Quaker Political Contribution:

From Governance to Advocacy

Friends held office in other colonies, although they were never as involved with the creation of colonial government as in West New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Ten Quakers served as governors for 35 terms during the first 100 years in Rhode Island, a period when half the colony's population were Friends. Quakers served as governors in Virginia and the Carolinas as well. Virtually every colonial assembly had Friends as elected members from the 1670s onwards.

QUAKER Stephen Hopkins (1707-1779) served as Governor of Rhode Island and as commissioner to the Colonial Congresses of 1754 to 1758. He wrote a series of articles, published and presented to the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1764, which explored the real basis and safeguards of self-government. This was considered by his contemporaries to be the most thoughtful analysis then yet produced in the colonies. He later signed the Declaration of Independence.

Quaker dominance in Pennsylvania government ended in 1754-56 (during the French and Indian War). At that time Friends in political office were forced to choose between voting to create a militia or resigning from their posts in protest to war and as a reaffirmation of Native American rights. Most Friends opted to resign, many feeling that holding office forced too great a compromise on issues of conscience on both the person and the congregation. This view was further cemented by the persecution Quakers suffered for their neutral stand during the American Revolution.

Despite a long period of withdrawal from politics, a number of Quakers in the 20th century stood for elected office and accepted appointment to high national office. They continue to do so.

THE Religious Society of Friends as a whole has sought new, creative ways to carry forward their concerns. Public forums, petitions, social and political lobbying and reform movements became the chosen methods for Quakers to continue their political ideals. Throughout the 19th century, these had coalesced around five main concerns which moved Friends to effect reforms first within their religion and then in the wider arena of American politics:

Ending Slavery

Fair Treatment of Native Americans

Women's Rights

Conflict Resolution

Relief for All Who Suffer

Friends expanded their efforts in the 20th century to include Civil Rights and Environmental Concerns. Work on these issues continues into the 21st century. Many of these efforts are being coordinated by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Quaker United Nations Office, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), the earliest religious lobbying organization in Washington, DC.

In the long run, lobbying for Friends was a more congenial method of influencing politics than electioneering.

- Frederick Tolles, Quaker historian

Ending Slavery -- Striving for Civil Rights

Germantown Friends' Protest against Slavery, 1688 (Excerpted)

These are the reasons why we are against the traffick of men-body, as followeth. ... There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience, wch is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body... . But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. ... Ah! doe consider well this thing, you who doe it, if you would be done at this manner? and if it is done according to Christianity?... Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries; separating housbands from their wives and children. Being now this is not done in the manner we would be done at therefore we contradict and are against this traffic of men-body. And we who profess that it is not lawful to steal, must, likewise, avoid to purchase such things as are stolen, but rather help to stop this robbing and stealing if possible.

Signed by:

Garret henderich
derick u de graeff
Francis daniell Pastorius
Abraham up Den graef

Beginning with the Germantown, Pennsylvania Meeting in 1688 and culminating in 1776 with all Quakers in the Philadelphia region, Friends gradually refused to own slaves. Quakers then worked to abolish all slavery and support equal rights for African Americans. Quakers played a significant role in founding the infant Republican Party because of its strong anti-slavery stand, were staunch supporters of Abraham Lincoln, and generally remained faithful to the Republican Party until at least the 1930s. During the 1950s, Quakers became increasingly active in the Civil Rights Movement and currently continue to work with and on behalf of disenfranchised populations both within the U.S. and abroad.

http://www.pym.org/exhibit/pics/49d.jpg
Executive Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 1851. Standing left to right: Mary Crew, Edward M. Davis, Haworth Wetherald, Abigail Kimber, Miller McKim, Sarah Pugh. Seated left to right: Oliver Johnson, Margaret Jones Burleigh, Benjamin C. Bacon, Robert Purvis, Lucretia Mott, James Mott.

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Quaker Bayard Rustin, a key player in every major civil rights initiative in the United States from the 1930s through the 1960s, with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement

Environmental Concerns

We are spiritually led in our efforts to mend the damage to our environment and all of life on this planet. Our major concerns include world population, ecological public policy, sustainable development, and the Friends' Testimony on simplicity as it relates to over-consumption and the welfare of the inhabitants of the earth.

- Ruah Swennerfelt, General Secretary, Friends Committee on Unity with Nature, 2000.

Relief for All Who Suffer

Quakers have been active in providing practical assistance to those suffering from poverty, discrimination, mental illness, incarceration, and the effects of war and natural disaster. They have also striven to effect improvement of institutions which service these populations. Particular care has been taken to offer humanitarian aid without regard to the politics of the participants.

True godliness don't turn men out of the world but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.

- William Penn, No Cross, No Crown

Conflict Resolution

From non-coercive actions abroad to the stemming of individual violence in families and communities, Quakers continue to press for peaceful measures to accomplish common goals.

