Brooklyn Quaker

A Visitor to a Quaker Meeting

2011-08-27T14:12:00.003-04:00

I was told of this post about a non-Quaker's visit to a Friends' Meeting, and thought it might interest others. Let me know what you think.

The blogger who hosted the post is named Evans but is not, as far as I know, relaed to me.

- - Rich

Advices in Active Voice - A Meat-and-Potatoes Paraphrase

2011-02-26T21:44:00.013-05:00

In theory, I have always felt that the Advices and Queries in each Yearly Meeting's Book of Faith and Pracice are vitally imporant for our life as a Religious Society of Friends. They should give us something meaty to chew on. If they really did, then the oft-quoted postscript "these things we do not lay on you as a rule or form to walk by" would be welcome - a warning to chew carefully and not swallow whole. But such a postscript becomes unnecessary if the advices themselves go down like watery soup.

As a practical matter, the Advices do not seem to be read, quoted or consulted very often in the Meetings I have known. Part of the reason, I now believe, is the style in which they are presented (after generations of rewrites by committees). They are mostly cast in the passive voice ("Friends are advised..., Friends are urged..., Friends are earnestly cautioned", etc.) In addition some of the actual advice is padded with unnecessary explanatory material ("From the beginnings of our society we have found it necessary... etc. etc.)

At the risk of hubris, I've now therefore tried doing my own rewrite of the Advices of NYYM - not to change the substance but to try to punch up the language just a little. I haven't left anything out because I disagreed with it, nor put anything in because I think it needs to be added. I've tried to keep as much of the actual functioning part of the original language as possible. It feels to me as if my new rendering is a tad more clear and more helpful than the original.

Please read the original 16 advices (you'll find them at this location in the New York Yearly Meeting website). Then compare them to my 16 "revised" advices below. I'd like to know what Friends think.

Advice to Friends from The Yearly Meeting
1. Hold regular public meetings for worship. Wait expectantly for divine guidance. Be diligent and punctual in attendance. Believe in and depend upon our Creator.

2. Read frequently the Scriptures and other books that inspire and instruct. Encourage your families and others to do so also.

3. Be mindful of your conduct and conversation. Observe the testimonies of simplicity and moderation.

4. Observe our Christian testimony for a faithful ministry of the gospel under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Remember that all have a responsibility in ministry.

5. Parents and teachers, exercise a loving and watchful care over children and youth. Meetings, help parents and children share religious experiences at home and in the meeting for worship. Give them an understanding of the principles and practices of Friends.

6. Parents and older Friends, be sensitive to the insights of younger people and keep a close and sympathetic contact with them. Children, love and respect your parents.

7. Work toward removing the causes of misery and suffering. Support efforts to overcome racial, social, economic, and educational discrimination. Bear testimony against all forms of oppression. Work for such treatment of prisoners as may help reconstruct their lives. Work for the abolition of the death penalty.

8. Refrain from practices that are detrimental to the body or the mind, such as the use of intoxicants and tobacco, and the misuse of drugs.

9. Avoid participation in lotteries, gambling, and betting, including schemes of chance that appeal as benevolences. Refrain from hazardous speculation. Do not engage in business that may be questionable.

10. Observe integrity in your living. Inspect frequently the state of your temporal affairs. In your dealings with everyone, endeavor to maintain a truly Christian character. Bear in mind the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

11. When contemplating marriage, seek divine guidance. Marriage is a life-long union of spiritual as well as temporal concerns. If you are united in your religious faith, you are likely to find not only a firmer bond of union but also greater strength in fulfilling all of life's undertakings. Therefore, when you contemplate marriage, acquaint your families and meetings with your intentions early and seek their approval. In this way you may avoid the far-reaching consequences of hasty and ill-considered action. Keep to the simple and solemn form of our marriage ceremony.

12. Conduct funerals and memorial meetings in a sincere spirit of worship. Avoid the display of floral decorations and the wearing of mourning. Adhere to our simple ceremony.

13. Take the opportunity, on occasions when special statements or oaths are required, to advance the cause of truth by simple affirmation, thus emphasizing that your statement is only a part of your usual integrity of speech.

14. Do not take of arms against any person, since "all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons" are contrary to our Christian testimony. Beware of indirectly supporting preparations for war. Examine in this light such matters as non-combatant military service, cooperation with conscription, employment or investment in war industries, and voluntary payment of war taxes. Be prepared to accept the consequences of your convictions. Maintain our testimony against war by supporting peaceful principles and the settlement of differences by peaceful methods. Lend support to all that strengthens international friendship and understanding. Give active help to movements that substitute cooperation and justice for force and intimidation.

15. Avoid any harshness of tone or manner when administering counsel or reproof, either privately or in meetings. Speak truth with love. Remember that if you would do God's work, you must abide in God's love. Even a seeming harshness may check the beginnings of true repentance, and a lack of sympathy may cause harm where only good was intended.

16. In Friends' business meetings, when there seems to be disagreement, encourage a free expression of all opinions. When you speak in meetings for business do not be unduly persistent in advocacy or opposition. After having fully expressed your views, recognize the generally expressed sense of the meeting. A deep and seeking silence can help to reconcile seemingly opposing points of view. Conduct your Meetings in the spirit of wisdom, forbearance, and love.

Only One Christ - A message in Meeting on August 23rd

2009-08-24T14:09:00.003-04:00

The following message was given at 15th Street yesterday (in words pretty close to this, though I am writing now from memory).

Our minds sometimes trick us into thinking that we have to choose between two seemingly different and opposing things when in reality they are only two sides of the same thing. For instance, we may think that we need to choose between justice and peace, between contemplation and action, or between faith and works. We Friends, at various times in our history have been especially prone to fooling ourselves that we have to choose between an "inner" Christ or an "outer" Christ.

If we really did have to make this choice most of us would probably choose the "inner" Christ, if only because it is primarily within us that we are able to hear Him and feel His presence. The Jesus of history may seem far away and hard to be sure about. We like John's description of Christ as the Word that was with God from the Beginning, as the Life that wells up in us, as the Light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world. But John also said of this same Word that at a particular time and place it "became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth". It is important to me to know that when I wait on the living Spirit of Christ in our meetings and feel his presence here that I am also touching at least the outer hem of the garment of that man who "dwelt among us" in the flesh, who got his feet dirty walking the dusty roads of Palestine, who touched people and let them touch him, who started out as a baby and had to "grow in wisdom and in stature" just as we do. Who knew about hunger and thirst and weariness. Who could be tempted. Who was moved by compassion. Who could rejoice with his friends at a wedding and who could endure suffering and even death when that was the price of faithfulness. In worshipping his living Spirit today I am also worshipping the man Jesus Christ, not choosing one over the other.

More Perspective on that dream

2009-07-31T15:06:00.004-04:00

All three commenters on my recent post about a dream picked up on the dream's suggestion of some problems with the Religious Society of Friends. Martin also noted my "optimistic view outside of the meetinghouse" and asked how that's sustained. Actually, I think Martin meant "outside of the dream" rather than "outside of the meetinghouse" since he seemed to be referring to my statement in the post that "my conscious waking understanding of where the RSofF reallly is" is different than the picture presented in the dream.

This post is in part an answer to Martin's question. I also want to talk a little more about the dream itself. I generally assume that any dream reveals more about the dreamer than about the dream's ostensible subject. What this dream reveals may be that I was experiencing some discouragement at the time of the dream and possibly also indulging some self-pity. It is true, as the dream implies, that over time the Religious Society of Friends is losing membership and may also in other ways be going downhill and seem to be in danger of falling. But what about the dream's picture of Friends' obliviousness to this problem and what about its picture of my own place in the Society as an unheeded and nearly irrelevant critic? Is this picture accurate? If so, Martin is right to ask how I can in waking life be optimistic about Friends.

Well, as I said in the original post, this has been a period of some discouragement and sense of loss for me. People I've loved have died in the recent past; others are seemingly on a path of self-destruction; I myself have had significant health problems which are not life-threatening but sometimes lead me to feel diminished both mentally and physically. I'm sure that all of this fed into the dream. I do have realistic worries about the Religious Society of Friends, but it has not been my experience that these are ignored or dismissed by other Friends. Nor do I feel in general that my voice is marginalized or ignored. In the dream, I am sitting in the next to last row of the room where a meeting for business is taking place. Note that no one makes me sit there, it's just where I have placed myself. That being the case, it perhaps not be surprising that my dream-self has trouble making himself heard. I think this reflects a general principle: that in order to be heard in the RSofF or in life generally we have to participate as members of the body. (I notice that Martin extends the metaphor to say that he is sitting outside the meetinghouse altogether. I'm not sure whether he is saying that this is by choice or by some action of exclusion by those inside. From where I sit, Martin seems very engaged with Friends - if not in his own Meeting then surely on the internet).

In waking life I generally sit very close to the front or center of any meeting for worship or business that I attend, and I ususally find that if I make a contribution it is accepted and appreciated (though not always united with). The thing is, though, that all of this usually takes place in my own monthly meeting, where I know most Friends and most Friends know me. I have also been active in New York Yearly Meeting in the past, but the limitations on my vacation time, my energy, and my funds have all prevented me from attending in recent years. That may be why I am feeling more powerless in relation to the YM than in relation to my own meeting. It may also be why I felt myself to be in almost the back row when I had this dream. My waking self, considering the objective facts, would have to remember that I have been offered many chances to sit on Yearly Meeting committees, that I have recently even been asked to contribute an article to the Yearly Meeting's newsletter, Spark, and that there are even several Friends who read my blog when I am able to add to it.

What about the spiritual problems that really do face us as Friends? I acknowledge these problems and I acknowledge that I am unable to solve them. BUT when I focus on my own local Meeting and when I focus, within that meeting, on what I am called to do, then I feel empowered by the Spirit of God to do my part - - and to leave to others the responsibilities they have for their parts. It helps me to know that in fact there are many Friends doing wonderful things in my meeting, and it also helps that I have found reason over the years to come to love the Friends I know here, including some with whom I have serious disagreements. My direct answer to Martin's question about what sustains my optimism is this: I find that -- as I keep coming back to worship and I keep engaging in business meeting and in committees and I manage to be faithful to my own leadings --- I am able to see God at work and be serene about it. When I focus instead on major trends and on matters beyond my control then I lose perspective and the mood that pervaded this dream takes hold.

I have no quarrel with anyone who finds that in order to find Christian fellowship they must look outside of the present-day Society of Friends. For myself, however, I sense that Christ is leading me at this time to keep my Quaker ties very much alive.

- - Rich

My dream about Yearly Meeting

2009-07-26T10:14:00.002-04:00

Last Sunday many Friends from my local meeting left for Silver Bay, New York to attend New York Yearly Meeting summer sessions. I was unable to attend this year (as I have been for several years), so I returned home and went about my usual activities.

Sunday night (or - - strictly speaking - - early Monday morning) I had a dream that seemed to concern the Yearly Meeting. Usually I don't remember my dreams so the very fact that I do remember it makes this one seem important to me. I will narrate it as briefly as I can and then comment on it.

In the dream I was in a large classroom, sitting in almost the back row. The classroom was the site of a meeting for business of the New York Yearly Meeting and the clerk of the meeting (not the person who is the actual clerk of NYYM in waking life) was sitting at the teacher's desk. Someone was reading a proposed State of the Society Report to the Meeting, which was expected to adopt it. As the reading progressed I realized that the room in which we sat was moving. Specifically, it was descending. In part of the dream it seemed to be moving downwards vertically, as an elevator would. In part of the dream it seemed to be moving down steep track as a roller coaster would. No one but me seemed disturbed by this downward motion, but as it became more rapid I began to wonder if we were moving downward at a normal pace or if we actually begun to fall.

As all this was going on I was also listening to the State of Society report and I noticed that it made no mention of a loss of members over the years. A person sitting behind me tried to get the clerk's attention to point this out but was not successful. Finally I called out "clerk,please!" and asked that something be added to the report to acknowledge our loss of members. The clerk responded that the minute had already been approved and it was time to move on to other business. Then I woke up.

comment: This dream is almost certainly about many other things in addition to the Religious Society of Friends and the New York Yearly Meeting. I've been profoundly affected by the loss of old friends to death in the past year and a half and also by the threatened loss of loved ones to disorders such as alcoholism and addiction and disease. Insofar as we and our friends and loved ones are "members of one another", the idea of "losing members" can have very broad application. In addition, my own neurological problems in the past year have made me very conscious of the aging process, of the thought that I may have crested the hill of life and be moving down the other side, and of the thought that I am slowly losing pieces of myself (members). So I admit that all of that may have its place in this dream.

But it's worth noting that ostensibly the dream is about a yearly meeting and its deliberations about its own state. In the dream the yearly meeting is moving downward rapidly and possibly falling. In the dream I am sitting near the back, far from the clerk, nursing doubts and fears that aren't heard. In the dream the meeting takes place in a classroom, but those of us attending it don't seem to be learning anything.

There is a sense of loss in this dream, and a sense of my own role being nearly irrelevant (next-to-last row in the classroom). This is quite different from my conscious waking understanding of where the RSofF really is. I have been very upbeat about Friends for many years. I'm not sure what, if anything, can be learned from this dream either about myself or about our meetings. But I thought it would be good to share it.

Comments welcomed.

Inconvenienced Again

2009-05-28T13:43:00.004-04:00

Faithful readers of this blog (thanks to both of you) may remember that on January 3rd I suffered a seizure that landed me in the hospital for a few days. (See I've been Inconvenienced). At the time it was felt that this was caused by a sudden drop in blood sugar, mainly because a timely jolt of dextrose brought me out of it. It made a certain amount of sense because I am a type 2 diabetic and was taking metformin to keep my blood sugar levels down.

On Tuesday May 26th I suffered a second seizure. Like the first, it took place in my home before I had even risen from sleep for the day. Again the ambulance was called and again I was rushed to the hospital. This time, however, the EMT's measured my blood sugar first, determined that I did NOT have low blood sugar, and did not administer dextrose. I came out of the seizure anyway. So the good news is that my loss of consciousness apparently did not result from low blood sugar. This in turn means that my life was probably never seriously in danger. Further good news, now that a CAT scan, MRI, and EEG have been done, is that I don't seem to have any tumors or internal bleeds that might explain the seizures. The bad news is that I am therefore one of millions of people who definitely have a seizure disorder (or "convlusive disorder") of some kind,but no one knows why. Fortunately there are medications that can prevent such seizures and I am now taking one of them.

Other differences between the two seizures [too much informtion alert for the delicate of sensibility]: this one involved urinary incontinence and also left me sore all over and lame on one side apparently from convulsive tightening of the muscles when it was taking place. In both cases, it took several minutes after emergencing from the seizure for me to remember a lot of mundane facts (such as my address and what day it was) and to orient myself.

Anyway, that's what happened. Not much more to say about it except that I now feel much much better.
- - Rich

Mel Long: 1947 - 2008

2009-04-25T10:18:00.005-04:00

The following was originally posted In July 2008:

Because of an excessively busy and sometimes complicated life, I haven't blogged in quite awhile, and have been procrastinating about finishing some posts on issues that seem important to me.

Right now, though, issues don't seem so important. I feel compelled to say something about Melanie Dee (Mel) Long, a woman whose goodness and vitality very much deserve to be celebrated. Mel died on June 28th in an automobile accident in Brattleboro, Vermont. I learned of this through a phone call from a mutual friend two days later.

I haven't seen Mel in 35 years or more and had only the most minimal contact by mail over the past decade. Yet news of her death came as a terrible blow. To give you a sense of who she was, I am going to draw on a published obituary, a blog item about a memorial for her, and a couple of pieces of her own writing.

The obituary for her was published at the Brattleboro Reformer's website. Lest this obituary someday disappear from the paper's website, I would like to quote it here (minus information on surviving family members that they might or might not want me to quote:
Melanie Dee "Mel" Long, 61, of Brattleboro, died in a car accident on Saturday, June 28. Mel worked as a gardener and pruner in the area and had also done work in the fields of reflexology, massage and dance. She was a regular at the Brattleboro Farmer's Market, offering hand and foot massage. Mel leaves her sisters...her nephew...and nieces. She was predeceased by her parents, Arthur and Dorothy Long. Mel especially enjoyed contra-dancing at the Greenfield Grange. She loved singing and harmonizing, and she played fiddle and guitar. She was deeply drawn to beauty in nature and loved hiking Mount Monadnock, and one of her very favorite places was Sunset Lake. Mel recently said that she loved growing her own vegetables at her new home on Black Mountain Road because it made her feel connected. Mel was very spiritual, feeling one with living creatures, and she had an affinity for aspects of Native American traditions. In the past couple of years she had enjoyed studying and practicing Spanish. She also cared deeply about other women who struggled emotionally as well as financially. FUNERAL NOTICE: Mel's sisters are planning to hold a memorial remembrance/celebration of her in the Brattleboro area at a later date.Friends and acquaintances who would like to come and/or would like to be in touch with her family at this time are invited to contact....

Mel apparently had quite an impact on those who met her at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market, for they held a memorial service for her (separate from the one that is planned by her family as mentioned in the obituary). This memorial was documented at the blog Rara's Market Watch. If you link to this website you will see two photographs from the memorial. One of these photographs includes a picture-within-the-picture of Mel herself. She is the woman in the picture on the white table who is wearing blue and is pointing at or touching her heart.

A number of other things about Mel are illustrated in a letter she once wrote to Communities Magazine. I'd like to quote that letter in full:

Dear Communities,
I was thrilled to discover a magazine about community living--thank you! I was very excited to read "The Reunion of Souls," by Nann Emerson Chase in the summer issue, about a community based on spirituality and in which the focus of relationships was to assist each other spiritually. ... As I read I started to get an uncomfortable sense of a lack of humility in the author, but brushed it off in my eagerness to find kindred souls. I've frequently experienced connections with people from other shared lifetimes and was deeply identifying with the words of the author.
Suddenly I read a sentence that stopped me short: "Here we mean someone of the opposite sex, as we believe homosexuality is not of the divine pattern." I've been "out" as a lesbian for 21 years, and though I'm quite familiar with this narrow kind of thinking, it always startles me coming from people who claim to be spiritually "evolved" ...
It's easy to bring our old beliefs about right and wrong to our new spiritual paths without realizing it. I come up against this again and again as I pray for humility, and for Love to be the strongest force in my life. In this society we learned that self-love is wrong, and so we don't want any part of humility because it feels like self-deprecation. It took me many years to realize that this isn't so. It's an aspect of true love of self, accepting the humanness and fallibility of the ego along with the divinity of each person.
In closing I'd appreciate it if you'd print the address of M.A.I.Z.E., the lesbian country magazine from Serafina, New Mexico.
Mel Long
Brattleboro, Vermont

This letter feels to me like a great example of who Mel was. It certainly illustrates her enthusiasm: After all, her first sentence began "I was thrilled...", the second began "I was very excited...". In the time that I knew her, Mel didn't use those words lightly, though she used them often. She really was "thrilled" and "excited" by people, by ideas, and by the possibilities of spiritual growth. The letter illustrates her lifelong interest in community, and explicitly mentions her "eagerness to find kindred souls."

The way she pointed out that writer of an article "lacked humility" and had "narrow ideas" was typical of Mel as I knew her, in that it was forthright to the point of bluntness, but still kind (Read it again, with all the surrounding material to see how she is seeking points of common ground with those she critiques). Her similar forthrightness about her own sexuality was also typical of her. She believed in her own humanity and dignity and defended the same for everyone else, regardless of their sexuality. She carried a special "concern" (as Quakers would call it) for the rights of women. And finally there are her wonderful and subtly balanced words about Love and humility. I had never heard her thoughts about humility before, and I see that she says it took her many years to come to the view that she expressed.

One other piece of her writing (literally her actual penmanship this time) is at this URL. It is a letter written in 2005 to the Water Resources Panel of the State of Vermont urging some restraints on the size of engines in motorboats in the Somerset Reservoir. "It is so important," she wrote, "to have wildernesslike waters for people to have quiet, solitude and see wildlife. It is also important for the wildlife itself!"

Talk to an Ecumenical Gathering in NYC

2009-01-31T12:37:00.004-05:00

I still intend to post some more about my Meeting's welcome leaflet and the issues related to it. However, my limited energies for writing were diverted for a time into the preparation of a talk I gave at an ecumenical prayer service in the neighborhood of 15th Street Meeting. I thought this talk might be of interest to my blog readers. Here it is:

Greetings to you, my brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. I am here as a member of the 15th Street Meeting of Friends, also known as Quakers. We are one of the many faith communities in this neighborhood that has endorsed this ecumenical worship service. I am pleased to join with you in prayer for Christian unity. I am grateful to Immaculate Conception Church for hosting this event, and I am grateful to the other participating faith communities for the part they are playing as well.

I would like to say, before beginning my reflection, that I extend my sympathy and condolences to all here who knew Richard J Neuhaus and who are grieving his recent death. I knew him only by reputation: as a respected and sometimes controversial public figure, and as a brave spokesman for the many causes he believed in. Those of you who knew him as a pastor, a spiritual counselor, and a friend must be feeling his loss all the more acutely. May God bring comfort and consolation to you.

I have been asked to reflect on the passage we have read from the prophet Ezekiel. It is a challenging passage, and it addresses precisely the subject we are praying about this week: the need for unity among God’s people. I will recap the passage briefly and then ask what it has to say to us today.

Ezekiel’s message in this passage - - and even more so in many others - - could be called a multi-media message or an audio-visual message. He not only heard a message from God: he also saw and felt it. He not only proclaimed that message to the people: he acted it out and performed it in front of them so that they would not only hear but also see what God was trying to tell them. In other parts of the book of Ezekiel, we learn that he had visions of flying creatures with four wings, visions of wheels within wheels turning in the air, and - - in an earlier part of the very same chapter from which we just read - - of a valley of dry bones which, when preached to, became clothed with flesh and came alive. Ezekiel was a very intense prophet and his message was nothing if not urgent and impassioned.

In today’s text the imagery is a little tamer than that but it is still very vivid. God told Ezekiel to take two sticks. I picture them as long poles. He was to label each stick with the name of one of the tribes into which the Hebrew people had been divided: Judah for the first stick and Joseph for the second. Then he was to join them together so that they would “become one in your hand”. I picture him here as holding the two sticks above his head for everyone to see, holding them end to end with his hand covering the place where they joined, and showing the people that when held that way they appeared as one long stick.

This visual teaching was to be backed up with a verbal explanation. When the people asked Ezekiel what he meant with his little demonstration, Ezekiel was to answer:
Thus says the Lord God: I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all. Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms. They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes
.

I am sure that when Ezekiel said and did all this he had the full attention of his audience. I am not so completely sure of how they felt about this message. Were they glad or not? On the one hand, he was promising them the very thing that we are praying for today. He was promising them a restoration of unity. They had been separated from each other and God was promising to bring them back together. They had been scattered among the people of other nations and God was promising to gather them in. They had been conquered and oppressed by foreigners and God was promising to give them back their own land with their own government. This must have sounded like very good news indeed.

On the other hand, this unity and ingathering was going to come at a price. The people were going to have to live by God’s laws again. God saw them as having “defiled themselves” and as having transgressed. They were going to have to change. I remember how eagerly I responded in my youth when Bob Dylan sang “The Times They are a’ Changing.” I also remember they very different reaction of some people in my parents’ generation. Every change that is experienced as a promise to some is also experienced as a threat to others, and perhaps as both to most of us.

What does this passage say to the people of today and particularly to the Christian people of today? Do we, like the tribes of Judah and Joseph, suffer from disunity and division? If so, do we sincerely wish to overcome these problems and are we in earnest when we pray to the Lord for healing, reconciliation and unity? If we are in earnest, do we dare to hope that our prayer will be answered? If it indeed is answered, are we prepared to embrace the changes that God may require of us in the process?

My answer to the first question is “Yes, we do suffer from disunity and division.” It goes almost without saying that this is true of the planet at large. We know that nation still lifts up sword against nation, with horrible consequences for soldiers and civilians alike. We know that social and economic classes are pitted against each other in a struggle for economic survival. We know that there is a growing gap between the poverty of the world’s poor and the wealth of the world’s elites. But what is true of the world at large is also true of our Christian Churches. Not only do our various denominations continue to be separate communities, many of them are also riven by internal tensions and divisions. Nor is this just a matter of honestly holding to different beliefs. All too often, these divisions are characterized by mutual suspicion and animosity. It is not yet universally true that people can tell we are Christians by our love for each other.

My answer to the second question is more hopeful: Yes, we do earnestly desire to overcome disunity and we are in earnest when we pray for reconciliation. There is something within us, no doubt sown in our souls by God himself, which yearns for brotherhood and sisterhood. This is felt by all kinds of people, not just Christians. I think it must be because of this yearning that people all over the world responded so hopefully to our recent elections here in the United States. I know that I myself yearn for Christian unity. I imagine that each of you, looking within, can say the same.

My answer to the third question is tentative, but also hopeful. I think we do dare to hope that our prayer for unity will be answered. God may not go so far as to make the Quakers into Roman Catholics or the Roman Catholics into Baptists. We may still need to put our own signs on the sticks that represent our different communions. But if we are willing to be lifted up by Him and to acknowledge Him as our Living God, it does seem possible that he can hold these different “sticks” together and wield them as one to do His work. What that work may turn out to be, I do not know. Maybe God wants us to become a people who are able together:

To practice hospitality for the stranger and alien,
To practice peace toward each other, our neighbors, and even our supposed enemies,
To live the gospel in our daily lives, becoming channels of Peace and Reconciliation in the world around us.

How wonderful it would be to find ourselves used in that work, and to be able to give Him praise and thanks for the privilege of serving Him in this way.

As for the fourth question, the answer to that is at this moment still open. Let us hope that we are prepared to embrace the changes that God may require of us. We are by and large a privileged people living in a privileged land. We have been asking a lot from the earth, from our fellow human beings, and from our other fellow-creatures on this planet to support and sustain the life to which we are accustomed. God, in justice, may ask us to change this. If we are excessively attached to the things we own and the ways we live, it may be very difficult for us to accept these changes.

Likewise, our very divisions have in some ways become comfortable for us. We do not have to spend much time with people that we fundamentally disagree with, or even with people whose customs and habits are different than ours. The patience and tolerance it will take to achieve real unity and begin to work together may also be difficult for us to cultivate. My deepest hope is that with God all things are possible. Imperfect creatures though we are, we are nevertheless indwelt by something from God that can teach us, in the words of Quaker George Fox “how to live and what to deny”. We are meant to be in unity with Him and with one another. We are meant to be “one in His Hand”. And by his grace we can be indeed.

I've been inconvenienced

2009-01-06T16:48:00.002-05:00

I haven't worked on my blog in more than a week. I think I would have done so over the past weekend, but on Friday morning I suffered a seizure (the first one in my 61-year-old life) and spent the weekend in a local hospital.

I'm feeling much better now and went back to work today, but I'll be conserving my energies for awhile longer before getting heavily back into blogging. The seizure was apparently due to medication I've been taking for my type 2 diabetes; it (or something) caused my blood sugar to suddenly plummet. Thanks be to God for my wife, Janet, who saw me seizing and called 911.

- - Rich

As of today, at Least for a While - Brooklyn Quaker will screen comments on this blog.

2008-12-15T12:13:00.005-05:00

Friends,

I just added the following comment to my most recent post, and then thought it might be a good idea to also make it a post of its own.

Friends,

I've decided to implement moderation on my blog's comments, at least for awhile. I will review each comment before it appears in order to keep the discussion on topic and - I hope - to keep it civil and respectful.

It may sometimes take me awhile to review comments. I apologize if this is frustrating. If for any reason I decide not to post a given comment I will try to explain why to the commenter. (Provided that I am able to do so that is - I'm not yet experienced in how the moderation system on blogger works).

- - Peace and Friendship,
Rich

My Meeting's Welcome Leaflet - -

2008-11-29T12:16:00.006-05:00

I left a comment on a quakerquaker video yesterday, stating that I think it would be better if we Friends, when doing "outreach" or "advancement", would talk less about ourselves and more about God. The following text is an example of what I think would be an improvement. It happens that I wrote it myself, so bias cannot be excluded. Nevertheless, it has been used at 15th Street Meeting, a famously "liberal" meeting for several years. Currently we make it available both as a handout at Meeting and as a tri-fold leaflet kept on display in a box on the fence around our yard. I'd be curious as to how Friends elsewhere feel about it.

YOU ARE WELCOME TO WORSHIP WITH US

If this is the first time you are joining us – or even if it is not – you may be interested in the following questions about Quaker worship as it is practiced here.

Q: Who or what do Quakers worship?
A: Quakers worship God: the same God who is recognized by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and worshipped by billions of people throughout the world. Quakers believe that God is a living Spirit who can be known and worshipped by anyone.

Q: What sacraments, forms or rituals do Quakers use in their worship?
A: There are different kinds of worship services at different Quaker Meetings. The kind we practice at Fifteenth Street Meeting is called “unprogrammed worship” or “waiting worship”. Its premise is that God’s own Spirit will guide us in how best to give God the worship God is due. Therefore we do not plan any ceremonies or rituals or prepare any hymns, sermons or prayers of our own devising. We come together in silence and wait for the moving of the Holy Spirit.

Q: What do the worshippers actually do?
A: What we try to do is quiet our minds, open our hearts, and listen to the Spirit. There is no prescribed way to do this. The key is an attitude of expectant waiting and a willingness to obey whatever inner promptings God may inspire. We are also alert to hear the messages that may come to us through our fellow worshippers.

Q: Is there a minister or priest in the Meeting for Worship?
A: Potentially, all are ministers. Vocal ministry occurs during unprogrammed worship when someone present feels deeply moved by God to offer a message to the assembled Friends. The words of the message may be words of praise, thanksgiving, comfort, reassurance, moral challenge, or spiritual insight.

Q: What is the difference between “vocal ministry” and other kinds of speaking?
A: Speaking that does not come from a sense of leading is not ministry. Discussion and debate are not ministry. Friends do not “answer” each other’s messages during a meeting. There is no strict limit on the length of messages, but usually “less is more”. It is easy to “outrun the Guide” when giving lengthy messages.A period of silence between messages offers the needed space for reflecting on what is said. Therefore those who offer messages should be careful not to rise too quickly after someone else has spoken.

Just asking

2008-10-07T09:37:00.005-04:00

When reading Quaker outreach materials, I often find that views are attributed to early Friends without any evidence being offered. No doubt sometimes those views really were the views of early Friends, but sometimes I fear that contemporary writers are projecting their own views back into the past. Here is a case in point, where the truth of the matter is unclear to me. I'd be interested in others' perspectives. (Note: I'm not asking whether the views in question are true or are good theology, but whether they really were, as stated, the views of George Fox and other early Friends).

The Quaker Finder website has a list of "Frequently Asked Questions" about Quakers. One of the questions is "How Do Quakers View Christ". And part of the answer is

Quakerism is concerned with life in this world rather than the next, and has no theology of heaven and hell. George Fox taught that redemption through Christ and the Second Coming should not be thought of as past and future events. Both can only be experienced in the present, as spiritual truth, independent of history. He believed that "Christ has come to teach his people himself," and that we can be as Adam was before the Fall if we open our hearts to the Inward Teacher.

I have the uneasy feeling that this description of George Fox's beliefs is at best a half-truth. I can see from his writings that Fox said Christ has come to teach his people himself and that we can be as Adam was before the Fall if we open our hearts to the inward teacher. I'm not so sure that Fox ever said the Second Coming "should not be thought of as a future event", though maybe he did, and I'd be willing to find that out if someone can provide a quote. I'd be a little less suprised if the word "only" were inserted into this statement, so that it said the Second Coming should not be thought of only as a future event.

As for the statement that "Quakers have no theology of heaven or hell", I would be astonished if anyone could prove this from documentary evidence. It's almost impossible to prove a negative, anyway, of course. But also it seems to me that there are things scattered throughout Quaker writings over the centuries that seem to indicate an interest by at least some prominent Friends in our eternal destiny.

What if Bonhoeffer had been Quaker?

2008-07-11T13:40:00.007-04:00

I have long been an admirer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: because of his clear-sighted theology in prewar books such as The Cost of Discipleship, because he championed the "Confessing Church" and resisted the Nazification of Christian churches in Germany, and not least because of the courage with which he endured imprisonment and met his death by execution at the hands of the German state.

As he himself recognized, however, there is a contradiction between his early radical pacifism, which is very evident in "The Cost of Discipleship" and his later participation in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Unlike the Austrian Catholic peasant Franz Jaegerstatter, Bonhoeffer believed that the unique challenge presented by the Nazis forced him to abandon absolute pacifism, precisely in order to be faithful. (Jaegerstatter, who was also executed by the Nazis, was punished because he remained a pacifist and refused to serve in the army).

I'd like to propose an unlikely scenario for the consideration of my readers and invite them to consider some questions it would raise:

Imagine that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been a Quaker instead of a Lutheran. Imagine that as he considered the possibility of trying to assassinate Hitler he had asked for a Clearness Committee from his Meeting. What do we think would have been the result? What do we think should have been the result? I ask this without having thought through my own answers. The ways we look at these questions might illumine more fundamental questions about discipleship, activism, faithfulness, testimony, and "effectiveness" as Quakers.

I invite people to respond either in comments on this blog or on their own blogs with links back to this one. I'm creating a "Bonhoeffer Question" label for this post.
- - Rich Accetta-Evans

It's All about meme (rhymes with scheme; not Mimi)

2008-02-25T10:53:00.007-05:00

I just found out that over on the blog A Quaker's Flourishing Faith, friend Jamie has posted a meme and has tagged me. This was done on Feb 19th, but I was unaware of it until I happened to drop in on the blog today.

