Christopher Brown
speaker
1,098 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 20 Jan
Christopher Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You know, they couldn't be shut down in the same way.
And the Society of Friends over the course of the 1700s goes through a period of, in some ways, worrying about having fallen away from the ideals of the founding era in the middle of the 17th century.
And there's that fear that the religious practices have become kind of a habit, a ritual, rather than being really deeply believed in.
And so Quaker testimony around slavery becomes part of a broader examination that's going on within the Society of Friends of why are we not as devout as our grandfathers and grandmothers had been?
Why do we seem to become more like the rest of society?
And as that questioning is happening, and they go through some crises in the middle decades of the 18th century,
there are individuals who point to the issue of slavery as one way to restore a notion of their group identity.
And this is really important.
For Quakers, initially, the sort of testimony against slavery is about establishing a agreement within the society of friends about what their values are, about what membership is,
of the Society of Friends requires.
And so it's very much about establishing a group identity, reinforcing a group identity around the fact that as Quakers, we find slaveholding violates our consciences.
And this is a place they get to in the 1760s and 1770s.
And in fact, what happens is they get to the point where they
say that if you don't accept this principle and if you continue to own slaves, you can no longer be a member of the society of friends.
And initially, that's really focused inward.
They're not campaigning to
initially to try to transform their broader society, the broader community, the colony, the empire.
It's about establishing a sense of who are we collectively.
And so in the same way that Quakers develop a sense of we do not serve in war,
Right.
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