in
the Rule of the Saints in England. It was the period of the
Fifth Monarchy Men, those violent zealots who planned
to enthrone King Jesus in succession to the late Charles I.
The apocalyptic imagery of the Books of Daniel
and Revelation worked like yeast in English minds and the
radical ethics of the New Testament were
spawning visionary schemes for the root-and-branch reform of
English society. The Quaker movement, we must recall, grew
out of the same Puritan soil as these other manifestations
of left-wing Protestantism; its early leaders shared fully
in the apocalyptic excitement, the zeal for social reform,
the identification of politics with
religion.3
"Laws and decrees shall be changed and
renewed," exulted Edward Burrough. "Every yoke and burden shall
be taken off from the neck of the poor; true judgment
and justice, mercy and truth, peace and righteousness shall
be exalted; and all the nations shall have judges as at the
first and counselors as at the
beginning."4 When George Fox
"was moved to sound the day of the Lord" from the top of
Pendle Hill, he was not behaving exactly like a
twentieth-century Philadelphia Quaker, but he was acting quite in the
spirit of the time.5 And when William Tomlinson cried out:
"Woe, woe, woe, to the oppressors of the earth, who grind the
faces of the poor," and warned that "God will in time hear
the groanings of the whole creation, and then, woe, woe,
woe, to you who have been such oppressors and
hard-hearted task-masters," he was speaking in the authentic vein
of prophetic Christianity and adding one more Quaker
voice to the chorus of social protest that reached a crescendo
in England at the end of the 1650's.
It is now pretty clear, despite the reticence of
Quaker literature on the subject, that in the critical year
1659, just before the Restoration of Charles II, the
Rump Parliament made a remarkable proposal to the Quakers
_ "nothing less than that they should aid in a
sweeping reorganization of ... the Commonwealth government _
a reorganization in which justiceships would be given
to Friends or to others sympathetic to the Quaker
movement."6 What is more, many Quakers were prepared to rise to
the challenge and take their part in administering the Holy
Commonwealth. Friends in Somersetshire
described themselves as "ready (for Truth's sake) to serve
the commonwealth to the uttermost of their ability," and
it seems probable that five Friends in Westminster and
seven in Bristol were actually appointed commissioners of
the militia. The French ambassador wrote home that the
hard-pressed government was relying for its support on
the Quakers: "The Spirit of God, by which they are ruled,"
he reported, "now permits them to take part in the affairs
of this world, and the Parliament seems inclined to make
use of them."
We are accustomed to think that the early
Friends stood aloof from politics, and we find it hard to see how
men who had renounced force could justify administering
the militia. Yet given the apocalyptic atmosphere of the
time, it is not impossible to understand how Friends could
have agreed to accept public office, even to take up
the magistrate's sword, in the interests of establishing the
Rule of the Saints. For once the regime of the righteous was
set up, all swords would, no doubt, be turned into
plowshares and all spears into pruning hooks. After all, one of
the earliest epistles of advice to Friends, the ancestor of all
our books of discipline, the famous letter sent out from
Balby in Yorkshire in 1656, had recommended "that if any
be called to serve the Commonwealth in any public
service, which is for the public wealth and good, that
with cheerfulness it be undertaken, and in
faithfulness discharged unto God: that therein patterns and
examples in the thing that is righteous, they may be, to those that
be without."7
But the revolution of the Saints did not come
off. Instead the unsaintly Charles II was restored to the
throne in 1660, and Puritan apocalypticism fizzled out in the
absurd and abortive little rising of the Fifth Monarchy Men
in January 1661. If George Fox had ever really favored Quaker
participation in the politics of the Saints, he had had
by now some sober second thoughts; some scholars think
the ten-week-long "time of darkness" into which he was
plunged in the middle of 1659 was a time of inward struggle
over this very issue. In any case, by the end of that year he
was advising Friends everywhere to "keep out of the powers
of the earth that run into wars and fightings" and to
"take heed of joining with this or the other, or meddling
with any, or being busy with other men's matters; but mind
the Lord, and his power and his
service."8
After the fiasco of the Fifth Monarchy rising,
innocent Friends were taken up by the hundreds and imprisoned
on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government
_ charges based on a doctrine of "guilt by association" as
far-fetched and vicious as that which has flourished in
our own day. To clear themselves of suspicion a number
of leading Friends, including Fox, issued a public
declaration that they had never been concerned in any plots for
the violent overthrow of the government, that indeed the
Spirit of Truth would never lead them to "fight and war
against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom
of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this
world."9
III
The traumatic experiences of the Restoration year
had a lasting effect on the Quaker attitude toward politics.
