All posts by Chuck Fager

Picking Up Carolina’s Torture Trash

Today was a good day to think about torture. And a good day to do something about it. Like picking up the trash.

Why today? Well, actually any day is a good day for to do something about it, and especially in the USA, where the public keeps getting quick glimpses of the rotted, stinking remains of the American torture program of the previous decade. And reminders of its potential for renewal.

Just snatches of horror, that flash by on their way to being shoved under the rug of impunity, and stuffed down the memory hole of forgetting & “Looking Forward.”

This past week there were several such awful glimpses, from a dump of newly-released stomach-churning CIA documents. But we won’t, you know, dwell on them.

Here in North Carolina, tho, a stubborn handful of us have refused to forget. For almost eleven years, we’ve done all sorts of protests aimed at tearing holes, even tiny ones, in the fabric of forgetting. We’ve tried conferences, rallies, marches, petitions, reports, you name it.

And almost four years ago, we added a new tactic: picking up the trash.

New: A Religious Autobiography From “Interesting Times”

My friend & colleague Stephen Angell read my new book “Meetings,” and here’s what he said:

A vivid, lively, kaleidoscopic self-portrait of a fascinating Catholic-turned-Quaker journalist, writer and activist. Chuck Fager’s autobiography is one of the best that I’ve seen of an aspiring nonviolent revolutionary’s Life in the Sixties. (The early seventies are covered, too, in which he and other radicals took a more conservative turn.) Fager seems to be everywhere, providing revealing insights from interviews with Phil Berrigan and E. F. Schumacher, among others. He also provides wonderful portraits of Quakers who made their mark on the world and who deserve not to be forgotten, Sam Levering, Morris Mitchell, and Louis Alger, among them. Even topics such as “how I came to love the Bible” are presented in a sprightly and thought-provoking fashion; one of his unforgettable characters, the Prophet Jeremiah, hasn’t been alive in thousands of years!

Orlando & Friends: A Quaker Prophet Speaks

Therefore, although I do not defend homosexuality any more than I would attempt to defend blue eyes, I do defend homosexual people. I defend their right to be who they are; I defend their right to equality under the law; I defend their right to attend Quaker Meetings and to be a part of them; I defend the idea that they, too, are children of God, spiritual persons, deserving the love and care of God and of his children. I believe that statements to condemn them are violent statements and are the first step in depriving them of their rights, of abusing them, of physical violence on their persons.

Many are mistakenly assuming that I hold my position only because my son is gay and that I do it in defense of him. That is not the case. I feel as strongly about this issue as a [John] Woolman about slavery or an Amos [the biblical prophet] about oppression of the poor or as [the prophet] Jeremiah about religious form without obedience. . . .

People have been terribly upset with me because I have not stated that homosexuality is a sin. Those who know me know, of course, that I have always conducted my own life according to the highest standards of personal morality and ethics and that I do not condone sin any more than Jesus did. I have never condoned promiscuity whether heterosexual or homosexual. In that context, I have to believe that some homosexual acts are indeed sinful just as I believe that some heterosexual acts are sinful. I believe that any act, sexual or otherwise, that exploits, abuses or harms another individual is sinful.

. . . I believe that a church that spends its time in condemning will not reach the world with the love of Christ. I believe that the condemnation, judgment, and hatred of homosexuals is itself a sin and that it leads to violence against them, and that the spirit that bashes homosexuals is the same spirit that burned witches in Salem, hanged Quakers in Boston, and burned Jews in Buchenwald.

Who Wants The Best Quaker Job There Is?

Plus, there’s still the unexpected. Next year there will be a new administration. And the talk of new big wars is in the air, from every side; where or when isn’t clear, but the urge to strike out at somebody is definitely there.

For our purpose here, all this adds up to steady work for Quaker House. it’s the only concrete Quaker peace project next to a major military base: it’s where the rubber of talk about “peace witness” hits the road travelled every day by the war machine.

And one other thing the American public seems happy to forget is that the war machine is still growing. Quaker House organized a conference in 2011 to mark the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s warning about the burgeoning growth of what he dubbed the “military industrial complex.” He was prophetic: it had kept burgeoning for that half-century since then.

And it’s still burgeoning, bigger now than then, despite whatever you’ve read or been told about “winding down.” Militarism is as American as apple pie; even more so.

The current Quaker House Co-Directors, Steve & Lynn Newsom, have been plenty busy too. And they’ll be retiring in late 2017. So it’s time to find their successors.

The Price of Prophecy: The Carolina Trial of Willie Frye

“As Friends, we must rise above the homophobic hysteria sweeping the country and seek to be a voice of reason, concern, and spiritual insight. We cannot afford to lose the soul of Quakerism by allowing ourselves to be caught up in the current compulsion to condemn and exclude. Naturally, we are stirred by the gay and lesbian rights movement. The civil rights movement of the sixties had much the same effect. Those of us who grew up in the South resisted and criticized it; we were hostile to it and felt threatened by it but, in the end, it compelled us to look within and what we found was raw prejudice that would not stand the objective scrutiny of the Inner Light.

The strength of Quakerism has always been found in our willingness to expose ourselves to that kind of examination and our further willingness to follow the revelation that the Light brings. It has been that willingness that has set us apart from other denominations and made us pioneers in areas of which we are now proud. It is time for us to hark back to our basic concepts in dealing with the present issue. The process has not failed us in the past. It will not fail us now if we have the courage to engage ourselves in it.”