Category Archives: Quaker Theology

A Progressive Quaker Message from Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Mott, considered at the time of her death in 1880 to be the “greatest American woman of the nineteenth century” by many of her contemporaries, was a Quaker abolitionist, women’s rights activist and social reformer. She was a key figure in an insurgent movement of Progressive Friends. Her messages and actions are  very pertinent today – and laid much of the foundation for the current women’s movement.
Wednesday First Month (January) 3, 2018, will mark Lucretia’s 225th birthday.
What message would she have for us if she were here today?
HINT: She’d likely tell us we’re in deep trouble and should get up and get busy. (She’d say it nicely, but urgently).
In fact, her message might sound like this . . .

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Is There Life after Death in Quaker North Carolina?

So will there be a rush among the meetings which had quit the old North Carolina Yearly Meeting to join (“rejoin”?) FCNC? Wait and see. Greene did not sound sanguine about the prospects.
But never mind: some of the longtime pastors said they had a remedy: outreach & evangelism. They asked that endowment funds in the budget targeted for church extension be allowed to accumulate for about three years, to finance a big church planting project. And to start the process, they proposed to bring in a “church multiplication” expert from Barclay College in Kansas to do an intensive “kickoff weekend” next spring.
Clerk Greene was for it: “If we don’t grow, we die,” he said. The outreach work may be the FCNC’s most important mission: everything should support it. He asked for approval for the plan. He got it, but it was another subdued murmur.
Indeed, the mood that morning deserves specific mention: if the doors had burst open then, or at any point in the three-hour session, and a SWAT team had rushed in, determined to arrest anyone showing signs of enthusiasm, they would have gone away empty-handed. If there was any excitement and exhilaration among this group, they left it at home.

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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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God(DESS) Explains IRMA’S Track

And notice that I’ll make another right turn there, mostly sliding past St. Louis — but that’s only because of the Cardinals, not the beer. (You bet Ima baseball fan.)

Besides, I’ve gotta cut a slice out of McConnell’s Kentucky, and rinse off some of the stink from the counties where the Clerks are still pretending same sex marriage ain’t “Christian” (as if THEY would know).

And then it’s smack into Pence-diana, also the biggest stronghold of the Klan (it even sucked in lots of Hoosier Quakers) in its last big heyday. (Could there be a connection? Do they make Square Donuts in Richmond?

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