Many Friends reacted sharply against anything that smacked
of partisan politics and took the position that a Quaker
should have nothing to do with the politics of this world, that
his citizenship was in another Kingdom. The words of
Alexander Parker in 1660 may stand as representative of this
attitude: "My advice and counsel," he wrote, "is, that every one
of you, who love and believe in the Light, be still and quiet,
and side not with any parties; but own and cherish the
good wherever it appears and testify against the
evil...."10
This attitude of aloofness and neutrality was
the dominant one in the Society of Friends during the
fifteen years following the Restoration. All the strength the
Society could muster was required simply to survive, to
weather the storm of persecution that Charles II loosed upon
them. But political interests were not dead. Around the year
1675 some Friends at least began to show a new concern
for politics. There was no dream of capturing England for
the Kingdom of God now. The House of Stuart was too
strongly entrenched. Moreover, Quakers were excluded from
office by the requirement of an oath, which they could not
in conscience take. And anyhow, the confident
millennial mood of midcentury had passed forever. But Friends
had meanwhile strengthened their own internal
government by creating a network of Monthly Meetings all over
the country with appropriate central agencies in
London. Consequently, they now had the means of bringing
their organized influence to bear on the British government
at one limited but _ to them _ all-important point:
religious toleration. Quaker action to bring an end to the
persecution took two forms: on the one hand, an attempt to
influence elections, and, on the other, an effort to
influence legislation. In other words, Friends engaged in a
certain amount of electioneering and lobbying.
In 1675, for example, the Second-Day Morning
Meeting in London encouraged Friends to vote only for
Parliament-men who would sign an agreement to work for
toleration. Six years later, the Meeting for Sufferings was
urging Quakers who had the franchise to vote for "sober,
discreet, and moderate men ... that are against persecution
and Popery, and that deport themselves tenderly towards
our Friends."11
William Penn was, of course, the most active
political Quaker of the time. Everyone knows about his
"Holy Experiment" in Pennsylvania (to which I shall come
back presently), but before he set that experiment on foot he
had a fling at politics in England. Though he had
announced, just a few years before, that "it is not our business to
meddle with government," he took to the hustings twice _ in
1677 and 1679 _ in a vain effort to elect his friend Algernon
Sidney to Parliament _ Sidney who dreamed of transforming
King Charles's England into a republic.
Friends were clearly a political bloc to be
reckoned with in those years. So active were they in
the Parliamentary elections that the King's friends
actually promised Penn to free his people from persecution if
he would pledge their political support or at least
their neutrality.12 And it has been plausibly argued that
King Charles's willingness to grant Penn a huge province
across the sea was dictated by the hope of draining off to
America a troublesome portion of his political
opposition.13
But in the long run lobbying was for Friends a
more congenial method of influencing politics than electioneering. Quakers had been engaged in lobbying
_ that is to say, in seeking to influence legislators by
personal visits _ ever since 1659, when a hundred and
sixty-five Friends went to Westminster Hall and sent into the
House of Commons a paper offering to lie "body for body" in jail
in place of their imprisoned and suffering fellow
Quakers.14 But after 1675 they intensified their legislative
activity, seeking acts for the release of prisoners and the ending
of persecution. The Meeting for Sufferings coordinated
the work. The weightiest Friends in England, including
George Fox and William Penn, busied themselves
buttonholing Members of Parliament and appearing at
committee hearings. The Yearly Meeting even rented a room in a coffee
house hard by the Houses of Parliament for a
headquarters _ a kind of Friends Committee on National
Legislation office.15 An unfriendly observer noted sourly that "it
was indeed somewhat scandalous, to see, when any Bill
or Petition was defending, wherein the Quakers had
their Account or Design, what crowding, what soliciting,
what treating and trading there was by that sly and artificial
set of Men..." And another critic observed that "Their
broad Hatts, their short Crevatts, their dour Looks, [and]
Subtil Carriages" were always in evidence when the House
of Commons was in session.16
The legislative struggle for religious liberty
was substantially won in 1689 with the passage of the
great Toleration Act, but the lobbying efforts went on, until
Friends were finally granted the right to substitute a
simple affirmation for a formal oath in 1722. From time to time
in the course of this campaign the Meeting for Sufferings
urged Friends to write their Parliament-men on the
subject.17 If anyone thinks the techniques of the FCNL are a
modern innovation, he knows little of Quaker history.
