Category Archives: Quaker History

A Quaker Holiday Story: A “Carpet of Light” (Again) for (Another) Shadowed New Year

Out of the silence,  as moved, Friends came to the table in ones or twos or family groups, and each lit another candle, which they placed on the table; they spoke if moved, then sat down again in the silence.

From the first time I experienced, the way that the whole room was progressively illuminated, seemed in fact to glow, as the number of flickering flames increased, was very moving to me.

In a way it was a visible, wordless, yet eloquent evocation of Quakerism at its best: a motley, seemingly haphazard collection of candles of witness, more diverse than we outwardly seem, mainly anonymous and individual, somehow joining together to become more than the sum of the parts. 

This time, at the end of 2017, a year which for me has been very heavily shadowed, often deeply gloomy, and yes, dark, the full array became something of an encouraging signal for the year ahead.

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A Quaker Race Riot – Comments & Response

White supremacy was an explicit part of the KKK “Kreed.” And this outlook continues.
Another such group, the “outing” of which shocked me at the time (early 1960s), was the Democratic party in many southern states. Alabama, for instance. The party there featured this emblem on its slates of candidates: a rooster and the motto: “White Supremacy for the Right.” Not much doubt there.
And while the Alabama Dems have changed (now mostly black, they have dumped the rooster), their place has been taken by others; many others. Here is a selected list:
ACTBAC NC, Traditionalist Workers Party, Proud Boys, Vanguard America, Identity Evropa, Generation Identitaire, Traditionalist Youth Movement, National Socialists, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Council of Conservative Citizens, the League of the South.
I don’t hesitate to call these “white supremacist” groups.
And they are not distant abstractions to me.
One of them, ACTBAC [Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County], is centered in the rural community of Snow Camp NC. The Friends meeting I attend is also in Snow Camp. A few months back, ACTBAC organized a pro-Confederate rally in Chapel Hill (in the next county east) in “defense” of a Confederate statue on the UNC campus. They have organized many such rallies.

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A Brief History of Western Quaker History

For one thing, a strongly entrenched, and tradition-minded “Hicksite Quaker Establishment” held most of the formal reins of power, and wanted to maintain a top-down Quietist religious culture almost identical to the Orthodox, except with a Hicksite elite at the controls.
Yet at the same time, there were a growing number of thoughtful, articulate Hicksites who were thinking “outside this box.”
Most of the leadership was appalled to learn that a “wide variety of theological oppinion” [sic] was developing among the rank and file.
They foresaw (correctly) multiple hazards to their status quo in this development: looking outward, these “oppinions” produced calls for new social activism in forms (like abolitionism & women’s rights) that alarmed and offended the Quietist leadership. (Yes, they really did.)​
And even more disturbing, these reformers also began calling for a “reformation” within the Society of Friends, away from its sternly top-down history, toward centering authority in local meetings and giving prime respect for individual seeking and action.​
Some liberal Friends today think these equalitarian ideas were promulgated by George Fox and Margaret Fell as Quakerism originally took form.​
Alas, not so. The Progressive agenda added up to a radical new model for the Society of Friends, which was not only controversial, but often subject to sanction.

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Breaking: North Carolina YM-FUM Shuts Down

There’s a notorious set of photos from St. Louis, of a public housing project called Pruitt Igoe, being brought down in a controlled detonation of high explosives. The story is that the project, meant to provide sturdy housing for the poor, had become toxic and uninhabitable. It could be a fitting parable for North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM – NCYM for short)

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