Category Archives: Signs of the Times

Fire This Time, Hard-Core Quaker, Sedition Watch, Signs of the Times

Knoxville & “Killing All Liberals”

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A good friend of mine from college days is a member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian church in Knoxville that was shot up on Sunday, July 27. She was there with her husband, but thankfully was not hit.

(“Thankfully.” I feel a twinge of survivor’s guilt writing that; but there it is.)

The reports Monday about the rantings of the shooter, wanting to kill all liberals and gays, and the targeting of this particular church, well-known for its welcoming stance and other progressive views, brings a lot of things home to me.

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Black & White & Other Colors, Hard-Core Quaker, LGBTQ & Gender, Quaker History, Quaker Theology, Signs of the Times

The Shame of Kenya: Epistles of Hate

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Below is the complete text of two epistles issued by East Africa Yearly Meeting — North.

I note that the 2007 Epistle comments on the statements at the FUM General Board session in Kenya, as well as responding to some reaction to them from a Yearly Meeting in North America.

From this 2007 Epistle, it appears to me that it would be a mistake to consider this matter in any way “resolved.”

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Death & Dying, LGBTQ & Gender, Quaker Theology, Quakers, Remarkable Friends, Remarkable People, Schools/Education, Signs of the Times, Stories-Quaker, The Spirit, writing & Such

Bill Kreidler: A Personal Tribute

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By Chuck Fager

Dear Friends,

One of the finest, most eloquent ministers of this generation of liberal Quakers has left us. William J. “Bill” Kreidler, of Beacon Hill Meeting in Boston, died on June 10, 2000. This is a time to mourn, and also a time to remember, and to pay tribute, which is what I want to do here

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Church Frauds & Related Crimes, Current Affairs, Divergent Friends, Remarkable Friends, Signs of the Times, Weird & Peculiar

Fleecing The Faithful – Prelude: Down the Garden Path & Opening Pandora’s Box

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The 1989 Friends Ministers Conference was the fourth in a series that were held every five years. The event had started out as the Friends Pastors Conference, but this was changed for the 1984 gathering in a bow to traditional Quaker nomenclature, and to accommodate the sensibilities of the handful of attenders who came from the non-pastoral Quaker groups. (I was one.)

The 1989 gathering was scheduled for Denver. The planning committee’s chairman was Eugene Coffin. Priscilla Deters’ introduction to the committee was succinctly described by an Investigator for the Kansas State Security Commission, Gary Fulton. Writing in 1994, he explained that:

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