[lit-ideas] What about those Quakers?
- From: Austin Meredith <Kouroo@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 07:36:14 -0400
I should probably be the one to respond to this, spilling the beans on the
Quakers, since I'm the list Quaker:
>The Quakers have managed to maintain a belief and practice in
>uncompromising pacifisms. I think that's true, although I've heard
>it said somewhere that the Quakers in Pennsylvania would hire
>non-Quakers to protect them from Indians (kill them, that is)
>much as Renaissance Catholic rulers hired Jews to do their banking.
>Is this true? Can anyone out there save mefrom having to research
>this out myself -- you know I'll never do it, so come on,
>spill the beans on the Quakers.
I'll take this a point at a time:
>The Quakers have managed to maintain a belief and practice in
>uncompromising pacifisms.
Well, yes and no. There are different Quakers and as always your mileage
may vary. During the Revolutionary War, for instance, there was a group
that called itself the "Free Quakers," that took up weapons and fought.
(Our little inside joke at the time was that what these Free Quakers were
free of was Quakerism.)
Also, remember Captain John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers
Ferry, Virginia in 1859, an attempt to raise a slave army and bring on
civil war? --Two midwestern Quakers were among Captain Brown's fighters.
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of Quakers even now, the
meetinghouse Quakers and the steeplehouse Quakers. It is the meetinghouse
Quakers, of whom I am one, who are holding to the Peace Testimony. The
steeplehouse Quakers are just another little fundie evangelical Protestant
sect, with Youth For Christ and hymn-singing and a hireling clergy -- the
whole nine yards. Friend Richard Milhouse Nixon was a steeplehouse Quaker
from Whittier, California, so he didn't have any difficulty with bringing
the Fear of the Lord to Cambodia.
>The Quakers in Pennsylvania would hire non-Quakers to protect them from
>Indians (kill them, that is)
The race situation in Pennsylvania during the French and Indian wars was
terribly fraught. We can hope we are never subjected to such pressures.
Part of the problem was that the white population of Pennsylvania was split
between non-Quakers, who were killing native Americans, and Quakers, who
were not, and the Indians were responding by killing the whites right back
-- without putting too fine a point on whether the whites they were killing
were the non-Quaker ones or the Quaker ones. It is true that, in this
situation, some of the Quakers in the Pennsylvania legislature voted for an
appropriation to purchase gunpowder for the white militias. If the spin you
want to put on this sad historical fact is that what they were doing was
hiring non-Quakers to kill Indians for them, well, as you can see, that's
not *entirely* incorrect.
>Renaissance Catholic rulers hired Jews to do their banking. Is this true?
I'm neither a Jewish banker nor a Renaissance Catholic ruler. I have no clue.
>come on, spill the beans on the Quakers.
Last First Day after meeting for worship, when we had potluck, I spilled
the beans *on myself*.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
