The Zen of Quakerism (2016)

Quakerism is still a form of Christian faith. And for a Christian the life on Earth is but a small episode of existence. The point is to obtain the life eternal, the salvation. To suffer and be put to death for the refusal to reject the principles of the faith, aka martyrdom, is a known way to practically guarantee a salvation.

Of course, from a game-theoretic perspective, such ideas can only persist if someone else protects the pacifists from being killed, likely by use of lethal force. In this situation the only morally acceptable choice for the pacifists is to not be afraid of death, and not demand somebody to do the dirty work for them. Which is what we see.

Note that Quakers never rejected the possibility of being killed for their beliefs, just the choice of killing others for them. Pacifism does not equate to passivism, after all: it simply means that they reject the notion of visiting violence on others.

It's also important to note that pacifism has been a divisive issue for Quakers from very early times. The play 'Sword of Peace' that's performed throughout the year in Snow Camp, NC, is about Meetings in the US struggling with the question of pacifism vs. the desire to aid their nascent country during the American Revolution. It was a debate for Friends during the US Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and onwards – one of the tenets of Quakerism is the need to wrestle with those issues by listening to the 'still small voice within' rather than blindly accepting the dictates of others. For many Friends, the threat posed by British colonial rule, the Confederacy, or Nazi Germany simply outweighed the demands of their conscience not to bear arms.

Friends often refer to the anecdote of William Penn asking George Fox (one of the founders of Quakerism) whether Penn should stop wearing his sword because he was now a Quaker. Fox told him, 'wear thy sword as long as thee is able' — meaning he should give it up because his conscience dictated it, not because he was a Quaker.

>The interesting (to me) part about such a philosophy is that it seems like it can only really survive and prosper within a society where someone else is willing to pick up the burden of doing the killing for you.

This seems to assume the "the burden of killing" is not only necessary but unavoidable, as if violence were a constant which should be equitably distributed amongst everyone. If so, I would presume the Quakers would disagree, and would be perfectly satisfied if no one bothered killing at all.

And historically speaking not a lot of people have been willing to kill to protect pacifists like the Quakers who have little capital, social clout or political power. So it isn't much of a burden to begin with.

I have to say I'm fortunate enough never to have found myself in that situation. Is this something that happens regularly in America?

I would comfortably say I completely share this conviction. I would not like to find myself in a position where that conviction was tested -- such as that you describe -- but not killing is almost universally understood to be a fundamental law of civilised society.

One can defend oneself and others in a myriad of ways that do not involve murder.

The line of reasoning really only works if you are talking about yourself. If we assume all lives are of equal value (which is a big assumption but not without precedent), then killing your would-be murderer is a wash, but it does raise the question; why should you be the one to live? And the justification seems like it must be based on either 1) a belief that the transgression of attempted murder justifies self-defence, or 2) that the Self is simply more important than the Other.

When a third party becomes involved you only need to rely on option 1. You are still probably acting out of “selfish” reasons in this case, however; I’d rather save my child than preserve the life of a murderer, but that is simply because my child’s life is more important to me than that of a murderer, regardless of moral justification.

The questions about self-centeredness get more interesting in life boat scenarios, where you have to choose between equally innocent parties.

I've grown really tired of the term "self defense" in the context of the wars recently.

Not because the concept would be wrong or there would be no need for it - of course a state has to be able to defend its population against attacks - but because as soon as there is a situation where it applies in war, both sides seem to stretch it to absolutely unrecognizable lengths and use it to justify essentially everything in warfare.

That's why I'm wary if someone makes a theoretical argument about personal self-defense that's tailor-made to justify killing. It feels too much like the same tactics in war propaganda.

There are nonlethal ways of defending oneself or others, too, btw. Learn martial arts, knock them out, use a taser if you have too, then grab your kid and run. None of that requires shooting them.

Clearly the one that is going to kill your child is evil and, if you are inclined to believe it, is going to hell and sinning against God.

When you kill that person, you have joined them in also sinning against God — irrespective of what your reason was.

I'm not taking a side here but just pointing out that Quakers have a very clear directive that goes, more or less, thou shalt not kill.

(It's perhaps a bigger surprise that countless other Christian religions have all kinds of addendums that I guess allow for that one.)

I was raised Quaker as well and still consider myself culturally Quaker, though I'm atheist and attend Meeting mostly only at weddings or funerals at this point.

What I value most about Quakerism is the emphasis on absolute honesty.

My father took time off college to protest the war -- which war, I'm not certain. He found himself questioning whether pacifism was truly his belief or something he was brought up with. So he enlisted to try out the other side. He didn't actually fight, but was trained as an artillery surveyor. When his superiors suggested he go to officer training school he asked for some time off to think about it, then came back three days later having decided he wanted to finish college and become a psychiatrist. He met my mom at his Quaker college, went back to Meeting, and some years later became a psychiatrist (and died shortly thereafter, not from the psychiatry). I've always thought it was cool that he tested his beliefs like that. His wider family was a bit uneasy with his choices but respected his process.

No. I mean Quakers. Their global humanitarian work and connections to communists and socialists the world over made them particularly interesting to the CIA. The CIA has directly used and manipulated Quakers for these purposes. This was especially true during the Cold War.

The majority of people "recruited" by the CIA are used for information or for their specific field of expertise.

A forgotten history I guess.

Many meetings associated with Friends United Meeting practice worship as a more "traditional" Christian church with a pastor. They associate with many other national and international Quaker organizations and have a majority of their members in countries like Kenya. Evangelical Friends Church is more like other evangelical Christian churches and does not associate with any other Quaker organization as far as I can tell.

I attended a silent meeting in the US almost two decades ago and this was my understanding at the time too. I later got interested in the demographics of religion and keep checking on the quakers and it's just not at all what you would extrapolate from this.

In the US iirc only about half of meetings are "unprogrammed" which is the traditional silent meeting. The other half more or less follow a normal low church formula, with congregational singing, bible readings, and one or more sermons. Also usually a period of silent worship still but it's not the bulk of the meeting. The doctrine of these churches is still quaker, because nearly anything can be, but people's polled beliefs are basically protestant christian.

Outside the US this second style was much more active in evangelism and missionary work and so the "programmed" style is vastly more popular. The majority of silent worshipping quakers are in the US & england, but globally they only represent something like 20% of active quakers. Africa and a few south american countries outnumber them by a huge margin.

The numbers are not good or reliable either because it's an extreme minority religion, something that might not be obvious if your exposure was in a large american city (or esp in one of the historical quaker regions) or on the internet. But best counts are less than half a million globally so even by the standards of minority religions just so so small. By comparison with other religious minorities there are more jews in los angeles, more muslims in chicago than there are quakers in the world. So whatever your local expression or personal experience of quakerism is it is probably unique and in some sense a historical outlier.