IV
The Affirmation Act of 1722 finally gave
English Quakers many of the privileges of citizenship they
had hitherto lacked, including the right to sue in court and
to vote without impediment (though not to hold public
office). Curiously enough, the achievement of most of the
privileges of citizenship was followed by a widespread
disinclination to exercise them. Friends in England _ I am leaving
the American story to one side for the moment _ were
entering the age of Quietism. The feeling grew that a good
Quaker should have as little as possible to do with
earthly government, that he must avoid the temptations, the
distractions, the compromises, the corruptions of
political life, that he ought to maintain his religious
testimonies with absolute purity, in isolation, if need be, from the life
of his time. He must be _ it was a favorite
phrase of the period _ among "the quiet in the land."
We saw this attitude taking root among the
English Friends at the time of the Restoration in 1660; in
the eighteenth century it became almost a dogma. Listen
to Samuel Scott, a fairly typical "public Friend," on
the Parliamentary elections of 1780:
The parliament being dissolved, a general election is coming on: the devil cometh forth,
and hell from beneath.... It becometh not the
members of our society to meddle much in those
matters, or to be active in political disquisitions ...
in respect to elections, we ought to go no farther
than voting for the candidates we best approve,
and declaring our preference of them, without endeavouring by any other means to
influence others. "Israel is to dwell alone, and not to be
mixed with the people."18
Some Friends even counseled against voting. Here
is the advice of Thomas Shillitoe, an extreme Quietist,
in 1820:
"Friends, let us dare not meddle with political
matters. ... Endeavour to keep that ear closed, which will be
itching to hear the news of the day and what is going forward in
the political circles." Friends, he thought, should be
resolutely oblivious to the world around them. "Avoid reading
political publications," he warned, "and, as much as
possible, newspapers."19 The religion of these Quietist Friends
was a tender plant that must be carefully guarded
against blighting contact with "the world."
V
The climate of English Quaker opinion on politics
did not change until well into the nineteenth century.
After the passage of the great Reform Bill of 1832 it
became possible at last for Friends to qualify for Parliament by
taking an affirmation in place of an oath. The first Quaker to
take a seat in the House of Commons was Joseph Pease,
who was elected in 1833, though his father, his
mother-in-law, and his Monthly Meeting all tried to dissuade him
from entering the hurly-burly of public life. He sat in the
House for several years, always wearing his plain Quaker
coat, steadfastly declining, in Quaker fashion, to use formal
titles of address even in Parliament.
Ten years after Joseph Pease broke the ice, a
Quaker statesman greater than he _ indeed one of the
towering figures in nineteenth-century British Politics _
entered Parliament. I shall not recount the story of John
Bright's career or attempt to catalogue his achievements. I
will simply mention some of the liberal causes for which
he struggled nobly and, in the main, successfully: the
abolition of compulsory Church rates or tithes, against which
Friends had long borne a testimony; the repeal of the Corn
Laws, which were taking bread out of the mouths of the poor:
the extension of the franchise, which had hitherto been
denied to many poorer folk in town and country; the
emancipation of the Jews, who had been subject to
civil disabilities based on prejudice; the abolition of capital punishment, still
a subject of political debate in England; justice and
fair treatment for the People of Ireland and India, who
in different ways were suffering from oppression;
steadfast opposition to the Crimean War, a war which
modern historians unite in condemning as unjust and
unnecessary; the humanitarian protest against the wanton
bombarding of Alexandria in 1882, the issue over which he resigned
from Gladstone's cabinet. Every one of these causes was
in harmony with his humane and pacifist impulses as
a Quaker. William E. Gladstone was not merely indulging
in the conventions of funeral eulogy when he said of
Bright "that he elevated political life to a higher elevation, and
to a loftier standard, and that he ... thereby bequeathed to
his country the character of a statesman which can be
made the subject not only of admiration, and not only of
gratitude, but of reverential
contemplation."20
Yet John Bright himself would have been the first
to admit that he had not been a completely "consistent"
Friend throughout his long career in politics, that the
testimonies of his religious society were counsels of perfection which
a practical politician could not uphold in all their purity.
He had, for instance, approved the bloody suppression of
the Indian Mutiny of 1857. He had been a warm supporter
of the North in our fratricidal Civil War, writing to
John Greenleaf Whittier that "war was and is the only way out
of the desperate difficulty of your country," and to
another correspondent that "I want no end of the war, and
no compromise, and no reunion till the Negro is made
free beyond all chance of
failure."21 And in his social
philosophy he was so much the captive of the laissez
faire doctrines of his time as to oppose every effort to limit by law the
number of hours women should work in
factories.22 In other words, one cannot overlook the plain fact that Bright's
contributions as a Quaker statesman, notable as they were, were
achieved at the sacrifice of consistency as a Quaker.
