Category Archives: Hard-Core Quaker

20 Years of “Quaker Theology” — An Overview & Review

A related category of personal theology has come from what I call the Divergent Friends: Quakers who have thought deeply about theological issues, and acted on their convictions, but are not academics or members of conventional theological guilds. Many are not remembered as theologians at all, but a closer look discloses new depths and resources.

One of my abiding favorites here is Lucretia Mott. Known rightly for her activism for women’s rights and against slavery (plus several other social reforms), we showed in QT #10 that she was also a seminal figure in challenging evangelical orthodoxy & structures among Friends, and gave voice and shape to the liberal stream in ways that have endured for 140 years since her death, and are still evident.

Others we profiled included Milton Mayer, a mid-20th century maverick (QT #8 & #30-

LaRouche & Me, Part II

Then he turned up working for a project financed by Rev. Sun Young Moon’s Unification Church. And that somehow led to him being put in charge of an unofficial “investigation” into lurid charges of a satanic child abuse ring, which was allegedly based in Omaha, Nebraska, but serviced powerful pedophiles as far away as Washington DC.

The Omaha “investigation” was financed by a LaRouche group. But the charges of satanic child abuse were soon thrown out of court, and Bevel left town. But he stayed with LaRouche for some time. When LaRouche ran for president in 1992 from his prison cell, his standard was carried on the outside by his vice-presidential candidate — James Bevel. Apparently Bevel operated from an apartment not far from LaRouche’s estate headquarters in Leesburg. One wonders whether, given the open racism that pervaded LaRouchian rhetoric and ideology, how Bevel fit in with that cadre.

When Bevel called me, he had a declaration and a question: the declaration was that he had reformed his seducing ways, and was atoning for damage done. I wished hm godspeed in that personal work, but inwardly I wasn’t sure I believed him.

The question was: would I ghostwrite his autobiography? He’d pay me, though amounts were not specified.

It didn’t take me long to decline the offer. Surely, somebody should tell his story, in its full complexity and often harrowing detail. And withal, I still admired what he had achieved in Selma and with Dr. King. But what on earth had led him into LaRouche’s orbit?

I was not the one to write this. There was too much else that I knew, or had credibly learned. I had too much baggage, too many scars, from it all. Did I even have the talent or wisdom to do the job? Besides, as queasy as much of what I already knew made me, my gut sensed that this was not the end of the story. I wished him well, and hung up the phone with a trembling hand.

Lyndon La Rouche and me — Part I

Prelude Lyndon La Rouche has died. The stories about him and his uber-weird political career are legion. This is a summary version of mine; it has a lot to do with Quakers. It wasn’t meant to, but that’s how it turned out. I First, though, I need to make what will seem like a pointless … Continue reading Lyndon La Rouche and me — Part I →

A Seasonal Reflection: All God’s Quakers Got a “Place In The Choir” — Even the Non-Theists Who Can’t/Won’t Sing

as I said earlier, my American Quaker life, now in its 53rd year, has been lived in a time of nearly constant American warmaking. And in that record, I can see the truth in the biblical warning from Galatians 6: “Be not deceived: God is not mocked. A man (or a country) reaps what they sow.” And as part of the harvest of our military wars, Americans are in continuing domestic conflict on numerous fronts, even among Friends.

If dealing with such struggles makes a Friend uncomfortable, it’s relatively easy to hunker down in a cozy, like-minded meeting and ignore most of them, and maybe that’s the right path for some. (I write that last without being convinced.)

But such cocooning doesn’t make the struggles go away. And sooner or later, one or another of these conflicts may well come knocking on your meeting’s door; and then, for instance, the blessed sanctuary that Langley Hill was for me in 1990 and early 1991 can all-too quickly dissolve into a faction-ridden catfight or worse.

In fact, some years after I left the DC area, Langley Hill started a Quaker school, with high hopes and a dedicated committee. But that project failed, and ended with the school closed and some Friends in court against others.

I don’t know the details, and wouldn’t burden you with them if I did. But I will repeat that the Society of Friends today exists within a larger society and culture that is riven with very deep conflicts, reaping what we have sown, and various aspects of these conflicts afflict many Friends & meetings too. I don’t know how to solve those, or how to escape them. I do have ideas about how to work on some of them, and have done my imperfect best.

I’ve also learned that Jesus’ time was like ours, only worse; do you remember where he ended up? And if you read a serious biography of George Fox, you’ll see that he and the first generations of Friends faced such internal travails as well.

So as I said, for me it took some time, more than a decade, among Friends, to find my place in the choir, and my broadest leading, centered on writing, in which specific other leadings have taken shape, in changing circumstances. And even then, specific leadings can and have changed. Further, some of my most important leadings were ones that I at first rejected and struggled against.