Quaker egalitarian theology was poised to grow into abolitionism.
Evidence
As early as 1657, English Dissenter George Fox prevailed on his newly founded Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, to convert the enslaved. Eschewing church hierarchies, and preaching that everyone had access to the “inward light of God,” the Quakers seemed primed to one day produce abolitionists and antiracists. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 114
Categorization
- SEED: A follow-up angle: how did Quaker doctrine — universal inward light — stay compatible with slaveholding for so long, and what finally flipped it to abolition? Tests Kendi’s claim that egalitarian beliefs alone don’t end racism.
- QUESTION: This troubles the reader’s test case: here a theological idea (universal inward light) seems to precede and eventually produce antiracist policy. Kendi would need to account for the long lag between the doctrine and abolition.
- XREF: connects to: American utopianism peaked in the antebellum era, allied with abolitionism — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 889; Puritan equality theology justified hierarchy toward racial strangers from the start — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 91; Northern evangelicals led abolition and common-school movements for poor and immigrant children — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 47 (+1 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: American utopianism peaked in the antebellum era, allied with abolitionism — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 889; Puritan equality theology justified hierarchy toward racial strangers from the start — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 91; Northern evangelicals led abolition and common-school movements for poor and immigrant children — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 47 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Puritan equality theology justified hierarchy toward racial strangers from the start
#complicates(0.78) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 91