Tender Sympathy

 

"As we enter with tender sympathy into the joys and sorrows of each other's lives, ready to give help and receive it ..."

That's how it's supposed to be - and that's the experience of quite a number of Quakers. But the experience isn't universal. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes there are personality clashes - even bitter disagreements - or just a nagging dislike that lies below the surface of attempts at friendship and understanding. We're not perfect after all.

But what of those occasions when the barrier to "tender sympathy" isn't something as simple as a personality clash? What if differences of culture and life experience lie at the root of difference? Quakers aren't immune to that difficulty - and there are particular problems because the current Quaker demographic in Britain is largely white, comfortably off and middle-class. There are historic reasons for this, some of which might discomfit Quakers today.

For people in the majority or dominant group it's not always easy to share life experiences, especially troubling experiences that may have been a crucial element of a continuing spiritual journey. But at least when experiences are shared there's a fair expectation that many of the listeners will have a shared sense of the kind of life in which those experiences happened. It's usual, for instance, to assume a norm of financial stability and being respected while never being racially abused and only very rarely (when taking part in non-violent action) being stopped and searched by the police.

That shared norm makes tender sympathy quite easy. The listeners will respond with their own similar or parallel experiences and the end of spiritual sharing will be a closer sense of shared identity. It's like being part of of a big family. No wonder many people talk about their arrival among Quakers as "coming home." And no wonder that for quite a few people it isn't like that at all.

Quakers tend to listen respectfully to whatever you tell them. Quakers work hard at listening - except when they're busy talking, which also happens quite a lot. But if you tell a group of people whose life experiences are very different from your own - particularly if you come from a group that is accustomed to mild contempt or worse from white, middle-class people - sharing your deepest experiences doesn't feel nearly so comfortable. You might decide to do it anyway - after all they are nice people - but they probably don't get it. What you receive doesn't feel so much like the "tender sympathy" of equals. It feels like the slightly condescending response of a teacher or social worker or magistrate who has read a few books about your way of life but doesn't know what it actually feels like. If you're really unlucky, they may offer advice - because they've read books so they reckon they know what your life is all about.

None of this is done out of unkindness or ill-will and somehow that makes it worse. Suppose you went to Meeting for Worship - kept going to Meeting for Worship - and it was the best and deepest spiritual experience of your life. But when Meeting was over you found yourself in a group of people who were comfortable together but just slightly awkward and condescending around you. 

Would you stay or would you go?

Why not talk about Germantown?

 Ah yes, the Quakers! They're good people. Didn't they play a big part in getting rid of slavery? Weren't they among the first to see that it was wrong?

Well no, actually. Quite a number of early Quakers were slave-owners - and that included William Penn, the man whose gigantic statue looms over Pennsylvania. He did think of freeing his slaves at one time - before one of his journeys he left a will setting them free if he died on the voyage - but he didn't actually do it and in the end he treated them as property and they passed to his heirs.

But didn't everyone believe in slavery then? No. They didn't. People who had been enslaved definitely thought it was a bad idea. That's why they rebelled so often. That's why some of them ran away when they had the chance - though that must have been a terrifying prospect in a land they didn't know. Pennsylvania enacted some pretty brutal laws to prevent enslaved people from talking to one another - and a state wouldn't pass laws like that unless the people in charge were pretty scared that the people they oppressed might conspire and rise up against them.

There were also Quakers who didn't believe in slavery - way back in William Penn's time and in Pennsylvania. Slavery was, after all, a pretty new enterprise on the scale adopted in the mid-17th century. It was taken up by the English government at just about the time Quakers were getting going. And some people found it appalling. Back in 1688 a protest was presented to the Quakers in Philadelphia signed by four Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania. It began: "These are the reasons why we are against the traffik of mens-body." The authors were Dutch and their English is clumsy but those words - "traffik of mens-body" - get right to the point of what slavery is. And the document goes on to point out all the reasons why it is wrong. It even points out the violence of slavery: that these people "have as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep them slaves."

Quakers in Britain today don't hear much about the authors of the Germantown protest, even though one, Francis Pastorius, was a friend of William Penn, the subject of a poem by Whittier and is sometimes considered the first American poet. They're a bit of an embarrassment - a reminder that early Quakers not only got some things wrong but also that the wrong they did caused devastating damage to the lives of those they oppressed. 

But isn't it time we learned at least as much about the bad bits of Quaker history as we're prepared to face when looking at the wrongs of the British Empire or our country's conduct in war? There can't be one rule for the British Empire and another rule for us. And while we're at it, perhaps we should find a way to acknowledge that the resistance of enslaved people helped Quakers understand that slavery was wrong and that when Quaker anti-slavery activities finally got going in the late 18th century, they weren't just drawing on Quaker thought but also on the activities of non-Quakers like Olaudah Equiano, who had once been the property of Quaker Robert King, and Ottobah Cugoano. These were men whose position in British society was far less easy than that of members of the Religious Society of Friends.

Thinking about the enslaved people and the Germantown protest isn't just a matter of being truthful about long-dead history. The past has formed who we are and where we are as a Society today. Who we choose to celebrate - whose words we include in Quaker Faith and Practice - tells us something of where we are now, and whose unhappiness we might prefer to ignore.

