Thought for the Day, 26 February 2007

Clifford Longley

I once had a letter from someone who addressed me as Reverend Doctor Clifford Longley - and I don't think he was joking. He then went on to inform me that, after careful study of all I had written, he had decided I must be some sort of Quaker. Wrong on both counts, but I was immensely flattered. Though I'm in fact a Roman Catholic, there is no religious denomination under heaven that I more admire than the tiny band of believers who are called Quakers, and who call themselves by the wonderful name the Society of Friends.

Take slavery. Of course there was William Wilberforce, an Evangelical Anglican and High Tory, but there would have been no Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade without them - nine of the original 12 members were Quakers. They were the first church in Britain or America to condemn slavery, in 1727, and they organised the first national petition against slavery in 1783. That is a full two years before Wilberforce was persuaded by William Pitt to involve himself in the anti-slavery movement. Although they numbered only in the tens of thousands all over the country it was Quakers who kept the movement going until slavery itself was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833.

But the story of Quaker resistance to slavery goes much further than that. Though a few Quakers did own slaves in colonial Pennsylvania, they were quickly persuaded to drop the practice and from then on the American Society of Friends vigorously opposed slavery on principle. Indeed it was American Quakers who first asked their British Friends to start agitating for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Parliament. So without the Quakers we would probably never have heard of Wilberforce.

That was only the beginning. At incredible risk to themselves, the peace-loving non-violent Quakers became the backbone of the so-called Underground Railroad, the network of contacts and safe houses across America through which passed thousands of runaway slaves on their way north, to Canada and safety. Helping escaped slaves was a criminal offence, and they were pursued across both slave states and free states by ferocious parties of slave hunters, armed with guns and whips. This had enormous effect on American public opinion and prepared the way for the emancipation of all American slaves in 1863, at the height of the civil war.

At the root of their belief system, long before the language of human rights became familiar to the rest of us, is a commitment to equality. They believe Christ can enlighten everyone without distinction, and all who turn to him can experience his presence in their lives. The rest follows - they are not big on doctrine or institutional religion, and they don't evangelise for converts. Nor do they blow their own trumpets or mind who gets the credit for their good works. Which is why someone not of their persuasion, like me, ought from time to time to speak up for them.