Power, Fear, and Spirit
Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Gracia Fay Ellwood, Editor, Peaceable Table
November 2014

Quakers were classed among some groups that were regarded by many people much as [animal rights] terrorists are today. Two such threatening groups were the Fifth Monarchists, whose goal was the end of human government and the imminent return of Christ to rule directly, and Jesuits, who were widely thought to be seeking to overthrow royal rule and reinstitute political papal supremacy.

There are both similarities and differences between the situation of Quakers in seventeenth-century England and that of animal activists today. Certainly there is less political, sociological, and religious turmoil at present, and thus less intense anxiety about world (-view) collapse.

It has been said that “the past is another country,” meaning that people of one era can never really understand those of another.However, a case can be made that not only is it possible to visit this country, but to warm and strengthen our hearts by making (one-sided) friendships with some who live there.The country to which I propose to make a quick visit in this issue is the second half of seventeenth-century England,to begin a friendship with a little-known member of the Religious Society of Friends, Anne Finch Conway, a philosopher, a viscountess. and this month’s Pioneer.

Quaker vegansThe experiences of many Friends of that day bear some resemblances, writ large, to those of animal advocates today. This essay may also provide helpful background information on Friend Conway for readers relatively unfamiliar with Quaker origins.

The religious, social, and political turmoil of this period had its source in the Reformation of the previous century. Many people underwent the trauma of the collapse or partial collapse of their world (view), a process sketched in “The Sky Is Falling,” in issue 61 of Peaceable Table. More than a hundred years later, the resulting upheavals continued; people tried to find or build another sacred canopy for society out of the fragments of the old, as the spiritual teachers, the liberators, the greedy and the power-hungry struggled by prayer and word, by laws and edicts, by musket and sword.

Quaker “Subversives”

Led by George Fox, James Nayler, Margaret Fell, and others, Quakers were among the most radical of those in quest of a renewed sky. They rejected not only the final religious authority of pope, king, and clergy, but of written Scriptures, though they did cherish the Scriptures as inspired by the Spirit. The final authority for Friends was (and still is) the divine Spirit or Light in the individual, in balance with the Spirit guiding the Quaker community as its members join in silent worship or for business. This conviction of the presence of “that of God” within every person entailed the rejection of society’s pyramidal structure controlled by people of rank, title, wealth, and political and military power.

Quaker vegansThe conviction of the presence of the Spirit in all persons also meant the disowning of war or other violence, because all, even the very depraved, still bear the divine Light and Spirit. It also entailed equality between the sexes (though Friends realized this imperfectly), and rejection of luxuries and other display of wealth in favor of simple living, so that all might have enough. It meant rejection of the institution of university-educated clergy supported by tithes from the peasants. In Friends’ Meeting for Worship, the uneducated field worker or the kitchen-maid, empowered by the Spirit, might have a word from God more profound than that of the learned and ordained archbishop. That word might be a spiritual truth to strengthen the soul; it might be a “leading” that Friends were to take action to go on teaching missions, or speak against unjust social conditions, such as state seizure of Friends’ property, the hellish conditions of the jails and prisons, or (in later centuries) human slavery. Many Friends’ experience of the Spirit gave them great courage.

These convictions were expressed in action and in word. Friends’ refused to doff their hats to their “betters” or address them by titles such as “my lady,” “my lord,” or “your highness;” they spoke out in open-air addresses and during the comment period after sermons in established churches (a number of Quakers even disrupted services and used abusive language, repelling some potential sympathizers). The impact of these radical ideas varied to some extent by class. Peasants and artisans, especially in the north of England, joined Friends in comparatively large numbers, but to many in all classes, especially people of property and/or power, they were dangerously subversive; most people could not imagine civilization at all without strict hierarchies. It seemed that the sky was falling, and an earthquake was shaking the very foundations of society, creating widespread fear.

Quakers were classed among some groups that were regarded by many people much as terrorists are today. Two such threatening groups were the Fifth Monarchists, whose goal was the end of human government and the imminent return of Christ to rule directly, and Jesuits, who were widely thought to be seeking to overthrow royal rule and reinstitute political papal supremacy. Much of English anti-Catholic hatred was focused on them. In the Interregnum of the 1650s, George Fox and other leading Friends were attacked by clergy and mobs, beaten, put into stocks, thrown into foul gaols (jails). After the Restoration of the monarchy beginning in 1660, the Fifth Monarchists attempted a coup, which aroused waves of paranoia in which Quakers were caught. Laws were passed making it illegal to refuse to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown. Although leading Friends issued a statement to the government making it clear that they disowned all violence, including violent overthrow of governments, nonetheless because they refused on principle to swear any oaths at all (and still do), their subversive intentions seemed to be proved; many were jailed and their property seized. They were also forbidden to hold secret meetings. Sometimes soldiers would invade Meetings for Worship and jerk off the hats of male Friends, expecting to find a tonsure showing that they were really Jesuits! Some attacks on Quakers were so large-scale and brutal that they resulted in blood flowing in the streets of London; hundreds died in filthy prisons, full of disease-bearing fleas and lice. Even prominent and wealthy gentry such as William Penn, Isaac Penington, and Margaret Fell spent time in prison. In such a setting, it is truly remarkable that an aristocrat would ally herself with the despised group.

