The Quaker Who Wasn't

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a meeting house: a long silence, a floorboard)
He is not a Quaker. He has never been a Quaker.

[Verse 1]
Eighteen seventy-seven, a mill in Ohio,
and somebody needed a mark to put upon the barrel
that would say to a stranger: this is honest, this is plain,
this is not adulterated, you can trust what's in the sack.
And the word for that, in America, in that year,
was a Quaker. So they drew one. And they used him.

[Chorus]
The Quaker who wasn't! No affiliation ever!
Not a member, not a meeting, not a testimony, not a thing!
They borrowed a whole religion's reputation for plain dealing
and printed it on oats and sold it back to everybody!
The Quaker who wasn't. Chosen to look honest.
Which is not the same as being. It is very much not the same.

[Verse 2]
And the actual Friends have raised it, quietly, over the years —
they don't sue, it isn't their way, but they've said it out loud:
that a faith built on refusing to swear oaths at all,
because your plain word ought to be enough on any day,
has had its face used as a guarantee of quality
by people it has no connection to whatsoever.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
There's something almost perfect in the shape of this, though:
a religion whose entire principle is that you do not need
a symbol or a ceremony or a badge to be believed —
turned into a symbol. Used as a badge. On a box.
The plainest people in the world made into a logo.
You could not invent that. You would not dare.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the meeting house silence, unbroken)
He is not a Quaker.
He has been on the shelf for a hundred and forty years.