10 - War and Political Crisis

Summary

From the 1750s onwards, Quaker monthly meetings in London and Philadelphia increased their sanctions dramatically. This increase was not caused by a decline in Friends’ conduct. Instead, the reform spirit that took hold of the Society during the eighteenth century led the meetings to apply stricter standards to Friends’ behaviour. The meetings increasingly policed their congregations. This constituted a profound institutional change. The epistles of the London Yearly Meeting, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline, and finally the monthly meetings’ records specify that the meetings’ goal in administering sanctions was to protect the Society of Friends’ reputation. The dramatic increase in sanctions from the mid-eighteenth century onwards therefore implies not only a spiritual change, but an increased concern over Friends’ collective reputation. In order to understand the growth of sanctions after 1750, we therefore need to ask: what triggered the Society's concern over its reputation in the 1750s? In order to answer this question, we have to take into account the political context within which mid-eighteenth-century Friends acted.

The Quaker Party

The origins of the Society's reputational worries of the mid-eighteenth century lie in Pennsylvania. Since about 1700, Friends in the colony had become outnumbered by followers of other religions. They continued, however, to dominate economic and political life, as a large number of Philadelphia merchants belonged to the Society, and Friends held important political offices. During the first half of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania Friends were politically divided. This changed with the founding of the Quaker Party. This political party united Quaker interests in Pennsylvania, and also gained the support of many non-Quakers. The party won the 1740 assembly elections in a landslide. Their opponent, the Proprietary Party, representing the interests of the proprietor and his allies gained not a single seat. Pennsylvania Friends now enjoyed a new position of power, not merely in the colony as of itself, but also vis-à-vis the proprietor. William Penn's son, Thomas Penn, was no longer a member of the Society of Friends, and unlike his father’s, his interests in Pennsylvania were purely economic. The Quaker Party's strength challenged his control over the province, and caused continuous conflict between him and the Pennsylvania Assembly, the colony's main legislative body. In particular, they competed over the right to issue currency and the authority to levy taxes.