Written by Kate Phillips
Quakers have their roots in late seventeenth century England, after the English Civil War. They believed that there is God in everyone, thus it is not necessary to have a church dictate where God is and how to find him. With this idea of God being present in everyone, often symbolized by an “inner light,” Quakers were adamant that everyone treats each other equally. They preached that this is how one would practice religion in their everyday life: treating everyone with respect. Quakers have a history of refusing military service, campaigning for prisoner rights, and were the first religion in Britain to recognize same-sex marriage. Famously, they refused to say titles such as “Lord”, “Lady”, or “Majesty.”
One of the main practices of the Quakers is the meeting for worship. This is where everyone sits together in silence in a room, typically with benches facing each other. There is nobody leading the service and no organization of where people should sit. Anyone can speak if they want to, and when they have said their peace, the room returns to silence to reflect. Speaking is not a requirement; often these meetings are filled with sparse comments and more silence.
The Quakers got their name from George Fox. While he could technically be named as the founder of the Quaker movement, Quakers are adamant against the notion of “heroes,” insisting on the power of the group, thus many Quakers do not refer to him as the founder or leader but simply as a historically significant person. George Fox was one of the first Quakers and one of the first to be persecuted. He famously refused to take his hat off for his superiors and went around preaching the existence of God in every person and the corruption of the church and its hierarchy. He, and his wife Margaret Fell, were both jailed for blasphemy or “disturbances” a number of times. At this time, the group was called The Religious Society of Friends. However, one day appearing in front of the court, George Fox was asked by the magistrate to show respect to him. Fox supposedly replied that no, it was he, the magistrate, that must “quake” in the face of God. Today, Quakers is the most commonly used title.
Other early Quakers included William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Throughout the seventeenth century, many Quakers were imprisoned and banned from holding meetings. The Quaker Act of 1662 made it a crime to refuse to swear allegiance to the crown, something many Quakers did as a result of their philosophies against hierarchy. The Conventicle Act of 1664 made holding meetings a crime, because these were meetings of people against the crown. In 1677, William Penn, after viewing the persecution of Quakers in the Netherlands, designed his “Holy Experiment”: the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was to be, in Penn’s mind, a safe haven for all those persecuted for religious reasons. While Pennsylvania and Providence in Rhode Island did prove to be a haven for Quakers and other religious groups, the Quakers were not completely safe even in America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony saw regular amounts of punishment and imprisonment of Quakers. In 1660, Puritan leaders executed Mary Dyer for being a Quaker. In 1667, Alice and Thomas Curwen were beaten publicly, and a man named Christopher Holder had his ear cut off. In the end, many were deported back to Europe.
In America, Quakers refused to provide militiamen to defend settlements. In Philadelphia, a Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures was formed. Under this act, Quakers set precedents for appointing their own interpreters and ambassadors to engage with indigenous groups on their own, separate from other colonies. It was their ultimate goal to be the lead negotiators and traders with indigenous groups in Pennsylvania.
Quakers established other institutions in America and abroad. In time, and especially with the Toleration Act of 1688, Quakers became more understood in Great Britain and were even looked to as favourable salesmen because of their aversion to long negotiations. In York, William Tuke opened an asylum that was an enigma of its time, treating patients as they would be treated in hospital and not in the typical terrible conditions of the time.
However, Quakers were more nuanced when it came to other issues. In 1681, three-quarters of the leaders of the Philadelphia Quaker meetings owned slaves. In 1756, this number dropped to ten percent, which is still a considerable amount for a group that preached human equality. In late 1776, the Quakers became the first group to ban slaveholding – parliament would not abolish it until 1807, Congress not until 1865. When abolition debates commenced in America, Pennsylvania had the highest percentage of votes against slavery. Quakers were largely responsible for setting up the Underground Railroad, a network of safehouses that would hide slaves escaping from the South on their way to Canada or the North. Quakers found a loophole around their pledged aversion to telling lies: if asked if they were hiding a slave, they would be able to respond “no,” as there was no such thing as a slave. There is a common conception that Quakers were always completely against slavery; however, while the majority of them were indeed abolitionists in the nineteenth century, they certainly do not have a perfect history.
Quakers’ views on women could be considered historically progressive. Women were given an equal vote in Quaker town meetings and were not separated at meetings for worship. Many writers of Quaker pamphlets were women: Dorothy White, Sarah Blackborow, Alice Curwen. However, once again, their views were not perfect. Around 1670, a small group led by William Rogers left the Religious Society of Friends, disapproving of women’s high influence, and founded their own Quaker scheme.
Many Quakers became famous activists and reformers, such as Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, Betsy Ross, and Elizabeth Fry. Other notable Quakers include George and John Cadbury, James Dean, Joan Baez, Judi Dench, Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover, and John Hopkins.
Quakers today are arguably less known as a group than they were at the time of their origins. It is important to recognize that they are an influential and unique religious group, but not one without error or prejudice. Everything is nuanced. They were against war, yet many Quakers fought in the American Revolution. They were for equality, yet many still owned slaves. Their history, however, sheds light on the anti-church sentiments of the time, anti-hierarchical philosophies, and how people throughout history have questioned what it means to be a truly good person.
Bibliography
“Quakers.” HISTORY, A&E Television Networks, 19 May 2017, www.history.com/topics/immigration/history-of-quakerism.
Sharman, Cecil W. “George Fox.” Quakers in the World, www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/12/George-Fox.
Wyatt, Tim. “Factsheet: Quakers.” Religion Media Centre, 27 July 2022, religionmediacentre.org.uk/factsheets/factsheet-quakers/.
“Quakers and slavery.” Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/holdings/research-guides/race/quakers-and-slavery/#:~:text=The%20Society%20of%20Friends%20(known,in%20the%20Anti%2DSlavery%20Society.
Featured image credit: The Quaker, and the Commissioners of Excise by Thomas Rowlandson, 1807. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Quaker,_and_the_Commissioners_of_Excise_MET_DP873839.jpg
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