tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/quakers-13002/articlesQuakers – The Conversation2023-08-01T15:42:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2091782023-08-01T15:42:11Z2023-08-01T15:42:11ZConscientious objectors in the second world war: little-known stories of pacifists plagued by doubt but willing to risk their lives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539242/original/file-20230725-27-5j4g2s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=141%2C0%2C3360%2C2179&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Second world war conscientious objectors attend a course in mechanised agriculture in Essex.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britain%27s_Home_Front_1939_-_1945-_Conscientious_Objectors_HU36259.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Like many conscientious objectors during the second world war, John Corsellis was acutely aware of the complex and conflicted position he was taking. Years later, he <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010236">told</a> the Imperial War Museum’s <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/sound">oral history project</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was always pretty strongly conscious of the illogicality of the pacifist position … I was well aware of the very great and extreme evil of Nazism, and conscious that the pacifist had only a very thin answer indeed as to how Nazism could be opposed in any other way than by force of arms.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Corsellis, the son of a barrister and educated at Westminster School in London, was far from alone in this inner-conflict. According to <a href="https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/r/linsey-robb/">my research</a> into these <a href="https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/publications/the-conchie-corps-conflict-compromise-and-conscientious-objection">conscientious objectors</a> – who remain far less well understood than their first world war counterparts – many were plagued with feelings of doubt, finding it difficult even years later to express their reasoning.</p>
<p>Corsellis was one of some 60,000 British men and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/18/4/409/1679606">900 women</a> who attested a conscientious objection during the second world war. (Many more women would like to have declared themselves conscientious objectors, but had no official way of doing so.) The 1% of conscripted men was proportionally more than the 16,000 who objected in the two years of conscription during the first world war. Most, but not all, objected on religious grounds and were from middle- or upper-class backgrounds. Most, but not all, were still willing to work in some capacity for Britain’s second world war effort.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Indeed, this new breed of “conchie” often displayed a strong desire to relieve the suffering of war – and were willing to risk their lives far from home. Having initially worked with the Quaker-affiliated Friends Ambulance Unit at home, Corsellis was sent to the El-Shatt refugee camp in Egypt and later the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Italy and Austria. There he witnessed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camps_in_post%E2%80%93World_War_II_Europe">forced repatriation of refugees</a> to eastern European countries including Yugoslavia – where many faced summary execution. (The trauma of these experiences led to Corsellis <a href="https://britishslovenesociety.org/john-corsellis-carer-of-post-war-refugees-14-01-1923-18-11-2018/">spending the rest of his life</a> raising awareness of the fates of Yugoslav displaced persons.)</p>
<p>A colleague on these missions, A. Tegla Davies, later described the motivation of second world war objectors in his history of the Friends Ambulance Unit:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When the war came upon them, the state treated them with surprising leniency. Some members of the unit went to prison, but for the majority the battle of the prisons had been won by the steadfastness of their [objector] fathers in the previous war. Now they felt that pacifism, having been recognised by the state, should show in action what it could do to relieve the suffering and agony which years of war were bound to produce.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘The pacifist is not a freak’</h2>
<p>Where first world war objectors can be characterised by their persistent opposition to the state, objectors in the second world war were generally willing to compromise so as to be useful in a non-combatant way. Despite being pacifists, they could be found in every corner of the war – and their experiences were often not so different from their fighting contemporaries. As Davies wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The normal, healthy young pacifist is not a freak. He feels the same passions and emotions as his fellow men. He does not enjoy being classed as odd or different. When war comes he is in a dilemma. If he joins the army, he violates his deepest convictions. If he refuses, he is in danger of cutting himself off from the community. Some are not unduly worried by that segregation. Others are tortured by it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Feelings of doubt were common among second world war objectors. Faced with a much more tolerant and flexible governmental strategy than the punitive stance of the first world war, ironically this engendered a much less certain course of action in many.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Crowded courtroom with two conscientious objectors at the centre," src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539243/original/file-20230725-30-35440n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A second world war tribunal for conscientious objectors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Britain%27s_Home_Front_1939_-_1945-_Conscientious_Objectors_HU62359.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even before the truth about Nazi atrocities came to light, their war was also a much more obvious battle between good and evil. The author and broadcaster <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Blishen">Edward Blishen</a> was working in Barnet as a young journalist when war was declared. Turning 18 in 1940, he was required to register as a conscientious objector just as France fell to the Nazis – a coincidence of events that tortured him, according to his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/4516489">war memoirs</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The shock of knowing that France was finished, and the voice within you saying: ‘You can’t … You can’t not be in it now – not now they’ve done this to France.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet despite this “voice of disloyal temptation”, Blishen registered as an objector, later recalling:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was sent to the bottom of the buzzing room, alone, away from all the others; and it felt as though I was separating myself from the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At his June 1940 tribunal, Blishen was granted agricultural work. Unlike in the first world war, these tribunals were headed by a civilian judge and included representation from trade unions. Incarceration was rare, with only 3% of men – compared with one-third in the first world war – given a prison sentence (generally 3-6 months) as a result of refusing to engage with the process of the tribunal altogether.</p>
<p>Complete exemption from military service was also rare. Around three-quarters of those applying for CO status were directed to work of “national importance”. This ranged from agricultural work to service in the army – either in the medical services or the specially formed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Combatant_Corps">Non-Combatant Corps</a>.</p>
<p>Blishen’s doubts persisted throughout the war. He didn’t enlist, but was painfully honest about the “feeling of shame” that haunted him as the fighting finally came to an end:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wondered, had I been motivated simply by the dread of being killed or maimed? … Wasn’t it true that through five years of universal agony, I had hidden away in despicable refuge? Had I even been a good pacifist? I had shuffled, hummed and hawed – put off all painful decisions. There it was, nearly over, and I was ashamed of myself.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Ambulance driver stands in front of his vehicle" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539254/original/file-20230725-20-z335fh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Friends Ambulance Unit driver in Wolfsburg, Germany, at the end of the second world war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friends_Ambulance_Unit_ambulance_driver,_with_his_vehicle_in_Wolfsburg,_Germany.jpg">Vernon39 via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘We needed each other’</h2>
<p>As in the first world war, nearly all who claimed objection at tribunal did so on the grounds of their religion – with many coming from traditionally pacifist churches such as the Quakers.</p>
<p>The Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in which Corsellis and Davies served was a re-creation of a first world war service that treated both military and civilian casualties. Predominantly funded by the Cadbury family of Quakers famous for its chocolate bars, the unit engendered a sense of solidarity among objectors <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80011838">according to another member</a>, William Brough:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We needed each other. We needed the confirmation of each other. We needed the affirmation of each other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Within the unit, the legacy of the first world war loomed large. Corsellis, whose father had lost an arm during the infamous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_campaign">Gallipoli campaign</a>, said he grew up strongly conscious of the “great war”, and argued that his entire generation felt the same. Avoiding a repeat of its destruction was, he added, a “major factor” in his pacifism. Fellow FAU member Michael Cadbury (a distant relative of the chocolate-making family) noted that he and his contemporaries were operating “on top of the mountain” that their forefathers “had scaled on our behalf”.</p>
<p>The popularity of great war poets during the objectors’ formative years was another important factor for some, including Blishen:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I looked at things very simply in those days. Pacifism had seemed to be the air we all breathed when we were in the grammar school together … We all read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque">Remarque</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Barbusse">Barbusse</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Toller">Toller</a>, and our views had always appeared so beautifully clear. War was black. Any war was black.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="British soldier looks through a trench periscope at the Western Front." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539258/original/file-20230725-22-tsnluv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many second world war COs were haunted by images of the Western Front trenches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NLS_Haig_-_Watching_the_Boche_trench_through_a_periscope.jpg">John Warwick Brooke/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The horrors of the <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/trench-warfare">western front trenches</a> are persistent motifs in the writings and interviews of many second world war objectors. For example, Mark Holloway described in a collective memoir how:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All through childhood, real and imaginary pictures of the war flickered semi-consciously in front of me like <a href="https://ayearofwar.com/2018/02/23/ww1-war-diary-salonika-very-lights/">Very lights</a>. They were supplemented later by visits to Belgium – where my parents proudly showed me Zeebrugge and described its intricate wartime history – and to the battlefields with their actual soundbites, trenches, barbed wire and charred stumps of tree that people still pay to see 10 years after war ended.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Ought I to rethink this?’</h2>
<p>Conscientious objectors weren’t all united in their reactions to the onset of the second world war. While many were willing to work alongside and even in the military, others took a very different position.</p>
<p>Tony Parker grew up in Manchester, the son of a cotton merchant who also owned a second-hand bookshop. This shop, where Parker had worked while at school, was a gateway to pacifism for him. The prominent anti-war literature he read there, notably the poems of Siegfried Sassoon – author of <a href="http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/9823">The Dug-Out</a> and <a href="https://allpoetry.com/Suicide-In-The-Trenches">Suicide in The Trenches</a> – made him realise that war was “nonsensical”.</p>
<p>At his initial tribunal in 1941, Parker was granted non-combatant or ambulance service, but he appealed this and was given mining work instead. Unlike the camaraderie engendered by units like the FAU, Parker was not part of any pacifist group and was the only objector sent to his mine, Bradford Colliery in Manchester. Of this time, <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80009024">Parker recalled</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think you did feel very alone – or at least, I did … All the time one was saying: ‘Am I doing right or am I doing wrong. Ought I to rethink this?’</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zI7MbCmjN9w?wmode=transparent&start=4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In the mine, Parker described himself as “like a strange being from another world” due to his markedly middle-class accent and upbringing. But though short-lived, it proved a transformative moment in his life. “I had never thought there was this kind of life that people had,” he recalled, adding that a friendship with another young miner – with whom he swapped poetry and classical records – had “stopped me thinking there was anything special about a middle-class education”.</p>
<p>Parker’s experience in the mine fuelled his socialism and politicised him in a way which would have been unthinkable before the war, as he learned about “working life in terms of not having things”. After suffering a broken arm and ribs while uncoupling two wagons of coal, he returned to work in his father’s bookshop – but the legacy of this time as a miner is clear. Parker spent the rest of his working life as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Parker_(author)">pioneering oral historian</a>, interviewing people “marginalised” by and living on the outskirts of society – including criminals, lighthouse keepers and single mothers.</p>
<h2>‘I had to join the damned’</h2>
<p>Upon the outbreak of the second world war, Patrick Kenneth Mayhew joined the Royal Army Medical Corp (RAMC) of the British Army and was deployed for service in France – where he became embroiled in one of the most infamous events of the war.</p>
<p>Once the German army invaded France on May 10 1940, Mayhew found himself part of the British army’s immediate retreat. His unit set up a field hospital in a hotel in the town of De Panne, on the Belgian-French border about ten miles from Dunkirk. They worked tirelessly on the many wounded until, <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80012321">in Mayhew’s words</a>: “We were becoming the front instead of the back.”</p>
<p>It was decided that an aid party comprising just one officer and four lower-ranked men would stay to help those who could not be evacuated. Despite not feeling “brave or proud”, Mayhew volunteered and spent 24 hours alternating between medical work and collecting identification disks from the dead outside.</p>
<p>Eventually, his aid party was instructed to evacuate. They made their way to the beach at De Panne, boarded a boat, and rowed for nine hours until they reached the shores of Margate. For his service, Mayhew was awarded the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Medal">Military Medal</a> for “bravery on land” – despite his strictly non-combatant status.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="War memorial on a beach" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539271/original/file-20230725-15-9kvt5z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Memorial commemorating the evacuation of British and Allied Forces from De Panne, May 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Evacuatie_monument%27_De_Panne_(7364728388).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The awarding of war medals to conscientious objectors was a rarity. Other recipients include members of the FAU’s <a href="https://academic.oup.com/shm/advance-article/doi/10.1093/shm/hkad010/7111375">Hadfield Spears ambulance unit</a>, who received France’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croix_de_Guerre">Croix de Guerre</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss">Desmond Doss</a>, an American pacifist medic who became <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conscientious_Objector">the first objector</a> to receive the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor">Medal of Honor</a> (the US Armed Forces’ highest military decoration) for going “above and beyond the call of duty” during the Battle of Okinawa, Japan, in 1945. Doss, who refused to carry a weapon of any kind, was the subject of the 2016 Hollywood biopic <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hacksaw_ridge">Hacksaw Ridge</a>.</p>
