The Origin Of A Name A look into the history of We & Thee
We & Thee has existed as a publication in the Carolina Friends School community for over forty years. It was initially the title of a newsletter from the “Parent Council,” which soon became a publication more centrally held by the school. The role of We & Thee editor is even one of the many that Jim Henderson filled, from the late 1980s to mid 1990s. From its earliest mimeographed pages to these more colorful and digitally produced ones, one thing that has not changed is the name. But why such an oddly archaic use of pronouns? One of the ways in which the early Quakers of the 17th century interpreted the tenet of simplicity was through “Plain Speech.” One component of Plain Speech involved referring to months and days as “First Day, Second Day,” “First Month, Second Month,” etc. rather than the common English names, derived from pagan deities. The other two components of Plain Speech had to do with radical notions of equality. Thomas Hamm, a Quaker Historian at Earlham College, explains in a video for Friends Journal that this reinforced the “spiritual equality of all people” and rejected the notion that “some people, by birth or by rank, were better than others.” This included not referring to people with honorific or other titles, but rather simply by name, and also using thee or thou for second person singular. At the time, to use you in the singular indicated a social superior. The more familiar thee and thou would indicate a person of more common status. Rather than electing to use the more noble you in the singular, Quakers chose to refer to all with the humbler pronoun. The English upper class saw this as an upending of the social order, according to Hamm. As the language adapted to use you in the singular, so, too, did many Quakers, although there are some that still use it among other Friends.
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We & Thee | Winter 2021
Writing in the New York Times on November 16, 2019, Teresa M. Bejan drew comparisons between the politics of pronouns for the early Quakers to more recent reckonings with how to be inclusive and affirming with our language: Modern practitioners of pronoun politics can learn a thing or two from the early Quakers. Like today’s egalitarians, the Quakers understood that what we say, as well as how we say it, can play a crucial part in creating a more just and equal society. They, too, were sensitive to the humble pronoun’s ability to reinforce hierarchies by encoding invidious distinctions into language itself. Yet unlike the early Quakers, these modern egalitarians want to embrace, rather than resist, pronouns’ honorific aspect, and thus to see trans-, nonbinary and genderqueer people as equally entitled to the “title” of their choosing. In choosing “we & thee,” the publication’s earliest founders were consciously connecting not just to the early roots of Quakerism and its lived idea of equality, but also to two of the defining notions of our Quaker roots: that within each person is the ability to divine truth, and that only by working for the good of the community can we truly find a way forward. Using those ideals, we as a school seek to affirm all aspects of our community members’ identities. Our philosophy is a source of inspiration to us all, to continually break down barriers and the rules of social order that support privilege. — Katherine Scott
