Faith in practice
David Olver reviews a new book of essays on Quaker history
Over the last decade or so, David Rubinstein has written a number of booklets on Quaker topics. But booklets by their nature are short-term reads so he has collected and published them as a 300-page book with the title Essays in Quaker History. This will give them the permanence they deserve. The seven essays are grouped under three headings: ‘Beginnings and Progress’; ‘Friends in War’; and ‘Personalities’.
The essay I found of greatest interest is that on ‘Yorkshire Friends in Historical Perspective’. It tells the history from George Fox’s first visit in 1651, through the quietist period, and on to the rise of Quaker businesses and Yorkshire Quakerism in the twentieth century. It includes a useful list of published histories of Local Meetings in Yorkshire.
The third essay, entitled ‘Modern Warfare 1899-1945’, is the text of the presidential address that the author gave to the Friends Historical Society in 2014. It is a scholarly, well-researched and readable account of Friends’ attitudes in three wars – the Boer war of 1899-1902 and the two world wars. The first world war was a traumatic and disuniting experience for Friends. The central thesis of the essay is to point out that many Friends supported the war. It is estimated that a third of members joined the armed forces – many of whom died on the battlefields. We look back and assume that pacifism has always been a defining testimony for British Quakerism. David Rubinstein shows that this was not the case. At the start of the war there were two broad views among Friends – that the Inner Light meant that individual consciences would lead to some Friends supporting the aims of the war, or that it was wrong to fight in all circumstances. A quotation on the York Quakers website illustrates a pro-war stance:
Harold Capper Hunt, an administrator at the Retreat hospital in York, put the matter in an oversimplified but not inaccurate form early in 1915: ‘If the Society stands for one thing more than another it is for liberty of conscience, and I am glad to say that in this crisis many members are at one with the British cause.’ This conviction, although seen by many Friends as inconsistent with the Quaker peace testimony, drew support from belief in the Inner Light.
Attitudes in the second world war were much more united, but, even so, there were Friends who took an absolutist pacifist position and refused to join the Friends Ambulance Unit, which was seen as quasi-military. The next essay covers the same ground as the previous essay but is more general and describes the attitudes of Quakers in 1914 and 1915. This is followed by a chapter that uses historical sources to track the attitudes of members of the Rowntree family during 1914-18. Those in business faced hard choices. The plight of Joseph Rowntree, who built the company to be a national brand, was typical. He was torn between loyalty to his employees and loyalty to his faith.
The last two essays will be of particular interest to York Friends. ‘The life of James Backhouse (1794-1869)’ is an account of an ardent evangelical Quaker who trained as a botanist and helped to run the family nursery garden business in York, but was predominantly a missionary. Finally, the author has written an interesting account of Edna Annie Crichton (1876-1970), who was the first woman lord mayor of York. She was not an active Friend but claimed to be a Quaker in public utterances – and it clearly drove her desire for public service, particularly to improve the housing in York.
Overall, David Rubinstein has done a great service in researching and recording the growth of Quakerism through the lives of some Friends. The book can be strongly recommended for a stimulating read.
Essays in Quaker History by David Rubinstein is published by Quacks Books at £12.99. ISBN: 9781904446712.
