CHAPTER 8 The Meeting and the World
It was inevitable and essential that the type of behavior developed within the Meeting Community should spread to the world outside. Community, equality, harmony and simplicity create attitudes of mind and heart which cannot be confined to any one place or group.
Because life within the Meeting Community is different but not too different from life outside it, this radiation is possible.
The code of behavior developed in a monastery, for example, is so different from that of the world around it that it is more difficult for the monastic way to be universalized.
The Quaker code of behavior can be universalized and has been widely extended with the possible exception of the doctrine of pacifism.
This doctrine, therefore, will receive particular attention here. "There is no better test," writes William E. Hocking, "of any rule of life than its way of settling accounts with pugnacity."'
Quaker efforts toward social and political reform have been largely carried on in the fields of
- religious liberty,
- education,
- the abolition of slavery,
- help for Negroes and Indians,
- improvement of mental hospitals,
- relief work during and after wars,
- prison reform, and
- endeavors toward removal of the causes of war.
As these efforts have received wide attention and as they involve no principles different from those already discussed, a brief outline will be sufficient.*
* Quaker work for temperance and in foreign missions is omitted for the sake of brevity. This work has involved no unique principles.144
The Society of Friends is a small group and the amount which it has accomplished may appear quantitatively insignificant. Quaker work has, however, sometimes proved important because of its pioneering quality.
Friends have not hesitated to support new and unpopular undertakings.
In many cases, after their endeavors have received the support of larger groups, they have withdrawn and expended their energies elsewhere in behalf of less popular causes.
The names of persons who are prominently associated with certain causes, such as William Wilberforce and William Lloyd Garrison in the cause of slavery, John Howard in prison reform, and Dorothea Lynde Dix in the reform of mental hospitals, are not Quaker names.
However, the initial steps in the reforms they effected had been taken by Quakers and these leaders received much of their backing from members of the Society of Friends. In all of their major efforts at social betterment the Quakers have been assisted by many like-minded persons outside their membership.
The pioneering quality of Quaker social work is largely due to the character of the meeting for worship.
Silent waiting worship permits a fresh and direct facing of facts under conditions in which the conscience becomes sensitized.
There is no screen of words and abstract concepts between the soul and reality. Music, sermons, prayers, responses, all such spiritual exercises may be received passively or with a resistance of which the recipient is often quite unaware, but that which arises from within is closer to the springs of the will.
The worshiper finds a certain condition in the outside world presented to his mind at the very time at which he is seeking God's guidance for his actions. The horizontal human relationship becomes correlated with the vertical divine-human relationship in such a way that certain actions appear to be required independently of any human opinion or demand.
A concern develops and with it a sense of uneasiness over a situation about which something needs to be done. This uneasiness persists until the required action is undertaken either successfully or unsuccessfully.
If unsuccessful, the Friend who had experienced the concern can at least feel that he has lived up to the measure of light and power given him. Needless to say, all meetings for worship are not sources of inspiration; many are unfruitful due to drowsiness or inertness. Also it must be remembered that the spirit of creative worship may be fruitful at unexpected times and places outside the united gathering. 146
1] Work among Negroes and Indians
"Let your Light shine among the Indians, the Blacks and the Whites that ye may answer the truth in them," writes George Fox in 1690.
From earliest times until the present the disabilities suffered by Negroes and Indians in a culture dominated by the "whites" have been an object of Quaker concern.
William Penn's policy of buying land from the Indians and of making treaties with them began a lasting friendship which resulted in safety for the Friends on the colonial frontier. No peaceful Quakers suffered injury during the French and Indian War. An interesting sidelight appears in the early Disciplines which strongly condemned the sale of rum to the Indians.
In 1795 the Yearly Meetings began to appoint committees on Indian affairs. These were the earliest standing committees. They still continue their labors.
Quaker delegations often went to Washington to plead for the aborigines. The Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs and the Indian Rights Association have been active in these efforts. When General Grant was elected President he met with a Quaker committee sent to plead for a peaceful Indian policy. He told them that, if they would send him the names of Quakers fit to be Indian agents, he would appoint them. This was done. The Quaker Indian agents succeeded in pacifying tribes then at war with one another. They distributed supplies, taught the Indians agriculture, and set up schools on the pattern of the Quaker Boarding Schools. To this work the Yearly Meetings made regular contributions. During the succeeding administrations most of the Quaker Indian agents were dismissed.
Quaker Indian schools first appeared in western New York in 1796, in Ohio in 1822, in Kansas in 1837, in Maine about 1850, and in North Carolina in 1888. In 1898 there were two boarding schools and seven day sch000ls in Oklahoma. These schools have gradually been merged with the public school system. The Tunes-sasa school in New York has recently become a community center.
TILE MEETING AND THE WORLD 147
When George Fox visited Barbadoes in 1671, he advised Friends to let their slaves go free after a certain length of time, but notempty-handed. The first protest in America against slavery was made by German Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1688. In 1711 the Quaker Assembly of Pennsylvania forbade by law the importation of Negroes, but this enactment was vetoed by the Royal Council in England. The gradual steps by which the Society of Friends freed its own slaves, so that by 1776 there were no Quaker slaveholders, have already been noted.
From the beginning until long after the Civil War, the Disciplines and minutes of all the American Yearly Meetings, North and South, contain instructions regarding the care and "spiritual and temporal" education of Negroes and the obligation of Friends "to advise them in respect to their engagements in worldly concerns" (1778). Many Friends abstained from the use of anything produced by slaves, such as sugar. They were mainly instrumental in developing "The Free Produce Association," a group which refused to buy the products of slave labor.
Friends in the South had a difficult time freeing their slaves, for the freed slaves were captured and sold to harsher masters. Laws were passed forbidding anyone to free his slaves. Largely as a result of these difficulties, most of the Southern Quakers migrated in covered wagons to Ohio and other states of the Old Northwest, where slavery was forbidden. This was near the beginning of the nineteenth century. In some cases the members of a meeting migrated together and maintained the continuity of their meeting organization.
Many Quaker homes were stations of the Underground Railroad by which slaves were handed on from one hiding place to another in their escape to the North. Thomas Garrett and Levi Coffin were each instrumental in effecting the escape of some three thousand.
After the Quakers had freed their own ranks of slaveholding, they set to work to abolish slavery altogether. Books by John Woolman and Anthony Benezet exerted a wide influence. In 1780 the Assembly of Pennsylvania passed the first law abolishing slavery. Abolition societies multiplied during the early years of the nineteenth century, both in England and in America. Several Quaker periodicals devoted to the cause of emancipation were published. One of these, edited by Benjamin Lundy, convertedWilliam Lloyd Garrison.
