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

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Oxford University Press, May 3, 2001 - Religion - 368 pages
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.

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Contents

Introduction
3
THE PEACE TESTIMONY
13
NEW ENGLAND
75
WAR
141
Appendix 1 The 1660 Declaration
234
Appendix 2 The 1673 Exemption
238
Appendix 3 The Rhode Island Testimony
242
Problems of Historical Interpretation
245
Notes
255
Bibliography
309
Index
341
Copyright

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Page 22 - Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you...
Page 48 - Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?
Page 47 - For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ...
Page 263 - Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus. 11 Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath : the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?
Page 307 - Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.
Page 302 - And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
Page 289 - Ye lust, and have not ; ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain ; ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not ; ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
Page 318 - An apology for the true Christian divinity as the same is held forth and preached by the people called in scorn Quakers...

About the author (2001)

Meredith Baldwin Weddle is an independent scholar who has taught at Yale, the State University of New York at Purchase, and Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.

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