Andrew Murphy: William Penn and "The Holy Experiment"

"The road to Pennsylvania, for Penn, began in the Cork prison 15 years before he set foot in America." 

 You can't understand Pennsylvania history - "The Holy Experiment" - without knowing about William Penn. There's no better source than the man who wrote the biography of William Penn.

Reflecting his interest in the intersections between political theory and political action (as well as his status as a born-and-raised Pennsylvanian), Murphy has engaged deeply with the life, career and political thought of William Penn, a figure who brought theory and practice together in the early modern British Atlantic. He is the author of William Penn: A Life (Oxford, 2019) and Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn (Oxford, 2016); and co-editor (with John Smolenski) of The Worlds of William Penn (Rutgers, 2019). A scholarly edition of Penn's political writings for the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series appeared in 2021.

Murphy's research takes up the intersections between politics and religion, in both historical and contemporary contexts. He is particularly interested in the emergence of religious liberty and liberty of conscience in early modern England and America, and the ongoing ramifications of these debates as they continue to unsettle American politics. He is the author, most recently, of Toleration: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2025), which canvasses the history, development, and contemporary global status of toleration as both a concept and a contested legal practice. His current research continues to bring together the political and the religious, exploring the concept of political martyrdom and the ways in which studying politically-charged deaths can help us make sense of the complex interplay of death, religion, politics, collective memory, and symbolic power.

Andrew Murphy

Professor; Department Chair

murphyan@umich.edu

Political Science; Political Theory; Administration

Education/Degree:

B.A. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1989)
M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison (1991)
Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison (1996)

Andrew Murphy joined the Political Science Department at Michigan after appointments at Virginia Commonwealth University, Rutgers University, Valparaiso University, and the University of Chicago. He became department chair in July 2024.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to We Love PA History, the podcast where we explore the stories, people, and moments that shaped Pennsylvania and helped shaped America. I'm Connie Doebele, and each episode we'll uncover a piece of our shared past, from famous events you thought you knew to hidden stories waiting to be rediscovered right here in the Keystone State. So let's jump into today's story. You can't understand Pennsylvania history without knowing about William Penn. There's no better source than the man who wrote the biography of William Penn. In 2019, it was published, and it was the first full-length biography in 40 years. Joining us is Professor Andrew Murphy. Hello, professor.

Speaker 1 0:49

Hello.

Speaker 0:50

Good. So let's start about how you got interested in William Penn.

Speaker 1 0:56

Sure. Well, I was uh born and raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the son of public school teachers and a public school student myself. And so learned a bit about Penn in school, knew about Penn on top of Philadelphia City Hall, knew a little bit about Pennsylvania as a place where religious freedom was a part of the part of the history. But the more I sort of learned about him as I as I grew older, went to graduate school and was studying the historical emergence of religious freedom, I discovered that Penn himself was someone who seemed like everybody had heard of, but most people didn't know much about, didn't know really when some people thought he was around during the American Revolution, some thought he lived in the Middle Ages. Nobody quite knew. And so this led me down a sort of bit of a rabbit hole where I spent about a decade of my life digging in and finding out that he was just a fascinating individual who left us, of course, a great legacy, but was really just quite a remarkable person in his time.

Speaker 1:58

So let's just get some of the basics out of the way for somebody who might not, as usual, a whole lot. When was he born?

Speaker 1 2:05

1644.

Speaker 2:07

When did he die?

Speaker 1 2:08

1718. So he died. So he died a good 60 years before the American Revolution.

Speaker 2:15

Exactly. But he was like 70 some years old when he died. That was pretty unusual for someone to do that.

Speaker 1 2:21

Yeah, so he I will say, yes, he did he did spend the last uh five or six years of his life pretty disabled. He had a he had a pretty major stroke in 1712, and his wife Hannah kind of took over management of things, including Pennsylvania during that time.

Speaker 2:34

Where was he born?

Speaker 1 2:36

He was born in London.

Speaker 2:38

And what was his family like?

