Maragaret Fell for Quakerism. Err, yeah. Long Post.

In Quakerism and Social Change, Heidi compares the Quaker concept of Inner Light to Plato's cave allegory. She likens the Inner Light to the real outside world, and that social change will occur in reality only with the help of this real inner light.

Heidi's analysis highlights the major pitfall in religion's roll in social activism. Their is one significant problem with the Allegory of the Cave. Men chained and shackled in a cave can see nothing but shadows on a wall, created by objects in front of a fire that is behind them. A prisoner released see that the shadows are in fact creatd by these objects for the real source of the shadows. Again, if he is taken outside the cave, he will see the sun, and realize that the fire, and statues in the cave are but poor imitations of the sun and real world. But why, after being deceived twice, would the man in the real world believe he has achieve ultimate truth? Could not the sun be just a larger fire in a larger cave with more colorful statues? There is absolutely no way to know that you have ever reached the "real world". In fact, a tenet of Plato's philosophy is that there is a "perfect" version of everything that exists in our world. For instance, a perfect square that all squares resemble. But even this is a tenuous assumption. One could just as easily assume a dynamic universe in which there was always room for change, and so always room for improvement.

Here is the short fall of religion in social activism. At every stage in the Allegory of the cave, all men believe they possess the truth. Even Plato assumes the cave dweller possesses the truth when the cave dweller enters Plato's world! In each case though, we see that the prisoner is actually wrong and does not know the truth.

At first, the implications of all this are dire. We can never know the Truth! BUT, there is a clear gradient of improvement. The prisoner learns and expands his world. Rather than achieving Truth, we can strive to achieve truths. In the stretch of human history as we know it, there has never been a perfect human society on a large scale. Regardless of whether or not there is an "outside real world" we have never been able to correctly assume we are outside, and so it would seem we shouldn't!

Religion is absolutely a way of gaining truths, but we are not out of the cave. Naturally, there is a progression towards the outside of the cave, and part of that progression is by religion and towards social betterment, but to say that religion, or a careful analysis of religion, or an Inner Light, or any one thing as much progress as it may allow us to make towards the outside is our Truth is to start believing in shadows.

To return to the topic... in Margaret Fell's writings we all recognize something strong and good, something progressive that has contributed to gender equality, something we value a lot in modern society. I would argue that the good we see in this is not the underlying religion, or even the underlying progressiveness, but the push against the stagnation of her own times.