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2019/04/24
2019/04/23
루크레티아 모트 - 페미위키
루크레티아 모트 - 페미위키
루크레티아 모트
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루크레티아 모트의 초상화
루크레티아 모트(영어: Lucretia Mott 1793년 1월 3일 ~ 1880년 11월 11일) 또는 루크리샤 모트, 루크레시아 모트는 세네카 폴스 선언의 중심 인물이었던 노예 해방 운동가이자 여성 인권 운동가이다.
1 세네카 폴스 선언
본문을 가져온 문서이 내용은 세네카 폴스 선언 문서의 본문을 가져와 보여주고 있습니다.
1840년, 런던에서 열린 반노예제도 세계 대회에 참석했던 미국 여성들은 남성 동료들이 여성들의 협조에 대하여 보상하고, 대회에서 주요 역할을 담당할 것을 믿었다. 그러나 상황은 전혀 딴판이었다. 심지어 미국 여권 운동의 가장 중요한 두 지도자였던 루크레티아 모트와 엘리자베스 케이디 스탠튼조차 대회에서 한마디도 발언하지 못했다. 모트와 스탠튼은 남성들이 여성들을 침묵하게 한 것에 분노했고 돌아가는 즉시 여권 대회를 개최할 것을 굳게 맹세했다. 8년 후인 1848년, 300명의 여성과 남성들은 뉴욕 주의 세네카 폴스에 모여 <입장 선언>과 12개항의 결의안을 내놓았다.
2 생애
도주노예법이 통과되고 나서 도망 노예들에게 자신의 집을 피난처로 제공했다.
남북전쟁 후에는 여권 신장과 함께 해방노예들의 투표권과 교육 기회를 얻으려고 애썼다.[1]
3 출처
Jump up↑ 김지석 (2013년 1월 3일). “[역사 속의 인물] 美여권 운동 선구자 루크레티아 모트”. 《매일신문》. 2018년 3월 23일에 확인함.
A Progressive Quaker Sermon - By Lucretia Mott - A Friendly Letter
A Progressive Quaker Sermon - By Lucretia Mott - A Friendly Letter
A PROGRESSIVE QUAKER SERMON – BY LUCRETIA MOTT
APRIL 20, 2014 CHUCK FAGER 1 COMMENT
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NOTE:
Lucretia Mott, considered at the time of her death in 1880 to be the “greatest American woman of the nineteenth century” by many of her contemporaries, was a Quaker abolitionist, women’s rights activist and social reformer. She was a key figure in an insurgent movement of Progressive Friends. Her messages and actions are very pertinent today – and laid much of the foundation for the current women’s movement.
On Sunday March 5, 2017, at 1 PM, Chuck Fager, will give a presentation on “Lucretia Mott: What Would She Say If She Were Here Today? HINT: She’d tell us we’re in deep trouble and should get up and get busy. (She’d say it very nicely, but urgently).”
The talk will be at the Orange County NC Main Library, 137 West Margaret Lane, Hillsborough NC. The talk will focus on Lucretia’s wide range of activism on many concerns, her pioneering & unforgettable voice for women, and radical views on numerous other public matters. Free & open to the public.
Y’all come!
Chuck will also discuss how, along with her activism, Lucretia maintained a staunch devotion to family and to Quakerism, even as she helped shake her faith community to its foundations, and as a key figure in the Progressive Friends movement, pushed it toward a future many Friends wanted to avoid.
The presentation is designed for adults interested in Lucretia Mott’s legacy, social activism, women’s rights and related issues, regardless of their religious affiliation.
The presentation is sponsored by the Hillsborough Friends Meeting. Did I mention that it’s free and open to the public? Yeah.
The address excerpted here is more “theological” than activist (she wouldn’t much like the term “theological,” but it fits.) There was not much distinction between them for Lucretia.
PS. Lucretia never prepared her messages, spoke only when she felt moved, and did not write them down. We have this one (and others) only because stenographers were sent in to take them down by shorthand. Sometimes this was to preserve them for admirers; other times it was to gain ammunition for having her disciplined or even disowned (yes, there were several such attempts). The latter efforts did not succeed; but I’m grateful for the record anyway.
Lucretia Mott (1793 – 1880)1849: Lucretia Mott– From “Likeness to Christ” – A sermon delivered at the Cherry Street Meeting in Philadelphia – Ninth Month 30, 1849
It is time that Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ. Were this sentiment generally admitted we should not see such tenacious adherence to what men deem the opinions and doctrines of Christ while at the same time in every day practice is exhibited anything but a likeness to Christ.
My reflections in this meeting have been upon the origin, parentage, and character of Jesus. I have thought we might profitably dwell upon the facts connected with his life, his precepts, and his practice in his walks among men. Humble as was his birth, obscure as was his parentage, little known as he seemed to be in his neighborhood and country, he has astonished the world and brought a response from all mankind by the purity of his precepts, the excellence of his example. Wherever that inimitable sermon on the mount is read, let it be translated into any language and spread before the people, there is an acknowledgement of its truth. When we come to judge the sectarian professors of his name by the true test, how widely do their lives differ from his?
Instead of going about doing good as was his wont, instead of being constantly in the exercise of benevolence and love as was his practice, we find the disposition too generally to measure the Christian by his assent to a creed which had not its sign with him nor indeed in his day. Instead of engaging in the exercise of peace, justice, and mercy, how many of the professors are arrayed against him in opposition to those great principles even as were his opposers in his day. Instead of being the bold nonconformist (if I may so speak) that he was, they are adhering to old church usages, and worn-out forms and exhibiting little of a Christ like disposition and character.
Instead of uttering the earnest protests against the spirit of proselytism and sectarianism as did the blessed Jesus–the divine, the holy, the born of God, there is the servile accommodation to this sectarian spirit and an observance of those forms even long after there is any claim of virtue in them; a disposition to use language which shall convey belief that in the inmost heart of many they reject.
