BIO: Kenneth Boulding, Quaker economist for peace (19 May 1993)


A list of related biographies follows:
  MARY DYER, QUAKER MARTYR (1 JUN 1660)
  ROBERT BARCLAY, QUAKER THEOLOGIAN (3 OCT 1690)
  GEORGE FOX, FOUNDER OF THE QUAKERS (13 JAN 1691)
  WILLIAM PENN, QUAKER STATESMAN (30 JUL 1718)
  JOHN WOOLMAN, QUAKER VOICE OF CONSCIENCE (7 OCT 1772)
  ELIZABETH GURNEY FRY, QUAKER HELPER OF PRISONERS (12 OCT 1845)
  JOSEPH JOHN GURNEY, EVANGELICAL QUAKER (4 JAN 1847)
  STEPHEN GRELLET, QUAKER ARISTOCRAT (16 NOV 1855)
  RUFUS JONES, QUAKER MYSTIC AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST (16 JUN 1948)
  KENNETH BOULDING, QUAKER ECONOMIST FOR PEACE (19 MAY 1993)
  (Many of the biographies have appended sections on aspects of the
  Quaker mvement.)

$$$ KENNETH BOULDING

     Kenneth Boulding was born in Liverpool <53:25 N 2:25 W>,
England, in 1910, came to the United States in 1937, became a US
citizen in 1948, and died 19 May 1993. He was a distinguished
economist, and served as President of the American Economics
Association in 1968. Although he made his professional reputation by
his work in straightforward economic analysis, he is also known for
his application of economic principles to the study of interpersonal
and group relationships and conflict resolution. He was Director of
the Center for Research in Conflict Resolution at the University of
Michigan, in Ann Arbor <42:18 N 83:43 W>. A list of some of his
books currently in print is found in the general bibliography at the
end of this article. His wife, Elise Marie Boulding, is a
sociologist who is also known for dealing with the relationship
between Quaker principles and her professional discipline. (Since
she is still alive, she falls outside the guidelines for this
biographical series.)

$$$ QUAKERS AND PACIFISM
   faith deal with a question such as that which arose, before the
   start of World War II, in the persecution of the Jews and the
   existence of concentration camps involving torture. The issue

     In Boswell's JOHNSON, under 28 April 1783, we find the
following entry:
        JOHNSON: I do not see, Sir, that fighting is absolutely
   forbidden in the Scripture; I see revenge forbidden, but not
   self-defense.
        BOSWELL: The Quakers say it is. "Unto him that smiteth
   thee on one cheek, offer him also the other." [Matthew 5:39]
        JOHNSON: But stay, Sir, the text is meant only to have the
   effect of moderating passion; it is plain that we are not to
   take it in a literal sense. We see this from the context, where
   there are other recommendations, which I warrant you, the
   Quaker will not take literally: as, for instance, "from him
   that would borrow of thee turn thou not away." [Matthew 5:42]
   Let a man whose credit is bad come to a Quaker and say, "Well,
   Sir, lend me a hundred pounds;" he'll find him as unwilling as
   any other man.

     Pacificism as a Quaker principle was a development. Many early
Quakers served in Cromwell's army with no apparent sense of
inconsistency. However, in 1650 Fox was in prison, and was offered
an early release if he would become a captain in Cromwell's army. He
wrote afterward:
     "I told them that I knew whence all wars arose, even from the
lust, according to James's doctrine [James 4:1], and I lived in the
virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of wars."
     In 1657, when Cromwell had won a series of spectacular military
victories against the Scots, the Irish, and the Portuguese, Fox
wrote a manifesto urging him to make use of his God-given powers to
force the Pope and the Moslems to give up their heathenish
practices. However, his conviction that Cromwell was the Lord's
Annointed soon vanished in disappointment at Cromwell's policies.
     During Fox's travels in the Americas in 1671-1673, when he
debated with Roger Williams, he again took a stand (or so Williams
claims in his account of the debate) inconsistent with the later
Quaker position. When asked, "If the magistrate be in the mind of
Christ and discern his law, is he to compel all the nation and
Commonwealth to the practice of his light?" he answered, "If he is
in the light and power of Christ, he is to subject all under the
power of Christ into his light."

After the Fifth Monarchy uprising of 1661, in order to reassure the
King that they had no plans to overthrow the government by force,
Fox and another leading Quaker drew up a Declaration and presented
it to the King. The crucial sentence is:
   All bloody principles and practices as we to our own particular
   do utterly deny, with all outward wars and strife and fightings
   with outward weapons for any end or under any pretense
   whatsoever; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the
   world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all
   Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with
   outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the
   kingdoms of this world.

