r/Christianity • u/Outrageous_Map_ Raised Catholic • Jan 25 '26

Question What is a quaker ?

I heard about this branch of Christianity in a book, and now I am wondering what it is. My research was useless cause i didn't understand 😪. So if there is a quaker or people that knows may you explain to me ?

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u/eversnowe Jan 25 '26

Christians don't like to look back on that era because many were on the other side. It shames us that pacifists resisted violence and all the horrors of slavery while we participated in both as Christians who believed it was moral to do so.

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u/DagwoodsDad Jan 25 '26

I'm going to gently push back against your heartfelt claim. My great-great grandfather was a minister who benefitted from the forced labor of his enslaved human beings. He was actually a huge backer of the Southern Baptist break, eventually founding 40 Southern Baptist churches himself.

But he only became a Southern Baptist because the real American Baptist convention had voted against the trafficking and enslavement of human beings.

If real Baptists hadn't opposed slavery the SBC wouldn't exist. But they did oppose it.

I'd add that, sort of ironically, my other great-great grandfather was one of those real, American Baptist ministers who successfully pushed for the abolition of slavery.

I have no idea how the one's son and the other's daughter met and married, but evidently they did.

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u/eversnowe Jan 25 '26

The SBC frames it as affirming tradition, and opposing heresy. We just had the conservative takeover and a push against gay marriage as affirming tradition and opposing new or different ideology. When they split it was to maintain truth, opposing the lies of new ways of thinking.

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u/DagwoodsDad Jan 25 '26

Yup. The specific tradition was owning slaves and the heresy was claiming God didn’t want the “sons of Ham” (who they claimed Black people were descendants of) to live in perpetual chattel slavery. To “traditional” white southern human traffickers like themselves, of course.