We have to take responsibility in our own countries for the trade in weapons, which will continue unless we intensify our actions against it. ... Quakers have often taken a prophetic role in the past. We should be glad of the example of the slave abolitionists and remember their strength, their courage, their witness, and do likewise now.

- Jo Vallentine, Quaker Australian Senator, 1991

The Alternatives to Violence Program, developed by Quakers, is currently being practiced at sites within the U.S. and abroad, ranging from schools to prisons to war zones.

Women's Rights

THE FIRST CONVENTION Ever Called to Discuss the Civil and Political Rights of Women, Seneca Falls, N.Y., July 19, 20, 1848.

Woman's Rights Convention.

A Convention to discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., on Wednesday and Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July current; convening at 10 o'clock A.M. During the first day the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are earnestly invited to attend. The public generally are invited to be present on the second day, when Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia, and other ladies and gentlemen, will address the Convention.

Quaker women held equal rights within the Religious Society of Friends from its founding. Quaker lawmakers had granted some equity in property and personal rights. The long campaign for women's rights in America is highlighted by the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration (written by 5 women, 4 of whom were Quakers: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane C. Hunt, respectively). It continued through the campaign to vote led by Rochester Friend, Susan B. Anthony, and to the ERA Amendment written by New Jersey Quaker, Alice Paul.

Fair Treatment of Native Americans

The long testimony of Quakers on this subject was acknowledged when both President Washington and six Indian tribes asked Friends to send a delegation to be impartial and honest arbitrators at the first Indian treaty made by the fledgling US, the 1794 Canandaigua Treaty with the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora nations. Many Friends and Quaker organizations throughout the United States continue to work with and on behalf of Native Americans.

http://www.pym.org/exhibit/p0910.html

Of all the hypocritical, sanctimonious, Bolshevistic Christian sects, the Quakers could be the most annoying:

Turning to his relations with the indigenous peoples, Penn treated them with the respect that Quakers extended to all humans, based on their belief that each human being holds within him- or herself a spark of the divine inner light.

Also, the laws were applied equally to Europeans and natives; if a colonist injured or killed an Indian, he was punished as prescribed by the law covering the specific crme. There was no attitude of "It was only an Indian," because Penn and others like him saw the natives as just as human as Europeans, with the same basic human rights. This also gained the respect and trust of the First Americans.

" Though I desire to extend religious freedom yet I want some recompense for my trouble". To that end he became a real estate salesman on a grand scale, selling off huge tracts of land at knockdown prices.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080913060824AA4WW6P

As E. Michael Jones (http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/SlaughterReviews.html) shows, a Christianity without a theology is a crude exercise in peer pressure, perfect for enforcing cultural Marxism:

The ground rules for every social structure they invented had to honor a powerful and paradoxical pair of Quaker beliefs: each of us has an inner teacher that is an arbiter of truth, and each of us needs the give-and-take of community in order to hear that inner teacher speak. So Quaker social structures offer community to help a person discover the guidance that comes from within and ground rules to prevent that community from invading the individual’s inwardness with external agendas and advice.

The Quaker structure I have adapted for use with faculty is called the “clearness committee.” It sounds like a name from the ‘60s, and it is – the 1660s. It is a time-honored process that invites people to help each other with personal problems while practicing a discipline that protects the sanctity of the soul.

Suppose I am wrestling with an issue related to my teaching – from designing a course to be taught next semester to struggling with my anger about students who act up in class. (The former is the kind of problem that most teachers can explore together, because it requires only mild trust; the latter is the kind of issue that will be risked only by people who have real confidence in each other.”

With my problem in mind, I – the so-called focus person in this process – invite four or five colleagues to become members of my clearness committee. Before we meet, I write a few pages about the problem for my colleagues to read. My write-up can take any form, but it often helps to organize it under three headings: first, a clear statement of the nature of the problem itself; second, notes on its relevant background, such as prior situations in which I had a similar experience; and third, notes on its relevant foreground, on what I see on the horizon when I hold this problem in view – for example, that I find the problem so discouraging that I have thought about quitting my job.

People often report that the first step toward clearness comes with putting the problem on paper. Doing so forces us to winnow our feelings and facts, allowing the chaff to blow away and getting the issue outside of our heads, into the light of day, where problems often look different than when we recycle them endlessly through our fears and doubts.

Then the committee meets for two to three uninterrupted hours. Seated in a circle with the focus person, committee members practice the discipline of giving undivided attention to that person and his or her question. For two or three hours, the focus person becomes the great thing at the heart of this small version of the community of truth, the sacred subject, worthy of respect.

Undivided attention means letting the focus person, and his or her issue, be at the center of the circle without trying, as a committee member, to put yourself there. This means that committee members do not call attention to themselves by laughing uproariously when something funny happens or by rushing to comfort the focus person when he or she is feeling pain or by falsely uniting with his or her concern (“I know exactly how you feel”). Undivided attention means forgetting about yourself, and for just a couple of hours, acting as if you had no other purpose on earth than to care for this human being.