148 FRIENDS FOR 800 yiis
Lucretia Mott, Thomas Shipley, Levi Coffin, Isaac T. Hopper, Elizabeth Comstock, John G. Whittier, were active leaders in the abolition movement, though they did not go along with those who advocated violence. In England the Friends and others engaged in the abolition movement were more successful than were those in America in bringing about nonviolent emancipation. In the British colonies from 700,000 to 800,000 slaves were freed by purchase about 1838. As a result of this nonviolent emancipation there is today a less serious race problem in the West Indies than in the United States, where the war and its aftermath produced tensions and hatreds which still continue.
During and after the Civil War about three million Negroes were set free without education or resources for making a living. All the Yearly Meetings formed committees and associations to help them. Food and clothing were distributed in areas where the destitute Negroes were gathered in concentration camps. Implements for farming were furnished. When state and federal agencies took over this work, the Quakers turned their attention to education which included industrial and agricultural training. Every American Yearly Meeting set up Negro schools. The Philadelphia Freedman's Association at one time maintained forty-seven schools. Gradually after 1875 these schools became merged with the public school system.
Quaker schools for Negroes had existed long before the Civil War. In 1770 and 1786 Negro schools were set up in Philadelphia. Many Monthly Meetings appointed special committees to look after Negro education. After 1760 the records of Virginia and Baltimore Yearly Meetings regularly contain instructions regarding the education of Negroes. This was never a popular task in the South. In the North in 1882 one Quaker who admitted Negroes to her Boarding School had her school practically destroyed by a mob.
Today the concern for fair treatment of Negroes and Indians finds its main outlet in the work of standing committees against all forms of discrimination based on race. The American Friends Service Committee, east and west, sponsors local groups furthering this interest. The acute conditions in South Africa are stirring the few Friends in that area to examine their own responsibility for the present serious situation. THE MEgflNG AND THE WORLD 149
2] Education
The story of Quaker education is long and will not be rehearsed here.2 Only those aspects which exhibit a pioneering spirit will be cited. The Quakers have on the whole followed conventional educational methods, but their schools have demonstrated a few innovations.
Quaker schools, either privately owned or under the care of committees of meetings, existed in considerable numbers during the first century of Quaker history. Toward the end of the eighteenth century in America special efforts were made by the Yearly Meetings to see to it that every Monthly Meeting supported, or aided in supporting, an elementary school. A number of these still survive, either as elementary schools or secondary day schools. The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed the founding of eight American Yearly Meeting Boarding Schools; the second half, the founding of ten American Quaker colleges. In the twentieth century adult education was undertaken in summer schools, conferences, institutes, and in two special institutions founded for the purpose, Woodbrooke in England and Pendle Hill in the United States.
The Quaker schools were pioneers in at least three fields: the equal education of boys and girls, the use of nonviolent methods, and the introduction of scientific and practical subjects into the curriculum. Other Quaker educational policies, such as the development in the students of the sense of belonging to a religious community, the creation of a religious atmosphere in the school, and "simplicity and moderation in dress, speech and deportment," are distinctive only in the degree to which they were carried out. The Quaker schools did not attempt to teach the truths of religion directly. Friends have maintained that only the divine Spirit within can accomplish this end. Verbal instruction, which results in "head knowledge," cannot be relied upon to effect knowledge which is of the heart. The school community, through its meetings for worship often attended by visiting
150 FRIENDS FOR 300 YFARs
Friends, its daily readings from the Bible followed by periods of silence, and by the influence of religiously minded and dech cated teachers created a setting in which religious feelings developed. The Quaker pattern of behavior was reproduced as far as possible in the school. The older schools were distinguished by their efforts to guard the students against every influence from the outside which would tend to weaken or change this way of life.
The equal education of boys and girls was a natural outcome of the equality of the sexes in the Quaker meeting and ministry. The co-educational Quaker Boarding School was a unique institution carried on like a large family. The heads of such a school were, as in the case of a family, a man and wife, who divided executive responsibilities. Since Quaker women received an education equal to that of men, which was a better education than other women received, they became leaders of their sex, particularly in the struggle for women's rights in the nineteenth century.
Since the Light of Christ in the conscience exists in children as well as in adults, it is appealed to or "answered" in cases of misdemeanor. The Puritan doctrine of total' depravity had a different educational result. According to this doctrine, goodness can be imposed by instruction, often enforced by fear. Although the Quaker schools were by no means free from attempts to coerce in maintaining discipline, they tended on the whole to depend more than did other schools on an appeal to the inward sense of right and wrong.
The doctrine of simplicity, in so far as it meant absence of superfluity, was the source of most of the Quaker educational innovations. In the days when the curriculum was largely based upon the classics, mathematics and other subjects designed primarily to polish and adorn, the Quaker schools emphasized practical subjects. George Fox set up the first Quaker schools in 1668 to teach "whatsoever things are civil and useful in creation." Quaker schools were among the earliest, if not actually the first, to introduce science into the curriculum. In the days when trades were learned by apprenticeship to a master craftsman, the Quaker schools gave instruction in applied sciences. It was natural that a religious body which believed in a religion based on experience should relate education to that which can be experienced.151
By far the most important recent innovation in this field is the type of education afforded since 1934 in the work camp movement. While these work camps have other than educational objectives, such as giving help to those who need it and the removal of tensions in conflict areas, the effect of the work camps on the campers themselves, both young men and young women, is often highly educational, sometimes revolutionary. In these camps where the campers work along with persons who need help or who are engaged in thp practice of their regular daily tasks, education through action and experience is carried as far as possible. Such education to be most effective must be supplemented by intellectual efforts characteristic of more conventional education.
2] The Method of Nonviolence
(A) PRISONS
The Quaker peace principles can be best understood when viewed in a context considerably wider than the refusal to take part in war. Prison reform, renunciation of violence in the case of the mentally ill, contributions toward a democratic constitution for the United States, and the struggle for religious liberty are also evidences of the same fundamental doctrine that the best way to deal with men is "to answer that of God" in them. Violence when applied to human beings reduces them and the user of violence to the level of the physical world where only force operates, but men who are open to the divine Light are most effectually moved by spiritual influences from within. By force men are degraded to a subhuman level; by friendship they are uplifted to the divine.
