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Pendle Hill Publications
Another Will Gird You: A Message to the Society of Friends
Another Will Gird You: A Message to the Society of Friends
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How shall Friends speak with the clarity that is needed, in response to the insights we have been given, in behalf of the cause we cherish, unless we bring our lives into line with what we say? The tone of the Quaker voice is grievously flawed because of the visible fact that, by and large, and taken as a group, we live as beneficiaries of a society, both national and international, both economic and cultural, that is in plain contradiction to our principles.
A hundred years and more before the Civil War, John Woolman and a handful of others came to see that the testimony of Friends against slavery was not clear as long as a single Friend kept a single slave; and through their patient faithfulness, the Society of Friends did get clear of this taint within its own membership before Pennsylvania, in 1780, became the first colony to abolish slavery. A few Friends also saw that war and economics were inextricably linked, and in his Plea for the Poor, written about 1763, John Woolman wrote: "Oh! that we who declare against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only, may walk in the Light, and therein examine our foundation and motives in holding great estates; may we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the Seeds of War have any nourishment in these our possessions. . . ." But here there was no success to compare with the crusade that cleared Friends of slave-holding, and today our testimony against war and preparation for war is increasingly compromised by our being bound, and without much attempt to resist being bound, into a system to which war and poverty are both integral.
A hundred years and more before the Civil War, John Woolman and a handful of others came to see that the testimony of Friends against slavery was not clear as long as a single Friend kept a single slave; and through their patient faithfulness, the Society of Friends did get clear of this taint within its own membership before Pennsylvania, in 1780, became the first colony to abolish slavery. A few Friends also saw that war and economics were inextricably linked, and in his Plea for the Poor, written about 1763, John Woolman wrote: "Oh! that we who declare against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only, may walk in the Light, and therein examine our foundation and motives in holding great estates; may we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the Seeds of War have any nourishment in these our possessions. . . ." But here there was no success to compare with the crusade that cleared Friends of slave-holding, and today our testimony against war and preparation for war is increasingly compromised by our being bound, and without much attempt to resist being bound, into a system to which war and poverty are both integral.
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