<p>In Mayhew’s case, the award caused quite a stir. His brother Paul thought it hilarious that a pacifist should win a medal for military bravery and the British press agreed, with several newspapers running articles on Mayhew. But these articles also delighted in the fact that he changed his mind – in the summer of 1940, Mayhew joined the combatant services of the army.</p>
<p>While it was tempting to see a straight line between his harrowing experiences in Dunkirk and this change of heart, Mayhew <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80012321">vehemently rejected this</a>, recalling years later:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It wasn’t anything of the sort. I saw nothing which made me change my mind in that way. Nor – and this is where it becomes so inconsistent – did I feel that I’d been wrong in my Christian belief that war is not acceptable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Instead, Mayhew blamed the intensity of the war in the summer of 1940, when invasion of Britain by the Nazis looked certain:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You weren’t taking time to think and read books and make up your mind, and talk to this person and that person, and let the thrill of Dunkirk die off … These were immediate, imperative decisions. I found so much in this country that I wanted to do or that I believed in … And I hated the idea of that going down the drain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mayhew added that it would have been very easy for him to stay in the RAMC – and that no one would have questioned his pacifism. In his own fascinating description, he was “the right sort of pacifist”: because he was willing to risk his life and help the war effort, his stance was acceptable to the wider public.</p>
<p>But Mayhew’s family was another key driver in his change of heart. The son of Lord Basil Mayhew, his elder siblings were scattered across the world doing “war work”, and he decided he didn’t want to “save his own soul” while his family committed “mortal sins”. Instead, “I had to join the damned.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Portrait of a young man in jacket and tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539267/original/file-20230725-17-u93mvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539267/original/file-20230725-17-u93mvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539267/original/file-20230725-17-u93mvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539267/original/file-20230725-17-u93mvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539267/original/file-20230725-17-u93mvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539267/original/file-20230725-17-u93mvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539267/original/file-20230725-17-u93mvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Timothy Corsellis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Timothy_John_Manley_Corsellis.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mayhew was far from the only objector to renounce their status and join the military during the second world war. Another was the poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Corsellis">Timothy Corsellis</a> – John’s younger brother – a pacifist who joined the RAF but refused to serve with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command">Bomber Command</a> as he did not want to participate in the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. In 1941, during his service with the Fleet Air Arm, his plane stalled during a training flight and he crashed and died near Annan in south-west Scotland.</p>
<h2>‘A turmoil of doubts’</h2>
<p>Summing up the second generation of world war objectors is a difficult task. Where their first world war counterparts have become simplified in popular representations, with their valiant opposition to a war that is almost universally condemned, the COs that followed two decades later appear as more nuanced, conflicted human beings.</p>
<p>They doubted their stances. They worried about their families. They felt torn between their duties to society and their duties to themselves and their beliefs. They keenly knew the horrors of the first world war, but they also felt the threat against their country and the emerging horrors of Nazism. Theirs was a complicated position.</p>
<p>The English poet and folk musician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Carter">Sydney Carter</a> was born in London to a military father. Although from a working-class background, he received a bursary to Christ’s Hospital private school before going to Oxford to read history at Balliol College. While his pacifism was ostensibly based on his religious beliefs, his decision to object was driven as much by heartbreak as anti-war sentiment. He recalled later in an <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80009009">interview for the Imperial War Museum archive</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pacifism seemed to offer something like a religion I could live by. It exposed inside, like a light: and suddenly, I felt quite free … It was as inexplicable as my religious experience had been at Christ’s Hospital; I clung to it through the dark years of the war, as [close] to a divine command that I ever had.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Plaque on the conscientious objectors' commemorative stone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539269/original/file-20230725-17-yy0hdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plaque on the conscientious objectors’ commemorative stone in central London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conscientious_Objectors%27_Memorial_Plaque_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2952280.jpg">David Dixon/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At his tribunal, Carter was granted service with the FAU, although he doubted “right up to the last moment and after it”. He admitted to having “a lot of non-pacifist things inside me”, and said he had joined the ambulance unit because it promised to be “arduous and dangerous”.</p>
<p>He was right. After doing perilous shelter work in Britain at the height of the Blitz, he was later posted to Egypt and Palestine. While serving at Nuseirat, a camp for Greek refugees, he took the decision “to cast myself into the melting pot, join the Army, [then] see what shape I came out – if I ever did”.</p>
<p>Carter informed his camp commander and set off for Cairo to enlist. Before he reached the Egyptian capital, however, he changed his mind again, and decided to “stick with the people I know”. This turmoil of doubts persisted throughout the war and after. In his 1965 memoir The Objectors, he wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once, I was a conchie. Why? For over 20 years I have been trying to find out. I could name some noble reasons but, even at the time, I am sure that there were tares among the wheat. Had I gone into the Army, no one would have questioned whether my motives were sincere or not. But being a conchie, I had to justify them – not only to the Tribunal, but to myself. I managed to convince the Tribunal. I’m not sure I ever managed to convince myself.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/presents-from-a-princess-the-mission-to-deliver-2-6-million-christmas-gifts-to-soldiers-and-sailors-on-the-1914-frontline-173276?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">The mission to deliver 2.6 million Christmas gifts to soldiers and sailors on the 1914 frontline
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-untold-story-of-the-cia-stasi-double-agent-abandoned-after-22-years-of-service-174668?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Revealed: untold story of the CIA/Stasi double agent abandoned after 22 years of service
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/womens-secret-war-the-inside-story-of-how-the-us-military-sent-female-soldiers-on-covert-combat-missions-to-afghanistan-205669?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Women’s secret war: the inside story of how the US military sent female soldiers on covert combat missions to Afghanistan
</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209178/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linsey Robb receives funding from the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council).</span></em></p>This later generation of ‘conchies’ often felt torn between their duties to society and their beliefs amid a much more obvious battle between good and evil.Linsey Robb, Associate Professor, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2093702023-07-18T12:30:37Z2023-07-18T12:30:37Z175 years ago, the Seneca Falls Convention kicked off the fight for women’s suffrage – an iconic moment deeply shaped by Quaker beliefs on gender and equality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537892/original/file-20230717-184356-6a2tmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C1024%2C676&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where on July 19 and 20, 1848, the first women's rights conventions in the U.S. were held.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-the-wesleyan-chapel-in-seneca-falls-new-news-photo/827407736?adppopup=true">Epics/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 19, 1848, nearly 300 men and women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, to begin the United States’ first public political meeting regarding women’s rights. The Seneca Falls Convention resulted in the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm">Declaration of Sentiments</a>, a document modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence that asserted “all men and women are created equal.” </p>
<p>The two-day conference marked the beginning of the movement for women’s suffrage, which would be granted 70 years later by the ratification of the 19th Amendment of the Constitution. And it likely wouldn’t have happened without Quakers.</p>
<p>Four of the convention’s five leaders belonged to this Protestant Christian group, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, whose ideas and community deeply shaped the meeting. One of Quakers’ core beliefs is that all men and women possess <a href="https://quaker.org/the-inner-light/">the “inward light</a>” – the light of Christ – and are therefore equal in the eyes of God. This belief led Quakers to recognize women as spiritual leaders, distinguishing them from many other religious groups at the time. </p>
<p>The Quaker women who participated in the gathering at Seneca Falls had been nurtured in a religious community that <a href="https://history.rutgers.edu/people/details/60-faculty-emeriti/162-hewitt-nancy">historian Nancy Hewitt</a> describes as a “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469668727/radical-friend/">rich female world of faith, family, and friendship</a>” – one that led many of them to step into the public sphere and work for social reforms. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://museumstudies.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/person/dr-julie-holcomb">19th century Quaker history</a>, I have found the faith’s women at the forefront of efforts <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">to abolish slavery</a>, promote the temperance movement and grant rights to women.</p>
<h2>Women’s souls and service</h2>
<p>Quakerism developed in the 1640s, amid the English Civil War – a time of political and religious turmoil. George Fox, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/walvin-quakers.html">one of the faith’s founders</a>, spent much of the decade in spiritual wanderings, which led him to conclude the answers he sought came from his direct experience of God. As Quaker historian and theologian <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/tr/dandelion-ben.aspx">Ben Pink Dandelion</a> notes, “This intimacy with Christ, this relationship of direct revelation,” <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/an-introduction-to-quakerism-pink-dandelion/3952779?ean=9780521600880">has defined Quakerism</a> ever since.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white drawing inside a pub shows a man in early modern dress standing on a bench and speaking as if in a trance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting by E.H. Wehnert depicts George Fox preaching in a tavern.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/george-fox-founder-of-the-society-of-friends-preaching-in-a-news-photo/2666182?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The belief in the “inward light” led Fox and others to encourage women’s spiritual leadership. In <a href="https://www.ccel.org/ccel/fox_g/autobio.vi.html#fna_vi-p56.1">Fox’s later writings</a>, he recalled encountering a religious group who believed women had no souls, “no more than a goose.” Fox objected, reminding them of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201%3A46-55&version=KJV">Mary’s words in the Bible</a> after an angel tells her that she will give birth to God’s son: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.qhpress.org/texts/fell.html">Margaret Fell</a>, the wife of a wealthy and prominent judge, helped Fox organize his followers into the Society of Friends. Worship meetings took inspiration from the Bible’s <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018%3A20&version=KJV">Book of Matthew</a>: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Quakers worshipped in silence. On occasion, when a worshipper felt moved by the spirit of Christ, they would break the silence to share something with the rest.</p>
<p>Quakers also established <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/an-introduction-to-quakerism-pink-dandelion/3952779?ean=9780521600880">meetings to oversee church business</a>, such as approving marriages, recording births and deaths, and enforcing the faith’s discipline.</p>
<h2>Spreading the faith</h2>
<p>Quaker men and women sometimes met together, and sometimes in separate meetings. Fox believed women might be reluctant to speak up in the company of men, even though they were men’s spiritual equals. </p>
<p><a href="https://nha.org/research/nantucket-history/history-topics/nantucket-women-how-the-quakers-womens-meetings-established-the-foundation-for-the-national-womens-rights-movement/">In their business meetings</a>, Quaker women oversaw relief for the poor, appointed committees to visit women who had strayed from church teachings, and testified on spiritual and social concerns. One woman was selected to serve as a clerk, taking notes on members’ concerns and decisions.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An early modern printed pamphlet's title page, which says 'Womens Speaking' at the top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The title page for a 1666 edition of Margaret Fell’s ‘Womens Speaking Justified.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1666_Fell_Womens_Speaking_Justified.jpg">Folger Shakespeare Library/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quakerism attracted a significant number of female converts, some of whom took an active role in spreading the faith. Eleven of the so-called “<a href="https://pendlehill.org/product/george-fox-and-the-valiant-sixty/">valiant sixty</a>” – itinerant ministers who preached Quaker principles in several countries – were women. <a href="https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/223/Elizabeth-Hooton">Elizabeth Hooton</a>, long reputed to be Fox’s first convert, traveled widely in Britain, North America and the Caribbean, preaching and proselytizing. <a href="https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/187/Mary-Fisher">Mary Fisher</a> joined six other Quakers on a spiritual visit to the Ottoman Empire in 1658, where she reported meeting with Sultan Mehmed IV. </p>
<p>Women also produced some of the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/new-critical-studies-on-early-quaker-women-1650-1800-9780198814221?cc=us&lang=en&#:%7E:text=and%20Catie%20Gill-,Description,as%20a%20transatlantic%20religious%20body.">earliest texts of Quaker witness</a>, writing about their relationship to God. In 1666, Fell penned <a href="http://www.qhpress.org/texts/fell.html">the pamphlet “Women’s Speaking Justified</a>,” a scripture-based argument for the spiritual equality of the sexes. Her text is now recognized as a major 17th century document on women’s religious leadership.</p>
