Wednesday, October 19, 2022

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 19th of October, 2022. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Let me start the show again with a question: are you familiar with John Woolman- the 18th-century Quaker and early abolitionist?

If the answer is no, I might suggest that you have indeed read something by him- if you had an Anthology of American literature in High School, I’d be willing to bet you would have read from Woolman’s Journal- a spiritual autobiography that is one of the few books from Pre-Revolutionary America that has never been out of print.

(Of course, in these days of cheap printing, this is less apropos in seeing the significance of work- but for a pre-revolutionary book, this is a big deal).

And if you didn’t read any Woolman, you certainly read authors whom he profoundly shaped- from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. The British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan suggested that the Journal of John Woolman is a spiritual biography that deserves to be considered on par with the Confessions of St. Augustine. Another historian argues that his Journal is “Of almost incalculable influence upon American culture.”

So, who was John Woolman? He was a quaker, born to a Quaker family on the 19th of October in 1720 in colonial New Jersey. He would work as a clerk and tailor, but from the age of 22, was ordained a minister in the Friends Church (this is what they call their churches- “quaker,” likely starting as a pejorative term).

He was primarily concerned with his conscience and the interconnectedness of sin. Even as a Quaker, he was radical in this respect; he wore all white as dyes came from slaves. He wouldn’t drink from silver or use any silver on account of the slaves mining silver in Mexico. He would not ride in a carriage because of the overworking of horses; he was a vegetarian and refused to pay any taxes that might support the war.

When working as a clerk, he refused to write a will that included the transfer of ownership of a slave. When his later work as a tailor began to succeed, he refused work as he believed additional work and wealth would take his attention from God. He wrote that “the increase of my business became my burden.”

And so he spent most of his life walking and preaching a Gospel of simplicity and abolitionism. While a Quaker by conviction also wrote, “I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believed that sincere upright-hearted person, in every society who truly love God was accepted of him.”

His Journal, the primary way we know anything about him, began in 1756 when he was 36. He started by writing, “I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness of God.” The autobiography was a well-traveled road for Christians from the time of Augustine. Still, it would become essential to Quakers who believe you don’t convince people with doctrinal discussions but rather by your life.

And it was his understanding of the interconnectedness of everything that gave rise to his eccentricities. He was an early proponent of the better treatment of the native tribes and an abolitionist when even the Quakers hadn’t officially condemned and forbidden the holding of slaves (They would take four years after Woolman’s death). Woolman taught that slavery wasn’t just evil for the one enslaved but also for the slave master whose pursuit of leisure and wealth had grown so much to require slave labor in the first place.

Woolman would travel to England on the first of May of 1772 (though he, in Quaker fashion, would call it the first day of the fifth month to avoid using names derived from pagan gods). There he would travel to various Friends meeting houses to argue for the abolition of the slave trade. But on one of his long journeys by foot in 1772, he contracted smallpox and died that year on the 9th of October. His Journal would become a popular book, and his arguments for abolition would be championed in the years to come. Born on the 19th of October in 1720, John Woolman was 51 years old.

The Last Word for today comes from the lectionary from the Gospel of Luke.

39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.[a]

45 When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 19th of October 2022, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who also won’t ride in carriages because he believes they are all haunted. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who also won’t wear dyed clothing, but only until labor day; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.