Quaker erasure

 

William Penn statue in 1894, prior to being placed on the pinnacle of City Hall, Philadelphia

"Don't erase William Penn," the cry goes up. "Don't cancel him."

I don't think he's being cancelled. He's still there in the history books, in Quaker Faith and Practice, on hundreds of websites, in legal textbooks, and in many statues, including the gigantic one that was for years the highest point in the city of Philadelphia.

More gently, we're asked to sympathise with him, which is fair enough - if we also offer our sympathy to Sam, Sue, Yaff, Jack, Peter, Chevalier, Susannah and Virgil Warder and to others whose names we don't know. These were the recorded enslaved people on William Penn's estate in Pennsylvania and we can't tell from those names where their lives began or whether they had other names that were stolen from them like their liberty.

We can't know what gifts, qualities and spiritual insights the enslaved people "owned" by William Penn had to offer. We can't tell how they were prevented from sharing them. We can know, if we choose, that in 1700 the legal code of Pennsylvania prevented Black people (it's unclear whether or not free Black people were included) from gathering together in groups of more than four. Breaking this rule was punishable by 39 lashes. The people who have been most fully cancelled and erased from history are those who were enslaved; in the words of Ecclesiasticus: "some there be which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them."

We can guess that the descendants of the enslaved people on William Penn's estate are among us in the world even though we may not know who they are. Very few of the enslaved people "owned" by Quakers make it into the history books, although Olaudah Equiano is a notable exception. But it seems to me that they deserve to be acknowledged with a degree of humility. We aren't the people who chose to enslave our fellow humans, despite numerous warnings that this was theft and violence. But if we cherish the good deeds and writings of the enslavers, we don't just need to acknowledge their wrong actions. We also need to be aware that the enslaved human beings had equal worth.

There's still a tendency to say that there was no opposition to slavery in the 17th century. This simply isn't true. There isn't just the evidence of the Germantown protest of 1688, which must have emerged from prior, unrecorded discussion and prayer. In 1693 George Keith, then in a dispute with fellow Quakers that led to his disownment the following year, wrote with others An Exhortation and Caution to Friends against buying or owning enslaved humans. This picks up many of the points made in the Germantown Protest and suggests a widespread attempt to find the right course of action. This document tends to be forgotten in view of Keith's support of a more conventional and biblically-based practice - he and his followers later introduced versions of adult baptism and communion - but it makes me wonder whether Keith and his followers saw shortcomings in reliance on the Inward Light in part because those who endorse it seemed happy to tolerate the abhorrent practice of slavery.

So far as I can see, none of the 17th century Quaker opponents of slavery are mentioned in Britain's Quaker Faith and Practice. Their words aren't quoted. Those enslaved and "owned" by Quakers are not named and their views and insights aren't reported. There's a lot of emphasis on later Quakers who spoke about slavery (though not yet the embarrassing Benjamin Lay). There's little acknowledgement of such groups as the Sons of Africa who worked with them on their campaigns.

This does still matter. It's partly a matter of being honest about the history of Quakers instead of serving up a sentimentalised and dishonest version. But it's also because, if we really believed in equality, we wouldn't just be looking for ways to defend William Penn and other early Quaker enslavers. We'd be giving weight to the experiences of those who Penn and other Quakers enslaved, who suffered terribly and who were just as fully human as their Quaker "owners." 

If we can't acknowledge the equality of all in the past, what chance do we have of seeing all as equal or of working for equality today?

Which side are you on?

 

image of the barrister Edward Carson

This 1909 editorial in The Friend really shocked me when I read it a couple of years ago. It began:

       "We are sincerely thankful that the good name of our friends, Cadbury Brothers, has been vindicated at the Birmingham Assizes after a trial extending throughout seven days. To Friends to whom the family are known, either personally or by reputation, the charges of dishonour and hypocrisy brought against them in regard to their dealings respecting cocoa from San Thomé and Principe were incredible." 

The editorial continued by praising the judge, who pretty well directed the jury to find for the Cadburys and by sympathising with William A Cadbury for the ordeal of being cross-examined in open court.

