[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Dan Lusthaus]

I wrote:

>>They
> >eventually even became intolerant of their own, leading to a division

to which Richard replied:

> You have now jumped ahead some two hundred years, to the mid-nineteenth
> century,

That's what the word "eventually" means. If you prefer to stay within the
18th c., then consider:

from
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_072800_quakers.htm
Although the reality fell short of Penn's utopian hopes, it still succeeded
mightily in the opinion of immigrants and posterity. Ambition, envy, and
avarice produced thirty years of tumultuous politics in the new province and
left Penn convinced that his experiment had failed. But at the same time,
Pennsylvania gained a reputation as the "best poor man's country," free of
feudal elites, established churches, tithes, discriminatory oaths, high
taxes, compulsory military service, and war. While Pennsylvania prospered,
Quakers prospered more than others. They always composed the majority of the
elite merchants of colonial Philadelphia as well as the most prosperous
farmers of the eastern counties.

Although at odds with each other politically, Quakers nevertheless dominated
the government of Pennsylvania. By 1740 Quaker politicians had become
sufficiently anxious about their ever-declining proportion of the population
and their more aggressive political enemies that they closed ranks and
formed possibly the most formidable Whig political organization in colonial
America, the Quaker party.

Ironically, political hegemony and social and economic preeminence raised
dissenting voices among Friends, and in the 1750s they determined to reverse
the direction the Society had taken since 1682. They believed that Quaker
participation in government had brought with it intolerable compromises in
such Quaker beliefs as pacifism and that many Friends, especially wealthy
ones, had assimilated "worldly" secular behavior. After another generation
there would be nothing left of Quakerism but the name, lamented one
dissenter. To restore the integrity of the Society, reformers insisted on
strict enforcement of all its mores, especially endogamy, and in the
violence brought to Pennsylvania by the French and Indian War, they demanded
that Quakers resign from public office rather than become bellicose. On the
social front they moved quickly against deviancy, expelling more than one in
five Friends by 1775, but not until the more intense public crisis of the
Revolution did all Friends leave public office and the Holy Experiment
completely end.

----(end quote)

In Pennsylvania, especially in the western part of the state, war with the
French and Indians (the other side of Penn's generosity in endeavoring to
purchase rather than take Indian land -- some Indians didn't want to play
along, and allied with the French led to massacres of British and Colonists,
which led to the colonists, including Quakers, vanquishing both, so that
even the so-called peaceful Indians left) along with the internal bickering
noted above ended with loss of hegemony, as noted above. One might even
conclude that their experiment in tolerance led to their own failure.

But I'd like to go back to an earlier question, which is why did I raise all
this, since fleeing religious persecution, the background of the first
amendment, etc. are all "well known." Unfortunately what I have seen in
college classrooms, especially in the South and Missouri, but also here in
Boston, is that this history, which was well-known to those eductated some
decades ago, is no longer well-known, and in many places not taught at all.
In many places in this country, students learn in Church *and* school that
this is a Christian nation, founded by Christian fathers who wanted a more
Christian nation, and the founding fathers not only put God's name on the
currency, but in the Pledge of Allegiance (they are often shocked to learn
the Pledge is a 20th c invention, and the phrase "under God" wasn't added
until 1956 during the height of the McCarthy era). In fact, when that
allegedly well-known narrative of how the first amendment came to be what it
is is presented to them, jaws drop and heads shake in resistant disbelief.
Maybe education is still better in New Mexico. I don't know. One way to find
out would be to have your Critically thinking students parse and
historically contextualize the first amendment. You might be shocked to
learn what they don't know. It's not just Darwin that is being excluded from
the classroom.

Buddhists also have their tiffs and failed social experiments.

Dan Lusthaus