Four or five testimonies

The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, in its section on ‘Quaker Spirituality’, says:

Individual spiritual leadings developed into corporate testimonies, the ethical stands of the Society of Friends that are a central expression of their spirituality.  These are often described as the testimonies of peace, simplicity, equality, and integrity.

This passage is typical of modern explanations of Quaker testimonies, in several ways:

• It lists a small, more-or-less fixed set of testimonies — in this case four, but the number ranges from three to about six, with four or five being by far the most common.
• The testimonies listed are very general, abstract, ethical principles.  Other aspects of Quaker religious thought, such as the idea of the Light Within, are not discussed under this heading, even though they represent truths to which Friends in some sense testify.
• The testimonies are listed with conventional names: peace, simplicity, equality, integrity.  If a fifth testimony is listed, it is usually community.  Occasionally one finds additional items in the list, such as justice, stewardship, etc., but the names for the five most commonly listed testimonies have become so well-established now that the mnemonic “SPICE” has become a popular way of remembering the list.  Although it is not done in the passage above, many presentations capitalize the first letter of each item in the list, clearly treating them as proper names.
• These specific testimonies are presented as a central, even foundational, feature of Quaker religious thought.

These characteristics represent what is now a very standard, widespread conception of Quaker testimonies — perhaps not so much among evangelical Friends, but certainly across a very large segment of contemporary Quakerism.  But it is entirely modern; as far as I can tell, nothing like this is found in Quaker literature prior to the 20th century, and even up through the first half of the 20th century, published descriptions of Friends testimonies do not seem to take quite this form.

There is some possibility of misunderstanding here, so let me clarify: Friends have used the term testimonies since the 17th century.  Phrases like our testimony for peace and our testimony for simplicity also date back a long way.  And Friends have stood explicitly for peace, simplicity and integrity, and perhaps somewhat more implicitly for equality and community, since very early on (though there is some debate about whether, or in what sense, early Friends believed in “equality”).

What is new is the use of the word testimony for just this specific set of four or five principles, rather than the full range of truths to which Friends testify, and the conception of Quakerism as organized around a small number of highly abstract, maximally general ethical concepts — almost as though it were an academic system of moral philosophy, compactly axiomatized so that all other aspects of Quaker practice and individual conduct can be shown to follow.

I hope in later posts to trace the origins and histories of individual phrases like Peace Testimony, Testimony of Equality, etc.  My purpose in this present post is just to consider how the word testimony came to refer to this small set of abstract principles.

It seems clear that this usage derives in large part from the presentation in Howard Brinton’s (1943) pamphlet Guide to Quaker Practice.  Section 6 of this pamphlet is titled ‘Social Testimonies’.  After a few paragraphs of introduction, Brinton writes:

At the price of over-simplification due to the need for brevity, let us outline the Quaker social doctrines under four heads — community, harmony, equality, and simplicity.  Of these four words simplicity is the only one which appears with any degree of frequency in Quaker literature, but various equivalents for the others often occur.  Obviously the four overlap, being derived out of the same fundamental principle.

Brinton goes on to discuss each of these categories in more detail, treating “harmony” as primarily a matter of peace.

Brinton is explicit in making clear that his four labels are not traditional; that they are merely headings or categories of testimonies, rather than the testimonies themselves; that the testimonies discussed under these headings are only the “social” testimonies and not the full set of Quaker testimonies; and that the four concepts of community, harmony, equality and simplicity are not foundational to Quaker faith, but are derived from something more fundamental.  So it would be a mistake to “blame” Howard Brinton for the shift in thought that the modern conception of Quaker testimonies represents.

But it is not hard to see how this presentation — widely read as it has been — might have influenced the way Friends conceived of the idea of a “testimony,” and led to a shift whereby what Brinton intended merely as useful labels for organizing his presentation came instead to be regarded as the unifying principles underlying each category of testimonies, and ultimately as the testimonies themselves.  By 1960, Frederick Tolles could write “…the basic Quaker testimonies — simplicity, equality, community, peace…”  (Quakers and the Atlantic Culture p. 133).