Reasons to walk cheerfully: Joe Jones’s Thought for the Week

‘We are part of a movement that is greater than any earthly empire.’

Someone quotes it after every election: ‘We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for this party or against the other… but we are for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation.’ Edward Burrough, of course, in 1659.

It’s a noble thought, and a challenging one – certainly at the time, when, as one of a collection of thoughts and practices, it led to Burrough’s imprisonment and death, aged just twenty-nine. 

Today, I’m not sure we could survey the Quaker landscape and truly say that Friends were not ‘for’ or ‘against’ either candidate in the recent election for US president. To readers of the Friend I’m going to call the reasons for this obvious, and leave it at that. Sometimes the route to justice, mercy, truth, peace and freedom seems more direct in one direction, and feelings of grief are understandable when it looks like we’re heading the other way. It’s appropriate, as Kate Graham bravely reminds us on page eight, to acknowledge these.

‘There is more to the world than the fortunes of individual politicians.’

But what Burrough was getting at, surely, is that there is more to the world than the fortunes of individual politicians or their parties. We do believe that people make a difference, of course. And one person, in the office of US president, can wield enormous influence. But on election day we can forget the larger forces at play. 

Consider, for example, one global trend that Friends take very seriously: poverty. In 1990, almost forty per cent of the world lived below the extreme poverty line. In 2019, the latest year for which World Bank figures are available, that number stood at eight-and-a-half per cent. That’s still 660 million people – a scandal – but a consistent movement over six presidencies (estimates indicate that the pandemic blip has now been overcome).

Increases in wealth, historically, come with environmental consequences. And yes, globally, since 1990, carbon dioxide emissions have risen by sixty per cent. In the US they’ve been falling for almost two decades. Again, they are still scandalously high – these are not figures to help you walk cheerfully – but the political motivations are not what one might expect. The state in the union with the largest solar capacity is not Democratic California but Republican Texas. If the new president scraps climate policies then, according to David Victor, a climate expert and professor at the University of California San Diego, ‘What we observed last time is that a lot of other folks are willing to step into the breach, and this time it will happen faster.’

We should, this week, acknowledge what new threats we might face in the world. But there is a reason why despair was once one of eight deadly sins. We are part of a movement that is greater than any earthly empire. It’s no time for giving up.

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