Is this honest, is this Christ like? Should Jesus again appear and preach as he did round about Judea and Jerusalem and Galilee, these high professors would be among the first to set him at naught, if not to resort to the extremes which were resorted to in his day. There is no danger of this now, however, because the customs of the age will not bear the bigot out in it, but the spirit is manifest, which led martyrs to the stake, Jesus to the cross, Mary Dyer to the gallows. This spirit is now showing itself in casting out the name one [after] another, as evil, in brother delivering up brother unto sectarian death. We say if Jesus should again appear–He is here; he has appeared, from generation to generation and his spirit is now as manifest, in the humble, the meek, the bold reformers, even among some of obscure parentage.
His spirit is now going up and down among men seeking their good, and endeavoring to promote the benign and holy principles of peace, justice, and love. And blessing to the merciful, to the peacemaker, to the pure in heart, and the poor in spirit, to the just, the upright, to those who desire righteousness is earnestly proclaimed, by these messengers of the Highest who are now in our midst. These, the preachers of righteousness, are no more acknowledged by the same class of people than was the messiah to the Jews. They are the anointed of God, the inspired preachers and writers and believers of the present time. In the pure example which they exhibit to the nations, they are emphatically the beloved sons of God.
It is, my friends, my mission to declare these things among you at the hazard of shocking many prejudices. The testimony of the chosen servants of the Highest in our day is equally divine inspiration with the inspired teaching of those in former times. . . .
Let us not hesitate to regard the utterance of truth in our age, as of equal value with that which is recorded in the scriptures. None can revere more than I do the truths of the Bible. I have read it perhaps as much as any one present, and, I trust, with profit. It has at times been more to me than my daily food. When an attempt was made some twenty years ago to engraft some church dogmas upon this society, claiming this book for authority, it led me to examine, and compare text with the content. In so doing I became so much interested that I scarcely noted the passage of time.
Even to this day, when I open this volume, so familiar is almost every chapter that I can sometimes scarcely lay it aside from the interest I feel in its beautiful pages.
But I should be recreant to the principle, did I not say, the great error in Christendom is in regarding these scriptures taken as a whole as the plenary inspiration of God, and their authority as supreme. I consider this as Elias Hicks did one of the greatest drawbacks, one of the greatest barriers to human progress that there is in the religious world, for while this volume is held as it is, and, by a resort to it, war, and slavery, wine drinking, and other cruel, oppressive, and degrading evils are sustained, pleading the example of the ancients as authority it serves as a check to human progress, as an obstacle in the way of these great and glorious reformers that are now upon the field.
Well did that servant of God, Elias Hicks, warn the people against an undue veneration of the Bible, or of any human authority, any written record or outward testimony. The tendency of his ministry was to lead the mind to the divine teacher, the sublime ruler, that all would find within themselves, which was above men’s teaching, human records, or outward authorities. Highly as he valued these ancient testimonies, they were not to take the place of the higher law inwardly revealed, which was and should be, the governing principle of our lives.
. . . Let us also not hesitate to declare it, and to speak the truth plainly as it is in Jesus, that we believe the time is come when this undue adherence to outward authorities, or to any forms of baptism or of communion of church or sabbath worship, should give place to more practical goodness among men, more love manifested one unto another in our every day life, doing good and ministering to the wants and interests of our fellow beings the world over. If we fully believe this, should we be most honest, did we so far seek to please men, more than to please God, as to fail to utter in our meetings, and whenever we feel called upon to do so in our conversation . . . and to exhibit by example, by a life of non-conformity, in accordance with these views, that we have faith and confidence in our convictions?
. . . I desire to speak so as to be understood, and trust there are among you ears blessed that they hear, and that these principles shall be received as the Gospel of the blessed son of God. Happy shall they be, who by observing these, shall come to be divested of the traditions and superstitions which have been clinging to them, leading them to erect an altar “to the unknown God.”
Full text of this message is at this page.
Several other posts on Progressive Friends include:
> A 19th century Virginia Friend’s lessons for us today.
> Living with & Writing about Progressive Friends.
> Early origins of the Progressive Friends movement.
> Progressive Friends & Spiritualism.
A Radio interview about Progressive Friends (25 minutes):
A Social Justice poem published by Progressive Friends
Related
A Progressive Quaker Message from Lucretia MottJanuary 2, 2018In “Cross-Generational Conversation: YAFS & OFFs”
Lucretia Mott's Birthday Secret: No Woman Is an Island?January 3, 2018In “Black & White & Other Colors”
Lucretia Mott & The Wild Chase SceneMarch 3, 2017In “Hard-Core Quaker”
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ONE THOUGHT ON “A PROGRESSIVE QUAKER SERMON – BY LUCRETIA MOTT”
Joan KindlerMARCH 11, 2017 AT 2:16 PM
I have read this once. I will read it again…and perhaps many times. This woman was intelligent, insightful and I will research and read as much as I can. When George fox said there was that of God in everyone. what other “sermon”echos this truth . Jesus could not have said it better…It follows the teachings of Jesus as if heard for the first time. Becoming a Quaker over 40
year ago has given me spurts of growth and moments of revelations. This is a moment. Truth exists and is powerfully told by many men and women who have been given the gift to express this Truth in different but amazing ways.
Lucretia Mott’s Quaker Easter Message, Still Good the Day After - A Friendly Letter
Lucretia Mott’s Quaker Easter Message, Still Good the Day After - A Friendly Letter
LUCRETIA MOTT’S QUAKER EASTER MESSAGE, STILL GOOD THE DAY AFTER
APRIL 22, 2019
CHUCK FAGER 4 COMMENTS
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Some years ago, a Friend who was much taken with what she believed was Quakerism’s essential, and defining character as a kind of mysticism, approached me. Knowing of my admiration for Lucretia mott, she asked if she should add Lucretia to her list of the great Quaker mystics.
