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What It Means to Be a Quaker Peace Activist

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6B Interviews Erling about his Beliefs and Quaker Faith

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6B Interviews Erling about his Beliefs and Quaker Faith

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Edited Interview with Erling about Beliefs and Quaker Faith.mp4

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6A Interviews Erling about his Beliefs and Quaker Faith

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6A Interviews Erling about his Beliefs and Quaker Faith

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Edited 6A Interviews Erling about his Beliefs and Quaker Faith.mp4

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How Quaker Parents Teach their Kids to Worship

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How Quaker Parents Teach their Kids to Worship

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How do Quakers Support Children Spiritually?

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How do Quakers Support Children Spiritually?

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How Do Quakers Support Children's Spirituality?

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Quakers vote for Gay Marriage in Britain

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Quakers vote for Gay Marriage in Britain

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Britain's Quakers have become the first major Christian church in the UK to support gay marriage. At their annual gathering in York yesterday, the Society of Friends called on the government to change the law to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples and determined that their marriage ceremony should be available to those couples.

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NEWBERG, ORE. - Through the past several years, the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends (NWYM) has struggled with where to stand on LGBT issues, which has led to the formation of a new yearly meeting-the Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends (SCYM).

As LGBT culture and acceptance has increased, NWYM has been in discussion about their stance. The NWYM statement on faith and practice said , "[T]he practice of sexual perversion in any form is sinful and contrary to the God-ordained purposes in sexual relationships. These perversions include sexual violence, homosexual acts, transvestism, incest, and sex acts with animals."

A growing number of members have viewed the grouping of homosexuality and transsexuality with sexual violence and bestiality to be a problem. West Hills Friends Church in Portland was the first church in the NWYM to challenge the NWYM on its faith and practice statement on human sexuality. In 2008, the West Hills Friends Church adopted a welcoming and affirming stance toward LGBT members. This sparked many other churches in the area to discuss the matter, leading to in-church disputes for the past few years.

In 2012, George Fox University (GFU) joined the discussion when an alumni group called OneGeorgeFox wrote an open letter to the school administrators and NWYM, urging them to be accepting of LGBT students. GFU gave a statement titled "OneGeorgeFox & LGBTQ Topics" on their website which said, "We believe that God has intended sexual relations to be reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. We recognize that this belief may be in conflict with the practice or vision of the larger culture, as Christian beliefs have been in other times and places. Yet we hold to the historic Christian position on this topic while being respectful of those who disagree with us."

The letter from OneGeorgeFox ultimately led to the formation of Common Ground, a student-run organization for LGBT students and allies. Common Ground has been denied recognition as an official GFU club from the Associated Student Community (ASC), though it has been allowed a table at the club fair for the past several years.

Eric Muhr, a former youth pastor at Newberg Friends Church and a new co-clerk of the SCYM, explained some of the repercussions GFU still feels as a result of the OneGeorgeFox letter. "This has meant that students who have confided in professors who have a reputation for being safe have sometimes found that those professors aren't actually safe now the way that they were even just a year ago," Muhr said. Muhr said he chose to become a part of the SCYM because "Bigotry is never kind."

As a result of the disagreements over LGBT acceptance, several churches have decided to leave NWYM, effective June 2018. One of the churches in the discussion, Newberg Friends Church, has divided over the issue. Newberg Friends Church will remain in the NWYM, while Newberg Emerging Friends Church will become a member of the SCYM.

Phil Smith, a philosophy professor and chair of the department of Christian Studies at GFU, is a member who decided to stay in Newberg Friends Church. He chose to do so because of his interpretation of scripture. He approached scripture with a critical eye and philosophy in mind, coming to the conclusion that the New Testament rejects homosexuality. Smith acknowledged that the split has not been easy, but he continues to maintain friendships with those who have left Newberg Friends Church. He said "I treasure them as Christian sisters and brothers. I pray for God's blessing on their churches."

Carl Anderson, the presiding clerk of Newberg Friends Church, said that Newberg Friends Church chooses to remain in the NWYM because they believe the NWYM Faith and Practice to still describe who they are called to be. Anderson acknowledged how painful the split was and remains to be and said "Like a divorce, the sum of the separate parts is less than the whole. Healing takes time and both sides will feel the effects of the split for some time."

