Quaker Alert! There’s big trouble brewing in North Carolina Yearly Meeting-FUM: talk (and MORE than talk) about purges and schism. I’ve now uploaded an exclusive hot-off-the-digital-presses report, a Preview from the journal Quaker Theology. The full report is here:
[Note: This essay was originally published in Friends Journal; but it’s now behind their paywall. It still seems timely today; maybe more so.] Quakerism was born in a time of revolutionary upheaval. Yet it learned how to survive when the revolution failed and was followed by decades of persecution. I sometimes hear Quakers waxing nostalgic … Continue reading “Survival & Resistance” A Message from 2006 That is Timely Again
I’m reading a history of Baptists in Alabama, and it’s tough going. After several days, I’m only as far as 1850. Yet the book is well-written, the story often absorbing; so what’s the trouble? This: almost every paragraph evokes parallels to current events in North Carolina Yearly Meeting of pastoral Quakers.
Be honest: Could you say “No” to “the war to end wars”? Turns out that president Woodrow Wilson didn’t coin that phrase, and reportedly only used it in public once. But it doesn’t matter. The phrase, along with one that Wilson did use, “to make the world safe for democracy,” became key pieces of a … Continue reading Progressive & Liberal American Quakers Face World War One
Researching and writing about Progressive Friends took up most of my time from the autumn of 2013 through the spring of 2014. Often this was a paradoxical experience: from one angle, it was a very solitary effort: from another, very crowded. I did this research at Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania, as the Cadbury research scholar … Continue reading Dog Days Diversions: Alone Together: Living With & Writing About Progressive Friends