Speaker 1 2:40

Well, his father was a naval commander. His father was a very adroit politician who fought on the parliamentary side in the English Civil War, between Parliament and the King, and then flipped years later. And so he was very skilled at sort of not only skilled at naval, winning naval battles, but also sort of maintaining his own career. And his mother, we don't know a whole lot about, but we do know that he spent a lot of time with her as a young boy since his father was off in the Navy.

Speaker 3:09

So what did he look like?

Speaker 1 3:12

You know, that's a great question. There's a lot of controversy. No one knows, there's not a really definitive portrait of him. There are portraits of him later in life. There's a portrait of a young man wearing a coat of armor that actually is on the cover of the of the biography that is reputed to be Penn. I want to think that it is him, because it's really quite a remarkable uh portrait. We do know that he lost a bit of his hair, and as a man who lost a bit of his own hair, I've always identified with that. And the reason why we know this is because he used to wear wigs and Quakers who were very simple and plain, committed to sort of plain clothing and plain dress, there was some controversy about this, and he had to assure them that it was simply a result of his of his childhood bout of smallpox, that he wasn't sort of expressing vanity when he when he was wearing wigs.

Speaker 4:05

I have to tell you, when I look at uh what is considered portraits of him in later I'm sorry, I say Quaker Oats logo.

Speaker 1 4:15

I mean Yes. Well, the the the Quaker Oats guy was never claimed it was never claimed that he was Penn. The folks at the at the company, someone once claimed that it was someone named Larry. I mean, who knows? But but yes, there is certain there's a certain Quaker vibe that you get uh from that from that image. What was his personality like? Well, we you know again, these are these are one of the reasons why I got so interested in him is because there is so little, there's relatively little known about him in terms of the introspection. Sort of we don't have a you know a lifelong diary, we don't we have we have a lot of correspondence, and I worked through that. One thing that sort of struck me as I learned more about him and about his personality is as you can probably imagine, someone who had such a you know outsize historical impact, he had sort of visionary ideas about how society ought to be run, uh society where people could live according to their conscience and so on. He also was easily offended. He he grew up with servants. I said his father was after his naval career, he then served in parliament. So they were sort of well, they were, they were, they were well off. He uh he was easily offended. He was not so good with money. Uh he spent time in a debtor's prison late in his life. So I think one of the things about his life, his personality as well as his life, is that there are these great sort of high moments and there are these really low moments. And in some ways, sort of that's the drama that I found so compelling about Penn's life.

Speaker 5:47

Did I read someplace that he was a runner?

Speaker 1 5:49

It was a runner. There are there are a lot of stories about what he might or might not have done. There's a story about him, yes, being one of the most gifted athletes in his grammar school class. Um, again, we have no we have no knowledge if this is true or not, but again, that's that's part of the story, is all the stories.

Speaker 6:08

How many times was he married?

Speaker 1 6:11

Twice. His he was married once to Gulielma, and she died young, she was sickly, then he was married to Hannah, and they were married for roughly the same uh amount of time each.

Speaker 6:22

How many children did he have?

Speaker 1 6:24

Oh Lord, I knew you were gonna ask me that. Many. You know, I I if I if if if I were if I were better prepared, I would have a number for you.

Speaker 6:33

But we're talking more than seven.

Speaker 1 6:37

Yeah, we're talking, we're talking in the seven to ten range. And now now I will say this in those times many children didn't didn't uh survive the first year or two. Um so that gives you two different sets of numbers you could talk about. But but yes, he he hadn't he had numerous children.

Speaker 6:53

So I have a quote from you uh from your book, and it might help us set the scene for what was going on in the period. You say William Penn entered a world racked by religious and political discord, civil war, and social unrest.