<h2>Acting on faith</h2>
<p>The Quaker women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention were born into this world of female ministry. For women like Philadelphia Quaker <a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">Lucretia Mott</a>, one of the Seneca Falls Convention’s organizers, Quaker practice normalized the idea that women, too, should have education, religious authority and the right to speak freely. Mott was also active in the antislavery movement, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-18th-century-quakers-led-a-boycott-of-sugar-to-protest-against-slavery-174114">boycotting slave-labor goods</a> such as cotton and sugar and organizing women in associations like the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. </p>
<p>Indeed, Quakers’ commitment to equality and community led many men and women to become social activists – but not without controversy. In the 1820s and again in the 1840s, the Society of Friends experienced a series of divisions over Quakers’ involvement in the antislavery movement and other reforms. Some saw activism as a natural manifestation of Quaker beliefs, but others feared that it threatened the group’s spiritual unity.</p>
<p>In 1848 – the same year as the Seneca Falls Convention – 200 Quakers made the decision to break from their yearly meeting, their local association. Citing their “<a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">rights of conscience</a>,” these men and women later formed the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends. Congregational Friends believed their faith required them to take steps toward abolishing slavery, and many also felt compelled to seek rights for women.</p>
<h2>‘Simply human rights’</h2>
<p>Just weeks after the Quaker split, Mott joined with four other women – her sister Martha Wright, Jane Hunt, Mary Ann M’Clintock and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – to organize a women’s rights convention. Among them, Stanton was the only non-Quaker. She and Mott had met during the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1607">World’s Anti-Slavery Convention</a> in 1848, held in London, where British organizers refused to recognize the American female delegates because of their gender.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A formal, black-and-white photo of an older woman wearing a gauzy bonnet and shawl." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo of Quaker social reformer Lucretia Mott, signed by Philadelphia photographer Frederick Gutekunst.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucretia_Mott,_signed_photo,_by_F._Gutekunst.jpg">Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the women agreed on the necessity of a women’s rights convention, they disagreed on the form and content. At their initial meeting, <a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">the five proposed to discuss the “social, civil, and religious condition of women”</a> – placing women’s oppression within a larger constellation of social evils. Stanton, however, listed the lack of suffrage as woman’s most urgent grievance. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the Seneca Falls Convention produced the Declaration of Sentiments, which celebrated women’s worthiness, criticized their subjugation and articulated the rights they deserved. Participants also passed <a href="https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/Womens-Rights.pdf">12 resolutions</a> designed to provide for women’s equality, affirming their right to occupy “such a station in society” as their “conscience shall dictate,” and their “sacred right to the elective franchise.”</p>
<p>The Quaker influence on the convention is most apparent in the differing views held by its two most influential leaders, Stanton and Mott. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/elizabeth-cady-stanton.htm">Stanton rejected</a> the need to introduce other issues into the fight for women’s rights, believing that once women gained political and legal power, more reforms would follow.</p>
<p>Mott, on the other hand, saw women’s oppression as one of many threats to individual liberty, from slavery and abusive prisons to the treatment of Native Americans. Real change, she believed, would require going to the root of the problem: “<a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">mindless tradition and savage greed</a>.” As Mott <a href="https://www.wwhp.org/Resources/davis_history.html">would later note</a>, “Among Quakers there had never been any talk of woman’s rights – it was simply human rights.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie L. Holcomb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most of the convention’s core organizers were Quakers. The religious movement’s beliefs about men and women’s equality before God has shaped members’ activism for centuries.Julie L. Holcomb, Professor of Museum Studies, Baylor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1948712023-01-23T18:32:32Z2023-01-23T18:32:32ZConsensus decision-making is surprisingly effective in both communities and workplaces<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504989/original/file-20230117-19784-31v617.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C79%2C6473%2C3470&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voting silences voices. Listening deeply to people in your group leads to more robust and better decisions. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’re in a leadership position — at work or in the community — you make decisions and oversee decision-making processes. Often it’s best to consult the people you are leading to reach a group decision. </p>
<p>Voting may seem the quickest route to a resolution, but it <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256261">isn’t the best way to enrol everyone</a>. Worse, voting can <a href="https://asset-pdf.scinapse.io/prod/2069572783/2069572783.pdf">silence voices and thwart creativity</a>.</p>
<p>Formal consensus decision-making <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256261">leads to broader engagement</a>. I have been training leaders in formal consensus decision-making for more than 25 years, and here’s why I recommend it. </p>
<h2>Circle of moral concern</h2>
<p>Slowing down your decision-making process and listening deeply to the people in your group also increases how much you care for them and how much you view them as people. </p>
<p>As a professor of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour, <a href="http://pnb.mcmaster.ca/rutherford/">in the Rutherford lab</a> at McMaster University, my students and I study the perception of social categories.</p>
<p>My students and I are interested in learning how people can increase their <a href="https://pnb.mcmaster.ca/rutherford/research-projects/">circle of moral concern</a>. When people behave in ways that harm others, they may not be including those others in the circle of people they care about. The deep listening involved in formal consensus decision-making draws people into that circle.</p>
<h2>Expertise in the group</h2>
<p>If a problem is difficult, if there is expertise in your group that can inform and improve the decision at issue, or if a solution is going to be expensive, it’s a good time to consider a broad, robust decision-making process.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most critical times to use a durable consensus decision-making process are when a decision is going to be controversial, or if the success of the decision relies on enthusiastic acceptance. </p>
<p>I suggest a specific model called <a href="http://foodnotbombs.net/CONSENSUS_FLOW_CHART.pdf">formal consensus decision-making</a>, in which no proposal is adopted until every concern is heard, understood and addressed. This model, complete with charts, roles and procedures, was developed by <a href="http://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/">Food Not Bombs</a>, a volunteer organization dedicated to non-violent social change. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People seen standing with a banner that says 'Food Not Bombs.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498042/original/file-20221129-12-d81nln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498042/original/file-20221129-12-d81nln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498042/original/file-20221129-12-d81nln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498042/original/file-20221129-12-d81nln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498042/original/file-20221129-12-d81nln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498042/original/file-20221129-12-d81nln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498042/original/file-20221129-12-d81nln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People with Food Not Bombs developed a model called formal consensus decision-making.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Elvert Barnes/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Political science researcher Sean Michael Parsons discusses the formation of Food Not Bombs in his 2010 dissertation. He points to how <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520084339/political-protest-and-cultural-revolution">historian Barbara Epstein discusses</a> the relationship between 1960s movements (which shaped the politics and habits of Food Not Bombs) and Quakers.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://quaker.org/are-quakers-christian">the Quaker religion</a>, <a href="https://quaker.org/decision-making">Quakers do not vote</a>, but
rely on “communal discernment” — <a href="https://quakerspeak.com/video/quaker-decision-making-consensus">listening for a truth</a> that emerges when people listen to one another and together “in the Spirit.” </p>
<h2>Building consensus in a university</h2>
<p>More than a year ago, <a href="https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2021/07/09/mel-rutherford-becomes-first-transgender-department-head-at-mcmaster.html">I became chair</a> of McMaster University’s department of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour. Since then, the department has not voted once.</p>
<p>My department uses formal consensus decision-making, and instead of policies, we have standard operating procedures. Where other departments have policies, bylaws and governance documents, we wanted something different, because creating bylaws can be contentious, enforcing bylaws can be worse and bylaws can’t anticipate unanticipated situations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of people sitting and standing in discussion." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505014/original/file-20230117-11910-ohh18b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505014/original/file-20230117-11910-ohh18b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505014/original/file-20230117-11910-ohh18b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505014/original/file-20230117-11910-ohh18b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505014/original/file-20230117-11910-ohh18b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505014/original/file-20230117-11910-ohh18b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505014/original/file-20230117-11910-ohh18b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can you get a group to agree on any kind of governance without voting? Yes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(StockSnap from Pixabay)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, we now use a living document simply called, “This is how we do it.” This document was not ratified by vote. It was reviewed by the entire department in a process where we analyzed how we currently did things and how we hoped to change — a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/gap-analysis-template/#">“gap analysis” process</a>.</p>
<p>If you’re wondering how to get a group to agree to any kind of governance document without voting, let me tell you the story of how we ratified our “This is how we do it” document without taking a single vote.</p>
<h2>Identifying values</h2>
<p>First, we created a <a href="https://www.indeed.com/hire/c/info/how-to-write-core-values">core values statement</a>, and today we measure all our practices and procedures against it. We started our core-values exercise in January with four large group meetings: faculty, staff, post-doctoral research fellows, graduate students and undergraduate students.</p>
<p>Representatives from each group met with our facilitator, who distilled the data she collected during those sessions, specifically the values that had been nominated in each meeting for every domain we discussed.</p>
<p>Finally, a small working group including representation from each of the large groups met to draft our core values statement. This draft went to the entire department with a request for feedback. After a final meeting of representatives, the core values were finalized.</p>
<p>Next, we had a faculty retreat to develop our “This is how we do it” document. In small groups and all together, we examined and discussed the fit between our department’s core values and this document. </p>
<p>We used notes from all discussions at the retreat to update the document and circulated it to the department for further comment. Now we have our way forward.</p>
<h2>Major bodies using consensus</h2>
<p>In Canada, some <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-can-foster-more-deliberative-democracy-starting-by-empowering-students-189053">major organizations are taking more inclusive and deliberative decision-making seriously</a>. There are even two governmental bodies in Canada that <a href="https://www.assembly.nu.ca/sites/default/files/Consensus%20Government%20in%20Nunavut%20-%20English.pdf">have a consensus style of government, Nunavut</a>, and the <a href="https://www.ntassembly.ca/visitors/what-consensus">Northwest Territories</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People seen sitting in desks designed in a circle format." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505012/original/file-20230117-14366-wl8bgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505012/original/file-20230117-14366-wl8bgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505012/original/file-20230117-14366-wl8bgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505012/original/file-20230117-14366-wl8bgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505012/original/file-20230117-14366-wl8bgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505012/original/file-20230117-14366-wl8bgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505012/original/file-20230117-14366-wl8bgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Nunavut Legislative Assembly, located in Iqaluit, Nunavut, seen here in February 2010, uses a consensus style for government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://cuc.ca">Canadian Unitarian Council</a>, which until now has used voting and <a href="https://robertsrules.com/">Robert’s Rules of Order</a> as their decision-making process, has created a <a href="https://cuc.ca/about-cuc/taskforces-committees-groups/">decision-making exploration team</a> which hopes to find a decision-making process that is “inclusive, collaborative and models informed group decision-making.”</p>
<h2>Listen to dissent</h2>
<p>Voting can silence voices. You may have been in a meeting at some point when a disagreement broke out and someone angrily suggested, “Let’s take a vote!” </p>
<p>All too often, that can be a way to silence dissent.</p>
<p>Why not try consensus at home, in your workplace, your church or faith community or your <a href="https://www.hipinfo.ca/record/BTN2935">running club</a>?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194871/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mel Rutherford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In formal consensus decision-making, no proposal is adopted until every concern is heard, understood and addressed. Here’s how it can work.Mel Rutherford, Professor and Department Chair, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1741142022-02-02T13:08:37Z2022-02-02T13:08:37ZHow 18th-century Quakers led a boycott of sugar to protest against slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443056/original/file-20220127-7574-v5e3rd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C7%2C722%2C567&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">English Quakers on a Barbados plantation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/78bd1744-d78b-dd15-e040-e00a18064d92">Image courtesy of New York Public Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Buying items that are fair trade, organic, locally made or cruelty-free are some of the ways in which consumers today seek to align their economic habits with their spiritual and ethical views. For 18th-century Quakers, it led them to abstain from sugar and other goods produced by enslaved people.</p>