I've never quite "gotten" memes in the sense that word is used by bloggers, and I used to be a tad grouchy about it, but my new policy is "when in doubt, go along with the meme".

The rules of the meme, as Jamie expresses them are:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123
3. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people

So....

I had to cheat a little. The nearest book of more than 123 pages was "Checkmate" by Bruce Pandolfini. Page 123 had just two diagrams and two identical sentences or sentence fragments ("Black mates in 4 moves." and "Black mates in 4 moves.") So I turned to the next closest book, which was "Walden and Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau edited by Owen Thomas. I can't say I'm proud of the time I've been devoting to chess books lately, so I'm glad to use Thoreau instead. Page 123 was part of "Walden" and the first three sentences to follow the first 5 sentences were these:

Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. In the warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar where it became cool at night, and remained so during the day; though I also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the pump.

I'm sure this quote can be mined for wonderful theological metaphors, but I would hate to disturb Henry in his grave, so I'll leave it there. Now all I have to do is "tag" five people. I feel pretty vague about what "tagging" is, but from the example in Jamie's post it looks like it's just putting in a link to the tag-ee's blog.

So I will tag the following:
Lorcan's Plain in the City blog
Robin's What Canst Thou Say
Amanda's Of the Best Sort but...
Liz Opp's The Good Raised Up
and Paul L's Shower of Blessings
Is this how it's done?

Epistle from Young Adult Friends Retreat

2007-12-22T13:17:00.000-05:00

I hope the Young Friends who wrote the following epistle won't mind if I post it in full on my blog. It is also available at New York Yearly Meeting's Infoshare website.

I don't know exactly when this event took place, but it was evidently quite recent, and it sounds like it was very valuable. I am encouraged to see such thoughtfulness and deep seeking among these Friends. I hope we will see the fruit of their seeking and struggle emerge as they become increasingly active in the Society of Friends and some of us codgers recede a little.

Epistle from YAF Retreat

We write to you from Brooklyn’s meetinghouse in New York City during a time of retreat and exploration. Here twelve Young Adult Friends gathered for a conference titled Faith and Practice: Finding Yourself Quaker. We came together Friday evening and remained with each other in the Spirit of worship, play, and sharing until the rise of Brooklyn’s Meeting for Worship on First Day. The hospitality afforded by the meetinghouse space was greatly appreciated, and we were grateful again for having such a welcoming environment in which to join. During the time spent together we have experienced fellowship, nourishment, and support in seeking our paths. The whole of the gathering has been full of gratitude and connection.

Friday evening Friends were encouraged to consider different aspects of Quakerism, and together we collected a list of words that rose in us as we thought about what Quakers are. The list held ideals, ordeals, hopes, and truths. It contained Continuing Revelation and Committees, Seriousness and Lightheartedness, Questioning and Affirming Christianity, Political Awareness, Quaker Guilt, Mysticism, Silence, and Joy. Even as we took it down, we knew that no list could ever be long enough to explain it fully. No list could capture the gestalt…and so we moved to questions.

During the late evening of Friday, and throughout the day on Saturday, we asked and grasped after Truth. We wondered who we were and asked it aloud. Then we wondered what we were if no one agreed. We took pride in our heritage and history and wondered about our future. We struggled with the idea that some are Quaker because of the community it provides and others because of the spirituality. We want to know if one can be had without the other. Would either be complete? We asked if there was a right way to worship; if we should, or could, draw lines to define us; and whether or not there was any joy in worship. We asked what the Divine was. We asked if Divine was. We wondered and we wandered. And we did it all together.

Though we all grapple with difficult questions, it is not as common for us to do this work together and aloud. We found that there was power in speaking these questions into the space and in trying to answer them together. The atmosphere was live and our conversation flowed smoothly from one thing to the next. And yet, for all the variety of topics, there were moments when we knew each other’s experience deeply. In the space of that moment we placed words on our experience and spoke them.
These are ours.

Sewn with threads of Word.
There are many voices.
Many fingers pointing.
One moon.
There is something that connects all of us.
There is something that is the same in all of us.
There is this energy to be alive.
It makes people whole and real.
When we settle in Gathered Stillness we open ourselves into the possibility of a profound experience which all can recognize, and no book can define…
Everything is there. It is exciting. Breathing faster. Heart beat up.
Everyone is themselves and more. More opened up. More…
There is Love.
It liberates.
Using the word love is dangerous though.
You end up saying love can fix the world.
Instead lets say…
The Universe is here. In its entirety.
Raw in this moment.
Commit.
Carry it forward.
Hear that?
See how it pushes you forward?
Feel how it grows larger still?
Is there sweetness in your mouth?
Will the shaking stop?
Is there more?
We help it along. Sure we do. But it does it itself too.
…and there is joy…. and gratitude to celebrate.
For those around us.
For friends.
For enemies.
For my life. Speak it.
For life. Acknowledge it.
Remember.
There are many voices.
These are ours.

We came for Faith and Practice: Finding Yourself Quaker and discovered that what we were looking for was, of course, in front of us the whole time. Quakerism is about finding. In this moment. Renewing again in every moment. Failing. Trying again. And trying again. In community. In silence and stillness.

To paraphrase Thomas Kelly, a practicing Friend must above all be one who practices a continual returning to inner stillness, who draws the world into the silence and Light found there, and is ready to bring that Light into the world, and is willing to be changed because of it all. A practicing Friend is one who does this and is willing to do it with others. Again and again. We feel called to this. This calls to us.

We are grateful for having had this time to be with one another, to have explored, and to be refreshed. And we are grateful and joyed to be able to share it with you.

In this long moment,
Callid Keefe-Perry, Rochester; Jillian Smith, Saratoga; Sarah Brown, Rockland; Niko Tsocanos, Wilton; Alex Tsocanos, Wilton; Sebastian Tsocanos, Wilton; Rebecca Haines, Mohawk Valley; Alex Haines, Mohawk Valley; Beth Vardy, Philipstown Worship Group; Luke Jones, 15th Street; Brianna Higgins, Wilton; John Lavin, Birmingham (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting)

What Priveleges Do I have?

2007-11-05T08:54:00.000-05:00

Coming soon: My much-delayed self-evaluation of the talk on Quakerism I gave at 15th Street Meetinghouse on October 10th. Meanwhile: here's this:

Jeanne, of the blog Social Class and Quakers has invited me to participate in an exercise, along with other bloggers. Each participant is to paste a series of statements from this post on Jeanne's blog into her or his own blog, bolding the ones that apply to herself/himself. Then we are to post a comment on Jeanne's original post saying that we did so and linking to our version. The statements all have some bearing on what one's "social class" is thought to be. In my case, I think they also say something about the generation in which I was born. Kids having their own tv's in their rooms, for example, was pretty much unheard of when I was in high school, whether you were dirt poor or fabulously wealthy, and as far as I know there was no such thing as an IRA back then.

The exercise sounds interesting so I've decided to participate. The statements in question follow. (BTW, for some reason this is called a "pseudo-meme". I have no idea what that means.)

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home(we sure did after I started buying them. They were almost exclusively paperbacks.
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively (I guess so: to the extent that there even are any people who dress and talk like me to be portrayed)
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp (once. A one-week Bible-themed camp)
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels (only one family vacation that I recall: that involved an automobile trip to an uncle's home in Alabama. We stayed with the uncle's family. I don't recall where we slept on the way down. I was about four years old).
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house (yes, if by "house" you mean "mobile home")
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (mobile home. They owned title to it though it was mortgaged)
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

Another New Blog - Among Friends

2007-09-11T19:52:00.000-04:00

The Quaker blogging world is growing so fast that I'm sure very few keep up with it all. However, I hope that people who read me (whoever you are) will also check out the relatively new blog called Among Friends. I'm probably biased because I so highly value Friends Kate, John, Carol and Elizabeth, who have created this blog. But check it out for yourselves. Carol's recent post about the reflections of an Anglican priest about the problems of Anglicans seems especially relevant to Quakers who are concerned about Friends United Meeting.
- - Rich

A New Talk About Quakerism - Public Invited

2007-09-11T19:04:00.000-04:00

Friends,
I have not added much to this blog of late, in part because I've been putting a lot of energy into preparing for a talk about Quakerism which I am to give in the 15th Street Meetinghouse on October 10th.

This talk grows out of a longstanding sense of being led by God to seek out opportunities for bringing the message of Quakerism to a wider audience. I brought this concern to the Ministry and Worship Committe of my meeting as well as to an informal clearness/suppport committee. The Minstry and Worship Committee approved the event in July and obtained permission from the business meeting just this past Sunday to publicize the talk beyond the monthly meeting and beyond the circle of Friends.

I am grateful to the Meeting for giving me this support. I know that some Friends will feel that my version of "the Quaker message" will differ from theirs. My sense is that in approving this event Friends have implicitly said that they trust me to give an honest individual testimony that is consistent with Friends tradition, and also to make it clear where some of my views may differ from others in the Meeting. I don't see myself as a "spokesperson" for the meeting or for the Society of Friends as an institution, but as a message-bearer supported and encouraged by the meeting as a spiritual community.

The following is a press release we are issuing about the event.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“SIMPLE FAITH, RADICAL WITNESS”
Local Quakers invite the public to learn about the religious and spiritual basis of Quaker Service Work and Social Activism.

The Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting, a group of Quakers in New York City, will host a public meeting in their Meetinghouse on Wednesday October 10th from 7 to 9 P.M. The event will feature a talk by long-time Quaker Richard Accetta-Evans on the topic “Simple Faith/Radical Witness”.

“Some people know of the Quakers as advocates for religious freedom, as early opponents of slavery, as conscientious objectors to war, and as providers of aid to refugees and disaster victims,” commented Accetta-Evans. “We hope that many know about Quaker Tom Fox who was kidnapped in Iraq in 2005 and executed in 2006. Tom Fox capped a life of service and witness by working as a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams. What is less well known is that Quaker activism grows from Quaker faith and is not something separate from it. Quakerism is rooted in a long tradition of regular worship, a strong sense of community, and a daily spiritual practice that goes way beyond taking controversial positions on public policy.”

In addition to the talk, the public meeting will include time for people to ask questions and discuss issues with Accetta-Evans and other Quakers. Admission is free. The Meetinghouse is at 15 Rutherford Place (just off East 15th Street, between Third Avenue and Second Avenue, adjacent to Stuyvesant Park).

The Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting, has approximately 150 members. The Meetinghouse was built in 1860 and is still used for weekly worship that includes “silent waiting on God” without any ordained clergy or prepared program of sermons, prayers or hymns. The Meeting hosts a nightly shelter for 12 homeless men and women and holds a monthly Vigil for Peace and Non-Violence at Washington Square Park. Accetta-Evans, 60, was raised as a Methodist but became a Quaker in 1968. He has been a member of the Fifteenth Street Meeting since the early 1970’s. He currently serves on its Ministry and Worship Committee. In addition to his “day job” as a systems analyst, he has written a number of articles about Quaker history, theology and spirituality, has taught Quakerism courses in his Meeting and has spoken publicly about Quakerism to both Quaker and non-Quaker audiences. Some of his writing can be seen at the blog “Brooklyn Quaker” (http://brooklynquaker.blogspot.com).

Contacts:
Cynthia Bardouka-Large (Clerk, Ministry and Worship Committee of Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting);
Phone: (xxx) xxx-xxxx; E-mail: klarchen at aol dot com

George Fisher (Clerk, Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting)
Phone: (xxx) xxx-xxxx; E-mail georgef1151 at yahoo.com

Richard Accetta-Evans (speaker)
E-mail: richaccettaevans at earthlink.net

Guest Post from Jeanne re Working Class Quakers

2007-07-31T11:23:00.000-04:00

A Friend named Jeanne left a comment yesterday on my post from December 2005 about the New York City Transit Strike. Since not many people peruse my old posts, and since I think Jeanne's comment seems valuable to me, I am taking the liberty of offering it here as a guest post. BTW, I see that Jeanne says her partner writes the blog "The Good Raised Up." Any Friend of Liz is a Friend of mine (though I've only "met" LIz through the blogosphere and not in the flesh).

Anyway, Jeanne's guest-post is as follows:

Jeanne said...
Greetings all,

I found this two-year-old post by doing a google search on 'quaker working class'. It's one of the only pertinent sites I found.

I'm writing because I took George Lakey's "Quakers and Social Class" workshop at Gathering this year (2007, River Falls, WI) and I'm looking to talk with other Quakers about social class, especially to Quakers who are either working class or grew up working class and who also feel like an odd duck among Quakers. I grew up working class and discovered in George's workshop that I've internalized much of modern Quaker's middle-class and owning-class tendencies. This, for me, has been much like discovering in my early twenties the depth to which the patriarchy had affected my life.

I'm starting a google group for working class Quakers or Quakers who grew up working class. Email me if you're interested in joining at njeanneburns at gmail.com.

I have heard of some of you because my partner writes the blog The Good Raised Up.

I hope someone reads this!

:-) Jeanne

Our Condition in "the Fall"

2007-06-30T13:30:00.000-04:00

NOTE: Some Further Comments on Chuck Fager's Response to my Review of "Without Apology" will appear eventually. Meanwhile, I have just finished the following post on an entirely different topic. I had been working on it for some time before Chuck sent me his post.- - Rich A-E

In a comment on my recent post about the Barclay Course at 15th Street Meeting, Marshall Massey says

Rich, I'd have loved to read more details about your Barclay course -- even at the level of my five-part report on the Bible study I led last summer at Baltimore -- so that I too could have learned from the course.

I'm afraid I'm not up to a report that thorough, but I do think that perhaps I can share some of the fruit of our discussions of Barclay's Proposition Number Four "On the Condition of the Man in the Fall". These are the things I brought away from the discussion.

I'll start by mentioning that we used the text of Barclay's own 1678 English translation of the Apology, as published by the Quaker Heritage Press. You can find the text of proposition 4 - and Barclay's Discussion of it - at this link: http://www.qhpress.org/texts/barclay/apology/prop4.html. It may be useful to glance at this whole chapter before reading the rest of the current post, but here is the proposition itself: All Adam's posterity (or mankind), both Jews and Gentiles, as to the first Adam (or earthly man), is fallen, degenerated, and dead; deprived of the sensation (or feeling) of this inward testimony or seed of God; and is subject unto the power, nature, and seed of the serpent, which he soweth in men's hearts, while they abide in this natural and corrupted estate: from whence it comes that not only their words and deeds but all their imaginations are evil perpetually in the sight of God, as proceeding from this depraved and wicked seed. Man therefore, as he is in this state, can know nothing aright; yea his thoughts and conceptions concerning God and things spiritual, until he be disjoined from this evil seed and united to the Divine Light, are unprofitable both to himself and others. Hence are rejected the Socinian and Pelagian errors in exalting a natural light, as also of the Papists and most of Protestants, who affirm that man without the true grace of God may be a true minister of the Gospel. Nevertheless this seed is not imputed to infants until by transgression they actually join themselves therewith: for they are by nature "the children of wrath" who walk according to the "power of the prince of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience," having their conversation in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind (Eph. 2)

Now this is not, on first reading, a terribly congenial proposition. Who wants to be told that he or she is "fallen, degenerate and dead", can "know nothing aright", and that not only his or her "words, and deeds, but all their imaginations are perpetually evil in the sight of God"? The language of the proposition reminds many people of the "original sin" idea so prominent in most of non-Quaker Christianity. For many Quakers it is an article of unofficial dogma that "Quakers don't believe in original sin", and some appear not to believe in "sin" at all. The idea of "the Fall" is closely linked in many people's minds to "original sin", so it may well come as a shock to see a discussion of "the Fall" in an early Quaker writer.

Another difficulty for many is that the whole concept of "the Fall" is centered around the Genesis narrative of what happened in the Garden of Eden. In Barclay's day, this narrative was widely understood as literal history. Today we do not understand it in that literal way, or least I do not, those of us who were studying Barclay at 15th Street Meeting do not, and most educated people do not. This being so, we may have more trouble than Barclay's generation did in accepting the reality of the Fall.

If we study Barclay's supporting argument and consult our own experience, however, several points become clear:

First, The doctrine described above is really quite different from the "original sin" doctrine taught by most other Christian Churches in Barclay's day and even in ours. Barclay himself rejected the term "original sin" and pointed out that it is not a scriptural term. He offers the words "death", "body of death", "old Adam" and "old man" as sounder terms taken from the Bible, and his discussion makes plain that these are not just different words, but words for a different spiritual reality. I will say more about this shortly.

Second, It is true that Barclay refers to and appears to accept the historicity of Adam, Eve, and the Garden, but there are hints in his discussion that the "mystical" significance of this story is more important to him than its supposed factuality. And certainly for us it is entirely possible to see a spiritual truth in the story of the Fall without having to accept its situation in a particular place and time.

Third, the key to understanding what Barclay is saying is to notice his distinction between people in the "natural and corrupted estate" which he describes as fallen and people "disjoined from this evil seed and united to the Divine Light". Indeed, this whole proposition cannot be fully understood until it is read in the context of Propositions 5 and 6 which are given the common title "Concerning the Universal Redemption by Christ, and also the Saving and Spiritual Light wherewith every man is enlightened". This dualism is somewhat problematic for modern people but it isn't for that reason necessarily or completely false. In fact, we really need to come to terms with it somehow, as it underlies much of Quaker practice, including our understanding of spirit-led ministry in worship (treated in Propositions 10 "Concerning Ministry" and 11 "Concerning Worship").

Fourth, Barclay's description of humanity in "the Fall" is - - if we are honest with ouselves - - a highly realistic description of humanity as it is. Our "sophistication" about our historical and biological origins are shallow if because of it we can't see the profoundly broken human condition that Barclay and the Bible call "fallen". Without an appreciation of this spiritual brokenness we are not equipped to receive with joy and gratitude the good news that through Christ's Light and Livign Spirit we are offered redemption from this state.

Let me expand on these points one-by-one.

1. The difference between "original sin" and the "old Adam"
In Barclay's proposition, quoted above, the statement that is perhaps least controversial to Friends of today is also the one that appeared most heretical to non-Quaker Christians of Barclay's day. Nevertheless this seed is not imputed to infants until by transgression they actually join themselves therewith:...
In contrast to this Quaker position, many other Christians of Barclay's day (and all too many of our own) actually believed that infants are born guilty of sin and worthy of eternal punishment unless or until some spiritual sanctuary could be found for them, either through a ceremony like baptism or through a "salvation experience" of accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior. This is a transparently cruel and inhuman doctrine. Where it has actually been accepted it has been a source of horrible fear and anguish to countless generations of loving parents. No doubt some people have been attracted to this doctrine precisely because its horror appealed to a streak of sadism, but others have accepted it reluctantly as an odd but inevitable corollary of a more general understanding of sin that in other respects seemed right, necessary, and implied by Scripture.

Barclay explicitly rejected this view. It's true he had just said that in our "natural state", which is presumably the state of the infant, we are subject to the "power,nature and seed of the serpent". But with his clarification that infants are not guilty of sin "until they join themselves therewith", we see that by "the old Adam" in our nature Barclay doesn't mean an inherited guilt for someone else's sin. He means, rather, an inherited natural disposition to commit sins ourselves. As infants we haven't yet acted on this natural disposition, but we all get our chance eventually. Barclay doesn't spell out at what age actual sins might take place, because this is not his interest. He is trying to focus attention on the reader's own spiritual condition, not on when and how a growing child becomes "of age". Barclay is able to argue the case for this doctrine from scripture, and to refute the scriptural arguments for the more conventional view.

It has always struck me that the "I am guilty of Adam's sin" point of view, while it seems so severe, actually lets the individual off the hook psychologically. It can tempt us to focus on Adam's sin in the past, which we can't do anything about, instead of our own conduct int the present. Barclay, in discussing our fallenness, focuses on what our fallenness causes us to actually do. I think this makes God's justice and our own responsibilities more comprehensible.

2. The real Fall, the mythical Garden
A number of otherwise intelligent people have patiently explained to me over the years that it is now impossible to believe in the Fall of man (and woman) because Darwin has demonstrated that we are in fact descended from other animals, not from ancestors who lived in Paradise. Ironically, the converse argument is sometimes used by Biblical literalists who insist that Darwinism can't be true because if it is then there was no Fall of Adam and no need for Christ. What can we make of this? Does all of Christian theology hang on a literalist reading of the story of the Garden?

The fact is that the Christian understanding of Eden was implicitly taken as at least partly metaphorical or symbolic long before Darwin - possibly as long as the story has been told. Consider, for example, the fact that Eden can't be located anyplace on the map of the known world, much less than in the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers where Genesis puts it. Remember that at the end of the Genesis story the garden isn't destroyed or lifted up to heaven. The man and the woman are expelled from it, angels with a flaming sword are placed at the gate to guard it, but the garden is left right where it is. Yet the "Biblical Literalists" we all presume our ancestors to have been did not go in search of this garden or place it on their maps. George Fox said of a remarkable spiritual experience he had, that he "came up through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God", but he didn't mean that he had travelled to the Middle East and set foot on a particular patch of earth. Barclay himself quotes Genesis about the expulsion of Adam and Eve and has this to say: The consequence of this fall, besides that which relates to the fruits of the earth, is also expressed (Gen. 3:24), "So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Now whatsoever literal signification this may have, we may safely ascribe to this paradise a mystical signification, and truly account it that spiritual communion and fellowship, which the saints obtain with God by Jesus Christ; to whom only these cherubims give way, and unto as many as enter by him, who calls himself the Door. So that, though we do not ascribe any whit of Adam's guilt to men, until they make it theirs by the like acts of disobedience; yet we cannot suppose that men, who are come of Adam naturally, can have any good thing in their nature, as belonging to it; which he, from whom they derive their nature, had not himself to communicate unto them.
We may accept this teaching or not, but whether we do so does not depend on whether we accept the theory of evolution. What the Garden represents to me is a vision of the world God fundamentally and originally intends for us: a world of harmony among all creatures and between them and their Creator. This is difficult for us to see or imagine because the world as it appears to us now is not like that. There are hints within empirical reality of the beaury and harmony that was and is intended, and sometimes this seems very close to realization. But then, somehow, something always happens. The bravest and most hopeful beginnings seem always subject to some flaw or defect. On the social level, utopian experiments go bad, hopeful movements burn out, revolutions are betrayed, good intentions go sour. In family life and individual life a very similar dynamic operates. Neither the vision of harmony nor the manifold disappointments of experience ever go away. The height and the depth are always with us. The distance between them is what I would call the Fall. The vision of Eden (and also the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem at the other end of the story) is our reminder that it is the height more than the depth that most represents God's intent for us. The expulsion from Eden represents the reality that we can't go back there on our own power. There's that flaming sword to get past - a sword that would separate us from the part of ourselves that has really chosen to leave the Garden's harmony. But more of that in point 4. I'm trying to keep to my outline here!

3. Barclay's dualism.
Is Barclay optimistic or pessimistic about human beings? If we read Proposition 4 without Propositions 5 and 6 he sounds pessimistic, with all of his warnings about our condition in the Fall. If we read propositions 5 and 6 without Proposition 4 he sounds optimistic, stressing as he does that there is a saving and Spiritual Light by which every human being is enlightened, and that the Redemption of Christ is a "universal" redemption. The resolution of this apparent contradiction lies in a recognition of Barclay's dualism. On the one hand there is an "evil seed" which is "natural". On the other hand, there is the "Divine Light" which is saving. Understanding this point of view requires a reshuffling of the thought-categories we are used to. In our vocabulary, "natural" is a positive word. We think of it as describing the-world-as-God-made-it. We contrast it to "un-natural" or "artificial", which we think of as the-world-as-people-spoiled-it. This way of dividing up reality has its own validity, but it does not easily map into Barclay's distinction between "natural" and "spiritual". For Barclay, the "natural" was not the world-as-God-made it, but the world that was fallen. And the opposite of this "nature" wasn't technology or art, it was all that proceeded directly from the Spirit. For George Fox this dualism was - if possible - even more pronounced. In his Journal he wrote:

I found that there were two thirsts in me -- the one after the creatures, to get help and strength there, and the other after the Lord, the Creator, and His Son Jesus Christ. I saw all the world could do me no good; if I had had a king's diet, palace, and attendance, all would have been as nothing; for nothing gave me comfort but the Lord by His power.

Barclay's dualism is somewhat problematic for me. But I am not ready to write it off. It is problematic for me because I cannot fix the line as confidently as Barclay seems to between what is "natural" and what is "spiritual". It occurs to me that whatever I experience of the Spirit is mediated to me through the physical, created universe and through my own senses and body. Even my centering down in worship and my release of self-will is in some way a thing that my "self" does. The inward motions that I feel are from God are nevertheless felt in my natural body and recorded by my natural mind. There are times when I can in fact mistake a notion of my own mind for a motion from God's Spirit. And, on the other hand, there is surely something of God's Spirit at work in anything that I might describe as natural. After all, even the "natural gifts" of intelligence, feeling, and appetite are parts of the world that God created. Perhaps this is related to the difficulty, already discussed, of understanding "the Fall" without envisioning it as a specific event in the past. If I don't see Eden as a particular outward place, and I don't see Adam's life and Eve's life in Eden as an event in history then Adam, Eve, and the Garden are all part of present reality and notwithstanding the Fall they are all part of the created world as I find it now.

Yet the distinction between "nature" and "spirit" is surely still a real distinction, even if it isn't always as clear and sharp for me or you as it seemed to Barclay. Moreover, it is a highly important distinction in Quaker practice as well as Quaker theory. Consider, for example, the Friend who speaks in Meeting. We recognize that in one sense it is always a "creature", an individual human being with blood and breath and brain, who stands in a meeting rooms and utters something. Yet we also believe that what that human being utters can only be "ministry" if is also in some sense from the Spirit. We listen to people all week, and in Meeting we want to listen to God. We think that there is a distinction between merely human voices and the voice of God. We disparage a message if we sense it to be solely from "the creature" or from "the ego" or from "the intellect". Barclay makes explicit the connection between this proposition and the Quaker understanding of ministry: "Hence are rejected the Socinian and Pelagian errors in exalting a natural light," he says, "as also of the Papists and most of Protestants, who affirm that man without the true grace of God may be a true minister of the Gospel".

Moreover, I think that by and large we try to be guided by the Spirit - and not by the resources of the creature alone - when we make the truly consequential decisions in our lives. We pray. We wait. We convene "clearness" committees. Why would this be the case if we didn't understand that the creature without the Spirit truly is "Fallen"?

4. "The Fall" as a Realistic Picture of Humanity.
Even after we free it from a literal reading of Genesis, the idea that humanity is fallen will seem to many a hopelessly outmoded idea, one that it is supposedly impossible for enlightened modern people to affirm. But why is it impossible? Do we have new evidence, unavailable in previous centuries, that people by default are as good as God intended us to be? I would argue, on the contrary that the record of war, prejudice, oppression, misery and cruelty has become longer, more incredibly bloody, and harder to explain away. To argue that there is nothing deeply wrong with the heart of humanity seems like an exercise in massive denial and self-deception. We are, of course, a part of the Creation that the God of Genesis looked at and pronounced to be Good. We are also party to the spoiling of that Creation, and we are capable of evil and destructive acts toward one another - often cloaked with sincerely self-righteous justifications. This is not just a technical problem or political problem or even just a moral problem. It is a spiritual affliction.

Our fallenness doesn't make us loathsome to God, nor does it mean that we merit condemnation and punishment. Our fallenness calls forth the compassion of God, the offer of a helping hand, the promise to breathe new life into us. If we are able to see ourselves as we are and accept God's grace, then we can experience the re-birth mentioned in John's Gospel and receive "...the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God." But if we cannot be realistic about ourselves, if we cannot recognize that we are fallen, then we will not accept God's helping hand.

Chuck Fager Responds

2007-06-22T08:50:00.000-04:00

My review, not too long ago, of Chuck Fager's book Without Apology, sparked a spirited discussion on this blog. At the time, I expressed interest in hearing from Chuck himself about his view of the issues raised. He has now provided the following thoughtful response, which I am pleased to present as a guest-post.

A Response to Rich Accetta- Evans’s Review of “Without Apology,” by Chuck Fager

Sixth Month 21, 2007

Friends, what goes around comes around. “Without Apology” was written in response to a particular set of trends and circumstances, and it looks to me like many of these trends are converging again. So the timing of Rich’s posting of his review reminds me of the old proverb about how there are no coincidences.

The last major outbreak of this fever, by my reckoning, was in 1990-1992, and centered on what became known as the “Realignment” idea. (“Realignment” for those who have not yet read the book, was a plan to “realign” the FUM-related yearly and monthly meetings by dividing them between the “true Christians” and the non-“true Christians,” with the latter being obliged to go elsewhere. Exactly how this division was to be accomplished, by whom, and by what standards, was never made entirely clear. This proposal, to put it mildly, was controversial; and I was, again to put it mildly, against it.)

“Without Apology” was written in the aftermath of the “realignment” struggle. All through that period, I kept wondering why liberal Friends were putting up with the unending barrage of attacks on their sanity, morality, and legitimacy which was a major aspect of that struggle (and which occurred outside it as well), without speaking up assertively on their own behalf.

Some reasons for this relative silence seemed depressingly clear: first was the cowardly habit of conflict-avoidance which is one of our least attractive features. And second, there’s the equally embarrassing mass ignorance of our tradition, both its history and convictions, that often hides behind the pretense that we have somehow evolved “beyond all that.” Yeah, right; like we’ve evolved beyond breathing. Too much liberal religion, and not only among Friends, boils down to wanting everyone to “be nice,” and for their church time to be a “safe space” and let everything else go hang.

– “A safe space”; now there’s a term which rankles. Sure, we want our children to be “safe” in First Day School. But that’s not the main thrust of this counsel. Yet where did this heretical notion come from, that religious life is supposed to be”safe”??

Not from the history of religion, that’s for sure. “Safe” like it was for Jesus? Or Fox? Joan of Arc? Tom Fox? Or so many others? There are very good reasons why the Bible says “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31) And why the first words that need to be said when humans encounter angels is, “Fear not.”

And certainly much of American Quakerism was not a “safe space” in those years, unless one resolutely closed one’s eyes, listened to one’s breath, and then slipped out if something troublesome emerged. That’s a relatively easy stance to maintain in Quaker silence; at least until someone opens their mouth.

I knew all that. But there was something else in play here: in the early 1990s, as far as I could see, liberal Quakerism in the U.S., and maybe in England too, had not produced any scholar or thinker ready to take on this task in an orderly, intellectually serious fashion. To the extent that anyone was thinking out loud about it at all, they/we were still leaning on Rufus Jones, dead almost fifty years, or Howard Brinton, dead nearly twenty years, to do it for us.

But while bowing to their eminence, it was clear to me that these worthies were of another time. Who would advocate for us now? Did anyone even think liberal Quakerism was worth speaking up for?

In looking for a response to these queries, mine was a name which did not occur to me. Not, that is, until it seemed clear that nobody else was likely to undertake the project. I did have a smattering of theological studies and a batch of Quaker journalism under my belt, but there was one qualification which tipped the balance: by God, I felt liberal Quakerism was worth speaking up for, warts and all. So I decided to have a go at it, and “Without Apology” was the result. And I note that, eleven years later, it still pretty much has the field of such advocacy to itself, for better or for worse.

The book seems to have struck a chord with many readers, selling out a number of small press runs, and evoking mostly favorable responses. One doesn’t get rich peddling books to Quakers, but "Without apology" has held its own, and orders continue to trickle in. Such that I prepared a Tenth Anniversary edition in 2006, and its first printing is close to sold out as well.

While working on the book, one thing I learned and re-learned was that, as the opening phrase above states, what goes around comes around. It turned out that “Realignment” was but one skirmish in what had been a century-long contest, many episodes of which had not been well-documented. So the work perforce took on a provisionally historical character, making initial forays into some of these musty corners of our collective attic. I knew then, and know better now, that there is much more to be explored.

By the time the book was finished, I figured that one of these years, the struggle would erupt again. The gray spectre of “realignment” would likely rise from its coffin, in a new guise, brandishing new (and behind them, old) issues.

And so, in 2007, it has. Much is familiar about the current appearance of the ghoul, not least that it seems to hover most over what remains of a much-enfeebled FUM. I won’t repeat here the thoughts about this current conflict posted on my blog, www.afriendlyletter.org . That posting also includes a number of links to other reports on the developing situation.

Rather, I’ll only note here that for Friends wanting to get “up to speed” on this latest dispute that “Without Apology,” whatever its shortcomings, is probably the main available piece of background reading. (Though here I must also add a plug for my more recent collection, “Shaggy Locks & Birkenstocks,” which includes a number of more recent pieces which fill in some important gaps in the earlier tome.)

As to Rich’s comments on “Without Apology” itself, I’m grateful for his many kind and respectful words about it, and the friendly spirit in which even the criticisms were offered. As to the latter, two points seem to me worth addressing briefly.

First, Rich’s complaints turn largely, as such critiques usually do, on Barclay. Rich feels I have misused Barclay’s thinking about the church in service to my effort to legitimate a “universalist” agenda.

Here the response is simple: in my view, I have not misused Barclay, because Barclay is not consistent. When it comes to the church, he speaks, not to put too fine a point on it, with forked tongue, or pen. In his “Apology,” the “true invisible church” is indeed not limited to professing Christians. He said that explicitly, meant it, and I quoted him on it accurately. This “true invisible church” idea is basic to the ecclesiology – the concept of the church – advanced in my book.