Thousands of Quakers who were imprisoned and treated like
common criminals during the forty years of persecution learned by experience of the horrible condition of seventeenth-century
prisons, dungeons and underground rooms, unventilated, overcrowded, covered with filth and alive with vermin. There was no separation of the healthy and the diseased, of hardened criminals and the young or even innocent, the sane and the insane. 152
Sometimes there was no separation of male and female prisoners. Those unable to pay the jailer for their food and bedding suffered severely from hunger and cold. The Quakers refused to pay bribes to the jailers. In consequence, they often suffered as severely as the poorest. Prisoners awaiting trial were treated in the same way as those who had been sentenced. There was no work for anyone. It would be difficult to imagine conditions more completely demoralizing and degrading.
In England the Quakers could at first do nothing except issue memorials to Parliament and to various officials, such as Fox's address To the Protector and Parliament of England in 1658, but in Pennsylvania there was full opportunity for radically changing the whole system. The Pennsylvania prisons became models, highly praised by foreign visitors as the best in the world. No convict paid for his board and lodging. Work was compulsory, there was classification of inmates and religious instruction was provided. Later in establishing the Eastern Penitentiary in Pennsylvania the Quakers carried this principle of isolation too far. They are credited with initiating the system of solitary confinement. Fiske writes in his history of The Dutch and Quaker Colonies that Pennsylvania was distinguished throughout the world for the administration of its prisons and the humanity of its discipline. Unfortunately, Penn's law to abolish imprisonment for debt was canceled at an early date. He did, however, succeed in reducing the number of crimes which could be punished by death from two hundred to two; namely, treason and murder.
Many Friends who traveled in the ministry insisted on inspecting the prisons in the cities which they visited and on ministering to the spiritual needs of the prisoners. This was particularly true of Stephen Grellet, Willian Alien, Thomas Shihitoe and William Forster. After a visit to a prison they reported what they had seen to the chief authorities. Conditions were often so bad that even the most hardened officials admitted that something ought to be done.
The first systematic attempt to reform the prisons through an organization was initiated by Elizabeth Fry in 1813. In visiting the women's section of Newgate Prison in London, she found conditions as bad as those described by the early Quaker prisoners. [153] The reforms which she, and the Association she founded, brought about transformed this "hell on earth" inhabited by idle, savage, drunken, unruly women whom visitors feared to approach, to a peaceable, industrious group. Children, naked and uncared for, were clothed and taught. Eventually her work led to better conditions in prisons throughout England and on the Continent as well.
Friends continued to make efforts to improve prisons and to prepare discharged prisoners to re-enter society. The events in this story are not so important for our present purpose as the underlying motives which brought about this humanitarian work. The Friends believe that prisoners have certain rights which belong to all human beings regardless of their character or crimes. The revenge of society on those who offend it is inconsistent with the gospel of Christ and the doctrine of the nature of man as a child of God. It is also ineffective. In the undeclared war between society and those who violate its rules, peace can be based only on love, understanding and good will, not on violence, hatred and vengeance. To those who hold a low opinion of man as naturally inclined to evil this doctrine may appear fantastic, but the few hesitating steps already made to treat a defect in character as we treat a defect in the body have been richly rewarded. To go beyond punishment to measures obviating the need for it is the ideal today.
By those who believe that the object of punishment is reformation, capital punishment is obviously condemned. That a human being should suddenly be deprived of the possibility of reformation or of making amends for his misdeeds is not only futile but morally wrong. If the taking of life is a crime for an individual, it is also a crime for the state. In America Friends are now slowly reawakening to their historic interest in this important subject.
(B) MENTAL HOSPITALS
If the Quaker method as applied to criminals seems to many unworkable, it may seem even less practicable when applied to the mentally ill. Nevertheless, the use of this method has produced important and unexpected results. [154]
In the eighteenth century and earlier the treatment of the insane was more inhuman than the treatment of criminals. They were imprisoned, chained, beaten, deprived of the ordinary necessities of life, and made objects of ridicule by visitors who were free to torment them.
As early as 1709 Philadelphia Monthly Meeting proposed the erection of a general hospital for the sick and insane, but the plan did not materialize. The first general hospital in America, the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, was founded in 1756 largely by Friends who appealed to Benjamin Franklin to lead the effort. "It was the first institution where cure rather than custody and repression was the underlying principle in the treatment of the insane."3
"It was also the first where a humane approach to the problem of insanity was attempted. "4 Friends are given credit for introducing occupational therapy in this hospital as a means of cure.5 But there was nevertheless at this hospital much harshness and crudity in the methods of treatment which showed little insight into the nature of mental illness.
The first institution expressly founded to carry out nonviolent ideas in the treatment of the insane was established by Quakers in York, England, in 1796. This institution was called The Retreat to avoid the stigma attached to the words "asylum" or "madhouse." Here a "family environment" was created and institutional characteristics were avoided. Patients were treated as guests, though employment was required. Chains were forbidden and also all resort to terrorism. There was little medical therapy. Mechanical restraint was sometimes used, but it was reduced to a minimum.
The influence of Samuel Tukes' Description of the Retreat near York was soon manifest in the establishment of two similar institutions in America: the Friends Asylum in Frankford, Pennsylvania, opened in 1817; and the Bloomingdale Asylum in New York, opened in 1821. The constitution of the Friends Asylum expressly stated that it "is intended to furnish, besides the requisite medical aid, such tender sympathetic attention and religious oversight as may sooth agitated minds." The system of treatment instituted at the York Retreat was followed. [155]
No chains were used. The Bloomingdale Asylum, developed as part of the New York Hospital, was founded by its president, Thomas Eddy, a Quaker who established the methods of "moral management" used at the York Retreat. Eddy was helped in this effort by correspondence with his friend, Lindley Murray, the Quaker grammarian and author of School Readers, who was then residing in York.
Another aspect of this same subject appears in the wide difference between the Puritans and Quakers in their attitude toward witchcraft. The Salem witchcraft mania of 1691-92, and the trials and executions for witchcraft elsewhere, were undoubtedly evidences of serious mental disorder in both accusers and accused. Nothing like this occurred in the Quaker colonies. The Quakers believed in divine possession but not in demoniacal possession. In Pennsylvania there was one trial for witchcraft. The jury found the culprit guilty only of "having the fame of being a witch." The early meeting minutes record several cases of action by the meeting in requiring acknowledgments of error from persons who took seriously witchcraft, necromancy or any "black art."
