MDMD Quakers & Pacifists

[Terrance]

"--so I guess I now I may kill anyone I like...?" Dixon, MD43

"--I am violent by nature." Dixon, MD.48

The Quakers were nonviolent resisters; that is, they regarded
nonviolence as an instrument of resistance to evil and ultimately as a
means of redemption. Optimists and reformers, Quakers were "worldly" in
the sense that they aspired to save the world, believing that one day
the Inner Light would illuminate all of humankind. Samuel Bownas, an
itinerant minister, explained in 1702 that Quakers "cannot think that
good and right" to kill "but rather endeavour to overcome our enemies
with courteous and friendly offices and kindness, and to assuage their
wrath by mildness and persuasion."

Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States, p.26

In the colonies Quakers were subjected to persecutions that included
hangings in        Puritan Boston. In the colony of Pennsylvania,
however, the "holy experiment" established in 1681 by William Penn
(16441718), they found a refuge and much more--a position as the ruling
faction. This Quaker commonwealth, one of the mildest and most liberal
regimes the world had ever seen, provided a haven for German sects that
settled on the frontier as well as a center of religious tolerance and
relatively humane dealing with Indian peoples.

Yet factional broils among the Quakers, contention with non-Quaker
newcomers, and rising demands for participation in imperial wars
steadily drained the life out of Quaker pacifism during the first half
of the eighteenth century, rendering it increasingly perfunctory and
expedient.

It was the task of purifying the Quaker peace commitment that inspired
the career of  John Woolman (17201772), the outstanding voice for
pacifism in early
America.  Unusual among religious pacifists, Woolman held that
Christian love required benevolent action on behalf of the oppressed.
Anticipating the emphasis on peacemaking and social justice assumed by
later generations of pacifists, Woolman spoke against slavery and
located the ultimate causes of war in greed and the lust for power.
Woolman was one of the dissidents who in 1755 urged that Pennsylvania
Quakers quit their Assembly seats rather than comply with demands for
taxes and troops generated by the French and Indian War (1754-1763).


As war began in 1754, Quaker leaders found it more and more difficult to
reconcile their social position with their religious beliefs.
One of those beliefs was pacifism. Most Quakers obeyed the biblical
order to submit to
the legitimate civil authority even though it meant agreeing to requests
from the government for money that would be used for war as well as for
peaceful purposes. In 1755, however, Gen. Edward Braddock was ambushed
by French and Indian forces at Fort Duquesne in western Pennsylvania.
This stunning defeat prompted the Pennsylvania assembly to take the
military initiative for the first time and vote for funds to raise a
militia and defend the frontier. Many Philadelphia Quakers, some of whom
saw Braddock's defeat as a sign of God's judgment  on their worldly
ways, developed a crisis of conscience. In 1755 several prominent
Quakers issued a statement supporting tax resistance on
religious grounds, one of the first signs of a deeper reform movement
within American Quakerism.

The reformers challenged those Quakers in the assembly to withdraw from
public affairs in order to limit  their involvement with the war and to
avoid contradicting their religious beliefs. Ten  members obeyed the
call by resigning or refusing to run for
reelection. Some would later  reenter the assembly, but after 1756 the
Quakers would never
have a majority in the  legislature again. The Quakers' withdrawal was
not only an
important step in religious   reform but also marked significant
political changes. Until
the Revolution, the political initiative in Pennsylvania would be taken
by the colony's
governor, or proprietor, who lived in England, because there was no
longer a powerful
enough group on the scene in  Philadelphia to control the political
process. The principles
the Quakers in the assembly had supported continued to be important, but
they were now
articulated by Benjamin  Franklin and his party of supporters rather
than by devout
Quakers, who mainly removed  themselves from politics to concentrate on
business and
religion.  Revolution. The growing conflict with Britain after the end
of the Seven Years' War  brought new problems to Quakers. One of the
basic beliefs of
the Society of Friends was  pacifism. The duty to testify to peace at
every opportunity
was taken seriously by most  Quakers and had been at the root of the
1755 withdrawal from
colonial government. As  the Stamp Act crisis began to move Americans
toward
independence, Quakers were  caught in the middle. At first Americans
pursued economic
measures, such as nonimportation, which at least some Quakers were
willing to
support as nonviolent.

Others objected to any form of resistance to the acknowledged
government, including
boycotts. The coming of actual war in 1775 made it even arder for
Quakers to
participate in the patriots' efforts even if they disagreed ith
Britain's actions. Most
Quakers refused to participate in the framing of the new state
governments forming after
1776 or to serve in the Continental Army or in the state militias. They
were criticized by
their neighbors for their principled stand against war and were fined
and punished by the
American governments. Quakers endured their sufferings and sought other
ways than fighting to share in the burden of war. In Boston and other
battle areas, for example, they offered medical help to the wounded on
both sides. The American Revolution was a civil  war in part, and it
divided Quakers just as it divided
other American groups. A significant minority of the Society of Friends
supported the American
cause and paid war taxes and  even did military service. For this, many
were disowned by
the Quaker communities

The abiding, exasperating challenge for American peace movements has
been to translate
promise into practice.

Peace movements have also been hobbled by their own exclusiveness,
expressed in many
forms of sectarianism and elitism. American peace advocates have
typically honored their
principles by defying belligerent public opinion rather than by trying
to convert it. In the
spirit of conscientious objection to the nation's wars, pacifists have
often elected to suffer
rather than to fight, to bear witness rather than to build mass
constituencies. Among them
the impulse to save the conscience from the pollutions of the world has
always been
strong. But in the long run peace reformers' failure to widen their
appeal by developing
practical alternatives to war making has certainly undercut their cause.
In the choice of
moral clarity and ostracism over political relevance, American pacifism
has resembled
Protestant ultraism, with which it was closely associated in the
nineteenth century, and
the political left, with which pacifism has grown affiliated in the
twentieth century. All of
these tendencies have reflected a sort of tribalism among peace seekers:
WE few against
the benighted, many of THEM.

The elitism of American peace movements has expressed itself in
persistent
antidemocratic class biases. Usually white, middle-class, and
well-educated, peace
reformers have tended to believe that peace principles can only trickle
down to workers,
people of color, and the poor, not originate within these groups. They
have been too
ready to assume that less privileged citizens are prone to violence, on
the theory that it
takes the civilizing effects of education and wealth to restrain the
pugnacity that is part of
human nature. In many of its phases peace witness, like temperance, has
been paraded as
a badge of moral superiority and superior social status. Few peace
organizations have
seriously attempted to attract working-class members.
The Vietnam antiwar movement bequeathed an ambiguous legacy to
subsequent peace
striving. It created a body of hundreds of thousands of activists, most
of them well
educated and middle class, who adapted what they learned from the
exhilarations and
frustrations of the 1960s to myriad commitments on behalf of peace and
social justice.
These people were the backbone of continuing peace organizations like
SANE/Freeze and
of new groups organized to protest American interventionist policies in
Central America
and the Middle East. These people made up much of the resistance to the
controversial
war policies of the administration of President George Bush in the
Persian Gulf in
1990-1991. Yet if the peace movement of the Vietnam period taught many
Americans
lasting antiwar lessons, it failed to retain the allegiance of potential
allies among the working class, the poor, and people of color.

Foot soldiers indeed. 



"Peace Movements." Encyclopedia of American Social History. 3 vols. 
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993.