Filmmaker Janet Gardner’s Quaker documentary is halfway complete after Guggenheim Fellowship

The cylindrical oatmeal box with the white-haired man in a tall black hat is among the most recognizable American images, and many people associate the Society of Friends with the Quaker Oat Company. Quakers are often imagined in old-fashioned dress, riding in buggies. The Quaker image has also been used to sell safety matches, whiskey, cigars and a 19th-century chamber pot, though the source notes that many of these products Quakers would not have approved of. Thomas Hamm, a professor at Earlham College, told the filmmakers that an early 20th-century bill to prevent using religious organizations to promote products failed after the Quaker Oats lobby blocked it. The account comes from Hamm’s interview in *Quakers: The Quiet Revolutionaries*, a documentary still in production by the Gardner Group.

Ben Pink Dandelion, a Quaker scholar affiliated with the University of Birmingham in England, is also interviewed in the film. “It is often said that Quakers have an influence beyond their numbers,” he says. The source points to traces of Quaker culture in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including schools such as Haverford College, Philadelphia’s historic Bartram Garden, and 61 versions of “Peaceable Kingdom” by Quaker painter Edward Hicks in area museums. It also notes that Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was influenced by Quaker thinking, with inmates in solitary confinement able to be penitent in cells with skylights.

In Princeton, Friends were among the first Europeans to settle along the Stony Brook, and their stone meeting house is still in use. Built in 1726 and rebuilt in 1760, it is the oldest house of worship in Princeton. Worshippers sit in silence as a form of prayer. When moved, a worshipper may speak to share a thought or observation, announce a humane cause, or sing a song. The source describes “the light within” as a fundamental principle, which many Friends interpret as a direct, unmediated experience of the divine that guides daily life and unites the community. Meeting for Worship is regarded as an opportunity for deep personal growth and spiritual nurturing.

Filmmaker Janet Gardner, who lives in Rocky Hill and New York City, said she noticed that PBS screened films about Muslim, Amish and Jewish cultures but little about Quakers. “Even the series ‘God in America’ only had a passing nod to Quakers,” she said. She initially funded the project through a Kickstarter campaign and last year received a Guggenheim Fellowship. “This will significantly enable us to proceed with the principal photography and attract more support,” she said of the film, which she described as halfway complete. Gardner suggested several reasons Quaker history may be underrepresented: Quakers do not proselytize, and their practice of seeking consensus before acting may have deterred some film projects. The source also notes that Quakers are often mistaken for Amish and Mennonites, and for Shakers, an offshoot of Quakers with whom they share a physical trembling during worship.

The film traces the movement to George Fox in mid-17th-century England. According to the source, Fox, a tall and charismatic man with a powerful voice, taught belief in an “inward light” and that God is present in everyone. After days without eating, he said he felt moved to climb a hill, and his vision, considered the beginning of Quakerism, was that anyone could have a direct relationship with God. Gardner and her late husband, George Morren, an anthropologist, Rutgers professor and Rocky Hill mayor, joined a 2010 pilgrimage from Philadelphia to England, where Fox was said to have had his vision.

Dandelion said that in 1662 the Church of England passed an act making Quakerism illegal, and that 11,000 Quakers were imprisoned, with 400 dying in prison. The source describes harsh treatment of Quaker women, including a bridle with a metal piece that cut their tongues, as trembling and shaking were considered dangerous hysteria. Fox worked with Margaret Fell, who was married to a prominent judge, to promote the idea that women were responsible for bringing the community to meeting. Fell and her husband took in and protected Quakers. For this, the source reports, Fell’s land was taken and she was sentenced to time in Lancaster Prison, where Fox was also imprisoned. After her husband died, Fell married Fox (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Gardner, a former field producer, film editor and news writer for NBC News, WNBC-TV, WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., and CBS News, describes herself as a “participant observer.” Raised an Episcopalian, she said she came to Quakerism slowly. She met Quakers, who protest all wars, while reporting on Agent Orange for several newspapers and while making films about the Vietnam War and Cambodian atrocities. The source adds that Quakers, early civil rights activists and followers of Gandhi’s civil disobedience, were among the first conscientious objectors. Gardner said the project has long been in her mind. “I always knew I’d make this film,” she said. “From a budgetary and length standpoint, it’s my most ambitious film.”

Source: Read the original report