Speaker 1 7:12

Yes. Well, I mentioned a minute ago about his father serving in the English Civil War, Penn born in 1644. The English Civil War broke out in 1642 and went for basically the rest of that decade. So during the time that he was a young boy, his father was very much in the midst of this armed conflict between Parliament and the king, which took place for religious reasons, for political reasons, a complicated sort of set of debates over who was the sort of supreme political authority and how they ought to orient both the state and the church. Now, the culmination of the 1640s, the culmination of this civil war is this really sort of traumatic event where they they put the king on trial, the parliamentary forces put the king on trial and behead the king, Charles I, in 1649. And so what's interesting about that is not simply that it was sort of a shocking and monumental thing to have happened, but also it set the stage for a lot of what came later. In other words, when Penn comes around in the 1670s and 1660s and 70s, arguing on behalf of things like religious freedom, he's got sort of a whole historical backdrop where people associate religious dissenters and political dissenters with civil war and violence and political upheaval and the execution of a king and so on and so on. And so we often think that things like religious freedom are just obviously a good thing, and that's everyone ought to be on board. But for Penn and his and his allies, they really had to make a very strong case that the way to a peaceful society was to find a way to allow people with widely varying religious views to live together, that it was going to lead to a better society, not to just more of the conflict that had been going on in the past.

Speaker 9:06

So when did he first find Quakerism?

Speaker 1 9:11

Sure. In the in in roughly 1667, he was traveling in Ireland, in Cork, on the on the south uh coast of Ireland. In his 20s, then. In his twenties, yes. And he was there because his father, again, I'm not mentioning how he was well connected, um, his father had been granted thousands of acres of Irish land for his service to the English crown. And of course, as a as an Irish American, this is the part of the story that is not my favorite part to tell. But while he was there negotiating with the tenants on the Penn Land on his father's behalf, is when he first encountered a Quaker meeting. Well, he may have me he may have encountered one earlier, but that's what this is where he had the real sort of transformative religious experience. And that was really the moment that set him on the course that would eventually lead him to Pennsylvania. It was the it was the uh the the occasion of his first imprisonment for being a Quaker, which was illegal at the time. And it was also the occasion of his first written defense of religious liberty. So 1667 in Ireland was a was a big, big moment in his life. And in some ways, it really is hard to understand Pennsylvania without understanding how important Ireland was.

Speaker 10:25

So what did it mean to be a Quaker then? And maybe as a sidebar, is it different than what it means to be a Quaker today?

Speaker 1 10:32

I think it is. I mean, we we often think of Quakers as peaceful, understated. I'm trying to think of other words, right? But maybe I'll go back and answer your first question, which was what did it mean then? It was um extremely controversial. They were extremely unpopular, they were considered to be the worst kind of anarchists, um, because the Quakers began from a premise that there is something of God in each person. They later called it the inner light, and that that sort of fundamental spiritual reality ought to be the governing fundamental insight around which this community forms. So this is why you have men and women taking up sort of preaching uh responsibilities, you have a kind of anti-hierarchical view, there's a real resistance to things like creeds where everyone has to say what they believe, because the idea is that you have God inside you and you have a sort of a direct, immediate potential for a direct and immediate relationship to God. You don't need a priest, you don't need a pastor, and you but you do have sort of a need for a supportive community around you, but it's a community of a certain kind. So this was considered to be undermine some of the hierarchies that were kind of taken for granted, that clergy should go to a university first and get a degree, and that people who are sort of socially superior ought to get deference from their from lower classes and so on. All these things are kind of thrown into question by this Quaker principle of spiritual equality.

Speaker 12:08

So, with his father in the military, that must have set up an interesting relationship.

Speaker 1 12:13

Well, his father was not real wild about him becoming a Quaker. Um, his father had plans for him. His father had plans that he would sort of join the elites the way his father had, and that he would play a role in respectable society. And when his father found out what had happened in Ireland in 167 uh 67, he summoned him home immediately. And it was a really, really unpleasant conversation that ensued. And even kicked him out of the house for a period of time.

Speaker 12:42

So I have another quote for you from your book, and I hope you could expand on it a little bit. You said Quakerism surely provided the bedrock of his identity from the moment he joined the Society of Friends in 1667. But William Penn's life is too complex to be viewed through only a single lens. Explain that.

