Testimonies and jigsaws
Rowena Loverance reviews the first book in the Quaker Quicks series, written by John Lampen
In his engaging new book, Quaker Roots and Branches, John Lampen continues his valuable dual mission to get his fellow Quakers to take their history seriously and to remind non-Quakers that we are still going strong today.
This is a slim volume, so the author has had to be rigorous. Focusing on Quaker witness, he has chosen just four topics, two familiar, two rather less so, rounded off with a final section on ‘Experience, belief and theology’. There is a glossary of Quaker terms and short bibliographies, but no references. Since many of the characters make tantalisingly brief appearances, I found it helpful to have Google to hand.
Starting with the environment is topical, following British Quakers’ commitment in 2011 to become a low-carbon, sustainable community, but John Lampen is at pains to find its origin in earlier acts of witness – George Fox’s vision of the unity of the created world, Arthur Eddington’s star-gazing and Ada Salter’s window boxes – which have now come together like jigsaw pieces making up the whole.
Similarly with punishment, where he focuses as much attention on the treatment of disturbed children, drawing on his own experience, as on the more familiar stories of prison visiting. This is his longest chapter, but it was a pity he could not find room for the experiences of contemporary prison reformers, such as Ruth Morris or Kimmett Edgar, and prison governors such as Dermot Grubb and Tim Newell (though the latter is referenced in the bibliography).
On war and peace, the most familiar Quaker testimony, John Lampen tries to anticipate the responses of his non-Quaker audience, and describes the harsh conditions endured by members of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit as a riposte to potential accusations of cowardice. Again, he brings the story up to date with the Quaker United Nations Office’s work on child soldiers and landmines.
By this point I was beginning to chafe at rather too much Quaker heroism, so the section on Quakers and the arts offers a useful corrective: how could we have got it so wrong for so long? Since the book was written, we have seen both the demise of the Leaveners and the Swarthmore Lecture given for the first time by a professional artist – so this particular jigsaw puzzle is clearly some way from completion.
In the last section on experience, John Lampen again draws convincingly on his own life, recalling the two occasions during which, following their inner Guide, he and his wife Diana made a difficult life choice for themselves and their family.
In a short book on a big topic, some deeper issues can feel glossed over. Both thinkers and activists appear – John Lampen believes there is less of a gap between them than one might think – but does following guidance, which for John Lampen is key to being a Quaker, play an equally important role for both? Is enough credit given to Quakers acting in partnership with others? The book’s cover photograph depicts a protest in the British Museum against BP cultural sponsorship, but does not credit the other climate change groups that also took part. And what about dissenters, such as those Quakers who conscientiously took up arms in the first world war? Sixty pages does not allow quite enough scope for light and shade.
This is the first book in the Quaker Quicks series: three more are imminent.
Quaker Roots and Branches by John Lampen is published by Christian Alternative at £6.99.