<p>Quaker Benjamin Lay, a former sailor who had settled in Philadelphia in 1731 after living in the British sugar colony of Barbados, is known to have <a href="https://www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/archive/winter-2018-issue-ii-volume-cxv/fearless-and-fiery.html">smashed his wife’s china</a> in 1742 during the annual gathering of Quakers in the city. Although Lay’s actions were described by one newspaper as a “publick Testimony against the Vanity of Tea-drinking,” Lay also protested the consumption of slave-grown sugar, which was produced under horrific conditions in sugar colonies like <a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Fearless-Benjamin-Lay-P1357.aspx">Barbados</a>.</p>
<p>In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, only a few <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300180770/peace-freedom">Quakers protested African slavery</a>. Indeed, individual Quakers who did protest, like Lay, were often disowned for their actions because their activism disrupted the unity of the Quaker community. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Quakers-and-Their-Allies-in-the-Abolitionist-Cause-1754-1808/Jackson-Kozel/p/book/9781138058651">Beginning in the 1750s</a>, Quakers’ support for slavery and the products of slave labor started to erode, as reformers like Quaker John Woolman urged their co-religionists in the North American Colonies and England to bring about change.</p>
<p>In the 1780s, British and American Quakers launched an extensive and unprecedented propaganda campaign against slavery and slave-labor products. Their goal of creating a broad nondenominational antislavery movement culminated in a boycott of slave-grown sugar in 1791 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2014.927988">supported by nearly a half-million Britons</a>. </p>
<p>How did the movement against slave-grown sugar go from the actions of a few to a protest of the masses? As a scholar of Quakers and the antislavery movement, I argue in my book “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy</a>” that the boycott of slave-grown sugar originated in the actions of ordinary Quakers seeking to draw closer to God by aligning their Christian principles with their economic practices.</p>
<h2>The golden rule</h2>
<p>Quakerism <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-quakers-a-very-short-introduction-9780199206797?cc=us&lang=en&">originated in the political turmoil</a> of the English civil war and the disruption of monarchical rule in the mid-17th century. In the 1640s, George Fox, the son of a weaver, began an extended period of spiritual wandering, which led him to conclude the answers he sought came not from church teaching or the Scriptures but rather from his direct experience of God. </p>
<p>In his travels, Fox encountered others who also sought a more direct experience of God. With the support of Margaret Fell, the wife of a wealthy and prominent judge, Fox organized his followers into the Society of Friends in 1652. Quaker itinerant ministers embarked on an ambitious program of mission work traveling throughout England, the North American Colonies and the Caribbean.</p>
<p>The restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 and the passage of the Quaker Act in 1662 brought religious persecution, physical punishment and imprisonment but did not dampen the religious enthusiasm of Quakers like Fox and Fell.</p>
<p>Quakers believe <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p083471">that God speaks to individuals personally and directly</a> through the “inward light” – that the light of Christ exists within all individuals, even those who have not been exposed to Christianity. As Quaker historian and theologian <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/tr/dandelion-ben.aspx">Ben Pink Dandelion</a> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-quakers-a-very-short-introduction-9780199206797?cc=us&lang=en&">notes</a>, “This intimacy with Christ, this relationship of direct revelation, is alone foundational and definitional of [Quakerism]. … Quakerism has had its identity constructed around this experience and insight.” </p>
<p>This experience of intimacy with Christ led Friends to develop distinct spiritual beliefs and practices, such as an emphasis on the golden rule – “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” – as a fundamental guiding principle. </p>
<p>Quakers were to avoid violence and war-making and to reject social customs that reinforced superficial distinctions of social class. Quakers were to adopt “plain dress, plain speech and plain living” and to tell the truth at all times. These beliefs and practices allow Quakers to emphasize the experience of God and to reject the temptations of worldly pleasures.</p>
<h2>Stolen goods</h2>
<p>In slave traders’ and slave holders’ minds, <a href="https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/ibram-x-kendi/stamped-from-the-beginning/9781568585987/">racial inferiority</a> justified the enslavement of Africans. By the 18th century, the slave trade and the use of slave labor were integral parts of the global economy. </p>
<p>Many Quakers owned slaves and participated in the slave trade. For them, the slave trade and slavery were simply standard business practice: “God-fearing men going about their godless business,” as historian <a href="https://doi.org/10.3828/quaker.12.2.189">James Walvin observed</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p083471">Still, Quakers were far from united in their views about slavery</a>. Beginning in the late 17th century, individual Quakers began to question the practice. Under slavery, Africans were captured, forced to work and subjected to violent punishment, even death, all contrary to Quakers’ belief in the golden rule and nonviolence. </p>
<p>Individual Quakers began to speak out, often linking the enslavement of Africans to the consumption of consumer goods. </p>
<p>John Hepburn, a Quaker from Middletown, New Jersey, was one of the first Quakers to protest against slavery. In 1714, he published “The American Defence of the Christian Golden Rule,” <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">which cataloged</a>, as no other Quaker had done, the evils of slavery. </p>
<p>Although the publication of Hepburn’s book coincided with statements issued by the London Yearly Meeting, the primary Quaker body in this period, warning of the effects of luxury goods on Quakers’ relationship with God, “The American Defence” did not result in any significant outcry among Quakers against slavery. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of man with a white beard, wearing a hat and a long coat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Benjamin Lay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.79.171">National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; this acquisition was made possible by a generous contribution from the James Smithson Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quaker Benjamin Lay also <a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Fearless-Benjamin-Lay-P1357.aspx">published his thoughts about slavery</a>. He also refused to dine with slaveholders, to be served by slaves or to eat sugar. Lay also dressed in coarse clothes. When smashing his wife’s dishware, he claimed that fine clothes and china were luxury goods that separated Quakers from God. Lay’s actions proved too much for Philadelphia Quakers, who disowned him in the late 1730s.</p>
<h2>Quaker antislavery and sugar</h2>
<p>Like Lay, Woolman too <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14993.html">was shocked when he saw the conditions</a> of enslaved people. For Woolman, the slave trade, the enslavement of Africans and the use of the products of their labor, such as sugar, were the most visible signs of the growth of an oppressive, global economy driven by greed, an evil that threatened the spiritual welfare of all. Consumed most often in tea, sugar symbolized for Woolman the corrupting influence of consumer goods. Soon after his travels through the South, Woolman, who was a merchant, stopped selling and consuming sugar and sugar products such as rum and molasses.</p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<p>The sweetness of sugar <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">hid the violence of its production</a>. Caribbean sugar plantations were infamous for their high rate of mortality and deficiencies in diet, shelter and clothing. The working conditions were brutal, and tropical disease contributed to a death toll that was 50% higher on sugar plantations than on coffee plantations. </p>
<p>Until his death in 1772, Woolman worked within the structure of the Society of Friends, urging Quakers to abstain from slave-grown sugar and other slave-labor products. In his writings, Woolman envisioned a just and simple economy that benefited everyone, freeing men and women to “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">walk in that pure light in which all their works are wrought in God</a>.” If Quakers allowed their spiritual beliefs to guide their economic habits, Woolman believed, the “true harmony of life” could be restored to all.</p>
<p>Eighteenth-century Quakers’ attempts to align religious beliefs and economic habits continued into the 19th century. Woolman, in particular, influenced many who believed it possible to create a moral economy. His <a href="https://quakerbooks.org/products/the-journal-and-major-essays-of-john-woolman-3533">journal</a>, published in 1774, is an important text about religiously informed consumer habits. </p>
<p>In the 1790s and again in the 1820s, British consumers, Quaker and non-Quaker alike, organized popular boycotts of slave-grown sugar. Although the boycott of sugar and other products of slave labor did not bring about the abolition of slavery on its own, the boycott did raise awareness of the connections between an individual’s relationship with God and the choices they made in the marketplace.</p>
<p></p><hr> <p></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>This article is part of a series examining sugar’s effects on human health and culture. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/sugar-2022-114641">Click here to read the articles on TheConversation.com.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie L. Holcomb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Eighteenth-century Quakers attempted to align their religious beliefs with what they purchased. These Quakers led some of the early campaigns against sugar being produced by enslaved people.Julie L. Holcomb, Associate Professor of Museum Studies, Baylor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1697212021-11-01T12:24:40Z2021-11-01T12:24:40ZWhat the ‘spiritual but not religious’ have in common with radical Protestants of 500 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429181/original/file-20211028-25-jfjjqp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C988%2C599&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Reformation's leading figures had diverse views, and some might have recognized themselves in "spiritual but not religious" people today.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.440991">Rijksmuseum</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For over a decade, one of the biggest stories in American religion has been <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/">the rise of the “Nones”</a>, a broad term for people who do not identify with a specific faith. The religiously unaffiliated now make up just over one quarter of the U.S. population. </p>
<p>While the Nones include agnostics and atheists, most people in this category <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/">retain a belief in God or some higher power</a>. Many describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” or “SBNR,” as researchers refer to them. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.sksm.edu/people/christopher-l-schelin/">professor of theology</a> at a <a href="https://www.uua.org/">Unitarian Universalist</a> and multireligious seminary, I encounter many students who fit within the SBNR mold. They are studying to become chaplains, <a href="https://chaplaincyinstitute.org/why-interfaith/">interfaith</a> ministers and social activists. But they may be surprised to know how much they resemble certain Protestants who lived five centuries ago – some of the so-called <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-940474-15-4.html">radical reformers</a> who split off from <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lasting-impact-of-luthers-reformation-4-essential-reads-105953">Martin Luther’s Reformation</a>.</p>
<h2>Spiritual but not religious</h2>
<p>Scholars fret over the <a href="https://nccc.georgetown.edu/body-mind-spirit/definitions-spirituality-religion.php">slippery definitions</a> of “spiritual” and “religious.” What the average person tends to mean by “spiritual” is seeking or experiencing a connection with a greater reality, however they understand it. Meanwhile, “religious” often means belonging to a group with specific doctrines and rituals.</p>
<p>The spiritual but not religious are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199341221.001.0001">independent seekers</a>, many of whom pray, meditate, do yoga and other spiritual practices outside the confines of a particular tradition.</p>
<p>The theologian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cByiqiMAAAAJ&hl=en">Linda Mercadante</a> spent several years interviewing SBNRs. In her book “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199931002.001.0001">Belief without Borders</a>”, she identifies some common values. SBNRs tend to be individualistic, trusting their own experience and intuition as a guide. They reject claims that any one religion contains the ultimate, exclusive truth, but they also believe religions possess wisdom and offer “<a href="http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=Paths_That_Lead_to_the_Same_Summit_by_Ananda_Coomaraswamy.pdf">many paths</a> to the same summit.”</p>
<p>Repudiating “organized religion” as a bastion of dogmatism and moral hypocrisy is common among SBNRs. They often <a href="https://collegevilleinstitute.org/bearings/listening-spiritual-religious/">explicitly reject</a> what they understand to be central Christian beliefs. They don’t welcome a message that God loves them but will send them to hell for not accepting Jesus. But many continue to experiment with rituals and prayers that draw on established religions, <a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/04/16/for-millennials-mysticism-shows-a-path-to-their-home-faiths/">including Christianity</a>.</p>
<h2>A Spiritual Reformation</h2>
<p>In 1528, Lutheran pastor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sebastian-Franck">Sebastian Franck</a> decided he’d had enough of organized religion. Deeply disturbed by the moral failures of professing Christians, he resigned his pulpit. </p>
<p>The Protestant Reformation had recently split the Christians of Western Europe into various factions, pitting Roman Catholics against Lutherans, <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/moversandshakers/ulrich-zwingli.html">Zwinglians</a> – whose influence lives on in <a href="https://new.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/reformed-accent/what-reformed">Reformed churches</a> today – and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Anabaptists">Anabaptists</a>, who practiced adult baptism. They couldn’t all be right, so Franck concluded they must <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bN1PuDsP4ocC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=a%20letter%20to%20john%20campanus&f=false">all be wrong</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd stands around a flame as a man burns papers in this black and white drawing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429403/original/file-20211029-13-1r5g4ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429403/original/file-20211029-13-1r5g4ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429403/original/file-20211029-13-1r5g4ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429403/original/file-20211029-13-1r5g4ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429403/original/file-20211029-13-1r5g4ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429403/original/file-20211029-13-1r5g4ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429403/original/file-20211029-13-1r5g4ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther, drawn here burning the pope’s threat to excommunicate him, is the most famous Reformation-era reformer, but there were many more.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Franck declared that the true church was the invisible fellowship of people who were instructed, not by the pope or the Bible, but by <a href="https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004393189/BP000007.xml">the divine spark</a> within. He became a leading figure in a form of radical Protestantism that scholars would later call the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/RenaissanceAndReformationWilliamGilbert1997/Renaissance%20and%20Reformation%2C%20William%20Gilbert%20%281997%29_djvu.txt">“Spiritualists”</a> or <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24934">“spiritual reformers”</a>. This diverse cast of characters downplayed or rejected the outward trappings of religion, such as rituals and sacraments. What really mattered was each individual’s direct encounter with God.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hans-Denck">Hans Denck</a>, who is sometimes credited as the first <a href="https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789047411048/Bej.9789004154025.i-574_008.xml">Spiritualist</a>, described this experience as the “inner Word” speaking from within a person’s soul. “The Word of God is already with you before you seek it,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=umpCQSQmsfMC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=denck+%22The+Word+of+God+is+already+with+you+before+you+seek+it%22&source=bl&ots=rQYx8LlKaN&sig=ACfU3U2vZckP9juI-hnXIcidVyOl_gM7rQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiX0PeM_-3zAhXBneAKHUQ8CNMQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=snippet&q=the%20word%20of%20god%20is%20already%20with%20you&f=false">he wrote</a>. Unlike typical Protestants, Denck and the other Spiritualists saw the Bible as redundant. Its purpose was to confirm what the believer already knew from the heart.</p>