Speaker 1 13:06

Well, one of the things I was sort of getting at is that a lot of the really important studies of Penn, previous biographies, accounts of his life have been written by Quakers who understand that particular aspect of his of his uh career as sort of the fundamental thing. I myself am not a Quaker, though I'm I have a great deal of sort of uh respect for it for its its historical legacy and and its values. I'm uh trained as a political theorist, so I'm very interested in sort of where political ideas come from. And they generally don't come just from one place, they come from lots of places. And so one of the things that is really important to, I think, understand about Penn's emerging political theory is that a good chunk of it surely does come from his idea about spiritual equality. He also has a number of sort of, he has other important sources in his, in his sort of arsenal, you might say. Though for a pacifistic Quaker, you probably shouldn't use the word arsenal, right? For example, the important role played by Magna Carta and sort of a constitutional tradition. The thing that makes him a real national celebrity in some ways is his is a trial in 1670 where he's put on trial. Uh the government closes the Quaker meeting house, so they can't hold their meetings there. So they go out into the street and they meet right out in front of the building. And Penn stands up and starts preaching. And this is illegal, you're not allowed to do this, it's an unauthorized religious gathering. And they arrest him for creating a riot and they put him on trial. And the only thing that saves him from a lengthy jail term is a jury that refuses to convict him. And so this becomes a sort of a bedrock political principle. So that you'll you'll notice if you go to the founding documents of Pennsylvania, jury trial is fundamental. Um, and this comes straight from Magna Carta. And so I think what I was getting at in that passage is that Quakerism is absolutely central. And it's it's it's the core, it's certainly the core of what he understood to be his sort of his own exist his own spiritual existence. But he was sort of in the world as part of a political alliance of a whole bunch of different types of groups, some of which had religious dimensions, other which didn't. And so there's a lot of different things going on. That's sort of what makes him so interesting.

Speaker 15:25

So, at what time do we get to the point where the thought of going to the colonies and beginning this new life in the area that ended up being called Pennsylvania?

Speaker 1 15:35

Yeah, well, it's interesting because, so I said 1667, he becomes a Quaker, 1670, he has this sort of famous trial. And really, for the next decade, from 1670 to 1680 or so, he's one of the leading figures of a sort of political movement that's aiming for uh religious freedom for both Protestants and depending on who you ask and when you ask it, Catholics, there's always a bit of a question there. But it's largely through the lack of success in this movement that sort of pushes him to think maybe you know beyond England itself. He didn't really, he had never been to America before he went in 1682. But the the the story of the 1670s, to me, it's a fascinating story because he he seems to be everywhere. He's arguing and debating with everybody, he's publishing dozens of pamphlets about political and religious freedom. And yet this coalition is repeatedly stymied because the government just is refuses, the government is dominated by Anglicans who have a stake in preserving things, sort of the religious established church the way it is. And so it's only really in 1680 or so that that he begins to sort of explore this other option through this idea that the crown owed his father a debt from years back that had never been paid to him. And so it's not clear, there's some question about what exactly the debt was, how much it was, but he got the king, Charles II, uh, to grant him this tract of land and then set about sort of articulating through a frame of government and a set of laws what it would look like to envision a society where people would not be penalized for acting on their sort of conscientious uh principles. And so that's sort of where we get to the Pennsylvania chapter of the story.

Speaker 17:30

How did he get to be the head of the area of Pennsylvania and the founding of Philadelphia? He was only 38 when he came to the colonies.

Speaker 1 17:38

It's remarkable to me. And I say this to my students, you know, he's 38. That's amazing, isn't it? And they say, Yeah, that's so old. I'm like, no, that's actually that's actually amazingly young. So he was what was called a proprietor, and what this means is that the king had granted him authority over this tract of land. It was it was bounded on, you know, in various ways by New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and and so on. So he was ostensibly the ruler of this place, and he himself was the governor, appointed himself governor. But to get back to what we were saying a minute ago about other pieces of his political sort of ideology, talked about juries. The other thing to say is that he was really sort of found it really important that there be representative institutions, that there be some way for the people to gather, to inform their representatives about what's sort of the the everyday sort of things that that go into forming a robust and prosperous community. So there was a general assembly that was going to be set up. And so he he spends 1681 and early 1682 laying down the rules, selling land to people, attracting investors. And then he goes over in 1682, spends two years there, you're literally measuring, you know, helping measure out plots of land, overseeing the institutional foundations and sort of getting things up and running.

