Religion: Fighting Friends

U.S. Quakers had good reason to “dwell deep” last week, and seek for a leading “in the silence of the creature.” Pacifism, one of the principles about which Friends are most touchy, had been challenged by Brand Blanshard, head of the Philosophy and Religion Department of Quaker Swarthmore College. It was typical of the Quakers that he was given four pages in the Friends Intelligencer for his attack. Friends had seldom read anything quite like it.

Said Philosopher Blanshard, a Quaker convert: pacifism is “plainly immoral.” A Friend, he maintained, can take up arms and still be a Friend. He rejected the position that “the use of organized force by one group upon another is always wrong.” Since Japan invaded Manchuria, he wrote, pacifists have “made the renunciation of force into a Moloch whose idolatry had to be maintained, no matter what the cost in lawlessness, blood and misery.”

Dogma v. Citizenship. Nor would Dr. Blanshard let his fellow Quakers take refuge in tradition, the Inner Light, the Bible, or their own definition of good citizenship. His points:

1) “The extreme emphasis on pacifism that we find today is a modern growth in the Society. I doubt if a single eminent early Quaker can be named who consistently condemned all war. Penn, [John] Bright and [Herbert] Hoover are the only three Quakers who have ever held positions of first-rate public responsibility, and none of them found it possible to retain the pacifist dogma.”

2) “Quakers have no formal creed; in its place they have put one great central doctrine, the doctrine of the Inner Light. What the Light reveals is left to the individual conscience; it is not imposed on us from outside. If this is correct, the attempt to prescribe the pacifist dogma is clearly inconsistent with that tolerance which the great doctrine implies.”

3) “Friends who find themselves unable to support their pacifism by tradition or creed sometimes defend it by saying that it is the requirement of Christianity. They have a case. The spirit enjoined by the New Testament was plainly one of love and mercy. But surely it was a spirit that Jesus enjoined, not an iron rule. If keeping a rule involved worse evils than its breach, Jesus broke it without a qualm. . . . It is impossible to make Jesus out to be a consistent pacifist even in personal relations, let alone international relations.”

4) “The Discipline says: ‘We urge Friends to be active in the performance of all the duties of good citizenship.’ In a day when democratic nations are going down like ninepins, I doubt whether ‘good citizenship’ can reasonably be taken to lie in enjoying the benefits of democracy while refusing to defend it, and in using one’s freedom to make the survival of freedom more difficult.”

Camp v. Camp. Many a Friend believes that Philosopher Blanshard has “outrun his Guide” and landed plump in the middle of an “unsoundness.” But there is little chance that Quakers will disown him. His views too clearly reflect the peculiar conflicting feelings of Friends toward World War II. Several Quaker families have one son in uniform, another in a C.O. camp. One Philadelphia Meeting has as many young members in one as the other, corresponds with them all. Last spring a Long Island Meeting wrote this facing-both-ways sentiment into its minutes: “We hold in equal respect any member of our Meeting serving in the U.S. Army or taking the stand of the conscientious objector.” Several men in the armed forces have asked to become Quakers and been accepted.

In the American Revolution, General Nathanael Greene was disowned for serving in the Continental Army; in the Civil War, militant Quakers were ousted by the hundred. Now Friends are inclined to differ in silence.

The Society has sound reasons for this course. Peace-loving U.S. Quakers have been split for more than a century by bitter religious differences; only since World War I have Friends managed to bring about something like Quaker unity. They are very reluctant to let any new issue disturb that unity—especially since Midwestern Evangelical Quakers (who are strong on doctrine) still look askance at East Coast Quakers, many of whom are Hicksites who put the authority of the Inner Light before the authority of the Bible.

U.S. Quakers had good reason to “dwell deep” last week, and seek for a leading “in the silence of the creature.” Pacifism, one of the principles about which Friends are most touchy, had been challenged by Brand Blanshard, head of the Philosophy and Religion Department of Quaker Swarthmore College. It was typical of the Quakers that he was given four pages in the Friends Intelligencer for his attack. Friends had seldom read anything quite like it.

Said Philosopher Blanshard, a Quaker convert: pacifism is “plainly immoral.” A Friend, he maintained, can take up arms and still be a Friend. He rejected the position that “the use of organized force by one group upon another is always wrong.” Since Japan invaded Manchuria, he wrote, pacifists have “made the renunciation of force into a Moloch whose idolatry had to be maintained, no matter what the cost in lawlessness, blood and misery.”

Dogma v. Citizenship. Nor would Dr. Blanshard let his fellow Quakers take refuge in tradition, the Inner Light, the Bible, or their own definition of good citizenship. His points:

1) “The extreme emphasis on pacifism that we find today is a modern growth in the Society. I doubt if a single eminent early Quaker can be named who consistently condemned all war. Penn, [John] Bright and [Herbert] Hoover are the only three Quakers who have ever held positions of first-rate public responsibility, and none of them found it possible to retain the pacifist dogma.”

2) “Quakers have no formal creed; in its place they have put one great central doctrine, the doctrine of the Inner Light. What the Light reveals is left to the individual conscience; it is not imposed on us from outside. If this is correct, the attempt to prescribe the pacifist dogma is clearly inconsistent with that tolerance which the great doctrine implies.”

3) “Friends who find themselves unable to support their pacifism by tradition or creed sometimes defend it by saying that it is the requirement of Christianity. They have a case. The spirit enjoined by the New Testament was plainly one of love and mercy. But surely it was a spirit that Jesus enjoined, not an iron rule. If keeping a rule involved worse evils than its breach, Jesus broke it without a qualm. . . . It is impossible to make Jesus out to be a consistent pacifist even in personal relations, let alone international relations.”

4) “The Discipline says: ‘We urge Friends to be active in the performance of all the duties of good citizenship.’ In a day when democratic nations are going down like ninepins, I doubt whether ‘good citizenship’ can reasonably be taken to lie in enjoying the benefits of democracy while refusing to defend it, and in using one’s freedom to make the survival of freedom more difficult.”

Camp v. Camp. Many a Friend believes that Philosopher Blanshard has “outrun his Guide” and landed plump in the middle of an “unsoundness.” But there is little chance that Quakers will disown him. His views too clearly reflect the peculiar conflicting feelings of Friends toward World War II. Several Quaker families have one son in uniform, another in a C.O. camp. One Philadelphia Meeting has as many young members in one as the other, corresponds with them all. Last spring a Long Island Meeting wrote this facing-both-ways sentiment into its minutes: “We hold in equal respect any member of our Meeting serving in the U.S. Army or taking the stand of the conscientious objector.” Several men in the armed forces have asked to become Quakers and been accepted.

In the American Revolution, General Nathanael Greene was disowned for serving in the Continental Army; in the Civil War, militant Quakers were ousted by the hundred. Now Friends are inclined to differ in silence.

The Society has sound reasons for this course. Peace-loving U.S. Quakers have been split for more than a century by bitter religious differences; only since World War I have Friends managed to bring about something like Quaker unity. They are very reluctant to let any new issue disturb that unity—especially since Midwestern Evangelical Quakers (who are strong on doctrine) still look askance at East Coast Quakers, many of whom are Hicksites who put the authority of the Inner Light before the authority of the Bible.