Category Archives: Hard-Core Quaker

From “Meetings” — Life, The Woods, & The Chainsaw

There was more to see on Bert’s farm than the fiery riot of the maples. He took us on a tour past his barn, down a path through a copse of these trees, beneath which the ground was crowded with seedlings and saplings, still green and fluttering in the morning breeze. Farther on, the path led us to his large woodlot, in which tall pines stood in rows.

We stopped, and Bert invited us to contemplate the two scenes we now confronted. On one side were the native trees, especially the maples, huddling together at random. But really, Bert explained, if we could see the world from their perspective, the air of vivid autumn exuberance was an illusion; in fact, they were caught in a desperate struggle: each tree was stretching for the sky, competing with all the rest to take in enough sunlight to make its food.

This was not a friendly contest, but life or death. And below, the riot of green around our feet was even more deceptive: practically all the slim saplings and seedlings we could see were almost certainly doomed. Crowded out by others, with the bigger trunks and branches blocking access to direct sun, only one in hundreds or a thousand would survive to become a tree.

I looked around the scene again; where had my naïve townie’s green eden suddenly gone?

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Peering Into the Heart of Darkness — And Its End

I had (& have) fond feelings for libraries, and at first glance, the one at Regis seemed a fine specimen: well-lighted, relatively new, with many long open shelves. Open shelves of books to me embodied freedom of thought and learning, and its liberating possibilities.

But something didn’t jibe with my sentimental notion. Behind the reference desk, my eye was caught by a large area enclosed by heavy mesh metal partitions, and with a locked gate. Inside were more books; I could see the shelves through the mesh. Were these antiquities? Precious manuscripts of historic value? They didn’t look like that.

No. My question to a cheerful librarian got a straightforward answer: this enclosure was for books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum: the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.

I stared at it in fascinated horror: of course I had heard of the Index. It was hundreds of years old. Where the Church was part of or protected by governments, it went hand in hand with censorship.

My first, adolescent thought was that it must include the books about sex. True enough, authors such as Gide and Balzac, thought to be peddlers of lasciviousness, were on it. But The Index was much more concerned about the mind than the loins, with stamping out heresy more than lust.

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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!

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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.

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