Speaker 19:06

Did he like the the colonies?

Speaker 1 19:08

Did he like the colonies? That's a great question. I think that by it it depends on when you ask him, I guess. I mean, that first that first visit, the 1682 to 84, it was really, he was kind of, I think, in the flush of kind of a visionary moment where he had the idea that that that he sort of was going to be able to bring this thing into existence that was sort of unable to be brought into existence in the old world. As I said, he was the proprietor and he had a sort of vision. So I think it's not surprising, perhaps, that he wasn't always interested in hearing a lot of criticism of the vision that he had. And after all, he you know his consideration was that he had sacrificed a great deal for this, and therefore he was the he was due some deference. The story, in some ways, he so he's over there for two years, then he goes back to England because of a legal dispute with Baltimore, who was his southern neighbor. And in some ways, the story from that point on is a story of increasing kind of tension and alienation with the Pennsylvanians. I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't, he's gone for 15 years before he actually returns again. So a lot of the people there had very little contact with him. They considered him to be a bit of a meddling outsider who wasn't really in tune with the situation on the ground. He considered himself, in the meantime, to be entitled to tell them what they should be doing. So it's a it's a very it's a complicated question that you that you ask.

Speaker 20:37

How did the name Pennsylvania finally end up being Pennsylvania?

Speaker 1 20:43

Well, right, and Penn has the story that he wanted to name it New Wales. New Wales. New Wales. This is his story. And his his along with that story is the idea that one of the royal secretaries, who was actually Welsh, nixed that idea. So then he wanted to call it Sylvania Woods Forest. And and his and the way he tells the story, his the the king insisted on being named Pennsylvania. And Penn was always very clear to tell people it wasn't named after him, it was named after his father, because the king had known his father from when there was there were associates in in the Navy. And so this was, I think, a way to try to ward off any claims of vanity for which would be very unquakerly, right? To name something after yourself. So now, of course, his father had the same name that he did, William Penn. So who knows? But that's that's the story of how the name came about.

Speaker 21:38

So people who have said that William Penn, that Pennsylvania is named for William Penn all these years are wrong.

Speaker 1 21:46

I'm just telling you what this the story that he told.

Speaker 21:49

It's very it's and that's the story he told.

Speaker 1 21:52

That's the story he told. Now, now it's I will say this it's it's it could be true, right? King could have named it after his father, of course, but they both had the same name. So I have no uh ruling on whether this is true or not.

Speaker 22:04

So the second time he traveled to the colonies, he was in his mid-50s.

Speaker 1 22:09

Yeah, he came back. It was so he left in 1684 and it was 1699 till he came back.

Speaker 22:14

And so what happened during that period?

Speaker 1 22:17

Well, that's the that's I'm talking about the high highs and the low lows of his of his life. I mean, the high highs, I think, are really the sort of the first few years of Pennsylvania. He's really quite dynamic and engaged. Uh he comes back to to England in 1684, which was really, I think, a fateful decision. He kind of had to because he was in this border dispute with Lord Baltimore, and if he had been ruled against, he could have lost the port and it would have been would have been really bad for Philadelphia. But when he comes back, he actually wins the case, but he he's recruited into sort of a political campaign by the king at the time, James II, who ends up getting deposed and dethroned in what they call the glorious revolution of 1688. I was saying it's it's glorious for lots of people, but but not for William Penn and not for James II, because James has the idea that religious freedom ought to be brought to England. And so he appeals to Penn to help him. James is Catholic, which is a real problem for an English king. And so after he's dethroned, he flees to France in 1688 and he gets away. Penn, as one of the most high-profile allies of this now deposed king, he's under suspicion, he's got warrants out for his arrest, he goes in hiding for two for several years, he loses control of the colony for a couple of years. Um so it's a really it's a really difficult period of his life. And it's so it's only then 1699 till he feels that he can get back, and he's also got increasing money difficulties. And it's really only 1699 till he comes, till he comes back to Pennsylvania. And he's there for a few years, and it's it's clear, I think, that the kind of the the early glow of excitement and cre and the creative moment, it's it's kind of passed by. And and there are a lot of people there who have the view that they've spent the last 15 years trying to make this place work, and he just doesn't quite get the way it is. So it's really, it's a very tense situation, and and it really is, it's kind of it was unfortunate to read and it wasn't really pleasant to write about, to be honest, but but it's there is a lot of a lot of bitterness between the in the between the two sides.