The case was a libel action brought by Cadbury's against a newspaper which accused the company of hypocrisy in continuing to buy cocoa beans from Sao Tomé and Principe long after it was evident to the company, and to any dispassionate observer, that the beans were grown and harvested under what was, in practice, a brutal form of chattel slavery masquerading as indentured labour. The Cadbury family, in collaboration with the Rowntrees and the Frys, were not only slow to act; they had also done their best to conceal the facts while searching for an alternative source of cocoa beans. In 1901, William A Cadbury wrote to fellow Quaker and anti-slavery campaigner Joseph Sturge acknowledging that one "looks at these matters in a different light when it affects one's own interests".

It took the Quaker chocolate manufacturers several years to decide on action. The 1904-5 reports of Henry W Nevinson, who had approached Cadbury with an offer of assistance, might have spurred them into action but Nevinson was a difficult character - a radical, far from quiet who didn't speak Portuguese, the language of the slave-plantation owners. It didn't occur to Cadbury that it might be helpful for anyone to learn the languages spoken by the enslaved families. The Quakers acted very slowly indeed and in accordance with their own interests.

Meanwhile enslaved people died. In 1902 William A Cadbury had heard from a missionary that the life expectancy of a newly-enslaved worker on the plantations was three and half to four years. One model plantation had a lower annual death rate of between 10 and 12% which it ascribed to anaemia caused by unhappiness. The death rate for children was around 25% per year. As information reached Britain and by 1907 William A Cadbury reported, when he attended a Quaker gathering in London, that many considered "we were acting hypocritically, although nobody quite said that word." It was in the following year that the Standard published an editorial condemning the "strange tranquillity" with which the "virtuous" owners of the chocolate companies had received reports of slavery - and that was the editorial which Cadbury, rather than demanding a retraction, chose to make the grounds of his case for libel.

The case was heard in Birmingham and the jury followed the judge's direction in deciding that Cadburys had been libelled. They then had to assess what damages to award Cadburys. The jury had heard the case and learned all about the brutal practices of enslavement and the high death-rate. They had watched William A Cadbury as he was cross-examined by Carson. The judge suggested that substantial damages should be paid to Cadburys but the jury did not agree. They awarded the lowest damages possible - a single farthing (a quarter of an old penny).

The editorial in The Friend doesn't mention the derisory damages. Instead it quotes the judge and insists that Quakers as a whole must support the Cadburys because they are known personally by some and have a good reputation in the Society.

But this isn't how we should decide matters. It doesn't matter that we might see and understand the difficulty that the Cadburys and the Rowntrees and the Frys faced in sourcing good quality cocoa beans. If we always take the side of those we know and respect - as though they could never make a mistake let alone do something wrong - we will quickly find that we are doing our best not to hear or even to silence other voices. The voices of the enslaved people on Sao Tomé and Principe deserved to be heard. They deserved to be acted upon. Enslaved workers in Sao Tomé sang a chantey: "In Sao Tomé there's a door for entrance, but none for getting out."

For eight years after first hearing of slavery on the islands of Sao Tomé and Principe, the Quaker chocolate firms continued to buy cocoa beans from the plantations there. They meant well. Towards the end of his cross-examination of William A Cadbury, Edward Carson asked, "Have you formed any estimate of the number of slaves who lost their lives in preparing your cocoa during those eight years?" Cadbury couldn't answer. A low estimate would suggest 4,000-5,000. The number may well have been much higher.

Missing Ministry

 

mezzo-tint 1683-8 (c) The Trustees of the British Museum

Last week I picked up a book I haven't read for ages. It was George Gorman's 1973 The Amazing Fact of Quaker Worship. Flicking through its pages I came across a passage from Robert Barclay's 1676 explanation and defence of Quaker practices and beliefs, usually called his Apology. I've never read Barclay's Apology but two passages struck me. The first is also included in Quaker Faith and Practice:

" it is left to the free gift of God to choose any whom he sees meet thereunto, whether rich or poor, servant or master, young or old, yea male or female."

The words may not seems so dramatic in the present day but in the 17th century, during the Restoration period, the distinction between classes was sharply marked, In particular the subservience of servant to master and woman to man in the workplace, family and society was taken for granted and often strictly enforced. The idea that God might choose to address a master through a his servant of a man through a woman was revolutionary. It didn't just call into question the restored hierarchy headed by the king; it was akin to the levelling movements that had been suppressed during the Commonwealth period under Cromwell. 