<p>Because the inner Word resided within all human beings, certain Spiritualists held that salvation was not limited to Christians. </p>
<p>“Consider as thy brothers,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=umpCQSQmsfMC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=denck+%22The+Word+of+God+is+already+with+you+before+you+seek+it%22&source=bl&ots=rQYx8LlKaN&sig=ACfU3U2vZckP9juI-hnXIcidVyOl_gM7rQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiX0PeM_-3zAhXBneAKHUQ8CNMQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=snippet&q=%22consider%20as%20thy%20brothers%22&f=false">wrote Franck</a>, “all … who fear God and work righteousness,” even those who never heard of Christ. There was no need to send missionaries to other nations. They already had the Holy Spirit to teach and spiritually “baptize” them.</p>
<p>Partly because of persecution and partly because of their emphasis on the individual, the Spiritualists rarely formed structured communities. Today, they are mostly forgotten outside of church history courses. But their influence shaped the founding of <a href="https://quakerinfo.org/index">Quakerism</a>, a branch of Christianity that, to this very day, seeks the guidance of the <a href="https://www.pym.org/faith-and-practice/experience-and-faith/the-light-within/">inner light</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture in an email newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<h2>What’s old is new again</h2>
<p>The parallels between the Protestant Spiritualists and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/24/why-americas-nones-left-religion-behind/">many contemporary SBNRs</a> can be striking. Both are repulsed by the ethical failings and exclusivism of religious communities. Both emphasize the responsibility of the individual to follow their own spiritual quest. Both believe that authentic experience of God or ultimate reality is available to all people, regardless of their specific beliefs. Whereas Franck and Denck used the early printing press to spread their message, today a spiritual teacher might record a podcast or YouTube video.</p>
<p>But it is important to emphasize that the Spiritualists were still decidedly Christian. Contrary to most SBNRs, they considered Jesus Christ the authoritative revealer of truth. Some believed he would soon return to Earth for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/millennialism/Millennialism-from-the-Renaissance-to-the-modern-world">his Second Coming</a> and waited as expectantly as any end times-focused fundamentalist does today. They may have seen other religions as valid paths, but they didn’t turn to them as resources for spiritual practice.</p>
<p>Even so, the Spiritualists demonstrate that the values and attitudes of SBNRs are far from a new development. They wrestled with similar difficulties in religion and came up with similar answers. As <a href="http://www.skylightpaths.com/page/product/978-1-59473-515-8">the spiritually independent continue to seek wisdom</a> and meaning, they can find good company in the radical reformers of a bygone age.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338598/original/file-20200529-78871-1g5gse5.jpg?w=128&h=128">
<div>
<header></header>
<p><a href="https://www.ats.edu/">Starr King School for the Ministry is a member of the Association of Theological Schools</a></p>
<footer>The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation U.S.</footer>
</div>
</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Schelin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So-called Spiritualists split off from Martin Luther’s Reformation 500 years ago, but some of their ideas carry on.Christopher Schelin, Assistant Professor of Practical and Political Theologies, Starr King School for the Ministry Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1161242019-05-15T10:45:09Z2019-05-15T10:45:09ZButtigieg’s call for universal public service would mark a big departure from historically small volunteer programs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273651/original/file-20190509-183077-1qg6gi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">JFK shaking hands with one of the first Peace Corps volunteers in 1961</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-DC-USA-APHS263798-John-F-Kennedy/d451bebc52a541e285e608e18048a33b/1/0">P Photo/William J. Smith</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Democratic presidential candidate <a href="http://time.com/longform/pete-buttigieg-2020/">Pete Buttigieg</a> recently proposed massively expanding <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/15/pete-buttigieg-national-service-program-1277274">national service</a> programs. </p>
<p>The South Bend, Indiana, mayor told <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2019-04-15">MSBNC journalist Rachel Maddow</a> he thinks it should be “not legally obligatory, but certainly a social norm that anybody after they’re 18 spends a year in national service.”</p>
<p>Buttigieg’s concept draws on the benefits he feels he derived from his own military experience. He believes that giving more young Americans a chance to <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-national-service-help-heal-americas-divisions-76833">serve their country</a> in roles like teaching at-risk children and building homes for those in need might help bridge some of the nation’s political, economic and cultural divides.</p>
<p>I research the <a href="https://holycross.academia.edu/ChrisStaysniak">history of U.S. volunteer service programs </a>, including the <a href="https://www.peacecorps.gov/">Peace Corps</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalservice.gov/programs/americorps">AmeriCorps</a>. The evidence that these programs help volunteers is stronger than proof that they make a significant difference for the communities served. To me, it’s clear that by mobilizing millions of young people rather than thousands, Buttigieg’s plan would exacerbate this problem. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273652/original/file-20190509-183096-uax48z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Buttigieg is making a call for national service part of his presidential bid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Pete-Buttigieg/982008f0021c4f4ca08630e1c3646169/11/0">AP Photo/Meg Kinnard</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pacifist roots</h2>
<p>The American philosopher William James planted the intellectual seeds for national service programs in 1910. In an essay demanding a “<a href="https://www.uky.edu/%7Eeushe2/Pajares/moral.html">moral equivalent to war</a>,” he argued for a new kind of national non-military service for young men. </p>
<p>This concept first appealed to pacifists. Beginning in the 1930s, the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, organized “<a href="https://www.afsc.org/content/archive-highlights-us-and-international-work-camps">work camps</a>,” which had high school and college-aged students assist low-income U.S. communities as unpaid volunteers.</p>
<p>On top of creating new infrastructure, like building community centers, or working in hospitals, the <a href="https://peaceworks.afsc.org/appalachian-self-sufficiency">early camps</a> were also designed to be an educational experience. Participants tended to be from privileged backgrounds and eager to <a href="https://peaceworks.afsc.org/us-work-camps-strive-justice-3rd-try-firefox">become more aware</a> of social issues such as poverty and race relations.</p>
<p>After World War II, various denominations began to organize work camp and relief projects in France, Japan, Egypt and other countries. They did everything from <a href="http://sth-archon.bu.edu/motive/issues/1950_March/assets/basic-html/page-36.html#">rebuild homes for displaced persons</a> to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pech.12187">teach farming techniques</a> to help rebuild war-ravaged areas and improve prospects for peace.</p>
<p>Representative <a href="https://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19640407-02.2.6">Henry Reuss</a> of Wisconsin, a Democrat, encountered an inter-denominational team from the International Voluntary Service building schools on a trip to Cambodia 1957. He <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/us/henry-reuss-liberal-in-congress-dies-at-89.html">proposed a government-sponsored program</a> that would serve the same purpose in 1959.</p>
<p>Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat, picked up on that idea when the advocated for the formation of what he called a “<a href="https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/s-2000-peace-corps-bill-introduced-senator-hubert-h-humphrey-june-1-1961">Peace Corps</a>” during his failed bid for his party’s presidential nomination in 1960. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273851/original/file-20190510-183096-11ml2ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quaker work camp volunteers helped install a water system for Pennsylvania coal miners in 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://peaceworks.afsc.org/us-work-camps-strive-justice-3rd-try-firefox">American Friends Service Committee</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Peace Corps and VISTA</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.peacecorps.gov/about/history/founding-moment/">John F. Kennedy</a> first embraced the idea as well in an impromptu speech – at 2 a.m. – he made on October 14, 1960, on the cusp of the presidential election that brought him to the White House. He established the Peace Corps by <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/?dod-date=922">executive order in March 1961</a>. </p>
<p>Americans immediately embraced it. A January 1961 Gallup Poll showed that 71% of Americans supported the idea and <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/peace-corps">thousands of students</a> declared their readiness to participate. </p>
<p>The Peace Corps was meant to aid developing countries by teaching English, improving farming practices and providing other hands-on training. Within two years it had dispatched <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/peace-corps-established">7,000 volunteers to 44 developing countries</a>. By <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/reconsidering-the-peace-corps/">1966 it reached its peak participation</a> of 15,000 volunteers. </p>
<p>“In the American mind, it took its place somewhere between the Boy Scouts and motherhood,” said the late <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F000271626636500102">Harris Wofford</a>, who helped create the Peace Corps and later ran the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that runs several national service programs.</p>
<p>The initial popularity of the Peace Corps led the Kennedy administration to explore creating a <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHSFLCW/012/JFKWHSFLCW-012-003">domestic counterpart</a> to aid “the entire needy segment of our population.” An early concept paper described how its “exemplary” volunteer “corpsmen” would inspire local communities to do a better job of helping themselves. </p>
<p>After JFK’s assassination, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-members-vista-volunteers-service-america">President Lyndon Johnson</a> realized this aim by establishing Volunteers in Service to America, or VISTA, in 1964. It soon stationed about 3,500 volunteers on the front lines of LBJ’s <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/poverty/index.html">War on Poverty</a> in places ranging from <a href="https://www.wvpublic.org/post/inside-appalachia-what-happened-when-vistas-came-wva-mining-town-1960s">rural West Virginia</a> to urban <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/576807">Houston</a> and <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/576807">Detroit</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QgdRkzLKlPM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">AmeriCorps, explained – including how to pronounce its name.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Less enthusiasm</h2>
<p>Before long, enthusiasm for both programs waned, dashing hopes some Americans harbored for a national program on a grander scale.</p>
<p>One initial purpose of the Peace Corps was increasing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.155">U.S. popularity and influence</a> at the height of the Cold War as a diplomatic tool. The program became less popular among college graduates due in part to widespread concerns over U.S. foreign policy, especially the Vietnam War. Even some of the <a href="http://www.poshcorps.com/podcast-1">volunteers themselves joined the criticism</a>.</p>
<p>VISTA volunteers had their own predicaments. Whether working in rural Appalachia or urban neighborhoods, they often found themselves <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820346717/a-peoples-war-on-poverty/">embroiled in conflicts with local politicians</a> due to their roles as <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2263#.XNnOX45KhPY">community organizers</a> in areas riddled with political and economic injustices.</p>
<p>As a result, the two flagship national service programs lost funding and support during the Nixon administration. But both kept going, attracting enough ambitious volunteers <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/why-job-candidates-peace-corps-americorps-are-good-business/">destined for leadership</a> in politics and business later in their careers to remain prestigious. Both welcome <a href="https://www.peacecorps.gov/stories/serving-older-american-insights-and-tips-field/">older volunteers</a>, as well as young people.</p>
<p>By late 2017, <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=817862">7,376 Peace Corps volunteers</a> were serving in 65 nations while <a href="https://www.nationalservice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/CNCS-Fact-Sheet-2018-AmeriCorps_May.pdf">75,000 Americans</a> volunteered at least part-time through AmeriCorps. </p>
<p>The Trump administration has sought to <a href="https://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/articles/president-trump-recommends-____-funding-cut-for-peace-corps">trim Peace Corps spending</a> and <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/trump-white-house-2020-budget-scraps-americorps-senior-corps-799fd69177e0/">stop funding</a> AmeriCorps – which replaced VISTA and includes funding for the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0013124514541463">Teach for America</a> program that puts young college graduates in low-income classrooms. </p>
<p>Congress has so far rebuffed those requests, leaving roughly <a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1043235/">US$400 million budgets</a> for both programs intact. </p>
<h2>Dreaming on</h2>
<p>Aspirations to expand national service programs have <a href="https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/33/a-nation-in-service/">cropped up before</a>. Presidents <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/blast-from-the-past-buttigieg-embraces-national-service.html">George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama</a> all expressed that goal. </p>
<p>Liberals, in particular, have periodically cast it as more than just a practical way to fight poverty. Like the Quakers who organized work camps for decades and still <a href="https://www.afsc.org/document/its-my-life-guide-to-alternatives-after-high-school">encourage youth community service</a>, they see advantages for society – such as less bigotry and more compassion for the poor – when affluent and highly educated volunteers connect with lower-income Americans, often across class and racial lines. </p>
