I was delighted to take part in the Quaker Theological Discussion Group panel on Saturday 2 December, alongside Emma Condori, Rhiannon Grant, and Robert J. Wafula. I presented a paper titled “Whiteness and the Quaker Universalist Discourse in Britain,” and you can watch it here:
Jolly Quaker 
I was interested to listen to your thoughts on this. I’ve been trying to plot the way Christian universalism has morphed more recently into something that seems more like modern unitarianism – but I hadn’t fully considered the whole whiteness thing.
I don’t know much about quakerism, so I would be curious to hear more about non-white Quaker universalist discourse. I know that there are people who self identify as Muslim Quakers, Buddhist Quakers and so on – do you know how they engage with the ideas you’ve discussed here? Is there something specific about Quaker Universalism which excludes people like this?
Second, I’d be interested to know more about how quakerism in the Rest of the World has or hasn’t embraced a form of Universalism. As far as I understand it, Quakerism elsewhere tends to be ‘more Christian’ than we might see in Europe, does that mean that there are no quaker groups in ‘non-white’ places that have rejected the whiteness but accepted forms of Universalism. Best, Joe
Thanks for reading the blog and taking the time to comment Joe. You ask some fascinating questions.
As to your first question, there are very few non-white Quakers in Britain Yearly Meeting, and the Quakers I’ve met who also identify as Muslim and Buddhist have also been white, so I’m not able to speak specifically to non-white Quaker beliefs. I would say though that the whiteness of the discourse is not dependent on the skin-tone of individuals. People with dark skin can inhabit and replicate white ways of being. What makes the discourse white is how it attempts to subsume all religious diversity within it, what I see as a colonial gaze. Talking to current members of the Quaker Universalist Group, it seems that the universalism of the early pamphlets has morphed into something else, and the universalizing claims have been dropped. QUG seems to be more about appreciating religious difference than anything else, something I’m all in favour of.
As far as I know, liberal Quakerism (which is majority white) is the only form of Quakerism globally to have embraced pluralism. I’d be interested to find out more about Quakerism in India, as Hindu forms of universalism played a big role in the development of European universalism. I wouldn’t want to claim that universalism/pluralism a specifically white phenomenon, but I think there are forms of universalism/pluralism that spring from and accommodate white ways of thinking.
These are questions well worth exploring further. Thanks again! Mark
No probs, look forward to hearing more of your work in 2024