The Quaker Peace Testimony, 1660 to 1941 (review)

Book Reviews Edited by Thomas D. Hamm The Quaker Peace Testimony, 1660 to 1941. By Peter Brock. York, Eng.: Sessions , 1991. viii + 387 pp. Notes, bibliographical postscripts, and index. Cloth, $40.00; paper, $19.95. U.S. distribution by Syracuse University Press. Peter Brock offers in this volume an exploration of the Quaker peace testimony from the beginnings of the Society of Friends in civil war England to 1914. His survey is based largely, though not entirely, on secondary sources; primary sources include tracts written by William Penn, John Bellers, and Jonathan Dymond, and nineteenth-century Quaker journals. The book ranges widely, incorporating discussions of the Quaker peace witness in France, Prussia, Norway, and Australia as well as focusing on the development of pacifism in Great Britain and North America. Brock seeks the genesis of Quaker pacifism in the 1650s and concludes, like other scholars, that before 1660 Friends held widely divergent views on the question of taking up arms. Among the earliest adherents to Quakerism were many soldiers and sailors of the Commonwealth: while some believed their new faith mandated conscientious objection, others kept their military positions. From a twentieth-century perspective even George Fox seems inconsistent during these years, as he personally adopted nonviolence but urged the Commonwealth to wage war against Catholicism. In the years after 1660, Friends developed a peace testimony that assumed orthodoxy by the nineteenth century. For over a century, Brock shows, Friends in Great Britain and North America (and Quaker-ruled Pennsylvania in particular) confronted the question of what constituted the just use of force. After 1800, Quakers everywhere were a very small sect. Under many flags they maintained a firm commitment to the absolutist position and exerted an influence, far beyond that which their numbers would warrant, upon governmental policies on the military draft. Nineteenth-century Quaker meetings required members to refuse military service of all sorts, including noncombatant alternatives, and forbade the hiring of substitutes or payment of fines. Young male Friends who failed to live up to this standard could be disowned. Mennonite churches, in contrast, permitted members to assume noncombatant duties. On the other hand, Friends generally approved payment of "mixed" taxes, that is, those designated for both military and nonmilitary purposes. Thus, Brock outlines the development of a coherent Quaker peace testimony, but he also makes clear that there was never unanimity among Friends about its meaning. He surveys the complexity of the evolution of Quaker pacifism and raises important questions for future research. For example, no one has yet studied the identity of the large number of Friends who chose to fight in the American Revolution or to measure the impact on the Society of the loss of these members. As Brock suggests, pacifism went farthest of all Quaker beliefs in distinguishing Friends who adhered to the peace testimony from members of other Protestant denominations . More intensive research is required before we can understand adequately how this commitment to pacifism shaped the Society's growth. University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyJean R. Soderlund ...