Since John Bright's time there has been an
unbroken tradition of political Quakerism in England. More than
sixty Friends have held seats in Parliament _ and they have
held them right through two World Wars. Scores,
probably hundreds more have served on county councils and in
other posts in local government.
Meanwhile the official attitude of London
Yearly Meeting has changed slowly from one of
reluctant acquiescence to one of whole-hearted endorsement
of political activity. The London Discipline of 1861 took
pains to point out some of the duties of public office that would
be inconsistent with Quaker principles _ adminstering
oaths, enforcing ecclesiastical demands, calling out the
armed forces _ and warned Friends to consider seriously
"whether it is right for them to accept an office which involves
such alternatives." Furthermore, the Discipline went on,
still under the sway of the Quietist fear of "the world": "When
we consider the seductive influence of popularity, and the
self-satisfaction consequent upon the successful efforts of
the intellectual powers, even in a good cause, we feel
bound with affectionate earnestness, to caution our friends
against being led to take an undue part in the many exciting
objects of the day,"23
By the beginning of the twentieth century,
however, the Yearly Meeting was offering advice in quite a
different vein. "The free institutions under which we live," read
the Discipline of 1911. "give many of our members a direct
share in the responsibilities of government, and in forming
the healthy public opinion that will lead to purity
of administration and righteousness of policy.
This responsibility belongs to them by virtue of their
citizenship, and our members can no more rightly remain
indifferent to it, than to the duties which they owe to their
parents and near relatives." "In view of the opportunities for
public service opened to Friends during the last half century,"
it went on, "we desire to press upon them the duty of
qualifying themselves, so that they may be `prepared unto every
good work.'"24 The change from the cautious spirit of the
Yearly Meeting's advice just half a century before is too
striking to miss.
Perhaps the most critical test of any Quaker's
devotion to his traditional religious testimonies comes in
wartime, and this is especially true for the Quaker in public office.
A student at Swarthmore College several years ago
tabulated the votes of the Quaker Members of Parliament on
crucial measures during the two World Wars. She found about
what one might expect: that some were consistent
pacifist Quakers throughout, voting for no military measures
and vigorously defending the rights of conscientious
objectors; that some were pretty consistently unpacifist
and unQuakerly in their attitude, supporting nearly all the
war government's measures; and that some were simply
not consistent (i.e., on some issues they voted their
Quaker consciences and on others they did not).
From her analysis she concluded that it is
not inherently impossible to be a consistent Quaker pacifist
in government, even in war-time: here the notable career
of the late T. Edmund Harvey, who sat in Parliament
during both World Wars, was her chief exhibit. On the other
hand, she was obliged to grant that if one is to avoid
mere negativism and obstructionism, it is often necessary to
be silent and therefore, to a degree, uninfluential with
respect to most major issues and to concentrate one's efforts
on such minor though important problems as securing
fair treatment for CO's.25 The experience of the English
Quaker M.P.'s suggests that the path of a religious idealist
in practical politics is not an easy one.
VI
So far I have focused on the relationship of
English Quakers to politics. I can deal with the
American experience more briefly, though it is far from a simple
story. The elements are the same, but the historical development
of attitudes is curiously different; in fact, the
American experience reverses the British to produce a kind
of historical counterpoint. For Quakers on this side of
the Atlantic were becoming more and more deeply involved
in politics just when their British cousins were
detaching themselves from it; later, American Friends reacted
towards Quietism and non-involvement as the English moved
away from that attitude and began to take an active part
in government.
There were four American colonies in which, for
longer or shorter periods, the powers of government were in
Quaker hands. In Rhode Island between 1672 and 1768
ten Quakers served for a total of thirty years as Governors, and
other Friends held office as Deputy-Governors and
Assemblymen.26 West New Jersey, especially during its
first quarter-century, from 1674 to 1702, was in every sense
a Quaker colony.27 Everyone knows that Pennsylvania
was controlled by Friends from its founding in 1682
down to the middle of the eighteenth
century.28 And there is no need to remind North Carolinians of the brief but
important Governorship of that able Quaker administrator
John Archdale.29 Obviously there are plenty of materials here
for the study of Quaker experience in government, and
they are far from having been exhausted by historians. I
shall limit myself to one point, the same point I discussed
in connection with John Bright and the other Quaker M.P.'s
_ the inevitability of compromise. I shall draw my
illustrations from what is usually, and rightly, considered the
most successful Quaker experience in government _
William Penn's "Holy Experiment" in colonial Pennsylvania.
As a concerned Friend William Penn gave
his allegiance to the fundamental principle of
Christian pacifism. So, as individual Friends, did most of
his associates and successors who dominated Pennsylvania
politics for three quarters of a century. But as
responsible legislators and administrators governing a constituent
part of the British Empire, they found it impossible in
practice to maintain that principle without abatement
or compromise.
