Without Dogma [1]

This book is a symposium of articles by fourteen Quakers upon what they feel to be the Quaker approach in their various specialist fields. I say ‘feel’ advisedly; for each contribution, whether about peace and war, business, education or philosophy, emphasises feeling, or in stricter language, moral intuition. The pattern which emerges from their collaboration is a particularly interesting one: it may be called without unfairness an X-ray picture of a religion of social welfare. Two features of the Quaker approach are very apparent – the attention and organised charitable activity which the Society of Friends has brought to bear on many social problems, such as race segregation in America and the destitution of post-war Europe, which are amenable to direct, intelligent social action; and the absence of any creed to which the individual Quaker is required to subscribe. The first feature calls for unqualified admiration. But the second seems to lie at the root of much confused thinking.

page 145

The position which the individual member of the Society of Friends is called to occupy in society has never been clearly defined. In general Quakers have accepted the dominion of Caesar too readily. One is asked to admire ideal Quaker paternalism in the relations of employer and employee; but one recalls the passages in Logan Pearsall Smith’s autobiography where he describes the Quaker employers of his boyhood acquaintance, venerable saints in the family circle, merciless slave-drivers in their factories. Of course the criticism is unfair; we have all known, or are, bad Catholics, Protestants, Moslems, agnostics; but a denomination which has as its focus an undefined moral intuition and lays great emphasis on practice inevitably invites such criticism.

Without dogma or definition the venerable saints may have found it all too easy to deceive themselves. I recall my experience of Quaker schools, here and in England. They were both well-equipped places in pleasant surroundings. But I remember on one occasion singing a hymn about the Atonement without the faintest knowledge of the meaning of that event; and on another occasion writing a tactful answer to a Scripture question on the Virgin Birth to the effect that Jesus Christ was a remarkable man but conceived and born normally. I got full marks; but somehow I feel that George Fox would not have agreed.

1954 (87)