Nope. Quite the contrary, I told her. In truth, Lucretia would in fact all-but head the list of the great anti-mystics of Quaker history. And as Lucretia’s motto was, “Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth,” it would be untruthful say otherwise.
I don’t know what happened to that Friend’s list. But before all the folderol and sugar high of Easter weekend dissipates, it may be worth taking a few moments to consider Lucretia’s convictions on the seasonal fanfare.
In short, she had no truck with Easter; the whole thing left her cold, not only the churchly hoopla, but even more the theology it embodied. Repeatedly she expressed a sentiment that she put in an 1841 letter to Friends in Ireland:
“. . . as to theology, I am sick of disputes on that subject; though I cannot say just as my husband has–that he ‘doesn’t care a fig about it’–for I do want those I love to see their way out of the darkness and error with which they are surrounded. Moreover, I think there is so much harm done by teaching the doctrine of human depravity and dependence on a vicarious atonement, that I feel constrained to call on all, everywhere, to yield such a mistaken and paralyzing dogma (emphasis mine).” (Hallowell 209)
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Some years ago, a Friend who was much taken with what she believed was Quakerism’s essential, and defining character as a kind of mysticism, approached me. Knowing of my admiration for Lucretia mott, she asked if she should add Lucretia to her list of the great Quaker mystics.
Nope. Quite the contrary, I told her. In truth, Lucretia would in fact all-but head the list of the great anti-mystics of Quaker history. And as Lucretia’s motto was, “Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth,” it would be untruthful say otherwise.
I don’t know what happened to that Friend’s list. But before all the folderol and sugar high of Easter weekend dissipates, it may be worth taking a few moments to consider Lucretia’s convictions on the seasonal fanfare.
In short, she had no truck with Easter; the whole thing left her cold, not only the churchly hoopla, but even more the theology it embodied. Repeatedly she expressed a sentiment that she put in an 1841 letter to Friends in Ireland:
“. . . as to theology, I am sick of disputes on that subject; though I cannot say just as my husband has–that he ‘doesn’t care a fig about it’–for I do want those I love to see their way out of the darkness and error with which they are surrounded. Moreover, I think there is so much harm done by teaching the doctrine of human depravity and dependence on a vicarious atonement, that I feel constrained to call on all, everywhere, to yield such a mistaken and paralyzing dogma (emphasis mine).” (Hallowell 209)
And in various formulations, that notion of depravity and the vicarious atonement for it by Jesus’ death and reported resurrection, is what the whole traditional Christian Easter event and story is about:
Humans are bound for hell, all of us, and human efforts are helpless to escape that fate.
Only an act of God can head it off, and so Jesus, being God and man, sacrificed himself and “atoned” (or “paid for”) this vast human “debt” of sin. Thereby God stayed His condemning hand, forgave humanity, and as as sign of it brought Jesus back to life on Easter.
Don’t ask me to explain all this; there are libraries of weighty tomes devoted to it. The point here is that Lucretia Mott completely rejected this whole scenario, decrying the “harm done” by it.
Yet she seemed devoted to Jesus. She quoted his words incessantly, affirmed his “messianic status,” and thought she was preaching his “gospel” message during her sixty controversial years as a Quaker preacher.
But if Jesus’ “gospel” was not about depravity and vicarious blood atonement, what did Lucretia say it was?
Scholar Priscilla Eppinger has put it in a nutshell: Salvation for humans would come through the faith of Christ, not faith in Christ. By this, Mott meant a faith like that of Jesus. She quoted from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (2:20):
“Faith of Jesus Christ is faith in the truth, faith in God and in man. The life that I now live in the flesh, said the Apostle, I live by the faith of the son of God. . . . Well [Mott added] what is this other than a faith similar to that which Jesus held, the faith of the son of God.” (Greene 124)
The faith of Christ, not faith in Christ. Neither Eppinger nor Lucretia originated this alternate motto. And what was this “faith”?
The chief sayings of Jesus that respond to this query are two: First, from Luke 4:
[14] And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee . . . .
[16] And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read.
[17] And there was delivered unto him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
[18]“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind;
to let the oppressed go free,
[19] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
[20] And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
[21] And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
[Keep in mind that after he said this, the locals ran him out of town and tried to kill him. But I digress.]
The second passage is from Matthew 25, describing a vision of the last judgment, and explaining why some will be going to “heaven”:
37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?
39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”
To which could also be added the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
Thus, for Mott, Jesus’ “gospel” was a call to do justice, free the oppressed, tend to the poor and suffering, and build a loving and just community. And for Mott, his example of enacting this call was complete, making him a messianic (saving) figure for real living people, and an ideal, an archetype, for those who came after. The best of those who followed, be they male or female, Christian or not (including non-theists), could not only carry on this “saving” work, but also become “messiahs of their age,” leading many into “the Kingdom of Heaven,” not in the sky, but on earth.
Even Jesus’ death, a trumped-up execution, was part of the pattern: she had seen many face death in similar causes; she knew her Quaker martyrology; she had walked in the shadow of that valley herself not a few times. He (and they) were “resurrected” in the lives of their successors.
Note that none of these gospel passages includes or depends on belief in any set of doctrines or notions of divine “atonement,” or miracles or heavenly interventions.
Lucretia and her message faced opposition in many quarters, often intense, and especially from the ruling ministers and elders. When she visited the Indiana Hicksite Yearly Meeting in 1844, after a days-long jouncy coach ride, she was met by a delegation of ministers & elders who told her to turn round and go home.
When she refused to do that, they then insisted that if she sat in any of the body’s sessions, she must keep quiet.
She declined to follow this command as well.
But the next year, the The Clerk of that Yearly Meeting, John T. Plummer, struck back, by issuing an “Admonitory Appeal” to members over his signature. It showed how angry Mott’s appearance and message had made him:
But who are these that are running to and fro in the earth, in their own time, and will, and strength; babbling of temperance, and non-resistance, and slavery, and benevolence, and communities, and the scriptures, and the sabbath, and woman’s rights? These are the thieves that cannot abide the way of humility and the cross, but climb up some other way, and steal the testimonies of Jesus, and are lifted up in their self-sufficiency . . . .