But as Rich and others have also pointed out, Barclay also states that in a particular Christian church, everybody ought to be Christian, according to the specific definition of Christian the particular church adheres to. He said that too, meant it, and he has been quoted on that point accurately by Rich and various others.

I noted this in the book, and quoted a fine piece by the late Francis Hall, who knew Barclay backward and forward, and concluded that “Barclay makes no attempt whatsoever,” he admits, “to resolve the difficulties presented by these two sets of beliefs, both of which he fully holds....It is clear that Barclay did not succeed in truly synthesizing these two elements of his faith, but the problem is a profoundly difficult one for the Christian theologian.” (My page 31)

I believe Hall had it exactly right; Barclay is on both sides of this issue, so it's just as fair to me to pick one side of it as it is for Rich to choose another. Thus I meet complaints like the one Rich raises mainly with a shrug. To say a Christian church should be Christian is a tautology. It begs the questions of what “Christian” means, and what kind of church the Society of Friends or its meetings can or should be. My book argued that liberal Quakerism attempts to manifest the “true invisible church” part of barclay; I argued further that this wider approach preceded Barclay, and could be traced all the way back to the words of Jesus.

Rich and some others evidently want the Society to stay within the “particular church” schema. To me that’s an option, not a mandate. Moreover, in my experience there are lots of Christian-identified Friends who are content with the “true invisible” model, so I’m persuaded that it is not inherently oppressive to them. To be sure, there are recurring cases of what my book called “christophobia,” but I am on record there as being opposed to this, and won’t belabor the point again here.

The other main complaint Rich raises is the suggestion that I made “straw men” out of some of the people my book challenges, and failed to do justice to the “Christian” identity of several historical figures claimed there as pioneers of modern liberal Quakerdom, such as John Greenleaf Whittier, Hannah Barnard, and Joel & Hannah Bean.

He also wishes I had paid detailed attention to a list of ten or so other notable twentieth century Friends of special interest to him. As to all these other Friends – I agree they are interesting; but Rich, give me a break – if I’d taken them all on, I’d still be writing it! (Maybe a Quaker in Brooklyn could write the book about them . . . ?)

For the ones I did consider, I’m not sure Rich gives me sufficient credit. The living persons described and quoted were major players in the events the book reports, and I have cited chapter and verse in all instances. This research has not been shown to be erroneous in any of these cases. So I don’t find a lot of straw sticking out of these sketches.

As for the dead, I plead more nuance than Rich allows. For instance, of course Whittier was a “Christian,” Rich – and I said so (cf. Page 52). But I also described him as being part of an evolution of that concept, both in Quakerism and broader Protestant circles, an evolution which flows directly into modern liberal Quakerdom.

This portrayal of Whittier as a transitional figure I stand by, and could cite numerous other sources beyond those in the book, which I have explored since then, to reinforce it. It is enough, though, to simply quote a telling stanza, from his poem “Miriam”:

“And I made answer: Truth is one;
And in all lands beneath the sun,
Whoso hath eyes to see may see
The tokens of its unity.
No scroll of creed its fulness wraps,
We trace it not by school-boy maps,
Free as the sun and air it is
Of latitudes and boundaries.
In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,
Are messages of good to man....’”

As for Joel & Hannah Bean, Rich properly points out that they were not “liberal” Friends, and wanted nothing more than to be left alone in their Quietist Orthodoxy. Yet again, my book says this too (cf. Pages 55-57).

But history (and perhaps the Spirit?) had other plans for the Beans. They were pushed into their role as the foreparents of west Coast liberal Quakerism. And if, as Rich insists, some of their spiritual offspring in today’s polyglot Pacific Yearly Meeting might find the Beans’ later mentions of the “living Christ” problematic, that possibility hardly diminishes the Beans’ actual formative role there. Besides which, I am personally acquainted with some very seriously Christian Quakers in that body, who are nonetheless content with its mixed character.

Finally in this connection, a word about Hannah Barnard: Rich again alleges that I paint her as not being “Christian.” But I do no such thing. Instead, I properly describe her as a proto-Hicksite. She is less a transitional figure than a forerunner, or even a prophet, of the changes in the liberal direction that were to come. When Elias Hicks himself came and preached in her home town of Hudson New York twenty years after her disownment, he paid a personal call on Hannah, and according to her they parted in perfect agreement on matters of religion.

Rich then turns to my effort to sort out some of the persisting value of Christianity to Quakerism, even in my liberal and inclusive sense of it. He dislikes my neologisms: “Christogenic,” “Christomorphic,” and so on. Alas; I liked them, and more important, thought them useful. But his basic objection to the passages in which they appear is not aesthetic or based on a lack of euphony. Rather, he asks rhetorically,

“What relevance does the Christian content of Quakerism have, unless we continue to experience Jesus as neither a dead man of history nor a distant figure in Heaven, but as one who has “Come to teach his people himself?”

And here perhaps we come upon a point of substantive difference.

The “Christian content” remains relevant, Rich, because the plain fact is that there are LOTS of ways Jesus can be relevant and experienced in Quaker circles other than the notion of his being “a present teacher.” The “present teacher” formula is one particular approach, which works for some Friends. I respect it, but am unable to accept it as the only way to either think about Jesus or "experience” him and his possible meanings for our community.

Let me quote, in this connection, the section from “Without Apology” describing Quakerism as Christagogic:

“that is, it continues to have much that it can learn from Christianity, its founder, and its larger biblical context.
“This feature may well be the most important, because it seems to me closest to Jesus’ own method. I have argued in my book, Wisdom and Your Spiritual Journey, that Jesus acted above all like a teacher-sage in the mold of biblical Wisdom. Teaching, particularly by example, was what wisdom sages did; and learning was above all the proper response of wisdom’s pupils. Certainly Jesus’ teachings, as recorded in the Gospels, and particularly the parables, continue to repay reflection and study. Further, such study is consistent with the attitude of independence of dogmatic systems which is also a feature of both biblical wisdom and liberal Quaker faith.”

I cite this passage because this way of relating to Jesus has for many years been the most meaningful to me personally, and I must insist on its legitimacy as a path for such Christian and Quaker experience.

Yes, it differs significantly from other such approaches, such as mysticism, prophetism, or “present-teacher”-ism. So what? I didn't invent it; it's there in the Bible. I would also suggest to Rich that the track record of adherents of this approach meets Jesus’ own test in Matthew 7:16 (“by their fruits ye shall know them”) as well as the others, and caution against insisting on more than this.

As many yearly meetings face the new challenges to their legitimacy raised by the new round of difficulties, I hope that “Without Apology” could still be useful to many in orienting them to some of the background and issues involved. Again, I appreciate Rich’s taking the time to give it such close attention. I'll be interested to see what further comments readers might want to make.

Peace,

Chuck Fager

Check-In

2007-06-16T12:18:00.000-04:00

A Quaker blog (or this one, anyway) is some kind of hybrid. It is in part a public forum for discussion of spiritual, moral, theological and political issues. It is also to some degree a personal record. I have tried, for the most part, to keep this one focussed on the public matters, the big issues. (For instance, I am working on a post which may not appear for awhile that discusses what we learned in the 15th Street Barclay course about "Robert Barclay's views of the Condition of Man in the Fall"; that post is more typical of what I write here than the post you are reading now, and far far more typical than my occasional attempts at a line or two of poetry).

That said, I have come to feel some kinship with other Quaker bloggers, and have longed to say more to them, through this blog, about what is going on with me. It seems somehow false and hollow to be pontificating about the nature of God (who, as the apostle John points out, we haven't seen) while maintaining such careful silence about the state of my own body, mind and soul.

Today, I feel some freedom to be a tad more self-disclosing, and some confidence that I can do this to a degree without compromising the privacy of family and friends.

What I feel I can share today is that I am in the process of healing: emerging slowly from a prolonged period of physical, emotional, and spiritual distress. As part of that healing I have had to face some of my own illnesses (such as diabetes) and unealthy patterns (such as the way I eat, the way I spend, the many unhelpful ways in which I unsuccessfully try to avoid unpleasantness, and my unwitting collaboration in enabling the dependencies of certain folks I care about).

This week, I saw my doctor for a three-month checkup. I learned that the program of diet, exercise, medication, and supplements I've been using has successfully kept my blood sugar levels back in the normal range throughout these three months. Even my cholesterol levels, which were once horrendous, are now immensely improved.

The doctor was not so sure of my emotional state. She seems to feel that I am not yet back to my "old self" even though I have recovered partially from the period of anxiety and depression that plagued me in the Fall and Winter. From my perspective, the recovery thus far is far more noticeable than any remaining problem. I find that I sleep well, that I am energized for work, and that I am able to squarely face certain outward problems that seemed to paralyze me whenever I even thought about them just a few months ago. I also find that I am no longer assaulted regularly by weakness, confused thinking, and waves of overwhelming grief as seemed to happen all too often for several months in a row.

I have learned that some of my personal distress had physical roots. On the other hand, some of it also came from my tendency to shoulder the responsibility for matters that are not under my control and not, in fact, my business at all. Underlying this last is a spiritual problem: my under-developed trust in God, and over-developed sense of my own importance. But I have at least recognized this spiritual problem and God is helping me with it(in the company of a group of others with similar problems).

Work on all of this must continue. Many "outward problems" remain even though my attitude toward them has changed. As for depression: the option of using medications to treat it is still open, but for my own reasons I prefer not to take that route and my sense right now is that I can continue to recover successfully without chemical help.

Prayers, of course are welcome.

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

Middle June Late Afternoon

2007-06-12T13:02:00.000-04:00

I haven't had leisure to write any poetry in a long long time.
This poem (if it is a poem) was "caught" more than "written" as I walked home from the deli yesterday afternoon....

In the warm rain
Middle June, late afternoon,
Slick wet pavement gleams
Reflecting beams
Of the westward-sinking sun.

15th Street Meeting's Seven Week Course on Barclay's Apology

2007-05-26T13:02:00.000-04:00

A while ago, I used this blog to post this announcement that Fifteenth Street Meeting was offering a course on Robert Barclay's "An Apology for the True Christian Divinity as the Same is Held Forth and Preached by the People Called in Scorn Quakers." In a comment on that post I said that "I do intend to post about how it goes, and in fact I intend even before the course to throw some of my own questions about Barclay out to the blogosphere in order to get others' perspectives." As it turned out, I did not post about how it went and did not throw my questions about Barclay out to the blogosphere to get others' perspectives. Another reality, also alluded to in that comment, intervened. Namely "...everyone, including me, will be balancing Barclay with busy work lives, family lives, and social lives (including our lives as Quakers with all our worship meetings, business meetings, and committee meetings). A big part of my "preparation" for this coursae has been trying to discern whether I was up to the expenditure of time and energy." Nevertheless, the course did take place, and it was - at least in my own biased eyes - a huge success.

We met from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursdays (April 12th, April 19th, April 26th, May 3rd, May 10th, May 17th and May 24th.) Attendance varied from 8 to 14, with some participants having to miss one or another session because of other commitments, but most sessions had at least 10 present. Those who came included two or three of the "usual suspects" (Friends already known to have a strong interest in early Quaker writings and/or in a Christocentric view of Quakerism), but many others came out of a less predictable curiosity. (The "usual suspects", I hasten to add, were extremely helpful, highly engaged with the text, and always ready with insightful comments). One man who made a good contribution came because he had seen a poster about the class and was curious. He is not himself a Friend, though he works for our Friends' school here as a security officer.

One Friend who I thought would be interested did not come because he thought my use of the Quaker Heritage Press edition of Barclay's Apology was somehow a slight of Dean Freiday, who prepared Barclay's Apology in Modern English. This disappointed me, as I think he could have added a lot. In fact, we wasted none of our limited time in critiqueing Freiday or anyone else, but concentrated on Barclay himself. If anything, our struggles with Barclay's syntax and sentence structure tended to increase my respect for the labors Freiday must have undergone to render as much of this as he did into "modern English". As it was, each of us in the course had to be our own Dean Freiday. In our own labor to understand, we may have avoided some of the errors that Larry Kuenning attributes to Freiday here, and we may have committed some of our own. But I remain glad that we engaged with Barclay's own translation of his original Latin prose. That way, the impressions we came away with were only first-generation-imperfect. That is, each of us has our own mental copy (however imperfect) of what Barclay meant to say, and not our own mental copy of Dean Freiday's interpreatation of what Barclay meant to say.

The schedule I laid out in the original announcement did not hold up. We spent more time than anticipated on the prefatory address to Charles the second, which I felt helped establish Barclay's historical context, on my own introductory overview of the 15 propositions, and on Propositions I and II.

As a result, we split the third session between "Concerning the Scriptures" and "Concerning the Condition of Man in the Fall" and by the end of the fourth class we had only gone as far as Propositions V and VI ("Concerning the Universal Redemption by Christ and also the Spiritual and Saving Light, wherewith every man is enlightened"). We therefore, very reluctantly, skipped over propositions VII, VIII and IX (dealing with "justification", "perfection", and "perseverance" respectively), in order to have enough time for a good discussion of the propositions on ministry, worship, baptism, communion, the limitations on the state's power over conscience, and the final proposition (on "Salutations and Recreations") where we met many familiar Quaker "testimonies", including the testimony againt war, in an unfamiliar context.

For some of these classes I asked the participants (if they felt so inclined) to come in with their own paraphrases of the propositions to be discussed that day. This generally provided a good starting point for discussion. In some cases, I distributed some excerpts from the chapter that had captured my attention and we discussed those. Often, participants came with particular passages in mind that were either especially edifying or especially troubling and we would discuss those. Throughout, I tried to maintain the stance that it was worth understanding what Barclay was saying whether or not we agree with him, that we are under no obligation to accept his judgement, but that we will be poorer as a Society of Friends if we don't understand something of where he fits into our tradition.

Frankly, there were some weeks when my own busy-ness at work or events in my personal life crowded out the time I had hoped to spend preparing for the class, so I had to "wing it" more than I had intended and to rely much more on the fact that the other participants had been reading and thinking that week, even if I had not. As far as I could tell, the class went just as well in those weeks as in the others, which is both reassuring and humbling. I suppose it did help that at least I was pretty familiar with Barclay already, having read him many many times.

My final conclusion? That Barclay is still relevant, and that Friends willing to read him carefully will find the effort worthwhile. When 17th century Latinized English gets in the way, it helps to read carefully and for readers to compare notes with each other on what he seems to be saying. Looking up the scriptural passages he quotes can also help. His views on some things (like "The condition of Man in the Fall") will seem completely surprising to some. His views on others (like "the Spiritual and Saving Light") will seem familiar yet somehow different than some of us at least in the more liberal meetings expected. In places Barclay's academic style is off-putting and discouraging for most readers. In other places, such as the propositions on worship and on ministry, his words still have power to inspire.

The "I Told You So" Department

2007-05-24T14:07:00.001-04:00

Even though this blog was meant to be concerned, among other things, with "Social Justice and Quakerism" I haven't posted very often on directly "political" matters. I have perhaps been overly-concerned that I would confuse my personal left-leaning political philosophy with the spiritual message of Quakerism that I think is fundamentally non-partisan.
One exception was this post opposing the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general of the United States from January 2005. Recent events have only served to reinforce my conviction at that time. In fact, I deeply suspect that a connection will emerge between the question of justifying torture (which was what exercised me in 2005) and the current scandals about the firing of U.S. attorneys. We'll see.

Review of Chuck Fager's "Without Apology"

2007-05-20T10:26:00.000-04:00

The following review has been resting on my hard drive for at least a couple of years. I have not published it before as I was intending to look more deeply into assertions I make about Hannah Barnard and Joel Bean, in order to increase my assurance what I said is actually true. In the meantime, I did show the review to some Friends here in New York, and one mentioned it during a recent session of our course about Robert Barclay's Apology. I looked it over, found that it still says some things I think worth saying, and decided to post it here. As always, comments are welcome.

Chuck Fager’s Without Apology
Reviewed by Rich Accetta-Evans

Chuck Fager’s book Without Apology: The Heroes, the Heritage and the Hope of Liberal Quakerism is available from the Kimo Press of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. I recommend it as a very good read, both for those who recognize themselves as “liberal Quakers” as the book defines this term and for Friends like myself who emphatically do not. One does not have to endorse its conclusions to recognize that this book, like many of Fager’s previous writings, exhibits both a love of the Quaker movement, and a refreshing willingness to view it critically. He is also a good storyteller and is able to give us a sympathetic understanding even of people whose views he rejects. Chapter 8, which recounts some of the troubles of our own Yearly Meeting, includes remarkable accounts of conversations between the author and two quite different people: the evangelical pastor Dan Whitley, of Clintondale Friends Church, and the feminist Quaker Carolyn Mallison.

Liberal Quakerism (however defined) has certainly taken its lumps from various quarters over the years. There is, after all, a glaring contrast between the radical but flamboyantly Christian rhetoric of Quakerism’s heroic early period and the bland theological equivocations of Friends’ bodies that see themselves as “liberal” today. So much so that liberal Quakerism has come to seem to many outsiders (and to many thoughtful Quakers themselves) like a movement that is losing touch with its historical memory and its spiritual roots. Chuck Fager wants to remedy this by demonstrating a connection between liberal Quaker faith and certain strands of thought and action that have been present among Friends since the days of George Fox. More than that, he wants to show that in some respects liberal Quakerism can claim to be the most faithful embodiment of what was always best in Quakerism. His story has not only liberal heroes but orthodox and evangelical villains (the Conservative or Wilburite branch of Quakerism is almost entirely ignored, however). By giving a voice to these ideas, Friend Fager’s book may initiate a dialogue that is long overdue and thereby assist other Quakers in understanding what makes their liberal cousins tick.

None of this is to say, however, that Without Apology is or ought to be the last word on these subjects. The very clarity of its assumptions and arguments will make it easier for some readers to articulate what seems to be wrong with them. Here are some of my own critiques:

There are at least some Friends, who might like to identify ourselves as Liberals, too, but who are excluded by the “inclusive” definition of the term that Chuck Fager offers (more on this definition below). We value the peace testimony, we prefer to worship without pastors or ordained human leaders, we embrace critical studies of the Bible and scientific theories of human origin, we believe in social and economic justice, in gender equality, and in the civil rights of homosexuals. We rejoice in the separation of Church and State. We advocate tolerance by the state toward people of all religions and toward people who reject religion. But we believe these things in the name of our living Lord and Teacher, Jesus Christ, and we find in Him the central reason that we are Quakers. It is this last point that makes us not-Liberal according to all too many of our Friends, and now according to Chuck Fager as well (though he does at least concede that it is OK for us to be Quakers.)

There is a mismatch of some kind between the book’s two kinds of definition for what he means by “Liberal Quakerism”. His “institutional” definition is that

“it primarily includes a network of yearly meetings in North America and Britain. Many of the North American Yearly Meetings are associated with Friends General Conference; several others…are unaffiliated.”

Although he does not list the Yearly Meetings he is talking about, it seems clear to anyone who knows the territory that they include Pacific Yearly Meeting, Britain Yearly Meeting, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, New England Yearly Meeting, and our own New York Yearly Meeting. This seems pretty much in line with what we would expect. Most Friends would certainly list these as “liberal” Friends’ bodies, while they would acknowledge that the membership is diverse. Chuck Fager’s “theological” definition of liberal Quakerism, however, contains terms that would be very controversial among Friends in these bodies – even, if not especially, among those who self-identify as liberals.

“Theologically”, he says, “I define Liberal Quakerism as: An ongoing effort to make visible a particular portion of the true Church, by means of the specific traditions and disciplines of the Religious Society of Friends. This very idea of manifesting the true Church is, we believe, rooted in the early Quakers’ unique and inclusive understanding of the Society’s Christian background and origins…”

This is not the whole definition, and much that I have omitted is important to the book’s overall argument. But in this passage, it seems to me, Chuck Fager’s familiarity with Quaker tradition has put him out of step with the rank-and-file Quaker liberal for whom he would like to speak. The very term “church”, much less “True church” is almost a taboo among many liberal Friends, so it would seem to me like a bit of a stretch to include it in a definition of who they are. Indeed, I think it will come as a shock to many of them to find that George Fox, Margaret Fell and the Valiant Sixty thought of themselves as part of a Church at all, though they emphatically and certainly did.

Notwithstanding that his very use of the term “true Church” may well mystify his fellow liberals, it will hardly endear him to students of what the term “Church” meant to early Friends. Fager leans heavily on certain ideas found in Robert Barclay’s “Apology”, which is a work of Quaker theology written by a contemporary of George Fox in the 17th century and widely used by Quakers to explain their faith to others throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and even into the 20th. Fager appreciates and enjoys the irony of basing a book called “Without Apology” on another one called “Apology”, but it seems to me that he is not really clear about the gulf between Barclay’s views and his own.

Starting with some things that Barclay actually said and believed, Chuck Fager extrapolates from them and draws his own conclusions. The reader not previously familiar with Barclay may have a hard time discerning where Barclay’s actual teachings leave off and Fager’s begin. A full discussion of this topic would not easily fit within this brief review, but the gist of it is this: Barclay taught that Christ’s spirit is alive and active within every human being and that those who “have become obedient to the holy light and testimony of God in their hearts” are thereby included in the true and invisible Church whether or not they have ever even heard of Jesus’ earthly ministry, teaching, crucifixion and resurrection. This much is true. The conclusion Chuck Fager extrapolates is that the Society of Friends should try to make this invisible church visible by embracing people as members without regard to whether they are Christians, and thus to be as inclusive on Earth as God presumably will be in Heaven.

Barclay himself rejected such a position, though to see that he did you will have to read his “Apology” for yourself, rather than rely on Chuck Fager’s selective quotations. For Barclay, the visible church (as distinct from the subtle and invisible church which he also talked about) was simply the community that openly and explicitly experienced, worshiped, listened to and obeyed the living Christ. Moreover, it was also quite simply the body that has since come to be known as the Religious Society of Friends. He, like other Quakers of his time, believed that a major problem with most Christian denominations was that they were too inclusive, allowing membership to people who professed belief in Christ but did not actually trust him, listen to his living voice, or obey him. I know of no Quaker in Barclay’s generation or for decades thereafter who argued that either meetings or other churches should include non-Christians as members. When Friends welcomed newcomers to join their meetings, they did so on the basis that these newcomers had heard the Quaker message about Christ, had been “convinced” by it and intended to live by it. It would be vain, of course, to argue that something has to be true if Barclay or Fox believed it. But it seems quite unfair to implicitly invoke their authority in supporting views that they rejected.

The orthodox and evangelical villains of Fager’s history lesson are in some ways straw men and straw women: not that they are not real people, but that they are far easier to knock down rhetorically than other representatives of Christian Quakerism he might have chosen. In some cases they are not even the best exponents of evangelical and orthodox Quakerism itself (why no discussion of T. Canby Jones, for example, or John Punshon, or Richard Foster, or Thomas Kelly?) But more to the point, for me, is that the evangelical and orthodox movements themselves are far from the only representatives of Christian Quakerism. I would have liked to read a serious treatment of the lives and ideas of contemporary Friends like Bill Taber from the Conservative tradition, Licia and Larry Kuenning of the independent Glenside Meeting, and Lewis Benson, John McCandless, Chris Stern and the whole New Foundation movement. These are Friends whose Christian vision is informed by authentic Quaker tradition, far less diluted by protestant fundamentalism than those whom Chuck Fager wants to take on in debate.

The “liberal heroes” whose stories are told in this book include many Friends who were not in fact “liberals” at all under the definition which the author has offered, though clearly they were liberal in the broader sense of being open-minded, generous, and loving – in the sense, that is, that any genuine follower of Jesus would hope to be. The kind of liberal Quakerism, which Chuck Fager is advocating, however, (the kind which says the Society of Friends should not be explicitly Christian) did not arise in these Friends’ lifetimes and there is no reason to think that they would have embraced it if it had.

For example, Friend Fager counts Hannah Barnard as a “foremother” of liberal Quakerism apparently because she was disowned in 1802 for denying the literal truth of certain passages of scripture: notably those in which God is presented as commanding Israel to wage wars. Although this position offended the evangelicals of her time, it was apparently based on her understanding of other passages of scripture – such as the commandment by Jesus that we should love our enemies and do good unto those that hate us. Nothing that Chuck Fager tells us about her supports his contention that she thought the Society of Friends should equivocate about the central importance of Jesus. Perhaps it is a hopeful sign that Christian faith has a future in liberal Quaker Meetings, if liberal Friends take inspiration from a woman who was as courageously loyal to Jesus’ teaching as Hannah Barnard seems to have been.

It may be that a subtext of this story is that just as Hannah Barnard is a ‘foremother’ of liberalism so her persecutors are forerunners of conservative or evangelical or otherwise “Christo-centric” Quakers of today. I would say, rather, that insofar as they were persecutors they were forerunners of the persecuting spirit wherever it appears – even when it appears in a “liberal” meeting that winces at “exclusive” Christian messages.

John Whittier, whom Fager acknowledges to have been part of the Orthodox wing of Quakerism, is nevertheless presented as a hero of liberalism because he spoke out against creedalism and in favor of the primacy of the Spirit over the letter as a guide to Truth. This, again, could be called a “liberal” attitude in the broadest sense, and some non-liberal Friends would no doubt dispute it. Yet Whittier was a Christian and I know of no evidence that he thought the Society of Friends should be anything other than a Christian body. Certainly there is no such evidence in this book.

Even Joel Bean, who Fager embraces as a liberal Friend is really not a liberal at all under Fager’s own definition, despite his important role in the history of the liberal Pacific Yearly Meeting. The book recounts how Bean was hounded out of Iowa Yearly Meeting by the Holiness Revival Quakers because of his adherence to more traditional quietist principles, and then hounded out of the meeting he fled to in California. It says that he then founded a new Meeting called the College Park Association of Friends. This Association’s Purpose, according to its own statement, was “To promote the interest of Christianity and morality and to disseminate religious and moral principles,” (italics added). Chuck Fager counts this as a “liberal” statement because of its relative brevity and simplicity. I’m afraid, however, that if Joel Bean were to form such an association among the Quakers of New York Yearly Meeting or Pacific Yearly Meeting today then someone would take him aside and elder him for his “exclusive language”.

Finally, I think that this book carries the weight of unrealistic and contradictory expectations for Quakerism. It wants us to retain a connection to the spiritual vitality and social radicalism of our ancestors, while rejecting as narrow and exclusive the faith and belief that nourished them. In a section of Chapter Four, the book gives us some terms to help us see “How Quakerism Is, and Isn’t Christian”. He tells us that Quakerism is “Christogenic”, “Christomorphic”, “Christogogic”, and “Christophilic”.

Notwithstanding that these quasi-Greek neologism sound ugly to the ear and look pretentious on the page, I found myself gathering enthusiasm when I first saw them. Apparently, I thought, Chuck is here acknowledging that Friends’ faith and practice were born in Christ, shaped by Christ, taught by Christ, and steeped in the love of Christ.

But no. For Chuck, “Christogenic” Quakerism is Quakerism that “emerged from the religious experience and cultural history of Christianity” - - quite a different thing than emerging from a direct experience of Christ himself. Likewise, “Christomorphic” Quakerism is called that because “its institutions and processes reflect explicit efforts to recreate and practice what Friends like William Penn regarded as ‘Primitive Christianity revived’”, and Quakerism is “Christagogic” in that it has “much that it can learn from Christianity, its founder, and its larger Biblical context”. But how and why will Friends who do not believe that Jesus is a living teacher want to keep their focus on the traditions that refer to him? What relevance does the Christian content of Quakerism have, unless we continue to experience Jesus as neither a dead man of history nor a distant figure in Heaven, but as one who has “Come to teach his people himself?” Don’t we already see that some Friends find any ministry that refers “too much” to him as an imposition and even as unQuakerly?

Judging by “A Modest Postscript”, which appears in the stapled typescript version of this book, but not in an earlier bound edition, Chuck Fager himself is aware of this problem. “Our near-universal ignorance of our heritage-Quaker, Christian and biblical-is appalling” he writes.

In summary, if I were to coin a term for the kind of Quakerism that Chuck Fager calls “liberal” and “inclusive”, I think I would call it “inclusivist”. It is almost too new an ism to be recognized as one. By articulating its premises as well as he has, Chuck Fager has made it possible to learn from this ism, but also – I hope – to begin to move beyond it. The best alternative to this inclusivism is not necessarily its direct opposite, “exclusivism”. Rather, I would hope that the future lies with Friends who are less concerned with the boundaries of Quakerism (whether by erasing them or reinforcing them) and more concerned with strengthening its central core.

Maurice Wilbur Evans August 12 1914 - October 27 1991

2007-03-05T14:33:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking about my father lately, and last night I found my typewritten talk at his funeral at the Rushville New York Methodist Church in 1991. Not long ago, I thought I had misplaced this paper permanently. I'm posting it on my blog in part because it's the best way I can think of to keep track of it. As a tribute, it falls short of what he deserves, but these were the words that came to me then. Dad was a wonderful human being - a fact that I'm glad I lived long enough to realize, because it wasn't as clear to me as it ought to have been when I was very young.

The hospital nurses described him as a “sweet guy” and as “a gentleman”. He was. Even while suffering with cancer, pneumonia, shingles, bed sores and fever he seemed to be trying to make things easier for people around him. He was courteous and thoughtful to the last.
But there was also more to him than the nice old guy the nurses saw. He was a good man in all seasons of his life. He was a father, a husband, a worker, a neighbor, and a man of faith. And always he was himself,never vain, never pretentious.
If you knew him at all you know that he was modest and shy almost to a fault. He tried not to attract attention. He avoided crowds when he could. He never put himself forward as a leader, was never on the church board or union executive committee, never gave speeches and never preached. If you had asked him he might have claimed he wasn’t very religious. Even when I told him what a good father he was during one of our last visiits, he waved away the compliment with a gesture of his hand. He didn’t think of himself as especially good.
Yet he was. He was a kind and loving husband and father and grandfather. Not the kind of father who threw his weight around and demanded respect, but the kind who spreads his care around and earned respect. He and my mother raised their family in an atmosphere of love, which I know has helped us in our lives. He was a loyal church member and a deep believer, though he didn’t talk about this much. He began a practice of daily devotions and Bible reading almost thirty years ago – originally in order to encourage his children – and continued the practice as long as he was able to live at home. Knowing this about him and knowing that so few other people did always reminded me of Jesus’ advice that we should pray in a closet rather than in a showsy public place.
As for kindness toward others, this came naturally to him. He and my mother were doing things for neighbors and relatives as long as I can remember. I think of an older man who used to live alone on our street and who was always welcome to come over for visits and sometimes for meals. I’m sure there are people in this room who can recall times in recent years when Dad offered a ride to the hospital or clinic, or brought a meal to someone who was shut in. Most of you know that he and my mother opened their home to a grandson who was very ill for many weeks just a few years ago. To hear him tell it, though, these were never good deeds - - just a kind of trade he was making with others who had been or would be good to h im. He was more aware of what he received from others than of what he gave to them.
And, of course, others did do things for him. He was grateful, and we in his family are grateful for all the love and support we received during his illness: the neighbors, friends and relatives who visited, helped us to visit, sent cards, sent prayers, or just said a word or two of comfort when it was needed.
When Jesus was trying to tell his disciples about the way it will be in the Kingdom of God, he warned them not to be like a man who went to a banquet and sat down uninvited beside the master of the feast. He said it was better to sit at the lower end of the table and wait to be invited to a better seat. I can picture of my father at the Great Banquet not even taking a seat at all, but sort of standing near the edges, back near the door. I picture the Lord taking him by the arm and guiding him to the head of the table and telling him to sit in the place of honor.
Finally – I want to mention the fact that Dad had the same name as a certain famous actor. Once in a while when I have filled in “father’s name” on an application blank or official document, I’ve been asked if I am the son of the Maurice Evans. If I am ever asked that again, I will say that “Yes, I am.” And if I am asked what it is like to be the son of an actor, then I will explain that the Maurice Evans was not an actor but a farm hand, a truck driver, and a construction worker. It was the other Maurice Evans who was an actor.

It Needs A Little Salt

2007-02-28T17:07:00.000-05:00

What contribution can Friends really make to the world?

We can proclaim our principles (We're for Peace! We're for Justice! We're for Simplicity! We're for the Earth!, etc.)

We can denounce the evils we see (or think we see) around us. (Abolish the Death Penalty! Stop the War! End Racism! Don't wear bright colors!).

But the question can be asked - is all this stand-taking a form of faithful witness, or just self-indulgence? Do we really promote peace by being "for" it? Can we really stop wars by protesting them? Is more required of us? And if so, what? Do Friends have a moral obligation to work "effectively" on these issues? If so, what would be "effective"? Civil disobedience? Electoral politics? Acts of service?

One could say (I, myself, often say) that we are not called to be effective but to be faithful. But if I knew how to really have an effect on the war in Iraq and to shorten the suffering by one day or save a single life, then the argument could be made that it would not be faithful to neglect than one effective action and turn my back on that one life or that one day of suffering. So "effectiveness" and "faithfulness" may not be antonyms.

But neither are they synonyms. We can't be faithful just by trying to be "effective". Perhaps one can't even be effective just by trying to be effective. Jesus told his Friends/Disciples in Matthew 5:13 (NIV)

13"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men...

I hear this as a warning against (among other things) false realism.