Compromise indeed was built into the very
foundations of the "Holy Experiment": by his charter from King
Charles II Penn was given power "to levy, muster, and train all
sorts of men ... and to make war and pursue the enemies and .
. . put them to death by the law of war ... and do all and
every act which to the charge and office of a captain-general
of an army belongeth." In other words, his authority, like
that of the President of the United States, included the
powers of Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy.
Penn apparently had no scruples about accepting
this authority, which was an essential condition of his
receiving the colony for his "Holy Experiment." No doubt he
believed there would be no need to exercise it in a
Quaker commonwealth. But events and the logic of
Pennsylvania's status in the British Empire showed otherwise.
When Britain went to war with France or Spain, as she did
four times during the next seventy-five years, orders came
from London to put the colony in a posture of military
defense and to contribute funds for the prosecution of the war.
The Quaker rulers of Pennsylvania knew they
might lose control of the colony and be forced to abandon
their "Holy Experiment" if they did not comply. They grew
adept at the politics of shuffle and evasion, but in the end
they usually found ways to meet the military demands. The
usual formula was to grant money "for the Queen's use." No
one was deceived as to the use the Queen would make of
the money. But, as one of the leading Quaker politicians put
it, "we did not see it to be inconsistent with our principles
to give the Queen money notwithstanding any use she
might put it to, that being not our part but hers."
Presently, the legislative "dodges" became
more ingenious. During King George's War the Quaker
Assembly voted four thousand pounds for the purchase of "bread,
beef, pork, flour, wheat and other grains"; and when the
Governor interpreted "other grains" to mean gunpowder, no
Quaker legislator is known to have objected. By 1755 the
Assembly was appropriating as much as fifty thousand pounds _
a huge sum considering the time and place _ "for the
King's use." In the following year Pennsylvania found itself
actually at war with the Delaware and Shawnee Indians. By
now the time for shuffling and evasion was past: Quakers
simply could not administer a province at war. And so the
majority of the Friends stepped down from office and the
"Holy Experiment" was over.
I have stressed this single point of compromise
with the peace testimony _ and I could have shown it in
other areas as well _ not to pass judgment on the political
Quakers of Pennsylvania. They had a noble and
forward-looking experiment in government committed to their hands. I
am not disposed to blame them for wanting to preserve
the substance of that experiment as long as they could, even
at some cost in terms of consistency with principle. I
merely wish us to be clear that even in William Penn's,
Quaker Utopia the exercise of political power involved
compromise, involved some abatement of Quaker
ideals.30
In 1758, two years after the Quaker abdication
in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting advised
its members to "beware of accepting of, or continuing in,
the exercise of any office or station in civil society
or government" which required actions inconsistent
with Quaker testimonies. The pendulum had swung
sharply away from political participation, and I think it is fair
to say that American Friends have tended almost from
that day to this to avoid direct participation in politics, at
least in the sense of seeking elective office.
The strong feelings of North Carolina Friends on
this subject a hundred years ago are reflected in the
unequivocal language of the Yearly Meeting Discipline of 1854: "It
is the sense of the Yearly Meeting, that if any of our
members accept, or act in, the office of member of the federal or
state legislature, justice of the peace, clerk of a court,
coroner, sheriff, or constable, that they be dealt with, and if
they cannot be convinced of the inconsistency of their
conduct, after sufficient labor, they be
disowned."31 Philadelphia's attitude, a century or more ago, was only a little
less sweeping: Friends were advised under pain of
disownment "to decline the acceptance of any office or station in
civil government, the duties of which are inconsistent with
our religious principles"; furthermore they were urged not
"to be active or accessory in electing or promoting to be
elected, their brethren to such offices or stations in
civil government."32 Quietism in relation to politics had
become the rule among American Friends just as British
Friends were beginning to break away from it.
