Category Archives: Quaker Theology

Three Reflections on Wisdom

So the Book of Proverbs and the other Wisdom texts are not just about good advice; but they embody a mode of “revelation” not reserved only to prophets or priests or ancient texts, but potentially available right now to anyone who is ready to observe keenly and reflect deeply.

Now, while my own observation & reflection has confirmed much of what I find in Proverbs, I have also seen much that doesn’t fit with its model of guaranteed riches & honor for the righteous. In fact I’m sorry to say that I’ve often seen the exact opposite happening.

So if I could talk to the editors of Proverbs, I’d want to ask – what about these people, righteous enough, innocent enough, who didn’t get rich and live happily ever after? Are they in your Wisdom texts somewhere?

Well yes, they are. Not so much in the Book of Proverbs, but very much in the Wisdom texts. And we’ll explore that next time.

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Does Scot Miller Have the Answer to American Quaker Decline?

But why on earth should any progressive throw over all that they’ve toiled so hard for to take up this new role?

Miller’s answer, in sum, is threefold:

1. Because Jesus said to, and if we’re to take him (and the Gospels) seriously, that’s what seriousness means;

2. Because it yields a different understanding of the world, and our place in it, one which is more true and promising; and

3. Because action from the bottom and at the margins has more impact than we can see with our media-distracted eyes & ears, especially if we can factor in the work of grace.

[Besides the Amish, the Catholic Worker movement is another useful model for comparison and study.]
 

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Quakers Getting on the DOWN Escalator

A change equally unorganized & unheralded, potentially as momentous at least for us is, I believe, underway in the U. S. liberal Quakerism I discovered in 1965 (after ditching pre-Vatican II Catholicism).

This change does not necessarily involve moving from physical places, but rather from one economic and class location to another.

When I found it, Liberal American Quakerism was a solidly middle class “sub-subculture,” nearly all white, with a heavy academic/educational tinge. (I acronym it “EMCWAQE”–“E” now as in “Ex,” or as vocalized, “EmQuake.”)

I don’t name EmQuake to flagellate anybody (or myself). After all, everybody & every group is conditioned/limited by its surroundings, so let’s just skip the trendy guilt-trips, which don’t fool anybody anyway, except sometimes us.

However, now in my 53nd year in this group, I see more & more of what’s been well-documented by economists/pollsters, etc. on a broader canvas, namely that these segments (the middle class part of EmQuake) are in a steady slide of downward mobility. We are not leaving our economic & class “homes” voluntarily, but like many of those in the Black Migration, being forced out.

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A Vietnam Era Underground Railroad Conductor “Takes It To Jesus”

In the late 1960s, I underwent what might be described as a born-again experience. At meeting for worship every First Day and at many other times during the week, I found myself thinking such remarkable sentiments as “Jesus saves” and “Jesus is the answer” and “Give it to Jesus.”
I didn’t often verbalize these thoughts, because Jesus was my little secret. Another member of the Buffalo New York Meeting had given me Jesus as a gift.
He told me that, in case I happened to know anyone involved in the new Underground Railroad, we might want to call this serendipitous, fly-by-night network of Quaker meeting houses and other more or less subversive waystations by the acronym JESUS.
That is, “Just Escape from Servitude in the United States.”
During the Vietnam War, the meeting house in Buffalo served as headquarters for the Western New York Draft Counseling Center, which operated probably 50-80 hours a week during the height of the war.

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