Marking Pennsylvania History

The Quaker Impact

Do Quakers matter? In a nation that has so often defined itself by war, can a religious group utterly opposed to military action make a real difference?

When, a quarter century ago, sociologist Digby Baltzell posed the question in his landmark book: Puritan Boston Quaker Philadelphia, he compared the culture of leadership in two very different cities. Baltzell's assumptions placed a higher value on the Puritan model of public service than on the Quaker model of consensus, witness, and action. No doubt about it, America has descended more directly from the Puritan strain of thinking, but the Quaker impact has its distinct strengths and cannot be discounted. Our cultural DNA bears evidence of its Quaker origins.

This is especially true in Philadelphia, of course. The Quaker influences on regional values and culture is discussed little and never, ever, the subject of boasting, but that does not mean there is not a strong - or even a powerful - Quaker influence in the Delaware Valley. It can be seen thriving in education, politics, culture, literature, architecture, and city planning. But if, in fact, the Quaker heritage remains a strong and pervasive influence, why does it still escape notice? It goes with the territory. Quaker culture is understated by definition, by preference and even by its aesthetic.

Baltzell's book, and his decades old thinking, is now outdated. A more recent exploration of the Quaker impact is in a new book that seems to have escaped notice almost as much as the subject it portrays. The authors of Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption 1720-1920 have studied the region's Quaker material culture: furniture, clothing, architecture and portraiture, and tentatively begun to tell a story of Quaker impact. This idea is powerful, long overdue, and would help all of us. The notion that we may someday understand the identity of Philadelphia as a by-product of the Quaker ethic and aesthetics is an enticing breakthrough.

One can only hope another quarter century does not have to pass before that important book is written.

- Kenneth FInkel, Executive Director of WHYY's Arts & Culture Service

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