Some of my "realistic" Friends occasionally become quite taken with the urgency of some particular action: flooding Congress with letters, flooding the streets with protesters, getting out the vote for some good candidate or (more often, sadly) against some bad candidate. Often these things are very reasonable to do. I have been on many peace marches in my time and expect to be on many more. I always feel that it is a good thing when I find my way to the monthly peace vigil other Friends of my meeting hold at Washington Square Arch in New York City. I also almost always vote. When elections seem close and the difference between candidates seems relatively large I tend to vote for liberal Democrats against less-liberal Democrats in primaries, and I tend to vote for Democrats against Republicans in general elections. On other occasions, I cast "symbolic" votes for candidates who have little chance of winning but seem to point the way toward much better policies than anything served up by Democrats or Republicans. (I admit it; I voted for Nader in 2000, but I did it in New York State, not a swing state).

But, quite frankly, I don't put as much energy into such things as I might have once. And - - especially in the area of electoral politics - - I would be very much opposed to the Religious Society of Friends taking a corporate stand equivalent to my individual stand. I wouldn't want my Meeting as a Meeting to be campaigning for the good guys, even if I really thought they were good guys. The issue here isn't our tax exemption; that's a practical matter and I don't think we should let it interfere with political activity if the Lord were leading us toward political activity. I admire the stance of the Catholic Worker, which refuses tax exempt status in order to be free of any government restrictions on their witness. But I don't think the Lord is (usually, anyway) leading us as a people to take partisan political stands that are advanced through traditional political activism.

To some folks, this might seem "unrealistic", "utopian", "idealistic", and even "self-indulgent". I could be (I have been) accused of seeking only my own vain purity rather than real change that would benefit real people. But I think these arguments are themselves unrealistic, that they vastly overestimate what can be accomplished by a tiny group like ours through political action, and that they vastly underestimate the one power we do have going for us: the power of faithful obedience to God's leadings and faithful witness to God's Kingdom.

There are no "pacifist" political parties of any real influence in America. We sometimes caricature the Republicans as warmongers and the Democrats as peacelovers. But a lot depends on what wars and what causes we're talking about. It may even depend on what Democrats and what Republicans we're talking about. So whoever I vote for in the next election, if that person wins there's a good chance that he or she will be leading the nation into a war, or even fail to extricate us from the current one. I can still make my judgements as to who is going to try the hardest to find other ways and vote for that person. And I will. And so will lots of other people who are not pacifists, not Quakers, not Christians. More power to them. This kind of voting has its place; but it's not the kind of peacemaking or peace witness to which we are particularly called as disciples and Friends of Jesus. In fact, if we get too enthusiastic about supporting candidates and about doing-what-it-takes to get them elected, we risk forfeiting our credibility as consistently principled advocates of peace, humanity and justice.

As a Christian pacifist, as I understand the term, I am not so much committed to some particular "pacifist" foreign policy as I am to thorough nonviolence in my own life, and consistent opennes to all my neighbors in this world who others may want to define as "enemies". Because we have renounced war for ourselves, and because we try to treated all people, however hated, despised, or feared, with respect and love, we Friends will often be in a position to give service where others have not, and to know people who others do not, and to understand the struggles of people who are generally not understood. We will be friends of the friendless, and even be friends of people who are enemies to each other. This makes us potential bridge builders and reconcilers. If we feed hungry people before the wars, tend to the wounded during wars, and consistently refuse to fight in the wars, then we may have a role in helping the growth of international and inter-group cooperation and understanding. We may also have a role in picking up the pieces once wars have burned themselves out. Once the combatants get sick of killing each other, they have often, historically, turned to principled non-combatants to pave the way for peace. But if - - in a misguidedly "realistic" campaign for certain candidates, we end up becoming just one more group of partisans with its own axe to grind, then we may undermine that more basic mission. Wouldn't it be great if I could talk to my Conservative Republican Congressman about victims of torture, without him suspecting that I am just trying to advance the fortunes of his Democratic opponent in the next election?

Why did I call this post "It needs a little salt"? Because that's what the world needs and that's what we - - as His disciples - - ought to be.

New Entry on Pondering The Gospels Blog

2007-02-28T16:10:00.000-05:00

My Pondering the Gospels blog has even fewer readers than this one. But I like it, anyway.

I hope it isn't out of place to point out here a new post there.

The Religious Society of Friends Has Been Very Very Good To Me

2007-02-26T09:46:00.000-05:00

The original title planned for this post was "What I owe to the Religious Society of Friends". I've decided to change it, because "What I owe..." could imply that it would be possible, even obligatory, for me to "give back" to Friends what Friends have given to me. It might be desirable, but it can't be done.
I attended my first unprogrammed Friends Meeting sometime in the early Spring of 1968 shortly before my 21st birthday. I was an unemployed and depressed college dropout, a off-and-on activist for civil rights and and against the war in VietNam. I was a former atheist and not-yet-theist trying to make sense within some logical framework of a transcendental experience I had had on the steps of the Pentagon during a sit-in demonstration in October 1967.

What did Friends do for me? They accepted me. They took me seriously. Sometimes they gently corrected me - - or asked me questions that helped me see things more clearly. They showed me by example the power that lies in waiting on God and following the leadings that God provides. Among Friends I found community in various forms - from an intentional community of Young Friends in Clinton New York in the early 70s, to the loose-knit, sometimes contentious, but very loving urban Meeting I belong to now. Among Friends I found some (including a few who'd be shocked to think so) who helped me understand what faith in Christ is all about.

I was with some Friends and others at an antiwar meeting at Albany Friends Meetinghouse on April 4, 1968 (my 21st birthday no less) when we heard the news about Martin Luther King's assassination. It was good to be with others who cared and who - unlike me - did not seem tempted to despair.

After I became a draft resister, many Friends supported me through my trial and slap-on-the wrist sentencing, even holding a meeting for worship in the federal courthouse. Friends both individually and collectively have helped me materially both in the early years when I was poor and in recent years when I became "involved beyond my ability to manage". Friends have helped me celebrate the great joys of my life, such as my marriage to Janet in 1977 and the birth of our son in 1981. Friends have been with me and held me in times of grief and anxiety. I've seen Friends do some foolish and self-defeating things, and I've seen Friends be touched by grace and brought back to God and one another.

For me, the ultimate source of all these blessings is the God Friends worship (or that some Friends don't worship, but that's another discussion). Yet it is through Friends and among Friends that I found this God. And it has usually been through the love and fellowship of Friends that God has poured out blessings on me. So I'm always always grateful to Friends.

'Nough said.

Quaker Faith and Values as I understand them

2007-02-15T14:37:00.000-05:00

Robin M, the creator of "What Canst Thou Say" has provided on her blog a brief statement she titled "My Commitment to Quaker Faith and Values". This was part of a project in which she was asked to "Give a brief statement of your commitment to the Quaker faith and values as you understand them." I'm not involved in that project, and feel no need to comment on my commitment to the Quaker faith and values, but I love the idea of saying something meaningful in 250 words or less about what that faith is and what those values are (as I understand them). Here goes......

Faith:

As I understand it, the Quaker faith is a decision to trust (by listening for, listening to, and following) the teaching and leading of Christ. Quaker belief is a separate matter from Quaker faith, but not entirely unrelated. I could believe many things about Christ without being willing to trust and follow Him, and would then be a believer but not have faith. Likewise, there might be a person who senses, trusts, and follows the leadings of Christ in the heart without being able to make "I believe.." statements about Him. Such a person could be considered to have faith without belief. Faith without belief is of more value than belief without faith.

Values:

As I understand them, the enduring Quaker values are those taught by Christ: Love of God, Love of Neighbor, Love of Enemies, Respect for Creation, Unselfishness, Service, Honesty, and Humility.

How many words was that?

My Meeting's M&W Committee Offers A Course on Robert Barclay

2007-02-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

I just sent the following announcement to many members and attenders of the 15th Street Meeting. I'm posting it in here because if there are others close enough to NYC to attend this course, I hope you will contact me and come join the class. It seems pretty likely that we'll have enough room.

This project has been in preparation for some time, and was approved last week by the Meeting's Ministry and Worship Committee.

The class will begin on Thursday April 12th at 6:30 p.m. and will meet every Thursday evening until May 24th. All sessions except the one on April 19th will be in the iBook library at Friends Seminary. The Class on April 19th will be in Room One of the Meetinghouse at 15 Rutherford Place.

- - Rich A-E

Reading Barclay’s “Apology” – An Early Brief for Quakerism
Outline of a Course Offered by Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting

By 1676, the early Quaker movement was emerging from its first three decades of growth, tumult, and persecution. The steadfastness of Friends under persecution, their persistence through major changes in society and politics, and even their honesty in business had begun to make a positive impression even on some of their
former enemies. Still, their seemingly peculiar mode of worship, their rejection of outward sacraments, and their unusual approach to doctrines like the Trinity all made them highly suspect in the eyes of other Christians.

Robert Barclay was a convert to Quakerism and had been educated in other Christian traditions (Calvinism and Roman Catholicism). He saw a need to explain the beliefs and doctrines of Friends in a way that could be understood by their critics. The result was a book published originally in Latin in 1676 and then translated by Barclay himself into English and published in 1678. Its full title was An Apology for the True Christian Divinity as the Same is Held Forth and Preached by the People Called in Scorn Quakers. Its sub-title further described it as "Being a Full Explanation of and Vindication of their Principles and Doctrines by many arguments deduced from scripture and right reason and the testimonies of famous authors both ancient and modern, with a full answer to the strongest objections usually made against them." Now we just call it The Apology.

Barclay's influence on later generations of Friends was considerable. Until well into the 19th century The Apology was kept in many Quaker households and read alongside the Bible and the Journal of George Fox. During the great separations, all branches of the fragmenting Society found some support for their own particular
positions in its pages.

In the twentieth century, Barclay was less often read, but exponents and opponents of “Quaker universalism” could both quote him in defense of their beliefs and often did so. (See, for example, "Without Apology" by Friend Chuck Fager). But many who read The Apology today rely on a paraphrase in Modern English by Dean Freiday, a book with many wonderful insights and but also some errors of interpretation.

The conviction underlying this course is that we will benefit by becoming conversant with the original. The preferred text will be the original English edition of 1678, as reissued (with modernized spelling) by Quaker Heritage Press in 2002. Reading each proposition in advance of the discussion will be strongly encouraged but not required. Classroom discussion will be seeded with questions from me, other resource
people, and - - of course - - class members themselves.

First Class (April 12th)- Background on Robert Barclay and the Quakerism of His Time:
Prefatory Address to “Charles the Second, King of Great Britain”
Quick Overview of the 15 Propositions

Second Class (April 19th)- First Three Propositions:
Proposition I - “Concerning the true Foundation of Knowledge”
Proposition II - “Concerning Immediate Revelation”
Proposition III - “Concerning the Scriptures”

Third Class (April 26th): Fourth Proposition; Fifth and Sixth Propositions
Proposition IV - “Concerning the Condition of Man in the Fall”
Propositions V and VI – “Concerning the Universal Redemption by Christ and also the Saving and Spiritual Light, wherewith every man is enlightened”

Fourth Class (May 3rd): Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Propositions
Proposition VII – “Concerning Justification”
Proposition VIII – “Concerning Perfection”
Proposition IX – “Concerning Perseverance and the Possibility of Falling From Grace”

Fifth Class (May 10th): Tenth and Eleventh Propositions
Proposition X - “Concerning the Ministry”
Proposition XI - “Concerning Worship”

Sixth Class (May 17th): Twelfth and Thirteenth Propositions
Proposition XII - “Concerning Baptism”
Proposition XIII – “Concerning the Communion or Participation of the Body and Blood of Christ”

Seventh Class (May 24th): Fourteenth and Fifteenth Propositions
Proposition XIV - “Concerning the power of the Civil Magistrate, in matters purely
religious, and pertaining to the conscience”.
Proposition XV - “Concerning Salutations and Recreations, &c.”

Oooops!

2006-12-31T00:23:00.000-05:00

Tonight I converted my blog to Google's "new blogger". It is probably becaue of this change that tons of my old posts (maybe all of them?) suddenly turned up on Planet Quaker.
Apologies to all who may have been flooded by my RSS feed.

- - Rich

Starting a New Blog

2006-12-30T23:59:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that I've not even been posting very much on this one, I have now undertaken a new and much more ambitious blog called Pondering The Gospels. Whether I can follow it through remains to be seen. Whether such a blog is really needed also remains to be seen. I'm well aware of other Friends who've undertaken similar projects that I very much admire. Friendly Skripture Study is one example, another (not recently added-to) is Bible Wonderings. That said, I am pretty enthusiastic about this new blog right now. If nothing else, the effort to produce it will be a useful way to focus my attention on the gospels.

- - Rich

Still Converting - A Message from "Rich Evans"

2006-12-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sifting through my jumble of papers the other day, I happened on an article I wrote in December 1976 (before I married and changed my name). I wrote it in response to an invitation from the Quarterly Meeting for Friends to write something about their spiritual experiences. I found in re-reading this piece that this "Rich Evans" had something to say to Rich Accetta-Evans. I have reproduced the article here in case it also has something to say to someone else.

FROM RICH EVANS
When I first joined Friends in 1969, I felt that I had arrived on a kind of spiritual mountain top, and I expected to climb no further. I felt that the Inner Light was guiding me; that it was sustaining me in a radical lifestyle redeemed from the evils of war and materialism. I was profoundly moved in meetings for worship and often felt the Power of the Spirit like a flood of warmth or a strong rushing stream within me. I was a draft resister, I had very little money, and expected to be in prison soon, yet my predominant mood was joyful.

Jesus, at the time, did not seem to have anything to do with these experiences. He was simply a man who had lived long ago and had perhaps been in touch with the Spirit. The Spirit itself did not seem like a man or a woman but more like an imperonal force. My religious life consisted of trying to tune myself to "It," not of praying to "Him."

Now, a mere 8 years later, I am suprised and happy to report that, for all this excitement and richness, those experiences of 1969 were really only the beginning. I no longer feel myself to be at the top of the mountain because I have seen more of what towers above me. I have gained a deeper sense of how awesome and inexhaustible the Lord our God really is, of how small we are beside Him, and yet of how intimate, tender, personal and sensitive His love for each of us is.

Along the way from there to here I descended all the way from that mountaintop into the deepest despair, weariness, self-disgust. I discovered an element of false pride and self-righteousness which corrupted even my best impulses and blinded me to my worst. I didscovered that my passionate beliefe in "love" did not prevent me from hurting people close to me. I discovered that some of my most cherished views about life were deeply wrong and dangerous to my spiritual health.

At the lowest part of this journey I became involved in a painful separation from someone very close to me. In one especially difficult afternoon, while the pain was sharpest, I found myself feeling not only grief and loss, but angry hatred. This discovery overwhelmed me with disgust for myself, giving way at last to a great bleakness, weariness and heaviness. I felt that there was no way to continue living.

Just then, however, I was "saved", if I may use that word, from my self-inflicted spiritual death. A vision was presented to me. In the vision, Jesus appeared in my path, stretched out His arms to me and said "Come unto me, you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." I knew, as I was seeing this, that Jesus was speaking with the Authority of a fellow-sufferer, a deeply human person, and yet as an example of purity and goodness. Then, although I did not in any obvious way "come" to Him, my weariness and anxiety left me at once. I did not feel elated or ecstatic, nor suddenly sure of what I wanted to do, but I felt rested, relaxed and able to continue living. It was appropriately symbolic that I was able to sleep that night for the first time in days. The rest I found was also a preview of that deeper "rest in the Lord" which I now enjoy in greater measure.

Perhaps surprisingly, this vivid exeperience did not immediatley "convert" me either to the thorough practice of a Christian life or to belief in Christian teachings. I did, however begin to convert. That is, I began to change, to grow, and to turn - however gropingly - toward Christ. I believe that to this very day I am still converting, still emerging into Life from Death, into the "Ocean of Light" from the "Ocean of Darkness".

Such an experience does not, of course, "prove" anything erxcept to whoever has had it. Nor should it be taken as somehow essential to the Christian life. Perhaps it is only when someone is really off the beam, really desparate, that God condescends to use such dramatic and unusual events to get His point across. For me, however, it was a decisive experience which led me eventually to learn several important things, of which I will here mention two:

First, I learned about the reality of sin. I came to see that humanity needs to be rescued from its own destructiveness, both outward and inward. Anyone can see this without adopting speculative views about the after-life. We can see it in the symptoms of spiritual death which abound around us. We can see it in the harvest of war, destruction,l hunger and fear being reaped by people all over the world. But we can see it most plainly of all in our own souls when they ae held to the Light.

Even George Fox, who never reoprts that he outwardly sinned, clearly went through a prolonged struggle with inner weakness and was only rescued by a vioce which said: "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition."

We therefore do the earliest Friends a great injustice, and sap this message of its power, if we suggest that they did not believe in sin or in salvation from sin. More importantly, we do ourselves great harm if we complacently refuse to see the potential for evil within us and shrug off the horrors of the 20th century as if we had no responsibility for them in any way.

The real message of early Friends about sin is more urgent today than ever: not simply that it exists, not simply that Christ will forgive it, buty that through Christ we can overcome it. We can be changed, we can turn away from death and choose life: perhpas not in the thorough and final way that Fox seemed to envisage, but certrainly in a way that makes a real difference, a way that starts us growing instead of dying.

The whole point of early Quaker testimonies was to confront the world with its bondage to sin by demonstrating the alternative: a life in servie to Crist. We cannot maintain a living, relevant, radical testimony today unless we keep in touch with the same Saving Power who was known to our spiritual ancestors.

Second, Ilearned about the reality of "incarnation". On this point it took my theology a long time to catch up with my experience. Even now, the questions reason asks have not been fully answered in my mind. Perhaps they need not be. The important point is this: I no longer think it unworthy of God to become a human being. My vision of Jesus gave me a new picture of God. The effort to define God through negatives as non-personal, non-rational, non-spatial, etc. haslost all appeal to me. I "define" God not at all, but accept His self-revelation, through Jesus. I rejoice in God's willingness to suffer, to love, to care, to forgive, and to lead us.

I suspect that themodern rejection of this idea, among Friends and others, has roots in an unconscious hatred of the created world in general or of the hyuman body in particular. If the material world is made by God, why should he not inhabit it? If the human body is a beautiful temple of the Spirit, why should Jesus not appear in one? Western philosophy has troubled itself a good deal about the proper way to distinguish body from spirit in theory; I think we can take a cue instead from Jesus and concern ourselves with integrating them in practice, and seeking the redemption of both.
- - R.E. December 1976

It is suprising to me that so much of what "Rich Evans" said in 1976 still seems new and fresh to me 30 years later. I've had to relearn some of the same lessons more than once. I might phrase some things differently today - but not as much as you might think. I definitely think I'm still converting.
- - Rich Accetta-Evans

A Message About Prayer

2006-12-11T22:12:00.000-05:00

note:Some Friends have noticed that it has been a long time (Since July, in fact) since my last blog post. I offer this post as a kind of cryptic postcard from where I am sojourning.

As I've said in a reply to Paul L's recent comment on my last post, I've been rather preoccupied with problems much closer to home than the blogosphere. I have, however, kept going to Meeting for Worship. On December 3rd I sat down on my usual bench in a pretty heavy (as opposed to weighty) frame of mind and began to inwardly and silently pray. In the course of this prayer, something opened in me about prayer itself and the following message emerged. I gave the message aloud in Meeting, and I believe it was helpful ministry for some, notwithstanding that the "content" was nothing new. I reproduce it here from memory, so the word-choices are probably different than in the original message.

Friends, I have been blessed in recent weeks with many reminders of how weak and needy I can sometimes be, and of how much I stand in need of love, support, guidance, nurture and strength from God, from the community of Friends and from my loved ones. Blessed but also distressed. I do not really like to see myself as weak and needy.

With all this on my mind this morning, I felt a need to pray and did not know how to begin, so I meditated awhile on a sample prayer taught by Jesus, the one often called the "Our Father" or "The Lord's Prayer". I believe the words of this prayer are not given to us so that they can be repeated by rote as part of a ritual. I believe they are given so that they can teach us something about prayer itself and about the God to whom we pray. Here is what they have taught me this morning as I meditated on them:

First, our God is a parent to us, and we are invited to speak to God as to a parent. Gender is not the issue. We can call God "Father" (or "Papa") as Jesus did, or "Mother" if that is easier for some of us. The point is that God gave us being, God loves us, God cares for us, and God watches over us with the loving attention of a parent. We can talk to God in a familiar way.

Second even though God is our parent, God is also in Heaven, in the Sky, High Above us. God is not our God only, not in our control, and not on our "side" against someone else. We are to hallow God's name. To refrain from using it in profanity certainly, but more importantly not to dishonor it by invoking it as a cover or a sanction for our human agendas and parochial concerns.

We are urged to pray that God's will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. The way things are now is not God's will for how they should be, but the things that we ourselves want and wish for aren't necessarily God's will either. We are to ask for God's own will to be acccomplished, rather than ours, and in asking we need to commmit ourselves to seek for that will and then to cooperate with it, as far as we are enabled to understand it.

We are encouraged to ask for our "daily" bread today. Not for cake or steak, and not for a lifetime supply of even bread, and not for a plan or a roadmap or a promise to always be secure. Just for enough to feed us now.

We are also to ask for forgiveness for the wrongs we have done, and to offer the same forgiveness for wrongs we have suffered, if any. We have a need to be freed from the chains of bitterness, guilt, and blame, in order to face the future in faith and love.

Finally, we are to ask that we not be "put to the test" beyond our strength. We don't have to be spiritual heroes. We don't tell the tempter to "bring it on". Instead we ask our Parent to deliver us from evil. And we trust that He will.

In sum: We are invited to ask God to deliver us from evil, to forgive us and help us forgive, to give us what we need today. We are invited to ask that God's will be done. We are reminded that God is our Parent but is also a Heavenly God with a name that should be hallowed.

Thinking of Zacharias Moussaoui

2006-07-22T13:18:00.000-04:00

A few months ago Zacharias Moussaoui was convicted of having some part in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and was sentenced to life in prison. That he wasn't executed is a victory of sorts for opponents of capital punishment, but not really a victory for the principle of humane and just treatment for offenders
Consider the statement at this website. Note that the writer feels life imprisonment was a more appropriate sentence than death, but note also the reasons:.

Second, by sentencing Moussaoui to life in prison at the federal Supermax facility in Colorado, we have done far worse than put him to death. He will be in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. He will have no visitors. He will have no contact with other inmates. He will be locked in his cell 23 hours a day. The only persons he will see will be the guards who will deliver his meals three times a day or escort him to a room for his daily 60 minute exercise period. That is it. He may, on occasion, be visited by some law enforcement or governmental official, but that's all. No friends. No relatives. No imams. Nobody.

To reiterate, we have done far worse than kill him. We have made him a non-entity, a living ghost who will quickly fade out of the the public's memory. And then he will die, as the presiding judge said, quoting T.S.Eliot, “with a whimper.” I can think of no better fate for him.

I am not an expert on the facts of Moussaoui's case. I don't know whether he actually had a role in 9/11, or whether he actually knew when and where it would take place. The jury heard the evidence and concluded that he did, so I tentatively assume that they are correct. I also don't know whether Moussaoui was mentally ill - though some of his actions and statements suggest that to a non-medical person like me. I certainly acknowledge, based on things he said in court, that he was a person filled with rage and that he directed that rage at all Americans (among others) - presumably including (not to be personal about it) ... me. So I have no problem seeing that innocent people should be protected from him, even if this means confining him for life.

BUT

If the above description of conditions for his confinement are accurate, I find them absolutely horrifying and absolutely unjustified. What could motivate such treatment except society's rage at his crime? How does this cruelty in any way redeem the suffering of the victims of 9/11? How does it advance justice? Or peace?

Jesus urged his followers to 'love your enemies and do good to those who hate you' (Luke 6:27-28). I have not taken this to mean that we necessarily have to feel warm and tender emotions toward specific people, but that we should intend (and act for) their good rather than their harm. Jesus modelled this attitude himself, even on the cross. Millions of people who think of themselves as followers of Jesus do not seem to want to apply this teaching in cases like Moussaoui's, but it seems to me that if we really become His Friends we will become able to do so: not only in the case of big and public and 'political' cases like Moussaoui's but in our daily interactions with "enemies" whose actions are merely inconvenient or annoying rather than evil.

I claim no great acheivement on this score, but I at least feel clear about what the direction should be.

I also wonder whether in fact Moussaoui is permitted visitors and whether he gets any? Is there anyone anywhere still looking out for his welfare, able to communicate with him and listen to him? Are Friends or others concerned for his rights and willing to believe that he is capable of growth?

These are sobering questions. I have been pondering them from some time and feel no clearness at all about what can be done.

- - Rich

Another Brooklyn Quaker

2006-07-21T13:16:00.000-04:00

Click this link to see still another Brooklyn Quaker, who - like me - is a non-member of Brooklyn Meeting.

Also - if I understand correctly - he or she is not only a Quaker but also a monk.

Appreciating "Bible Wonderings"

2006-07-20T09:54:00.000-04:00

Contemplative Scholar has attracted some well-deserved interest in her blog Embracing Complexity, and its posts are sometimes listed in www.quakerquaker.org. For some reason, though, I haven't seen much reaction to her other blog, Bible Wonderings. To be fair, I may have missed the comments if there were any. I see that her last post was in April and I fear that she may have abandoned the project.

As far as it goes, it is a wonderful, piece-by-piece journal of her observations and questions as she works her way through a reading of the Bible. There is no fundamentalism here, and no false academic sophistication either. She comes with an open mind and fresh perspective to each strange and often difficult passage of this old old collection of books. Having begun with Genesis back in January, she had just finished with the First five books, not always the easiest reading, as of her last post. "I'm having trouble getting through Numbers" she said frankly on April 7, when she discussed Numbers 1-20 (and who doesn't find Numbers a little numbing?); but on April 20 she had finished the book and had some interesting things to say about it.

I recommend reading this fascinating blog, and hope that Contemplative Scholar will consider resuming her work on it.

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

A Surprise Difficulty at Meeting for Business

2006-07-15T11:53:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday (July 9) was our monthly meeting for business at 15th Street. There were many many decisions to be made and this was mostly done in a very careful but open-hearted way with much mutual listening and common listening to the Spirit. Given that we met for five to six hours on a very hot uncomfortable day, I would say that it went remarkably well.

One matter that might have been expected to be easy for us, however, ended up detaining us much longer than we'd have liked - - and it is possible that the position I took was part of the reason.

We were asked by our Peace Committee to approve a letter to Representatives and Senators calling on the United States to release the names of all persons it is holding in custody, publish the charges against them (if any), allow them access to lawyers, and basically treat them as human beings. What was exciting about this was that it was not just to be a letter, it was to be carried by small groups of Friends to the offices of these Senators and Representatives in order to make a direct and personal appeal.

As far as I know, every single Friend in the room warmly approved of all these goals. You'd think that such a proposal would sail right through and we could get on with other matters (like whether the meeting should accept a large anonymous gift of stock in an unknown company).

Two Friends, however, (yes - I was one of them) expressed uneasiness about one sentence in the letter: something to the effect that this concern arose for us because of our deep spiritual belief, as Friends, that there is That of God in every person. I have a feeling that our uneasiness was not well-understood (and probably not well-communicated at least by me). Various ways around the difficulty were proposed by a number of Friends: from omitting the sentence altogether to rewording it in various ways which would be more acceptable to the other objector and me. But none of these proposals meeting general acceptance, the Meeting finally adopted the original minute. I did not ask to be minuted as standing aside or in opposition, since I thought that the action taken itself was more important than its specific language, but I remain disappointed that the Meeting did not find some way to more fully harmonize the truth as I saw it with the truth as seen by some other Friends.

This use of the phrase "That of God in everyone" has become very common among modern Friends in liberal meetings like mine. It probably dates from Rufus Jones' attempts to restate Quaker beliefs in modern terms in the early 20th century. Almost every commitment and testimony that Quakers affirm is said to flow from our belief that there is That of God in every one. Why are we against capital punishment? Because there is That of God in every one? Why are we in favor of equal rights for women, for gays, for racial and ethnic minorities? Because there is that of God in everyone. Why do we not have ordained and paid ministers in unprogrammed meetings? Because there is That of God in everyone. Etc. etc. I don't know whether this is felt to be the reason that Faith and Practice urges "Care should be taken that all of our members avoid participation in lotteries, gambling, and betting, including such schemes of chance that appeal as benevolences..." but probably someone could make the connection.

My problem with this is pretty simple: My reason for opposing war, oppression, capital punsihment, prisoner abuse (and gambling) is indeed religiously or spiritually grounded; but it is not that there is That of God in everyone. Nor, as far as I can tell, was that ever the reason given by any of our Quaker forbears before Friend Rufus Jones. (There may be examples in the Hicksite branch during the 19th century, but I don't know of them; I'm fairly sure that Elias Hicks himslf never said any such thing). George Fox did not give this as a reason that he couldn't accept a commission in the New Model Army. The famous declaration of Friends to King Charles II in 1660 made no mention of That of God in every one. John Woolman didn't mention it in any of his pleas for the poor, the oppressed, and the enslaved. Margaret Fell didn't mention it in "Women's Speaking Justified". . Thomas Lurting, the "Fighting Sailor turned Peaceable Christian" didn't give it as a reason for not fighting pirates. Even Lucretia Mott, no conservative she, did not use it as an argument for women's suffrage.

That of God in every one, after all, is the Light. (I will not open another front of debate by insisting right here and now that it is the Light of Christ Jesus). To be sure, it is the Light in me that tells me, if I haven't got the message any other way, that I shouldn't kill or maim or destroy or degrade or oppress other people. But not because there is also Light in them; on the contrary, I am not to do these things to fellow human-beings because they are flesh and blood and can be hurt and damaged and God's love for their flesh-and-blood selves is a model for me of the love and respect that I, too, should have for all. As far as That of God in them goes, I know I can't harm it. It is eternal, comes from God, existed before any human being did, and will persist when all of us are gone from the physical world. The last thing I should worry about, should I harm some person's physical body, is what will happen to That of God.

Of course, lots of Friends like to use this language about that of God, because they think it is what Quaker tradition has always taught. As I pointed out above, this is not true. Lewis Benson's ought-to-be-famous article "That of God In Every Man: What Did George Fox Mean By It?", published in 1970, ought to have settled that question for good. As Lewis pointed out, Fox used the phrase very very rarely and always in the context of exhorting Friends to testify and (for want of a better word) to evangelize. Fox called on Friends to "speak to" or "preach to" or "answer" That of God in every one (or every man; he used both expressions) and said that that of God in people would witness to them inwardly, convict them of their sins, and show them how to overcome. He clearly believed that "that of God" really was in every one; that it was placed in each of us by God to bring us to Himself, but he never once made the simple declarative statement "There is that of God in Every One", and certainly didn't make it fundamental to the Quaker message.

Why does this phrase continue to be so abused? I think it's because it lends itself so easily to a "translation" that goes down more easily in our secular age. When we say to the average person "there is that of God in every one" we are understood to be simply saying that every person is precious. Most non-Quakers will agree with this, though they might not go so far as to say that no person should be killed. Let me say that I, too, think every person is precious. I, too, will agree with most Friends that I would never be justified in killing anyone. But the clearest way for me to say that every person is precious is to say "Every preson is precious". The phrase that there is that of God in everyone I will reserve (if I choose to use it at all) as a way of talking about the wonder and challenge that await anyone and every one who will turn within and wait on it.

Conference Envy

2006-07-14T17:03:00.000-04:00

There were lots of exciting Quaker blogposts emanating from the recent gathering of Friends General Conference and especially the Convergent Friends' Interest Group. It seems that an awful lot of Quaker bloggers were there and got to meet each other in the flesh, some for the first time.

Alas, I wasn't there. My life-direction of recent years hasn't lent itself to much travelling or conference-attendance. It's been quite awhile since I even made it to my own Yearly Meeting. So when I read about it on, for example, Robin's blog I get a strong "wish-I-was-there" feeling, and a yearning to meet and speak with all those Friends.

Connected to this is a yearning I also feel to communicate the spiritual/intellectual ferment of the Quaker blogosphere to Friends I know from my own Meeting, but who are not active bloggers.

It reminds me in some ways of the Young Friends of North America Conferences I attended in the late 60's/early 70's and the need some YF's felt then to meet with each other in other places and also to spread themselves out through the S of F in North America. One result was a number of "caravans" of YF's who travelled together in groups visiting local meetings and yearly meetings and holding threshing sesions on issues like draft resistance, war tax resistance, women's and men's liberation, and simplicity. In this way, those who participated got to know each other better, know Quakerism better, and communicate some of their ideas and passionate commitment to the wider (older) body of Friends.

Now, for the same reasons that I don't get to conferences I would not personally join any such "caravan" if one were formed by a group of bloggers today (and maybe most of the bloggers are too settled and geographically stable to do such a thing). But if it were formed and it wanted to visit NYC I would be very excited for them to come to my meeting, and I would work to help coordinate local hospitality.

I wonder if that could happen?

Diabetes

2006-07-02T10:23:00.000-04:00

Generally speaking, I don't put a lot of personal news in this blog. As I say in the title box, its purpose is to share "thoughts on Quaker Faith and Practice as they appear to me." My day-to-day life raises all sorts of issues about Quaker practice, but writing about it would normally mean writing about other people I interact with and I don't want my friends and family to think I will be discussing their personal lives on the world wide web.

There's also the point that my own personal life is probably not so vitally interesting to others as it is to me.

