Quaker Theology #11 -- Spring-Summer 2005

"Many Friends do not know ‘where they are’ -- page 2:
 

So, as a result of their opposing if genuinely felt reactions to the Great War, Walter Thomson ended up in Parliament and Wilfrid Littleboy in jail. Ultimately, and at least partially as a result of their choices, both succeeded in their separate spheres, though it took a bit longer for Littleboy to see the fruits of his sacrifice than for Thomson to reap the rewards of his patriotism. The Friendly warrior earned the respect and trust of his fellow-citizens; the pacifist Quaker, with considerably more time to see the results of his sacrifice made manifest, gained sufficient confidence from his co-religionists to be chosen as their spiritual leader. But whatever the results of the two men’s contrasting decisions, it would seem useful to consider the reasons each gave for making the choice he did.

In this Wilfred would appear to have some advantage due in part to the preservation by his parents and his children of a series of remarkable and stirring letters he wrote from prison. These missives are the musings of a man moved by silence and sensual deprivation to spiritual depths he had never before plumbed and rather than being cast down by the ordeal of over two years in the third division in various of His Majesty’s prisons, Littleboy was exulted by "a sense of serene peace and contentment." As he told his parents: "I have literally not been ‘off colour’ for a day. . . . "¹⁰ While he did not wish presumptuously to link he and his fellow absolutist prisoners (remember there were less than 150 of them or about 5 per cent of friends of military age) too closely with their spiritual ancestors, he believed that "it is the same power that lived in them as shall live in us. . . . the old case of dreamers of the dream who assure the future . . ." And, for him, that future was in "perfectly safe hands."¹¹

Walter Trevelyan Thomson can only stand in the shadow of the dazzling spiritual light exuded by Wilfrid Littleboy’s prison testimony. Still, lest one take a notion that Walter Thomson’s reasons for supporting the war were simply a gauche betrayal of religious principles, one should give this war Friend his due. He did not hide his patriotic convictions under a bushel but spoke them openly and in the company of his fellow Quakers, most succinctly on the occasion of his Presidential Address to the Ackworth Old Scholars Association in the Spring of 1915.

The theme of Thomson’s presentation was his attempt to come to grips with the conflict between his obligations as a Quaker and his responsibilities as a citizen. In the desperate situation facing the British nation, he said, "the whirligig of time" had forced him to conclude that "the only safe course . . . [was] to follow Geo. Fox’s advice and let each ascertain for himself with the guidance of the Holy Spirit what is the Will of God for us in this matter." Having leaned upon the Founder for his authority, Thomson went on to provide what Malcolm Thomas, former librarian at Friends House, has called "an excellent summary of the arguments against an absolute peace testimony. . . ." Indeed, he concluded that the Society’s apparent decision to embrace a narrow interpretation of acceptable wartime service had created "a new precedent" in determining "to ostracise and excommunicate . . . members who think the present war justifiable . . . as . . . the lesser of two evils."¹³

From whence did W.T. Thomson derive such arguments? Frankly, they would have been easily found from a wide variety of Quaker sources. To begin he might have pointed to the apparent ambivalence of George Fox and other early Friends prior to the Restoration crisis. In 1655 Edward Burrough showed no hesitation in enjoining parliamentary soldiers not to "strengthen the hand of evil-doers, but [to] lay your swords in justice upon everyone that doth evil." Closer to hand there was Caroline Stephen’s discussion of Quakers and peace in her popular book Quaker Strongholds published in 1890:

Walter Thomson might also have considered that strong support given to the war in South Africa by such publicly prominent Friends as the famous lexicographer John Bellows and the historian Thomas Hodgkin, whose son Robin served as an officer in that conflict. Then, he also might have read the comment of some fairly weighty contemporaries in the Quaker press. The stockbroker J.B. Braithwaite, Jr. called upon the Society to recognise "that the use of force against evil [i.e., the Hun] is not only permissible but necessary." And Herbert Sefton-Jones, patent attorney & famed world traveler, noted that Robert Barclay, Quakerism’s most distinguished theologian, ranked "war with cock-fighting, bull-baiting, may-pole dancing, bell-ringing and other popular entertainments of his day . . . far less offensive in the sight of God than Hireling Ministry, Oaths or Payment of Tithes." (I think it should be noted that while Sefton-Jones may have been cute and clever, anyone who actually read Barclay might have responded that while he did not say much, what he did say seemed decisive, e.g., "it is impossible to reconcile war and revenge with Christian practice.")

