It’s Here!
The Quaker History Roundtable opens Thursday evening, June 8. Its focus is 20th Century American Quakerism, and it will continue through Sunday morning, June 11.
If you can’t join us in person, you can watch it online. It will be webcast online here.
Retirement is supposed to be when, with time growing short, one gets to work on the bucket list. And on my list, making some sense of the last century — half of which I spent among Friends — is pretty high. Much higher than going on a cruise.
Call me weird, but I think watching glaciers melt is like watching paint dry. Besides, I’ve checked, and not one of these boats has a decent Quaker library.
Working on Quaker history has been continually stimulating for me, and often fun. And not much has been done on the 20th century among Quakers — despite the fact that a LOT went on.
So about a year ago I started sounding out scholars and others I’ve met and heard about who are also Quaker history geeks, and suggested we do some work, then get together and share and discuss it; many were interested. And I had enough savings to underwrite it, so I did.
The outcome is the Quaker history Roundtable, which will debut on June 8-11, less than eight weeks hence. Many thanks are due to the Earlham School of Religion for agreeing to host it, and cooperate on the arrangements. Fortunately, history geeks are relatively simple to handle, logistics-wise: they mostly talk and argue (err, discuss), then eat and talk & “discuss” some more.
The talk was lively and nonstop, even with breaks. The gathering moved almost seamlessly into broader issue discussion, with resource people as participants, to consider ways to keep moving and build cooperation and momentum.
The Consultation was not aimed at producing resolutions or a new organization, but to assist in encouraging and facilitating cooperation for continued resistance. Encouragement also seemed in plentiful supply, and we closed with some music, from Scott Holmes, who doubles as an aggressive lawyer fighting mass incarceration when he’s not writing songs. He’d written a new resistance song just for us.
Perhaps this model of locally-driven multi-issue and multi-group consultations would be of use to other Meetings. It is neither expensive nor complicated, and the organizing was done by a small cadre of volunteers, using social media as the main means of promotion. And one of its most welcome outcomes was a lift in spirits. We’ll all need more of those; there’s still much to ring the resistance bell about.
Who was Jane Johnson, and why was she racing down Philadelphia streets in a coach with Lucretia Mott in September of 1855? And why were federal marshals trying to catch them?? And why did Johnson run through Mott’s house and out the back door? There’s two ways to find out the answers to these (and … Continue reading Lucretia Mott & The Wild Chase Scene
Maintaining religious liberty within the Religious Society of Friends has not always been easy. For instance, contrary to popular Quaker legend, work in the abolitionist movement was very unpopular among Friends, and especially repugnant to the entrenched power structure of recorded ministers and elder. They thought it was “creaturely,” needlessly dangerous — and many highly-placed Friends, while not own slaves, yet had extensive business interests connected to the slave economy. These were threatened by connections with abolition “agitation.
The result was what I have called “The Great Purge”; many Friends were forced out of the Society, and others resigned, to uphold their antislavery principles. Even some meetings were laid down by “executive action” for being tainted by the reforming virus.
Some Friends did not wait for the Overseers and elders to show up to apply this “discipline.”