“Oh! seriously consider, friends, what it is to assume the prerogative of the Most High! Keep [i.e., stay] at home; be still in your minds; wait upon him; and whatsoever he bids you do, that in meekness do; and your reward will be with him. But go not after the Beast of many heads and many horns; even though some of them should be like the head of a lamb; it is but one of the many forms of the heads of the beast, that would fain deceive the very elect.
And what if we should say, that this head, that is like the head of a lamb, has deceived many, and it has even now written upon its forehead, ‘PROGRESS, MORAL SUASION; but its heart is puffed up with presumption, and in it is written SELF-SUFFICIENCY, and even BLASPHEMY against the Most High.’
“. . . It is He [God], and not man [or woman], that governs . . . . Then who art thou, oh! man! worm of the dust! Dead leaf of the forest, driven to and fro by the wind! That thou undertakest to reform the world! Art thou greater than He who created thee?”
Many other efforts were made to silence and disown Mott and like-minded Friends; I have documented several aimed specifically at her. But she was too nimble a Quaker politician, and they never managed to snare her.
Instead, Mott kept delivering her non-miraculous, non-mystical gospel; in her ”home” meeting in September 1849 she declared,
“This creed based upon the assumption of human depravity and completed by a vicarious atonement–connected with a belief in mysteries and miracles as essential to salvation–forms a substitute for that faith which works by love and which purifies the heart, leading us into communion with God and teaching us to live in the cultivation of benevolence, to visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction and to entertain charitable feelings one unto another.” (Greene 97)
She considered any such faith or religion which hindered the living out of God’s will to be false religion. A faith like that of Jesus would lead each person toward their own divinity as each lived into the increasing fullness of God’s reign.
Mott also rejected the special God-Man status orthodoxy conferred on Jesus. Instead, she looked on those, women as well as men, who acted out what she called the “practical” vision of God’s kingdom in later eras as equally children of God, themselves as much potential new messiahs as Jesus. In March 1869 she stated,
I look to this class [reformers] for such changes in the commercial world, in the monetary system of the country, in all the relations of capital and labor, in all the influences around us–. . . to remove the terrible oppression, the terrible wrongs which so large a part of our fellow human beings in this and other lands are groaning under, . . . I say the only means I know of appointed by God in any age of the world, is the faithfulness of His children, the obedience of those who are sent, the Sons [& daughters] of Him in every age, the Messiahs of their age, who have gone forth proclaiming greater liberty, greater truths to mankind, greater duty for that entire community. (Greene 335-6)
So this is Lucretia Mott’s Quaker Easter message. Like it or not, it seems to me to have lost little relevance 140 years after her death in 1880.
And it’s worth considering the day after; or even the day before.
==============
A footnote on sources:
James & Lucretia Mott, Life & Letters, by Anna Davis Hallowell, 1884. Online here at archive.org
Greene, Dana, ed. Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980. (Not online.)
Eppinger, Priscilla Elaine. Messiahs of Every Age: A Theological Basis of Nineteenth-century Social Reform. Quaker Theology #10, Spring-Summer 2004
Fager, Chuck. Lucretia Mott, Liberal Quaker Theologian. Quaker Theology #10, Spring-Summer 2004.
Related
Lucretia Mott's Birthday Secret: No Woman Is an Island?January 3, 2018In “Black & White & Other Colors”
A Progressive Quaker Message from Lucretia MottJanuary 2, 2018In “Cross-Generational Conversation: YAFS & OFFs”
A Progressive Quaker Sermon - By Lucretia MottApril 20, 2014In “Hard-Core Quaker”
Humans are bound for hell, all of us, and human efforts are helpless to escape that fate.
Only an act of God can head it off, and so Jesus, being God and man, sacrificed himself and “atoned” (or “paid for”) this vast human “debt” of sin. Thereby God stayed His condemning hand, forgave humanity, and as as sign of it brought Jesus back to life on Easter.
Don’t ask me to explain all this; there are libraries of weighty tomes devoted to it. The point here is that Lucretia Mott completely rejected this whole scenario, decrying the “harm done” by it.
Yet she seemed devoted to Jesus. She quoted his words incessantly, affirmed his “messianic status,” and thought she was preaching his “gospel” message during her sixty controversial years as a Quaker preacher.
But if Jesus’ “gospel” was not about depravity and vicarious blood atonement, what did Lucretia say it was?
Scholar Priscilla Eppinger has put it in a nutshell: Salvation for humans would come through the faith of Christ, not faith in Christ. By this, Mott meant a faith like that of Jesus. She quoted from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (2:20):
“Faith of Jesus Christ is faith in the truth, faith in God and in man. The life that I now live in the flesh, said the Apostle, I live by the faith of the son of God. . . . Well [Mott added] what is this other than a faith similar to that which Jesus held, the faith of the son of God.” (Greene 124)
The faith of Christ, not faith in Christ. Neither Eppinger nor Lucretia originated this alternate motto. And what was this “faith”?
The chief sayings of Jesus that respond to this query are two: First, from Luke 4:
[14] And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee . . . .
[16] And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read.
[17] And there was delivered unto him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
[18]“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind;
to let the oppressed go free,
[19] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
[20] And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
[21] And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
[Keep in mind that after he said this, the locals ran him out of town and tried to kill him. But I digress.]
The second passage is from Matthew 25, describing a vision of the last judgment, and explaining why some will be going to “heaven”:
37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?
39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”
To which could also be added the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
Thus, for Mott, Jesus’ “gospel” was a call to do justice, free the oppressed, tend to the poor and suffering, and build a loving and just community. And for Mott, his example of enacting this call was complete, making him a messianic (saving) figure for real living people, and an ideal, an archetype, for those who came after. The best of those who followed, be they male or female, Christian or not (including non-theists), could not only carry on this “saving” work, but also become “messiahs of their age,” leading many into “the Kingdom of Heaven,” not in the sky, but on earth.