Speaker 24:30

So you're listening to We Love PA History, and it's a podcast of the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation. Our guest is Andrew Murphy. He is your chair of the political science department.

Speaker 1 24:42

I am, that's right, yes.

Speaker 24:43

At the University of Michigan. And in 2019, he authored the book William Penn a Life. Now you've also written other books just about the Penn philosophies, right? And so you've kind of flushed out not only the Quakerism, but some of these other ideas?

Speaker 1 25:00

Right. Yeah, it's it's actually a fascinating story, again, because it's something that I think a lot of us just sort of take for granted. Well, religious freedom, it's a good thing. Why would someone be against it? They must be small-minded or bigoted. It's actually, it was a really robust historical conversation. In the earlier period in the 17th century in England, it's an argument that involves making claims about true Christianity, right? The idea that that true Christianity doesn't persecute and it's meek and humble and and all of that. There's an economic argument about freedom. If you want to have a thriving, robust economy and a prosperous society, persecuting people is not a great way to achieve that. There are political sort of arguments, like I was saying, that that draw on Magna Carta and other kinds of political documents. Um there's a whole range of different, but then there are also really compelling arguments on the other side that were historically really powerful. Like I was saying, that the association that religious dissent equals political dissent, and that there's something there was, you know, like any uh argument that involves sort of the Bible, there's lots of things you can go in there and get. So for everyone who's arguing Jesus said don't persecute, there's someone saying, well, Romans 13 says obey the government. And so these are really fascinating arguments that I think are worth, it's worth sort of remembering or sort of rediscovering how complicated they were, because they were really complicated.

Speaker 26:27

You mentioned earlier about the records of William Penn. Where does one go to find the records of William Penn?

Speaker 1 26:35

Well, there are they're in a number of places. If you're if there they're on there are on 14 reels of microfilm, and you can you can find those at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Not on my old. Some things are online, some things are not. It's a complicated, it's a complicated question. There's a lot of it at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Some things you can get to online, some things uh you can't. But and one of the things that has been really important in knowing, in learning about Penn is the important role played by a number of Quaker historians over the course of the 20th century. And their interest in Penn was sort of driven by their own Quakerism and their sense that Quakerism had this really important historical role. And so it's sort of thanks to a lot of those scholars that we really have what we have.

Speaker 27:18

So we've learned a lot about William Penn, and the question comes up: did he have slaves?

Speaker 1 27:24

The answer is yes.

Speaker 27:27

How do you explain that?

Speaker 1 27:29

Yeah, though this is a this is a really interesting question. I think it's it's one of the things that made that that makes the study of history so so fascinating and so interesting is you have sort of simultaneously an individual who is able to envision a very different kind of society and very different kind of world than he saw when he looked around him. A world where a variety of different religious groups would could live together in a in a community where they sort of all pitched in for their own common good, which was not the world that was that he saw around him in many ways. And yet things that we take as sort of equally obvious just didn't. Now, I I wish I could give you an answer as to why he didn't see this, right? And I think it's also what makes it even more of a of a challenging topic is that Quakerism came to be associated as one of the leading sort of movements in American history for abolition and against slavery. That's in the 18th century and the 19th century. Penn is a 17th century figure. So, you know, again, it's it's it's simply it's simply a fact that there were slaves at Pensbury and they were they were sort of household, they were sort of household slaves. Uh it wasn't like he had a you know a large plantation system like we see in the South, but I'm I'm not trying to say it's any, you know, any more or less problematic. What's the name of his home? Pensbury is, yes, and it's as it's a wonderfully reconstructed, it's been wonderfully reconstructed. I highly recommend people go and visit. It sits right on the Delaware River. And it's it's been we we don't know exactly what the house looked like, but we have the sort of the the fact it's been reconstructed from the foundations, and they do a they do a wonderful job out there. I highly recommend people visit if possible.

