Friends and Service
By Dorothy H. Hutchinson
The basis of Friends concerns is the same as the basis of Quakerism as a whole—the belief in the within-ness of God. This is not original with Friends. Many other groups have believed that God is within as well as above and beyond human beings.
However, the emphasis on the within-ness of God in everyone, in the capacity of the individual to communicate directly with God, to experience the spirit of Christ and express it in every aspect of life, has led us to adopt patterns of behavior which may be considered characteristically Quaker.
This is the spiritual basis of the Friends distinctive form of meeting for worship—waiting in the Light for direct revelation of God’s will for us. It is the basis for all social testimonies. For three centuries Friends have been exploring the application of this belief in the within-ness of God in everyone to the problems of human relations and the end is certainly not yet.
A Quaker social concern seems usually to arise in a sensitive individual or very small group—often decades before it grips the Society of Friends as a whole, and as much as a century or more before it appeals to the secular world. Howard Brinton has pointed out that the famous names in social reform are often not Quaker names, but that many years before the successful reformer, relatively unknown Quakers initiated the concern which later bore fruit.
The concern arises as a revelation to an individual that there is a painful discrepancy between existing social conditions and what God wills for society and that this discrepancy is not being dealt with adequately. The next step is the determination of the individual to do something about it—not because one is particularly well-fitted to tackle the problem, but simply because no one else seems to be doing so. This is what has put onto the social scene so many amazing Quaker amateurs who never became professional reformers, but, like Elizabeth Fry, worked under a compelling concern while carrying a full load of the other duties of life.
The concern about crime and the treatment of offenders was a most natural concern for early Friends, many of whom spent long periods in prison during the first forty years of the existence of the Society of Friends. Fox addressed a message on the subject to the Protector and to Parliament as early as 1658. Penn gave practical expression to this Friendly concern by reducing the number of capital crimes from 200 to 2 when he established his colony of Pennsylvania, whose prisons, more- over, were considered models for the world. Generation after generation of Friends have visited prisoners, reported prison conditions to the authorities and have worked for rehabilitation rather than punishment of offenders. Their work has grown out of the Friendly conviction that gentleness fans the Inner Light however dimly it may be burning, and by faith in the capacity of every human being for regeneration.
It certainly seems that the timing of efforts for social change is important, whether one is dealing with social change itself or with the spiritual awakening which is often the prerequisite of social change. This may be one reason why Quaker concerns have been expressed in waves of activity rather than in a steadily flowing stream of social action. For example, in the early 19th century reform was in the air of England, and the time was ripe for Elizabeth Fry’s prison work. Similarly, in the mid-18th century American Friends were sufficiently uneasy about slavery so that John Woolman had something to speak to. I often think that even Jesus was dependent on his time. Unless some of his contemporaries had been spiritually ready to receive and transmit his message, his insights could only have been totally lost.
Having spoken of the origin of Friends social concerns, their development and their timing, I should like to dissect a social concern and describe some aspects of its anatomy. Using Elizabeth Fry as an example, I shall call attention to seven characteristics of Quaker social concerns in general.
First and foremost, a Quaker concern requires a prepared individual. This preparation, in the great among us, seems to have a pattern which is visible in retrospect, but is not visible to the individual at the time it is happening. When Elizabeth Fry, as a teenager, taught seventy underprivileged neighborhood children in the laundry of her father’s home, how could she or anyone else foresee that this was preparation for her later perception that the way to reach the hardened women of Newgate prison was to offer schooling for their wretched children? When Elizabeth Fry, as a young matron, first spoke in a Friends meeting in obedience to the Spirit, who could foresee that her discipline in the vocal ministry would be her best possible preparation for speaking before the government’s Committee on Prisons? She was the first woman in England, other than the Queen, ever to be consulted by any committee of the British government and she was prepared to speak clearly, concisely, with unselfconscious dignity and, above all, with a spiritual fervor which was persuasive. It seems that faithfulness in seemingly unrelated aspects of life is necessary preparation for a Friend called to carry through a concern.
A second characteristic of a Friend’s social concern is that the concerned individual makes direct contact with the evil which needs attention. That is why Elizabeth Fry had so much more practical insight than other prison reformers of her day. She neither theorized nor bemoaned, but went straight into the prisons to serve. Those who visit prisoners or who go to prison as prisoners for conscience’ sake may have something to say now which the theoretical penologist, psychiatrist, or sociologist cannot quite match.