In recent times a new phase of the concern for the mentally ill has appeared. During World War II many Quaker conscientious objectors were assigned to mental hospitals as assistants. They and other pacifists were much less dependent on violent methods than were other attendants. Sympathy and kindness proved to be more effective than force, though force applied in a sympathetic manner was sometimes necessary. These conscientious objectors, both during and after their service, succeeded in bringing about changes for the better in several hospitals, and helped in establishing an organization to improve administration, facilities and care.
(c) THE STATE
The extreme form of democracy prevailing in the Quaker meeting for worship and the meeting for the transaction of the church business was a pacifist technique for creating co-operation without compulsion. [156]It was inevitable that, when the Quakers had the power to determine the form of government in a state, they should make it as democratic as possible. In five of the American colonies—Rhode Island Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina—the Quakers took the lead politically for a long or short period of time, but only in Pennsylvania and New Jersey did they have the opportunity to make the constitutions. When William Penn was writing the Concessions and Agreements for West Jersey in 1676, he said, "There we lay a foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as men and Christians, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own consent; for we put the power in the people." New Jersey lost some of its earlier freedom when it became a crown colony in 1702, but the Frame of Government given by Penn to Pennsylvania lasted till the American Revolution and carried on the same democratic philosophy. There was complete religious liberty. Anyone who believed in Cod could hold office. The Frame of Government provided ways for its amendment and was changed three times in the first ten years. The Assembly met and adjourned by laws passed by itself. Affirmation was permitted as a substitute for a legal oath. All these provisions were unique and far ahead of current practice. Two provisions, one for universal education at the expense of the state and the other for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, turned out to be too advanced for the Pennsylvania colonists.
There can be no doubt that the Constitution of the United States, written in Philadelphia, owed much to Penn's "Holy Experiment." Penn's theories, because they had been carried out in practice and not just written in books, had a powerful influence. John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1688) also influenced the members of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and there is evidence that Locke himself was influenced by Penn.6 The Charter written earlier by Locke for Carolina was based on aristocratic feudalism and authority based on fear. Later Locke became acquainted with Penn and assisted him in writing the Frame of Government for Pennsylvania. This, apparently, caused a radical change in Locke's political philosophy. The Frame exists today in Penn's handwriting interlined with notes and comments by Locke and Sidney. [157] Later the doctrines that government is based on the consent of the governed, that Church and State should be separated completely, and that the legislative and executive branches should be separate, as embodied in Penn's Frame, became the basis of Locke's political theory in the Second Treatise. Penn's influence on the American Constitution was exerted also through his suggestion for a political union of the colonies. This plan was presented to a Royal Commission in 1697. It contained some provisions and even words and phrases later embodied in the American Constitution; such as, for example, an annual "congress" (our modern senate), made up of two representatives from each province, to arrange for the interprovincial administration of justice, to regulate interprovincial commerce, and to consider ways and means to support and protect the union.
Penn was the only political theorist of first rank produced by the Society of Friends. Yet the long and bitter struggle on the part of many persons for religious liberty both in England and America laid the basis for that type of political thought which later became fundamental in American life. One important result of this struggle is the exemption from military service of religious conscientious objectors. It was not the theocracy of New England nor the aristocracy of the. South, but the liberal democracy of the middle colonies which determined the future form of the American state.
The histoian George Bancroft writes:
The rise of the people called Quakers is one of the memorable events in the history of man. It marks the moment when intellectual freedom was claimed unconditionally by the people as an inalienable birthright!
(D) RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
The nonresistant method of creating changes for the better by refusal to obey a law is illustrated in the bitter struggle for religious liberty. About 21,000 Friends suffered fines and imprisonment in England, many of them more than once. About 450 died in prison. At one time there were as many as 4,200 in prison. 230 were banished, of whom, however, only a score were actually transported.158
There were many factors which brought about the passage of the Toleration Act in 1689, but it is certain that the stubborn resistance of the Quakers to the Quaker Act of 1662 which was explicitly directed against attendance at Friends meetings, and to the Conventicle Acts of 1664 and 1670 directed against all nonconformist religious services, had much to do with the advent of religious liberty in England. That Friends bore the brunt of the persecution is indicated in the records which show that many more Quakers were convicted under the act than noncon-formists.8 This was because the Quakers met openly while others met secretly. This fact was admitted by some nonconformist writers. Baxter says:
here the fanatics called Quakers did greatly relieve the sober people for a time; for they were so resolute, and gloried in their constancy and sufferings that they assembled openly—and were dragged away daily to the Common Gaol, and yet desisted not, but the rest came the next day nevertheless, so that the Gaol at Newgate was filled with them. Abundance of them died in prison and yet they continued their assemblies still—yea, many turned Quakers because the Quakers kept their meetings openly and went to prison for it cheerfully?
Efforts to stop the Quakers from meeting together by destroying their meeting houses failed. They then met on the rubbish. When every adult member was taken to prison, the children kept up the meeting. No human power could reach them. Much credit for the final victory is due to the persistent work of the Meeting for Sufferings, the central executive committee in London led by William Penn, the foremost champion of religious liberty in England. The care and leadership of this body unified the Society, so that the fires of persecution could not consume it. For a century after the Act of Toleration Friends continued to suffer heavy losses through fines, and occasional imprisonment for refusal to pay tithes to the Church of England.
In part of America the struggle for religious liberty was carried on as bitterly as in England. The Independents (Congregationalists) had largely accepted religious liberty in England under the Commonwealth but they themselves denied it to others in New England. Only the Baptists of Rhode Island tolerated the Quakers. Historians who say that religious liberty is a special gift of Protestantism are partly right, but they tend to forg the persecution of Quakers by non-Quakers and the complete at sence of persecution of non-Quakers by Quakers. Only th colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island, wher the Quakers were strongest, did not at some time have a stat church. Brooks Adams writes:
Freedom of thought is the greatest triumph over tyranny that bray men have ever won. . . . we owe to their heroic devotion the mos priceless of our treasures, our perfect liberty of thought and speech and all who love our country's freedom may well reverence th memory of those martyred Quakers by whose death and agony th battle of New England has been won.1°
(E) INTERNATIONAL PEACE
If nonviolent methods, based on good will and an appeal to th inward sense of rightness in every man, are frequently successful in dealing with abnormal persons, they are more frequently successful in dealing with normal persons. No pacifist claims thai his method is always successful. Every method fails sometimes, including the method based on violence. If two persons or two nations resort to fighting, one is bound to lose, so the method of fighting cannot at the most be more than 50 per cent successful. The nonviolent method may, however, operate in such a way that both sides win. Together they may arrive at a decision which is better than that which either one of the parties desired in the first place. This pacifist technique was fully discussed in the chapter "Reaching Decisions."