Even Jesus’ death, a trumped-up execution, was part of the pattern: she had seen many face death in similar causes; she knew her Quaker martyrology; she had walked in the shadow of that valley herself not a few times. He (and they) were “resurrected” in the lives of their successors.
Note that none of these gospel passages includes or depends on belief in any set of doctrines or notions of divine “atonement,” or miracles or heavenly interventions.
Lucretia and her message faced opposition in many quarters, often intense, and especially from the ruling ministers and elders. When she visited the Indiana Hicksite Yearly Meeting in 1844, after a days-long jouncy coach ride, she was met by a delegation of ministers & elders who told her to turn round and go home.
When she refused to do that, they then insisted that if she sat in any of the body’s sessions, she must keep quiet.
She declined to follow this command as well.
But the next year, the The Clerk of that Yearly Meeting, John T. Plummer, struck back, by issuing an “Admonitory Appeal” to members over his signature. It showed how angry Mott’s appearance and message had made him:
But who are these that are running to and fro in the earth, in their own time, and will, and strength; babbling of temperance, and non-resistance, and slavery, and benevolence, and communities, and the scriptures, and the sabbath, and woman’s rights? These are the thieves that cannot abide the way of humility and the cross, but climb up some other way, and steal the testimonies of Jesus, and are lifted up in their self-sufficiency . . . .
“Oh! seriously consider, friends, what it is to assume the prerogative of the Most High! Keep [i.e., stay] at home; be still in your minds; wait upon him; and whatsoever he bids you do, that in meekness do; and your reward will be with him. But go not after the Beast of many heads and many horns; even though some of them should be like the head of a lamb; it is but one of the many forms of the heads of the beast, that would fain deceive the very elect.
And what if we should say, that this head, that is like the head of a lamb, has deceived many, and it has even now written upon its forehead, ‘PROGRESS, MORAL SUASION; but its heart is puffed up with presumption, and in it is written SELF-SUFFICIENCY, and even BLASPHEMY against the Most High.’
“. . . It is He [God], and not man [or woman], that governs . . . . Then who art thou, oh! man! worm of the dust! Dead leaf of the forest, driven to and fro by the wind! That thou undertakest to reform the world! Art thou greater than He who created thee?”
Many other efforts were made to silence and disown Mott and like-minded Friends; I have documented several aimed specifically at her. But she was too nimble a Quaker politician, and they never managed to snare her.
Instead, Mott kept delivering her non-miraculous, non-mystical gospel; in her ”home” meeting in September 1849 she declared,
“This creed based upon the assumption of human depravity and completed by a vicarious atonement–connected with a belief in mysteries and miracles as essential to salvation–forms a substitute for that faith which works by love and which purifies the heart, leading us into communion with God and teaching us to live in the cultivation of benevolence, to visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction and to entertain charitable feelings one unto another.” (Greene 97)
She considered any such faith or religion which hindered the living out of God’s will to be false religion. A faith like that of Jesus would lead each person toward their own divinity as each lived into the increasing fullness of God’s reign.
Mott also rejected the special God-Man status orthodoxy conferred on Jesus. Instead, she looked on those, women as well as men, who acted out what she called the “practical” vision of God’s kingdom in later eras as equally children of God, themselves as much potential new messiahs as Jesus. In March 1869 she stated,
I look to this class [reformers] for such changes in the commercial world, in the monetary system of the country, in all the relations of capital and labor, in all the influences around us–. . . to remove the terrible oppression, the terrible wrongs which so large a part of our fellow human beings in this and other lands are groaning under, . . . I say the only means I know of appointed by God in any age of the world, is the faithfulness of His children, the obedience of those who are sent, the Sons [& daughters] of Him in every age, the Messiahs of their age, who have gone forth proclaiming greater liberty, greater truths to mankind, greater duty for that entire community. (Greene 335-6)
So this is Lucretia Mott’s Quaker Easter message. Like it or not, it seems to me to have lost little relevance 140 years after her death in 1880.
And it’s worth considering the day after; or even the day before.
==============
A footnote on sources:
James & Lucretia Mott, Life & Letters, by Anna Davis Hallowell, 1884. Online here at archive.org
Greene, Dana, ed. Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980. (Not online.)
Eppinger, Priscilla Elaine. Messiahs of Every Age: A Theological Basis of Nineteenth-century Social Reform. Quaker Theology #10, Spring-Summer 2004
Fager, Chuck. Lucretia Mott, Liberal Quaker Theologian. Quaker Theology #10, Spring-Summer 2004.
Related
Lucretia Mott's Birthday Secret: No Woman Is an Island?January 3, 2018In “Black & White & Other Colors”
A Progressive Quaker Message from Lucretia MottJanuary 2, 2018In “Cross-Generational Conversation: YAFS & OFFs”
A Progressive Quaker Sermon - By Lucretia MottApril 20, 2014In “Hard-Core Quaker”
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4 THOUGHTS ON “LUCRETIA MOTT’S QUAKER EASTER MESSAGE, STILL GOOD THE DAY AFTER”
Tom CostelloAPRIL 22, 2019 AT 3:01 PM
Thanks, Chuck, for reminding us how Friend Lucretia perservered.
REPLY
Pat FateneauAPRIL 22, 2019 AT 4:44 PM
Marcus Borg speaks of the pre-Easter Jesus. The Jesus before the scribes assigned all sorts of miracles to him so that Christianity would appeal to the masses For the first time, I felt like I could embrace this Jesus
REPLY
Rex SprouseAPRIL 22, 2019 AT 5:09 PM
A perennial frustration for me: Many contemporary Quakers are so unfamiliar with Quaker religious thought over the centuries that they assume that “Christianity” equals beliefs like Substitutionary Atonement, the Virgin Birth, “accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior,” etc., etc. How many Quakers today believe that the Quaker religion and the Quaker way of life represent (or should represent) Primitive Christianity revived?
