All posts by Chuck Fager

For Friendly Summer Reading: Two New Books

So you know I’ve been interested in Quakers and Quakerism for decades.
I began exploring this interest by writing stories about Friends in 1977.
Beginning in 1989, I was asked to read my Quaker and other stories to campers and adults at Friends Music Camp, at the Olney Friends School in Ohio, where Peg Champney was the founding Director. I’ve been invited back to read more of these stories every summer since.
Now I’ve collected nineteen of these stories in a new book, “Posies for Peg.”
And: My granddaughter came to me awhile back, to say that some schoolmates had been asking her about what Quakers believe, and how our beliefs differ from other Christian churches — but she didn’t know how to answer them.
Her uncertainty was no surprise: even though she grew up among Quakers, she hadn’t been taught about Quakerism. And I couldn’t find any compact, accessible guide to the topics that kept coming up for her.
So I set out to produce one.
I wanted to offer concise answers to some of these typical questions. So far I’ve gathered almost fifty such FAQs.
These make up a new book — really an over-sized pamphlet– called, Some Quaker FAQs. I think of it as the beginning of an “un-systematic theology” for Friends.

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The Photo I Hoped I’d Never See

It remains unclear how over 450 additional troops would overcome the central problem to the training effort in Iraq: a lack of recruits to train. . . . The announcement was greeted with indifference and scepticism in Iraq, where efforts to arm local Sunnis opposed to Isis have foundered and training programmes by the US have made little progress in producing disciplined Sunni fighters capable of challenging the militant group.
“The increase doesn’t have an effect,” said Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar and expert on Isis. “It is a weak step to reduce pressure from the media.”

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D-Day for Carolina Quakers–Dodging Some Bullets — But NOT All

The theme was announced by none other than Wayne Lamb, pastor of Chatham NC Friends and self-proclaimed scourge of liberal Carolina Quakers. “It’s June 6,” he boomed to the Representative meeting of North Carolina Yearly Meeting-FUM (NCYM), crowded into Pine Hill Meeting in Ararat NC. Then, for emphasis: “June 6, 1944,” he repeated, then added: … Continue reading D-Day for Carolina Quakers–Dodging Some Bullets — But NOT All →

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Carolina Quakers: Saturday Showdown at Pine Hill?

What does “Integrity” mean in relation to North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends?

Does it mean taking seriously the four times that Faith & Practice says that it is NOT a CREED and thinking for oneself? Or is it picking out a few phrases from it and trying to make them the “absolute authority” for an organized purge of officers, committees, and meetings–something that same Faith & Practice does NOT authorize anywhere??

Is it attacking meetings which have honest issues about the fairness of their treatment in the yearly meeting, and reflect that in the partial payment of askings?

Or is there integrity in making widespread public threats about withholding ALL askings as of April 15, 2015 unless there was a purge by that date of disfavored meetings — and then abandoning the threat when the deadline passes and it doesn’t work?

Is it shown in getting creeds from other Quaker branches, purchasing most study resources and programs from Baptists, ignoring practically every Quaker in history and almost all the yearly meeting programs (except, of course, Quaker Lake) — and then demanding that other meetings be forbidden from freely associating with other kinds of Quakers, on their own time, and with their own funds?

And is there integrity in pursuing heresy inside this yearly meeting while making detailed plans to secede and form a separate body, one which will abandon just about every Quaker distinctive there is?

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