Matthew Staples, a senior at GFU and recording clerk for the SCYM, said "The fundamental conviction of Quakerism is that the light of Christ is in everyone; that the Holy Spirit is living and active and works through everyone, so I think that honoring that conviction ... is the most important thing we can do and is the thing that would be most pleasing to God."

Staples grew up going to Newberg Friends Church, but began attending Newberg Emerging Friends Church after the separation because of his personal beliefs regarding equality and acceptance.

Although Muhr, Smith, Anderson, and Staples have differing views on the discussion, they all described the split as painful, and remain hopeful that the Quaker church can accept each other's differences in scriptural interpretation and heal.

Reported by Megan Creighton

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Quaker Church Splits Over Disputes on LGBT Issues - The Crescent

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NEWBERG, ORE. - Through the past several years, the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends (NWYM) has struggled with where to stand on LGBT issues, which has led to the formation of a new yearly meeting-the Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends (SCYM).

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SCROLL DOWN TO #2 "QUAKER MEETINGS"

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Meeting the Spirit - An Introduction to Quaker Beliefs and Practices

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" Be patterns, be examples, in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one."

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Anti-Slavery in North America

Quakers in Germantown, now a suburb of Philadelphia, made the first recorded protest against slavery in 1688. Many Quakers, especially in the southern colonies, owned slaves at this time. William Penn himself owned slaves during his four years in Pennsylvania (1682-4 and 1696-8), though they were later freed and he treated them well. In 1763 Robert King of Philadelphia, a prominent Quaker merchant in the West Indies, purchased Olaudah Equiano, the famous black Abolitionist, though he sold him his freedom three years later.

For much of the eighteenth century, the focus was on eliminating slavery within the Quaker community. This was eventually achieved in 1774. Many individuals helped to change opinion. Benjamin Lay (1677-1759) was a campaigner who believed in eye-catching approaches. On one occasion he stood barefoot in the snow outside a Quaker Meeting to show the conditions in which many slaves were living. . John Woolman (1720-1772) wrote 'Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes' in which he argued that slavery was harmful to both slaves and slave owners. Anthony Benezet (1713-84), a great Quaker educator,wrote several books on slavery and conditions in Africa. Many Quakers freed their own slaves, and some bought slaves from others, in order to free them. By 1758 opinion amongst Quakers had moved to a point where a systematic programme of visits to the remaining Quaker slave-owners was agreed, in an endeavour to persuade them to free their slaves. Eventually, in 1774, Quakers who still owned slaves were expelled from the Society of Friends.

Once Quakers had eliminated slavery from their own communities, they turned their attention to eradicating slavery in society as a whole. Two strands of activity developed. One was a campaign to win hearts and minds. The other was supporting escaping slaves, and helping them and freedmen/women to build new lives.

Campaigning took many forms. The Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1775, in Philadelphia. Revealingly, women were excluded from the Society's decision-making: women were not entirely equal, even among Quakers. After Lucretia Mott was barred as a woman from speaking at the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention, she founded the Pennsylvania Female Anti-Slavery Society. She often spoke publicly, with considerable eloquence. As the US expanded westwards, other centres of activity emerged, for example in Indiana.

Much was published. The Pennsylvania Freeman was an important outlet especially when John Greenleaf Whittier the well-known Quaker poet, became its editor in 1838. He campaigned extensively through its pages and his other writings. William Savery petitioned Congress to abolish slavery in 1783.

'Free Produce' committees grew up, with much Quaker input, boycotting all slave-produced goods. Along with their British counterparts, Quakers at this time developed many of the approaches to campaigning that are still in use today, including boycotts.

Supporting slaves and former slaves also took many forms. The Underground Railroad was a set of routes and safe houses whereby escaping slaves could make their way from the slave-owning South to the emancipated North. Many Quakers were active in this, notably Levi Coffin, a merchant in Cincinnati, Indiana and Thomas Garrett. They were breaking the law, and taking great risks. Levi became known as the President of the Railroad, and it is estimated he helped about 2000 runaways to freedom. He and his wife are the basis of two characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin. This was an early example of direct action or civil disobedience. Schools were set up for children, and attempts were made to find safe places for former slaves to settle.

