Virtuous Friends: Morality and Quaker Identity

Recent work in moral philosophy and psychology has made deep connections between questions of morality and identity, suggesting that orientation to a moral framework, through community practices and discourses, contributes to the individual sense of self. I argue that contemporary Liberal Quakers in Britain thus use their moral judgments among other things to reinforce their social identity as Quakers, emphasising a shared approach to ethical framework and sources of authority over the substantive content of the judgments. The favoured ethical framework of Liberal British Quakers appears to be a form of virtue ethics, and I explore the possibility that links between virtue ethics on the one hand and the concepts of testimony and discernment on the other, enable the use of a virtue ethics approach to reinforce a sense of Quaker identity.