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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24667 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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Do you have any particular reading recommendations about these quaker antics? I spent a year as apart of a quaker meeting, and always heard about the anti-slavery stuff, but never from anything like a primary source.

There's a section in What We Owe the Future about Quaker early slave abolitionism. This isn't the full section but rather a quick teaser from https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/owe-future-bookbite/36216/

Instead, an important cause for abolition was shifting moral sentiments in the 1700s in the US, especially the contributions of Quaker abolitionists. Perhaps the most fascinating of the Quaker abolitionists was Benjamin Lay, who stood at just four feet tall and called himself Little Benjamin, likening himself to little David who killed Goliath. Lay lived in a cave just outside Philadelphia and boycotted all goods produced by enslaved people. He once stood outside a Quaker meeting in the snow and bare feet with no coat. When passersby expressed concern, he explained that enslaved people were made to work outside for the whole winter dressed as he was. Lay played an important role in Quaker opposition to slavery, which, in turn, played an important role in abolition.

More about Benjamin Lay from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay but also not quite everything mentioned in the book

He first began advocating for the abolition of slavery when, in Barbados, he saw an enslaved man commit suicide rather than be hit again by his owner. His passionate enmity of slavery was partially fueled by his Quaker beliefs. Lay made several dramatic demonstrations against the practice. [...barefoot in snow thing above...] On another occasion, he kidnapped the child of slaveholders temporarily, to show them how Africans felt when their relatives were sold overseas.[8]

In Burlington, New Jersey, at the 1738 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers, dressed as a soldier, he concluded a diatribe against slavery, quoting the Bible saying that all men should be equal under God, by plunging a sword into a Bible containing a bladder of blood-red pokeberry juice, which spattered over those nearby.[9][10]

He did stuff like this his whole life, apparently.

I wouldn't buy the book for a deep dive on Quaker abolitionism though, it isn't that.

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