This week I am breaking the pattern to say something about my recent discovery that I have type 2 diabetes and that as a result of it I have already suffered some mild neuropathy (nerve damage).
For a couple of years I have known that my doctor was somewhat concerned with my blood sugar levels, but it somehow hadn't sunk in just how serious this was. I took metformin (Glucophage) for awhile, improved my diet and exercise, was able to stop the metformin, gradually went back to my old carelessness on diet and exercise, and now find that I really really have diabetes, and it isn't going to go away. I'm back on metformin, now measure my blood glucose levels several times a day, and carefully watch my diet to keep those levels somewhere close to where they should be. I'm even exercising again - a practice that in my case goes very much against the grain. I'm conscious that this diagnosis is potentially a great blessing to me, since it gives me a chance of preventing further nerve damage (not to mention all the other gruesome complications that can come with diabetes).

I find that some writers about type 2 diabetes want to reassure me that it isn't "my fault" and is probably genetic (though I could have prevented its symptoms by eating better). This seems like a double message. The important point for me is not to fix blame for the disease but to find the best way to cope with it and to be or become as healthy as possible while living with it. Somewhere in there I sense a parallel to the spiritual life in general, to all the weaknesses we fall prey to, and to the steps we can take, with God's help, to be strengthened.

I also want to take note of how encouraged I am, as I look around my Meeting, to note the example of other Friends who have been living, often for many years, with various chronic conditions. These Friends' ability to live well and continue giving to others gives me great comfort and some courage.
- - Rich Accetta-Evans

Quaker Culture vs Quaker Faith Part II

2006-06-24T02:40:00.000-04:00

In a recent post called My Take on Quaker Culture vs. Quaker Faith: Part I I began a discussion of a speech given by Friend Samuel Caldwell in 1998. The speech was a critique of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that I took as a more general critique of Quakers today. Friend Caldwell made the argument that that Friends (or at least those of PhYM) have come to value our culture and tradition over our faith, and that as a result we are selling the faith short. I thought that I agreed with him, until I read his list of what troulbes him about the "Quaker Culture". My first post on this topic ended by reproducing his list of some characteristics of Quaker culture, and with a stated intention to say more about it in Part II.

Some of the commenters on my post thought I had missed the main point of Sam Caldwell's speech. Paul L creator of the blog Showers of Blessings said that the real point of the speech was its "clear and powerful exposition of Quaker Faith", and that the list of Quaker cultural characteristics only sounds "peevish and curmudgeonly" if it is read without the context of that exposition. Mark Wutka, who blogs at The Ear of the Soul, said that "...to focus on his complaints about Quaker culture is to miss the main point of the article, which is that we have raised the culture to such a level that it obscures the faith - the culture, in essence, has become the faith." I, however, still want to address that list. As I said already, in my own comment to the commenters

I hope I made it clear already that I agree with his general point that our "culture" can get in the way of our "faith". I don't think that gets us very far, though, unless we agree on where to draw the distinction between culture and faith. That's why I think it's important not to just pass by the detailed illustrations in order to concentrate on the "main point". Some (not all) of the things Sam Caldwell objects to as "culture" feel to me like they grow pretty directly out of the core faith, at least as I understand it. I'll try to explain further when I get to Part II.

So this is Part II, and what follows is me trying to "explain further"...

Sam Caldwell's first listed characteristic of Quaker culture is a (no doubt humorously exaggerated) claim that among Friends Everyone is required, almost as a matter of religious principle, to reuse their styrofoam cups; Taken literally, this would be nowhere near true. In fact, the most conspicuous feature of Quaker culture I have noticed - which I admit is also an exaggeration - is that among Friends no one is ever required as a matter of religious principle to do anything at all. But let's disregard the exaggerations. What is being complained of here? There is a somewhat heightened consciousness among many Friends of ecological issues, and a heightened tendency to examine and question how even our small daily habits may feed into big social problems. So we may or may not use styrofoam cups at Quaker gatherings; and if we do we may or may not reuse them. But there will perhaps be someone in a given Quaker community who calls our attention to the cost of styrofoam cups as a drain on non-renewable natural resources, a source of damage to the environment, and a small but real contributing factor in the global struggle for access to petroleum. Is this aspect of Quaker culture about "customs rather than leadings" as Mark put it? Or does it grow directly out of spiritual insights first glimpsed by our ancestors and still available to us when we settle into the Silence and listen to God? Think of George Fox's warning that "the tempter" will come in that which we are addicted to. Even George Bush has now acknowledged that we are addicted as a society to consumption of petroleum-related products (of which styrofoam is decidely one). Think also of John Woolman's advice to try whether the seeds of war are to be found in our possessions. I have no doubt that from time to time some Friend gets overly self-righteous about things like styrofoam cups. I know I did myself in my foolish-but-fervent youth before I realized how little standing I have to criticize anyone else about anything. But this is an occupational hazard of trying to live by any kind of principle. Its best cure is the humility that comes of falling short of one's own standards. There is nothing merely customary or traditional as far as I can see in trying to maintain a consistent testimony of stewardship for the earth through little gestures like minimizing the waste of styrofoam cups.

The second characteristic of Quaker culture Sam Caldwell points to is that ...people who earn a good living are regarded as suspicious and marginalized from the spiritual life of their meetings." Here I wish I had at least some concept of what our Friend is talking about. What qualifies as a "good living" in his mind? Here in New York we have a few Friends who are poor, many who struggle to pay their New York rents or mortages, and a few who are materially comfortable by any measure. Almost all of us earn a "good living" as I see it; only a few if any actually lack for food, for example. I am not aware of any Friend I know ever having been criticized for earning too much. To the extent that we ever consider these matters at all (and..as with most other "personal' matters..our more usual tendency is to be totally silent about the implications of our faith in matters of money) I think Friends are less interested in how much a person earns than in how the person earns it and how the person uses it. This may make wealthy Friends uncomfortable at times, I know it makes me uncomfortable at times. But this kind of discomfort comes not from an arbitrary "culture" or "tradition" but from our spiritual heritage itself; the very thing that Friend Caldwell seems to want us to cherish and build upon. After all, the same rabbi who told the parable at the top of his speech also had some disconcerting things to say to the wealth of his time. (See for example Matthew 19:24, or Luke 6:24-25.

If anything, it may be that Friends today are a bit more comfortable with the wealthy and powerful than is really good for our witness and faith. Quaker schools in large metropolitan areas, for example, seldom serve the poor including poor Friends. Their student bodies tend to come overwhelmingly from very high-income families who are not even Quakers.

So, I've only covered two of Sam's 13 points. I plan to do a Part III, but not to continue looking at each point in turn. My point is that some part of Quaker culture does in fact spring from Quaker faith. It's good that we no longer require broad-brim hats (and also that we still permit them), but it would not necessarily be good if we gave up all of the characteristics that might make us seem weird or out-of-place to others. In Part III, I hope to focus less on Sam's speech as such and more on what is seed and what is chaff in our Quaker culture.

About time they discussed this!

2006-06-16T08:40:00.000-04:00

I saw this paragraph on the Washington Post website today.

As the Pentagon announced the 2,500th death of a U.S. service member in the conflict, the House embarked on its first extended discussion of the war since Congress authorized force nearly four years ago. More than 140 lawmakers took the floor to applaud or attack President Bush's prosecution of the war in an 11-hour debate scheduled to last until nearly midnight.

(emphasis added)

The most important public issue of the decade (so far,anyway) and the politicians are just getting around to dealing with it. I am reinforced in believing that the real seeds of change are planted outside the political process in social and spiritual movements; they only bear fruit in public policy, legislation, or even mainstream debate after hearts and minds have already been changed by the witness of "impractical", "radical", "unrealistic" visionaries.

While ageing this morning

2006-06-11T10:15:00.000-04:00

while ageing
this morning
i thought ---
this too
is as
it should
be

My Take on Quaker Culture vs Quaker Faith: Part I

2006-06-10T14:30:00.000-04:00

I was reading Johan Maurer's excellent blog Can You Believe a couple of days ago and followed some of the links I found there until I came to a speech by Sam Caldwell given back in 1998 and recently posted on the Downtown Manhattan Friends Meeting website.

As I read the speech I realized that I had read it once before (I don't remember when), and I was soon re-living the strange experience the first time I read it. What kind of strange experience? Well, it was sort of like the kind of abbreviated political conversation I've sometimes had with new acquaintances. The acquaintance will introduce some current controversy and comment on the "ridiculousness" of one side's position in a way that makes me think he is critiquing the same side that I critique (the Republicans, usually). I enjoy what he is saying and the vigor of his criticism even though maybe he goes a tad farther than I would. Then, as we talk a little longer and he expands his argument, I suddenly realize thatt actually he is critiquing the "side" of the issue that I identify with. The "ridiculous" positions he is talking about are my positions. An example of this is a conversation I once had about the Terry Schiavo case. My conversation partner started by railing against the "outsiders" who "intervened in a private matter." I thought he meant the Republican Congress and President Bush. It turned out he was referring to "activist judges" whose rulings the Congress was trying to contravene.

Well, reading Sam Caldwell's speech was something like that for me. He started out by quoting Jesus' parable of the talents and proceeded to a ringing denunciation of Friends today (his particular target was Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, but I think his words would apply more broadly) for failing to preserve and expand the "spiritual treasure" of our faith, because we are too obsessed with our narrow sectarian "culture" and tradition. I was silently cheering as I read

Now, Friends, I have come tonight to tell you the truth — Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends is the unfaithful servant in this parable. Over 350 years ago, our master entrusted a great spiritual treasure to our safekeeping. At first, our forebears took it and invested it zealously, and it grew and multiplied. But, during the last few decades, we have become cautious, even cowardly. Instead of risking our spiritual capital to increase it, we have buried our treasure deep in the ground and run away and hid. The capital is still there, but it’s earning no interest. We risk nothing and gain nothing. We have become like the servant the master despises.

And, now, the time of reckoning is upon us. It will do us no good to dig up the talents we’ve hidden and return them to their rightful owner. Excuses and explanations will not suffice. God is not pleased. Mark my words, Friends: unless we do something radical soon, what treasure we have will be taken away from us and given to those who have invested their five talents and made five talents more. It is
already happening. We have only to look about us for the signs of the times.

I was still with him when he wrote:

We have become ardent conservators of an arid tradition, not ambassadors of a living faith...

and when he continued

And that, Friends, is the crux of the problem. On the one hand, we have the Quaker faith—a precious treasure given to us by God. On the other hand, we have Quaker tradition and culture--the ground, if you will, in which we have buried our treasure. The first spells life; the second spells death. Like the servant in the parable, if we merely conserve our traditions and culture, what faith we have will be taken away and given to others. And, this is precisely what is wrong with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting today--we are focused on conserving our culture, not venturing with our faith. What’s worse, we are confused between the two. The time has come for us to choose.

I thought to myself "Go Sam Caldwell, whoever you are. You really tell it like it is." Of course, I don't know the first thing about Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Philadelphia is over two hours away from New York City after all!) but it seemed to me that this speech was laying open the pathology of every Quaker Meeting I've ever known.

Then Friend Caldwell got down to specifics, and I found my smile fading a bit. First the rhetoric started to heat up a little beyond my comfort zone. "Philadelphia Yearly Meeting culture has become boring, petty, peevish, repressive, humorless, irrelevant, and generally repugnant to healthy human beings." Well, I don't know about Philadelphia, but Friends in New York are only like that part of the time. In between our skirmishes and feuds we sometimes have a good laugh or two and I even know some Friends here who occasionally (or regularly) do something generous and hopeful for our fellow-citizens, whether it's putting out sandwiches in the homeless shelter we host, or standing in a monthly vigil for peace and non-violence.

Then he offered a list of some characteristics of Quaker culture to illustrate how petty and ridiculous we are(and I say "we", notwithstanding that he's talking about Philadelphia, because by now I am starting to thoroughly identify with this group). I have numbered his list for discussion purposes, though in the published speech they are just un-numbered items:

We are the only religion I know of where:
(1)everyone is required, almost as a matter of religious principle, to reuse their styrofoam cups;
(2)where people who earn a good living are regarded as suspicious and marginalized from the spiritual life of their meetings;
(3)where fun is a potluck supper where you bring your own silver;
(4)where absolutely everyone is underpaid, and no one is ever fired for incompetence;
(5)where non-conformity and anti-social behaviors are consistently praised;
(6)where the pursuit of a free lunch is developed to a high art;
(7)where no-one is ever properly thanked or recognized, no matter how much they have done or achieved;
(8)where the typical family tree goes in a circle;
(9)where women always wear sensible shoes;
(10)where men never wear neckties;
(11)where indirectness and obfuscation are virtues;
(12)where fuss budgets and reactionaries are automatically appointed to high office;
(13)and where volunteers who attend important meetings are charged for their parking and meals.

And just to disabuse us if we should think that he is exaggerating for affectionate humorous purposes, he follows up this list by saying

Why, I ask myself, would any sane person want to become a member of the Religious Society of Friends?

Why indeed? What could be crazier than reusing a styrofoam cup?

I fully intend to say a lot more about this list, but the time I have available today is now used up. Part 2 of the post will have to wait.

Responding to Pam

2006-05-13T12:18:00.000-04:00

In order to cope with the larger task of responding to the comments on my recent post What This Christian is Looking for in Quakerism, I am going to break it down into the smaller and more agreeable task of responding to some of the individual people who wrote one or more of those comments. I would like to start with Pam, also known by her blogger name of earthfreak.

It was Pam who inspired this post in the first place by asking why I, as a Christian, chose to affiliate with Quakers rather than with some other denomination where I could "cleave to Christian doctrine". After I answered this question to the best of my ability with the new post, Pam continued to participate in the dialogue. One thing she said she wanted to make clear was ...I didn't ask it [i.e. the original question] so much as a challenge, but more out of really wanting to understand your christianity (and come to trust it) and also perhaps in hopes of inspiring understanding of what it feels like to have someone say something that can be interpreted as "I'm not sure you're a real quaker..."

I did understand this and I hope I responded in that spirit. I think it's a good thing for us to ask questions that force each other's unspoken assumptions to become explicit and discussable. In the latter part of the quote above, I guess Pam is saying that some of my own earlier comments could have been interpreted as my saying "I'm not sure you [read: you nontheist, or you non-Christian] are a real Quaker." This is a real problem in this type of dialogue. If any of us has a strong concept of what Quakerism essentially is, we risk offending folks who have come into the same Quaker community with a different concept of what Quakrism essentially is.

Roman Catholics don't have this problem; nor do most Protestants or most kinds of Moslems. I sometimes attend a Roman Catholic church with my wife or my son, and I am on friendly terms with the parishoners. However, I know for certain that I am not a Catholic, and they know I am not a Catholic because the question "what is a Catholic" has been pretty clearly answered over the past 2000 years and there is little chance that either they or I could be confused about it. For example, I do not believe that their bishop in the city of Rome is Christ's vicar on earth, nor that certain of his pronouncements "from the chair of Peter" are infallible. Nor - to take some older and more stable aspects of Catholicism - do I believe that bread and wine are transmuted into the body and blood of Jesus during the ceremony of the mass. I still think that many Catholics are wonderful people, and I am impressed with their Church's stand on certain social issues such as immigration, poverty, capital punishment, and war. (Their official positions on birth control, the roles of men and women, and the dignity and rights of homosexuals are another matter, but I know that many Catholics themselves think differently about those matters, and I imagine that the official position will evolve). My point here is that it would be very unfair for me to accuse the Roman Catholic Church of being "exclusive" because it won't accept me with my present beliefs as a member. My experience is that they are very "inclusive" and open - much more so than any Quaker meeting I know of - and that they would be more than willing they would even be eager to embrace anyone at all who wanted to adopt their faith, undergo the prescribed rituals of baptism and confirmation, etc. There does not seem to be anything snooty or snobbish about social class, education level, or ethnic background in the Roman Catholic Church. It's only because I don't want to be included in that particular faith that I have not been included.

For Quakers in the present historical period, it is more complicated. We lack a common understanding of what constitutes the essence of the faith-community we would or would not like to invite people into. We all want to be accepted by each other, even though we don't necessarily want to accept each other's visions of what it is we are joining. This leads to awkward situations. For example, I recently gave a message in Meeting about engaging with rather than retreating from the world. In it, I referred in passing to the world itself as "the world God made and the world God loves". After Meeting, a Friend told me that I should have clarified this was only my belief and not a Quaker belief. She was upset that someone might equate it with "scientific creationism". If I weren't already pretty confident of my status as a Quaker-in-good-standing I might have thought "ooops. made a mistake. I guess this isn't a Christian religion after all. I don't belong here." Conversely, if that particular Friend had read my article "What Is It With the Quakers and Jesus Christ?" she might have thought "ooops. I thought this was a non-doctrinal group. I didn't realize it was a bunch of Christians. Guess I'd better join someone else." The fact is that both she and I have already been accepted into the Quaker community. Neither of us has particular standing to define Quakerism for the other. But both of us have freedom to witness to the Quaker faith as we understand it. We both also have some responsibility to understand the tradition that was handed down to us, and not to promulgate mistaken notions about what that tradition was orginally. I think it is an essential and often-neglected task of our Ministry and Counsel or equivalent committees to give people information about that tradition.

Where does that leave Pam and me? I don't think Pam wants to exclude me from her vision of Quakerism, but I think she might (I say might becaue obviously I don't know) be a little uneasy with me if I were part of her Meeting. I also don't want to exclude Pam. If she moved to New York, I would welcome her into my Meeting, but I would not stop testifying about Christ in Meeting even if she, as a non-theist, found this testimony off-putting (Again, I am not saying she would find it off-putting; some non-theists do and some don't).

Pam went on to comment on the vision of the "church", a vision articulated by George Fox and early Quakers, that I had pointed to in my post. Pam said: You [i.e. I, Rich]said: no Christian denominations even trying to be the "church" as I understand that term, whereas the Quaker movement at least started out with that aim.
That resonates with me. It's pretty much why christianity never 'grabbed' me in the first place. I guess what I wonder is how much it matters whether others use the same language to discuss building the church (of course, in a real building project, it's easier if everyone agrees on what's a brick as opposed to a nail, but then, you could call a board a plank and probably still get it done) I personally feel called to build "the chruch" - but not to worship Jesus (which I believe that he himself wouldn't want) My question is whether we can still work together, and my hope is that we can

It sounds here as if maybe Pam and I are coming pretty close to each other's vision, with just a minor terminology problem remaining in the way. And maybe we are much closer than our rhetoric would suggest. I certainly recognize that there are lots of traps in words. But I confess I am quite confused about what Pam is saying here. The heart of my description of the church was this:

...it is a body of people who are so united to Christ Jesus (the "true head" that Fox referred to) and to each other that they have become one body, able as a body to serve Him and witness for Him, and to do the kind of prophetic and reconciling work (not to mention humble service) that He did in the flesh before his crucifixion and resurrection. They will do His works because they allow Him to guide them.

Pam's response is that she wants to build this church but not to worship Christ. It sounds as if the identity of the "true head" of the church is pretty much a side-issue for her. But in my description it was the issue. I am not really hung up on the name. Call him Christ, call him Jesus, call him Yeshua, call him Moshiach, call him Son of God, call him Son of Man, call him Rabbi, call him Prophet, call him Carpenter, Call him Servant: just so we know we're talking about that guy who gave his life and took it up again sometime around 33 C.E. I'm sure we can work together on all kinds of good causes even if you have no interest in this particular person. If you believed in God but didn't believe in Jesus I'm sure we could even worship God together. I myself worshipped God before I came to see a unity between God and Jesus, and I'm convinced that I was worshipping the same God all along. But if you don't want to worship God and you don't want to worship Jesus, if you don't even think that God or Jesus are alive and available to worship, then I don't think you want to build the "church" that I was talking about.

Again, this is the kind of issue that is important or not depending on what side of it you come down on. If you don't think Christ Jesus is alive, it really isn't all that important whether the rest of your faith community believes in him or not. If you do think he is alove, nothing else is more important than finding a faith community in which all can listen to him together and unite in his service. It's as if you wanted to visit your mother on mother's day and wanted to welcome your partner to come along. Your partner wouldn't be "getting it" if his or her answer were "Great. Let's go. But let's drive to the beach instead of your hometown. What does it matter if we call it 'Ocean' or 'Mom'?"

Pam went on to discuss the fireside chat analogy in which in which I compared the voice of Christ in the Meeting to the voice of FDR on the radio during WWII. The purpose of the analogy was to explore the question of the speaker's identity was imoprtant to how/whether we gather together to hear his voice. She identified herself as one of the "mechanical voice" people in the analogy, and rejected those (i.e. the theists or Christians) who think there is "some kind of magic going on and are attentive to that, rather than the truth or non-truth of the message". I think this really is the nub of all that is different between Pam's point of view and mine on this issue. I really do think there is "some kind of magic" going on in Quaker meeting (though I'd prefer the term "miracle" to "magic").

Pam went on to explain that she would not want to base her acceptance of a message on who its speaker was, but on its inherent truth and goodness. She puts this very well as follows:

So, if Jesus says "love your neighbor" and you are inspired to do it because he's Jesus, and I'm inspired to do it because it sounds like a damn good idea, I'm not doing it as well? I suppose I can understand that, because I think just the reverse. I think Jesus said a really lot of good stuff, but if he came back and retracted it, I wouldn't give it up just cause he said so (unless some new revelation made it clear to me, I guess.)

This points at a very deep issue of theology that could get the inquiring mind running in circles for centuries: Are good actions good because God wills them, or does God will them because they are good? I despair of a good logical answer, becaue the reality of "goodness" and the reality of "God" are so entwined with each other at a deep level that I can't see how to separate them for analysis. But in practical terms, if I thought I heard "Jesus" recanting His own basic teachings I think I would doubt my "hearing" before I doubted the teachings. The early Quakers' letter to Charles II said "the Spirit of Truth by which we are guided is not changeable so as to move us away from a thing as evil and again to move us unto it." (quoted only from memory, apologies for any departure from accuracy).

I set out to respond to all of Pam's comments in response to my post. I have spent so long on just the first comment she posted, that I'm afraid I'll have to postpone my responses to the others.

I expect I'll be hearing from Friends in the meantime.

Peace and Good Will,
- - Rich Accetta-Evans

An Oasis - Not a Fortress

2006-05-11T11:27:00.000-04:00

Friends,

I have had to be away from my blog for awhile because of other absolutely overwhelming real-life events. Last Saturday, sensing the light at the end of the tunnel, I sat down to write a humongous post basically catching up on all the comments re my last post What this Christian Is Looking for in Quakerism, but after I'd been writing for over two hours I saw the futility of even trying to respond to everything everybody said. There were just too many good comments for that. And, besides, I realized that I don't really have to have the last word in every conversation.

Today, I'd like to comment more briefly on some of the major themes. Then next week I'll try to go back and answer some particular questions people have asked me in more detail.

First, some people from varying points of view responded tenderly and respectfully to what I had said about a vivid personal experience of Christ more than 30 years ago. I just want to say that I appreciated these comments very much. Robin said something particularly meaningful to me about how learning of this experience made her feel "less unbalanced" about her own. Robin has written elsewhere (I can't find it any more but surely it was on her blog?) about what her experience was and I recall thinking at the time that it was really very similar to mine. Robin also said something about me "ministering to [her] personally" by telling about this experience. Since I am a great admirer of Robin and her husband Chris, perceiving that they seem to have a more consistent real-life spiritual practice than I do, it was very gratifying to me to hear that I may have in any way been a "minister" to Robin.

Second, I thought it was fascinating how different people riffed on the theme of my analogy between listening to the Light or Voice of Christ and listening to FDR's fireside chats. Some people elaborated the metaphor, others changed it in various ways so that it conveyed their own differing understandings of the real situation. I think all of this must have helped us understand each other a little better. To me, it does matter whether the voice we hear in worship is Christ or not, though I'm sure that I would still know it was saying good things even if I couldn't identify the speaker. I think there are other voices we could be listening to, as Marshall suggested, that would be less benign. These other voices might be the voices of things like nationalism, materialism, etc. They might be the internalized voices of our parents, our peer groups, our nation, etc. In theory, I think they might be the actual voices of other "spirits", though I have no experience of any such thing. At the same time, I felt a tad uncomfortable with some of the critical discussion of other religions. I really don't know anything about Krishna, and I accept Marshall's testimony based on his experience of Hinduism that there may be some Krishna-worshippers who are into some bad things. But Hinduism is such a vast religion with so many hundreds of millions of followers that I feel totally unqualified to make generalizations about it. It seems likely to me that many Hindus are truly guided by God (and hence - as I see it - by Christ). That doesn't mean that Hindus are Christians, of course, and I doubt that in practice a serious Hindu would want to join a group of people who saw themselves as looking for guidance from the living voice of Jesus Christ. I don't think there are many groups of either non-Christians or non-Quaker-Christians who even claim to base their practice on listening to the living, speaking voice of God, under any name, so in a sense it's pretty theoretical to drag other religions into the conversation when we're discussing voices and names of same.

To revert to the fireside chat analogy, this is where I think we are as a group of Friends: We all came to the fireside chat of Quakerism by explicit or implicit invitation from someone or something. For example, some of us came because we were invited by our parents, some by other Friends, some - less explicitly - by learning of the existence of Quakers through their public testimony, through reading about them in history books or whatever. The problem is that we came to the chat with different expectations. I came wanting to listen to FDR (the unlikely Christ-representative of our analogy) because I see him as a person who I love and trust and look to for guidance. Some came wanting to listen to whoever-that-guy-is (or whoever-or-whatever-that-voice-is) on the radio and they are willing to trust and follow him as long as what he says conforms to beliefs they already have about right and wrong and what is going on in the world. There may be still others who just want to spin the dial and see who else might be on the radio. All of us are a little befuddled about this situation, but here we are together and we have to make the best of it.

I very well understand how one might not think that it was important to identify the One who speaks to us as Jesus Christ. If I did not identify Him as such, I probably wouldn't think it was important either. But since I do believe He is Christ -- that He is a Person who loves us and who suffered for us -- then I do believe it is important to acknowledge Him. For me to not acknowledge Him would seem ungrateful and disloyal. In other words, this is an inherently asymmetric question. How you regard its importance may well depend on what you think its answer is.

On the other hand, my need to acknowledge Christ doesn't in itself create a need for anyone else to do so. If I need a group in which we can acknowledge Him and listen to Him together (as I do) this doesn't mean that others can't also sit in on the group while thinking of its purpose somewhat differently. But it will always be an awkward situation.

Another theme I'd like to comment on is Marshall's idea (actually, the classical Quaker idea) of "the hedge". This is the idea that one goal of some Quaker practices is to create a protected space for our faith - one where we won't be overexposed to non-Quaker influences that might be harmful. These outside influences might be "unsound" theological ideas, worldly attitudes toward war, toward hierarchy and inequality, toward consumerism, or whatever. In certain periods of Quaker history and perhaps in certain pockets of Quakerism today (such as the Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative that Marshall belongs to) this has been part of the reason for Quaker disciplinary practices, for separate Quaker schools, for "peculiar" Quaker dress and speech, and so on. Although in other respects I suppose I am much more of a "conservative" than "liberal" Quaker (how oddly either of those labels fits with Quakeism!), I am not much of a proponent for the "hedge" idea. To me, it feels like a defensive and fear-based approach to maintaining our identity. The very earliest Quakers weren't trying to protect a little enclave from the world: they were trying to launch an offensive on the world. They assumed that in interactions between "the people of God" and "the world's people" the "people of God" would be perfectly safe and the "world's people" would be challenged and maybe changed. The "hedge" became a central concept after Quakerism had stopped expanding, after the most blatant persecutions had ceased for the most part, and when succeeding generations sought just to live in peace among themselves. John Woolman's ministry thrived during this period, as well as that of many others less well known, so one can hardly generalize that the "hedge" always led to spiritual deadness. Yet in the long run I think that was its tendency. People who were brought up with Quakerism as a "tradition" that was never really questioned or tested against others' beliefs gradually lost a really vital conviction of its truth, or a sense of connection to what motivated its founding. So then, when new ideas arose in the world around or when new challenges presented themselves, the Quaker tradition itself was no longer supple enough to adapt from within. In the long run no hedge is high enough to keep out the world. Challenges to our faith will come, and it's better for us to meet them with a tested, living, flexible faith than a protected and brittle one.

So, since I've had some luck with proposing analogies that get people talking, here's another one: Can we think of Quakerism as indeed having a boundary and identity, but not one that is either sharply drawn or marked by a fence or hedge or wall? A fortress has a wall. An oasis in the desert is a bounded place, easily distinguished from the surrounding barrenness, but it needs no fence. Its character comes from the water that bubbles up at its center, and from the life that grows around it. I want to settle with other water-lovers around the well of living water which Jesus spoke of to the woman of Samaria.

I could elaborate at greater length (and probably will eventually) but this post, too, has now taken quite a while to write. I am closing it now and will await any comments.

Peace of Christ,
Richard

Fullness of Joy - A Talk By John Edminster

2006-04-17T18:09:00.000-04:00

My Friend John Edminster, a fellow-member of 15th Street Meeting, was invited to present a sermon on the day called Easter to Manhattan Meeting, a pastoral meeting that meets in the same building as 15th Street Meeting. He sent me the text of his talk, which seemed to me so wonderful that I asked his permission to post it here. He agreed.

Fullness of Joy

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy: at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11

Thank you, Friends, for having me come and speak to you. May the Lord make our time together fruitful. Please join me in the Lord’s Prayer: …

I can’t speak to you on this day, of all days, without speaking about what Jesus’ suffering on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead, mean to us. Not just to us Christians, but to all humankind: for this, the very crown of Jesus’ earthly life, is the good news, the tidings of great joy which shall be to _all people._ Yes, even to the people at the ends of the earth that never heard of Jesus; to the babies that can’t understand anything about Jesus yet; and to the people exposed to a false, toxic and cruel counterfeit-Christianity that left them distrustful of anything to do with Jesus. Whatever good this Easter mystery has done, it has done for the good of everyone, and all creation benefits. “It is finished,” Jesus said before dying. – What was finished? What got accomplished? Let’s look at our own personal experience:

Do you find a moral law written in your heart, which makes you feel bad when you’ve told a lie or done a bad thing, and which supports you when you know you’re doing good? You are hearing the voice of Christ, the fulfillment of a promise made in Jeremiah 31:33. Do you ever feel that your steps are being guided, that you’re being led to where you need to go and put in touch with the people you need to meet, so that good things can get done? You’re feeling the guidance of Christ, a fulfilled promise of Isaiah 30:21. Have you ever been in trouble, and so afraid that you can’t think straight, and amazingly, you find words coming out of your mouth that you can tell are the right words, truthful words, the perfect words? That is the mouth and wisdom of Christ coming through you, promised us by Jesus before his crucifixion, Luke 21:15. Now people who are not Christian may often have these experiences, but not identify them with Jesus Christ. And that’s doubtless OK with Christ. But something more becomes possible when we recognize this as the work of One who is, in fact, our Savior. Something much more. Then these things are not merely helps to the ethical life from a well-wisher, but elements of a gospel plan for our salvation from death, from futility, from hopeless separateness from God – in a word, from sin. Once we recognize this as a gift of One who died to get it for us, we have an intimation of its enormous value. Once we discover that this One who died is risen and ever living, and invites us to participate in His eternal life, much more becomes possible for us – nothing short of a new life as a new person, who in turn is an organic part of a new people, among whom the living Christ walks as Prophet, Priest and King. I am speaking of this from my own experience. The twenty-six year-old George Fox could speak of this new life from his own experience: when he was being grilled on his beliefs before imprisonment in Derby, he told his captors that he knew Christ had sanctified him because he, Fox, “was in the paradise of God.” (Think of it: surrounded by hostile bullies, and yet able to experience paradise? If God made this possible to George Fox, is it too much to believe that God did the same for Tom Fox?)

So experience of Christ and His salvation is possible in this life – direct experience, not just acceptance by faith, or notional belief in words about it. Still, the passion and resurrection of Jesus are baffling to the mind on many levels. Did He really die, as the Christians teach, or just appear to die, as Islam teaches? If He died, how were the processes of death reversed, and the stone rolled away from the tomb? Why did His heavenly Father have Him suffer so? And why did He, surely capable of knowing better, pick Judas to be His disciple anyway? I expect that when we all return to God at the end of time, God will give us a full understanding of everything, including all this. Until then it may not be possible to understand it with the intellect: it does, however, seem to invite understanding by the heart, and if our own heart staggers under its weight, we’d do well to seek help from those of greater heart than ourselves.

Six hundred years ago, there lived a woman named Julian of Norwich, a lover of God with an enormous heart. As a young woman, she had prayed to understand Jesus’ passion, to suffer to the point of death for the sake of becoming more worthy of God, and to receive the wounds of true contrition, true compassion, and true longing for God. She was granted these wishes on May 8, 1373, at the point of death at age 30, her eyesight and breath failing and her body going numb as she stared at the face of Christ on her parish priest’s crucifix. Suddenly, she tells us, all her pain was taken away, “and I was as fit and well as I had ever been.” She prayed then to experience Christ’s pain on the cross. At once she saw blood flowing from under the wooden figure’s crown of thorns, and “at the same moment the Trinity filled me full of heartfelt joy, and I knew that all eternity was like this for those who attain heaven.” So began the first of her sixteen _Revelations of Divine Love_ that she dictated, later in her long life, to an anonymous scribe. In all her revelations she was shown the oneness of God, and she explains that where she speaks of Christ, or God, or the Holy Spirit, she means the Unity that encompasses them all. I will read passages from Clifton Wolters’s translation of the _Revelations_ into modern English:

[Chapter 22:] Then our good Lord Jesus Christ said, ‘Are you well satisfied with my suffering for you?’ ‘Yes, thank you, good Lord,’ I replied. “Yes, good Lord, bless you.’ And the kind Lord Jesus said, ‘If you are satisfied, I am satisfied too. It gives me great happiness and joy and, indeed, eternal delight ever to have suffered for you. If I could possibly have suffered more, I would have done so.’