But Barclay goes further in a passage I eventually found in Barclay's Apology online, and which I'm quoting here at greater length than George Gorman does:

"in our day God hath raised up witnesses for himself, as he did fishermen of old, many, yea most of whom are labouring and mechanic men, who, altogether without that learning, have by the power and Spirit of God struck at the very root and ground of Babylon, and in the strength and might of this power have gathered thousands, by reaching their consciences, into the same power and life; who, as to the outward part, have been far more knowing than they, yet not able to resist the virtue that proceeded from them. Of which I myself am a true witness, and can declare from a certain experience, because my heart hath been often greatly broken and tendered by that virtuous Life that proceeded from the powerful ministry of those illiterate men: so that by their very countenance, as well as words, I have felt the evil in me often chained down and the good reached to and raised."

This startled me because it indicates something which I haven't, to my recollection, heard said in Quaker circles: that the majority of God's witnesses in the 17th century - by which Barclay almost certainly means Quakers - were members of the "labouring and mechanic" class. In other words, they were manual workers. Barclay goes on to say that he has direct experience of their ministry, and it has had a powerful effect on his faith, life and actions.

I wonder how many Quakers today can say that they have responded like this to the ministry of working-class people. 

I could extend this to wonder how many Quakers today can say that their lives have been changed, as Barclay's was, by the active presence of exploited, despised and marginalised people in their Meeting. Are there any Meetings in Britain today where the most frequent and most effective ministry comes from people who are poor?

We are missing a great deal of ministry - and it may be ministry that would, in Barclay's words, break and tender us - and by tendering he means softening us, making us tender to the call of the Spirit and the needs of others.

It's worth imagining what a Quaker Meeting might be like if we regularly received ministry arising, through the Spirit, from the lived experience of queuing at a food bank, or from fearing the loss of insecure housing or casual work. Ministry may arrive through an individual but it speaks through that individual's experience, knowledge and understanding, just as it uses that individual's words and language. Let's go further and imagine that all Meetings in Britain included a number of members who shared their experience of homelessness or, like many Black youths and adults, of being regularly stopped and searched by the police. Suppose most members of Quaker Meetings experienced, on an almost daily basis, the casual cruelty of a society that looked down on them and treated them as people of little worth. I wonder what Quaker Meetings for Worship would be like if that were the case, and whether we would, in such circumstances, build a stronger community and draw closer to the Light. 

Punching above our weight?

 

A phrase that's come to worry me the more I hear it is "Quakers punch above their weight." And although I detest boxing, it's not the image of the punch that worries me. I'm just as worried when it's put more politely as "Quakers have an influence that's disproportionate to their small numbers."

I have two concerns about this idea of influence. One is that it seems a particularly sneaky way of going about things. In the struggle for the vote, women (whose campaign was never endorsed by British Quakers as a whole) were often told that their proper role was to exert a quiet influence behind the scenes - which meant, on the whole, those women who were classed as "ladies" acting as society hostesses or whispering ideas for policy into their influential husbands' ears. It never seemed much of a substitute for involvement in real, informed public debate and it plainly privileged those women who were not merely wealthy but also prepared to exert sweetly feminine charms to public and political ends.

I wouldn't accuse any Quaker of deploying sweetly feminine charms in this way. However Quaker influence behind the scenes has on occasion been exerted by Quakers using social contacts with highly-placed politicians that derive from class privilege and the manners of the wealthier members of society. This behind-the-scenes influence through social contacts goes in both directions. For instance, in 1907 William A Cadbury was persuaded by the foreign secretary Lord Grey to delay and limit access to the report into slavery in Principe and Sao Tomé he had commissioned because it might cause damage to the government's interests as well as the reputation of Quaker chocolate manufacturers.

But there's another concern. If we exert disproportionate influence, by what right do we do so? Do we really think we are heard because of our virtue - or is it because of our money and our manners? And if we are being heard, whose voices exert less influence than they should?

I think most Quakers would express shock if I stood up in Meeting and praised the way in which influence over parliaments is bought by the rich or achieved by those with the right contacts. I've heard Quakers express shock at the thought that friends of ministers might have been privileged in gaining PPE contracts. They might also be discomfited by the way political parties (in power and opposition) raise funds by charging for access to key politicians. But it's the standard game and all sorts of people play it. I've heard of charities, campaign groups I support, universities, local authorities and even NHS trusts trying to get on the right side of ministers by booking stalls at party conferences - and isn't that a kind of cash for access?

