Emblematic of our times, the National Park Service announced and then retracted the removal of a William Penn statue from Welcome Park in Philadelphia, Pa.. The proposed “rehabilitation” of the park would have deleted Pennsylvania’s Quaker founder in favor of “expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia, in consultation with representatives of the Indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.”
A model of Penn’s home in the park, which originally sat on the site, was also to be removed, as were exhibit panels illustrating the timeline of Penn’s momentous and admirable life.
Kudos to the Park Service for correcting itself after a few days, but why was the cancelling of Penn, the embodiment of welcome and peaceful coexistence, even contemplated?
In William Hackett Fisher’s famous 1989 book, Albion’s Seed, he proposed that America was shaped by four British “folks ways:” the Congregationalist Puritans who settled New England, the Anglican Cavaliers who settled the South, the Presbyterian Scots-Irish who settled the back country, and the Quakers who settled Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic. No single leader incarnated the Puritan, Cavalier, and Scots-Irish migration folk ways the way that Penn incarnated Quakerism, with ongoing impact today.
Penn famously abjured war, rejected conquest in place of harmony with the native tribes, and established religious freedom in Pennsylvania. Of all early American personalities, he should be safe from assault by the radical deconstructionists. But for too many, any European Christian is an oppressor who must be deleted.
Continue reading at WORLD here.
Comment by David on January 12, 2024 at 12:05 pm
Philadelphia has messed up several of its parks. The attractive formal plaza that extended for blocks in front of Independence Hill was destroyed for a disorderly space. Some of these distant blocks had become homeless encampments many years ago.
Penn continued the good relations with Native Americans begun earlier by the Swedes in Philadelphia and the Dutch in New York. Religious freedom as promoted by the Dutch was also followed.
“Coming to speak of Pennsylvania again, that colony possesses great liberties above all other English colonies, inasmuch as all religious sects are tolerated there. We find there Lutherans, Reformed, Catholics, Quakers, Mennonists or Anabaptists, Herrnhuters or Moravian Brethren, Pietists, Seventh Day Baptists, Dunkers, Presbyterians, Newborn, Freemasons, Separatists, Freethinkers, Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, Negroes and Indians. The Evangelicals and Reformed, however, are in the majority. But there are many hundred unbaptized souls.”—Rev. Mittleberger, 1750.
Comment by David Mu on January 13, 2024 at 11:50 pm
That William Penn is considered suited for removal by that crowd says much about how bad they truly are – from their deeds to their core. Penn still has much to say to our present, and I have no doubt that he will remained remembered when this crowd are barely even foot-notes.
I am proud that I have fore fathers who knew and worked with him in his newly founded colony.
Comment by Mikeb on January 14, 2024 at 3:16 pm
You know who someone is by who they hate and love. They hate long dead Quakers and they love Hamas.
There is a common core on how everything God loves they hate, Israel, Families, 2 biological sexes, protecting children, 1Man 1Woman Marriage.
You can pretty much draw a line down the middle and see who falls on which end by asking just one of those topics.
Comment by George on January 18, 2024 at 9:20 am
This is a prime example of “depending on whose ox is being gored”. We have seen statues and monuments removed from all over this country (especially the south) and the fine folks of Pennsylvania did not care less. The Woke culture is entrenched in our governments; both federal and state. They remove the names of our forefathers from schools. From elementary all the way to colleges. They even go as far as banning the Dr. Zeuss children books while supporting the libraries right to have “ how to books” for juvenile sex. The highly educated people were bent out of shape when twenty years ago, the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamyan. Where were these intellectuals when they began removing a monument in Arlington National cemetery a few weeks ago. If we don’t support one another against this woke culture, in the end, we all will lose.