The meeting begins with the focus person briefly restating the issue. Then members of the committee begin their work, guided and constrained by the basic and nonnegotiable ground rule of this proceeding: members are forbidden to speak to the focus person in any way except to ask that person an honest, open question. The pace of the questioning must be slow – this is a discernment process, not a thesis defense or cross-examination. The focus person usually answers each question aloud but always has the right to pass, leading to the next question and response and the next and the next. By allowing ample silence between and response and the next question, the group keeps the process respectful and gentle.

The ground rule of questions only is simple, but its implications are demanding. It means no advice, no overidentification (“I had that problem once, and here is what I did”), no handing off the problem to someone else (“You ought to talk with X about this”), no suggestions of books to read, techniques to use, meditations to practice, therapists to see. Members of the committee may only ask the focus person honest, open questions – questions that do not promote the questioner’s agenda but help the focus person discover wisdom within.

Before a clearness committee convenes, we must remind each other what an honest, open question is, so skilled are we at posing questions that are really advice in disguise. If I ask, “Have you thought about seeing a therapist?” honesty probably requires me to tell you that in my opinion, you should see a therapist. My question cannot be honest and open if, even as I ask it, I am listening for a particular answer that I regard as “correct.” But if I ask, “Has this kind of thing ever happened to you before?” and if it has, “How did it make you feel?” my questions are probably open and honest. With questions of this sort, it is unlikely that I hope to hear any particular answer or believe that I know what the “right” answer is.

Over a two-hour period, this cycle of question and response can have remarkable cumulative effect. As the focus person speaks his or her truth, the layers of interference between that person and the inner teacher are slowly stripped away, allowing the person to hear more clearly the guidance that comes from within.

As the process unfolds, we are reminded of a simple truth: because we cannot get inside another person’s soul, we cannot possibly know the answer to another person’s problem. Indeed, we cannot even know exactly what the problem is. I am often reminded of this fact when I serve as a member of a clearness committee. Ten minutes into the proceedings, I feel certain that I know what is wrong with the focus person and how to fix it. But after two hours of attentive listening, I am appalled at my earlier arrogance. I see now that I did not understand – and even if I did, my abstract concept of the problem is meaningless until understanding arises within the person whose problem it is.

As a member of many clearness committees, I have been privileged to witness a remarkable thing: human beings in dialogue with their inner teachers. Watching the focus person in this setting provides the most vivid evidence I have ever seen that each of us has a teacher within – all we need are the conditions that allow us to listen, to speak, and to learn.

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:hkY1NqkPPQUJ:www.human-edu.net/LinkClick.aspx%3Ffileticket%3Dwpp8CXGTvvE%253D%26tabid%3D127%26mid%3D519%26language%3Den-US+quakers+%22radical+egalitarianism%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The public schools being so terribly Jewed, upscale whites willingly pay big money for their kids to imbibe the same dangerous poison in an artificially safer environment:

Diversity and Multiculturalism

Friends schools value and embrace the diversity of cultures and religions in their communities. The curricular approach in Friends education is committed to the rich diversity of multiple perspectives, cultivated through each student's voice engaged in inquiry. Friends schools continually review and change curricula in ways that are responsive to the current world context through studies with artistic and intellectual value that are culturally diverse.

Service Learning

The Friends Council on Education affirms that outreach and service learning are embedded in the curricula of Friends schools. Through the civic engagement of service learning, students build and value relationships with others so that an appreciation of the similarities and differences across humanity can be experienced. Students gain an awareness of the world beyond their immediate environment, have exposure to broad societal issues, develop compassion for those struggling under difficult circumstances, cultivate an ability to view problems from a variety of perspectives, and recognize their own capacity to actively make a difference in the world.

World Citizenry

The Friends Council on Education affirms that Friends schools teach values for world citizenry including the love of freedom, religious tolerance, democracy, respect for human dignity, respect for diversity and work to improve the lives of the oppressed. Following Quaker principles, Friends schools seek to incorporate those values into the life and culture of the school, rather than represent them in symbols and rote recitations.

http://friendscouncil.org/Library/InfoManage/Guide.asp?FolderID=383&SessionID={529C2744-E922-423E-99A7-CF71B118231E}&SP=2

I have never heard of or encountered a coloured Quaker ?
Are these blighters pushing a do as we say not as we do philosophy ?

Are these blighters pushing a do as we say not as we do philosophy ?

Why of course! Quakers worked tirelessly to integrate ethnic working class city neighborhoods and the first-tier suburbs where middle class whites were trying to flee the niggers. But when it came to the wealthy "Main Line" suburbs of Philadelphia where the Quakers themselves lived, they circulated petitions (peer pressure) against selling to blacks.