<p>Buttigieg, in his call for civilian national service cited the same rationale: that it would aid “social cohesion.” <a href="https://www.johndelaney.com/2019/04/14/delaney-announces-national-service-and-climate-corps-plan-in-new-hampshire/">John Delaney</a>, a former Congressman from Maryland, also favors a robust national service program. Now running a low-profile bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Delaney says more universal service would “restore a sense of common purpose.” </p>
<p>Volunteers, including those who take part in Teach for America do get more familiar with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-national-service-help-heal-americas-divisions-76833">problems faced by the communities they assist</a>. They also benefit personally excel at attaining <a href="https://www.nationalservice.gov/sites/default/files/evidenceexchange/AlumniMediaBriefingContent-01122017-1541_0.pdf">their career goals</a>.</p>
<p>But how effective are these programs at making things better for the people they serve? </p>
<p>The evidence is far less compelling. A large body of literature, for instance, shows that the impact of Teach for America on struggling schools is <a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2015/09/11/after-25-years-teach-for-america-results-are-consistently-underwhelming/">marginal</a> at best.</p>
<p>That is partly why Teach for America is encountering growing resistance from groups ranging from parents, to politicians and teacher unions. A bill pending in the California legislature would <a href="https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/how-did-measles-return-to-southern-california/a-push-to-ban-teach-for-america-in-california">ban its teachers from its public schools</a>. </p>
<p>There are, likewise, few if any objective assessments attesting to the <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/1424955_file_Kenny_Peace_Corps_FINAL.pdf">Peace Corps’ impact</a>. <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/peace-corps-fantasies">Bolivia</a>, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/12/28/peace.corps/index.html">Russia</a> and <a href="https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/forgotten-failures-peace-corps/">dozens of other countries</a> have opted out.</p>
<p>Buttigieg’s call for a national service program would require a scale beyond than anything seen before. Should the federal government ever seek to realize his grand ambition, it ought to first answer some long-deferred tough questions about the real purposes and benefits of this kind of volunteering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Staysniak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>No matter how well-intentioned, volunteers who may be inexperienced can’t solve the entrenched and complex social problems low-income communities endure.Christopher Staysniak, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1088742019-01-10T11:51:02Z2019-01-10T11:51:02ZRemembering American saint Elizabeth Seton’s legacy and how it continues to inspire work with immigrants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253073/original/file-20190109-32148-1g7yhyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elizabeth Ann Seton shrine.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/publicworksgroup/34784415045/in/photolist-UZMdHT-UWdMDs-fB8CKj-5yLMas-o4WGUx-UWdP3Q-vj8Re-bCri6T-UZMfZr-8XMGph-2dToPbz-TLhb8p-brn93C-dnYUwp-dvDEe7-Q2RZF1-a11ioE-cKGVWC-UWdMkm-7air9j-Jea2HX-TLhbma-huSCgM-UZMgmP-peAiir-UZMg7F-TLhdQi-fATkyp-YG6xa9-7KKmNK-BWCLJ4-4AXXht-p1sRHw-8NmdTX-SAj9Nz-vj9ck-dvDCPJ-dvy4LP-phVRQN-dvy5ei-YiUAU1-bCetht-c4oyUG-uPaSKG-qR4vrV-4qKm9X-cyjdCy-6rHrpH-77Rq5J-77Mudi">Pam Broviak</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The month of January marks the <a href="https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-elizabeth-ann-seton/">feast</a> of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Born in New York City in 1774, Seton became the first person born in what would soon become the United States to be canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Since then, she has been celebrated as an “American saint.” </p>
<p>As the author of her recent <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140103062730&fa=author&person_id=5913">biography</a>, I believe Seton’s life and legacy transcend national boundaries. Seton drew inspiration from other cultures, and the religious community she created continues to serve and learn from immigrants. </p>
<h2>Early years</h2>
<p>When the American Revolution began, Seton’s family, like many other colonists, remained loyal to the Crown. After the war she witnessed the difficulties that defeated Loyalists faced. </p>
<p>As she grew to womanhood in New York City, Seton educated herself through an intellectual and social world that went beyond national boundaries. She was fascinated by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5427?msg=welcome_stranger">French philosophy</a> and <a href="http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Hervey%2C%20James%2C%201714-1758">English theology</a>. </p>
<p>She married a transatlantic merchant, William Seton, son of an English immigrant, who had lived in Italy. The <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Origins_of_Women_s_Activism.html?id=Ne9ECQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">Setons socialized</a> with other cosmopolitan merchant families, some of them immigrants. </p>
<p>If there was anything distinctly American about Seton’s experience of religion, it was that she saw around her many different faiths practiced openly. An Episcopalian by birth, she loved the Methodist hymns she overheard on Manhattan’s streets. She also admired the plain bonnets of Quaker women – “pretty hats,” as she called them – that they wore to demonstrate their humility. </p>
<p>New Yorkers worshiped in any number of ways, and Seton believed they all had value. </p>
<h2>Converting to Catholicism</h2>
<p>Seton’s discovery of Catholicism emerged from her willingness to appreciate, as she once wrote, “many different customs and manners.” A chance visit to Italy introduced her to the faith that would transform her life.</p>
<p>In 1804, William Seton’s health and business failed. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cht.2011.0005">The Setons traveled to Italy</a>, hoping that the climate would cure William’s tuberculosis and that Italian merchant friends would resuscitate his business. William died, bankrupt, weeks after their arrival. </p>
<p>In Italy, Elizabeth visited Catholic churches, moved by the same interest in other faiths that characterized her New York life. She was first dazzled by the beauties of <a href="http://www.learner.org/interactives/renaissance/florence_sub2.html">Florence</a>, and then moved by the Catholic doctrine of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02364b.htm">transubstantiation</a>, a belief that God was present during the sacrament of communion. </p>
<p>Back home in New York, Seton wavered in the face of her friends’ and family’s mistrust of a faith they <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/No_king_no_popery.html?id=5IPYAAAAMAAJ">did not consider appropriate</a> for the United States. Among Protestant Americans, anti-Catholic attitudes were deeply rooted. Many believed Catholics were loyal only to Rome and <a href="http://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-316">untrustworthy</a>.</p>
<p>After an agonizing deliberation, Seton formally converted. But weary of her family’s distaste for her new faith, she hoped to emigrate to <a href="https://www.ville.quebec.qc.ca/en/citoyens/patrimoine/quartiers/vieux_quebec/interet/monastere_des_ursulines_de_quebec.aspx">Quebec</a>, home to French-speaking Catholics and many churches. She hoped to find in Quebec a unified, Catholic society. </p>
<h2>Founding a new community</h2>
<p>Emigration proved impractical, and Seton instead moved to Maryland. Over the next 15 years, she developed a new understanding of how to live a faithful life in a diverse nation. Her beliefs did not change, but while earlier she had tried to persuade relatives to convert, she no longer did so. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252940/original/file-20190108-32127-1emzaz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252940/original/file-20190108-32127-1emzaz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252940/original/file-20190108-32127-1emzaz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252940/original/file-20190108-32127-1emzaz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252940/original/file-20190108-32127-1emzaz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252940/original/file-20190108-32127-1emzaz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252940/original/file-20190108-32127-1emzaz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmd41280/15436816465/in/photolist-pw6HJ2-p1sU7E-6F2Zo7-5mTMnb-qR9uF7-YksXWC-d2XMeQ-fB8D6L-VuNNtD-5m6nYz-5C7h9W-97oJQn-Y91Bho-6GcUmY-EeKC9-qR4ub8-5maGaj-6F2Zns-d2XWQm-pUrVNZ-YqCY2R-d2XNbQ-dvy4FK-6F2ZmS-5HN87h-d2XJPE-77Mu38-d2XvTC-5HN8UC-6G8QBV-337bHV-5HHPpv-q4uqMy-YACaAV-7KPjWm-ctqGpy-6G8QRD-5m6r8Z-5maF5u-d3mHNU-d3m9As-bWmuis-d3kT7U-d2XYS7-d3n1Vm-d2XuLW-5maGRf-8XMDJ9-YiUB7q-4o7Ce8">Jon Dawson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Maryland, Seton founded the <a href="http://www.srcharitycinti.org/about/images/EAS%20History.pdf">American Sisters of Charity</a>, an apostolic women’s religious community. The Sisters of Charity began orphanages and schools in <a href="https://dcarchives.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/sisters-of-charity-of-st-josephs-mission-to-philadelphia-1814/">Philadelphia</a>, <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/programs/child-welfarechild-labor/the-sisters-of-charity-of-new-york/">New York</a> and beyond. Many of those cared for were newcomers to the United States or their children. The sisters were laying the groundwork for a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_American_Catholic_Experience.html?id=E2P-GRjwqqgC">Church that drew strength from immigrants</a> in American cities and towns. </p>
<p>Seton also founded a school for girls. She insisted that non-Catholic children be welcome, and that they not be pressed to change their beliefs. </p>
<p>Seton was <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02364b.htm">canonized</a> in 1975. Pope Paul VI declared she had performed posthumous miracles, led a holy life and entered heaven. There are now <a href="https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pope-visit-us-saints-20150911-htmlstory.html">11 men and women</a> who have been canonized for their work in the United States or colonies that would become part of the United States.</p>
<p>Some of those who advocated Seton’s canonization emphasized her status as a native-born citizen. The reason lies not in Seton’s life but in the later history of Catholicism. </p>
<p>In the decades after Seton’s death in 1821, large numbers of <a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nromcath.htm">Irish and German Catholics</a> immigrated to the United States. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Anti_Catholicism_in_America_1620_1860.html?id=aBA6DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false">The cultural antipathy and economic competition</a> that resulted revived anti-Catholic sentiments that had begun to recede. </p>
<p>The heavily immigrant Church was often anxious in the face of anti-Catholicism. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rac.2012.22.2.203?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Seton’s canonization</a> was meant to be the ringing affirmative answer to the question of whether one could be both a good American and a good Catholic. </p>
<h2>Seton’s legacy</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252941/original/file-20190108-32130-q7ryuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252941/original/file-20190108-32130-q7ryuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252941/original/file-20190108-32130-q7ryuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252941/original/file-20190108-32130-q7ryuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252941/original/file-20190108-32130-q7ryuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252941/original/file-20190108-32130-q7ryuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252941/original/file-20190108-32130-q7ryuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Statue and relic of St Elizabeth Ann Seton in the Basilica where she’s buried in Emmitsburg, Maryland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/45686870455/in/photolist-2cBc9T2-UZMhy8-ctqD4j-ctqCDW-ctqGbQ-6Lg5n5-ovnjqh-ctqHud-bCwGN2-THkZ77-6GzMfP-UZMdHT-UWdMDs-fB8CKj-5yLMas-o4WGUx-UWdP3Q-vj8Re-bCri6T-UZMfZr-8XMGph-2dToPbz-TLhb8p-brn93C-dnYUwp-dvDEe7-Q2RZF1-a11ioE-cKGVWC-UWdMkm-7air9j-Jea2HX-TLhbma-huSCgM-UZMgmP-peAiir-UZMg7F-TLhdQi-fATkyp-YG6xa9-7KKmNK-BWCLJ4-4AXXht-p1sRHw-8NmdTX-SAj9Nz-vj9ck-dvDCPJ-dvy4LP-phVRQN">Lawrence OP</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, the religious communities Seton inspired, the <a href="http://sistersofcharityfederation.org/">Sisters and Daughters of Charity</a>, honor her as an American and a faithful Catholic. Yet they interpret Seton’s legacy as a commitment to human community that extends beyond national boundaries. </p>
<p>Members of the Sisters of Charity Federation <a href="http://sistersofcharityfederation.org/immigrants-refugees/">aid immigrants</a> in a variety of ways, including working with the legal system and offering homes to refugee families. </p>
<p>The Federation works with the United Nations to <a href="http://sistersofcharityfederation.org/ngo/">“give voice to those living in poverty,”</a> and has joined other religious communities in a statement on behalf of <a href="https://www.svdpusa.org/Portals/0/Muslim%20Statement%20and%20SVdP%20VOP%20Cover%20Note.pdf">“our Muslim brothers and sisters</a>.”</p>
<p>With issues about stopping immigrants from entering the United States looming large, it is worthwhile to remember Elizabeth Seton belonged to many communities during her life – the nation was just one of them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine O'Donnell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Elizabeth Seton was canonized in 1975 as a saint. Charities founded by her continue her work with poor immigrants.Catherine O'Donnell, Associate Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/866572017-11-24T16:23:45Z2017-11-24T16:23:45ZWhat Quaker schools can teach the rest of the class about equality, mutual respect and learning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194802/original/file-20171115-19841-hgw79c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/education-students-people-knowledge-concept-497545879?src=JOrTe_54k1hWW9qGynBlGQ-1-11">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The head of England’s schools inspectorate <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amanda-spielmans-speech-at-the-birmingham-school-partnership-conference">believes</a> that British values, including tolerance, openness to new ideas and mutual respect, should form a central part of school education.</p>
<p>Amanda Spielman, the new Ofsted chief, said the education system has a “vital role in inculcating and upholding” these values. She went on to praise one school which promotes inclusiveness, and another where a “values-focused” thought each day informs teaching.</p>
<p>But the very subject of teaching values in school can be problematic. Whose <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-spectre-of-british-values-and-education-policy-39102">values</a> are really being taught? How will a school’s performance of this duty be <a href="https://theconversation.com/promoting-british-values-opens-up-a-can-of-worms-for-teachers-27846">measured</a>? Others think we should step back from the question of “British” values and focus on helping children <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-british-values-should-be-folded-into-character-education-52131">develop a “virtuous” character</a>. </p>
<p>But what happens when an entire school culture is seen by its students as promoting equality, mutual respect and inclusiveness? </p>
<p><a href="https://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/en/projects/how-students-learn-within-a-quaker-school-environment(58a06ee3-9e6a-4559-89c5-de2380907179).html">New research</a> reveals a significant relationship between Quaker school values and their students’ engagement with learning opportunities. Quaker schools are not common (there are ten in the UK and Ireland, 100 in the US), but they exist in 15 countries around the world. Some are very well established and highly thought of – both the Clintons and the Obamas sent their children <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2016/11/10/which-washington-area-school-will-barron-trump-attend/?utm_term=.1b3b1ca4b40f">to a Quaker establishment</a>, Sidwell Friends School, from the White House.</p>