The Quakers who traveled abroad on missionary journeys assumed that their hearers already knew something of the Truth which they wished to communicate. George Fox, for example, appealed to the Koran in writing to the Bey of Algiers. When Mary Fisher had addressed the Sultan of Turkey and his Court she was asked what she thought of Mahomet. She replied "that she knew him not, but Christ enlightened every man who came into the world. Him she knew.... And concerning Mahomet," she said, "they might judge him false or true according to the words and prophecies he spoke." 160 The Turk confessed this to be true. With this reply we can contrast the reply of Thomas of Tolento in Malabar, India, in 1307 to the same question: "I tell you Mahomet is the son of perdition and hath his place in hell, and not only he but all such as follow and keep his law, false and persistent and accursed as it is and hostile to God and the salvation of souls."
The difference between the two answers illustrates the nature and source of Quaker pacifism. When John Woolman visited the Indians in order to hold a Friends meeting with them, he gave as one of his reasons, "that I might learn something from them." The method of nonviolence is not a method for pushing one's own ideas. It is a method for arriving at the truth on whichever side it may be.
The refusal to take any part in war or preparation for war was not universal among Friends at the start. Some Quakers in Cromwell's army were dismissed because of their equalitarian principles. Others became pacifists long before the Quaker movement began." Not until 1661 was there a public announcement from the leaders that a Quaker would not fight. This was written in protest against the arrest of Quakers who were thought to have participated in the insurrection of the Fifth Monarchy Men who tried to seize London by force in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. No regularly constituted body of the Society of Friends has ever made a declaration contrary to the strict pacifist position, but in every war some members have, as individuals, supported the war or taken part in it.
Friends arrived at their pacifist position in the same two ways by which they reached their other social testimonies: they followed the Light of Christ in their conscience ey followed the words of Christ in the New Testament. The Quaker scholars, such as Barclay, Penn, Penington, Claridge and Fisher, were familiar with the writings of the early Church Fathers and quoted them in defense of their position. Barclay, in the Apology, gives about forty quotations or references to show that, for the first three centuries, the Christian leaders opposed participation in war. He quotes, for example, the answer of Martin to Julian called the Apostate, "I am a soldier of Christ, therefore I cannot fight." 161 The Friends were not disturbed because fighting can be defended by the Old Testament. If the Old Testament is to be taken literally, then it would be necessary, as Barclay points out, for Christians to follow all the precepts of the Mosaic law.
Christianity, they believed, is a new dispensation which has replaced the old. In using the New Testament in their controversies with the Protestants who accepted the Bible as authoritative, they met their opponents on their own ground.
Such texts were used as
- "Love your enemies,"
- "Blessed are the peacemakers,"
- "Resist not evil,"
- "All they that take up the sword shall perish by the sword,"
- "If my kingdom were of this world then would my servants fight,"
- "We wrestle not against flesh and blood,"
- "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal,"
- "Render to no man evil for evil,"
- "Wars and fightings come of your lusts."
But it was not so much particular texts as it was the example of Christ being led to the cross without resistance and the whole spirit of New Testament religion, commanding its followers to take up the cross in the same way, that formed the principal basis for this position.
Two sayings of Jesus,
- "I came not to bring peace but a sword" and
- "He that hath no sword let him sell his cloak and buy one,"
were interpreted in the light of their context which gives them a figurative turn. Ambrose and Origen, Barclay shows, gave these texts the same symbolic interpretation.
Friends believed that their pacifism followed so naturally and inevitably from their other more fundamental principles that little is said about it in early Quaker writings.
It was taken for granted that a consistent Friend would not fight. As we have seen, the whole procedure of the meeting for worship and the meeting for business was based on a technique which did not admit the overcoming of some persons by other persons. Rather it tended to create an integration of various points of view into a new one on a level higher than any individual opinion. The Light, as has been shown in every application of Quaker doctrine to social problems, is a source of unity. It is not one force among other forces.
The Light is in all men, and the closer they come to it, the closer they come to one another. Force can produce a superficial unity like that which exists in a machine or in a social mechanism such as an army. It cannot produce organic unity any more than a human body with a soul can be manufactured in a machine shop.[162] To appeal to the Light of Truth in another man is to influence him from within. In appealing to this Light in him, we also appeal to the same Light in ourselves and as a result we may find that he is right while we are wrong. We cannot honestly set out to change other men without being willing to be changed ourselves.
All the world admits that a peaceful solution to a controversy is better than a violent solution, but some hold that, men being what they are, peaceful methods are impractical. The realistic pacifist, they say, will wait until others are also pacifists. But Friends have believed that the only way to bring about a peaceful world is to begin here and now, regardless of the risk involved. When Joseph Hoag in 1812 was publicly pleading for his peace principles, a man in the audience said, "Well, stranger, if all the world was of your mind I would turn and follow after." Joseph Hoag replied, "So then thou hast a mind to be the last man to be good. I have a mind to be one of the first and set the rest an example."12 Isaac Penington writes of the peaceable kingdom foretold by prophecy:
When so ever such a thing shall be brought forth in the world it must have a beginning before it can grow and be perfected. And where should it begin but in some particulars, (individuals) in a nation and so spread by degrees. . . . Therefore, whoever desires to see this lovely state brought forth in the general. . . must cherish it in the particular.13
Joseph Sturge correctly states the manner in which all causes for human betterment originate:
It seems to be the will of Him who is infinite in wisdom that light upon great subjects should first arise and be gradually spread through the faithfulness of individuals in acting up to their own convictions."'
The common argument that the pacifist can apply his principles only in an ideal society is untrue. We are not commanded to love our enemies only when there are no enemies, nor to overcome evil with good only when there is no evil.
