Friends and Social Change
By Kenneth Boulding
For when I came into the silent assemblies of God's people, I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up.
- Robert Barclay
Friends are conservative radicals. They are conservative because they are religious, and religion, as the origin of the word indicates, suggests binding together. Religion binds the present with the past and it binds diverse people into communities. Quakers, because of their deep Christian roots, are bound into the past history of humankind. The words and actions attributed to Isaiah, to Jesus, to Saint Francis, to George Fox and to John Woolman come down through the centuries and are bound into the life and witness of today. In the meeting for worship Friends seek to break through the here-and-now into that which is eternal. Here, that which is beyond time and in every time becomes part of the present.
With all this conservatism, however, Friends are also radical. Their authority is the light within, the present and personal experience by which past undoubted authority must be tested. "Thou sayest Christ said this and the apostles said that, but what canst thou say" says George Fox, the founder of Quakerism. This "what canst thou say" is the key to a religion in which we have "no time but this present." There is a constant hunger to apply the eternal principles of love, justice and redemptive suffering to this present world.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Quakers have pioneered in many areas of social change. They pioneered economic development in the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. They pioneered in many early social inventions, such as banking and insurance. They pioneered in movements for political and social reform, in the anti-slavery movement, in setting fixed prices rather than haggling, and in religious tolerance. Today they are involved deeply in the peace movement and in the movement for racial equality. The American Friends Service Committee in the United States, the Friends Service Council in England and Friends Service Committees in other countries represent a twentieth century adaptation of this spirit of innovation and social invention.
This inventiveness and radicalism of the Quakers arises by necessity out of their religious life and experience. In the meeting for worship there are no external props to divert the mind, which is forced inward in meditation to where its conscience can be quickened and the sense of need aroused. There is a famous story of the stranger who came into a Friends meeting as it was settling into silence and after a few uneasy minutes turned to his neighbor and said, "When does the service begin?" The Friend replied, quietly, "The worship is here, the service begins outside."
Another key to this curious conservative radicalism of Friends is the fact that the core of the Quaker experience is in the local meeting, which is, at its best, a community bound together by mutual love and concern rather than by doctrine. In the community new ideas, as they arise, are tested against the wisdom of others, which makes for a certain conservatism and slowness to act. On the other hand, because the inward light is expected to create novelties, new ideas are welcomed and tried out lovingly and respectfully. Not all Friends meetings by any means come up to this ideal, but the fact that the ideal is recognized brings about a constant pressure to realize it.
We do well to remember also that the Society of Friends was born, not among the middle class, but among small farmers and artisans. They were men and women of little formal education, who worked with their hands and knew the burdens of poverty, but whose minds and hearts reached out towards the truth, creating a community of singular sweetness and joy.
In the last generation or so, many people, especially in professional and academic life, have come into the Society of Friends. They find in it a community within which they can express both their conservatism-their sense of affiliation with the past under a community going beyond the present-and their radicalism-their outrage and dissatisfaction with the world as it is. They search for a better world where war and injustice, poverty and extravagance, hatred and misery, will have been eliminated. This is the message of the Society of Friends today. It remains as relevant as it ever was, and there is still a call for those who are in spirit part of its community to enter full into its body.
Bulk copies of pamphlets in the "Friends And" series can be obtained from Quakerbooks.Org. Copyright © by Friends General Conference.