In recent years the official attitude of many
American Yearly Meetings has swung over to a position not
unlike that of London Yearly Meeting, though this shift was
neither prompted nor followed, as in England, by any
significant migration of American Quakers into public office. In
1927 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting declared its belief that
"the Kingdom of God on earth is advanced by those who
devote themselves with unselfish public spirit to the building of
a high national character, and to the shaping of a
righteous policy of government both at home and abroad." It
urged Friends "to be active in the performance of all the duties
of good citizenship," and defined the duties of good
citizenship specifically to include
office-holding.33 In 1945 the Five
Years Meeting, representing the great majority of
American Quakers offered similar advice: "It behooves all Friends,"
read its Discipline, "to fit themselves for efficient
public service and to be faithful to their performance of duty
as they are gifted and guided by the inspiration of
God."34
The book of Faith and Practice
issued by the reunited Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1955, repeats the
earlier advice about accepting office when summoned to it, but
adds a cautionary proviso: "Necessity for group action,"
it suggests, "may, however, present difficult problems for
the office holder who seeks to be single-minded in his
loyalty to God. A prayerful search," it goes on in slightly
cryptic language, "may lead to a suitable adjustment which
need not establish a precedent but should be kept before
the Father in Heaven for further light." But, "It may
become necessary," the statement concludes, "to sacrifice
position to conscience and expediency to
principle."35
VII
This sober advice calls to mind a wise passage
from Rufus Jones:
There has always been in the Society of Friends a group of persons pledged
unswervingly to the ideal. To those who form this inner
group compromise is under no circumstance
allowable. If there comes a collision between allegiance
to the ideal and the holding of public office, then
the office must be deserted. If obedience to the
soul's vision involves eye or hand, houses or lands
or life, they must be immediately surrendered. But there has always been as well another group
who have held it to be equally imperative to work
out their principles of life in the complex affairs
of the community and the state, where to gain an end one must yield something; where to get
on
one must submit to existing conditions; and where to achieve ultimate triumph one must risk
his ideals to the tender mercies of a world not
yet ripe for them.36
If anything is clear from our quick historical survey,
I think it must be this: that there is no one Quaker
attitude towards politics. Historically, Quakers can be
found practicing and preaching almost every possible position
from full participation to complete withdrawal and
abstention. Rufus Jones has isolated for us, in the passage I just
quoted, the two polar extremes. I would just underline the
dilemma implicit in his description. If a concerned Quaker (or
any man or woman committed to an absolute religious
ethic) decides to enter practical politics in order to translate
his principles into actuality, he may achieve a relative
success: he may be able to raise the level of political life in his
time, as John Bright did, or maintain a comparatively happy
and just and peaceful society, as the Quaker legislators
of Pennsylvania did. But he can apparently do it only at a
price _ the price of compromise, of the partial betrayal of his
ideals. If, on the other hand, he decides to preserve his ideals
intact, to maintain his religious testimonies unsullied and
pure, he may be able to do that, but again at a price _ the price
of isolation, of withdrawal from the main stream of life in
his time, of renouncing the opportunity directly and
immediately to influence history.
Let me call the two positions the relativist and
the absolutist. And let me suggest that perhaps each one
needs the other. The relativist needs the absolutist to keep
alive and clear the vision of the City of God while he struggles
in some measure to realize it in the City of Earth.
And conversely, the absolutist needs the relativist, lest
the vision remain the possession of a few only,
untranslated into any degree of reality for the world as a whole. Which
position an individual Friend will take will depend, I
suppose, on his temperament. For those of us who incline
towards the more absolutist position, there is wisdom in
the statement of Henry Hodgkin, the English Friend who
was the first Director of Pendle Hill: "With my conception of
the Christian life," he wrote,
I do not see that it would be possible for me to enter the world of politics as it is at present
run. For example, anyone who wants to make his influence felt must be allied to a party and
accept many compromises. He must use methods current in politics but, to say the least,
highly distasteful to a moral man.... Time was when
I felt that for anyone to embark on such a career was a comedown from the highest level
of Christian living. While I am as far as ever
from being able to go into politics myself, I should
now hold that God may be just as truly revealed in
a person who enters this field and accepts conditions which I could not accept as, let us
say, a devoted evangelist.37
Of course neither of these two polar positions
is uniquely Quaker. The Mennonites in their quiet way
have practiced the absolutist withdrawal from the world
longer and more consistently than Friends have ever done.
And many religious idealists have gone into politics at
some sacrifice of their ideals to work for a relatively better
world. I should like to suggest in closing that if there is
any distinctive Quaker posture vis à
vis politics, it is one which I might describe as the prophetic stance or the role of
the divine lobbyist.
By this I do not mean approaching legislators for
favors _ though Friends have sometimes done that, as in the
case of the Affirmation Act. I am thinking rather of George
Fox in 1656 bidding Oliver Cromwell to lay down his crown at
the feet of Jesus, of Robert Barclay in 1679 standing
before the representatives of the European powers at
Nimwegen and calling upon them to settle a peace upon
Christian principles, or Joseph Sturge in 1855 pleading with
Tsar Alexander II for reconciliation with England, of Rufus
Jones in 1938 interceding for the Jews before the chiefs of
the Gestapo or Henry Cadbury appearing before the
Military Affairs Committee in Washington or any Friend
visiting his Congressman with a religious concern. All these,
like the prophets of Israel, have felt a divine call to "speak
truth to power," to lay a concern upon those who are charged
with the governing of men." The Friends Committee on
National Legislation is, in a sense, an institutionalization of
this age-old Quaker practice.
