Benjamin Lay: The Radical Quaker Abolitionist Who Challenged the World

Benjamin Lay was born in 1682, a third-generation Quaker when three generations of Quakers was all there was. “He was a much more ardent and more radical Quaker than either his grandparents or his parents,” says Lay’s biographer, Marcus Rediker—possessing a zeal that harkened back to the very beginnings of the Religious Society of Friends.

Horrified by the violence he saw being perpetrated against enslaved peoples in early 18th-century Barbados—and equally horrified by the participation of Friends in that violence—Benjamin arrived in colonial Philadelphia a fervent abolitionist. “He believed that people were sleepwalking,” Marcus explains, “that they weren’t awake and alert to the injustice that was going on all around them. And he thought it was his job to wake them up.”

In this video, Marcus recounts Benjamin’s provocative, at times theatrically dramatic ministry against slavery, which got him kicked out of four different Quaker meetings. We also hear from members of Abington Monthly Meeting, where stories about Benjamin survive to this day.

As Abington’s George Schaefer says, “The legacy of Benjamin Lay… keeps us on our toes regarding our own complicity and our own complacency [about] what’s going on in the world around us now.”

3 thoughts on “Benjamin Lay: The Radical Quaker Abolitionist Who Challenged the World

  1. It’s good to see the meeting room where we worshiped throughout my 12 years at Abington Friends School. Unfortunately, as students we never heard of Benjamin Lay or of Lucretia Mott, my biggest Quaker heroes now. (I’m Class of ’61) I hope later generations of Friends School students are learning about them and other Quakers who were ahead of their times and laid the foundations of social advances we take for granted now.

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