Benjamin turned somberly to his acquaintance and asked, “Dost thou keep any Negro slaves in thy family?” When the gentleman answered yes, he did indeed keep slaves, Benjamin pushed back and stood up from the table.

In The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Keith split from the Yearly Meeting and formed a Christian Quaker sect. The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man—a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world.

(Birkel 2015, 256, 264-265)    Lay then stated, “I can now die in peace.” His death came the following winter, in February 3, 1759, shortly after he was moved from his cave to Joshua Morris’s house (120). The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist. In the minutes of the Meeting, and in Lay was immersed in a desperate struggle to wrest the legacy of Fox and Penn away from the “slave-keepers,” and to claim them for the budding anti-slavery movement.

“George Fox and America.” In Michael Mullett, ed., Frost, Jerry W. (1991). Stephen W. (1992). cols.

on The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary AbolitionistExcerpts from: ALL SLAVE-KEEPERS That keep the Innocent in Bondage, APOSTATESThe Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist    Another significant adversary was Robert Jordan, Jr., a slaveholder, a scion of a Virginia tobacco dynasty, and a traveling minister who had been imprisoned in Virginia for his opposition to tithes.

While the content of Lay’s message was not recorded, Rediker surmises that Lay was challenging the artificial division of the assembly into a male and female meeting space, in violation of the Galatians 3:26 principle that all, even male and female, are one in Christ. So now it is time for Quaker historians to step up to the plate and provide our own in-depth analyses of Lay. In short, “Benjamin conducted his life in full keeping with his evolving democratic, egalitarian, and antinomian principles” (115). In 1703, he returned from England to North America as a missionary under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, an Anglican agency that engaged in slaveholding in the West Indies and did not oppose it in North America.

“George Fox’s Ambiguous Anti-Slavery Legacy.” In Michael Mullett, ed.,     Rediker usefully depicts Lay’s confrontations with a small handful of grandees.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist Table of Contents.

All of these matters are  major themes of     After his disownment in 1738, Rediker tells us that Lay remained “involved with the Quaker community, attending worship services” and actively confronting Friends on the wrongs of slavery. In any event, Lay was disowned by the Colchester Two Weeks Meeting, in 1722 and again in 1724. The confrontation of corrupt or mistaken ministers that had been the foundation of the young George Fox’s ministry was channeled through Penn to Lay, and the further reformation of the Christian churches that was needed definitely included reform of the Quaker ministry – or, so Lay saw matters in the 1730s. Fox had given ministry in Barbados in the 1670s that dealt extensively with the issue of slavery, and it seems likely that, like other American Quakers, Pennsylvania Quakers, both pro-slavery and anti-slavery, strove mightily to make it appear to fellow Quakers that Fox’s position was entirely in accord with their own position on slavery (Carroll 1991, 62; Frost 1991, 80, passim).

It is central to Rediker’s case that Lay, born to Quaker parents in Essex, England, in 1682, represented “in many ways a throwback to [James] Nayler, [Martha] Simmonds, [John] Perrot, and other early radical Quakers” (Rediker, 19). “In a rising crescendo of emotion, the prophet thundered his judgment: ‘Thus shall God shed the blood of those persons who enslave their fellow creatures’” (2). “An Address to Protestants Upon the Present Conjuncture.” In Hugh Barbour,     The use that Lay made of Penn’s work is interesting.

]Rediker captures well the exploitation and oppression according to race and class in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, and the opposition to it that Lay was trying to ignite.Property Damage and Non-Violent Resistance    Prior to Lay’s moving to Pennsylvania in 1732, he accused numerous ministers in England of not speaking Truth. In this book, Rediker hopes “to illuminate and overcome once and for all the condescension, opposition, and isolation [Lay] received from his contemporaries and from some who have written about him since his death” (151).

A Review of Marcus Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.Boston: Beacon Press, 2017. In addition to these stories preserved for posterity by Rush, Vaux, and other contemporaries or near-contemporaries of Lay, there are a variety of other sources that can be used to write his biography. 19. Here is one place where Rediker aims to make an impact, and, to a large extent, he succeeds.Marcus Rediker, Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh, has published many excellent volumes with African and Afro-diaspora themes, including The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (2000); The Slave Ship (2007); and The Amistad Rebellion (2012).

Introduction — Prophet against Slavery Chapter One — Early Life Chapter Two — “A Man of Strife and Contention” Chapter Three — Philadelphia’s “Men of Renown” Chapter Four — How Slave-keepers Became Apostates Hopefully, this book will stimulate further research and publication on Benjamin Lay. That Lay “was pious and benevolent, most will admit.