There are grave perils and responsibilities in this
role. There is the peril of hiding a selfish motive behind a
facade of religious concern: a Quaker lobby must never fall to
the level of the lumber lobby or the oil lobby. There is the
peril of mistaking a personal impulse, no matter how
altruistic, for a divine call, of becoming a mere busybody,
troubling harassed legislators with trivial or irresponsible
demands. And there is the responsibility of "earning the right" by
a consistent pattern of religious dedication and service
to speak to those who bear the heavy burden of political power."
This kind of prophetic mission to the rulers of men
is a distinctively Quaker approach to politics. When
carried out under a deep religious concern by a person whose
own life speaks of a genuine commitment to a spiritual
vision, such an approach can be a way of avoiding the dilemma
of isolation on the one hand and compromise on the other,
a way of combining consistency of life with relevance
to history. Like the prophet Zechariah before his king,
Friends can still pronounce the timeless but always timely
message: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith
the Lord."40
Notes
1. The Journal of George
Fox, ed. John L. Nickalls (Cambridge, England, 1952), pp. 274-75, 197-98.
2. On the withdrawal of Friends from the government
of Pennsylvania see Frederick B. Tolles, "The Twilight
of the Holy Experiment," Bulletin of Friends
Historical Association, XLV (Spring 1956), 30-37.
3. The best account of the Puritan roots of Quakerism
is Geoffrey F. Nuttall's The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith
and Experience (Oxford, 1946). For the social and
political "climate" of the 1650's see W. Schenk,
The Concern for Social Justice in the Puritan Revolution
(London, 1948).
4. Both this passage and that from William Tomlinson
below are taken from a revealing article by James F.
Maclear, "Quakerism and the End of the Interregnum: A
Chapter in the Domestication of Radical Puritanism,"
Church History, XIX (December 1950), 240-70.
5. Journal of George Fox,
pp. 103-104. T. Canby Jones places Fox in relation to the eschatology of his time in
"George Fox's Understanding of Last Things,"
Friends' Quarterly, VIII (October 1954), 194-206.
6. Maclear, op. cit., p. 255.
7. Letters, etc., of Early Friends,
ed. A. R. Barclay (London, 1841), pp. 280-81.
8. Journal, p. 358.
9. This familiar declaration has often been reprinted.
See Journal of George Fox, pp. 398-404.
10. Letters, etc., of Early
Friends, p. 368.
11. William C. Braithwaite. The Second Period
of Quakerism (London, 1919), pp. 90,
98. Ethyn Williams Kirby gives a good account of "The Quakers' Efforts to Secure Civil
and Religious Liberty,
1660-96" in the Journal of Modern History.
VII (1935) 401-21.
12. Kirby, op. cit., 402, 405-408.
13. Fulmer Mood. "William Penn and English
Politics in 1680-81," Journal of the Friends' Historical Society,
XXXII (1935), 3-21.
14. W. C. Braithwaite,
The Beginnings of Quakerism, Second Edition, revised
by Henry J. Cadbury (Cambridge, England, 1955), pp. 454-55.
15. The Short Journals and Itinerary Journals of George
Fax ed. Norman Penney (Cambridge, England, 1925), pp.
190-92, 218.
16. Kirby, op. cit., p. 413.
17. Ibid., p. 418.
18. Samuel Scott, A Diary of Some Religious Exercises
and Experience (London, 1809), p. 12.
19. Journal of the Life and Labours of Thomas Shillitoe
(London, 1839), I, 224.
20. Quoted in Rufus M. Jones,
The Later Periods of Quakerism (London, 1921), II,
633. The best account of Bright's career is still George Macaulay Trevelyan's
Life of John Bright (Boston and New York,
1913). But Margaret E. Hirst's John Bright
(London, 1945) is an admirable brief biography.
21. Margaret E. Hirst, The Quakers in Peace and War
(London, 1923), pp. 285-87, 288-91.
22. Edwin B. Bronner, "John Bright and the Factory
Acts," Bulletin of Friends Historical Association,
XXXVIII (1949), 92-102.
23. Extracts from the Minutes and Epistles of the Yearly
Meeting
Relating to Christian Doctrine, Practice, and
Discipline (London, 1861), pp. 123, 124.