Nevertheless slavery amongst non-Quakers continued, in parts of the US, until 1865. It was central to the Civil War (1861-5), the outcome of which was that slavery was finally abolished throughout the Union.

Nevertheless, slavery persists in modern forms, such as forced labour, in many parts of the world. Many North American Quakers are involved in activities concerned with abolishing these modern forms of slavery. There are strong links with Anti-Slavery International (ASI), arguably the oldest human rights organization in the world, founded as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839. In 2000, Quaker academic Kevin Bales, an expert on modern forms of slavery, co-founded an American organization called Free the Slaves, which is affiliated with ASI.

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Quakers in Germantown, now a suburb of Philadelphia, made the first recorded protest against slavery in 1688. Many Quakers, especially in the southern colonies, owned slaves at this time. William Penn himself owned slaves during his four years in Pennsylvania (1682-4 and 1696-8), though they were later freed and he treated them well.

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Quaker Issues_Anti-Slavery Activist Benjamin Lay

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Quaker Boycotting Goods made by Enslaved People

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Quaker Boycotting Goods made by Enslaved People

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Boycotting Goods Produced by Slaves

Quakers were at the forefront of the movement to boycott goods produced by slave labour.

In Britain several women were influential in the anti-slavery movement, and came to see boycotting as a key campaigning tool. In 1824 Elizabeth Heyrick from Leicester wrote a pamphlet entitled "Immediate, not Gradual Abolition or An Inquiry Into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery" which sold thousands of copies in Britain and the USA. The pamphlet made it clear that conditions in the plantations in which the slaves worked to produce sugar were appalling.

Heyrick and many other women, a large number of whom were Quakers, believed that a boycott of sugar, which was one of Britain's major imports, would help to make people aware of the suffering of slaves. Inspired by her, women's societies put out boycott pamphlets and started to compile a national list of all those who had given up West Indian sugar. Together with fellow-campaigner Susannah Watts she canvassed large areas of Leicester and promoted a boycott of sugar produced in the West Indies. By the following June almost a quarter of the town's population had given up sugar.

Some supporters of the campaign used sugar from East India instead, and sugar bowls and other items were soon produced which stated that the sugar in them had not been produced by slave labour. Those who forsook sugar seem to have come from all classes and age groups within society. Quaker William Allen had given up sugar before he was eighteen years of age. Grocers stopped selling sugar from the West Indies and reported that sales of sugar from East India had increased tenfold. According to a newspaper report two Quakers in Cornwall toured the county on foot and found that more than 12,000 people had stopped using sugar. Anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson gave his backing too, and it was estimated that at the height of the boycott 400,000 people had given up the use of sugar from the West Indies. To some extent the boycott of sugar was symbolic as people in Britain continued to consume other products made by American slave labour such as tobacco, coffee and cotton, but awareness of these was not raised systematically in the same way.

In America Elias Hicks spoke forcefully against slavery and was one of the early leaders of the anti-slavery movement. In 1811 he produced a pamphlet against slavery and encouraged his followers to join the boycott against the products of slavery. He would not use rice, sugar or cotton. It is said that even on his death bed he refused to be covered by a blanket made of cotton that had been produced using slave labour.

The "free produce" movement was a boycott of any goods produced with slave labour. It was seen as a way of fighting slavery by having consumers buy only produce from non-slave labour. The movement was active in North America from the beginning of the abolitionist movement of the 1790s to the end of slavery in the 1860s. In 1826 in Baltimore, Maryland, Benjamin Lundy opened the first "free produce" store that only sold goods that had been produced by non-slave labour. In the same year Quakers in Wilmington, Delaware, drew up a charter for a formal free-produce organisation. In 1827 the movement expanded and Thomas M'Clintock and others founded the Free Produce Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1838 several such groups came together to form the American Free Produce Society, which developed the idea further as it aimed beyond boycotts and early forms of conscious consumerism, by creating several pamphlets, tracts and the journal Non-Slaveholder. The association, although larger than the predecessors, did not grow large enough to start benefiting from economies of scale and as a result the prices were always unsustainably higher than the slave produced goods they were trying to replace.

