Walking in the Way of Peace : Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century

## Abstract “All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny” – so pronounced a small band of the first English Quakers in 1660, renouncing wars, fighting, and weapons and enunciating principles of peace called the “peace testimony.” The deceptively simple words of the peace testimony conceal the complexity of the task facing each Quaker as he worked out their precise meaning and the restraints and the actions they required in his own life. Quakers in early New England had to translate peace principles into practice during King Philip's War between settlers and Indians in 1675–76. In a time of terror, individual Quakers had to decide whether the peace testimony allowed service in militias, standing watch, seeking safety in garrison houses, and paying taxes. Their decisions covered a broad range and resulted in a pacifist continuum of interpretation and behavior. During this war, Quakers who dominated the government of Rhode Island were faced with reconciling the peace testimony with their duties as governors to protect their colony, to punish “evil‐doers,” and to reward “those who do good.” Their dilemma stimulated both imaginative legislation and corrosive compromises, illuminating the ambiguities of principles when applied to public policy. Before the war a Quaker government had enacted legislation, the Exemption of 1673, exempting conscientious objectors from all military duties including alternative civil service. But some Quakers chastised their Quaker rulers in a document called the Rhode Island Testimony for putting their faith in “carnal weapons” when they took warlike measures of offense and defense, such as transporting soldiers to battle. The struggle of early Quakers in England and America illuminates the intricate complications of pacifist belief, suggesting the kind of nuanced questions any pacifist must address. This book investigates the historical context, meaning, and expression of early Quaker pacifism in England and its colonies. Weddle focuses primarily on one historical moment--King Philip's War, which broke out in 1675 between English settlers and Indians in New England. Among the settlers were Quakers, adherents of the movement that had gathered by 1652 out of the religious and social turmoil of the English Civil War. King Philip's War confronted the New England Quakers with the practical need to define the parameters of their peace testimony --to test their principles and to choose how they would respond to violence. The Quaker governors of Rhode Island, for example, had to reconcile their beliefs with the need to provide for the common defense. Others had to reconcile their peace principles with such concerns as seeking refuge in garrisons, collecting taxes for war, carrying guns for self-defense as they worked in the fields, and serving in the militia. Indeed, Weddle has uncovered records of many Quakers engaged in or abetting acts of violence, thus debunking the traditional historiography of Quakers as saintly pacifists. Weddle shows that Quaker pacifism existed as a doctrinal position before the 1660 crackdown on religious sectarians, but that it was a radical theological position rather than a pragmatic strategy. She thus convincingly refutes the Marxist argument that Quakers acted from economic and political, and not religious motives. She examines in detail how the Quakers'theology worked--how, for example, their interpretation of certain biblical passages affected their politics--and traces the evolution of the concept of pacifism from a doctrine that was essentially about protecting the state of one's own soul to one concerned with the consequences of violence to other human beings. This book investigates the historical context, meaning, and expression of early Quaker pacifism in England and its colonies. Weddle focuses primarily on one historical moment--King Philip's War, which broke out in 1675 between English settlers and Indians in New England. Among the settlerswere Quakers, adherents of the movement that had gathered by 1652 out of the religious and social turmoil of the English Civil War. King Philip's War confronted the New England Quakers with the practical need to define the parameters of their peace testimony --to test their principles and to choosehow they would respond to violence. The Quaker governors of Rhode Island, for example, had to reconcile their beliefs with the need to provide for the common defense. Others had to reconcile their peace principles with such concerns as seeking refuge in garrisons, collecting taxes for war, carryingguns for self-defense as they worked in the fields, and serving in the militia. Indeed, Weddle has uncovered records of many Quakers engaged in or abetting acts of violence, thus debunking the traditional historiography of Quakers as saintly pacifists. Weddle shows that Quaker pacifism existed as a doctrinal position before the 1660 crackdown on religious sectarians, but thatit was a radical theological position rather than a pragmatic strategy. She thus convincingly refutes the Marxist argument that Quakers acted from economic and political, and not religious motives. She examines in detail how the Quakers' theology worked--how, for example, their interpretation ofcertain biblical passages affected their politics--and traces the evolution of the concept of pacifism from a doctrine that was essentially about protecting the state of one's own soul to one concerned with the consequences of violence to other human beings.

A synthesis of intellectual and social history, Walking in the Way of Peace investigates the historical context, meaning, and expression of early Quaker pacifism in England and its colonies. In a nuanced examination of pacifism, Weddle focuses on King Philip's War, which forced New England Quakers, rulers and ruled alike, to define the parameters of their peace testimony.

"In examining the Quaker expression of pacifism, Weddle focuses on King Philip's War of 1675-76, a deadly war between Indians and English settlers in New England. This first in-depth study of early Quaker pacifism in America uses the war experience both to set forth and to disentangle the intricate complications of pacifist belief." This text investigates the historical context, meaning and expression of early Quaker pacifism in England and its colonies. The text focuses primarily on King Philip's War, which allowed New England Quakers to define their peace testimony