24. Christian Discipline of the Religious Society of Friends
of London Yearly Meeting, Part II. Christian
Practice (London, 1911), p. 126.
25. Betty Ann Hershberger, A Pacifist Approach to
Civil Government: A Comparison of the Participant
Quaker and the Non-Participant Mennonite View
(typewritten B.A. thesis, Swarthmore College. 1951).
26. Rufus M. Jones, The Quakers in the American
Colonies (London, 1911), Part I, Chapter VIII, is the best account.
27. John E. Pomfret, The Province
of West New Jersey (Princeton. 1958) makes this amply clear.
28. Isaac Sharpless, A Quaker Experiment in
Government (Philadelphia. 1898), though written nearly sixty
years ago, is still a very useful book; a briefer account, also
by Isaac Sharpless, will be found in Jones, Quakers in
the American Colonies, Book V. There is a short narrative
in my Meeting House and Counting House (Chapel Hill,
1948), Chapter I.
29. The ten pages in Jones's
Quakers in the American Colonies (340-350) need to be amplified by some
Quaker scholar.
30. For a thoughtful critique of Quaker participation
in Pennsylvania politics from the Mennonite
non-resistant point of view the reader is referred to two articles
by Guy F. Hershberger: "The Pennsylvania
Quaker Experiment in Politics,
1682-1756," Mennonite Quarterly Review,
X (1936), 187-221; and "Pacifism and the
State in Colonial Pennsylvania," Church History,
VIII (1939), 54-74.
31. The Discipline of Friends, Revised and Approved by
the Yearly Meeting, Held at New Garden, in Guilford
County, N. C., in the Eleventh Month, 1854 (Greensboro, N.
C., 1855), p. 16.
32. This advice appears in the
Rules of Discipline of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting before the Great
Separation and was retained in both Orthodox and
Hicksite Disciplines for a considerable period thereafter.
North Carolina's discipline was later (1870)
revised to bring it
essentially into line with the Philadelphia advice.
33. The Book of Discipline of the Religious Society of
Friends (Philadelphia, 1927), pp. 57-58.
34. Faith and Practice of the Five Years Meeting of Friends
in America (Richmond, Indiana, [1946]), pp. 38-39.
35. Faith and Practice of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
of the Religious Society of Friends (Philadelphia, 1955),
p. 42.
36. Quakers in the American
Colonies, pp. 175-78.
37. Quoted in F. W. Sollmann,
Religion and Politics, Pendle Hill Pamphlet Number 14 ( Wallingford, Penna., n.d,
), pp. 5-6.
38. Clarence E. Pickett gave some examples of
Quakers visiting heads of states in his Ward Lecture,
Friends and International Affairs (Guilford College, 1952). I
have collected some other examples in "Friends and
the Rulers of the People," The American Friend,
New Series, XXXVI (1948), 134-35,153; and "The Dream of
John Woolman," AFSC Bulletin, October 1951, pp. 19-20.
39. Cecil E. Hinshaw has some pertinent observations
on this subject in his Pendle Hill Pamphlet (Number
80), Toward Political Responsibility (Wallingford,
Penna., 1954), a pamphlet, incidentally, which presents a
point of view not unlike the perfectionism of George Fox
in the 1850's. Bertram Pickard in an earlier Pendle
Hill Pamphlet (Number 16), Peacemaker's Dilemma
(Wallingford, n.d.) suggests another, less radical way
out of the impasse. Walter C. Woodward made a
helpful contribution to the discussion of this problem in
his essay on "The Individual and the State" in
Beyond Dilemmas: Quakers Look at Life, ed. S. B.
Laughlin (Philadelphia, 1937), pp. 205-27: he
acknowledges, however (pp. 215-18), that Friends have not
succeeded in transcending the crucial dilemma outlined above.
40. Zechariah iv. 6.
Frederick Barnes Tolles
The Howard M. Jenkins Professor of Quaker
History and Research at Swarthmore College, Frederick
Barnes Tolles, presents the seventh Ward Lecture. Choosing
as his subject Quakerism and Politics, he combines the
several interests in which he has had extensive scholarly
training. His three academic degrees from Harvard University
were taken in the fields of American Civilization and
American History. In 1948 the University of North Carolina
Press published his book Meeting House and Counting House:
The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia.
Subsequently continuing his interests in research and Quakerism,
he has written Slavery and the Woman Question: Lucretia
Mott's Diary, George Logan of Philadelphia, James Logan and
the Culture of Provincial America. His excellence in the areas
of research and in knowledge of Quakerism was
recognized by his election to the presidency of the English
Friends Historical Association, for which he gave the
historical address at the Friends Tercentenary Celebration in 1952.