All posts by Chuck Fager

Change Comes to Timeless Olney & Friends Music Camp

The shale oil/gas drillers are aggressively seeking out and buying up oil rights to properties near and far in this shale-rich region.
Including Barnesville.

Including Olney Friends School.
And thus has crumbled the strongest, most comforting illusion I have nourished about this Quietist Quaker oasis, perched on its ridge, but shielded on three sides by woods, and facing a pond like a moat on the other.
Here the school has stood at one end for five generations, clinging to its past while being pushed into a turbulent present; and at the other end of the long green lawn is the big, venerable Stillwater Meetinghouse, the seat of Ohio Yearly Meeting- Conservative.
Both the yearly meeting & the school have been offered money –big money– for fracking rights here under their ridge. Both have said no.
So far.

Is Jesus Just Like A U.S. Soldier??

Let me point out, Sir & Ma’am, that in fact, many other “defining forces” HAVE indeed offered to “die for me,” starting with my mother.
Yes: close to two thousand mothers in the U.S. not only “offer” to die but actually do die either giving birth or shortly afterward, every year.

Then there were numerous first responders: firefighters, police officers (more than a hundred killed per year on duty) and the like, who took many very serious risks on my behalf.

Rather, what soldiers actually offer to do is KILL for “me” — not at my personal request, but on orders from strangers in Washington.

Jesus didn’t do that. In fact, when his followers started to fight to protect him, he told them to stop. (Read Matthew 26 & John 18)

Howell Raines & Whistling Dixie

I won’t say the situation is hopeless; but “bleak” does not do it justice. And barring the rise of some unpredictable earthquake comparable to the Selma voting rights movement, the new southern white supremacist GOP status quo looks from here in Carolina as if it will be very difficult to dislodge. Contra Raines, I could see it taking as many generations as the last one to dismantle.

Anti-Disestablishmentarianism: The Word for Southern Marriage Holdouts

Anti-Disestablishmentarianism: The Word for Southern Marriage HoldoutsDo kids still joke about learning to spell “anti-disestablishentarianism”? I used to think it was a fake, something made up, like Mary Poppins’s “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” But no! It was real. And in fact, I just realized that TODAY, for the very first time ever, I can use the term in … Continue reading Anti-Disestablishmentarianism: The Word for Southern Marriage Holdouts →

Conscience in Mississippi; Grandstanding In Alabama

A Circuit Clerk in Mississippi resigned her post rather than issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.
Linda Barnette said in a letter of resignation, effective on June 30, 2015, that

“The Supreme Court’s decision violates my core values as a Christian,” she wrote. “My final authority is the Bible. I cannot in all good conscience issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples under my name because the Bible clearly teaches that homosexuality is contrary to God’s plan and purpose for marriage and family. . . .”
Acquaintances said Barnette’s husband is a pastor who worked with Billy Graham Ministries for many years.
“I choose to obey God rather than man,” Barnette wrote.

Linda-Barnette
Linda Barnette, former Circuit Clerk of Grenada County, Mississippi.

I cite this letter to pay Barnette public respect. She had been Circuit Clerk, for 24 years. But she followed her conscience, peacefully but clearly, out the door.
That’s what Christians and Quakers are supposed to do.

Her witness is honorable. It is also rare. And it won’t slow the issuance of same sex marriage licenses in the state by much, if at all.