Quaker Justifications for “Plain Speech”
January 6, 2025 § 1 Comment
I’ve just finished reading “Aspects of 17th Century Quaker Rhetoric,” by Richard Bauman, published in The Quarterly Journal of Speech*, and learned some great stuff about early Quaker rhetoric. By “rhetoric,” Bauman means “the art of persuasion,” in in Quaker terms, the art of convincement.
Bauman lays out four explanations and justifications early Friends gave for rejecting “the use of “you” in the second person singular, insisting instead upon ‘thou’ and ‘thee.’” I was only aware of two. Here’s his list in brief:
- “You” ungrammatical. The use of “you” was ungrammatical, and thus not true. “You” was properly used for the second person plural.
- “You” unbiblical. In the Bible, “the equivalents of ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ were employed by Christ and by the primitive Christians as well as in parts of the Old Testament.” The generalization of “you” was a later corruption.
- Spiritual egalitarianism. They rejected the honorific “you” “in order to bring their behavior into line with their principle that the spirit of God was accessible within every [person] and that the unity of this shared bond was of primary importance in interpersonal relations.”
- Social rank and etiquette. “The use of ‘you’ to a single individual communicated deference, honor, courtesy, while ‘thou’ imparted intimacy or condescension when used to a close equal or subordinate, but contempt when addressed to a more distant equal or a superior—either that or boorishness. . . . By refusing to conform their usage to these conventions the Quakers violated very strongly established social norms.”
Bauman goes on to point out that this “active aggressive” approach “was not meant to be merely provocative or exemplary, but to bring people to spiritual self-knowledge—‘to see where they were’—and thus from the world’s honor to a higher state.” Plain speech was a rhetorical tool for convincement. With the practice of plain speech, they sought to “arouse the Spirit of God in those who witnessed it, provided they were ready to receive the Light . . . “ “Any behavior whatsoever that was actuated by the spirit of Truth could lead other [men] to that Truth by evoking the spirit of God within them.”
“. . . the rhetoric of the early Quakers was not simply a rhetoric of words, but a unified rhetoric of symbolic action for which Fox’s words might stand as the keynote: ‘Let your lives speak.’”
* Sorry I failed to capture the date and issue of this journal when I downloaded it.
Through the Flaming Sword 
Plato, in his dialogue Gorgias, has Socrates demonstrate the then-novel and radical idea that Rhetoric should be the servant of Ethics, and that its proper use is to persuade humans to do good and not evil. Even in this age of the quick sound-bite, it makes a good read for the patient reader.
I hear an echo of Socrates (though also of Isaiah 5:20) in the Apostle’s simile of the human mouth in James 3:11: “Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” — and also in early Friends’ adoption of our Single Standard of Truth. “I wonder what law of man… ought to oblige me to make a lie, in calling good, evil; and evil, good?” wrote Barclay (Apology, Proposition 15, §III). George Fox put the Quaker testimony against telling untruths more fiercely in his 1682 writing, “The Cause Why Adam and Eve Were Driven out of Paradise” (Works, 6:159):
“And in Rev. xxi. he saith, ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful and unbelieving… and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death’ [Rev. 21:8]. Whosoever is not found written in the book of life, is to be cast into the lake of fire; and therefore, what good will all your profession do in Christendom, if ye be found in these sins and evils [?]”
I say, God bless rhetoric rightly used, and long may Friends be among its right users!