So how do Quakers gain their disproportionate influence? I'm prepared to agree, as a Quaker, that it's influence for things I too really care about: peace-making, help for refugees, LGBTQ rights and so forth. Well they - we - pay for it. We have offices and people who are good at talking with politicians. People with opposing views - and often with much more money - do the same things to advance their views. It's a messy process and hasn't got much to do with democracy.

Meanwhile there are groups who have much of importance to say whose influence is insufficient - who punch below their weight. The Grenfell Action Group were vigorous in their attempts to avert the fire that killed 72 people - but they were mocked, threatened and ignored. Yet they did their best to speak truth to power. Numerous campaigns seek the truth about other deaths when the state or big organisations are involved, but few have much impact on politicians or policy. If we're pleased that Quakers have a disproportionately large influence, what do we feel about those who influence is disproportionately small? And how does punching above our weight fit with our testimony to equality?

Towards a Quaker view of work?

 

Quaker Oats advertisement from The Strand magazine

Quaker Oats have nothing to do with Quakers, apart from being an occasional source of annoyance. But an advertisement which labels Quaker Oats as "the work food" and tells readers sternly "You have your work to do" plays into the Protestant work ethic that has, at times, played a part in Quaker thinking. For instance this quotation from Quaker John Bellers in 1714 is still in Quaker Faith and Practice and I've heard it quoted on numerous occasions:
"The poor without employment are like rough diamonds, their worth is unknown."

The more I look at that line, torn from its context for present-day edification, the stranger it seems. Why is the worth of the poor specifically only known if they are employed? And by whom does it have to be known? In the early 18th century when he wrote those words John Bellers would have been well acquainted with Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount as given in Matthew's gospel:

"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? ...

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

"And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." (Matt. 6, 26, 28-9)

But John Bellers was part of a world that was very concerned with idleness - especially the idleness of those who were forced to depend on the charity of others. His scheme for providing poor Quakers with flax to spin, at home or in prison, led to other plans including for a College of Industry which never came into being, and a Quaker workhouse, which did. From 1702 the fifty-six "Friends and Orphans" who lodged there were kept busy with various kinds of manual labour, although the boys were taught to read, write and keep accounts. They were also fed a decent diet including bread, meat and beer and kept clean by the provision of cold baths.

Bellers' statement about the poor stands out because there is so little in Quaker Faith and Practice about the experience of being employed. By comparison, a great deal is included about Quaker businesses and business ethics - from the point of view of those who own, run and invest in them. But many people and many Quakers today engage and struggle with the world of work as employees. Even more live valuable lives outside paid employment - and if we really believe in "that of God" in everyone, this might also help us to see the value in the work people do, whether it is paid or not.

When I was having a tough time at work I looked through Quaker Faith and Practice to see if there was any help to be found there. I didn't find much. It helped to told not to lower my standard of integrity but not what to do if I saw a lack of integrity in some of the things that were done by those in charge at my place of work. Bosses often present a false picture of themselves and their work to the world, particularly under the stressed conditions of a competitive market place. This seemed at times to compromise my own attempts at "strict integrity."

And how about bullying, inequality and injustice? These are commonplace in many workplaces today and Quakers are both subject to these and lookers on. It would help to find advice on how to respond and how to stand with those fellow employees who are having a hard time. Not all jobs are rewarding in any way other than in providing the employee with pay. Much work is experienced, with justification, as mere drudgery. When many people (including Quakers) are in precarious jobs we are all in need of useful, ethical and spiritually-informed advice to help us navigate the world in which we live. It's good to read the kind of over-arching vision that Quakers more than a hundred years ago articulated when looking towards a new social order but it would be helpful to accompany this with a sense of how to deal with the realities of daily life until and in order that such a vision might be achieved.

Quakers can easily be tempted to place higher value on the rich and those in well-rewarded jobs than those who earn little or nothing - as though money really was the key to understanding individual wealth. The history of poor Quakers is less recorded than the history of rich ones which is a shame. As a society we probably have more knowledge of the thoughts and spiritual insights of Quakers who owned and traded in slaves, or profited indirectly through slavery, than of how Quaker paupers, labourers and servants understood their faith. This is a considerable loss and it would be a greater shame if we continued to neglect the insights of those less valued in the world beyond our Society. 