REPLY
Joan KindlerAPRIL 22, 2019 AT 6:47 PM
Thank you for the real meaning of Easter…I have never been comfortable with the “classic” story..so cruel…and think I have made the resurection a reaffirmation a symbol of God’s Love
Lucretia Mott 1849 sermon
Lucretia Mott sermon
delivered at the Cherry Street Meeting in Philadelphia,
September 30, 1849
----
It is time that Christians were judged more by their
likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ. Were this sentiment generally
admitted we should not see such tenacious adherence to what men deem the
opinions and doctrines of Christ while at the same time in every day practise
is exhibited anything but a likeness to Christ. My reflections in this meeting
have been upon the origin, parentage, and character of Jesus. I have thought we
might profitably dwell upon the facts connected with his life, his precepts,
and his practise in his walks among men.
Humble as was his birth, obscure as was his parentage,
little known as he seemed to be in his neighborhood and country, he has
astonished the world and brought a response from all mankind by the purity of
his precepts, the excellence of his example. Wherever that inimitable sermon on
the mount is read, let it be translated into any language and spread before the
people, there is an acknowledgement of its truth. When we come to judge the
sectarian professors of his name by the true test, how widely do their lives
differ from his?
Instead of going about doing good as was his wont, instead
of being constantly in the exercise of benevolence and love as was his
practice, we find the disposition too generally to measure the Christian by his
assent to a creed which had not its sign with him nor indeed in his day.
Instead of engaging in the exercise of peace, justice, and mercy, how many of
the professors are arrayed against him in opposition to those great principles even
as were his opposers in his day. Instead of being the bold nonconformist (if I
may so speak) that he was, they are adhering to old church usages, and worn-out
forms and exhibiting little of a Christ like disposition and character. Instead
of uttering the earnest protests against the spirit of proselytism and
sectarianism as did the blessed Jesus--the divine, the holy, the born of God,
there is the servile accommodation to this sectarian spirit and an observance
of those forms even long after there is any claim of virtue in them; a
disposition to use language which shall convey belief that in the inmost heart
of many they reject.
Is this honest, is this Christ like? Should Jesus again
appear and preach as he did round about Judea and Jerusalem and Galilee, these
high professors would be among the first to set him at naught, if not to resort
to the extremes which were resorted to in his day. There is no danger of this
now, however, because the customs of the age will not bear the bigot out in it,
but the spirit is manifest, which led martyrs to the stake, Jesus to the cross,
Mary Dyer to the gallows. This spirit is now showing itself in casting out the
name one of another, as evil, in brother delivering up brother unto sectarian
death. We say if Jesus should again appear--He *is* here; he *has* appeared,
from generation to generation and his spirit is now as manifest, in the humble,
the meek, the bold reformers, even among some of obscure parentage.
His spirit is now going up and down among men seeking their
good, and endeavoring to promote the benign and holy principles of peace,
justice, and love. And blessing to the merciful, to the peacemaker, to the pure
in heart, and the poort in spirit, to the just, the upright, to those who
desire righteousness is earnestly proclaimed, by these messengers of the
Highest who are now in our midst. These, the preachers of righteousness, are no
more acknowledged by the same calss of people than was the messiah to the Jews.
They are the anointed of God, the inspired preachers and writers and believers
of the present time. In the pure example which they exhibit to the nations,
they are emphatically the beloved sons of God.
It is, my friends, my mission to declare these things among
you at the hazard of shocking many prejudices. The testimony of the chosen
servants of the Highest in our day is equally divine inspiration with the
inspired teaching of those in former times. It is evidence of the superstition
of our age, that we can adhere to, Yea that, we can bow with profound veneration
to the records of an Abraham, the sensualist Solomon, and the warlike David,
inspired though they many have been, and I am not disposed to doubt it, more
than to the equal inspiration of the writers of the present age. Why not
acknowledge the inspiration of many of the poets of succeeding ages, as well as
of Deborah and Miriam in their songs of victory of Job and David in their
beautiful poetry and psalms, or of Isaiah and Jeremiah in their scorching
rebukes and mournful lamentations?
These are beautifully
instructive but ought they to command our veneration more than the divine
poetic language of many, very many, since their day, who have uttered truth
equally precious? Truth speaks the same language in every age of the world and
is equally valuable to us. Are we so blindly superstitious as to reject the one
and adhere to the other? How much does this society lose by this undue
veneration to ancient authorities, a want of equal respect to the living
inspired testimonies of latter time? Christianity requires that we bring into
view the apostles of succeeding generations, that we acknowledge their
apostleship and give the right hand of fellowship to those who have been and
who are sent forth of God with Great truths to declare before the people; and also
to practice lives of righteousness, exceeding the righteousness of the scribes
and pharisees, and even of the chosen ones of former times.
The people in their childish and dark state, just emerging
out of barbarism, were not prepared to exhibit all those great principles in
the near approach to fullness, to the perfection that is called for at our
hands. There is this continued advance toward perfection from age to age. The
records of our predecessors give evidence of such progress. When I quote the language
of William Penn, "it is time for Christians to be judged more by their
likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ," I offer the sentiment of
one who is justly held in great regard if not veneration by this people, and
whose writings may be referred to with as much profit as those of the servants
of God in former ages; and we may well respect the memory of him and his
contemporaries as well as of many not limited to our religious society, who
have borne testimony to the truth.
It is of importance to us, also, to speak of those whom we
know, those whose characters we have fuller acquaintance with, than we can have
with such as lived in ages past, that we should bring into view the lives of
the faithful of our generation.
Jesus bore his testimony--doing always the things which
pleased his Father. He lived his meek, his humble and useful life--drawing his
disciples around him, and declaring great truths to the people who gathered to
hear him.
