Walking in the Way of Peace

Abstract

“All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny” – so pronounced a small band of the first English Quakers in 1660, renouncing wars, fighting, and weapons and enunciating principles of peace called the “peace testimony.” The deceptively simple words of the peace testimony conceal the complexity of the task facing each Quaker as he worked out their precise meaning and the restraints and the actions they required in his own life. Quakers in early New England had to translate peace principles into practice during King Philip's War between settlers and Indians in 1675–76. In a time of terror, individual Quakers had to decide whether the peace testimony allowed service in militias, standing watch, seeking safety in garrison houses, and paying taxes. Their decisions covered a broad range and resulted in a pacifist continuum of interpretation and behavior. During this war, Quakers who dominated the government of Rhode Island were faced with reconciling the peace testimony with their duties as governors to protect their colony, to punish “evil‐doers,” and to reward “those who do good.” Their dilemma stimulated both imaginative legislation and corrosive compromises, illuminating the ambiguities of principles when applied to public policy. Before the war a Quaker government had enacted legislation, the Exemption of 1673, exempting conscientious objectors from all military duties including alternative civil service. But some Quakers chastised their Quaker rulers in a document called the Rhode Island Testimony for putting their faith in “carnal weapons” when they took warlike measures of offense and defense, such as transporting soldiers to battle. The struggle of early Quakers in England and America illuminates the intricate complications of pacifist belief, suggesting the kind of nuanced questions any pacifist must address.

The Early Quakers, the Peace Testimony and Masculinity in England, 1660-1720

“…55 As Weddle suggests that seventeenth-century Friends proved ungovernable because 'to be willingly vulnerable is to be invincible', Boulding similarly comments that the freest exercise of the will may be the renunciation of power. 56 For Boulding, the power of love is the most fundamental form of integrative power, 57 whereas threat power 'often produces integrative weakness', 'the capacity to... alienate people' 58 or, in the case of the Friends, the capacity to lose members when other denominations seemed more appealing. Similarly, those opposing and oppressing Friends lost sympathy for themselves and gained it for the persecuted when they repeatedly threatened a people who refused to reciprocate and stressed their peaceable nature.…”

“…76 Certainly, William Penn wrote in 1693 of the 'bloody tragedies' of war, 77 and despite Meredith Weddle's assertions to the contrary, Friends' accounts suggest that Quaker compassion for the victims of violence developed before, rather than only after, the Restoration. 78 The testimony, then, is recognised by historians of pacifism as part of Friends' active engagement with the world, whilst internally, Quakers continued to discipline members along gendered lines, and their testimony was fundamentally gendered, connecting pacifism to masculinity.…”

“…In Walking in the Way of Peace, Weddle reconsiders Friends' testimony, and concludes that many other scholars have both overlooked its gradual development, 79 and have anachronistically believed that as the wording of the 11 testimony remained unchanged, the meaning also stayed constant for three centuries. 80 It is certainly the case that although early historians of Quakerism viewed the testimony as part of Friends' passive resistance to anything which they felt unable to do for reasons of conscience, it was represented as remaining virtually unchanged until the twentieth century.…”

“…80 It is certainly the case that although early historians of Quakerism viewed the testimony as part of Friends' passive resistance to anything which they felt unable to do for reasons of conscience, it was represented as remaining virtually unchanged until the twentieth century. 81 Weddle, then, uses King Philip's War, in Rhode Island and New England of the 1670s, as an example of Friends' differing interpretations of pacifism, and rejects assertions that Quaker pacifism developed from either faith or a political rationale alone, stressing the importance of historical context for the testimony, and rejecting the idea of 'an ideological homogeneity that did not exist.'…”

“…81 Weddle, then, uses King Philip's War, in Rhode Island and New England of the 1670s, as an example of Friends' differing interpretations of pacifism, and rejects assertions that Quaker pacifism developed from either faith or a political rationale alone, stressing the importance of historical context for the testimony, and rejecting the idea of 'an ideological homogeneity that did not exist.' 82 Quaker pacifism was not, she suggests, 'uncomplicated, homogeneous, self-evident, and unproblematical', and she reminds us of the need to consider individuals' obligations to decide what appropriate behaviour in any situation was, as well as the extent to which they were mediated in published accounts. 83 Consideration of Friends' published works allows us to draw together ideals of Quaker pacifist and masculine behaviour.…”