Suspicion of Friends as subversives lingered for decades, but gradually respect for them was building as other people noticed and admired their courage in meeting for worship despite life-threatening attacks, their refusal to meet violence with violence, and the offers of brave individual Friends to take the place of other Friends in prison. State persecution finally ceased in the late 1680s, when laws of tolerance were finally passed.

Nonviolent “Terrorists” Today

There are both similarities and differences between the situation of Quakers in seventeenth-century England and that of animal activists today. Certainly there is less political, sociological, and religious turmoil at present, and thus less intense anxiety about world (-view) collapse. It is also obvious that we do not have yesteryear’s savage public punishments like flogging, hang- draw-and-quartering, and the stake; and that our jails and prisons, bad as some of them are, are not literal pits rife with disease, where prisoners sometimes get no food, and often no sanitation. The torture and killing of political prisoners has taken place (and may still continue) under U.S. auspices, but it tends to be secret and/or outsourced; and prominent animal activists are not its targets.

What we activists do have in common with early Friends’ situation is, for one thing, suspicion that we are subversives. As the Quaker commitment to pan-human equality threatened the privileges of many in the upper strata of the seventeenth-century hierarchies, our foundational conviction that animals, like humans, have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is threatening to the agribusiness barons who derive their wealth from enslaving animals for their flesh and their “products,” and to the powers behind Big Pharma whose billions depend on animal experimentation (among other things). It also threatens foundational ideas of millions of consumers who have been socialized into suppressing their compassion for animals and into believing that eating these supposed foods is “normal, natural, and necessary.” The challenge to these deep assumptions may even arouse anxiety in some that their world is collapsing.

Unsurprisingly, the lords of the pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries, in bed with political authorities, have acted to suppress the spread of such ideas and of actions to bring them about. U.S. readers will be familiar with the kinds of laws involved: food “libel” laws and ag-gag laws, and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Food libel laws, intended to suppress those who point out the dangers to human health in certain foods, do in some cases deal with evils in the factory-farm system, and (due to the huge cost of defense in a lawsuit) have a chilling effect on freedom of speech about these and other evils. But overall they are less immediately relevant to actions to end animal exploitation than the other two categories.

The ag-gag laws in the past few years are (among other things) aimed at silencing undercover investigators and whistleblowers whose film footage of horrors in animal industries, aired in the media, have caused the industries to lose money. The laws, though they differ somewhat in different states, have a central source: a model law to suppress whistleblowing and animal-freeing, drafted in 2002 by a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Called the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, it was distributed to lobbyists and state lawmakers across the US. They are presently in effect in seven states, while in other states attempts to pass them failed. These state laws work in tandem with the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, passed in Congress in 2006 with only a single dissenting voice (that of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, pictured). Although the law claims it does not interfere with freedom of expression, in fact its vague language in key areas does lead to conflict with First Amendment rights. Past attempts to challenge the law as unconstitutional have failed; a new challenge is now underway by the attorney of two activists, Tyler Lang and Kevin Johnson, charged under the law for freeing mink from an Illinois fur farm in July of this year (See Challenge Lawyer plans constitutional challenge in mink farm sabotage case.)

The use of “terrorism” as a key term in a number of these laws is particularly significant. For decades the term has been used to refer to high-profile violent acts such as the kidnapping or killing of individuals, especially prominent figures, accompanied by further threats, acts intended to arouse terror among the population at large and thus destabilize the society politically. The term’s fear-arousing impact increased enormously after the 9/11 event, which official sources immediately attributed to foreign terrorists. (It took over the emotional resonance of “communist,” a term the power of which was fading.) A minority of animal activists have issued threats--I know of no actual assaults--against animal-laboratory personnel, a situation which gave industry moguls and their legislative bedfellows an excuse to tar all animal activists with the bogey-word. In the process, a once-useful term has been stood on its head: activists, many of whom are motivated by compassion and a deep desire to end the suffering and killing of innocent beings, thus promoting peace, have been made out to be people motivated by hatred willing to inflict suffering and killing on innocent beings, thus promoting fear in order to gain political power. This sounds like Orwell’s “Newspeak.”

Like Friends in seventeenth-century England, we friends of animals have a vision of virtually unprecedented moral equality and Peace which threatens an oppressive worldview and fuels a conflict between the liberators and other truth-tellers on one hand, and the wealthy and powerful who stand to lose if the vision prevails. The outcome is still unknown. But if the actions and lives of activists mirror the values we profess, it will help to shape the future in the direction of our hearts’ desire for Peace.

For an insightful current essay on the abuse of the term terrorism, see Doublethink. For evidence about the cover-up of killings of political prisoners committed by prison camp personnel, see Guantanamo and Cover-Up. For a 2010 introductory lecture on torture inflicted by US authorities, see Quaker Initiative to End Torture.

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