Ithaca College

U.S. Quakers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries engaged in social and political reform activities that included intervening in U.S. insular policy discourses. Hicksite Quaker Albert K. Smiley, a rather unknown Social gospeller, contributed to such national policy debates by providing a communal democratic space for engaging in what Figueroa calls 'political ecumenism.' This talk examined these early U.S. Quaker national policy interventions through Smiley’s Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples (LMC) to show how both American and Filipino leaders, Quaker and non-Quaker alike, utilized the LMC to assuage the polarizing & competing racial-religious values serving as cultural barriers (broadly characterizing the ‘Philippine problem’) to U.S. Philippine policy development.

This case (as part of a larger book project) has implications for understanding the role of non-governmental institutions, debates about citizenship and civic status in the U.S., and political rhetoric in policy development.