…In his word ‘If I could possibly have suffered more, I would have done so’ I saw that he would have died again and again, for his love would have given him no rest until he had done so…. And here…I saw that the love which made him suffer is as much greater than his pain as heaven is greater than earth…. This deed and this work for our salvation was ordered as well as God himself was able to order it. And I saw Christ’s complete happiness; his happiness would not have been complete if it were at all possible to have done it better.

[Chapter 23:] …It is the will of God that we too should delight with him in our salvation, and thereby be greatly comforted and strengthened. And his will is that our soul should cheerfully occupy itself with this fact, helped on by his grace. For we are his happiness: in us he ever delights….

…I mean, that as far as we can manage it, our delight in our salvation should be like Christ’s…. As if he were saying, ‘It is sufficient joy and delight for me to know that I can truly satisfy you. I ask you nothing else as the results of my suffering.’

…he rejoices that the deed is past and done, and he shall suffer no more; he rejoices too that he has raised us to heaven, and made us to be his crown and eternal delight; again, he rejoices that by his passion he has bought us out from the eternal pain of hell.

Really! Until I read Julian I’d never gotten it that God is actually thrilled by our salvation, so delighted that Christ puts us up on His head to wear like a party hat! It’s just like the parable of the prodigal son, isn’t it?

[Chapter 26:] After this our Lord showed himself, in glory even greater than I had seen before – so it seemed to me. By this I was taught that our soul can never rest until it comes to him, and knows him to be fullness of joy, friendly and considerate, blessed and life indeed. And he said again and again ‘It is I; it is I; it is I who am most exalted; it is I whom you love; it is I whom you delight in; it is I whom you serve; it is I whom you long for, whom you desire; it is I whom you mean; it is I who am all. It is I whom Holy Church preaches and teaches; it is I who showed myself to you here.’

All the women I’ve had my heart broken by – it was God I was longing for! All that wealth and comfort I so set my heart on! All those cigarettes and cups of coffee I so used to crave! Not realizing that it’s God that I delight in, and in Whom, alone, I’ll find fullness of joy! What insanity, to forget that!

[Chapter 27:] …[Sin] can only be known by the pain it causes. This pain is something, as I see it, which lasts but a while. It purges us and makes us know ourselves, so that we ask for mercy…. Because of his tender love for all those who are to be saved our good Lord comforts us at once and sweetly, as if to say, ‘It is true that sin is the cause of all this pain; but it is all going to be all right; it is all going to be all right; everything is going to be all right.’ These words were said most tenderly, with never a hint of blame either to me or to any of those to be saved. It would be most improper of me therefore to blame or criticize God for my sin, since he does not blame me for it.

In these words I saw one of God’s marvelously deep secrets – a secret which he will plainly reveal to us in heaven. And when we know it we will see the reason why he allowed sin to come, and seeing, we shall rejoice in him for ever.

Oh, Friends, this is God’s message to you today, and Christ’s, and Julian’s, and mine: it is all going to be all right. In spite of all this madness and cruelty that are taking lives and wasting the earth, it is all going to be all right. If God could create everything out of nothing, then God can also turn all evil into good, and this Christ promised to Julian and promises to us. Twice in the Book of Revelations (7:17, 21:4) we are told that God will wipe away all tears from our eyes, and those tears include all tears from the atrocities and injustices being done in the world today, all tears of rage and despair and self-loathing, and even all tears of doubt that all this suffering might have been unnecessary. The God that does not blame us for sin, but only wants to free us from it, today raises Jesus from the dead to tell us: everything is going to be all right! It is time for us to tell the whole world that everything is going to be all right.

John Jeremiah Edminster
Saved as: 060415EasterSermon.doc

What This Christian Is Looking For In Quakerism

2006-04-17T13:38:00.000-04:00

This post is a continued discussion of one of the topics that were raised by my April Fool's Satire "Press Release - Seventh Day, First of Fourth Month" and the follow-up/clarifation post called "April Fool's Satire Not Intended as Sarcasm". There have already been many thoughtful responses from several points of view posted as comments on this blog itself and as new posts on other blogs. (For example: here, here, here, and here )

The thread I want to pick up here is the one initiated by Pam (aka earthfreak) who wrote:I guess I just feel like there are so very many religions where you can cleave to christian doctrine, why are you a quaker??
I take this question to be very important - not least because it illustrates how easily we can end up talking past each other and failing to communicate. Pam had evidently thought that the Christian "doctrine" I adhere to is pretty much the same kind of thing one can find in any non-Quaker Christian Church and I had said nothing in the original post to indicate otherwise. In a top-of-the-head first stab at a reply I said I hope to find time within the next few days to answer with the care that the question deserves. In the meantime, I'll just say here that for some Quaker Christians, including me, the Christian "doctrine" we believe in is quite different in important respects than anything taught in the Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox Churches. The Quaker understanding of Christianity (or at least this particular Quaker's understanding of Christianity) doesn't really exist very much outside of Quakerism, which is one of the reasons some of us would so deeply regret having it disappear here too.
So now the time has come try giving that promised answer "with the care the question deserves". Why do I want to be part of a Quaker Meeting, as opposed to -- for example -- a Methodist or Baptist or Catholic Church? What am I looking for in Quakerism that I don't expect to find in other Christian bodies?

My answer, I have to say, is not necessarily the same answer that other Quaker Christians might give.

So here it is: What I am looking for in Quakerism is a church in the full-bodied sense of that word as it was used by George Fox in an argument with a priest

I told him the church was the pillar and ground of truth, made up of living stones, living members, a spiritual household, which Christ was the head of; but he was not the head of a mixed multitude, or of an old house made up of lime, stones and wood.

This teaching (doctrine?) of Fox's seems to have caused a near riot at the time, but Fox seemed to think it was pretty important to maintain it.

This set them all on fire. The priest came down from his pulpit, and others out of their pews, and the dispute there was marred. I went to a great inn, and there disputed the thing with the priests and professors, who were all on fire. But I maintained the true church, and the true head thereof, over their heads, till they all gave out and fled away.

But instead of relying on Fox's words, let me try to explain in my words what this "church" is (and isn't) that I am seeking to be part of. It is not a purely human institution with a human hierarchy, a body of customary practices, a book of rules, a liturgy, a set of sacred rituals, etc. It is not an "association" (to use a word that Martin used that pushed my buttons) of people who decide to hang out with each other because they are good people and have been able to find something in common. Rather, it is a body of people who are so united to Christ Jesus (the "true head" that Fox referred to) and to each other that they have become one body, able as a body to serve Him and witness for Him, and to do the kind of prophetic and reconciling work (not to mention humble service) that He did in the flesh before his crucifixion and resurrection. They will do His works because they allow Him to guide them. "Doctrine" or "teaching" as such is not the point of such a community, but it's obviously a little difficult for any group to wholeheartedly serve Christ if many members aren't even sure he exists.

Notice that this kind of church community founded on the real teaching presence of Christ is not what most Christian denominations have in mind when they call themselves churches. For many churches, the "presence" of Christ is felt to center in ritual acts such as the eucharist, water baptism, etc. The authority of Christ is presumed to be something that can be handed down from generation to generation by the laying on of hands ("ordination") and to be wielded at will by the clergy or other hierarchy of the present generation. The suffering and sacrificial death of Christ is seen as a past event that we benefit from vicariously, or a ritual event that we re-enact as sacrament, rather than an ongoing reality in which we participate as the members of his body doing his work in the world. Conventional morality is preached (or isn't in some cases), but the radical demands of the Kingdom of Heaven as outlined in the Sermon on the Mount are not. This is not to say that folks in these other churches are not "real Christians", still less that they (or non-Christians for that matter) are not "saved". But it affirms that since Christ Has Come to Teach His People Himself, a far deeper experience of radical discipleship and faithfulness is possible than these other churches offer.

Of course, the question is whether the Quakerism of today can offer it either. So many of us seem to have forgotten, if we ever knew, that this was its whole purpose in the beginning. Perhaps we are no closer to its reality, despite the witness of our forebears, than any other religion or Christian denomination. Perhaps I as an individual would not really be ready to fully give myself to this full church experience if it were to become fully realized. I'm sure it's also true that such a Church will not be brought about by membership purges or Quakerism 101 classes or any other purely strategic activity by those who long for it. (In fact, I'm convinced by the history of Quakerism in the 19th century that membership purges and schisms are exactly the wrong way to go).

Nevertheless, it was from Friends history as interpreted by a few contemporaries that I first "caught" this vision, and it has been in Friends' Meetings that I have felt it surging somewhere not far beneath the surface time and time again over the years. That's what I'm looking for (and what in some small measure I actually find) in Quakerism. However short of this our actual practice may presently fall, this vision still in some sense defines what Quakerism really means as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps I have raised more new questions than I have successfully answered. I hope people will respond and will challenge me to clarify (to the best of my ability) whatever I have obscured by my choice of words.

Vicki Cooley

2006-04-10T14:10:00.000-04:00

I received the following e-mail today.

FROM THE COOLEY FAMILY IN DUNDEE, NY

Victoria Baker Cooley died peacefully at home about two o'clock this morning in the arms and hands of her family, with singing, tears and thanks for her good life.

Vicki lived a full life. She lived with breast cancer the past five years, remaining active in various causes. We grieve our loss and the years she might yet have continued to help transform the world and be with family. We feel supported by the wide circle of friends whom she loved and helped.

VICTORIA LYN BAKER COOLEY

April 9, 1943 -- April 10, 2006

As the note points out, Vicki lived a full life. She received many blessings (her family, her friends, her tremendous intelligence, her energy, the spiritual fellowship of Friends and others); and she was a vehicle of blessings to many others. I cannot claim to have been a close friend and I have not been in regular contact, but in hearing this news I feel very teary and that I have suffered (we have suffered) a great loss. I first came to know her when she was clerk of the Yearly Meeting and I was one of the recording clerks. I last spoke to her at any length several years ago when she and John Cooley gave me hospitality for several days in their wonderful large (but simple) house in Dundee. I also remember being astonished and deeply grateful when she came to my hometown of Rushville, New York, to attend my mother's funeral in 1999. She had not known my mother or others in my family, but came to support a fellow-Quaker in a time of sadness. I knew no other Quakers near Rushville, and had not expected any Quakers to be there. It was immensely comforting to see her.

Vicki once wrote of what she discovered in herself when she was asked to reflect on how she wanted to live.

...I was amazed at the simple clarity of what came to me: I do not want to be dismissive in my attitude toward anyone, ever. That is quite a bit more demanding than “No putdowns,” and it is taking time as well as effort for me to learn what it means, but I trust it completely as True.

I'd like to be that way, too, though I think I know far less about how to be that way than Vicki ever did. This remark of Vicki's is part of her talk "The Quality of Mercy" given as a lecture at Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 2005. I hope Friends will read it and maybe sense in the spirit behind it at least a hint of the greatness of her soul.

Race Love and Justice: A Talk to NYYM Spring Sessions by Jeff Hitchcock

2006-04-10T10:24:00.000-04:00

I've just learned, through the New York Yearly Meeting website, of a talk by Jeff Hitchcock recently given to the Spring Sessions of New York Yearly Meeting. One particularly sharp observation in the talk (paraphrased from another writer) was "time immemorial the oppressor has spoken of love and the oppressed have spoken of justice". (Actually, of course, some of the oppressed have spoken of both, but the point is well taken. Those of us with privelege are understandably often more drawn to the "love" talk of Martin Luther King than to his demand for justice.) Friend Hitchcock's speech can be viewed in its entirety here and I strongly recommend reading all of it and considering it deeply. It ends with the following queries (which gain depth and power when read in the context of the whole talk):

Query 1. How can European American Friends take Quaker tools for justice and, as a privileged group in a fading but present system of white supremacy, join with Friends of color in applying those tools, so that justice is shared within our community?

Query 2. How might we Friends better love one another in this work?

April Fool Satire Not Intended as Sarcasm

2006-04-05T16:46:00.000-04:00

I am surprised and chagrined to see that my recent April Fool's post has caused some people pain and that it was seen by Friends I respect (including Mark Wutka of The Ear Of the Soul, Pam of Reaching for the Light, Canine Diamond of The Crate and Liz Opp of The Good Raised Up) as an example of sarcasm. According to an online dictionary I consulted, sarcasm is "a cutting, often ironic, remark intended to wound..." or "intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule." While I knew I was writing satirically, I did not at all intend to wound anyone or to make anyone the butt of contempt or ridicule. Nevertheless, that was obviously the result. I apologize to all.

Now I'll try to comment on some of the issues raised.
Pam remarked that
...it certainly FEELS like you're saying that embracing nontheist members is... ludicrous. If you're not saying that, I really would like to know what you are saying.

First, I don't think it's ever "ludicrous" to embrace a person. I'm sure that if Pam attended my meeting I would try to make her feel welcome. I have heartily approved on many occasions when my Meeting accepted into membership people whose theological views are non-Christian despite the fact that I think Jesus is more or less the whole point of Quakerism. I don't think we've actually faced the non-theist issue in my meeting, but the principle seems the same.

The intended target of my satire wasn't any particular group such as universalists or non-theists, but the general proposition that saying "we don't want to exclude anyone" pre-empts any further discussion of what is and what isn't central to Quakerism. This general proposition is often sincerely defended, but I think there are very few people who have thought through its real implications. I assume tht for most of my readers there is, somewhere in my satire's list of people who should be included (whether it's militarists, Wiccans, pastoral Friends, Roman Catholics or simply "non-Quakers") someone who you as an individual don't think of as a viable candidate for membership in your particular Friends Meeting. You wouldn't necessarily tell them they can't join, but you would find it odd if they wanted to. Why would a militarist want to join a pacifist organization? Would he or she expect it to give up its corporate pacifist testimony? If the Meeting held to its pacifist testimony but accepted a non-pacifist member, would the member feel patronized or treated as a second-class Quaker?

If there is some point of view you would not try to actively "include" on equal terms in your Meeting, let's not say any more that we want to include everyone, and let's proceed to the discussion of what is and isn't central to your vision of Quakerism, to my vision of Quakerism, and - if possible - to some shared vision of our Friends community as a whole. If there is at present no such shared vision that doesn't necessarily mean we'll have to start excluding each other or go our separate ways, but it probably does mean that we'll always have a somewhat rocky relationship.

I'd like to ask Pam to say more about her concept of worship. She says that she thinks I or other theistic Friends might be saying "I don't want to worship with you if you don't believe in God." so I take it that she values the act of worship. But my understanding of the word "worship" breaks down here. To me, the word "worship" is a transitive verb. I can only conceive or worship as worship of someone or worship of something. Who or what does a nontheist worship? This is a relatively new question for me. I've been dialogueing for years with non-Christians theists who have argued that Christ isn't essential to the Quaker faith as long as all Friends still believe in the same God. That has been challenging in itself, but I have come to understand the terms of the discussion. Non-theism seems like a whole different issue.

Pam also thought theistic Friends might be saying 'and I'm not interested in hearing your story and seeing if it resonates with me, I just want to hear the word "god"'. I can't speak for other theistic Friends, but the circle of people whose stories I am eager to hear and resonate with is much larger than the circle of people I count as fellow Quakers. I love opportunities for inter-faith dialogue and also for dialogue with those whose ideals are grounded somewhere else than on religious faith. I also respect the right of every faith community, including my own, to find its own center and define its own boundaries.

Canine Diamond responded to my post on her blog, saying "As per my earlier posts, it has been my experience that membership and professed Christianity are not measures of one's committment to the social ideals of Quakerism, or of basic humanity." I certainly agree and hope I didn't give the impression that non-Christians lack social ideals or basic humanity. Among my life-long heroes I have counted Bertrand Russell (now deceased), Nat Hentoff, and many other non-theists with fine social ideals and deep humanity. Even if we speak only of distinctively Quaker wocial ideals, I'm confident that one could embrace them without embracing the Quaker faith. When I go to Meeting, however, I am not primarily in search of a chance to express my social ideals, Quaker or otherwise. I am seeking, rather, a chance to join with others in waiting on, listening to, worshipping, praising, and adoring God.

James Riemermann objects to Martin Kelley's post because he thinks that in it "...individualism is presumed to be the flag of those who step outside of the Christian or theistic tradition." That's not the way I understood what Martin was saying. A Meeting of people who are non-theist would not necessarily be any more individualistic than a Meeting of theists or a Meeting of Chritians or a Meeting of Buddhists. Any one of these perspectives could be the shared perspective of a group tht united around it. But in the extreme case a Meeting in which non-theism, theism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. were all equally open options would be a Meeting where faith-commitments were individual rather than shared. I.E. it would be an "individualistic" Meeting.

I'm sure that none of the above has been the last word on these issues. I hope, at least, that the sting of my perceived sarcasm in the earlier post has been at least a little moderated.

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

Press Release - Seventh Day, 1st of Fourth Month, 2006

2006-04-01T12:53:00.000-05:00

New York City, 1st of Fourth Month, 2006 C.E.

In a long expected move that builds on recent trends toward theological inclusivness in the Religious Society of Friends, an ad hoc group of members, attenders, and non-member non-attenders of several Friends' Meetings announced today the formation of a group tentatively called the NonQuaker Friends Association. Kelly Brinton-Jones, the group's "clerk of the day" (a kind of presiding officer whose tenure is 24 hours) said the group's final name may change since some of its founding members believe that the use of the word "Friends" as an identifier is unduly limiting and exclusionary.

"The Society of people called Friends has a long and sad history of narrowness and exclusiveness," said Brinton-Jones, "but today we take another step in our journey toward universal inclusiveness." The group's potential nationwide constitutency is estimated at 10 - 15 individuals.

Brinton-Jones explained that in the early days of the Society of Friends it included only people who were anti-clerical, anti-war, anti-luxury, anti-pride, anti-vanity and pro-Christian to boot. He said that Puritans, Roman Catholics, Ranters, Baptists and other English groups of the time were not formally prohibited from attending these early Friends' meetings, but they were subtly excluded by the strong stands the Friends took against things that others believed in. "In theory, you could come to Meeting no matter who you were," said Brinton-Jones, "but if you wanted to swear oaths, kill people, or dance around the maypole you were NOT made welcome."

In later times, this trend toward exclusiveness nor only continued, but increased according to Brinton-Jones. "The 'Free Quakers' who supported the American Revolution were unceremoniously expelled because of the Society's rigid insistence on its 'peace testimony'. In the 18th Century, inspired by zealot John Woolman, Friends also purged their ranks of well-to-do citizens who happened to own slaves, even though this practice was then legal and technically a private personal matter."

"In the 19th and 20th centuries," Brinton-Jones continued, "the exclusionary trends began to reverse. Today, in large sections of the United States Meetings no longer exclude people who want pastors like other churches. In the 1970s California Friends warmly embraced a member who had scandalized some traditionalists by becomeing Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, making war against a foreign nation, and covering-up a burglary. In a few isolated pockets, Meetings have opened their doors and hearts to people who embrace ritual practices from other faith-traditions, such as communion with bread and wine, baptism with water, and Wiccan fertility dances. We of the NonQuaker Friends Association welcome these trends, just as we welcome the growth of the Nontheist Friends, Universalist Friends, and other groups who stretch our traditional definitions. Ultimately, however, it is not good enough to just say that no particular beliefs are mandatory. The Society of Friends will remain exclusionary and sectarian as long as its Meetings accept only Quakers as members. It is with this in mind that we call upon all Friends Meetings to topple this final barrier between our beloved Society and the greater Society around us."

It is believed that the group will attempt to hold an informal interest group at upcoming sessions of Friends General Conference.

Harmeet Sooden, James Loney and Norman Kember.

2006-03-13T14:30:00.000-05:00

The Death of Tom Fox has hit us Quakers especially hard, since he was a Quaker also and widely known among the Quaker community even before going to Iraq.

Yet he was just one of the four captive members of the Christian Peacemakers Teams. Even in our grief about Tom, let's also continue to pray and work for the release of Harmeet Sooden, Janes Loney and Norman Kemper. And also, of course, for all the other victims of this cruel cruel war, whatever their religion, nationality, or politics.

May the war end speedily!

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

Mourning Tom Fox; Celebrating His Witness

2006-03-11T14:19:00.000-05:00

Those who read this are probably already aware of the death of our Friend Tom Fox. I unite with this statement at http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/06-10-03statement.htm by his Christian Peacemaker Team Colleagues.

I do not believe that any life or any death is ever "in vain". Certainly, neither Tom Fox's life on earth and nor his heroic peacemaker's death could be described that way. He was/is a hero of the spiritual life; a Christian whose faith was lived and not just proclaimed. A peacemaker who advanced love and understanding while he was with us and whose memory and living spirit will continue to do so.

Though I never met Tom Fox, I feel deeply sad today.

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

More from the new George Fox web site

2006-03-10T10:24:00.000-05:00

I am still hoping that more Friends will comment on the new George Fox website created by Hall and Joan Worthington (thanks to Johann Maurer for his comment on the post I wrote yesterday). I do not find that I agree with everything the Worthingtons say, and I hope to find time to put some of my questions and responses into words, but in the meantime I am delighted to find that these two people I never heard of have discovered the richness of George Fox's message.

I have now learned, from correspondence with Hall Worthington, that I was incorrect in assuming that they had first heard of Fox through contact with Friends. Hall discovered Fox independently through his own reading. Indeed, he found when he did explore Quakerism-as-it-is-today that it is quite different from what he had thought George Fox was talking about. I know that many Quaker bloggers have had the same experience. Whatever differences I may discern between my own views and the Halls', it seems very important to me to open up a channel of communication between Friends who take George Fox's Christian message seriously, and these non-Friends who (unexpectedly) do the same.

To stimulate further discussion I am now going to quote a kind of summary of George Fox's message and ministry as the Worthingtons understand it.

THE GOSPEL REDISCOVERED

George Fox reestablished the true gospel (power of God)
that was lost for 1260 years and is again lost today. The gospel difference is:

1) God's peace to you. God's perfect example, (Christ) does not condemn you, but rather gives you His peace and asks you to trust Him to help you find heaven on earth.

HE AWAITS YOU! HE IS THE REWARDER OF THOSE WHO SEEK HIM!

2) He wants to purify you, perfect you, destroy all the sinful nature in your body, give you a new heart and mind, and make you one with Him and the Father. (not presumptively, but in reality). He wants you to not be burdened with your unhappiness and misery (Hell on earth), but rather to lead you to joy, peace, and happiness - the Kingdom of Heaven (Heaven on earth).

3) The process of purification is so simple, the wise of the earth scoff at it:
Seek his kingdom within you and its' righteousness (and all else will be added)
(your necessary first priority)
On a daily basis, in private, get quiet and think on the name of Jesus Christ.

( His name is the power to purify you; stay your hope in him changing you. When not quiet, think on whatever is noble, good, honest, lovely,etc. If there are others with the same hope to meet with, meditate with them.)

Listen and watch. (eyes closed or open, it works both ways)

Obey any simple, easy to understand commands heard or felt.
(You will hear many voices. Use scripture to validate. Don't fill in the blanks.)

Practice acts love and kindness energized through faith.
(even the little things count! big things too encourage each other to practice giving, love, and good deeds "the only thing that counts is love energized by faith" )

He awaits you. He is the Rewarder of those who seek Him.

4) This Christ and gospel is powerful enough to change us on this side of the grave and make us like Him. This Christ and gospel can destroy the sinful nature of sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, etc. and replace them with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

The New George Fox Writings Website

2006-03-08T16:39:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at the new website created by Hall and Joan Worthington and devoted to the life and writings of George Fox.

Here are my observations:

First: I was wary when I read that they had "modernized" the language, since this is often a rationale for watering down the content of early Quake writings, but I put my mind at ease after reading a fair number of epistles and comparing them to the "original" text at other sites. The modernizing seems to consist mainly of changing "thee" and "thou" to you, changing obsolete verb endings such as -eth to modern equivalents, and occasionally inserting a clarifying word. For example, in epistle number 2 they have changed from

Rejoice not in the flesh, but in the spirit, which crucifieth all fleshly boasting: if the fleshly will be fed, then carelessness cometh up, and they fall into flatness, (from the spirit,) and are mindless of the Lord God; such are soon up and down.
to
Rejoice not in the flesh, but rather in the spirit,
which crucifies all fleshly boastings:
if the fleshly will be fed, then carelessness cometh up,
and they fall into flatness, (from the spirit),
and are mindless of the Lord God;
such are soon up and down.

Second: As the above example shows, their breaking down of the text into separate lines greatly improves readability.

Third: They have an article under "Editors' comments" called "Government Protests". It points out that the early Friends' testimony against wars didn't generally involve actually protesting wars or trying to end them. It also makes the argument that mass anti-war protests are not really in the spirit of the peace testimony. I would draw different conclusions in the end, but their argument deserves to be listened to.

Fourth: In another article under "Editors comments" called "Imitation of Early Quakers" they protest against the use of "plain speech" and "plain dress" that imitates early Quaker patterns but in their opinion is untrue to the spirit of the real early Quaker testimony about plainness. Here I feel much closer to what they are saying than I do to their point about anti-war marches, though I don't feel, as perhaps they do, that the quaint forms of plainness are actually a bad thing.

Fifth: While I too am a great admirer of George Fox, I feel a tad put off by their statement that "We believe George Fox to be the greatest man the world has known since Jesus Christ left the earth."

Finally: I notice that they say they are not members of any church or religious society since they have not found anyone who agrees with their beliefs. Yet it seems likely that somewhere along the way they have had contact with Friends, since few other groups would have pointed them to the writings of George Fox. One wonders what they think of Friends.

I think this website is fascinating. I'd love to hear what other Friends make of it.

A Web-Site Devoted to Quaker Musicians

2006-03-03T17:06:00.000-05:00

Peter Blood-Patterson just sent me a link to a website on Quaker musicians - especially folk musicians - maintained by himself and Annie Blood-Patterson. I've added it to my sidebar, and I am putting the link here as well, for those who might be interested in checking it out. There are certainly more Friends and friends of Friends involved in folk music than I had been aware of.

The site is Quakers and Music.

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

Olara Otunnu On "Saving God's Children from the Scourge of War"

2006-02-21T12:34:00.000-05:00

I want to thank Eden Grace for passing along to many Friends word of a talk by Olara Otunnu at the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches currently under way in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Eden is representing Friends at the Assembly. I also want to thank Carol Holmes of Brooklyn Meeting for passing Eden's email on to me and others. There is nothing I can usefully add to what Olara Otunnu has said, except to urge you to read it. Please note especially the section of the talk devoted to "Northern Uganda: The worst place in the world to be a child today".

The entire talk can be read here:
"Saving God's Children from the Scourge of War"

Quakerism:A Simple Faith, A Radical Witness

2006-02-03T15:27:00.000-05:00

Contents

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
A WORD ABOUT THE TITLE OF THIS TALK
QUAKERISM: THE SIMPLEST VERSION
QUAKERISM: THE NOT-QUITE-SO-SIMPLE VERSION
QUAKERISM'S "RADICAL" WITNESS
SIMPLICITY
INTEGRITY
COMMUNITY
EQUALITY
CONCLUSION

PREFACE

Recently, I posted the text of a talk about "Quaker Spirituality" that I gave at a Women's Spirituality Group in the Roman Catholic parish of St. Andrew the Apostle in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Tonight I am giving a different talk at the Catholic Worker’s Maryhouse on East 3rd Steet in Manhattan. The following is what I have written in preparation. At the talk itself, I plan to bring only an outline of these comments and to speak from the outline rather than the full text. The Title (stolen from New York Yearly Meeting’s website) is “Quakerism: A Simple Faith, A Radical Witness”.
Note added 2/10/06: I have decided to retitle this post with the title of the talk itself rather than "A Talk on Quakerism for the Catholic Worker".

INTRODUCTION
I want to thank Jane Sammon for inviting me to speak tonight, not only because it gives me a chance to talk about Quakerism, but also because I get to renew my acquaintaince with the Catholic Worker. I ran into Jane at the parish of St Andrew the Apostle in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, last November when she came there to talk to a Women’s Spirituality Group about Dorothy Day. My wife, Janet, is a Catholic who attends St Andrews and she told me in advance about Jane’s talk. The Women’s Spirituality Group says that it’s OK with them if men want to attend, and I certainly wanted to hear the talk about Dorothy, so I attended. Jane seemed impressed when she found out I was a Quaker, and she invited me to come here and speak. There might be better people to represent Friends, but I love to talk about Quakerism, so I decided to accept.

I speak of “renewing my acquaintance” with the Worker because – though I almost always read the Catholic Worker paper – I have not been at St Joseph House or Mary House for many many years. Through the Quaker Meeting I know Sam Oast, John Maynard and others who – though not Catholic – have been part of the Catholic Worker family and supported it through volunteering, but I have not followed their example. In my long-ago youth, however, I did have many personal contacts with the Worker. I attended a conference of Peacemakers (or maybe it was Pax Christi) at the Catholic Worker Farm in Tivoli in 1969 or 1970 or thereabouts. I recall meeting Michael Cullen there as well as hearing Dorothy Day speak. I met CW’er Daniel Marshall way back in the seventies when he lived in New Hampshire before coming back to the City and to Brooklyn. In the years from 1971 to 1977 I lived on the Lower East Side and frequently attended Friday night meetings, often coming with the very same Janet who is now my wife. Say what you will about the Friday night meeting, it is a very inexpensive date! During those years, I remember watching a screening of The Trial of the Cantonsville Nine, hearing a talk by Daniel Berrigan, and hearing other talks at various times by Robert Coles, Henri Nouwen, Eileen Egan and many more. I never dreamed that I might speak here myself one day, and I feel very honored. Incidentally, I also felt very proud recently when my son, Nicholas, who is a committed Catholic and in some ways a conservative Catholic, chose to use some of his free time between jobs to do some volunteer work at St Joseph’s House. I hope that all of those present who support the Worker year-in and year-out are also proud of carrying on its witness and its service. I, for one, am grateful to you.

A WORD ABOUT THE TITLE OF THIS TALK
When Jane Sammon asked me to come up with a title for the talk, I decided to steal a slogan from the website of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). That’s the larger Quaker body that includes my own Meeting (the 15th Street Meeting) and most local Quaker Meetings in New York, Northern New Jersey, and Southwestern Connecticut. The slogan is “Quakerism: A Simple Faith, A Radical Witness”. The same website also features an alternative slogan “Quakerism: A Radical Faith, A Simple Witness”. It occurred to me that the words “Simple” and “Radical” in either order might appeal to Catholic Workers and help draw in the crowds even though most of you would have no idea of who this guy “Rich Accetta-Evans” is. Once I started to think about the talk itself, however, I had to face some questions about that title: Is it really accurate? Is the Quaker faith really a “simple” faith? Is the Quaker witness really a “radical” witness?

What is the Quaker faith, and how simple is it? These are questions that different Quakers will answer differently, especially if in the word “faith” we include “belief” in specific doctrines. I think there is a distinction between “faith” and “belief” even though they are related to each other, and I’ll come back to that point later. First I would like to consider one of the many explanations you can sometimes hear in Quaker circles of what Quakerism fundamentally is.

QUAKERISM: THE SIMPLEST VERSION
The simplest explanation of Quakerism, found especially in outreach literature of Quaker and Quaker-related organizations, is usually phrased something like this: “Quakers believe that there is That of God in every one.” It may also be added that we believe all people have direct access to God without intermediaries like priests or ministers. Together, these two beliefs are said to be "the reason" that our worship is silent, that we oppose participation in war, that we work against capital punishment, that we have historically supported women's equality with men, opposed slavery, and so on.

I have to confess that this simple explanation of Quakerism is a tad too simple for me. I know Friends who find that it says all that needs to be said, and I know that often these are really good and faithful Friends. Therefore, on the deepest and most important level I have no quarrel with them. I stand in awe, frankly, of the integrity, the love, the courage and the faithful witness some Friends have shown while articulating no belief beyond the above simple formulation. Nevertheless, when I myself try to describe the faith that motivates me as a Friend I find I have to go beyond this type of statement. I dig back into the history of our movement, read about the ways in which our faith was presented by earlier generations, and draw upon that tradition to inform my own thinking and to interpret my own experience. In this, I think I share something with a growing number of Friends who are engaged in a similar search.

Part of the reason I find this simple formulation unsatisfying is that it's hard to say exactly what it means. What is the "that of God" in people? Is it a part of the human personality? If so, is it the only part? If I believe that there is "that of God" in people does that imply that people are necessarily good and righteous? If not, then how does this belief lead to any particular way of acting? If I believed on other grounds that war is justified or that capital punishment is necessary, why would I change my mind if I learn that there is "that of God" in my nation's enemies or in a convicted murderer? Should I be afraid that by killing the individual I am also killing "that of God"?. It doesn't seem very likely, if I accept that God is immortal and eternal. My friend John Edminster, who has read the Bhagavad Gita (I have not) tells me that there is a passage in it that reassures warriors about the killing they have to do precisely because there is something of God in the enemy and God cannot be killed even if the individual's body is. Also, what does the doctrine of "that of God" have to do with equality? Is the idea that this undefined "something" is quantifiable and that the quantity is equal in every individual?

