A Brief Account of the Society of Friends in Colonial America
Religion in colonial times was a much more powerful force in peoples' daily
lives than now. Church and government were almost indistinguishable. William
Penn, who was a Quaker, did his best to establish Pennsylvania as a place where all
would be allowed to worship freely, and he sought to form a government based on
laws consistent with fundamental principles of Quaker faith. As a result,
Pennsylvania became a very attractive safe haven for Quakers experiencing
persecution in England and on the European continent. Eventually, however, the
Quakers' determination to conserve a pure Quaker sect in preference to compromising
Quaker principles to accomodate a broader community led to the end of their reign in
Pennsylvania.
Prior to William Penn: Founded in England by George Fox in about 1650,
the Society of Friends' belief that each person, through an "Inner Light," could be his
or her own minister or priest differentiated it from other sects and from the established
Church of England. No longer were paid leaders needed for guidance or to be the
conduit for confession and forgiveness by Christ, and indeed at Friends weekly
Meetings, no minister presided(s). Needless to say, the top heavy (and wealthy)
hierarchy in the Church of England was not amused, and used its power to severely
persecute the Friends. Penalties included flogging, jail time, banishment, and
confiscation of Quaker property by the Church.
The Quakers were persecuted in America as well as England, and not only by
the Church of England. Two women, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, were the first
Quakers in America. However, after arriving in Boston from England's colony of
Barbados in 1656, they were imprisoned and then forcibly returned to their point of
origin by the Puritans. The Puritans apparently arbitrarily decided that Quakers
worshipped the devil. They also were put off by the Quakers' denial of authority.
Quakers refused to bow to officials, to use titles of address, and to take oaths (such as
oaths of office or court testimony). The Puritans passed a law in 1657 allowing an
ear to be cut off of any Quaker who returned to a community after being expelled. A
second return cost a second ear, and a third return cost the offender's tongue.
To a significant and puzzling extent, many of the first Quakers on the
American continent appeared to deliberately seek out the hardships of martyrdom.
They preferred to, "...die for the whole truth rather than live with a half-truth."
Unwilling, for example, to stay in colonial Rhode Island where the rulers refused to
persecute them, various groups and individuals made trips that seem to reflect a spirit
both bizarre and dauntless.
Selecting from many examples, the saga of Mary Dyer illustrates the Quaker
martyr tendency. Mary Dyer returned to Puritan-run Boston to preach and "suffer for
the truth," after having been banished. She and two other Quakers were tried and
convicted on October 19, 1659, and were sentenced to death under a 1658 Puritan
law. Puritan governor Endicott, however, was reluctant to hang a woman, and after
having her mounted on the gallows with arms and legs bound and face covered, he
gave Mary a reprieve and again banished her from Boston. The two men were
executed. Mary Dyer, however, was undaunted, and returned on May 21, 1660 to
continue preaching. She was again arrested and sentenced, refused the Governor's
new offer of a reprieve, and was duly hanged.
The New England Puritan leaders were not sadists. But they had risked
everything to travel three thousand miles to escape the same sort of persecution in
England and Europe that the Quakers experienced, and to build their own image of
Zion. The Puritans had not sought out the Quakers to punish them. Instead the
Quakers appeared to come in search of punishment.
William Penn's "Holy Experiment": William Penn took advantage of a debt of about
16,000 lbs. owed his late father by King Charles II to acquire a charter for the
Pennsylvania territory. The King had no ready funds available for repaying debts,
and was happy to grant territory in America in lieu of cash payment. Charles II
granted the charter on 4 March, 1681.
William Penn thus was called upon to prepare a frame of government for a
land he had never seen and for people who were not yet there, and to meet
contingencies of which he could have no idea. He sought to do this on the basis of a
kind of Quaker practical mysticism that incorporated some of the principles of justice,
liberty, and equal opportunity that have come to be equated with the United States.
The Quakers possessed a set of attitudes about justice, equality, and toleration which
fit later textbook definitions of American democracy.
Penn, who had converted to Quakerism in 1667 and had served time in
British jails for his views, also sought to create a "Holy Experiment" where his
conviction that all should be allowed to worship freely could be put into practice. In
his "Frame of Government of Pennsylvania," Penn started by asserting the necessity
of law in human society as authorized by God and stated by St. Paul, and added his
belief that, "...government seems to me to be a part of religion itself, a thing sacred in
its institution and end."
Principles versus Practice: Troubles arose largely because of the conflict 1)
over the Quakers' refusal to take or administer oaths, and 2) between Penn's
responsibility to the English Crown and the Quakers' pacifist beliefs.
Oaths: Three centuries later, the issue of oaths and its resolution is difficult to
understand. The origin of the Quakers' resistance to taking oaths was a 1656 answer
by George Fox to an English court that was attempting to administer the usual "truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" oath. Fox refused, saying, "...for Christ
our Lord and Master saith, 'Swear not at all; but let your communication be yea, yea,
and nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." It was, according to
Fox, "the light in every man" which gave him the truth and made him testify to it.
The only Biblical justification for swearing was in the old testament, and thus directed
only to Jews.
Anglicans (Church of England) and other non-Quakers, however, felt that no
testimony was valid or office responsible without the accompaniment of an oath. This
issue festered both in Pennsylvania and in England until 1718, when a law that met
the minimum of Quaker demands escaped repeal by the Crown. The law allowed an
"affirmation" in place of an oath for witnesses and office holders and established the
same penalties for false affirmations as for perjury. This has aspects of a question of
semantics to the modern eye, but exemplified what became to be seen as Quaker
obstinance or, more charitably, stubbornness.
Pacifism: Pacifist practices caused problems in controlling pirates on the
Delaware Bay, in protecting frontier Quaker settlers from the Indians, and in meeting
England's demands for contributions to military forces. This began to come to a head
in 1739 when the Pennsylvania government was forced to struggle with England's
demand for support in its war with Spain, the so-called War of Jenkins' Ear.
Skipping over the detail, the Quakers' succeeded in paralyzing the Pennsylvania
government until about 1745, when a strong compromise party emerged under the
leadership of Benjamin Franklin.
Faced in the 1750s with French-incited Indian attacks in western
Pennsylvania, Quaker leaders finally took Franklin's advice and, on June 4, 1756, the
six leading conservative Quakers in the Pennsylvania Assembly offered their
resignations. Franklin reported with pleasure that, "...all the stiff rump....have
voluntarily quitted the Assembly; and 'tis proposed to chuse Churchman (Anglicans)
in their places." Although less-rigid Quakers remained in the Assembly,
three-quarters of a century of Quaker rule in Pennsylvania thus came to an end by
abdication.
Quakers/Puritans: The Quaker experience displays a dramatic contrast to that
of the Puritans. Puritan success was made possible by the decline of American
Puritanism as an uncompromising theology. Quakers, however, preferred to
conserve a pure Quaker sect rather than build a broader community with a flavor of
compromised Quakerism, and in doing so were put out of power.
Later Division: Inevitably, the Society of Friends eventually divided between
the moderates, who wanted to adapt the church to make it more practical, and
conservatives who wanted to stick with the original idea. The formal division
occurred in 1827, and became known as the "Hicksite Separation." Many places now
boast two Quaker churches; the Orthodox and the Hicksite.
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