This Saturday, June 4, another tense scene will unfold in North Carolina’s ongoing Quaker soap opera: NC Yearly Meeting-FUM (NCYM) will hold its spring Representative Body session.
For the past two years, these Seventh Day (Saturday) assemblies have staged one melodrama after another, all focused on a single burning (well, smoldering) question: Will NCYM purge the handful of liberal meetings?
While much of the rest of the U.S. population is involved in or watching Memorial Day events centered on those killed in our wars, I hope Quakers will make room for a different approach to this observance.
To be sure, Friends have much to remember, and many to memorialize in regard to war also. For one thing, there were many Quakers who, despite what is called the Peace testimony, felt obliged to take up arms in one war or another; their number is large, and we are best advised not to deceive ourselves about that.
At the same time, in all these wars, where Quakers were present, significant numbers of them have stuck to the testimony and declined involvement in combat. The specifics vary with the wars, and personalities; the stories are quite varied. But many underwent awful ordeals, and not a few paid for their testimony with their lives.
Reflecting on what I know of this, my thoughts turned to the most lethal of U.S. wars (so far), the Civil War of 1861-1865.
Maintaining religious liberty within the Religious Society of Friends has not always been easy. For instance, contrary to popular Quaker legend, work in the abolitionist movement was very unpopular among Friends, and especially repugnant to the entrenched power structure of recorded ministers and elder. They thought it was “creaturely,” needlessly dangerous — and many highly-placed Friends, while not own slaves, yet had extensive business interests connected to the slave economy. These were threatened by connections with abolition “agitation.
The result was what I have called “The Great Purge”; many Friends were forced out of the Society, and others resigned, to uphold their antislavery principles. Even some meetings were laid down by “executive action” for being tainted by the reforming virus.
Some Friends did not wait for the Overseers and elders to show up to apply this “discipline.”
“I have seen periods of progress followed by reaction. I have seen the hopes and aspirations of Negroes rise during World War II, only to be smashed during the Eisenhower years. I am seeing the victories of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations destroyed by Richard Nixon.”
Bayard, there have been ups and down since then. But I think it’s been increasingly tough in recent years, and this year is really awful. Maybe it’s better that you’re not here to see it. But I’d sure appreciate your counsel.
“I think the movement contributed to this nation a sense of universal freedom. Precisely because women saw our movement in the sixties, stimulated them to want their rights. The fact that students saw the movement of the sixties created a student movement in this country.”
If I was the Quaker Pope, Fifth Month (May) 24 would be one of the biggest Quaker holidays/festivals on our [non]liturgical calendar. That’s because it is (or should be), “Religious Liberty Day.”
It was on the 24th of Fifth Month, in 1689, that the Toleration Act, in official jargon, “received the Royal Assent,” and thus became law in England and its dominions.
Why is this important to Quakers?
Because that’s the day when Quakers & Quakerism became legal. It marked the successful conclusion to almost thirty years of suffering, organizing and lobbying.