Speaker 29:21

So the legacy of William Penn, has that been hurt by the discussion of his having slaves?

Speaker 1 29:30

Yeah, I don't know. I might not be the one to I might not be the one to ask. I think when I when I sort of think about the value of understanding historical figures, I think I tend to sort of go and try to avoid two extremes. One is kind of hero worship, right? Everything they did was because they did this great thing, therefore everything they did was great, and anything else was just to be ignored. Um, I think that's not helpful because it's not it's not the historical record. Um, I also think if we make the shortcomings or the blind spots the only thing, we can also lose sort of an appreciation of what he did do. And so I think it's one of the things I was hoping for in writing William Penn a Life is to have sort of a broad picture of sort of warts and all, you might say. Because I think some of the work that came before, some of the previous biographies didn't even mention it, the the slave issue. To me, it's a piece of the picture, it's not the whole picture, but it makes it's not responsible to pretend that it's not part of the picture.

Speaker 30:34

In the introduction of your book, you say that William Penn is important not only in historical, a historical sense, but also in a contemporary sense. So what's the contemporary sense?

Speaker 1 30:48

Well, I think I think that the uh we may we might be tempted sometimes to think that things like religious freedom or liberty of conscience, that that these are kind of like settled, we've we've already figured this out, right? It's a safe, established freedom. I don't necessarily think that politics works that way. And anything that can be achieved can be lost and often and often is. So I think the fact is that there are still religious minorities in in the United States and in other countries who face exclusion, marginalization, persecution, and and more generally, the challenge of what you might call living lives of conscientious integrity. Whatever it is that you find to be sort of the core existential foundation of your identity, being able to live in a world that that that allows you to live that out to the fullest amount possible. So I think that's that sort of struggle, ongoing sort of aspiration is is never is never fully realized. And so I think that's one of the things the that that sort of the pen legacy is still worth reflecting on.

Speaker 31:58

Is your book still available?

Speaker 1 32:00

I certainly hope so. Last I checked. Yes. Yes, absolutely. What's your next book? Oh my. The next book uh is a book about political martyrs. So you have a sort of religious martyrs, are a particular kind of, but to me, there's the same way that I have interest in pen. I'm very interested in the way people's religious people put their religious and their political views together to sort of make their way through the world as they see it. So we have obviously the term martyr is sort of a religiously driven term, um, but there are all sorts of of political individuals who are sort of whose deaths are made into sort of the the foundations of social movements. And I'm still working it out. So I haven't got all the things, I can't give you the full story. But there's a whole, but there's a lot, whether it's people like Abraham Lincoln or you have current arguments over people like George Floyd, Ashley Babbitt in the January 6th riots. There's a it's a it's a phenomenon that a wide range of different political groups um uses to kind of build and mobilize their communities. So that's that's all I can get you right now.

Speaker 33:05

So when you go into your classroom, do you teach William Penn in your classroom, Mike?

Speaker 1 33:10

Not much, actually. I don't really know what.

Speaker 33:14

Well, thank you for joining us. Andrew Murphy is the chair of the political science department at the University of Michigan. He is a professor there and the author of the 2019 book, William Penn A Life. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 33:28

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 33:35

And that's today's story from We Love PA History. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and share it with someone who loves Pennsylvania as much as you do. You can help others discover these stories by leaving a quick rating or review. It really makes a difference. The We Love PA History podcast is produced by Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advances awareness, understanding, and appreciation of Pennsylvania's history and heritage. The Markosky Engineering Group, Incorporated, is a proud sponsor of the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation, which carries out its mission on behalf of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the citizens of Pennsylvania. Markosky is pleased to sponsor the We Love PA History podcast. For more information about Markosky and its significant Pennsylvania history, visit Markosky.com. That's Markosky.com. To learn more, see photos and explore the places we talked about today. Visit us at PAHeritage.org. Or follow us on Facebook at Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation. I'm Connie Doebele. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep exploring Pennsylvania's past. Because Pennsylvania history isn't just history, it's our story.