The object of the Christian religion is to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth, not by the power of men, but by the power of God working through men. This can be done only by methods which are compatible with the code of behavior described by Christ as characteristic of God's Kingdom. 163 The Kingdom begins to exist when Christ's way of life begins to be lived. The King-lom, the ideal society which men work for and pray for when hey utter the Lord's Prayer, cannot he brought about by means nconsistent with itself. If fighting is inconsistent with an ideal ociety, then fighting will not bring the ideal society. A spiritual esult is produced by spiritual means and a material result by iiaterial means. If war is evil, as almost everyone today admits, then it cannot be the right way to produce a good result. The bildren of Mars are not angels of peace. As William Penn says, 'A good end cannot sanctify evil means, nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.31015
Barclay and Penington point out that the state, not having accepted the gospel of Christ as its standard of behavior, may be expected to engage in war as consistent with its own principles. It is under the old dispensation which existed before the coming of Christ. It acts accordingly. But this behavior of the state is no excuse for those individuals who have themselves accepted the higher standard of Christianity. They have received a greater measure of Light and must be faithful to it. This is not to be interpreted as vocational pacifism, as if God had called some to fight because fighting is necessary and others to be peaceful so as to show by their lives the nature of the Christian goal. All men and nations are called to be peaceful but every man must live up to his measure of light, however dim. We cannot censure the insensitive for not going beyond what they have. As their measure increases they will come closer to that peaceable Kingdom in which swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. For seventy-five years it was demonstrated in Pennsylvania that even a state can be devoted to the ways of peace.
Friends have generally favored the use of police power if that power impartially protects the rights of the criminal and the rights of society. Such power must be reduced to a minimum and used with sympathetic understanding. The exercise of police power differs from international war in which the innocent often suffer more than the guilty and where the object is the taking of life. Under present international conditions a so-called international police force wages war. This police action is not directed toward guilty individuals as is the case with the police action of the federal government of the United States. Friends have never been anarchists. They hold that the state is important. They support it as long as its reqUirements do not Oppose the leadings of the Light.164
Friends are often asked what they would do if attacked by a person intent on murder. Many would protect themselves by force if that force did not involve serious injury or the taking of life. Some would reply to this question as Thomas Chalkley did: "I being innocent if I was killed in my body, my soul might be happy; but if I killed him, he dying in his wickedness would consequently be unhappy; and if I was killed he might live to repent; but If I killed him, he would have no time to repent."',' In the case of being called upon to protect another person, the decision would be more difficult, but the same general line of reasoning might apply. Death is not itself an evil, but the taking of life is an evil. The soldier who is killed suffers a material injury; the soldier who kills suffers a spiritual injury.
There are many instances in Quaker history of bandits who were persuaded to desist from attack. The famous Quaker doctor Lettsom on encountering a highwayman "converted him into a useful member of society."17 Catharine Shipley said to a man who was attempting to snatch her purse on a dark street, "Let us kneel down on the pavement and ask Heavenly Father whether He means thee to have it." The man fled.
In defending their pacifism the Quakers have seldom given as their reason the destruction of life and property caused by war. Loss of life and property is not in itself an evil. The loss of life might lead to a happier condition hereafter, and the loss of property is sometimes an actual benefit for a person who is too closely tied to his possessions. The evil results of war—hatred, brutality, callousness to suffering and deceit—are spiritual and moral rather than material.
It is now possible to defend pacifism by an appeal to biology which was formerly thought to align itself with militarism. The theory that higher species evolved in the course of evolution through a process of savage competition by which the strong overcame and eliminated the weak has been superseded by the view that co-operation plays a greater part than competition. 165 Those species which are most sensitive to the needs of others and are most adaptable to changes in environment because of greater sensitivity to a wider range of existence are most likely to survive. The heavy fighters, equipped with strong claws, disappear in the course of evolution; the small, tender, sensitive, adaptable species survive. According to Whitehead, "Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide."8 This is true among nations as among animal organisms. The militaristic empires such as Assyria and Rome, where the soldier was most admired, have had comparatively short careers; the somewhat more pacific cultures, such as those of China and India, where the scholar or the holy man was most admired, have continued since the dawn of civilization. The two recent world wars have shown that those nations which are least militaristic have the greatest power of survival.
There is a story told of the Chinese sage Lao-tse, the founder of Taoism, which illustrates this point. When he lay dying he asked his disciple to look into his mouth. "What do you see?" the old man asked. "I see nothing," replied the disciple. "No teeth?" "No, no teeth, but I see a tongue." By this Lao-tse taught him this lesson: that which is hard, sharp and brittle disappears, while that which is soft and yielding survives.
Pacifism is not a doctr which can be practiced with absolute consistency by one who is an integral part of society. The Quakers have not generally retreated from society in order to be consistent pacifists. They believe that God does not require more than is possible for human beings living a normal life. Inward peace and the sense of freedom from guilt is not the result of complete success in an undertaking. It comes rather from living up to what appears to be the divine requirement, however small or large the requirement is. The primary virtue is obedience to the Inward Light which may not, at the particular stage of religious growth attained by an individual, require absolute consistency. Inconsistency is not the worst evil. It is better to be inconsistently good than consistently bad. The pacifist finds strength to be good in a particular area of life. If he succeeds, more may be required later. If his inconsistencies result in humility, they are not without value. 166 The doctrine of some Protestant theologians that man is doomed to perpetual inner tension and a constant sense of guilt because of original sin or because he cannot avoid sinning finds no support in the Quaker Journals. Once the journalist, after a period of conflict, has learned how to submit himself to divine Guidance, he finds peace. There is no sense of guilt until he again disobeys. The main evidence of obedience to the Light is inner peace, and many Quaker lives have demonstrated that life can be lived in a state of almost continuous inner peace, even in this evil world. John Pemberton writes to Susanna Fothergil in the midst of the French and Indian War: "There are such as can in humility and thankfulness say they are favored with a quiet habitation." When Christ said, "My peace I give unto you," he was not making a promise which could not be fulfilled. His followers learn that, even if they, like him, take upon themselves the burden of the world's suffering, it is still possible to feel within a sense of his peace. William Penn writes of those who accepted the message of the early Quakers: What "people had been vainly seeking without, with much pains and cost, they by this ministry found within the right way to peace with Cod."'°
Pacifists who have no inner sense of peace are not well fitted to work for peace. Their own inner conflict will infect what they do. Inner conflict, as modem psychologists have often pointed out, produces outer conflict, especially when that inner conflict is not recognized by him in whom it exists. The person beset with inner conflict seeks relief by projecting it on the situation around him. A whole nation may be so afflicted with an inner conflict that it seeks relief by projecting it on other nations or races and war results. The peacemakers are called blessed because they are children of God, and God, as Paul truly says, "is not a God of confusion, but of peace" (I Cor. 14:33). God does not appear in the world as one force among other forces, but as the source of unity among conflicting forces. "God is Love."