Estates, degrees and Mary Fisher

 

I was troubled when, in Meeting for Worship, a Friend read this passage from Isaac Pennington:

"Are there not different states, different degrees, different growths, different places? … Therefore, watch every one to feel and know his own place and service in the body, and to be sensible of the gifts, places, and services of others, that the Lord may be honoured in all, and every one owned and honoured in the Lord, and no otherwise."

It was written in 1667 but it's still listed as one of the "well-loved phrases" in Britain Yearly Meeting's current edition of Quaker Faith and Practice. I don't love it at all.

It's possible that Friends today aren't familiar with the way some of those words were used in the 17th century. But the word "degrees" following the word "states" go back to some arguments about class that were common enough in Shakespeare's day to surface in his plays. "Degree" and "state" or "estate" in this context mean something close to social and economic class. Knowing your "place and service" among Friends suggest the existence of a hierarchy that's not much different from the hierarchy in the rest of the world.

Warnings that individual Quakers should know their place and stay there aren't that uncommon, even among early Friends. An epistle from George Fox, quoted in Geoffrey Durham's The Spirit of the Quakers, includes the warning to Friends "of what trade or calling so ever" to:

"Go not beyond your estates, lest ye bring yourselves to trouble, and cumber, and a snare; keep low and down in all things ye act. ... "dwell every one of you under your own vine ... and seek not to be great ..."

Fox's epistle is concerned with many things, from avoiding debt, envy and lavish spending to the need to "dwell in the truth, justice, righteousness, and holiness." The word "estates" as used here seems concerned with both possessions and place in the world, since these were closely linked in the understanding of the time. This his words, like Pennington's, have an underlying tone of "Know your place and stay there."

These injunctions, still quoted and loved, have a chilling effect on my own wish to challenge existing hierarchies. I want to wave the banner of Quakers' testimony to Equality but are Quakers really that equal - and do they want to be? I don't know the answer. An enthusiasm to speak truth to power is rarely matched by a desire to hear truth spoken by the powerless - or even by a recognition that those with less power also have a truth to speak.

I'm cheered, however, by parts of the story of Mary Fisher. She was one of the group called the "Valiant Sixty" - the men and women who were also known as "publishers of truth." In the 1650s she as an illiterate housemaid she was convinced of the truth of Quakerism, as were all in the household where she was employed. When she told her employers that she felt a calling to preach, they released her from her employment and she went out with another woman, Elizabeth Williams, to preach in the streets of England. They were flogged as vagabonds. But Quakers taught Mary Fisher to read and write, They supported her ministry - and her ministry took her to Barbados, to America and to Turkey where she spoke with the Sultan and felt a special kinship with the Muslims she met, describing them as "more near truth than many nations" and speaking of her great love towards them.

Later Mary Fisher married twice and died in 1698 in South Carolina. There the story becomes less happy. At the time of her death she was a slave-owner and a human being was listed as part of her property. So I wonder how Mary Fisher was seen by other Quakers at the time. Was she seen as an exception, with special gifts and a calling that allowed her, uniquely, to be freed from the usual restriction of estate, degree and place? And was that, in the end, how she saw herself? Or was there a moment in the early history of Quakers when equality of people of all estates and degrees seemed possible and a harbinger of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth?

Unwritten rules

Quakers have a testimony to equality. That doesn't mean that they - that we - are very good at it. We're not entirely sure what it means.

In Britain, where Quakers don't have paid ministers (although they do have employees) there's a tendency to say that equality means not having a hierarchy. We sit in a square or a circle. In a Meeting for Worship anyone can stand to minister. Quaker roles - clerk, elder, treasurer etc. - aren't held for life but for three- or six-year periods and in theory anyone can take them.

It's not as easy as that. Quaker practices have been evolved through centuries and, over time, plenty of customs and unwritten rules have evolved. Quakers try to explain these to newcomers - we're not an unwelcoming lot. But we tend to forget how little newcomers know. We may explain about sitting in silence for long stretches of time - or even that, from time to time, people may stand up and "minister." We may even say encouragingly that "Anyone can minister" but is that really true? Quaker ministry tends to have a quite small range of acceptable tones and patterns. I'm not sure what would happen if a newcomer felt moved to harangue us for a long time in the style of, for example, George Fox. Or perhaps I do know what would happen. The newcomer would be eldered and gently, condescendingly, learn some of the unwritten rules of ministry. Friends would be relieved when the newcomer failed to return.

Perhaps it's fortunate that most newcomers don't feel moved to minister. They tend to wait until after Meeting to ask questions. Then they may or may not be aware of the social rules that apply - because social rules do exist, even if they're unwritten. For some that time after Meeting is a comfortable time - a chance to drink Fairtrade tea or coffee, to nibble organic biscuits and to feel that this is the sort of gathering in which they belong. But what about those who don't feel comfortable? They may have enjoyed the peace of Meeting for Worship and been moved by ministry. They may even have found that Meeting provided a deep and enriching spiritual experience. But now they have to navigate a social gathering which in Britain is mostly white and mostly middle-class. What if they feel out of place? What if that's the main obstacle that will hinder or halt their return?

Why?

In the interest of truth.

In the interest of equality.

Because these things matter.