<p>There are several things which make the English Quaker schools involved in the research distinctive. First, they all hold a “Meeting for Worship” which looks similar to a traditional school assembly in which the whole school gathers. Everyone sits in silence and all have the opportunity to address the room. This practice underscores another distinctive feature, which is that Quaker schools assert that everyone is equal. Schools try to reflect this in the way they listen to students and encourage positive relationships between year groups and between students and staff. </p>
<p>Although independent, Quaker schools rarely admit students based on academic selection. Quakers believe there is “something of God in everyone”. They actively encourage inclusiveness and stress that each student will grow and develop in their own way. </p>
<p>Yet counter-intuitively, students often perform very well in exams and the schools punch above their weight in <a href="http://www.aquakereducation.co.uk/bootham-students-on-the-up/">academic results</a>. So do aspects of the Quaker school culture contribute to students’ successful learning? </p>
<p>We found that students who were more likely to study without being told to and who enjoyed and took more interest in their subjects were the ones who also saw their schools as places characterised by friendliness, an equalitarian ethos and somewhere they rarely felt pressured. These students also tended to value the Quaker practice of silence and the weekly all-school Meeting for Worship, in which anyone can share a thought or express an opinion. </p>
<p>Interviews with students revealed how friendly relationships create strong bonds of trust, grounded in mutual respect and the Quaker belief in equality (perhaps surprising given that only 3% of students and 8% of teachers at the schools come from a Quaker background). Students recognise teachers as supportive and “on their side”, which leads to honest conversations about their studies and feeling of increased responsibility for their own learning. </p>
<p>One Year 10 boy said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you have a good relationship with the teacher or you are more friendly, then it is easier for you to get into the subject and learn more.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A girl from Year 9 told us: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think the Quakerism influences us a lot. I think that’s what gives a lot of the friendly environment because you know that you’re equal whoever you are. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Meeting for Worship was seen as providing an opportunity to reflect, contributing to the relaxed atmosphere of school. But it also confirmed the place of students’ voices and the importance of community. This helped students feel they can be themselves, and supported to do the best they can – although this “best” was not confined to examination performance. </p>
<h2>A working relationship</h2>
<p>According to one female student, the friendly atmosphere “helps you learn more, because you feel under less pressure to understand [the subject] straight away”. </p>
<p>Interviews with teachers confirmed the perspectives of students. They felt there was a focus on providing a wide and varied education, which was not defined principally in terms of exam grades. Many teachers referred to their sense of freedom to teach students as individuals, without feeling pressured by evaluations.</p>
<p>“The children are allowed to be themselves, but we are as well,” said one. “Everyone is welcomed and tolerated so it is a very accepting environment, and that makes for a very pleasant environment to teach in.”</p>
<p>Several factors linking back to the Quaker belief in equality and their practice of open worship, appear to help explain the relationship between students’ willingness to engage with learning and their lack of anxiety in relation to study, as well as their ability to make the most of the support offered by teachers. In particular, there seems to be a relationship between the inclusive ethos of the schools and an orientation towards educational engagement in students.</p>
<p>In seeking to explain these relationships, we’ve come to see that inclusiveness may be important to education because learning is really about being open to receive “the other”. Curriculum content is one of these “others”. Students who have been encouraged to practice inclusiveness towards fellow students – and have seen this role modelled in their teachers – become more disposed to receive the “otherness” of new learning opportunities.</p>
<p>Spielman may be on to something in her desire to see values play an important role in school education. But the challenge will be to help schools adopt cultures where those values are authentically – and visibly – practised.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Newton received funding from one of the Quakers involved in the project. </span></em></p>When it comes to engaging young people in their school studies, inclusivity means a lot.Nigel Newton, Assistant researcher, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/834042017-10-02T00:51:52Z2017-10-02T00:51:52ZWhat Gandhi can teach today’s protesters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188230/original/file-20170929-21580-on1yzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mohandas K. Gandhi during a prayer meeting on Jan. 22, 1948.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi – commonly known by the honorific Mahatma, the great-souled one – emphasized nonviolent resistance in his campaign for Indian independence.</p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4873#.WcgSR4prxgc">as my research shows</a>, Gandhi has become an iconic figure for people seeking social change, including communities across the United States.</p>
<h2>Explaining nonviolence</h2>
<p>For Gandhi, nonviolence was <a href="http://mettacenter.org/nonviolence/introduction/">not simply the absence of physical violence</a>. Self-rule and radical democracy in which <a href="http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/village_swaraj.pdf">everyone participates</a> in the governance process were also part of Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence. </p>
<p>He believed that self-rule should extend to all people, rich and poor, male and female, and at all levels of society. To him, authority over others was a form of violence. To achieve that vision, he encouraged <a href="http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/village_swaraj.pdf">participation</a> of women and the lower castes in economic and political matters.</p>
<p>These ideas about violence and authority had <a href="http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Echernus/NonviolenceBook/">circulated in the U.S.</a> in the 19th century, especially among the Christian peace churches such as the Quakers and Mennonites. In this view, equality and the lack of hierarchical structures are forms of nonviolence. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi breaking his fast.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Max Desfor</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Gandhi, it was the <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00litlinks/gandhi/">Indian religions, Hinduism and Jainism,</a> that shaped his activism. His mother, a devout Hindu, taught him the importance of fasting as a form of self-discipline and religious devotion. From the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Jains.html?id=jt6-YXE2aUwC">Jains</a>, with whom he grew up, he learned <a href="http://simplicitycollective.com/the-simple-life-past-present-future">nonviolence and nonpossessiveness</a>. In particular, he drew on the Hindu text <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-bhagavadgita/9780231064682">“Bhagavad Gita”</a> (The Song of the Lord) for a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v7i1.65">religious framework</a> on the values of simplicity, duty and nonviolence. </p>
<p>All this translated into Gandhi’s peaceful expression of protest of which the most potent “weapon” was fasting. </p>
<h2>Nonviolent resistance</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.history.com/news/gandhis-salt-march-85-years-ago/print">Salt March of 1930</a> is one of Gandhi’s best-known acts of peaceful resistance.</p>
<p>Under colonial rule, the British taxed Indians for salt and declared that making or collecting salt was illegal. Since salt is necessary for survival, this issue affected each and every Indian. They considered this law unjust and morally wrong. </p>
<p>Gandhi organized a 241-mile march across western India to the city of Dandi in Gujarat, in western India, where he collected salt, illegally. He started with 78 people. But as the marchers proceeded, thousands more <a href="http://www.history.com/news/gandhis-salt-march-85-years-ago/print">joined</a>. Weeks later, his unarmed followers marched to a government salt depot, where they met violent retaliation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.history.com/news/gandhis-salt-march-85-years-ago/print">In the words</a> of American journalist <a href="https://100years.upi.com/uni_anecdotes_1921.html">Webb Miller</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“At a word of command, scores of native police rushed upon the advancing marchers and rained blows on their heads…Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Gandhi, resistance meant placing one’s own body in harm’s way, open to the possibility of injury, imprisonment or even death. And that is what made it such such a <a href="https://gandhianiceberg.com/">powerful political tool</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech at Selma, Alabama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Horace Cort</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Years later, Martin Luther King Jr., who met with Gandhi, would employ similar ways of <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/mahatma-gandhi/9780231159593">nonviolent resistance</a>. </p>
<p>Indeed, it was the visceral horror of what happened in the two countries that rapidly <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4873#.Wc5XnUqGOL0">swung public opinion</a>. </p>
<p>During the Indian independence movement, descriptions of British clubs striking unarmed Indians in the Salt March drew <a href="http://www.calpeacepower.org/0101/PDF/SaltMarch.pdf">worldwide sympathy</a>. Back in the U.S., Americans watched with horror as Birmingham police set dogs upon African-Americans during a peaceful civil rights protest in 1963. This pushed President Kennedy to take action and eventually led to the <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights-Movement.aspx">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a>.</p>
<h2>What can we learn from Gandhi</h2>
<p>In my research, I found many communities in the U.S. replicating Gandhi’s model: <a href="https://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/sustainable-communities/possibility-alliance-ze0z11zmar">Possibility Alliance</a> in La Plata, Missouri, and <a href="http://cherithbrookcw.blogspot.com/">Cherith Brook Catholic Worker House</a> in Kansas City, Missouri, are among those who have used nonviolent protests to raise their voice against racial and economic injustices. </p>
<p>But, for others, as we have seen in recent months, keeping protests peaceful can be difficult. There were reports, for example, of <a href="https://www.apnews.com/116336dc947e4e8faba1d5ccd1805398/US-colleges-confront-a-new-era-of-sometimes-violent-protest">violence during protests on college campuses</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/03/the-violent-rally-trump-cant-move-past/?utm_term=.b1ad0432c46d">rallies against or in support of President Trump</a>. The <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">Black Lives Matter movement</a> has been accused of rioting, for example, in Baton Rouge where members <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-trumps-america-black-lives-matter-shifts-from-protests-to-policy/2017/05/04/a2acf37a-28fe-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.215639f125de">blocked intersections</a>. </p>
<p>At times, oppressive regimes might themselves retaliate violently, blaming the protesters for their retaliation. King too was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/dont-criticize-black-lives-matter-for-provoking-violence-the-civil-rights-movement-did-too/?utm_term=.e7f011b56452">criticized</a> for inciting violence. Only later was he labeled ”<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/dont-criticize-black-lives-matter-for-provoking-violence-the-civil-rights-movement-did-too/?utm_term=.7eaa43dc78a3">passive and nonconfrontational.</a>“ </p>
<p>For contemporary protesters, Gandhi and King’s political strategies could provide some valuable lessons. The peaceful resistance that the two pursued was more effective in exposing hard truths about injustices. And it is worth remembering what King wrote, in his <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">Letter from a Birmingham Jail</a>, that he
"earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83404/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Whitney Sanford receives funding from University of Florida Center for Humanities in the Public Sphere.</span></em></p>For Gandhi, whose birth anniversary is Monday, Oct. 2, nonviolent resistance meant placing one’s own body in harm’s way to expose social injustices, which made it a powerful political tool.Whitney Sanford, Professor of Religion, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/731852017-02-24T02:06:53Z2017-02-24T02:06:53ZHidden figures: How black women preachers spoke truth to power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158161/original/image-20170223-32718-1dleovy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sojourner Truth Memorial in Florence, Massachusetts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masstravel/13943933590/in/photolist-nfbiE7-fA3eGa-7eXAM3-8EitT3-8rwTDn-cjcw8G-6jjvuQ-aujo3H-5xuE3L-8P6YFS-5xqgGr-8EfjTc-6jjtrQ-7cZHed-6jfoDT-6jfohX-6jfkhP-dkKzXm-6jjvVm-6jfcTT-6jfmQK-6jfpQe-6jfnQ8-6jfEJX-6jjs7f-6jfev4-6jjrgb-6jjwqS-6jjwXN-6jjJUC-kGvtF5-6jjQWo-6jfoYZ-6jfpoe-6jjsJm-8EfjFx-6jfF9K-5xqgpV-kGucSV-edpMem-ETLbH-ETLbV-pbRDdk-6fkPN8-QRN7By-6ixS5N-9pNct7-pB24Hd-azmgsm-2C8VGB">Lynne Graves</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each semester I greet the students who file into my preaching class at <a href="http://divinity.howard.edu/">Howard University</a> with a standard talk. The talk is not an overview of the basics – techniques of sermon preparation or sermon delivery, as one might expect. Outlining the basics is not particularly difficult.</p>
<p>The greatest challenge, in fact, is helping learners to stretch their theology: namely, how they perceive who God is and convey what God is like in their sermons. This becomes particularly important for <a href="http://www.abingdonpress.com/product/9781501818943">African-American preachers</a>, especially African-American women preachers, because most come from church contexts that overuse exclusively masculine language for God and humanity.</p>
<p>African-American women comprise more than 70 percent of the active membership of generally any <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137552877">African-American congregation</a> one might attend today. According to one Pew study, African-American women are among the most <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2009/01/30/a-religious-portrait-of-african-americans/">religiously committed of the Protestant</a> demographic – eight in 10 say that religion is important to them.</p>
<p>Yet, America’s Christian pulpits, especially African-American pulpits, remain male-dominated spaces. Still today, eyebrows raise, churches split, pews empty and recommendation letters get lost at a woman’s mention that God has <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=African%20American%20Preaching%20an%20Introduction">called her to preach</a>.</p>
<p>The deciding factor for women desiring to pastor and be accorded respect equal to their male counterparts generally whittles down to one question: Can she preach?</p>
<p>The fact is that African-American women have preached, formed congregations and confronted many racial injustices since the slavery era.</p>
<h2>Here’s the history</h2>