I wonder if it's possible to separate the idea of what constitutes work from ideas that connect wealth and income with status. Work might then consist not just of something that gains a transfer of money into a bank account but might also cover housework and other domestic chores, planting a garden, cooking a meal, caring for a child or other dependent, listening to a neighbour, running an errand. It might even include activities that have no worldly value but are spiritually nourishing or simply make life seem worthwhile. Someone might work by listening to music, going for a run, playing a game with others or observing with pleasure something in the neighbourhood - a tree, a flower, a bird or a fine design on a house or wall. Could we really challenge the values of the contemporary world so far?

I don't think we can do any of this without a lot of serious listening - the kind of listening that turns many preconceived values and assumptions upside down. Instead of listening to the practised words of bosses and owners, we need to make space to hear those whose work is not so highly valued and those who have been taught not to recognize what they do as work as all. I don't know if this is possible in the Religious Society of Friends but I'd like to think that it is.

Quaker Mother and Child by Horace Pippin c.1935-40 

Quaker Mother and Child | RISD Museum 

Money, time and something else

The website for Quakers in Britain includes a section on giving.  It indicates two ways in which members of the Religious Society of Friends can contribute to Quaker work: by giving money or by giving time. Both money and time are useful and can be used well. But there are many people who have neither time nor money to spare and there's a risk that such people may come to feel they have nothing to offer the wider Quaker community - and that the Quaker community as a whole may forget what those without time and money actually provide.

Many people in Britain have less than no money. They are in debt. This isn't their fault. We live in a system where debt is a way of life. Some kinds of debt are respectable, even among Quakers who can be quite critical of debt. A mortgage is a debt. A student loan is a debt, although a debt that may never be repaid. A bank loan that underwrites a business venture is a debt. 

The debts that people working in insecure low-paid jobs or relying on benefits tend to be smaller but it's much harder to get by when these debts are incurred. Many people who have incurred debts through poverty or crisis find themselves working extra hours in an attempt to reduce of pay off the debt. These people often have caring responsibilities or illness or disabilities as well. They can't offer Quakers time or money but they are just the people we should welcome in our Meetings and as members. They have much to teach the wealthier and more fortunate people in our community. 

Some of what we might learn is purely practical. The book of  Pam Lunn's 2011 Swarthmore Lecture, Costing not less than everything, includes the following passage:
    "In the town where I live the local climate change action group recently had an interactive exhibition. ... I spent about three hours there, helping visitors use a simple online carbon footprint calculator. The people who were showing low carbon emissions and coming very close to one-planet living (in carbon terms) were the poor - people unemployed or on low incomes, with whole families living in small houses, in what many of us would regard as over-crowded conditions. I was surprised at how low some of their carbon footprints were. ... I don't regard my own home as luxurious, or my lifestyle as affluent - but on a global scale they most certainly are."

That passage is a useful reminder, and not just that poorer people in Britain may be doing less harm to the planet than the majority of Quakers. It's an uncomfortable reminder that Quakers are, by and large, affluent and liable to be surprised that poor people might set a good example. And while the paragraph draws back from suggesting that the author is herself living an affluent lifestyle in a luxurious home in local terms, that is precisely what her example suggests. If there were more people in our Meetings setting a good material example by their low carbon footprint because of their relative poverty, and if their example were valued, admired and followed, they would provide something of worth to the community of Quakers as a whole.

I think we sometimes pay too much attention to those who are able to offer time and money to Quakers, and too little attention to those among us who struggle and lack both. Because we don't have a paid priesthood, we depend on those who can afford to donate time to Quaker work and perhaps also to those whose money can fund Quaker projects. Of course their time and money is a useful and generous gift. But just as we worry about big donors to political parties wielding undue influence and power, we need to be concerned that big donors to Quakers (in terms of time as well as money) might exert too much influence on the decisions and direction of the Society. Those who possess spare time and money are often those whose life experience has been limited. There is a difference between observing need (even when we respond to it) and actually experiencing need.