The assault on the pacifist position by the older Protestantism has been renewed today in somewhat different form by the Neo-Calvinists. Pacifists are chided for perfectionism and utopianism. The Neo-Calvinists hold that perfectionism is a mistaken theory because man as man is bound to sin, not only because of original sin, but also because he is an integral part of a sinful society. 167
We have no choice between evil and good, but only between one evil and another. War and tyranny are both evils. When we are forced to choose one or the other, we choose war as the lesser evil. Therefore, war is justified in spite of the fact that it is contrary to the teaching of Christ and the Will of God. Christ's teachings cannot be followed literally in an evil world. They exist for the purpose of creating a perpetual tension between the ideal and the real so that the real may seek the ideal, even though this ideal is forever beyond its reach.
Utopianism is held to be wrong for the same reasons. The Kingdom of God is not in history, that is, it does not exist as a real possibility here on this earth. It exists only in a timeless eternity where it has already come to pass. Christ's work is finished. Man's task is to accept it through faith.
All this seems to be so much at variance with the teachings of the New Testament and the religious experience of the great Christians that it is difficult to see how it can be held sincerely. In the first place, it seems to deny the central Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. If Christ lived a perfect life in a sinful world, then such a life is clearly possible; either that, or the Incarnation was not real, but only an appearance. The Incarnation means that Christ was a revelation of God in genuinely human terms and, if genuinely human, then he expressed, by his life and teachings, a real example for men to follow. If Jesus was himself a pacifist, as even the Neo-Orthodox admit, then we must be pacifists also if we obey his command to follow him.
That the New Testament code of behavior is applicable only in some timeless heavenly realm is inconsistent with the whole spirit of the gospel which tells us how to behave here and now. Christ's commands are not expressed in a future tense but in the present. To hold that the Christian religion cannot be lived here on this earth is an acceptance of defeatism which finds no support in New Testapient Christianity which was triumphantly optimistic, even though the early Christians were opposed by a great totalitarian state. In the early Church each Christian community thought of itself as an island of the Kingdom of Heaven, confident that, as the number of islands increased, they would eventually unite to form the great continent of the new perfected social order where the Spirit of the Living Christ would rule. Pentecost was not a revival meeting. 168 When Peter stood up to explain what had happened, he did not proclaim Christ as a personal savior but as one who would introduce a new order in the world. Christ had said that the Kingdom was already germinating. It was a grain of mustard seed which would grow into a great tree, a creative leaven operating in the world to transform the world unto itself. This conception does not necessarily conflict with the belief that the Kingdom has already come in a timeless eternity nor with the apocalyptic belief held by many Christians that the Kingdom would come suddenly. The sun may burst suddenly above the horizon, but its coming is predicted by the twilight before the dawn. Did not the early Christians feel that they tasted "the powers of the age to come" (Heb. 6:5)?
That our choice is always between one evil and another, between war and tyranny, for example, is not true. There is a third choice which has often been taken in Christian history, though it may lead to martyrdom. If we refuse war, and, as a result, are subjected to tyranny, we can refuse tyranny also and go to prison or to death. The prisoner may be free spiritually, however confined in body, but he who submits to tyranny or war is free neither spiritually nor physically. In On the Duty of Civil Disobedience Thoreau says of a prison that it is "the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor. . . . As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body, just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog."
At the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948 it was agreed that the will of God is against war and that the will of God takes precedence over the will of the state. That the moral law takes precedence over the will of the state was the basis of the condemnation of the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. The pacifist who disobeys the law and goes to prison engages in civil disobedience for the sake of principle. He is as willing to sacrifice himself for his cause as the soldier to sacrifice himself for his cause. He uses a spiritual weapon in a spiritual warfare. 169 The present conflict between East and West is a spiritual conflict, a conflict of ideas and moral principles. As such it will never be settled by material weapons with which ideas and moral principles have nothing in common. As Barclay says peace comes not by "knocks and blows and such like things, which may well destroy the body but never can inform the soul, which is a free agent, and must either accept or reject matters of opinion as they are borne in upon it by something proportioned to its own nature."20
So far the Quaker principle of pacifism has been treated in the negative way, as refusal to take part in war. The positive side, which is equally important, inclqdes the efforts to remove causes of war and repair damage done by war, particularly damage in terms of hatred and prejudice. International agreements by which differences between nations can be settled by arbitration have been a concern of Friends from the beginning. William Penn's Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe (1693) and John Bellers' Some Reasons for a European State proposed to the Powers of Europe (1710) offered plans for an organization not unlike the present United Nations. On a number of occasions Friends have endeavored to promote the settlement of differences by arbitration. Such instances include Barclay's letter in 1678 to the plenipotentiaries who were negotiating the terms of peace at Nimeguen; Joseph Sturge's attempted mediation between Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein in 1850; the peace deputation to the Czar of Russia in 1854 headed by Joseph Sturge, which, had there been less hysteria in England, might have prevented the Crimean War; John Bright's successful efforts to secure arbitration between England and the Northern States in 1861; the attempt of the Quaker government of Rhode Island to avert by arbitration King Philip's War in 1675; the efforts of John Fothergill and David Barclay in frequent conference with Benjamin Franklin to avert the American War of Revolution and the successful efforts of George Logan, grandson of Penn's secretary James Logan, to prevent war between the United States and France in 1798 after the American Commissioners had failed to secure the release of American sailors in French prisons. 170 In addition to these and other efforts of individuals, Quaker bodies frequently address governments through epistles and visiting committees on the subject of the peaceful settlement of differences Peace Societies beginning in England in 1814 and in America in 1815, worked continuously for arbitration.
The suffering incurred by Quakers and other pacifists in every war in the Western World during the past three centuries because of their refual to fight is too long a story to rehearse here, even in outline. The adventures of ship captains who did not carry guns as a defense against pirates and privateers and attacks by mobs on Quakers who refused to put lights in their windows in celebration of military victories are among the less known events in this story. That a peaceful attitude inspired by good will and complete absence of fear is often a greater source of safety than weapons has been demonstrated by many instances. In the Indian wars on the frontier in colonial times and in the Irish wars of 1690 and 1798, Quakers were seldom harmed.
(F) RELIEF WORK
Relief work undertaken to repair damages caused by war or conflict is a natural corollary of the peace principle. Although this work has not been large in material terms, the results have been disproportionately great in terms of bridging gaps created by hatred and misunderstanding.
