All posts by Chuck Fager

Getting Kicked Off The Titanic: More NC Quaker Shakeups?

This change could, in a best-case scenario, bring some of the recent purge efforts to a screeching halt.

Why? Because, to be frank, there are very few if any of the purge promoters who have the guts to face their targets over a table in the target’s meetinghouse, and to lay out and explain a prepared, meeting-approved bill of particulars.

Instead, the modus operandi over the past two years has been classic bullying: innuendo, false charges, harassing gossip, catcalls and bullying in large sessions, or haranguing audiences captive on their own home turf.

They are even less prepared for a setting where they would be obliged to present evidence, and then listen as well as preach.

They are much more accustomed to drive-by potshots. For instance, in a Quarterly Meeting session, I listened to jackleg preachers toss out accusations that the meeting I attend was allied with the Anti-Christ, and going down the same road to mass murder followed by the Branch Davidians.

These absurd charges were based on — well, misapprehensions would be a kind description; prejudiced delusions somewhat more pointed. But the preachers were not held accountable for those calumnies there.

Further, in one of the recent Representative sessions, a preacher accused my meeting and several others of spreading “blasphemy” with almost every statement we made. Really? Blasphemy about what? There was no accountability for that assertion either.

Bernie Sanders, Jack Shafer & The Day After

Sanders has been a fighter who is a gentleman.

This combination is rare enough in our public life; but beyond merely being admirable, it is one that will wear well. Sanders may have been defeated in his presidential run, but he has not been disgraced, nor have his ideas been discredited. He and they will persist.

On the political side, his disciplined focus on economic inequality has been expressed in policy proposals which, whether you like them are not, are rational and plausible. If he wants to spend more than a trillion dollars on infrastructure, education & expanded health care, he is also clear that all this would be paid for, with higher taxes. It would not be a shower of “free stuff”; there is no “voo-doo” in his economics.
Moreover, his stubbornly consistent message of economic justice was timely when he first raised it more than forty years ago, not long after president Lyndon Johnson had declared (and lost) a war on poverty. It has only become more intense through the years, is urgent now, and will remain high in public consciousness thru the next president’s term, whoever occupies the White House. Sanders will still be strategically positioned to affect coming policy debates.

“Some Quaker FAQs” — Part #4

What is a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”??

We’ll get to that in a minute. First, what’s this about Jesus “Christ”? You might think “Christ” was Jesus’ last name, like Jesus Smith or Jesus Jones.

Nope. “Christ” is a title: it’s short for “Jesus, the Christ,” like “Jesus, the President,” or “Jesus, the World Champion.” And in the Bible, “the Christ” is a short way of describing the one who was chosen by God and given the power to save everybody.

Try saying that title three times fast: “Jesus-the-one-who-was-chosen-by-God-and-given-the-power-to-save-everybody.” Yeah; plain old “Jesus Christ” will do for me.

Now, back to that “personal relationship.”

This gets a little tricky. When I think of a “personal relationship,” I usually have in mind a connection or involvement with an actual person: My relationship with my father, say; or my relationship with my best friend.

Relationships can be good, bad, or mixed. With a girlfriend who dumped me. The teacher I hated (or liked) most in school. Or a friend I’ve had lots of fun with, but is occasionally annoying. Relationships can also be in the past as well as the present. There’s my BFF David, who died in 1995. Many of my teachers, favorite and otherwise, have died; so has my father.

But what about Jesus? He lived two thousand years ago. Nobody in New Covenant Temple ever met him. Nobody there ever met anybody who met him. They’re read about him, talked about him, heard about him, sung about him, prayed to him.

But many of us have read or heard about Harry Potter, seen him in movies. How does any of this add up to a “personal relationship”?

2016: Politics “When The Sky Darkens”

Most years, I put up with politics: it’s as necessary as taking out the trash, but only about as interesting.
Sure I have my preferences, and occasionally a candidate is exciting, for awhile. But usually I’m eager to get it over with, and go back to what feels like real life.
This year is different. I’m following the campaigns as closely as I can, with a morbid, horrified fascination.
The NY Times’s Roger Cohen gets at the reason why: Democracies can die.
Many parts of our former republic, including civil liberties, are already close to catatonic; and profoundly anti-democratic forces (the secret security state, the war machine) are already loose and beyond our control (which is why we mostly prefer not to think about them).

But all this could get much, much worse, depending on how this political year turns out.
Cohen comes at the 2016 campaign from the BTDT (“Been There, Done That”) perspective, of those who have seen — and lived– this movie before. It’s also a movie which is being remade in more and more corners of their continent. And What about Ours?

Quakers: “Cannot Learn War Any More”; Or Maybe We Can.

A letter of self-preservation directed to King Charles II by Margaret Fell and George Fox in 1660 started it all. Brief excerpts from the letter appear today in the Quaker books [of] Discipline and Faith and Practice. In part the excerpts read:

We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever. … The Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move us unto it … [it] will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ nor for the Kingdoms of this world. … Therefore, we cannot learn war any more.

These few sentences are foundational for Quakers. They are a kind of Quaker scripture, drafted by Quaker founders, preserved by Friends of all branches, and recited by Quaker faithful for three and a half centuries. But the truth about the Quaker peace testimony cannot be contained in a few sentences that are in fact altered from the original 1660 letter. In this discrepancy we glimpse the actual history of Quaker pacifism—a much more tangled, ambivalent, and compelling saga.

The original letter actually starts out: “All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly deny; with all outward wars. . . .” Like other radical groups, Friends in England in 1660 were powerless, facing persecution by a newly restored monarchy that feared dissenters would plot coups. The letter to Charles hoped to ward off this persecution (it didn’t succeed, but that’s another story). The letter noted that while the Quakers had foresworn violence, they did not expect their rulers to do so