In 1847, in Cincinnati, Levi Coffin established a warehouse selling goods not produced by slave labour. For a time the business prospered but was eventually forced to close. It was difficult for abolitionists to ascertain which goods were wholly produced by free labour. The American Free Produce Society disbanded in 1847 as there was insufficient support of the boycott. In the previous year Quakers had founded The Philadelphia Free Produce Association of Friends. Quakers who had organised the earlier Free Produce Society continued their activities until 1856.

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Quakers were at the forefront of the movement to boycott goods produced by slave labour. In Britain several women were influential in the anti-slavery movement, and came to see boycotting as a key campaigning tool.

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Anti-Slavery

Slavery is not simply a historical phenomenon; It persists to this day in modern forms, such as trafficking. Quakers have opposed it from very early on and still do.

In the first few years after the Quaker movement began in 1652, slavery would have been outside the experience of most Quakers, as it was not much practised in Britain. But in British colonies in the Caribbean and North America it was widespread. Britain was also heavily involved in the slave trade, as many of its merchants brought captives from African countries to the New World to sell to plantation owners and wealthy householders. So as early Quakers and others of like mind travelled across the Atlantic, they saw slavery at first hand, and some became slave-owners themselves. But they soon saw that ownership of one human being by another contradicted their belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings (the testimony to equality).

Quakers were not alone in this, and the key strength of the historical abolitionist movement, in Britain and North America, was the determination of the slaves themselves. Quakers nevertheless made a vital and distinctive input, in five main ways.

They raised slavery as a moral issue as early as the 1670s and 80s. When George Fox and Irish Friend William Edmundson visited Barbados in 1671 they were confronted with the realities of slave labour face to face. Fox immediately appealed for better treatment. By 1675 Edmondson was condemning slavery outright. The Germantown Quakers in Philadelphia stated that slavery itself was immoral in 1688. Many others raised the moral issue over the years that followed.

They worked for nearly a century to eradicate it from the Quaker community. In 1727, Britain Yearly Meeting forbade owning, and dealing in, slaves. In North America a long process of persuasion culminated in 1774, when Quakers, involved with slavery, were told to give it up or leave the Society of Friends.

Quakers provided a leadership structure, reliable national network, and significant material resources to the campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1783 Quakers in Britain began active campaigning. They joined forces with William Wilberforce and others. The campaign drew heavily on the extensive Quaker network. The slave trade was abolished in 1807, and slavery itself became illegal in the British Empire in 1833. In North America, Quakers campaigned equally vigorously. Many also broke the law by assisting slaves to escape from the slave-owning states in the South to the freer North. Slavery was finally abolished in the United States in 1865.

The methods Quakers pioneered constituted an extraordinary model which evolved rapidly and illustrates the key elements still required for such campaigns today: research, committee leadership, logo, publications, petitions, lobbying, produce boycotts, networking, fundraising, legislation and direct action/ civil disobedience.

A remarkable number of individual Quaker men and women gave exemplary leadership.

Thus the evils of slavery were gradually and systematically exposed in what is arguably the first Human Rights movement aimed at securing the fundamental rights of others. Quakers played a prominent, active, supportive and moral role. They helped to create a moral-political momentum, which attracted allies in other churches and from wider society, making it a mass movement.

In truth these landmarks in legislation were far from final: slavery has not been eliminated. It has gradually metamorphosed into its contemporary forms - forced and bonded labour, trafficking in persons, the worst forms of child labour, forced child begging, and child soldiers. Descent-based (traditional) Slavery still exists in some places. The distinctiveness of the Quaker contribution has gradually merged with the universal commitment to standards of human rights and justice to which Quakers individually and collectively continue to contribute, as do many others. Quakers are much involved in modern anti-slavery movements.

The British & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1839 and continues to this day as Anti-Slavery International (ASI). Throughout the generations and decades Quaker individuals, families and local Meetings have continued to support this organisation and its work. Current Quaker support at all levels for the Anti-Slavery cause remains a significant bulwark.

Click Britain or the Americas, for more information about Quaker thought and action concerning slavery in these parts of the world.

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Slavery is not simply a historical phenomenon; It persists to this day in modern forms, such as trafficking. Quakers have opposed it from very early on and still do. In the first few years after the Quaker movement began in 1652, slavery would have been outside the experience of most Quakers, as it was not much practised in Britain.

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Stances of Faith on LGBTQ_Human Rights Campaign

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Stances of Faith on LGBTQ_Human Rights Campaign