Finally, Thomson might even have drawn sustenance from the 1912 document "Our Testimony for Peace" which, again revealing the Quaker genius for backing and filling, noted:

So, Walter Trevelyan Thomson’s plea for tolerance based on historical precedent was not without considerable foundation.

In light of this demonstration of the extreme differences concerning the nature of the peace testimony which arose in London Yearly Meeting during the Great War and the varying reasons given for those differences, I should like to return to the example with which I began this essay, Scott Simon’s vision of the peace testimony as something that can on occasion be put aside and ask again why it is as difficult for Quakers in the twenty-first century as it was for their forebears in the First World War to arrive at some satisfactory consensus about the relationship between being a Quaker and being a pacifist. Or to push the matter further, what it really means to be a pacifist, and how pacifism is related to Quakerism.

Although I am neither a Quaker nor a pacifist, it seems to me to me to be a matter of definition. It is my view, to paraphrase W.H. Auden, that war leaves no choice to real pacifists, they must oppose it, or cease to be pacifists. This is because pacifism, like pregnancy, really is an all or nothing proposition.

I cannot, of course, speak from any general knowledge or experience of contemporary Quaker pacifism but my personal experience has been that when I ask Friends to define their own understanding of the peace testimony, they stumble about for a bit and then mumble something about "that of God in every man", although they seldom provide any sense of the origins or precise meaning of that elusive phase. Nor, on the other hand, are they likely to furnish any Biblical citations to support their understanding of what the peace testimony means to Friends or whether it means anything at all.

I have asserted elsewhere that contemporary Quakerism can scarcely survive as a separate religious community if it ignores or eschews its historic peace testimony.¹⁶ Given the current situation in our nation and the world, it would seem incumbent upon Friends to seriously rethink and reassert their devotion to the principle and practice which, during the twentieth century, raised their Religious Society, striving as it did to create the Kingdom of God on earth, to its exalted position among the moral leaders of a physically riven and spiritually irresolute contemporary world.

NOTES

1 Earnest E. Taylor, "Diary, 1914–", 3 August 1914, Temp. Box 23/3, Library of the Society of Friends.

2 Minute 2, 28 April 1915, Minutes of the Meeting of Elders, Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

3 Yearly Meeting Epistle, 1854, quoted in Christian Practice (London 1925), 140 and "Our Testimony for Peace," London Yearly Meeting, 1912, 107-8, 112-14, 116-17.

4 Quoted from Christian Discipline, 1911 (London 1911), 141.

5 London Yearly Meeting, 1915, 30 and The Friend, 28 May 1915, 408-09.

6 For examples of letters from Quaker war supporters see The Friend, 20 Aug. 1914, 652-54; 3 Sept. 1914, 686; and 10 Sept. 1915, 707. For J.B. Hodgkin’s letter, see ibid., 19 Nov. 1915, 872-3 & 26 Nov. 1915, 887.)

7 Wilfred E. Littleboy, "Our Peace Testimony and Some of Its Implications," TF, 2 Oct. 1914, 722-4.

8 W.T. Thomson to Clerk of Darlington Monthly Meeting [J.B. Hodgkin], 7 Dec. 1914, copy in Minutes, Darlington Monthly Meeting, 14 Jan. 1915, 463.

9 Minutes, Darlington Monthly Meeting, 11 Feb. 1915, 468 & 13 March 1915, 473-4.

10 Wilfred E. Littleboy (W.E.L. to his parents, 10 March & 30 July 1917, Wilfrid Littleboy Papers (WEP).

11 W.E.L. to parents, 18 & 20 Jan. 1917, Ibid.

12 W.E.L. to parents, 18 June 1918, Ibid.

13 Thirty0Fourth Annual Report of the Ackworth Old Scholars Association, edited by Albert G. Linney (York 1916), 18-19; W.T. Thomson to Clerk, 7 Dec. 1914, in Minutes, Darlington Monthly Meeting, 14 Jan. 1915; and Malcolm Thomas to John Lockett (copy), 31 July 1995 (seen through courtesy of the author).Ibid.

14 Caroline Stephen, Quaker Strongholds (London 1891), 122, 130, 15, 159

15 "Our Testimony for Peace," LYM, 1912, 113.

16 Thomas C. Kennedy, British Quakerism, 1860-1920: The Transformation of a Religious Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press) , 429-30.

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