One theme unifies Woolmans thought: his recognition of the need for the people to connect with each other and with God. He believed that all of Gods creatures are connected. He said he had been baptized into a feeling sense of the condition of others. At other times he felt mixed in with the oppressed so that he no longer considered himself as a distinct or separate being. He struggled against the worlds great barriers and separations whether between races, classes, the rich and the poor, people and nature, and humankind and God. The Woolman House is dedicated to continuing this struggle against separations with the hope that:
All these separations and gaps shall be
taken up and hooked and linked together,
The whole earth, this cold, impassive,
voiceless earth, shall be completely justified,
Nature and Man shall be disjoined and
diffused no more,
The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse them.
-Walt Whitman
Passage to India
I was convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true justice and goodness, not only toward all men, but also toward the brute creatures.
-Woolman's Journal
....to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives.
-A Plea for the Poor
There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind; which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren in the best sense of the expression.
-Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes
John Woolman, his journal
Woolman Central
