Souperist practices, reported at the time, included serving meat soups on Fridays – which Catholics were forbidden by their faith from consuming, and by the fact that they could not afford meat in the first place.
Soupers were frequently ostracised by their own community, and were strongly denounced from the pulpit by the Catholic priesthood. On occasion, soupers had to be protected by British soldiers from other Catholics.
There have been a lot of distractions during Pride Month 2025: a coup, a war, shocking Supreme Court rulings, a flop of a tank march, the soaring success of its No Kings rival — I won’t even try to list all the major ones. In June’s waning days, this blog will play some catchup: a … Continue reading “Quaking Over Gay Rights” — Kicked in The Head in Wichita
Lucretia Mott completely rejected this whole [traditional Easter] scenario, decrying the “harm done” by it.
Yet she seemed devoted to Jesus. She quoted his words incessantly, affirmed his “messianic status,” and thought she was preaching his “gospel” message during her sixty controversial years as a Quaker preacher.
But if Jesus’ “gospel” was not about depravity and vicarious blood atonement, what did Lucretia say it was?
Scholar Priscilla Eppinger has put it in a nutshell: Salvation for humans would come through the faith of Christ, not faith in Christ. By this, Mott meant a faith like that of Jesus. She quoted from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (2:20):
“Faith of Jesus Christ is faith in the truth, faith in God and in man. The life that I now live in the flesh, said the Apostle, I live by the faith of the son of God. . . . Well [Mott added] what is this other than a faith similar to that which Jesus held, the faith of the son of God.” (Greene 124)
The faith of Christ, not faith in Christ. Neither Eppinger nor Lucretia originated this alternate motto. And what was this “faith”?
“Fiddle” is a woefully insufficient word to describe much of what happened. “Cheating” is plainer, thus more accurate. Chicanery, duplicity and treachery are apt corollaries.
In some of these recent cases, particularly Indiana and Northwest yes, the fiddlers/cheaters got their way. In North Carolina, Western & Wilmington YMs, they faced pushback, and the “fiddles” didn’t work out as planned. In our culture today, it’s a pushback world.
So that’s another quibble with “Fiddle”. Cheating, if identified and faced, can be stopped, or at least blunted; but besides calling a treacherous spade a corrupt shovel, a meaningful response requires courage. Speaking truth to power, carrying the cross, and all that. Or, in pietist argot, “spiritual combat.”
The First Month 2019 issue of Friends Journal includes an article by Friend Adria Gulizia, “Greater Racial Diversity Requires Greater Theological Diversity.” At one level, I very much empathize with Adria Gulizia’s concern for what I would call “theological inclusiveness.” The widespread ignorance, apathy & avoidance of theology/Bible in “liberal” meetings I have known have … Continue reading Liberal Quakers Need More “Theological Diversity.” What could possibly go wrong?