New Jersey's Quakers: Their Nonviolent Legacy Still Echoes in Name and Law

New Jersey’s history is a rich one, especially its now underappreciated but intense a religious past. New Jerseyans aren’t the most religious of Americans, at least not anymore. Yes, a look around our cities and suburbs reveals a wide variety of faiths; Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus all share space in our small state. And let us not forget the increasingly vocal minority of nonbelievers who are making their voices heard through their own organizations. Then there are a lot of my own neighbors, who tend to treat religion like it’s a salad bar, hopping from church to church depending on all sorts of factors, from requested church contributions to the personality of the leading priest or pastor. I say to them, bless you all. You keep our state an interesting, vibrant place - filled with people concerned with this life and the next.

But here and there – you don’t see them so prominently these days – you may notice a coworker or a friend refer to church as “Meeting.” Perhaps you may spot one of their “Meeting Houses” – typically a plain white or brick structure, unassuming in nature. Yet their intellectual, historical and spiritual contributions to the state of New Jersey are so prevalent that much of our landscape still bears their name or at least their legacy. To each other they’re known as “The Society of Friends,” but to the rest of us, we call them Quakers.

Stony Brook Quaker Meeting House, Princeton, N.J.

They’re usually associated with William Penn’s neighboring Pennsylvania, yet

The Garden State owes this small religious minority a debt that can never be repaid. Place-names like Quakerbridge, Penns Neck, Pennsauken and dozens of others attest to their presence. More importantly, the legacy of religious freedom, toleration and the lack of an established Church – core elements of our state’s own Constitution - testify to their heritage of intellectual vigor, personal mercy and liberality.

There are a lot of qualities of the Quakers worth recounting, but one in particular I find most compelling simply because it’s gotten them into the most trouble with authorities over the past four centuries (they were founded in England in the late 1640’s). Quakers are Christians, but their interpretation of Christianity demands political and personal pacifism. Quakers despise all forms of physical violence and religious coercion. Since their founding to today, they will tell you that the best way to worship Jesus is to continually try, in our imperfect human form, to imitate him. And since Jesus never killed anyone, or fought in any wars, or burned any witches, or practiced any form of religious violence, then no one should. Period.

In both England and America, this literal embracing of pacifism got them fined, jailed, exiled, whipped, disqualified from the voting rolls and elected office, publicly humiliated and executed. Puritans in both England and New England, right up to the end of the 1600’s, regarded Quakers as their polar opposites and persecuted them relentlessly. Yet by the time of the American Revolution, Quakers comprised of a significant minority in North America, and in New Jersey in particular. Eventually their beliefs concerning religious freedom made their way into New Jersey’s first Constitution of 1776:

      “That no person shall ever, within this Colony, be

      deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping Almighty God

      in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; nor,

      under any pretence whatever, be compelled to attend any place of

      worship, contrary to his own faith and judgment; nor shall any

      person, within this Colony, ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes

      or any other rates, for the purpose of building or repairing any

      other church or churches, place or places of worship, or for the

      maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he

      believes to be right, or has deliberately or voluntarily engaged

      himself to perform.”

But even with victory in the Revolution, the Quaker dedication to non-violence would still create tensions with New Jersey. And this is where it gets most interesting, at least for me. Over the course of my research for my A.P. history class, I came upon an absolutely fascinating document from July of 1833. Specifically, the document is a formal petition from New Jersey’s Quakers to the State Legislature in Trenton. It is a document of principle, of a people dedicated to the cause of humanity, of a people who were ready at any time – even in an age when their formal persecution was over – to pay a steep price for their beliefs.

In 1833 the Legislature was considering a new bill addressing the state militia. As I’ve said in an earlier blog, the business of being armed and in the militia (New Jersey’s military service) was a social one. Militia service was considered an important part of civic life. The bill would continue the state law demanding, in times of need, all armed men to defend it. But in a new twist, those who opposed military service (i.e. Quakers) could opt out, but would still have to pay a sort of ‘substitution tax’ in lieu of their duty. The bill would then direct such monies to public education or some other non-violent, state-provided service.

The Quakers, though admitting that the era of persecution had passed, would not be moved. They would not serve, ever, in the state’s militia, nor would they pay any tax that acknowledged the state’s legitimate power to engage in the business of killing. And if this resulted in Quakers going to prison, then, so be it:

“As mankind are brought under the influence of the spirit of Christ Jesus, and fully obey his divine commands, wars and fightings must cease…To their sincerity in this belief, our predecessors invariably bore testimony, frequently suffering…long and cruel imprisonment…That which our Lord has forbidden us no human enactments can make lawful; when these require us to violate the divine law, we submit to suffer all that man may be permitted to inflict, rather than wound our consciences.”

What a remarkable group of people. The issue that fascinates me here is not just that the Quakers were strong believers in gentleness and pacifism, they were, even in the years after religious freedom had been secured, still willing to lose their liberty for such faith. The decades of freedom that followed the Revolution had not made them complacent. They never sought to hurt anyone; nonviolence was at the core of their being and they weren’t afraid to acknowledge it – even to their legislators in Trenton. They were willing to walk the walk, even if that path ended in poverty, humiliation and prison. And prison in the 1830’s was not a place where people went to sit around or lift weights or make license plates; it was a place where after a month or two you usually got sick - and died.

I tried to find out if their request for an amendment to the bill was ever fulfilled but I could not. I’ll keep looking though. Nevertheless, I do not believe that any Quaker was ever arrested before or since then for refusal to serve in any of New Jersey’s military forces.

Knowing what I now know about the Quaker legacy and presence here in New Jersey, I think I’ll visit the Stony Brook Quaker Meeting House here in Princeton this weekend. I need to pay my respects to some of the most progressive builders of the Garden State.