<p>The earliest black female preacher was a Methodist woman simply known as <a href="http://diverseeducation.com/article/8493/">Elizabeth</a>. She held her first prayer meeting in Baltimore in 1808 and preached for about 50 years before retiring to Philadelphia to live among the <a href="http://www.quakers.org">Quakers</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158162/original/image-20170223-32692-1jt2c80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158162/original/image-20170223-32692-1jt2c80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158162/original/image-20170223-32692-1jt2c80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158162/original/image-20170223-32692-1jt2c80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158162/original/image-20170223-32692-1jt2c80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158162/original/image-20170223-32692-1jt2c80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158162/original/image-20170223-32692-1jt2c80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">First African-American church, founded by Rev. Richard Allen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfsmith/6990618379/in/photolist-iuHAEG-iqCokx-jKgd2h-hYcuBE-iuJZrb-bDJKi6">D Smith</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An unbroken legacy of African-American women preachers persisted even long after Elizabeth. <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/lee-jarena-1783">Reverend Jarena Lee</a> became the first African-American woman to preach at the <a href="https://www.ame-church.com">African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church</a>. She had started even before the church was officially formed in the city of Philadelphia in 1816. But, she faced considerable opposition.</p>
<p>AME Bishop <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p97.html">Richard Allen</a>, who founded the AME Church, had initially refused Lee’s request to preach. It was only upon hearing her speak, presumably, from the floor, during a worship service, that he permitted her to give a sermon.</p>
<p><a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Preaching-with-Sacred-Fire/">Lee reported</a> that Bishop Allen,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“rose up in the assembly, and related that [she] had called upon him eight years before, asking to be permitted to preach, and that he had put [her] off; but that he now as much believed that [she] was called to that work, as any of the preachers present.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lee was much like her Colonial-era contemporary, the famed women’s rights activist <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/sojourner-truth-9511284">Sojourner Truth</a>. Truth had escaped John Dumont’s slave plantation in 1828 and landed in New York City, where she became an itinerant preacher active in the abolition and woman’s suffrage movements.</p>
<h2>Fighting the gender narratives</h2>
<p>For centuries now, the Holy Bible has been used to <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/2-12.htm">suppress women’s voices</a>. These early female black preachers reinterpreted the Bible to liberate women.</p>
<p>Truth, for example, is most remembered for her captivating topical sermon <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/1851-sojourner-truth-arnt-i-woman">"Ar’nt I A Woman?</a>,” delivered at the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/more-womens-rights-conventions.htm">Woman’s Rights National Convention</a> on May 29, 1851 in Akron, Ohio.</p>
<p>In a skillful historical interpretation of the scriptures, in her convention address, Truth used the Bible to liberate and set the record straight about women’s rights. She <a href="http://www.sojournertruth.com/p/aint-i-woman.html">professed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.” </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158164/original/image-20170223-21964-vvstda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158164/original/image-20170223-21964-vvstda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158164/original/image-20170223-21964-vvstda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158164/original/image-20170223-21964-vvstda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158164/original/image-20170223-21964-vvstda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158164/original/image-20170223-21964-vvstda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158164/original/image-20170223-21964-vvstda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jarena Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tradingcardsnpsyahoocom/7222590166/in/photolist-c1eEqE-c1eEt1-dHhvYD-99Cw6A-99zin4-99zgcc-99CwGW-99Cr5s-99zhTx-99zkva-99Cu3w-99zhaB-99zhDt-99Ct1s-99CshA-99zkeT-99zjLe-99zmjF-99zkLD-99zgVx-99zmPx-99ywgr-99zj4p-99zgqB-8QQ7Rb-99znRD-99zAQg-99zAj4-99CrN7-99CK7u-99Cvyq-99CuAj-99CHPG-99CsvC-99zyJk-99zgET-jYZFwf-99zzhv-99CwwU-99zzMx-99CJmu-99zz2c-99zxWF-99CGeW-5Z9Mr2-99CJSj-99zBAM-99zomH-99zn62-99Crzm">TradingCardsNPS</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Truth, Jarena Lee spoke truth to power and paved the way for other mid- to late 19th-century black female preachers to achieve validation as pulpit leaders, although neither she nor Truth received official clerical appointments.</p>
<p>The first woman to achieve this validation was <a href="http://www.hallofgovernors.ny.gov/wh/Julia-A-J-Foote">Julia A. J. Foote</a>. In 1884, she became the first woman ordained a deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion <a href="http://www.amez.org/">AMEZ</a> Church. Shortly after followed the ordinations of AME evangelist <a href="http://articles.mcall.com/1995-07-13/features/3054687_1_mrs-baker-religious-leaders-harriet-cole">Harriet A. Baker</a>, who in 1889 was perhaps the first black woman to receive a pastoral appointment. <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/30036/jesus-jobs-and-justice-by-bettye-collier-thomas/">Mary J. Small</a> became the first woman to achieve “elder ordination” status, which permitted her to preach, teach and administer the sacraments and Holy Communion.</p>
<p>Historian <a href="http://www.cla.temple.edu/history/faculty/bettye-collier-thomas/">Bettye Collier-Thomas</a> maintains that the goal for most black women seeking ordination in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was simply a matter of gender inclusion, not necessarily pursuing the need to transform the patriarchal church.</p>
<h2>Preaching justice</h2>
<p>An important voice was that of Rev. Florence Spearing Randolph. In her role as reformer, suffragist, evangelist and pastor, she daringly advanced the cause of freedom and justice within the churches she served and even beyond during the period of the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration">Great Migration</a> of 20th century.</p>
<p>In my book, <a href="http://baylorpr.es/sGilbert">“A Pursued Justice: Black Preaching from the Great Migration to Civil Rights</a>,” I trace the clerical legacy of <a href="http://www.njwomenshistory.org/discover/biographies/florence-spearing-randolph/">Rev. Randolph</a> and describe how her prophetic sermons spoke to the spiritual, social and industrial conditions of her African-American listeners before and during <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration">the largest internal migration</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>In her sermons she brought criticism to the broken promises of American democracy, the deceptive ideology of black inferiority and other chronic injustices.</p>
<p>Randolph’s sermon “If I Were White,” preached on Race Relations Sunday, Feb. 1, 1941, reminded her listeners of their self-worth. It emphasized that America’s whites who claim to be defending democracy in wartime have an obligation to all American citizens.</p>
<p>Randolph spoke in concrete language. She argued that the refusal of whites to act justly toward blacks, domestically and abroad, embraced sin rather than Christ. That, she said, revealed a realistic picture of America’s race problem.</p>
<p>She also spoke about gender discrimination. Randolph’s carefully crafted sermon in 1909 “Antipathy to Women Preachers,” for example, highlights several heroic women in the Bible. From her interpretation of their scriptural legacy, she argued that gender discrimination in Christian pulpits illustrated a misreading of scripture.</p>
<p>Randolph used her position as preacher to effect social change. She was a member and organizer for the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/womans-christian-temperance-union">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a> (WCTU), which led in the work to pass the <a href="http://constitution.laws.com/american-history/constitution/constitutional-amendments/18th-amendment">18th Amendment</a>, which made prohibition of the production, sale and transport of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. Her affiliation with the WCTU earned her the title “militant herald of temperance and righteousness.”</p>
<p>Today, several respected African-American women preachers and teachers of preachers proudly stand on Lee’s, Small’s and Randolph’s shoulders raising their prophetic voices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have not received any funding for this research. </span></em></p>Since the 19th century, a long line of black women preachers set in motion a tradition that spoke against injustices and questioned patriarchal attitudes. Here’s their story.Kenyatta R. Gilbert, Associate Professor of Homiletics, Howard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/327732014-10-20T05:31:55Z2014-10-20T05:31:55ZCelebrate the truces – because World War I must not be an excuse for militarism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62071/original/x39d7gf3-1413541492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C800%2C553&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Quaker ambulance driver in Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Red Cross</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The government is <a href="http://www.1914.org/news/communities-unveil-the-first-victoria-cross-commemorative-paving-stones/">unveiling commemorative paving stones</a> laid in the birth places of those members of the British Empire forces in World War I who received the Victoria Cross for their bravery. The government’s stated aims are to “provide a lasting legacy of local heroes” and “honour their bravery”. All 627 Victoria Cross recipients will be so honoured over the next four years, with the promise that “no hero will be forgotten”.</p>
<p>This represents the most radical remaking of Great War commemoration for decades. It turns the emphasis from grief at a costly tragedy to lionisation of the warrior. It is a move that has more to do with the contemporary politics of militarism than with any genuine attempt to honour the memory of those who lost their lives between 1914 and 1918. The prime minister, David Cameron, candidly revealed his politics when, in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/speech-at-imperial-war-museum-on-first-world-war-centenary-plans">unveiling plans in 2012</a> for the centenary commemorations, he said he wanted: “A commemoration that captures our national spirit in every corner of the country … like the Diamond Jubilee”.</p>
<p>What, you may ask, is wrong with celebrating heroes in this way?</p>
<h2>War to end all wars</h2>
<p>It is an attempt to rewrite the history of the war as somehow glorious and necessary. The war was an ugly clash of imperial rivalries, marked by the unspeakable horrors of trench warfare. Far from proving “the war to end of all wars”, it scarred a nation whose sons would be sent to die against the same enemy within a generation.</p>
<p>Veterans also tend to baulk at their lauding as “heroes”, explaining themselves more humbly as men just doing their jobs and looking out for their comrades. Great War memorials rarely record either rank or medals, but are starkly simple alphabetical lists of all those who had their lives taken from them. By singling out only those men who received the top military award, the government is tearing up a century of practice.</p>
<p>Why has the government taken this radical departure? The answer is in part a reaction to the public scepticism about military operations that has become mainstream with the failures of the “War on Terror”. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/15/iraq-war-mass-protest">unprecedented anti-war demonstrations</a> against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the early 2000s may represent a sea-change in public attitudes to foreign wars. This has alarmed conservative politicians of all parties and the military top brass, who have been scrambling to regain ground ever since.</p>
<p>This began in earnest with then prime minister Gordon Brown’s <a href="http://www.ppu.org.uk/militarism/recognition_of_our_armed_forces.pdf">2008 report on the National Recognition of Our Armed Forces</a>. It identified a supposed lack of public understanding of the military due to decreased “familiarity”. The response to this perceived malady was to recommend a range of measures including celebratory home-coming parades, encouraging soldiers to wear uniforms in public and greater military presence in secondary schools and national sporting events. This was a grievous misdiagnosis: the real reason for the supposed disconnect was a reaction to the deceits and failures of Tony Blair’s Iraq invasion.</p>
<p>Cameron shared Brown’s concern about the increasing drift of British public opinion towards pacifism. The commemorative paving stones must be interpreted as a further attempt to rehabilitate the military. But Cameron has been cannier than Brown – whereas it was easy to decry the bogus logic in Brown’s initiative, it is hardly tasteful to protest at the unveiling of monument to a dead soldier.</p>
<h2>They also served …</h2>
<p>So how can we counter this shameless use of World War I to re-militarise the present? By celebrating and commemorating those who, in their foresight, opposed or questioned the industrial slaughter of World War I. These included women’s activists, Christians and political radicals who strove to recapture visions of a unified and pacific Europe – as well as the many workers who went on strike and soldiers who mutinied. These men and women exhibited great bravery, facing scorn, impoverishment, prison and death. Although widely reviled at the time, history has vindicated <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/aug/03/guardiansocietysupplement">their opposition</a> to a catastrophic conflict that decimated Europe and need never have been fought.</p>
<p>Of course, no British government will lavish funds on those types of commemorations. It falls to citizens and scholars to recover and retell these histories – as indeed they are doing up and down the country through books, talks, exhibitions, music, drama and art.</p>
<p>But these activities usually require substantial effort, particularly in researching their background. Here’s an easier suggestion: help your community celebrate the centenary of the <a href="http://www.christmastruce.co.uk/article.html">December 1914 Christmas truces</a>.</p>
<p>The truces commonly began with German soldiers putting up Christmas trees, shouting or writing Christmas greetings, and singing carols recognisable to their British counterparts. Troops met in no-man’s land to bury their dead, exchange gifts and souvenirs, share festive food and drink, sing and entertain each other, swap names and addresses, pose for photographs, conduct joint religious services, and play football. </p>
<p>These were not isolated incidents but were widespread right down the western front. Although the most famous, the 1914 Christmas truces weren’t one-off events. Throughout the entire war many combatants managed, through a “live-and-let-live” system, to reduce risk of discomfort and death by complicated local truces and tacit understandings that enraged the high commands of both sides and discredited the jingoistic propaganda that they pedalled.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Appalled at the horror: Siegfried Sassoon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Charles Beresford</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The extraordinary events of 100 Christmases ago are easy to celebrate this year, as a variety of non-profit organisations have produced <a href="http://research.ncl.ac.uk/martinlutherking/activities/worldwaronechristmastrucecommemorations/">resources</a> to help schools, churches and civic institutions mark them – and, in so doing, critically reflect on both the legacy of World War I and the continuation of war in our world.</p>
<p>The tragedy of World War I needs remembering - but not in a way that reinforces militarism today. It is fitting to recall Siegfried Sassoon’s verdict on an earlier government’s attempt to memorialise the dead, the Menin Gate in Belgium. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Who will remember, passing through this Gate<br>
the unheroic dead who fed the guns?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The poet threw his Military Cross into the Mersey in 1917 as part of what he described as “an act of wilful defiance of military authority”. His sombre verdict on what the fallen may have thought of the Menin Gate’s “peace complacent stone” is worth recalling as the government of today lays paving stones around the country:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime<br>
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Megoran is Co-Convenor of the Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee </span></em></p>The government is unveiling commemorative paving stones laid in the birth places of those members of the British Empire forces in World War I who received the Victoria Cross for their bravery. The government’s…Nick Megoran, Lecturer in Political Geography, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.