There is no single experience of poverty and need. People who are poor or in need are complete, fully-rounded human beings. Each of them has something individual and specific to offer us, should they wish to join us at Meeting or become a member of the Religious Society of Friends. Each has particular spiritual insights. We can learn at least as much from those who lack time and money as from those who have both in abundance.

watercolour from the commonplace book of Quaker Elizabeth Clay

Where are the poor Quakers?

 Why are Quakers so wealthy?

Not all Quakers are wealthy. Some are poor, subsisting on benefits or working for low wages in the gig economy. Some struggle to make ends meet. But the overwhelming impression given by Quakers in Britain as a whole is of people who are, for the most part, comfortably off and who don't suffer from the day-to day money struggles that affect a large proportion of the British population. So what went wrong?

Quakers are, as our Advices and Queries make plain, a faith group with Christian roots. And the Bible, which Quakers are still advised to read, is not a book that sides with the rich. Jesus' teachings are quite clear: he brings good news to the poor and warns his followers not to lay up for themselves treasures on earth. Yet Quakers often seem quite proud of the wealth that Quaker businesses - the breweries, the banks, the chocolate factories - have created. By the mid-19th century, according to Elizabeth Isichei's research, the average Quaker was three times as wealthy as the average British citizen. I don't find that a cause for pride.

Once any group starts becoming rich it's also liable to start being defensive about its wealth. In religious groups this can be labelled the reward of providence of the gift of God. Surely we don't think like that any more. Surely we know that wealth - including Quaker wealth - was achieved in some dodgy ways. Even Quakers who didn't "own" enslaved people or take part in colonial wars reaped the benefits of a system of empire-building, war and slavery.

Wealth has other corrupting influences. It's not just that, as the Sermon on the Mount says, moth and rust will corrupt, and thieves break through and steal. It teaches people to protect themselves from any association with poor people and poverty - unless that association is one in which the rich can congratulate themselves on doing good to and instructing the poor. Separation between rich and poor becomes central to a way of life.

In the 1860s many Quaker missions had been set up. These were not based on the equality of all that we attempt today in Quaker Meetings, where anyone can minister (unless and until eldered). They included Bible readings, singing and preaching to the poor. By the end of the 1860s there were roughly as many people regularly attending Quaker missions as there were attending Quaker Meetings for Worship. The suggestion was made that Quaker Mission members should be admitted to membership of the Religious Society of Friends - though perhaps there should be a second-class, inferior kind of membership especially for them.

The proposal to admit Mission members to Quaker membership created much discussion among Friends. In 1869 Quaker Robert Barclay, in a widely-published speech, asked:

 "Do you wish to invite chimney-sweepers, costermongers, or even blacksmiths, to dinner on First Day? Do you intend to give their sons and daughters a boarding-school education? Do you intend to save the country the expense of supporting them when out of work, and give them a sort of prescriptive right to a maintenance – a right apart from the simple personal, individual act of Christian charity?"

The speech went on to explain that it would be wrong to ask labouring men to take time away from their labours so that they could attend the business Meetings in which the direction of the Society was determined. (He didn't mention labouring women because women were, at that time, excluded from such Meetings.) And he went on and on and on:

"There is the crossing-sweeper! He is a Christian; will you reject him from Christ’s visible church? He has the same Lord, the same baptism, the same faith, the same God. He will go to the same heaven as you. He will sit down at the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Nay, he may occupy a higher place in heaven than you. No, you cannot, as professing Christians, refuse to welcome him as one who Christ is not ashamed to call his brother and if you are ashamed  to do so, be very sure he will at the last day be ashamed of you before the angels of God.

           "You cannot refuse him that Christian communion, that  loving Christian sympathy and religious instruction which you desire your own child should enjoy. But is that any reason you should introduce him to what is religiously valueless, and invite him to dinner, and encourage your daughter to associate with him in her civil or social capacity? Is it any reason why you should give him a boarding-school education, which will help him to become one of the queen’s ministers? Are not these things beyond the functions of a Christian church? Must they not necessarily limit the mission of a church of Christ?"

That distinction, between wealthy Quakers and the faithful poor, was the view that prevailed. There is an absence of poor and working-class people among Quakers today because Quakers decided - perhaps by default rather than active decision - to exclude them from the Society. So today we have wealth  but are impoverished in diversity. There is important ministry that we may therefore fail to hear.