Reading Woolman part two: the last safe Quaker
Someone who only knew Woolman from articles in popular Quaker periodicals might be forgiven for a moment of shock when opening his book. John Woolman is so much more religious than we usually acknowledge. We describe him as an activist even though he and his contemporaries clearly saw and named him a minister. There are many instances where he described the inhumanity of the slave trade and he clearly identified with the oppressed but he almost always did so with from a Biblical perspective. He acknowledged that religious faithfulness could exist outside his beloved Society of Friends but his life's work was calling Friends to live a profoundly Christian life. Flip to a random page of the journal and you'll probably count half a dozen metaphors for God. Yes, he was a social activist but he was also a deeply religious minister of the gospel.
So why do we wrap ourselves up in Woolman like he's the flag of proto-liberal Quakerism? In an culture where Quaker authority is deeply distrusted and appeals to the Bible or to Quaker history are routinely dismissed, he has become the last safe Friend to claim. His name is invoked as a sort of talisman against critique, as a rhetorical show-stopper. "If you don't agree with my take on the environment/tax resistance/universalism, you're the moral equivalent of Woolman's slave holders." (Before the emails start flooding in, remember I'm writing this as a dues-paying activist Quaker myself.) We don't need to agree with him to engage with him and learn from him. But we do need to be honest about what he believed and open to admitting when we disagree. We shouldn't use him simply as a stooge for our own agenda.
I like Woolman but I have my disagreements. His scrupulousness was over the top. My own personality tends toward a certain purity, exemplified by fifteen years of veganism, my plain dress, my being car-less into my late thirties. I've learned that I need to moderate this tendency. My purity can sometimes be a sign of an elitism that wants to separate myself from the world (I've learned to laugh at myself more). Asceticism can be a powerful spiritual lens but it can also burn a self- and world-hatred into us. I've had friends on the brink of suicide (literally) over this kind of scrupulousness. I worry when a new Friend finds my plain pages and is in broadfalls and bonnets a few weeks later, knowing from my own experience that the speed of their gusto sometimes rushes a discernment practice that needs to rest and settle before it is fully owned (the most personally challenging of the traditional tests of Quaker discernment is "patience").
John Woolman presents an awfully high bar for future generations. He reports refusing medicine when illness brought him to the brink of death, preferring to see fevers as signs of God's will. While that might have been the smarter course in an pre-hygienic era when doctors often did more harm than good, this Christian Scientist-like attitude is not one I can endorse. He sailed to England deep in the hold along with the cattle because he thought the woodwork unnecessarily pretty in the passenger cabins. While his famous wearing of un-dyed garments was rooted partly in the outrages of the manufacturing process, he talked much more eloquently about the inherent evil of wearing clothes that might hide stains, arguing that anyone who would try to hide stains on their clothes would be that much more likely to hide their internal spiritual stains (all I could think about when reading this was that he must have left child-rearing duties to the well-inclined Sarah).
Woolman proudly relates (in his famously humble style) how he once tried to shut down a traveling magic act that was scheduled to play at the local inn. I suspect that if any of us somehow found ourselves on his clearness committee we might find a way to tell him to... well, lighten up. I sympathize with his concerns against mindless entertainment but telling the good people of Mount Holly that they can't see a disappearing rabbit act because of his religious sensibilities is more Taliban than most of us would feel comfortable with.
He was a man of his times and that's okay. We can take him for what he is. We shouldn't dismiss any of his opinions too lightly for he really was a great religious and ethical figure. But we might think twice before enlisting the party pooper of Mount Holly for our cause.
Next time: The Myth of the Isolated Saint.
Reading John Woolman:
- Part One: The Public Life of a Private Man
- Part Two: "The Last Safe Quaker" (this page)
- Part Three: The Isolated Saint
- Part Four (forthcoming)
8 Comments
Leave a comment
About Martin
I’m a Quaker from
South Jersey with a love of
outreach and ministry.
More bio and my contact information in my
about Martin
post.
Martin's other sites:
Feed Subscription:
You can also sign up to get daily posts delivered by email. Enter email address:
Martin, Fabulous post here, I learned a ton from what you said. It's interesting because even as a more "conservative" Quaker (I am not sure if that's what I am) I tend to go back to Woolman as well. In fact Woolman is one character that set me on my hunt for "what happened." Why is it that we have to go so far back to find a hero in our tradition? His commitment to Christ & caring for the outcast, simple living, etc is the embodiment of the kind of Christ-follower I want to be - not one ripped in two by the dualisms of spiritual piety and social gospel. But all the same, there doesn't seem to be any Woolman's after him, and granted in today's world Woolman needs to be drastically updated but still - where are they?
And ultimately I think we need to take what you said, "He was a man of his times and that’s okay. We can take him for what he is. We shouldn’t dismiss any of his opinions too lightly for he really was a great religious and ethical figure. But we might think twice before enlisting the party pooper of Mount Holly for our cause," and apply that for our whole narrative. I mean - we have some really good stuff, let's hang on to it, but let's also re-work it, play with it a bit, get creative, blog some, lighten up a bit and see what works. Anytime some person becomes the guidepost for a cause - we dehumanize them and make them a creation of our own purposes. John Woolman then becomes someone of my own imagination and no longer John Woolman, when we take only the bits and pieces we like and leave the rest behind.
Hi Wess,
Thanks for the good comments. You're actually prefiguring part three in some of this (how lovely!)
I should warn everyone: parts one and two were basically written in one sitting on a train ride last week (and edited and elaborated when posted) but three is only in my head so who knows just when it come to a screen near you. I'm also realizing a part four is in order. Yikes!