DET writes:
   In no known instance did the earliest exponents of the Quaker
   faith deal with a question such as that which arose, before the
   start of World War II, in the persecution of the Jews and the
   existence of concentration camps involving torture. The issue
   was uniformly stated in terms of what the individual should do
   when he becomes the personal object of attack or aggression,
   rather than in terms of what the Christian's duty may be when
   the victim is a third party.
        Most of the inhabitants of any state are by no means ready
   for a program of nonresistance which would, indeed, be
   meaningless to them. We must, then, as realists, recognize the
   state they are in. The best decision, in practice, is not the
   abstract best, but is always the best under the circumstances.
   "And, therefore, while they are in that condition," wrote
   Barclay in a memorable sentence, "we shall not say that war,
   undertaken upon a just occasion, is altogether unlawful to
   them."

     Isaac Penington writes that the best situation, on the
individual level, is that a man, touched by the Spirit of Christ,
turns the other cheek when smitten. We may look forward to a time
when whole nations, touched by the Spirit of Christ, will respond
similarly as nations, a time when "the gospel will teach a whole
nation (if they hearken to it) as well as a particular person, to
trust the Lord and to wait on him for preservation." But in this
present time,
   I speak not this against any magistrate's or people's defending
   themselves against foreign invasions, or making use of the
   sword to suppress the violent and evil doers within their
   borders (for this the present estate of things may and doth
   require, and a great blessing will attend the sword where it is
   borne uprightly to that end, and its use will be honourable;
   and while there is need of a sword, the Lord will not suffer
   that government, or those governors, to want fitting
   instruments under them for the managing thereof, to wait on him
   in his fear to have the edge of it rightly directed); but yet
   there is a better state which the Lord hath already brought
   some into, and which nations are to travel towards.

D Elton Trueblood (THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS) writes (in about
1971):
   It is obvious, for example, that the existence of the United
   States Fleet, in the Taiwan Straits, PREVENTS an invasion of
   either the Communists or the Nationalists. It would be an
   extremely confused lover of peace who wished for the
   elimination of the means of prevention of something that would
   involve untold murder and violence.

E B Castle (APPROACH TO QUAKERISM, London, 1961) writes:
   The Quaker dilemma, as far as I can see, can be resolved in two
   ways. In the first place the Quaker witness against all war
   must be maintained, because it is founded on Christian truth
   and because this truth must be declared. The educative value of
   this persistent witness has been shown in its increasingly wide
   acceptance among other branches of the Christian Church. In all
   great causes there must be pioneers whose function it is to
   point the way. Otherwise the world remains forever in the realm
   of the second-best, governed by expedients that can never hold
   back the flood of evil. On the other hand, it is of the utmost
   importance that Friends should recognize the nature of the
   responsibilities of men who hold positions Friends themselves
   would not feel free to occupy.

     In the French and Indian War, around 1756, the Quakers held a
majority in the legislature of Pennsylvania. They had to choose
between supervising the civilian war effort of the colony, and
resigning office and abandoning political power. They chose the
latter.

$$$ FOR FURTHER READING


 @@@ BOULDING, ELISE MARIE
     THE FAMILY AS A WAY INTO THE FUTURE, 1978 $3 pb PH -222-X
     CHILDREN AND SOLITUDE 1962 $3 pb PH -125-8

 @@@ BOULDING, KENNETH
     ECONOMICS OF PEACE, $21, 0-8369-2982-9 Ayer.
     THE EVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL OF QUAKERISM, $3 pb, PH -136-3
     MENDING THE WORLD: Quaker insights on the social order, 1986,
$3 pb, PH -266-1
     THE ORGANIZATIONAL REVOLUTION: a study in the ethics of
economic organization, $57.50, 0-313-24371-9 Greenwood
     MAYER-BOULDING DIALOGUE ON PEACE RESEARCH (by Milton Mayer and
Kenneth Boulding), 1967 $3 pb PH -153-3
     BEYOND ECONOMICS: Essays on society, religion and ethics,
UMichPress (1970) 0-472-06167-4 L=11pb
     CONFLICT AND DEFENSE: a general theory, UnivPr of Am (1988)
L=24p 0-8191-7112-3
     PEACE AND THE WAR INDUSTRY (Boulding, editor)  L=8pb
     THERE IS A SPIRIT: Naylor sonnets, L=2p, Quaker Home Service
(1992) 0-85245-246-2
     THREE FACES OF POWER: a general theory, Sage Pubns (1990)
0-8039-3862-4
     Cynthia Earl Kerman, CREATIVE TENSION: the life and thought of
Kenneth Boulding (UMich Press, 1974, $12.50 hc, 354pp plus notes and
index, ISBN 0-472-51500-4). This was written during Boulding's
lifetime by a friend of his.

     D(avid) Elton Trueblood, THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS, Friends
United Press, Richmond, Indiana, ISBN 0-913408-02-6 pb