A third characteristic of the concerned Friend is the ability to establish empathy with the objects of the concern, e.g. to achieve imaginative identification with prisoners as Elizabeth Fry did. When she read to them from the Scriptures, she tended to avoid passages condemning sin and sinners and chose those indicating that all have fallen short of the glory of God and that God’s mercy is correspondingly limitless and universal. And when she spoke with the women of Newgate, it is significant that she used the first person plural—not “you” but “we.”
A fourth characteristic of the concerned Quaker is willingness to work for any minor, unspectacular, partial solution of a big problem which seems, at the moment, achievable. Often minor reforms are the only realistic possibility and to over-reach is to prevent any progress. If Elizabeth Fry had said to the government, “Nothing will suffice but abolition of the prison system and dealing with criminals solely by love and trust,” she would have achieved nothing. Instead, she began by teaching a few bedraggled children in Newgate prison, then some older prisoners, then getting them employment to keep them busy and restore their self respect, books to read and visitors who expressed friendly concern for them. Small things, indeed, compared with the magnitude of the evil!
Is this compromise? Do minor reforms make great social evils easier for people of tender conscience to accept and therefore delay the final solution of these evils? If I understand the experience of Quaker reformers, this has not been their view. Quakers have seen as two-fold their function in a non-Quaker society: (1) to hold up the ideal —never to forget it nor allow others to forget it as a goal; and (2) at the same time to initiate small, imperfect steps with which they, themselves, are dissatisfied because of their partial nature. It seems to me to be not only more useful, but to take more courage to work at these partial solutions rather than, in effect, to wash one’s hands of evil by rejecting every solution which is less than ideal.
A fifth characteristic of a Quaker’s concern is that it does not rest until it has penetrated through the superficial evil to its root causes. In looking for causes Quakers cannot, as many Christians have done, fall back upon hopeless human depravity as the sole cause of social evils. Friends recognize that depravity is real, but they have never considered it an essential quality nor felt obliged to wait until people are less depraved before attacking social evils. They have, on the contrary, felt that, since everyone contains the Divine essence, we need not be without hope. Friends, therefore, look for social causes and at least partial cures for social evils. Elizabeth Fry saw poverty and ignorance as causes of crime, which could be recognized and cured. In the same spirit, we can now point to the prevalent philosophy of violence, the injustices of our social system, and society’s callousness in accepting the patterns of the past as causes of crime which can be recognized and cured.
A sixth characteristic of social concern is that the person who is sensitive to one social concern becomes inevitably more sensitive to all social evils. The pursuit of a social concern sensitizes the conscience to all of human suffering. This does not mean that we need spread ourselves too thin by applying ourselves equally to everything at once. But it means that, while we work at our particular social vocation, we uphold in every possible way those whose vocation is in another area of social concern. Here again Elizabeth Fry is an astonishing example. Along with raising an enormous brood of children and doing her pioneering prison work, that blessed woman helped set up shelters for “the houseless” of London, furnished libraries for isolated shepherds and coast guard personnel, established training schools for nurses, and got legislation passed abolishing the burning of Indian widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres!
Lastly, the person with a social concern is willing to accept censure and ridicule. This may sound like an anti-climax, but it is not. There is no tyrant harder to defy than public opinion. I believe that more people hesitate to undertake unpopular concerns because they fear being called wrong or foolish than because they fear imprisonment or personal injury. We allow ourselves to be deterred by the misunderstanding of the majority who always misunderstand every new idea. We are even more discouraged by lack of understanding on the part of our fellow Friends, our fellow Christians—the “good” people.
Yet, in the last analysis, obedience to the Light is the only satisfying course. Approval is not the criterion. Results are not the criteria. We may never be able to say to our critics and detractors, “The results show that our work was important and rightly ordered.” Elizabeth Fry was severely criticized by her fellow Quakers for supposed neglect of her family, and I daresay for her “unladylike” concern with the political matters relating to prisons. She was “foolish” to speak against capital punishment in an era when life was taken even for very minor offenses. She died before most of her goals were achieved.
However, I am convinced that if one is obedient, failure is impossible. If I don’t see any results of my work, there are two possible reasons. Either my Light was deficient and I was mistaken about God’s will or methods of action. If so, I should be glad there were no results. Or else I was right in my insight and my efforts, but the time is not ripe for results. Then it is for others to build on what I have tried to do until the results become visible. The results, when they appear, will rest upon the foundations laid by many anonymous builders. To be one of these is not to fail.
Bulk copies of pamphlets in the "Friends And" series can be obtained from Quakerbooks.Org. Copyright © by Friends General Conference.