Relief work inside the Society of Friends was essential from the beginning, owing to the general loss of property by fines for civil disobedience. Relief work outside the Society seems to have first occurred during the Irish war in 1690 when Quakers supplied prisoners of war with food and clothing. In 1755 the Acadians, banished from Canada, were aided by Friends of Philadelphia, largely through the efforts of Anthony Benezet. In 1775-76 Friends in the Philadelphia area collected a large sum of money for the relief of sufferers from the siege of Boston and the blockade of the New England coast by the British fleet. Towns through which the Quakers had once been whipped recorded their thanks. During the Napoleonic wars soup kitchens were set up to relieve distress in London. During the nineteenth century the Balkan countries were in almost continuous revolt against the Turks and there were many refugees in European cities. 171 In 1822 English Friends sent a large sum to the Greek refugees. In 1876 relief supplies were distributed in Macedonia and Bulgaria and again in 1912. In the Crimean War in 1854 the English fleet had ravaged the coast of Finland which then belonged to Russia and caused widespread destruction. Under the leadership of Joseph Sturge food and clothing, seed corn, fishing nets and other supplies were sent to repair the damage. Whittier's poem on this event ends with the words
The baffle lost by England's hate By England's love is won.
thus indicating the main motive and result of relief work. In 1892 Friends distributed a fund of £40,000 in the famine-stricken parts of Russia.
When the great Irish Famine of 1846-47 occurred, Friends committees raised £200,000, largely from non-Quaker sources, and a group of English and Irish Friends distributed relief. In the American Civil War relief was administered and educational work done for the Negro freedmen as already mentioned. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 wrought great devastation and misery in France. About forty English Quakers distributed relief supplies including seeds and cattle. At this time the red and black "Quaker star" was first used as a distinguishing mark. Today this emblem designates Quaker Service of all kinds all over the world.
In the Boer War of 1900 Friends sent a delegation to South Africa that succeeded in arousing British feeling against the crowded concentration camps in which Boer families were confined. This resulted in improved conditions. The subsequent relief included the restoration of the. Boers' most treasured heirlooms, their family Bibles.
World Wars I and II witnessed an expansion of Quaker relief which eventually included work in all the countries affected by the wars. The introduction of universal military conscription into England and the United States led Friends everywhere into an effort to substitute relief work for military service. There was a general determination to make personal sacrifices as great as those made by persons who supported or took part in the war. 172This work began in England in 1914 with the "Emergency Cornmittee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and Turks in Distress," "The War-Victims Relief Committee ," and the "Friends Ambulance Unit" which took care of men wounded in battle. This Unit was too closely tied to the war effort to receive the official endorsement of the Society of Friends, but the larger part of its members were Friends. Soon after the United States entered the war in 1917 the "American Friends Service Committee" was formed to assist conscientious objectors and, send relief workers abroad. Later, conscientious objectors were furloughed by the government to the Committee for relief work in France. The devastation caused by the war in France had already led English Friends to send workers there. These were joined by the Americans. This work consisted of relief and reconstruction operations of various kinds, including medical help and the revival of agriculture. At the same time a number of English and American Friends were sent to Russia to administer aid.
Such were the beginnings of a service which has continued to, widen and has carried, and is carrying, Friends into many parts of the world on errands of mercy. At one time a million children were being fed in Germany. World War II added China and India to the countries assisted. Home service was begun in 1920 by the American Friends Service Committee. In the thirties Friends helped the stricken coal miners in West Virginia and elsewhere. This beginning has expanded into a great variety of undertakings, internes in industry, work camps, community integration of minorities, and, in the basic sense, adult education through institutes and seminars. Today in many parts of the world there are centers in which, by action and word, a spirit of reconciliation is demonstrated.
This long story of Friends Service has been told in many books and pamphlets. In all their work the Quakers have been supported and assisted by a much larger group of like-minded persons outside their membership for whom they have acted as instruments and with whom they have collaborated. The primary motivation of this relief work is humanitarianism, the removal of suffering and the repair of destruction. Secondarily, it is a form of preaching through action. War creates ill will which is the seed of more war. 173 Relief work creates good will which is a seed of peace. War, unlike floods, earthquakes and famines, is a manmade evil which results in wrong human attitudes—hatred, greed and fear. These attitudes can be changed by a practical demonstration of their opposites, love, self-sacrifice and confidence. Friends may take their share of responsibility in repairing damages caused by the convulsions of nature, but their main concern is to create ties of good will and understanding in areas of conflict between nations, races and classes.
Another motivation of Quaker relief work is a sense of guilt. As an integral part of a society so constructed that war recurs, the Quakers must assume a share of responsibility for the causes of war. If this responsibility cannot be avoided, it may be partially atoned for by attempting to remedy the evils caused by war. A relief worker who believes in his own goodness because of his superior principles has not faced the real facts of the situation. Woolman deals with this problem:
Where men profess to be so meek and heavenly minded and to have their trust so firmly settled in God that they cannot join in wars and yet by their spirit and conduct in common life manifest a contrary disposition, their difficulties are great at such a time.2'
Quaker relief workers have received maintenance, but no salary. They are expected to live as near the standard of living of those whom they help as health and efficiency permit. They become, as far as possible, members of the community in which they find themselves and 'share in its problems and activities. In France, for example, the members of the Unit ploughed in the fields beside the peasants and built houses in co-operation with them. There is a consistent effort by such companionship to avoid the sense of help handed down, though this is difficult to avoid, especially in the distribution of food and clothing. Quaker relief workers are in the main nonprofessional, that is, they are not necessarily technically trained social workers. This helps to close the gap between them and those whom they help. They leave positions at home, spend one or two years in the field and return to the work they left.174 Thus the nonprofessional character of the religion of the Society of Friends is carried over, as far as possible, into its humanitarian work. Another policy which distinguishes the Quaker relief team is the effort made to be absolutely impartial and to distribute help regardless of race, nationality, religion or political opinion. Thus in the Spanish Civil War, help was given on both sides of the battle line in spite of private feelings which tended to sympathize with the Loyalists. Although many workers in Friends Service are not Friends, the Quaker type of meeting for worship and the Quaker method of arriving at decisions prevails.
Friends Service is a demonstration of all four of the primary social doctrines. It demonstrates community because it endeavors to unite the whole human race into one interdependent community; it demonstrates equality because of its impartiality; it demonstrates simplicity because of the standard of living required of its workers; and it demonstrates harmony by its main objective—the promotion of peace.
CHAPTER 9
In 2005, people all across the world sat up in their seats to watch Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. They were stunned to see the environmental degradation and destruction that has occurred and the profound threat it poses to all life on the planet. Then, in October 2007, many of us jumped with joy when Gore and the U. N. Panel on Climate Change were jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. This recognition gave us hope of a way to work through our political, economic, and environmental systems in order to reverse the effects of decades of indifference and damage to our planet.