His apostles and their successors were faithful in their day-going
out into the world, and shaking the nations around them. Reformers since their
time have done their work in exposing error and wrong, and calling for priests
of righteousness in place of vain forms. The bold utterances of Elias Hicks and
his contemporaries aroused the sectarian and theological world in our day.
Their demand for a higher righteousness was not in vain. Their examples of
self-denials and faithfulness to duty should be held up for imitation. We
overestimate those who have lived and labored in days long past, while we value
not sufficiently the labors of those around us, who may have as high a
commission as had their predecessors.
Let us not hesitate to regard the utterance of truth in our
age, as of equal value with that which is recorded in the scriptures. None can
revere more than I do the truths of the Bible. I have read it perhaps as much
as any one present, and, I trust, with profit. It has at times been more to me
than my daily food. When an attempt was made some twenty years ago to engraft
some church dogmas upon this society, claiming this book for authority, it led
me to examine, and compare text with the content. In so doing I became so much
interested that I scarcely noted the passage of time. Even to this day, when I
open this volume, so familiar is almost every chapter that I can sometimes
scarcely lay it aside from the interest I feel in its beautiful pages.
But I should be recreant to the principle, did I not say,
the great error in Christendom is in regarding these scriptures taken as a
whole as the plenary inspiration of God, and their authority as supreme. I
consider this as Elias Hicks did one of the greatest drawbacks, one of the
greatest barriers to human progress that there is in the religious world, for
while this volume is held as it is, and, by a resort to it, war, and slavery,
wine drinking, and other cruel, oppressive, and degrading evils are sustained,
pleading the example of the ancients as authority it serves as a check to human
progress, as an obstacle in the way of these great and glorious reformers that
are now upon the field. Well did that servant of God, Elias Hicks, warn the
people against an undue veneration of the Bible, or of any human authority, any
written record or outward testimony. The tendency of his ministry was to lead
the mind to the divine teacher, the sublime ruler, that all would find within
themselves, which was above men's teaching, human records, or outward
authorities.
Highly as he valued these ancient testimonies, they were
not to take the place of the higher law inwardly revealed, which was and should
be, the governing principle of our lives. One of our early friends, Richard
Davies, attended a meeting of the independents, and heard the preacher express
the sentiment that the time would come when Christians would have no more need
of the Bible than of any other book. He remarked on this saying of the
preacher, "Hast thou not experienced that time already come." Does
not this imply, or may we not infer from this, that our worthy friend has
experienced that time already come; was it a greater heresy, than that uttered
by the apostle Paul, when he declared that those who had known a birth into the
gospel, had no more need of the law? that they were under a higher dispensation
than were they who were bound by their statutes and ceremonies?
Let us also not hesitate to declare it, and to speak the
truth plainly as it is in Jesus, that we believe the time is come when this
undue adherence to outward authorities, or to any forms of baptism or of communion
of church or sabbath worship, should give place to more practical goodness
among men, more love manifested one unto another in our every day life, doing
good and ministering to the wants and interests of our fellow beings the world
over. If we fully believe this, should we be most honest, did we so far seek to
please men, more than to please God, as to fail to utter in our meetings, and
whenever we feel called upon to do so in our conversation, in our writings, and
to exhibit by example, by a life of non-conformity, in accordance with these
views, that we have faith and confidence in our convictions?
It needs, my friends, in this day that one should go forth
saying neither baptism profiteth anything nor non-baptism, but faith which
worketh by love, neither the ordinance of the communion table profiteth
anything, nor the absence from the same, but faith which worketh by love. These
things should never be regarded as the test of the worshipper. Neither your
sabbath observance profiteth anything, nor the non-observance of the day, but
faith with worketh by love. Let all these subjects be held up in their true
light. Let them be plainly spoken of-- and let our lives be in accordance with
our convictions of right, each striving to carry out our principles. Then
obscure though we may be, lost sight of almost, in the great and pompous
religious associations of the day, we yet shall have our influence and it will
be felt. Why do we wish it to be felt? Because we believe it is the testimony
of truth, and our duty to spread it far and wide. Because the healthful growth
of the people requires that they should come away from their vain oblations,
and settle upon the ground of obedience to the requirings of truth.
I desire to speak so as to be understood, and trust there
are among you ears blessed that they hear, and that these principles shall be
received as the Gospel of the blessed son of God. Happy shall they be, who by
observing these, shall come to be divested of the traditions and superstitions
which have been
clinging to them, leading them to erect an altar "to
the unknown God."
In the place of this shall an altar be raised where on may
be oblations of God's own preparing. Thus may these approach our Father in
Heaven and hold communion with him--entering his courts with thanksgiving, and
his gates with praise, even though there may be no oral expression. He may
unite in prayer and in praise, which will ascend as sweet incense, and the
blessing will come which we can scarcely contain.
[Reprinted with the kind permission of the Friends
Historical
Library, Swarthmore College]
A Progressive Quaker Message from Lucretia Mott - A Friendly Letter
A Progressive Quaker Message from Lucretia Mott - A Friendly Letter
A PROGRESSIVE QUAKER MESSAGE FROM LUCRETIA MOTT
JANUARY 2, 2018 CHUCK FAGER 1 COMMENT
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“Truth for authority, not authority for truth.”
Lucretia Mott, considered at the time of her death in 1880 to be the “greatest American woman of the nineteenth century” by many of her contemporaries, was a Quaker abolitionist, women’s rights activist and social reformer. She was also a key figure in an important insurgent movement of Progressive Friends. Her messages and actions are very pertinent today – and laid much of the foundation for the current women’s movement.
Thursday First Month (January) 3, 2019, will mark Lucretia’s 226th birthday.
What message would she have for us if she were here today?
HINT: She’d likely tell us we’re in deep trouble and should get up and get busy. (She’d say it nicely, but urgently).
In fact, her message might sound like this . . .
NOTE: The address excerpted below is more “theological” than activist (she wouldn’t much like the term “theological,” but it fits.) There was not much distinction between them for Lucretia.