Bravo. This is rightly conceived and vigorously expressed.
An aside: Why can't we have such such clear strong thinking and writing as a staple in Friends Journal?
Hi Mitch: It means a lot to get from a bravo from you, wow, thanks! I guess I can let the cat out of the bag that you will see something from me in the October "Friends Journal":www.friendsjournal.org issue (loosely self-plagerized from "Emergent Church Movement":http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/emergent_church_movement_the_younger_evangelicals_and_quaker_renewal.php, the topics will be familiar to Ranter readers). I understand that the _Journal_ was overrun with good submissions for this issue ("What Are Friends Called To Today" or some such) and that they're thinking of publishing some of the run-over throughout the next year. It's good to see Friends want to ask the big questions!
Martin, I enjoyed reading this very much though your viewpoint about Woolman is, as Woolman might say, "distinguishable" from mine. Not that I exactly disagree with anything you say, but that when I read Woolman I tend to notice different things than those you've highlighted at least so far.
I am working on a talk about Woolman to be given at the Catholic Worker in New York City on October 13 at 7 p.m. I see that in preparing for this talk I will have to think about your critique and how I feel about it.
My own interest in Woolman is not just in the particular stands he took; much less on trying to claim his authority for stands we might take today. My interest is in trying to understand how he came to make the decisions he did, what resources he drew on to undertake his ministry, and how it is that he seems to have had such a large impact on history notwithstanding his seeming indifference to considerations of tactical effectiveness. I think that both his Christian faith and the disciplined nature of Friends' Meetings at the time have something to do with this.
There is at least one area, not yet mentioned by you, in which Woolman's thought makes me uncomfortable: his view of Providence and his tendency to regard anything that happens as a deliberate act of God. I won't look up the exact quote now, but I recall that he rationalizes horrible diseases by saying that if a righteous person dies of an affliction "his change is happy" or words to that effect. In other words, the righteous person who dies from disease goes to Heaven. On the other hand, if a person dies in sin and presumably goes to Hell "The Almighty is clear." In other words, such sinners have only themselves, not God, to blame. And finally, if a person suffers from illness but survives they may be purified and made more spiritual by the experience. This last seems to have happened to Woolman himself, so I don't totally dismiss it, but this whole line of thought is hard for me to get my mind around. No doubt his way of thinking about such things has something to do with the higher rates of mortality among people of all ages in his time than in countries like ours in the 21st century.
Thanks again for writing this. As others have noted the thinking is fresh and the style is bracing.
- - Rich
What a great post. Woolman is on my (way too long right now) reading list- I think it'll be helpful to have some prior reflection and context whenever I get it.
This- "I worry when a new Friend finds my plain pages and is in broadfalls and bonnets a few weeks later"- made me smile. I was pleased to discover that I did not feel implicated. :P In fact, it reminded me of something I've been meaning to tell you. I was talking with a Friend at some point this summer about how reading your posts about plainness were my first nudges in that direction. They asked if it was also because of you that I went vegan. To which I replied, "Martin is vegan?"
I think we must share some of those same purist tendencies. I'm working on loosening up myself.
Oh, and I really like the image of someone wearing broadfalls and a bonnet. I think I'll propose it as the FLGBTQC mascot.
Hello again Martin. I figured out how to post a comment (needless to say I am not very experienced in the blog world), so I will post my email here:
Hi Martin. I was not sure how to respond to your blog "Part Two" on John Woolman while on the website, so here's a personal email. I am so encouraged to see so many Quaker bloggers so worth reading. I attended my first FGC in Tacoma with my family this year (we live in Seattle). My heart was full to overflowing with gratitude and joy to have Quakers from all over the country here in the northwest, my home. I am originally from the east coast and have been in Washington for 25 years. Sadly, very few visits from old friends from the east. Thankfully most of my family travels back and forth to the pacific coast.
Anyhow, I wanted to respond to your reading of John Woolman since the workshop I attended was entitled "Radical Trust: Walking with John Woolman" led by Rachel Findlay. I am so very glad that I did not read Woolman before this workshop as I might see him in very much the same light as you describe. However, I am now convinced that Woolman's writings are not to be read alone or in the same way one might sit down and read another journal or even other spiritual writings. I appreciate how Rachel took us by the hand and led us through the text contempletatively, with historical context, love and gentle guidance.
It was similar to reading poetry and indeed, one day we read paragraphs of the journal in lectio divina "style" in our small groups. The journal is to be experienced more than read. The passage about Woolman refusing medication when ill and nearly dying is an incredible meditation on his "radical trust" in God's will for his life and his willingness to surrender his will completely. I do not see him as rigid or judgmental in his choices to listen deeply to the will of God for his life. I have come to understand his "eldering" of others as personally excruciatingly painful for him as a sensitive soul with a need to be "liked" by others he loved. His walk was deliberate, very personal and very human. However, he was an extraordinary human in many ways and I liken his spiritual gifts to that of other genius', impossible to compare myself to...but someone to learn from on a deep level.
I returned from FGC with a deeper sense of Woolman's life experience and was spiritually touched and changed by the experience of the workshop. I now believe that his journal is to be "lived with", rather than read. My understanding from Rachel is that she has been living with Woolman's writings for the better part of 30 years. His words have revealed their meaning to her over that time. I think I understand now what she means.
I offer this perspective to you in the hopes that you will desire to approach John Woolman's journal with new eyes and ears and perhaps with a small group of interested folk read the journal in a worshipful manner. I am glad you wrote with such honesty of your internal struggles with Woolman. Thanks for your good work on the website and keeping the dialogue alive for Quakers and non-Quakers alike.
In Peace,
Elaine