QUAKERISM: THE NOT-QUITE-SO-SIMPLE-VERSION
It may be lucky for me that Friends don't take a hard line on doctrinal purity, because the thoughts I have just expressed to you might strike some Quakers as almost heretical. "That of God in everyone" comes close in some Friends' minds to a Quaker creed, though probably most would not say it that way. After all, doesn't the very phrase "that of God in everyone" come from the writings of George Fox, Quakerism's 17th century founder? Well, yes, George Fox did use that phrase a few times. In fact, though, he never gave it much emphasis. When it does appear in his writing it isn't offered as a teaching in itself. The declarative sentence "There is that of God in everyone" does not occur. Nor does any sentence of the form "Friends believe there is That of God in Everyone" or "I believe there is that of God in Everyone" or "You should believe that there is That of God in Everyone." Instead, when Fox used the phrase he was usually exhorting someone to "answer" that of God in someone, or to "speak to" that of God, or to "obey" that of God. Fox also used other terms: the "Witness of God", the "Light of Christ", the "Spirit of God", and he used these terms in a way that is pretty remote from the bare teaching that people are good because there is some kind of divine spark in them.

In context, Fox's message about "that of God" in us, or about his more favored term "The Light of Christ" was that this Light is alive and active and it is speaking to each of us, telling us how to live, showing us our faults and weaknesses, pointing the way toward something better, encouraging and even demanding that we change our all too human ways. He called it the "Light of Christ" for a reason – because he identified it with the Jesus Christ of the Bible and thought that it teaches the same way of love for others, trust in God, and forgetfulness of self that Jesus taught and exemplified. To Fox's mind, it didn't matter nearly so much whether you had correct beliefs about the nature of this Light as it did that you learned how to wait on it, listen to it, and be faithful to it. To him, there was no way for people to follow Christ just by reading the Bible or understanding a doctrine, important though both of those might be. The only way to be a follower of Christ was to see His Light within you and heed it. This is illustrated in a pamphlet he wrote called "Some Principles of the Elect People of God Who in Scorn are Called Quakers". You can find it online at http://www.quakers-swfl.org/georgefox.html. Notice the rather different spin he puts on the familiar Christian teaching that Christ is the only way to God. To George Fox, since Christ is the Light, this means that to come to God you must come to the Light within you.

Further we say, Christ is our Way, who is the Light that doth enlighten you, and every one that cometh into the world, that with it you might see him, the Way, and come to walk in the way of Peace and Life, which is the Way of God, and which is the new and living Way, which the Apostles were in; which Christendom hath gone out of, going from the Light in their own particulars, into their own Inventions and Imaginations, which is the cause there are so many wayes amongst them; changeable Wayes, and changeable Worships; I say, amongst them that are gone out of the new and living Way: So every one that cometh to the Light in their own particulars, they come to Christ, they come to the new and living Way, and from and out of the old and dead Wayes, which are in the Fall from God, out of his Image and Power; So who come into his Image and Power, they must come to the Light, which Christ the Way hath enlightened them withal in their own particulars: For there is no other way to the Father, but Christ the Light, which doth enlighten every one that comes into the world, who is the Way, even the new and living Way, and hear his Voyce and Teaching; so they shall love the Light, love the VVay, and love Christ; but they that hate the Light hate Christ the VVay.

QUAKERISM'S "RADICAL" WITNESS
How does this conception of Christianity lead to a "radical witness"? Bear in mind that “radical” has two meanings. On the one hand, it is usually used today to mean “extreme”, “far out”, “dangerous”, even “violent”. The other meaning of “radical” is derived from the Latin word “radicalis” which means “having roots” or from the French word “radix” simply meaning “root”. A radical witness or faith is one that challenges us at “the root”, not just in superrficial or secondary ways.

Quakers today are usually thought of as peaceful and respectable folks, but at various times in our history we have been thought of by others as radical in the far-out, dangerous sense. At our best, however, we have really been radical in that other sense. Let me illustrate by talking about George Fox, the man usually considered the founder of Quakerism.

Quakerism arose in the Northern part of England in the middle of the 17th century. It was less than 50 years after the first publication of the King James Version of the Bible and only about 100 years after the English Church under Henry VIII had broken away from Rome. Religious fervor was running high, but so - - in many quarters - - was a growing sense of disillusion. The Protestant reformers had promised to cleanse the church of corruption, but they quarreled among themselves about what practices and traditions were corrupt and what ones weren’t. The clergy were supported by tithes collected from the general population by the state, and some were thought to be more interested in this comfortable living than in preaching the gospel.

A powerful feeling against monarchy and aristocracy was strong in the land, and the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell had toppled King Charles I and beheaded him, but this ushered in even more unrest and conflict. A great many people, intensely reading their Bibles and pursuing their prayers shared a sense that something was still amiss. They felt that neither the break-away from Rome nor the violent Puritan revolution had really resulted in a Church that was truly in the Spirit of Christ and the Apostles. Some itinerant preachers who weren’t really tied to any particular existing Church began criss-crossing the country airing their views and holding debates. There were Levellers and Diggers and Seekers and some people called Ranters.

George Fox was part of that world. He was the son of a weaver, had once been apprenticed to a shoemaker and worked as a shepherd, but he left his trade, broke off all ties with his family, and began traveling through the countryside on a kind of spiritual quest that then turned into a spiritual mission. He was convinced that Christendom had lost its bearing. He had looked for help from all kinds of Catholics and Protestants including Purtitans and Baptists and various kinds of separatists, but they hadn't been able to speak to his condition. He observed that they often didn't live by even their own teachings. He thought that their claims to authority, whether based in scripture or in tradition, were hollow if they weren't led by the Spirit. He said that neither formal ordination nor university training could qualify a person to be a minister. He said that true baptism and true communion were spiritual realities, not ceremonies. He said that to preach for money, especially money raised by the state, was to make a disgraceful trade of what ought to be freely given. By 1652 Fox was 28 years old. He had already carried his message pretty far and wide. He had spoken in market-places against cheating in merchandise, in courtrooms where he warned the judges to "judge justly", and in houses of worship (which he called "steeplehouses") whenever he could get the floor. He was perceived as a because his message challenged the privelege of the clergy, because he refused to flatter the egos of his social betters or political masters, because he wouldn't swear oaths in court, because he valued the prophetic ministry of women as well as men, and because he taught that God calls us to righteous and just behavior – not just to receive forgiveness for sins that we persist in. He was also thought a radical because he was willing to be faithful to these beliefs even when it cost him beatings and imprisonments. Furthermore, he helped to organize a movement of people of like mind – a movement of people who felt sure they were a people of God, a Church, a body of Christ. Their willingness to suffer together for what they called the Truth was a source of great spiritual power, and also a source of agita for secular and religious authorities.

This is how George Fox described his own mission:
But with and by this divine power and spirit of God, and the light of Jesus, I was to bring people off from all their own ways, to Christ, the new and living way; and from their churches, which men had made and gathered, to the Church in God, the general assembly written in heaven which Christ is the head of: and off from the world’s teachers, made by men, to learn of Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life, of whom the Father said, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him"; and off from all the world’s worships, to know the Spirit of truth in the inward parts, and to be led thereby; that in it they might worship the Father of spirits, who seeks such to worship Him; which Spirit they that worshipped not in, knew not what they worshipped. And I was to bring people off from all the world’s religions, which are vain; that they might know the pure religion, might visit the fatherless, the widows, and the strangers, and keep themselves from the spots of the world; then there would not be so many beggars, the sight of whom often grieved my heart, to see so much hard-heartedness amongst them that professed the name of Christ. And I was to bring them off from all the world’s fellowships, and prayings, and singings, which stood in forms without power, that their fellowship might be in the Holy Ghost, and in the Eternal Spirit of God; that they might pray in the Holy Ghost, and sing in the Spirit, and with the grace that comes by Jesus; making melody in their hearts to the Lord, who hath sent His beloved Son to be their Saviour, and caused His heavenly sun to shine upon all the world, and through them all, and His heavenly rain to fall upon the just and the unjust as His outward rain doth fall, and His outward sun doth shine on all, which is God’s unspeakable love to the world. And I was to bring people off from Jewish ceremonies, and from heathenish fables, and from men’s inventions and windy doctrines, by which they blew the people about this way and the other way, from sect to sect; and from all their beggarly rudiments, with their schools and colleges for making ministers of Christ, who are indeed ministers of their own making but not of Christ’s; and from all their images and crosses, and sprinkling of infants, with all their holy days (so called) and all their vain traditions, which they had gotten up since the apostles’ days, which the Lord’s power was against: in the dread and authority of which I was moved to declare against them all, and against all that preached and not freely, as being such as had not received freely from Christ.

Fox was arrested and persecuted numerous times during the time of the Puritan Rule. Once he passed up a chance to get out of jail because he wouldn’t consent to become a captain in the Puritan New Model Army. Because he refused to swear oaths he was suspected by some Puritans of being a closet royalist or even a closet Catholic. Later, when the Puritans were out and a new king was in, he was arrested again. Now he was suspected of being against the King. And some of the same people who had persecuted him under the Puritans, now switched sides and persecuted him under the monarchy. One time, he was arrested under the orders of a judge named Thomas Porter, he asked some other Friends to make inquiries and find out what the charges were. According to his Journal:
“To the best of their remembrance the matters therein charged against me were that I was a person generally suspected to be a common disturber of the peace of the nation, an enemy to the King, and a chief upholder of the Quakers' sect; and that, together with others of my fanatic opinion, I had of late endeavoured to raise insurrections in these parts of the country, and to embroil the whole kingdom in blood. Wherefore the jailer was commanded to keep me in safe custody until I should be released by order of the King and Parliament.”
Of course, Fox answered that none of this was true, that he was not a radical or fanatic in the sense of violent or destructive. But in the course of doing so, he also showed himself to be a true “radical” in the sense of one who goes to the root:
I never was found in any plot; I never took any engagement or oath; nor have I ever learned war-postures. As those were false charges against me then, so are these now which come from Major Porter, who is lately appointed to be justice, but formerly wanted power to exercise his cruelty against us; which is but the wickedness of the old enemy. The peace of the nation I am not a disturber of, nor ever was; but I seek the peace of it, and of all men, and stand for all nations' peace, and all men's peace upon the earth, and wish all knew my innocency in these things.

And whereas Major Porter saith I am an enemy to the King, this is false; for my love is to him and to all men, even though they be enemies to God, to themselves, and to me. … It is much Major Porter should say I am an enemy to the King; for I have no reason so to be, he having done nothing against me.

But I have been often imprisoned and persecuted these eleven or twelve years by those that have been both against the King and his father, even the party by whom Porter was made a major and for whom he bore arms; but not by them that were for the King. I was never an enemy to the King, nor to any man's person upon the earth. I am in the love that fulfils the law, which thinks no evil, but loves even enemies; and would have the King saved, and come to the knowledge of the Truth, and be brought into the fear of the Lord, to receive His wisdom from above, by which all things were made and created; that with that wisdom he may order all things to the glory of God.

And whereas he saith that I, together with others of my fanatic opinion, as he calls it, have of late endeavoured to raise insurrections, and to embroil the whole kingdom in blood, I answer, This is altogether false. To these things I am as a child; I know nothing of them. The postures of war I never learned; my weapons are spiritual and not carnal, for with carnal weapons I do not fight. I am a follower of Him who said, 'My kingdom is not of this world,' and though these lies and slanders are raised upon me, I deny drawing any carnal weapon against the King or Parliament, or any man upon the earth. For I am come to the end of the Law, but am in that which saves men's lives. A witness I am against all murderers, plotters, and all such as would imbrue the nation in blood; for it is not in my heart to have any man's life destroyed.

And as for the word fanatic, which signifies furious, foolish, mad, etc., he might have considered himself before he had used that word, and have learned the humility which goes before honour. We are not furious, foolish, or mad; but through patience and meekness have borne lies, slanders and persecutions many years, and have undergone great sufferings. The spiritual man, that wrestles not with flesh and blood, and the Spirit that reproves sin in the gate, which is the Spirit of Truth, wisdom, and sound judgment, is not mad, foolish, furious, which fanatic signifies; but all are of a mad, furious, foolish spirit that in their furiousness, foolishness and rage wrestle with flesh and blood, with carnal weapons. This is not the Spirit of God, but of error, that persecutes in a mad, blind zeal, like Nebuchadnezzar and Saul

The Puritans and the monarchists had each been willing to shed others’ blood when they were in power. And they had feared and distrusted the Quakers who would not support them. But Fox and the Quakers were not just against one side or the other or for one side or the other. They were against the one thing that both sides had in common: the willingness to lay aside Christ’s commandment of love. The Quakers were indeed battlers of a sort, but their “weapons” were spiritual weapons. It was not long after this that Friends sent a letter to King Charles declaring that they bore a testimony against “all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons for any end or under any pretence whatever”. Most Quakers still take the same stand today. Between wars it is widely admired. When others feel that war is necessary it starts to seem radical and indeed it is radical. Today, there is a Quaker member of the Christian Peacemakers Team, named Tom Fox (no relation to George Fox), who has been kidnapped in Iraq and is under threat of death. His captors seem to think he is a spy for the United States or Israel. Some super-patriots in America, such as Rush Limbaugh seem to think he’s in cahoots with terrorists. People who are caught up in the Spirit of War still have just as much trouble as Judge Porter did in understanding the followers of the Prince of Peace. Here is what Tom Fox himself has said about his motivation for going to Iraq (He uses the gender-neutral word “realm” for what we used to call the “kingdom” of God.
If I understand the message of God… we are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. Again, if I understand the message of God, how we take part in the creation of this realm is to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength and to love our neighbors and our enemies as we love God and ourselves. In its essential form, different aspects of love bring about the creation of the realm.

SIMPLICITY OF LIFE

What else is radical about Quakerism? Well, there is the pursuit of “simplicity” or “plainness”. I am no longer talking about a simple faith, here, but about simplicity of life. I think that what Quakers call "simplicity" has something in common with what the Catholic Worker movement calls “voluntary poverty”, though it is probably not quite the same thing. I will not claim to have gone as far in the direction of simplicity as God may want me to. I live in a rich country, I am used to using material things pretty casually and unthinkingly. The danger in this is that I may become enslaved to the need for these things and may persist in using them even if in doing so I damage the natural environment or end up exploiting the poor. Moreover, since material goods are transitory and uncertain things, I know that I am building on a sandy foundation if I trust in them or depend on them too much. As Jesus said, it is better not to put our treasure on earth where rust can corrode it or thieves break in and steal it. It is better to put our treasure in Heaven. I feel challenged in this area by a number of Quakers in history, but also by many Quakers and non-Quakers, including many Catholic Workers today.

INTEGRITY
Another area is “integrity”, the belief in being truthful with oneself and others and remaining true to one’s convictions, whatever the cost. Jesus said that we should let our “yea” be yea and our “nay” be “nay”. He also said that we should not swear oaths, which would be taking God’s name in vain to back up our claim to honesty. Quakers have understood this to mean that we should refuse to swear oaths even in court, and should simply affirm that we are telling the truth and willing to take the consequences. In the bad old days, if those in power wanted to get Quakers in trouble they would ask them to swear a loyalty oath. Fox and others preferred prison to this hollow and hypocritical practice. I think it was Voltaire who said of the treaty that Quaker William Penn signed with the Indians of Pennsylvania: “It is the only treaty never sworn to and never broken.” Truth might not sound like a radical ideal, even though most people will probably admit it is a difficult one. Yet a great many evils are only possible because of the willingness of otherwise good people to ignore them, hide them, go along with them silently. It’s not just a question of being willing to speak the truth in political forums or public debates. It’s a question of incorporating truthfulness into everything one does: at work, in the family, in social situations, and so on. Truthfulness is hard and it requires constant practice. In this area, too, I find that I cannot claim to have progressed as far as I know that God would have me. I know that many other Quakers have gone much further.

COMMUNITY
“Community” is another ideal that many Quaker writers have pointed to as fundamental to Quakerism. Quakers have a strong individualistic streak, but it is balanced by a strong belief in the importance of spiritual community, in the fellowship of people who worship together, search for God’s will together, celebrate their joys together, and support each other through adversity. Without community, it would be infinitely harder than it is to be faithful to all the other Quaker ideals. Community is also an excellent way to put those ideals to the test. How much easier it would be - - and how much less valuable - - to love other people if we never had to actually deal with them!

EQUALITY
Finally, there is the ideal of “Equality”. The way that Quakers think about today probably owes as much or more to the secular Enlightenment, to the Declaration of Independence, and to the Constitution of the United States as it does to our Quaker ancestors. Yet the roots of that ideal are there in George Fox’s rebuke of human pride and vanity, in his refusal to give “hat honor” to nobles and social betters, in his use of the familiar form “thee” or “thou” instead of the Polite form “you” when addressing said nobles and betters. It is also there in his insistence, quoting the Bible, that God is not a “respecter of persons”. And of course it is there in the willingness of early Quakers to recognize that women, like men, are often “gifted” in the ministry and worthy to preach in meetings for worship. In the early years of Quakerism, these principles were not carried forth consistently in the matter of race. Even so well-respected a Friend as William Penn owned slaves. But by the grace of God and the Light of Christ Friends came to see in time that slavery was evil and to end that practice amongst themselves. Friends came to that collective decision in the 18th century, about 100 years before the Civil War. In the 19th century, many Friends – by no means all – were active abolitionists, agitators against slavery, and supporters of the underground railroad. In our own time we are learning what this spirit of equality must mean for the position of gay and lesbian people in our society. We are also learning the painful lesson that we are still quite far from free of racism, elitism, and acquiescence in class and caste inequality.

CONCLUSION
The list of qualities I have just named: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality, are sometimes said to be the “testimonies” of the Religious Society of Friends. The Friends General Conference has used the first letter of each to spell out "SPICE" and has coined the slogan "Spice Up Your Life With Quakerism". I don't imagine that this slogan is going to go very far! I have not described Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality as "testimonies", because that might give the misleading impression that they are found in a rulebook somewhere and defined for us in some cut-and-dried way. What they really are - - or will be if we Quakers manage to live up to the inheritance we have received - - are natural fruits of a life of the spirit. They are not separate “testimonies” but aspects of a single testimony: the testimony of our lives that God is alive and active, available to all, able to teach and guide us. And not only us, of course. You, too.

Follow-Up on my Review of Farmington! Farmington

2006-02-02T19:37:00.000-05:00

Licia Kuenning has just posted a new comment on my review of Farmington! Farminton!. In it she expresses some frustration with blogging as a medium of dialogue and says she thinks people will be unaware of this new comment on an old post (which may be true).

With that in mind, I invite anyone who is interested to read both the original review and all of the comments including Licia's new one at this link.

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

John Edminster on The Still Small Voice and How it Guides Us

2006-01-30T08:50:00.000-05:00

I continue to find gems in the most recent issue of Spark, the New York Yearly Meeting Newsletter. The following is a letter in that issue from John Edminster, and refers to an article by Christopher Sammond in the November issue that is also well worth reading. Here is John's letter (I hope I'm not violating any rights of New York Yearly Meeting by quoting it in full).

The Still, Small Voice
I was delighted to find Christopher Sammond wrestling with the question "What Do Friends Believe?" in the November Spark. Not only is it embarrassing to Friends not to be able to answer such a question from an outsider clearly, but it cannot help but weaken us spiritually not to be able to articulate what we instinctually feel to be a core faith that unites us. I applaud Christopher's groundbreaking work.

Christopher asserts that we share two central beliefs: (a) that there's That of God in each of us (call It what you will), and (b) that It can lead and guide us. I'd like to subtract a little from his statement of the first core belief, and add a little to the second. There are theological "minimalists" among us who avoid making any assumptions about what It is that leads and guides us, and might be more comfortable with our speaking of "the still, small voice." To speak of a "voice" refers merely to the experience of contact, which I think we all agree it's possible to have. To speak of the voice's Source or Owner is to make an ontological assumption that there's a He, She, or It speaking. I make that assumption when I answer the "voice" (rarely a voice for me, but more often a sense of holy presence) by addressing it as "God" or "Lord Jesus." But the Quaker sitting next to me who makes no such assumptions is not a worse Friend for her scrupulousness about avoiding assumptions; she may be a better one—if she's a better obeyer of that voice.

What I'd want to add to Christopher's formulation of the second central belief is that the still, small voice not only can lead and guide us, but we ought to let it lead and guide us. We who have experienced its promptings vividly know that when it expresses itself, we feel its absolute authority. (I am just now remembering a moment of temptation when I heard the Voice say "No!" to my impulse, with dreadful majesty.) Without this shared belief in the "oughtness" of following the holy prompting there could be no Quakerism. We might quickly become a club of flabby admirers of saintliness that made no effort to be saintly ourselves, and with no agreed-on basis for discipline grounded in our living experience of authoritative inward spiritual guidance, the Society of Friends would soon be no more than an umbrella organization of individuals that liked to call themselves Quakers for as many reasons as there were members.

Before I touch on our testimonies I'd like to add a third element: a central belief in the truthfulness, consistency and self-identity of the still, small voice. By this I mean that we would not accept it if a Friend that we were trying to discipline snapped back at us, "Well, you have your still, small voice, and I have mine!" No, light is light, and it shows things as they are. Nor would we fail to suspect a counterfeit if the still, small voice that rebuked our sins today winked at them tomorrow. The Heavenly Guide may keep me on a longer or shorter leash than It keeps you (as Paul recognized in Romans 14), but It will not contradict Itself when regulating our collective life: if two Friends bring incompatible directions to the community that defy a higher synthesis, one or both of the Friends must be wrong! Thus Friends indeed have a belief behind their tradition of collective discernment, that while individual Friends may be more or less accurate in their perception of the truth, there is an objective truth to be gotten at, which the still, small voice leads to.

And there is a Oneness to that voice. By this I mean that we Friends would —or most of us would—reject any world-view that ascribed mutually independent, multiple sources to our holy guidance: "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" (2 Cor: 6:15) Those who wish to make no assumptions about the Source of our guidance would, at least, refrain from imputing different Friends' guidance to, say, separate familiar spirits—or else risk serious confrontation with monotheist Friends.

As to our testimonies: Christopher is right that they "follow" from Quakerism's core beliefs, but they cannot be derived from our core beliefs by reasoning alone. They would not have been received by us without some tendering of the heart by the Holy Spirit —or whatever Friends wish to call It. How can we proud human egos hold to the testimony of equality, for example, without repeated humblings? Or the testimony of integrity, without feeling that awful shame over the lies we've told? Or the testimony of simplicity, without feeling sick of the cumber that keeps us distant from the Holy?

This is most telling, I think, with regard to our testimony against war. "Recognizing that of God in the other person" cannot be a sufficient reason not to take up the sword against him, because, in the Bhagavad Gita, the Incarnate Lord urges Arjuna the warrior to kill his opponents precisely because there is that of God in them, which undergoes no injury or diminution at the death of the body—and which, indeed, the Gita teaches, is all there is to the person that has any life, consciousness, or value! The living Christ seems never to have bothered using the "that of God in the other" argument (a product of 20th-century Liberal Quakerism, in any case) when He disarmed the first Friends: Thomas Lurting, aiming the cannon at the Spaniards, was stopped not by reasoning, or a dazzling revelation of their godlike qualities, but by having his heart pierced by the spirit of compassion. With theories about the indwelling God one can argue: with love's arrow one can only sink to one's knees.

I'm glad that Christopher mentioned corporate worship in connection with our core beliefs. One can be yogin, or a Christian hermit, without regular assembling for worship with co-religionists, but one cannot easily be a Quaker. Do we worship together because we like to, or because we have a commandment to? Is it an element of our covenant? Here we are likely to split into factions over the question of whether we have "commandments" or "covenants" at all, which in turn may lead back to the question of whether God is a Person with a will regarding His or Her creatures' conduct. If Friends ever had a tradition about the mandatory nature of meeting, one would expect to find it in Barclay's Apology, yet oddly, the whole of his discussion of "Proposition 11" cites no scriptural requirement to assemble for collective worship, but only Jesus' promise to be present "where two or three are gathered together in my name" (Matthew 18:20), a warning in Hebrews (10:24–26) not to avoid meeting together, and the Proverb (27:17) about iron sharpening iron. Perhaps the impulse to gather for worship can best be described as part of the "law written in the heart" (Jeremiah 31:33). Written out on paper as a codified obligation, it loses its living quality. Kept alive within, it regularly sets the alarm clock for First Day morning.
- John Edminster, 15th Street

Newton Garver on Idolatry

2006-01-27T09:17:00.000-05:00

I have long admired the sharp mind and deep insight of Newton Garver (a Friend in Buffalo Monthly Meeting of New York Yearly Meeting). This article about Idolatry is a good illustration of both. It appeared in The Buffalo Report and a shortened version was reprinted in Spark, the New York Yearly Meeting Newsletter. I highly recommend this article for the light it sheds on what it means to bear witness as a Friend in this nation in these times.

A Talk on Quakerism for a Catholic Audience

2006-01-25T15:56:00.000-05:00

Recently, I was invited to speak about "Quaker Spirituality" at a Women's Spirituality Group in the Roman Catholic parish of St. Andrew the Apostle in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The event took place yesterday evening and seemed to me to go very well. I wrote out what I wanted to say in advance, then boiled it down to an outline and spoke from that. The following is the full speech as written in advance and no doubt differs in several places from whatever it was that I actually said. Comments are welcome.

Introduction
Even though they didn’t work for the late Admiral Stockdale when he debated Al Gore, I’m going to start tonight by answering two questions: Who am I, and what am I doing here?

Who am I? My name is Rich Accetta-Evans. I am a member of the 15th Street Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, a local Quaker congregation in Manhattan. (Quakers use the word “Meeting” to mean a worship service, and also use the same word to describe the worshipping community itself – just as Catholics can sometimes use the word Church to describe worship -- “I am going to Church” and also to describe the people of God who identify as Catholics – “I am a member of the Church”.)

What am I doing here at the St Andrews Women’s Spirituality Group? Well, my primary connection with the Roman Catholic Church is through my wife, Janet, who has been a deeply committed Catholic all her life, and also through my son Nicholas, who has grown up as a Catholic and is a practicing Catholic today. It was with Janet’s encouragement that I attended a meeting of your Women’s Spirituality Group in November, because I heard your announcement that men were welcome and because I very much wanted to hear the talk given by Jane Sammond about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. I have been an admirer of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker for many years. I want to thank Janet for inviting me that night, all of you for accepting my presence, and Terry Febles in particular for speaking to me right after the meeting and inviting me to come back and talk about Quakerism.

I’ve had a lot of time to prepare and it’s possible that I’ve over-prepared. I confess that I am working from a speech I’ve written in advance, but the key phrase is “working from”, not “sticking to”. I will be happy if the flow of conversation moves us away from what I have written into unexpected territory. I want to “speak with” you rather than “speak to” you. I am hoping and assuming that this will be a dialogue rather than a monologue. I not only welcome questions at the end, but I hope you will feel free to jump in with both questions and comments as we go along.

Since this is a dialogue, I hope it’s clear that is no one’s intention here today to “convert” anyone from Roman Catholicism to Quakerism or vice versa. (Especially not vice-versa, please, since there are few enough Quakers in the world already). What I hope for from our dialogue is what I would hope for from a dialogue between people of any two faith traditions: that we gain a better understanding of each other, learn what our commonalities are, learn what our differences are, and come to appreciate both. If I get to it before I run out of my breath or your patience, I hope to mention some things that I already believe Quakers would do well to learn from the Roman Catholic Church, as well as some things that Catholics might want to look at in Quaker experience.

I will add that I think ecumenical and inter-faith dialogues in general are very important and useful and I am delighted to at last participate in one. As far as I know, Quakers have not been very involved in such dialogues at the national or international level. There have been meetings between Catholic and Lutheran theologians, between Christians and Jews, and between Jews and Moslems. A few years ago, I believe that Pope John Paul II had a meeting with a patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. But not many world religious leaders have met with the Quakers. This isn’t because of any prejudice against Friends or desire to snub us. It’s because we are really a very tiny group. Quakers sometimes say that we are a fourth branch of Christianity, along side of but distinct from Roman Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, and Protestants. I myself have said this and in fact that’s how I look at us. But I must admit that in view of the demographic statistics it takes a lot of chutzpah for me to make such a statement. According to an Encyclopedia article about Quakerism, there are about 600,000 Quakers in the entire world. I suppose there are that many Catholics in a single Borough of New York City. In all of New York State plus Northern New Jersey and Southwestern Connecticut there are only 6000 Quakers. My own Meeting in Manhattan has less than 200 members, and it is the second largest of the five Meetings in New York City. Many Quaker Meetings scattered across the cities, towns, and rural areas of North America have only 5 to 20 members.

Basic Questions About Quakerism

I have been using the words “Quakers” and “Friends”, I have said that in my opinion Quakers constitute a fourth admittedly tiny branch of Christianity, and I have mentioned that I belong to a Quaker Meeting. But I haven’t defined what Quakerism is or said very much about what it is like. So let me start over with some basic questions again. What is the “Religious Society of Friends”? Where does it fit in the family of world religions and Christian denominations? How do Friends worship? What do we believe? How is Quakerism different than other faith traditions, especially Catholicism? And how – if at all – is it the same?

At this point a confession is in order: my answers to these questions are only my answers. If you talk to another Quaker you may get slightly different answers – or even dramatically different answers. Even though Quakerism is a tiny movement, it is also a many-faceted movement, and there are many ways of looking at it. What I know about Quakerism comes from being a Quaker for over 35 years, from being pretty active in my Meeting and visiting others, and from doing a lot of reading and correspondence. But no one has conferred on me any right to speak authoritatively for all Quakers. There is a story about an old Quaker farmer, meant to illustrate the idea (or maybe the stereotype) that Quakers are sticklers for the literal truth and don’t like to affirm anything they aren’t absolutely sure is so. This farmer was asked whether a certain sheep on the hillside was white or black. “Well,” he said, “the side facing me is white.” Since he couldn’t see the other side of the sheep he wasn’t willing to say what color it was. In that spirit, please remember that whatever I say about Quakerism in the rest of this talk I am really saying only about the side of Quakerism I can see. There are other kinds of Quaker Meeting than the one I attend. And sitting on the bench beside me even at my own Meeting are some dear and wonderful Friends who may see the Quakerism we practice together very differently than I do. (One very lively area of discussion is the relationship between Christianity and Quakerism; I am not going to address that issue here.)

Still, I am going to answer those questions the best I can. I am going to start by describing a typical Sunday morning Quaker worship service. Then I am going to explain the origin of Quaker worship practice by going back into Quaker History. In the historical part of the talk, since this is after all a women’s spirituality group, I am going to concentrate on the role of Margaret Fell, a particularly important woman in the early history of Quakerism and in my opinion a great spiritual leader. Finally, as I mentioned before, I hope to mention some things that I think Quakers and Catholics can learn from each other.

The Experience of Quaker Worship

Should you ever decide to visit us (and – by the way – you are very welcome to do so) your first impression would probably be that it is a strikingly different place from a typical Catholic or even Protestant Church building and that the worship that takes place there is strikingly different from the liturgy of the mass. Nevertheless, having attended mass at St Andrews and elsewhere fairly frequently and having attended Quaker Meeting for over 35 years, I actually see some important similarities.

Let’s start with the differences, and especially with a list of all the things that St Andrews has but the Quaker Meeting and the Quaker Meetinghouse do not: At Fifteenth Street Meeting, during the hour of worship we have:
· No altar
· No pulpit
· No baptismal font (because we have no water baptism)
· No statues
· No pictures
· No priest
· No hymnals
· No prayer books
· No lectionary of pre-selected readings
· No communion bread
· No wine (or even grape juice)
· No liturgical calendar of seasons or holidays to be observed

You may ask what’s left. What DO we have? Well, here is where the commonality between our worship and Catholic worship may come in. Because what we have you also have. We, like you, have the presence of God. The fundamental faith decision that lies behind our manner of worship is that if we have this Divine Presence we believe we really don’t need anything else in order to worship. And if we don’t have or aren’t conscious of the Divine Presence then nothing else we might lean on will make true worship possible. One recent Quaker writer named Lloyd Lee Wilson has said that Quaker spirituality is a spirituality of subtraction. We have subtracted from our outward practice a great many things that we know other Churches have found to be precious and even holy. We have done it in order to clear a space for a direct encounter with the most precious and holy One of all. The moments in the Catholic liturgy that feel most familiar to me as a Quaker are the moments of silence. There are some Saturdays when the priest or deacon says something like “Let us pause to remember our sins and ask God forgiveness” – followed by a very brief period of silence. Or, after reading a list of people to pray for because they are sick or because they have passed away, the priest or deacon may invite the people to “add their own intentions in silence”. Finally, at the moment when the priest elevates the consecrated host and says the words “This is Jesus” there is often a profound and reverent hush, however brief. Each of these brief silences feels to me like a little piece of Quaker Meeting.

It’s possible that this seems a little abstract. Let me return to describing more concretely how I experience a typical Meeting for Worship. As I come into the Meetinghouse, a large brick building erected in 1865, I will usually be greeted by one or two Friends who stand at the door and welcome all who come in. These are members of a committee called the Greeting Committee. (Although our spirituality is a spirituality of subtraction, one thing we haven’t subtracted is committees – almost all of the work of the Meeting is done by committees. It is more or less expected that members will participate in committee work if they are able.). I may briefly chat with one or two people in the lobby, but once I go into the Meeting room itself all conversation stops.

The meeting starts at 11 a.m., but I usually try to be in my seat by 10:45 or 10:50. The Meeting room is pretty large. It has a high ceiling and tall windows with clear glass (not stained-glass thank you very much). There are lots of long wooden benches with cushions for comfortable seating. When I first attended the Meeting back in the early 1970’s there were no cushions. A senior class at the Quaker school next door to us donated the cushions sometime back in the 1980s. They are much appreciated now, though I think at first there was some grumbling that they detracted from the atmosphere of plainness and simplicity that we try to cultivate. Some rows of benches face toward the front; some are turned at right angles and face each other; still others at the front of the room face toward the back. It’s sort of like a big circle, but a big more rectangular than that.