PS. Lucretia never prepared her messages, spoke only when she felt moved, and did not write them down. We have this one (and others) only because stenographers were sent in to take them down by shorthand. Sometimes this was to preserve them for admirers; other times it was to gain ammunition for having her disciplined or even disowned (YES, there were several such attempts). The latter efforts did not succeed; but I’m grateful for the record anyway.
Lucretia Mott (1793 – 1880)1849: Lucretia Mott– From “Likeness to Christ” – A sermon delivered at the Cherry Street Meeting in Philadelphia – Ninth Month 30, 1849
It is time that Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ. Were this sentiment generally admitted we should not see such tenacious adherence to what men deem the opinions and doctrines of Christ while at the same time in every day practice is exhibited anything but a likeness to Christ.
My reflections in this meeting have been upon the origin, parentage, and character of Jesus. I have thought we might profitably dwell upon the facts connected with his life, his precepts, and his practice in his walks among men. Humble as was his birth, obscure as was his parentage, little known as he seemed to be in his neighborhood and country, he has astonished the world and brought a response from all mankind by the purity of his precepts, the excellence of his example. Wherever that inimitable sermon on the mount is read, let it be translated into any language and spread before the people, there is an acknowledgement of its truth. When we come to judge the sectarian professors of his name by the true test, how widely do their lives differ from his?
Instead of going about doing good as was his wont, instead of being constantly in the exercise of benevolence and love as was his practice, we find the disposition too generally to measure the Christian by his assent to a creed which had not its sign with him nor indeed in his day. Instead of engaging in the exercise of peace, justice, and mercy, how many of the professors are arrayed against him in opposition to those great principles even as were his opposers in his day. Instead of being the bold nonconformist (if I may so speak) that he was, they are adhering to old church usages, and worn-out forms and exhibiting little of a Christ like disposition and character.
Instead of uttering the earnest protests against the spirit of proselytism and sectarianism as did the blessed Jesus–the divine, the holy, the born of God, there is the servile accommodation to this sectarian spirit and an observance of those forms even long after there is any claim of virtue in them; a disposition to use language which shall convey belief that in the inmost heart of many they reject.
Is this honest, is this Christ like? Should Jesus again appear and preach as he did round about Judea and Jerusalem and Galilee, these high professors would be among the first to set him at naught, if not to resort to the extremes which were resorted to in his day. There is no danger of this now, however, because the customs of the age will not bear the bigot out in it, but the spirit is manifest, which led martyrs to the stake, Jesus to the cross, Mary Dyer to the gallows. This spirit is now showing itself in casting out the name one [after] another, as evil, in brother delivering up brother unto sectarian death. We say if Jesus should again appear–He is here; he has appeared, from generation to generation and his spirit is now as manifest, in the humble, the meek, the bold reformers, even among some of obscure parentage.
His spirit is now going up and down among men seeking their good, and endeavoring to promote the benign and holy principles of peace, justice, and love. And blessing to the merciful, to the peacemaker, to the pure in heart, and the poor in spirit, to the just, the upright, to those who desire righteousness is earnestly proclaimed, by these messengers of the Highest who are now in our midst. These, the preachers of righteousness, are no more acknowledged by the same class of people than was the messiah to the Jews. They are the anointed of God, the inspired preachers and writers and believers of the present time. In the pure example which they exhibit to the nations, they are emphatically the beloved sons of God.
It is, my friends, my mission to declare these things among you at the hazard of shocking many prejudices. The testimony of the chosen servants of the Highest in our day is equally divine inspiration with the inspired teaching of those in former times. . . .
Let us not hesitate to regard the utterance of truth in our age, as of equal value with that which is recorded in the scriptures. None can revere more than I do the truths of the Bible. I have read it perhaps as much as any one present, and, I trust, with profit. It has at times been more to me than my daily food. When an attempt was made some twenty years ago to engraft some church dogmas upon this society, claiming this book for authority, it led me to examine, and compare text with the content. In so doing I became so much interested that I scarcely noted the passage of time.
Even to this day, when I open this volume, so familiar is almost every chapter that I can sometimes scarcely lay it aside from the interest I feel in its beautiful pages.
But I should be recreant to the principle, did I not say, the great error in Christendom is in regarding these scriptures taken as a whole as the plenary inspiration of God, and their authority as supreme. I consider this as Elias Hicks did one of the greatest drawbacks, one of the greatest barriers to human progress that there is in the religious world, for while this volume is held as it is, and, by a resort to it, war, and slavery, wine drinking, and other cruel, oppressive, and degrading evils are sustained, pleading the example of the ancients as authority it serves as a check to human progress, as an obstacle in the way of these great and glorious reformers that are now upon the field.
Well did that servant of God, Elias Hicks, warn the people against an undue veneration of the Bible, or of any human authority, any written record or outward testimony. The tendency of his ministry was to lead the mind to the divine teacher, the sublime ruler, that all would find within themselves, which was above men’s teaching, human records, or outward authorities. Highly as he valued these ancient testimonies, they were not to take the place of the higher law inwardly revealed, which was and should be, the governing principle of our lives.
. . . Let us also not hesitate to declare it, and to speak the truth plainly as it is in Jesus, that we believe the time is come when this undue adherence to outward authorities, or to any forms of baptism or of communion of church or sabbath worship, should give place to more practical goodness among men, more love manifested one unto another in our every day life, doing good and ministering to the wants and interests of our fellow beings the world over. If we fully believe this, should we be most honest, did we so far seek to please men, more than to please God, as to fail to utter in our meetings, and whenever we feel called upon to do so in our conversation . . . and to exhibit by example, by a life of non-conformity, in accordance with these views, that we have faith and confidence in our convictions?
. . . I desire to speak so as to be understood, and trust there are among you ears blessed that they hear, and that these principles shall be received as the Gospel of the blessed son of God. Happy shall they be, who by observing these, shall come to be divested of the traditions and superstitions which have been clinging to them, leading them to erect an altar “to the unknown God.”
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