So how did it turn out, this Holy Experiment?<\/p>\n
In modern popular culture, the verdict is often rendered with a sneer.\u00a0 \u201cCity of Brotherly Love\u201d has turned into a phrase invoked more often in sarcasm than admiration.<\/p>\n
In 1994, a Gallup Poll named Philadelphia America\u2019s most hostile place. The most durable stereotypes about the city cluster around its fans\u2019 penchant for booing and the colorfulness of its crime and corruption.<\/p>\n
So William Penn\u2019s choice can sometimes seem less destiny<\/em> than irony.<\/em><\/p>\n But that judgment is neither complete nor fair. It ignores so much evidence.<\/p>\n Thanks to its founder\u2019s impetus, and to the furthering energy of citizens from Benjamin Franklin to Richard Allen, from Lucretia Mott to John Wanamaker, from Richardson Dilworth to Mary Scullion, Philadelphia has remained one of America\u2019s most inventive laboratories for exploring the civic potential of brotherly love and sisterly affection.<\/p>\n Its history can be read as a long duel between destiny and irony, each vying to seize the upper hand in interpreting City of Brotherly Love<\/em>.\u00a0 Philadelphia hosts a continuing dialogue about what brotherly love looks like in the civic sphere.<\/p>\n Be clear on this:\u00a0 It won\u2019t do to reduce the notion of brotherly love<\/em> to saccharine sentiment, to feelings only tender and soft.<\/p>\n Brotherly love<\/em> does not imply the absence of conflict. Have you ever seen young brothers together?\u00a0 Their bond, strong as cement though it might be, gets expressed often as not through competing, jousting, gibes, and dares.<\/p>\n Anger is also a way to express caring, and in Philadelphia\u2019s long history, a common one.\u00a0\u00a0 Even today, some of Philadelphia\u2019s best rowhouse citizens, who work doggedly to keep blocks decent and children safe, regard their hometown with what can only be called an angry love.\u00a0\u00a0 It is loyal, it endures \u2013 but it has spikes and edges.<\/p>\n Like the nation that chose this city (and not by accident) as the spot to declare, then define, itself, Philadelphia has struggled to define brother<\/em>. Who is inside the circle, who not?<\/p>\n The city\u2019s story follows a cycle: high aspiration thwarted by weakness, strife, and division, then redeemed by a new round of noble struggle, which broadens understanding and widens the circle.<\/p>\n Penn himself, while nobly distinguished among colonizers for his fair and respectful relations with the native Lenape, had a blind spot about blacks. He owned slaves, and excluded blacks from many of the protections of Pennsylvania’s charter. While he founded his city upon a writ of religious tolerance that made it a rare and fruitful haven, he still excluded Catholics, Jews, and Muslims from the franchise.<\/p>\n Some Quakers later on repaired the lapses of Penn and other forebears, becoming leaders of the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad.\u00a0 Richard Allen and Absalom Jones helped advance Penn\u2019s vision of religious freedom by insisting that it extended to the black person as well.<\/p>\n Abolitionist Lucretia Mott also sounded the clarion call that women, too, deserved a full role in America\u2019s civic drama \u2013 that in fact, they were vital to bringing phileo <\/em>to the polis.<\/em><\/p>\n As Philadelphia thrived, thanks in no small part to Penn\u2019s legacy of openness, immigrants poured in.\u00a0 The inevitable backlash flared, especially in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 The Nativist riots of 1844 in Kensington were anti-Catholic bias at its ugliest. But in the long run the disorder helped make the case for the consolidation of the city into a larger, more governable but also more diverse whole.<\/p>\n Back and forth through the decades the dialogue flows around the city\u2019s public squares, noisily and sometimes violently: Will the City of Brotherly Love embrace the destiny of its name, or reject it with cruel irony?<\/p>\n Along with dark moments \u2013 riots and beatings and tribal corruptions –\u00a0 Philly has birthed great testaments to shared civic bonds, from Fairmount Park<\/a> to the settlement houses to the Free Library<\/a> to the Mural Arts Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n Its National League ball team once taunted Jackie Robinson most shamefully, but the Phillies now boast two beloved African American MVPs, whose jerseys are proudly worn on backs white as well as black.<\/p>\n Through it all, the legacy of William Penn, his dreams, wisdom and example, still hums in the city\u2019s blood \u2013 despite our cantankerous failings, our ritual suspicions about the latest bidders to join the circle of brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n Philadelphia, by its very name, is an unfinished dream of civic feeling and common purpose, an audacious wager upon the better angels of our nature.<\/p>\n We, the heirs and inhabitants of a city named for love, remain quick to anger, prickly and prideful, wary of the new.<\/p>\n It is our way, and God knows we have some reason for it.<\/p>\n But we are also stubborn in love, fierce in loyalty, and our embrace of those we let inside the circle is warm, protective and unfailing.<\/p>\n We need to let more in, and more easily, with fewer tests.<\/p>\n But we Philadelphians are young, still, in this Holy Experiment, and still learning.<\/p>\n May the Spirit that inspired civic heroes such as William Penn, Absalom Jones,\u00a0 Barnard Gratz and\u00a0 St. Katharine Drexel to the heights of brotherly love and sisterly affection continue to guide us.<\/p>\n Chris <\/strong>Satullo <\/strong>is Executive Director of News and Civic Dialogue at WHYY. (Author information current at time of publication.)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12951,"template":"","egp_featured_subjects":[],"class_list":["post-1549","egp_themes","type-egp_themes","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_themes\/1549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_themes"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/egp_themes"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_themes\/1549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38710,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_themes\/1549\/revisions\/38710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"egp_featured_subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_featured_subjects?post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Helping_Hands-150dpi-1-300x277.jpg\" "\\"Helping")
<\/a>Destiny vs. Irony<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Penn\u2019s Legacy Persists<\/strong><\/h3>\n