'Can it be that some of the most interesting historical Quakers dwelt on the outer edges of the Society?' Photo: George Keith
What would Jesus do? Simon Webb on George Keith, theology, and the slave trade
‘Keith’s emphasis on the incarnate Jesus was felt by many Friends to be inconsistent with their idea of the Inner Light.’
n 1889, Charles Hildeburn, a collector of old books, discovered a copy of George Keith’s An exhortation & caution to Friends concerning buying or keeping of negroes. This had been published in 1693, and had been referenced by Benjamin Franklin, among others. But until Hildeburn’s find it had been lost for nearly 200 years. It was quickly re-published as The First Printed Protest Against Slavery in America.
The actual first recorded protest by a religious group against the enslavement of Africans in the US was the Germantown Petition, which appeared five years earlier, in 1688. This was written by Francis Daniel Pastorius, a German Quaker in William Penn’s new colony, and the central character in Whittier’s ‘The Pennsylvania Pilgrim’ (1872). It is likely that the nineteenth-century re-publishers of Keith’s Exhortation felt justified in calling it ‘the first printed protest against slavery’ because the Germantown Petition had not been printed. That too was lost, until it was rediscovered in 1844 and printed in the Friend.
The main part of the Germantown Petition is just over a thousand words, but it still manages to be repetitive. It says little more than that white people should not enslave black people because the whites themselves would not like such treatment, and that the practice of enslaving Africans is giving Pennsylvania a bad name. By contrast, at over 2,500 better-organised words, George Keith’s Exhortation deploys theological arguments, and quotes scripture.
In The Christian Quaker, her book about George Keith, Madeleine Ward argues that Keith’s Exhortation reflects his own beliefs about Jesus as a living, incarnate man. The Exhortation reminds us that ‘all such who are sincere Christians and true Believers in Christ Jesus, and Followers of him, bear his Image’, and that this is something they share with ‘Negroes, Blacks and Taunies’, who are ‘a real part of mankind’, for all of whom Jesus ‘tasted Death’.
It is likely that some Philadelphian Quakers responded to this with embarrassment, and others with anger. The Exhortation was criticising their behaviour, and was yet another inflammatory message from a controversial Friend. These Philadelphians found Keith’s utterances inflammatory precisely because of the theology that underlies his Exhortation. Keith’s emphasis on the incarnate Jesus, Jesus the outward man, was felt by many Friends to be inconsistent with their idea of Jesus as the Inner Light. Ward even suggests that George Fox’s emphasis on the inward, spiritual life of the soul – his sense that ‘if the Truth hath made you free, then you are free indeed’ – led to his ‘complacency on the issue of slavery’.
By the time his Exhortation was published, Keith had founded his own group of ‘Keithian’ Quakers. In 1694 he was disowned by London Yearly Meeting. One is reminded of Benjamin Lay, whose 1737 book against slavery used similar arguments. Lay was not only disowned by Quaker Meetings, he was sometimes physically carried out of them. Can it be that some of the most interesting historical Quakers dwelt on the outer edges of the Society?
Keith’s Exhortation can be read at www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qwhp/gk-as1693.htm.
Comments
Just a detail that might be lost: the 1844 reprinting of the Germantown Petition was in “The Friend” magazine of Philadelphia, which was founded 16 years before Friends in London decided to use the same name for their publication. In the 1950s, the Philadelphia magazine joined forces with one of its schismatic cousins and the united publication was renamed “Friends Journal” (for transparency, I’m its current senior editor). Here’s the 1844 republication in Google Books: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Friend/ing4AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The Friend quaker 1844 Vol. XVII&pg=PA125&printsec=frontcover
I personally would not put George Keith anywhere near Benjamin Lay on the pedestal of Quaker heroes. Keith’s journey was a kind of reverse road to Damascus: after his turn from Friends, he personally persecuted them on many occasions. He jailed British Friend Samuel Bownas (who literally wrote the book on Quaker ministry) for over a year. Keith also rigged a fake election that disenfranchised the Quaker colony of West Jersey by combining it with the numerically larger East Jersey (the combined colony/ state maintained some slavery until AFTER the U.S. Civil War, which would not have been true if West Jersey had remained independent). Keith was a complicated man, interesting of study for sure, but he was a political leader who did not fear to wield the power of the state against his enemies. Benjamin Lay, in contrast, was an underdog using the power of pranks to prick the consciences of his economic and social superiors.
By friendsjournal on 11th August 2023 - 0:17
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