Thought for the week 1: Ian Tod on unfinished business

‘Racial equality has been slow in progressing.’

The testimonies unite Quakers worldwide. They spring from deep experience, and have been reaffirmed by successive generations. A testimony is not a belief, but is committed action arising out of Friends’ religious experience. Take our radical vision of equality, rooted in the recognition of that of God in everyone, which is in many ways the core of Quaker spirituality – and, in a way, is also responsible for two enduring stereotypes about Friends.

First there is the use of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’. In the seventeenth century, English had two second-person pronouns, much as French and other languages still have today. ‘Thee’ or ‘thou’ was used to address one person, while you’d say ‘you’ while speaking to a group of people – or someone of greater social standing, such as the nobility. But Quakers didn’t believe in such distinctions, and called everyone ‘thou’. This belief was behind male Friends’ refusal to take their hats off in the presence of ‘social superiors’, and it met with consequences including violence, and even imprisonment. Before Friends became pacifists, they were dismissed from the army for refusing to treat officers as superior.

Secondly, a more significant legacy of the Quaker vision of equality is that, from the beginning, women and men were both accepted as capable of receiving and sharing the continued revelation of Spirit. Friends were some of the first to value women as spiritual ministers – though at one time it was common for male and female Quakers to have separate Meetings for Business, since Quakers found that women were not participating fully in joint Meetings as most women would not nay-say their husbands. Hence some Meeting houses had a movable divider to allow each sex to run their own Business Meetings; any issue which required the consent of the whole Meeting would involve sending an emissary to the other Meeting. 

So Friends have pushed against inequality since our earliest days, and over time gender equality gave way to expressions of racial equality as abolitionism grew among Friends. But racial equality has been slow in progressing, since the days when many Quakers benefited from enslaving Africans. In 1671, George Fox travelled to Barbados where eighty per cent of Quakers had enslaved people in their plantations. Fox urged Quakers to consider manumission but did not call for an end to the practice of enslavement. He did commend Friends to worship with enslaved people in their households, and to introduce them to Quakerism, but integration was slow. Worship took place in separate Meeting houses or segregated rooms. This led one abolitionist to comment that ‘[The Quakers] will give good advice… They will aid in giving us a partial education but never in a Quaker School beside their own children, Whatever they do for us savors of pity and is done at arm’s length.’ 

Difficult work remains to rid ourselves of prejudice and inequitable treatment. But Quakerism is a journey, and following a Quaker life is a challenge. We must remember that part of that challenge is reaching full equality.

---

Comments

French was the first language of my childhood.  Simplistically the second personal singular ‘Tu ’ is used to address both inferriors and intimates; ‘Vous’ is used to speak superiors and formally. 

In earlier times too many assumed that Quakers using Thee/Thou were using it in the sense of speaking to inferiors, disrespectfully , vividly illustrated by Thomas Ellswood (Qf&p 19:40m last paragraph) 

But to Friends it stood as a testimony to equality, drawing all into their close, intimate circle, whether stranger or Friend.

By Ol Rappaport on 2025 04 17

---

Please login to add a comment