Quaker Political Quietism

Quaker Political Quietism is the doctrine that the establishment and removal of kings and governments fall within God’s prerogative, not the business of human political action. In Thomas Paine’s examination of a Quaker testimony against breaking with Great Britain, the principle becomes a test of consistency: if political outcomes are God’s work, he argues, its adherents should neither organize against change nor try to direct the public toward preserving the existing order.

Principle and Religious Grounding

The testimony states that Quakers have held, since their profession of the light of Christ Jesus, that setting up and putting down rulers is God’s “peculiar prerogative.” Believers, on this account, should not contrive the ruin or overturning of governments; their duty is to pray for the king, the nation’s safety, and the good of all people, and to live peaceably under whatever government God is pleased to set over them.

Paine reads this as a doctrine of political submission, not merely a warning against violence. If God determines which governments stand, then a believer should receive the outcome of public measures with patience and humility. The principle’s reach is therefore broader than opposition to one particular revolution: it appears to require acceptance of any government that comes to power.

Paine’s Test of Consistency

Paine turns the testimony’s own terms against its authors. If the setting up and removal of governments belong to God, he asks, why publish a political testimony at all? Its publication, he contends, shows either that its writers do not believe what they profess or that they lack the virtue to practise it. In his view, public advocacy against political change is itself an attempt to take part in the very business they have declared outside their station.

He extends the argument from publishing a warning to trying to influence the public. The testimony calls on people to unite in abhorring writings and measures aimed at ending the connection with Great Britain and rejecting subordination to the king and his lawful authorities. Paine sees a direct contradiction: its authors first resign the ordering and disposal of governments to God, then intervene to preserve the existing political relationship. He characterizes them as a factional part of the Quakers, rather than as representatives of the whole body.

Human Agency and Political Change

To expose what he sees as the doctrine’s practical consequence, Paine invokes earlier changes of government. Oliver Cromwell, he argues, would have to be understood as an instrument of divine action; the death of Charles I could not, under this principle, be attributed simply to human hands. If the present king met a similar end, the testimony’s logic would oblige its writers to applaud the event as God’s work. Paine’s point is not that the testimony explicitly welcomes such outcomes, but that its claim about divine prerogative leaves no consistent basis for condemning them.

He likewise observes that kings are not removed by miracles and that changes of government occur through ordinary human means, including the means then being used in America. The dispersal of the Jews, though foretold by Christ, was also effected by arms. If Quakers refuse to serve as agents of change, Paine argues, they should not become meddlers on the opposing side: they should wait silently for the outcome unless they can show divine authority specifically condemning American independence from Britain.

Relation to Paine’s Political Argument

The dispute sits within Paine’s broader account of government as a human institution whose legitimacy depends on its purpose and arrangements. He distinguishes society, which arises from people’s needs and mutual attachments, from government, which restrains vice; government is justified by security, not by the sacred status of a ruler. His argument for religious liberty also limits government’s proper role to protecting conscientious believers, while allowing religious diversity to foster Christian kindness.

That framework sharpens the conflict over quietism. Paine does not treat political action as automatically irreligious: he challenges the Quaker authors to produce divine authority for the claim that God disapproves of American independence, while insisting that political changes are made through human action. His closing distinction is that the Americans, as he describes their aim, intend neither to install nor depose a king; they seek to have nothing to do with kings. The testimony, he concludes, therefore condemns a political purpose its authors’ own stated doctrine does not consistently authorize them to oppose.