I pick a spot on a bench, sit down, and close my eyes. Most other people close their eyes as well, though this is not a requirement and I actually have not heard it mentioned very often. It just seems the most natural thing to do. After closing my eyes I begin a process a lot of Friends call “centering down”. Basically this is nothing more than trying to forget myself, overcome self-consciousness, let go of whatever seemed important to me before I came into Meeting, and just wait quietly for God. Sometimes I use some simple prayer to help me do this. Other times I find that the only way to let go of a particular distraction is to first bring it up, as it were, and pray about it silently and then let it go. Our worship is sometimes called “silent worship” and it is sometimes called “unprogrammed worship” for reasons I will explain shortly. But my favorite term for it is one that is used very commonly in the so-called “Conservative” meetings of Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, and a few other places: these Friends call Quaker worship “waiting worship” because it consists of “waiting on the Lord”. To me, the word waiting conveys just the right balance of quietness and eager expectation. I am fond of the scriptural quotation “They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.”

I am not the only person “centering down” or “settling in” during the first 15 to 30 minutes of worship. All present are doing the same. There will always be some Friends who come in late, and there will be some sounds of creaking floorboards and benches as people find their places, sit down, and settle in. But gradually it becomes very still and hushed.

What happens next - after we center down the best we can - is, as Friends understand it, both private and individual and communal or corporate at the same time. It is different from praying or meditating at home by oneself. We look inward, but we are also drawn both upwards to God and outwards to each other. There are times, though it doesn’t always happen, and we can’t really make it happen at will, when we feel in the silence that God has brought us into a very precious bond of unity with each other. We even have some words that we use to describe such a Meeting: it is said to be “gathered” or to be “covered”.

I don’t want to give the impression, though, that nothing happens in the hour of worship except this “centering down” and occasionally this sense of being “covered” or “gathered”. Many Friends like to quote the promise of Jesus that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst”. We very much believe that God is there when we meet together (and also when we don’t, of course, but the point is that when we meet together we open ourselves to God in a special way). And because God is present, we believe that God will inspire us or move us to worship Him (or Her) in the way that is most appropriate for our condition at that time and that place. Some meetings proceed entirely in silence from beginning to end, but usually there will be several spoken messages during the hour. Friends give such messages when we feel them given to us by the Spirit and when we feel powerfully moved to offer them to the group. We refer to this as “vocal ministry”.

All of the basic elements of worship that take place in any Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or Moslem worship service have their parallels in a Quaker worship service. That is, the worshippers may
· Confess sins or weaknesses,
· Repent and ask God’s forgiveness,
· Offer thanks,
· Offer praise,
· Pray for the needs of others and ourselves,
· Hear spoken ministry that enlightens, challenges, encourages or exhorts us.

What makes the Quaker Meeting seem so different is that none of this is scheduled or programmed for us. We don’t come to Meeting with a fixed idea of what we will pray about or meditate about that day. We do not come with a plan to speak or a plan to not speak. We come, rather, in a spirit of openness, ready to seek for the Light in the silence, to let the Light search us, and show us our own spiritual states. I may come to the meeting quite satisfied with myself but be shown in the silence that I have been selfish or cowardly or insensitive or greedy in some particular area of my life and I need to be helped to do better. Or, on the other hand, I may come to meeting feeling low and despondent and find in the Silence that I am reassured of God’s love and care. If another Friend is moved to speak some words of ministry I may find surprisingly often that they are helpful to me – that they “speak to my condition” as Friends say. If the words of ministry are not helpful to me, I let them go and continue to wait in the silence.

It could be asked: what is gained by practicing this rather pared-down and Spartan form of worship? Why do Quakers deprive themselves of the liturgical supports that most other Christians find so helpful? We do have our reasons and they are important to us. To give a feeling for what those reasons are and how we came to them I’m going to give a compressed overview of Quaker history, especially the history of our founding in the 17th century. Ordinarily, to do this I would probably start by talking about the ministry of George Fox, one of the most important early Quaker leaders and the one usually credited with being our founder. Certainly I will mention George, as he is very important, but I am not going to begin with him. I am going to begin with a woman named Margaret Fell.

Margaret Fell and the Origins of Quakerism

Quakerism arose in the Northern part of England in the middle of the 17th century. It was less than 50 years after the first publication of the King James Version of the Bible and only about 100 years after the English Church under Henry VIII had broken away from Rome. Religious fervor was running high, but so - - in many quarters - - was a growing sense of disillusion. The Protestant reformers had promised to cleanse the church of corruption, but they quarreled among themselves about what practices and traditions were corrupt and what ones weren’t. The clergy were supported by tithes collected from the general population by the state, and some were thought to be more interested in this comfortable living than in preaching the gospel.

A powerful feeling against monarchy and aristocracy was strong in the land, and the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell had toppled King Charles I and beheaded him, but this ushered in even more unrest and conflict. A great many people, intensely reading their Bibles and pursuing their prayers shared a sense that something was still amiss. They felt that neither the break-away from Rome nor the violent Puritan revolution had really resulted in a Church that was truly in the Spirit of Christ and the Apostles. Some itinerant preachers who weren’t really tied to any particular existing Church began criss-crossing the country airing their views and holding debates. There were Levellers and Diggers and Seekers and some people called Ranters.

This is where Margaret Fell enters the picture. Margaret Fell eventually became the wife of George Fox, but she was a significant figure in Quakerism decades before that happened, and her role was never simply that of a helper or assistant. It is quite possible that if Margaret Fell had not become involved in the early Quaker movement there would be no such thing as Quakerism today.

Margaret and her husband Thomas Fell were sympathizers with the general ferment of their times. They belonged to a local church, were well-off enough to have a large house and some household help, and were respectable members of their community. Thomas Fell was actually a judge. But they also made their home available to many of those wandering preachers and they were intensely interested in the religious and social issues of the time. In 1652, Margaret was 38 years old, was already the mother of several children, and was the day-to-day manager of her household when she had her first encounter with Fox.

Fox was the son of a weaver, had once been apprenticed to a shoemaker and worked as a shepherd, but he had left his trade, broken off all ties with his family, and begun traveling through the countryside on a kind of spiritual quest that then turned into a spiritual mission. He was convinced that Christendom had somewhere lost its bearing. He had looked for help from all kinds of Catholics and Protestants including Purtitans and Baptists and various kinds of separatists, but they hadn't been able to speak to his condition. He observed that they often didn't live by even their own teachings. He thought that their claims to authority, whether based in scripture or in tradition, were hollow if they weren't led by the Spirit. He said that neither formal ordination nor university training could qualify a person to be a minister. He said that true baptism and true communion were spiritual realities, not ceremonies. He said that to preach for money, especially money raised by the state, was to make a disgraceful trade of what ought to be freely given. By 1652 Fox was 28 years old. He had already carried his message pretty far and wide. He had spoken in market-places against cheating in merchandise, in courtrooms where he warned the judges to "judge justly", and in houses of worship (which he called "steeplehouses") whenever he could get the floor. Often he was well-received by a portion of the population, and strongly rejected by others. He had already been in prison twice before he met Margaret Fell, once for over a year. Margaret later described their meeting this way.

"And in the year 1652 it pleased the Lord to draw him towards us; so he came on from Sedburg, and so to Westmoreland, as Firbank Chapel, where John Blayking came unto him; and so on to Preston, and to Grarig, and Kendal, and Underbarrow, and Poobank, and Cartmel, and Staveley; and so onto Swarthmore, my dwelling house, whither he brought the blessed tidings of the Everlasting Gospel, which I, and many hundreds in these parts, have cause to praise the Lord for. My then husband, Thomas Fell, was not at home at that time, but gone the Welsh circuit, being one of the Judges of Assize and our house being a place open to entertain ministers and religious people at, one of George Fox his Friends brought him hither; where he stayed all night. And the next day being a Lecture, or a fast day, he went to Ulverston Steeple house, but came not in, till people were gathered; I and my children had been a long time there before. And when they were singing before the sermon, he came in; and when they had done singing, he stood up upon a seat or form, and desired, that he might have liberty to speak and he that was in the pulpit, said he might. And the first word, that he spoke, were as follows: He is not a Jew, that is one outward; neither is that circumcision, which is outward but he is a Jew , that is one inward; and that is circumcision, which is of the heart. And so he went on, and said, how that Christ was the Light of the world, and lights every man that comes into the world; and that by this Light they might be gathered to God. &c. and I stood up in my pew, and wondered at his doctrine; for I had never heard such before. and then he went on, and opened the Scriptures, and said; the Scriptures were the Prophet's words, and Christ's and the Apostle's words, and what, as they spoke, they enjoyed and possessed, and had it from the Lord and said, then what had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit, which gave them forth. You will say, Christ says this, and the Apostles say this but what can thou say? Are thou a child of Light, and have walked in the Light, and that thou speaks, is it inwardly from God? &c. This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart; and then I saw clearly, we were all wrong. So I sat me down in my pew again, and cried bitterly and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, we are all thieves, we are all thieves; who have taken the Scriptures in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves. So that served me, that I cannot well tell, what he spoke afterwards; but he went on in declaring against the false prophets, and priests, and deceivers of the people. And there was one John Sawry, a Justice of the Peace, and a professor, that bid the churchwarden, take him away and he laid his hands on him several times, and took them off again, and let him alone; and then after a while he gave over, and came to our house again that night. And he spoke in the family among the servants, and they were all generally convinced; as William Caton, Thomas Salthouse, Mary Askew, Anne Clayton and several other servants. And I was stricken into such a sadness I knew not what to do; my husband being from home. I saw, it was the Truth, and I could not deny it; and I did, as the Apostle says, I received the Truth in the love of it and it was opened to me so clear, that I had never a tittle in my heart against it; but I desired the Lord, that I might be kept in it, and then I desired no greater portion."
After this, Judge Fell came home, Margaret introduced him to George Fox, and the judge welcomed him and his Friends. Margaret came to be known as a Friend herself, though the Judge did not. In the years after that, George Fox and roughly sixty other traveling ministers of like mind continued to travel around England and to gather groups of those they had "convinced" into regular meetings for worship. One of these meetings was held in Margaret's house. In addition, Margaret kept up a steady correspondence among all these ministers, raised money for them when they were imprisoned, advised them when they had difficulties, and facilitated communication among them. Over the next ten years her house became a focal center of the Quaker movement. A summary of her life found at http://www.gwyneddfriends.org/margaret_fell.html, quotes the journal of a contemporary Friend named William Caton:
"Oh! The love which in that day abounded among us, especially in that family! And oh! The freshness of the power of the Lord God, which then was amongst us; and the zeal for Him and His truth, the comfort and refreshment which we had from His presence - the nearness and dearness that was amongst us one towards another, - the openings and revelations which we then had!"
In 1658, Thomas Fell died. In 1659, King Charles II was restored to the throne of England and the Puritans routed from power. The Quakers' troubles, however, were far from over. Over the next several years all Quaker leaders were severely persecuted, their lands were seized for non-payment of tithes and they were often arrested for refusing to swear loyalty oaths to the king. Margaret's statement about the loyalty oath was:

"...this I shall say, as for my allegiance, I love, own, and honor the King and desire his peace and welfare; and that we may live a peaceable, a quiet and a godly life under his government, according to the Scriptures; and this is my allegiance to the King. And as for the oath itself, Christ Jesus, the King of Kings, hath commanded me not to swear at all, neither by heaven, nor by earth, nor by any other Oath."
After six months in jail and a trial, Margaret was sentenced to life in prison and forfeiture of her property. Her answer to that was "Although I am out of the King's protection, yet I am not out of the protection of the Almighty God."Even in prison she wrote prolifically, sending epistles of encouragement to other Friends, and religious pamphlets to the general public. One particularly important paper she wrote at that time was called "Women's Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All Such as Speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus And How Women Were the First That Preached the Tidings of the Resurrection of Jesus, and Were Sent by Christ's Own Command Before He Ascended to the Father". This pamphlet defended the Quakers' widely criticized practice of encouraging women to give ministry during their meetings for worship. She was finally released from prison in 1668. She was married to George Fox one year after that, but never spent much time in his company thereafter as either she or he was at any given time either abroad on religious journeys or in prison. George Fox died in January 1691. Margaret Fell survived him by 11 years, dying in April 1702.

By the time Margaret died, a new generation of Friends was predominant in the Society. Some of the old fire was gone, and there was more of an effort to codify things like simplicity and plainness that had been left more to the Spirit in the early days. It was in this period that plain black clothing, like that of the Quaker Oats man, had come to be almost a costume of Quakers. One of Margaret's last writings was a warning against this tendency. She wrote:

"Our monthly and quarterly meetings were set up for reproving and looking into superfluous or disorderly walking, and such to be admonished and instructed in the truth, and not private persons to take upon them to make orders, and say this must be done and the other must not be done: and can Friends think that those who are taught and guided of God can be subject and follow such low mean orders? So it's good for Friends of our country to leave these things to the Lord, who is become our leader, teacher and guider, and not to go abroad to spread them, for they will never do good, but has done hurt already: we are now coming into … that which Christ cried woe against, minding altogether outward things, neglecting the inward work of almighty God in our hearts, if we can but frame according to outward prescriptions and orders, and deny eating and drinking with our neighbours, in so much that poor Friends is mangled in their minds, that they know not what to do. For one Friend says one way, and another another; but Christ Jesus saith that we must take no thought what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or what we shall put on: bids us consider the lilies, how they grow in more royalty than Solomon. But, contrary to this, we must look at no colours, nor make anything that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them, nor wear them: but we must be all in one dress and one colour.
This is silly poor gospel! It is more fit for us to be covered with God's eternal Spirit, and clothed with his eternal Light, which leads us and guides us into righteousness, and to live righteously and justly and holily in this present evil world. This is the clothing that God puts upon us, and likes, and will bless. This will make our light shine forth before men, that they may glorify our heavenly Father which is in Heaven, for we have God for our teacher, and we have his promises and doctrine, and we have the Apostles' practice in their day and generation: and we have God's holy Spirit, to lead us and guide us, and we have the blessed truth, that we are made partakers of, to be our practice. And why should we turn to men and woman teaching which is contrary to Christ Jesus' command, and the Apostles' practice?
...Friends, we have one God, and one mediator betwixt God and man, the man Jesus Christ; let us keep to him or we are undone."

What Can Catholics and Quakers Learn From Each Other

There are many things about which Quakers and Catholics must agree to disagree as long as we are faithful to our respective traditions. I as a Quaker am not going to be persuaded about trans-substantiation and the real presence of Christ in the physical elements of communion. If I were so persuaded, I think I would in good conscience have to leave the Society of Friends. Catholics, I imagine, are not about to say that there is no need of a priesthood, or to dispense with the seven sacraments, or any other fundamentals of the Catholic faith. Yet there are things about Catholicism that Quakers could adopt without becoming Catholic, and I will tentatively suggest (it's not really my call) that there may be things about Quakerism that Catholics could adopt without becoming Quaker.

What I think that Quakers could learn from Catholics is this: any religious community, however narrow it has to be because of its particular beliefs and practices, ought to be big enough and wide enough to embrace all classes, nationalities, stations in life, and education levels. The Roman Catholic Church puts Quaker meetings to shame in this respect. In Catholicism I see a rich mixture of national backgrounds and social and economic classes and racial groups. I see that masses are sometimes held in several languages within one parish. I see that there are first, second, and third-generation immigrants in local parishes. In all too many Quaker meetings, by contrast, we have become a very narrow stratum of people. We make excuses for this, but I think the experience of the Catholic Church shows it doesn't have to be that way.

Another thing Quakers can learn from Catholics is a little more assertiveness about defining our beliefs. For complicated reasons we have become very diffident about this. Sometimes people come to us and worship with us for quite a while before they hear very much about what we hold to be most essential in our faith. We have been careful not to offend sincere seekers who may differ with us, but not so careful to make sure that we are offering them something worth seeking for.

What I think Catholics might take from Quakers is this: a fuller confidence in the spiritual gifts and potential contributions of so-called "lay" believers. I say "so-called" because as a Quaker I don't distinguish between laypeople and clergy. I realize that the Roman Catholic Church does distinguish and will continue to do so. But it seems to me that even within this distinction there is room for far greater participation by people who are not in religious orders. I offer no prescription for how that could be done, just my observation – based on my experience in Friends' meetings – that all of God's people have some part in the body of Christ.

I Recommend These Queries

2006-01-22T10:27:00.004-05:00

"Contemplative Scholar" has posted some wonderful Queries on Quaker Disillusionment. I recommend them highly.

Last Night's Meeting of Dialogue Across Differences

2006-01-17T11:34:00.000-05:00

As I have mentioned in previous posts, there is a great neighborhood project in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, called "Dialogue Across Differences". It brings together people from a pretty wide variety of ethnic, national, class, and religious backgrounds. Last night's meeting involved two working groups, including the one I joined on providing new English speakers in the neighborhood (especially adults from ESL classes) an opportunity to practice English by conversingon a regular basis with volunteers who speak English already. I think it's very worthwhile and hope to get further involved. If I'm lucky maybe I can learn a smidgen of Arabic or Spanish or Russian while I'm serving as a conversation-partner for an immigrant, but that of course is not the purpose; it's for us to help them ;-).

The main thing I want to note on this post, however, is that before we broke down into working groups we had a program of brief reflections from three spiritual leaders about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The reflections came from a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew. All three were excellent. And all three speakers felt very comfortable drawing on their own traditions and scriptures to point us toward a concern for justice, peace and reconciliation. I heard a wonderful story about Mohammed, some real wisdom from the rabbinical tradition of Judaism as well as some more familiar (to me) Christian wisdom. This was somewhat unusual in our group, since although we come together to dialog we don't usually dialog about religion per se (that isn't our primary objective by any means). On this occasion I think it worked very well. I appreciated it because no one seemed to be in a defensive or victim-conscious state of mind (as is sometimes - I'm afraid - the case in Quaker Meetings). It was OK to share, and all three speakers had very powerful things to say.

Note to Self: Remember the Posts You Intend to Create

2006-01-17T11:19:00.000-05:00

I have been working for several weeks on two talks about Quakerism I have been invited to give to Roman Catholic audiences. This doesn't leave much time for blogging, except for the little quick posts that sometimes arise from daily events. Just so I don't forget, though:

I intend (God willing) to write a better response to some questions back in December from Leila, the creator of the Sister Scorpion blog.
I want to create a Part II of my post awhile back about testing leadings.
I want to muse aloud about the challenges of being both a faithful Christ-follower and tender to Friends afflicted with Christo-phobia at the same time.

I've learned not to make promises about these things, even to myself: I merely take note of my good intentions. We'll see what happens.

Let's Be Careful About Casting Blame (and about who we quote as a source of news)

2006-01-11T16:26:00.000-05:00

I've been following the (discouragingly few) developments in the situation of the Christian Peacemaker Team members who were abudcted in Iraq by looking every day at the relevant portion of the Quaker Blog Watch There is a link there right now that troubles me in a different way than I expected.

The link says If the State Took our Brothers, Then
We Must be Having a Powerful Effect. Clicking this link brings one to a blog called "Cytations" whose ownership and point of view I can't quite place. I at first took it to be something sponsored by the Christian Peacemaker Teams, but I have started to strongly doubt that it is. Maybe someone can enlighten me about that.

Anyway, what first troubled me about this blogpost was the reference to "If the State Took our Brothers" coupled with some pictures of the Christian Peacemaker Team captives. As far as I know, there has been no evidence that "the state" had anything to do with the capture of these four peacemakers. At first, I considered that the title might refer to the more recent and very brief arrest of some other Christian Peacemaker Team members in Israel, but there is no mention of that arrest in the post.

The body of the post is a statement by Peggy Gish which actually is a very good statement. Whether she had anything to do with putting it on the Cytations blog is another question. One of her points is that "One of the effects of kidnappings, killings, and bombings, whether they are done by the resistance or the state, is to instill fear in the people. This fear leads to feelings of helplessness and paralysis." Her purpose seems to be to counteract this helplessness and paralysis by asserting that the work CPT is doing is having an effect. I have no quarrel with this statement, only with the title it is given in the post, and with the link that appears just below it.

The link that appears just below it is to another post called Who is Holding the Christian Peacemakers? and the internal title of that is "Israelis Still Holding Christian Peacemakers in Iraq". It states that "Israelis have practically confessed to the kidnapping by smearing Rachel [Cory] at the old discussion." This old discussion, meanwhile, turns out to be yet another post accusing the Israelis of being behind the kidnapping of the Christian Peacemaker Team members. There are some hateful, violent, and obscene comments on that post directed against Rachel Cory by someone who is alleged to be an Israeli, but nothing remotely constituting either a "confession" or "evidence" that Israel had anything to do with the kidnapping of four Christian Peacemakers in Iraq.

The other evidence "Cytation" cites in this latter post consists mostly of the fact that the Christian Peacemaker Teams have never harmed Moslems and have sometimes offended Israelis. The argument is that it would therefore make no sense for Moslems to kidnap them. The thing is, though, that lots of things that really happen "make no sense". The attack on the World Trade Center "made no sense" from one point of view, and it too has sometimes been blamed by conspiracy theorists on Israel, notwithstanding that Osama Bin Laden seems pretty proud of taking the credit for himself.

No reasonable person thinks that serious and devout well-informed Moslems deliberately kidnapped the Christian Peacemakers. I have been very moved by and grateful to many people in the Islamic world who have appealed for release of the captives. Israelis, however, are not very likely alternative candidates for the villain-role in this story.

Who are the kidnappers? The so-called Swords of Righteousness Brigade may be misguided would-be Moslems (either Sunni or Shiite or other), or Moslems ill-informed about their own faith, or Moslems ill-informed about the Christian Peacemakers and their work. Or they may not be Moslems at all. They may simply be common criminals who took advantage of the breakdown of law and order in Iraq (created by the invasion and occupation) to kidnap some people who looked like they might be useable in collecting ransom monehy from their fellow Westerners. The fact that the CPTers, as pacifists, refused military protection probably made them fairly easy targets.

As long as we don't really know, it would seem the better part of wisdom to not assume. And in view of the long history of "blood libels" (not to mention pogroms and genocide) directed against Jews and crusades directed against Moslems, I think it is particularly important for the friends of these peacemaking Christians not to start throwing reckless accusations at either of those other traditions.

I also want to state (though I wish I could assume that it's a given) that I don't think Israel should be any more immune to critiques and denunciations for specific actions than any other state. I do not equate opposition to particular Israeli policies with anti-Semitism. I do feel, however, that unsupported inflammatory accusations are a different matter.

Quakerism on Wikipedia

2006-01-06T15:36:00.000-05:00

Folks who read blogs probably also know about Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. Rather than rely on pre-selected "experts" to enter and correct information, Wikipedia lets anyone do so. Of course it is easy to enter erroneous information, but then it is also easy to correct erroneous information. A handy feature also lets you see the history of changes to any given article.

Recent articles in the mainstream press have examined whether Wikipedia is more or less likely to contain errors than traditional encyclopedias such as Encyclopedia Brittanica. The tentative conclusion seems to be that Wikipedia may be a hair less accurate at this time, but not much. (One study found that in a sample of science-related articles Wikipedia had an average of 5 errors per topic against 4 errors per topic in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. In both cases, many of the "errors" were extremely minor).

Having read about all this, I decided to go look at Wikipedia's entry for Quakerism. I found a couple of things I would like to add or change, and did so. If you go to the article and click the "History" tab at the top you can see my changes as well as those that went before. I am registered under the user name Richquaker.

In addition to the main article about Quakerism, I also went to the List of Quakers which says that it is a list of "notable" people associaed with the Religious Society of Friends". Lots of notable Friends were not on the list (at least as I define notable), so I added just two: Lewis Benson and Martin Kelley. In Martin's case I put in some links to the Quaker Ranter blog and Quaker Blog Watch. (I did this before I had created the userid of Richquaker, so the change is anonymous). Maybe soon I'll supplement Lewis Benson's entry with links to some of his works or to the New Foundation group.

All of which I mention for just this one reason: if blogging Quakers get active in adding-to and correcting the Wikipedia information about Quakerism, a fuller picture of our faith can be presented to the world. Go to it, Friends!

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

photo

2006-01-05T17:44:00.000-05:00

Asking For A Clean Heart

2006-01-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was an important Meeting for Worship for me. I had missed Sunday morning Meeting the previous week and had also missed Friday night meeting for two weeks in a row.

But more than that - I was feeling spiritually out of tune and in need of re-centering. Late in the week I had unwisely agreed to hear something in confidence that should not have been a secret. I had planned to keep this secret by just "not mentioning" it, but as things turned out I had to be willfully evasive, then tell half-truths and at last tell an outright lie. I am a terrible liar and the person I was trying not to tell is very intuitive. So the result was that I seriously damaged someone's trust in me and did no good at all for the person I was trying to "protect".

In Meeting I reflected on all this and saw in the light that even the allegedly good intentions I had started out with were not all that good. In my heart I knew all along that the confidence would be very hard to keeep and that if I did keep it I would actually not be doing anyone any real favors. I would only be enabling some addictive behavior. So why had I done this? Because I'm tender to another's need for privacy? No, unfortunately, that wasn't the largest part of my motive. It was because I fear conflict and unpleasantness and confrontation. I understood this vaguely and intellectually even going into Meeting, but in the Silence and in the Light I felt it more deeply.

At that point a verse dimly remembered from some long-ago Sunday School or Vacation Bible School lesson came to mind. A prayer. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." That was my silent prayer throughout the rest of the meeting. Often I give vocal ministry in Meeting, but that was not to be my role this time. A visiting Friend who I greatly respect gave a wonderful message on the theme (perhaps apropos of the New Year) that in worship we enter into something timeless rather than time-bound. Another Friend prayed her thanks for the gift of God's Spirit. Still another spoke of Christ and the need for obedience. I appreciated all the messages, but what I needed most was to hear and repeat within the simple prayer "Create in me a clean heart, Oh God, and renew a right spirit within me." It occurred to me that this prayer needed to be said in the right spirit in order to be valid. If I were merely asking passively that God give me a "clean heart" then I would be in danger of trying to shift onto Him the responsibility for my own condition (God hasn't given me a clean heart, so what can I do?) On the other hand, though, the prayer was necessary. If I were to make some "resolution" to get myself a clean heart on my own power I would be setting myself an impossible task and setting myself up for failure. I needed to take responsibility, but I also needed to ask for the assistance I needed to meet that responsibility.

Later, after going home, I searched through the Psalms looking for this verse. The Bible I picked up did not have a concordance, so it took awhile. (Gave me an excellent opportunity to reacquaint myself with some beautiful Psalms, by the way). I finally found it in the 51st Psalm. Here it is, as it is presented in the King James Version:

1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
9 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.
13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
15 O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.
16 For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

Links Concernng War in our Time

2006-01-01T12:58:00.000-05:00

Official Quaker-Related Web Sites in New York City

2006-01-01T09:46:00.000-05:00

Jesus Christ Forbids War - A Tract by John Edminster

2005-12-29T12:07:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning for some time to add the following link to the sidebar of my blog. I think it deserves wide notice and comment. The author, John Edminster, is a Friend in my Meeting and in many ways I feel him to be a soul-mate. I hope that Friends profit from reading his tract.

The Tract is: Jesus Christ Forbids War

- - Rich Accetta-Evans

P.S. The above post has been updated with a different URL for the text of John Edminster's tract than the one I originally provided. From this "new" URL it is possible not only to view the tract but to download it as a PDF or WORD document. John tells me that the email address given on the site is outdated and will be corrected. He can now be reached at john.edminster@gmail.com instead of the yahoo address formerly given.

Thoughts on the New York City Transit Strike - And Quaker Class Narrowness

2005-12-28T16:29:00.000-05:00

I still hope to create another post about testing leadings, but the topic on my mind today is the recent New York City Transit Strike. As of today, the Transit Workers Union (Local 100) and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have reached a tentative contract agreement that is to be submitted to the union members for a vote. The actual strike, as everyone knows, was ended last week when certain demands by the MTA were taken off the table.

Since I was not at Meeting for Worship last Sunday (the first time in a loooong time that I missed it), I haven't had any opportunity to discuss the strike with local Friends or to learn what their take on it is. I doubt that there is any one position that all of us adhere to, and I don't think there needs to be. Personally, I am very sympathetic with the union. I recognize that the strike was economically damaging to many people, including the transit workers themselves and also including some folks whose circumstances are even worse than those of the transit workers. For that reason, I can well understand why a person of good will could consider the strike unjustified. Yet I can't bring myself to put all or even most of the blame for the strike on the union. It seems evident that the leadership would not have exposed itself to heavy fines or its members to punitive loss of wages if they didn't feel there was a desparate need to take a stand.

The MTA made extreme last-minute demands on the union, thus precipitating the strike, but for some reason absorbed almost no criticism from the press and none at all from the mayor or governor. Instead, the mayor and governor swaggered and threatened and insulted in public, while hypocritically resuming talks (thank God) in the background. Meanwhile, where is the public anger at the erosion of health and retirement benefits throughout our society? Or - for that matter - at the demeaning treatment transit workers and many other workers routinely receive from high-handed management rigidly enforcing nit-picking regulations? This week's Village Voice has some good articles about the latter.

But the reason I wanted to post about the strike on this Quaker-related blog is that it has sharpened my awareness of the narrow spectrum of social and economic classes included in our Quaker Meetings. Some Friends may have favored the strike, and some may have opposed it or resented it. But no Friend in New York, as far as I know, has an intimate acquaintance with the issues derived from having actually been a transit worker. Among the 500 or so Quakers in New York City, I don't believe that any are transit workers (or cab drivers, or telephone linemen, or fire fighters, or deli-counter workers, or people in the garment trades, or bank tellers, or ... you get the idea). I don't believe this is purely a matter of chance. Consider the following rough calculation of the chances are that a random collection of 500 New Yorkers would not include any members of the transit union.

1) Assume there are a total of about 10 million New Yorkers. (I haven't checked the actual census figures, but I believe this is in the ball park. Corrections are welcomed).
2) Assume there are 33,000 members of the transit workers union local 100. (This figure has recently been quoted in the press).
3) Dividing 33,000 by 10 million, the chance that a single New Yorker, chosen at random, is a member of the Transit Workers Union is .0033 (33 ten thousandths). Therefore the chance that a single New Yorker chosen at random is NOT a member is 1 - .0033 = .9967
4) The chance that 500 New Yorkers chosen at random are ALL non-members of the transit union is therefore approximately .9967 multiplied by itself 500 times, or .9967 to the 500th power. According to my calculator, that comes to just a hair over 19.15%. In other words there is a less than 20% chance that a random collection of 500 New Yorkers would include no members of the Transit Workers Union. (I realize that this calculation is not quite accurate. I have neglected the fact that each time a person is chosen the pool of ten million shrinks by one and the probabilities for the next selection alter slightly. The impact of that simplification is small and the difficulty of doing the math correctly is a little beyond my grasp).)

What is the purpose of this calculation? Frankly, I had hoped before I did it that it would come out differently and would show that the absence of transit workers from our Meetings is only due to random chance and to the fact that there are so few Friends in such a big city. Even after doing it I thought briefly "Oh, less than a 20% probability isn't such a long shot. Maybe it's just chance after all." But then I thought of all those other categories of working-class folks mentioned above and reflected that all of them are either unrepresented or grossly under-represented in our meetings. What are the chances of that? Let's face it, for all our talk of "inclusion" and "universalism" we are a pretty narrow sect and it isn't just because of chance.

What is the real cause of this narrowness? And what could be done about it? I don't know.

But I think I know some of the things that are not the real cause.

It is not because Quakerism is a subtle, profound faith for intellectuals (it isn't).
It is not because working-class people are prejudiced against us.
It is not because working-class people are too busy to worship.
It is not because working-class people reject peace.
It is not because working-class people can't stand silence.
It is not because God wants it that way.

Many of the first venturers into the Quaker faith were people of "low estate" in the world. They were unusual people because of their convictions, but not because of their social class or income or education. Perhaps they were "narrower" than us because their views were more definite and "dogmatic". They were not models of racial inclusiveness, as African-American scholars among Friends have recently begun to point out to us. But when compared to Friends today in the Meetings I know about they seem to have been much more accessible to a whole spectrum of social and economic classes. They were a "great people", not an elite.

Comments are - as always - welcome.

Presenting Quakerism to a Catholic Audience

2005-12-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

I have recently been invited to speak to two different Roman Catholic groups about Quakerism. One is a women's spirituality group in a local parish in Brooklyn, and the other is the Friday night meeting of the Catholic Worker movement in Manhattan. My topic at the local parish is to be "Quaker Spirituality", and at the CW it is to be "Quakerism: A simple faith/A Radical Witness" (That last title is inspired by the slogan at New York Yearly Meeting's Web Site). I have been thinking about what I will say to each group and have decided to write down some of my thoughts here. I do not plan to read by remarks, however, so whatever I end up saying in either place will probably differ considerably from the following

I am grateful for this chance to speak with you and - I hope - to dialogue with you. Dialogue about matters of faith is not necessarily easy. We Quakers may be less skilled at it than many others because we have less experience at it. The large dialogues going on among the world's great faiths do not always include us, because - not to put too fine a point on it - we are not one of the world's great faiths, at least when judged numerically. Nor are we one of the great