the friend online
03 October 2008

Loving the Spirit of the Age

Laurie Michaelis explores the paradox of Quakers’ historical involvement in industry and their commitment today to green issues

Quakers have often sided with the Revolution. In the 1650s the first Friends were part of the move to turn English society upside down, abolishing old feudal power structures and inequalities. But did Friends help to build the power structures and inequalities of today?

Nowadays Quakers know where their sympathies lie. They have a strong presence not just on anti-war marches, but also in the anti-globalisation movement and at Climate Camp. You don’t find many Friends working for large corporations. They are far more likely to be teachers or social workers.

Quakerism is an engaged faith. Few religious bodies put as much emphasis on connecting spiritual practice with action in the world. Those seventeenth century Friends believed the Kingdom of God was coming, literally, in their lifetimes. They were working for real, immediate change.

Climate Campers this year had a similar feeling. Their revolutionary movement felt prophetic both in its message to the world that we must change the way we live and organise our society, and in the sense of moral community within the camp. Decisions at Climate Camp are made by consensus. People cook for each other, share, provide mutual support, learn and grow together. And like early Friends, they have a sense of being embattled by the powers that be – an essentially nonviolent gathering surrounded by police in riot gear.

Yet something jars here. The organisers of Climate Camp say our ecological and energy crisis ‘has its roots in a capitalist system that has steadily exploited both people and resources for hundreds of years’. But if you go back to the emergence of that capitalist system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, you find rather a lot of Quakers. Much Quaker work now relies on chocolate money – charitable funds left by the Rowntrees and Cadburys. Earlier Quaker capitalists included the Lloyds, iron makers turned bankers, the Barclays, whose bank emerged from a goldsmith’s business, and Edward Pease and other Friends who financed and built the world’s first public railway. Quakers helped shape the Industrial Revolution and the financial system that funded it. They thrived in that system. Hard work and plain living meant that they reinvested the money they made. Their strong national community brought mutual support, scrutiny of each other’s business practices, exchange of skills and an ability to innovate. And the public perception of Quaker integrity made them a trusted ‘brand’.

Capitalism emerged as a highly moral system. Quakers and many other industrialists used their wealth and power to improve their employees’ quality of life. But there was a contradiction. Quakers were producing the goods and providing the finance that underpinned the new consumer society – the Spirit of the Age that they condemned in their Yearly Meeting minutes and epistles.

Speaking to the world gathering of Friends last year, Marion McNaughton quoted the Benedictine Jean Leclercq: ‘we must love the age we live in’. Can we love the competitive, materialistic individualism of the Spirit of the Age? It underpins much that is unsustainable in our society, from climate change and oil wars to the over-reliance on consumer credit.

A growing number of Friends are questioning the western way of life – finding ways to live without cars or air travel, turning down the central heating and cutting their consumption of meat and dairy products. It is harder to question individualism itself. Quakers are perhaps the most individualistic of faith groups, many being attracted from other religions by the freedom to ‘decide for yourself’ in the non-credal silence. Yet, it does seem that Friends have found a way to combine their individualism with a strong sense of community. Maybe that is the shift that is needed in the Spirit of the Age.

Laurie Michaelis is the Friend’s environment editor and a member of Oxford & Swindon Area Quaker Meeting.

Climate Camp

Living Witness Project

Overview of Quakers from 1650 to 1990

Laurie Michaelis

Comments:

Paul Newman, 05 October
I found Laurie Michaelis' article stimulating and challenging. There are many words found regularly in the Quaker Lexicon - peace equality, justice, light, environment; rarely do I hear the word - 'enterprise'. The private sector is perceived to be a dark place. It is often not seen as the place of service, fellowship and good that I have often experienced. It is considered to be besmirched with the 'profit motive'. It is not a natural place for 21st century Quakers to play leadership roles.

As Laurie states in the 18th and 19th century, Quakers were the entrepreneurs and bankers of the time and they were able to reflect their Quaker way of life and thinking in their everyday working relationships. Without trying, they practiced the most pure form of outreach. The influence for example of a Quaker coal shipping merchant in Whitby was immense upon the young sailor apprentice, James Cook.

I believe that wealth creation based on open markets, and enterprise in a free society are absolutely essential for us to have sensible discussions about equality and distribution.

We need to fully participate and be seen to participate in today's modern western society with all of its faults, many of which we personally share, either directly or indirectly. Quaker role models need to exist in all walks of life including the commercial and the political as well as in the voluntary and public sectors.

Quakers in many contexts are inclusive and non judgmental; is that true when considering the world of enterprise, profit and consumer activity?

Like the Barclays, Cadburys and Rowntrees of the 19th century. we must today fully participate or be marginalised or even worse be considered hypocrites.



 


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In this week's online edition... rss edition
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Dear visitor
Judy Kirby, editor, the Friend
The poetry of silence and the prose of action
Kevin Franz
The spiritual path for me?
Ron Kentish
What about Hitler?
Geoffrey Carnall
Why I came to the Meeting house
Sibyl Ruth
Why I love Meeting for Worship
Bob Johnson
Recharging our Quaker batteries
Harriet Hart
Loving the Spirit of the Age
Laurie Michaelis
Give Jesus a promotion!
David Boulton
Jesus and me
Paul Oestreicher
Restorative justice
Marian Liebmann
‘Our Lives’: working in disadvantaged communities
Rowena Loverance
Conciliation behind the scenes
Oliver Robertson
Far more than pacifism
Rosemary Hartill
On being a Quaker artist
Rowena Loverance
q-eye
eye@thefriend.org

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