Corporately, we have never known, since Friends were first out of the early persecutions, such a purification as we shall need now. What is this worldliness which I say is throttling our witness and giving the hollow ring of pretension to what we say? It is chiefly characterized by our uncritical and insensitive attitude toward our insatiable material wants. . . [We] make a god of the American standard of living, with its implications of competition and oppression, its dependence on preparation for war, not to say mongering of war, and with its effect of speeding up our lives, dispersing out attention, squandering our powers. . .

This brings us to distinguish love of the world from worldliness. Worldliness is a form of world-denying. World-affirming means the full acceptance and enjoyment of the creation, and we do not rightly praise the Creator unless we enjoy and rightly use his creation. He is praised in the delight of sound and taste and form; the hearable, tastable, tangible things of the earth are good and worthy to be praised, and not just works of nature but the handiwork of [humans] too. . .

Mildred Binns Young, Another Will Gird You: A Message to the Society of Friends. Pendle Hill Pamphlet #109 (1960)