“Longing for a Spicier Quakerism”
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There are some obvious gems we Quakers like to put in our metaphorical crown. Our eventual role in movements of abolition, our work towards equal rights for women, and our opposition to war. But there are others, perhaps not as shiny as those, but worth some attention. I remember hearing in passing one summer day in Newberg that Quakers were behind the implementation of fair pricing in business practices, moving away from predatory tactics of bartering and haggling.
I wanted to verify this. So I did some research this week and found that indeed, Quakers began applying a core intention of “truth in all dealings” to areas not just within their Meetinghouse walls, but in their engagements with the general public. Early Quakers are credited with the advent of menu boards, where all customers can see the price available to each patron who comes in the door.
From a Friends Journal article on this topic published in 1956 Bruce L Pearson writes:
“Whether the early Quakers were consciously trying to start a social movement or not is a moot point. Most likely they were not. They were merely seeking to give consistent expression to their belief in the equality of all people as spiritual children of God. The Quaker custom of marking a fixed price on merchandise so that all people would pay the same price is another case in point. Most probably Friends did this simply because they wanted to be fair to all who frequented their shops and give the sharp bargainer no advantage at the expense of the their less skilled citizen.”
Many of the things we call “Quaker Testimonies” today have, at their core, some similar intention of addressing power disparities at play in their lives. John Woolman, speaking about the trappings of wealth and an appeal to simplicity, writes,
“Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul.”
Another lesser known Quaker conviction is of the aim to speak plainly and honestly as much as possible. This leading is often cited as Quakers devotion to plain speech, which actually has it’s origins in grammatical preferences and avoidance of honorifics when addressing people of different status. It is why Quakers have so many thee’s and thou’s in their early writings, which was a sort of thumb at the nose of the 17th century English expectation that the mighty and powerful were to be addressed with the more honoring “you” rather than the singular thee or thou which was reserved for people of equal or lesser status.
We may struggle to understand how provocative this is, but imagine say a modern day Quaker refusing to address the current present as mister President, but as Don. It is an acknowledgment that we don’t play the same game as the powerful and mighty. Our hearts come at human interaction with a different spirit than status afforded by wealth or prestige.
But the Quaker tendency towards plain speech was more than just an adjustment in honorifics, it was also at the heart of many early Quaker writings and messaging labeled heinous, or overly provocative. George Fox spoke with conviction and passion, avoiding euphemisms, and softened or flowery language. It may be why Quakerism took off as it did, many of the early Friends wrote fiery pamphlets that circulated, sort of like anarchist zines, to stoke the revolutionary spirit of the time, and to bring about the vision of the mighty being cast down.
One such pamphlet, written by Dorothy White in 1659, is titled “A Diligent Search Amongst Rulers, Priests, Professors, and People” she writes,
“All you high and lofty ones, you fruitless branches, you will by the Lord be cut down with the Sword of his power.”
Dorothy joined many Quaker voices in showing that to be a pacifist you do not need to passive, and that we can use our voice as a means of actively resisting the powers that be.
Similarly, George Fox wrote a pamphlet entitled “Fifty Nine Particulars” also in 1659 in which he lists fifty-nine politically and culturally provocative suggestions to be considered by the ruling class, but also by his fellow disgruntled citizens. In it he proposes that all of the resources from the elite, such as the grand palaces and cathedral’s be vacated by their current residents and repurposed for the benefit of the poor.
He also wished to disqualify those seeking political office based on certain personal perimeters. Imagine how Don Trump would have felt about this quote from George Fox,
“Let no one that is high, proud, or lofty, envious or scornful bear Office, for he will turn the sword backward and do the Devil’s work…For they that are hasty, proud, in a mad blind zeal will turn the sword against the just.”
Why do I feel that George Fox would have had a hard time getting a business meeting approval to publish this pamphlet today? Well, I suppose that I’ve sat through enough Quaker business meetings to sense that we’ve substituted speaking plainly and with conviction, for statements and minutes that need to be so thoroughly dulled in order to be approved.
If you look around at our newly formed yearly meeting you will see a glaring absence of young voices that were with us at the beginning. Why? Because they were present for Quaker business meetings where in order to reach approval, the original ideas, statements, or convictions had to be stripped of their original life force. What is left after this process are not ideas, statements or convictions anyone has any interest in pursuing anymore, but mostly meaningless items to be filed away in our minutes.
In our ever present quest to address the quandary of dwindling church attendance, especially the absence of young Friends I think a question we must constantly ask ourselves is, “is what we are saying and doing compelling?”
What’s more, are we speaking plainly about what this community is, and what it does? Just as early Friends desired to be transparent about fair pricing as a means towards fair participation, I wonder if we modern day Friends may rekindle this spirit of directness as a way of inviting others into our compelling story. But, we will continue to struggle in that goal if we believe that our way forward is with vanilla and toothless statements and actions.
What if our “about statements” stripped away all of the flowery, vague things and got more precise and honest about what we are doing and what we have to offer. What if, for example we were to say that our yearly meeting, Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting is a new experiment in attempting to create community across great geographical distance, and that if you come to our gatherings you are going to see a group of about 150 people practicing community organizing, crafting purpose and meaning for our existence all the while learning how influences like white supremacy and heteronormativity knowingly and unknowingly influence our work. Because, isn’t that what we are doing? If we are at least up front about it, shouldn’t we expect people who are interested in that experiment to show up and know what experiment they are participating in.
What if this community spoke plainly and honestly about where we are? What if, say, in our work in being welcoming to the Queer community, we could say, “If you are in a monogamous gay or lesbian relationship, you will find people in similar relationships here, and you will find that our community has had practice in supporting people like you. If you are trans or genderqueer, know that you will find people in our community who identify as such as well, but you can expect that people will struggle to use your correct pronouns, as this is something we are still practicing. Our community struggled to navigate conversations around non-monogamous relationships in the past, and we anticipate approaching that conversation again will require us to learn and engage with something that carries a lot of tension for us.”
Friends, might we be considering that at the heart of the Quaker way is a process of listening to the Light of Truth and Love that exists within us and our experiences and that in that listening, we come remarkably close to our core convictions, unadorned and real. What if we spoke from that place with love for our neighbor but also from those convictions that encourage us to hold the powerful and mighty accountable, not dulling the Light for the sake of digestibility for the masses but wildly prophetic, real, and plainly spoken?
What if the metric of decision-making about what we say and do is not how vanilla we can make it to appeal to as many people as possible, but what we can say with Truth and conviction and passion that actually has life and consequences and actual Spirit behind it? How would our communities be different? How would our influence on the outside world be different than it is currently? Can we not feel what is possible if we’d be more compelling by way of speaking our Truth in Power and in Love?