Eight years ago today, Eighth Month 5, 2017, some Friends in North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) got their wish: They got rid of the “liberals” in the body. Out went New Garden Meeting in Greensboro; Jamestown just south of there; Greensboro First Friends; and even tiny Spring Meeting, in the pastures and woods of south … Continue reading Un-Happy Anniversary, Friends
This small 2003 collection of essays, now alas out of print, had its origins in two incidents, somewhat related, and which also turned out to be the start of something bigger, at least for me. In the first, I proposed to the Publications Committee of Friends General Conference (FGC), the “liberal” association of U. S. … Continue reading Shaggy Locks & Birkenstocks: wandering through recent Quaker history
“History doesn’t repeat,” Mark Twain supposedly said, “but sometimes it rhymes.” Are the conflicts within so many American churches over LGBTQ and associated issues part of some cruel karmic sonnet? The Separation Generation’s three volumes approach this question in prose, by chronicling disruptions among five American Yearly Meetings extending roughly from 2011 to 2018 (along … Continue reading Broken Churches, Broken Nation (Again?)
This is a developing story. Watch for Updates. I’m stunned. I just learned that David Zarembka, aged 77, a very distinguished Friend from Baltimore Yearly meeting, who lived for more than a decade among Friends in Kenya, and his wife Gladys Kamonya, 73 have both succumbed to Covid. Both passed in Eldoret Kenya. Gladys Kamonya … Continue reading Breaking! OMG — Friends David Zarembka & Wife Gladys Kamonya Dead of Covid
Is it over? Has The Separation Generation finished dividing U. S. Quakers? Yes and no. Yes, in a publishing sense: Book Three, the last of The Separation Generation series, is now done and available: Shattered By the Light; or The Ruins and the Green. In Shattered by the Light, parallel conflicts over sexuality, the Bible … Continue reading Is This The End of the Separation Generation?