Category Archives: Signs of the Times

Arguing With God: Quaker House & My 9-11 Story

Back home in Pennsylvania, I struggled through the next days, like everyone else, to make sense of what had happened. Only one thing about the aftermath seemed clear to me: the U.S would soon be at war. Where and when were obscure, but this had seemed to me a bottom-line certainty even before we finally rose and left Arla alone with her smoking television screen that morning.

This certainty was not a sign of any prophetic gift. It came, I think, more from my roots in a military family. Many of the reflexes of that culture were ingrained: You (whoever “you” were, we still weren’t sure) don’t get away with attacking the Pentagon, the nerve center of all the US military. Somebody will soon face some heavy payback from the armed men and women whose center and stronghold is in that building.

And chances were very good that when this war started, there would be many more of the innocent killed in their frenzied, fiery search for the guilty. U.S. revenge would be painted on some part of the world in a very broad brush of death.

And me? What would I do in the face of this impending war? The attacks had shaken me, truly, but had not undermined my basic Quaker pacifist convictions. I had just seen murder, on a huge scale. But more murder was not an answer to murder. That was my conviction on September 10; it remained so on September 12th. And I also sensed that I would have some small part in struggling to frame and lift up some voice for an alternative. Hell, any serious Quaker (or Christian?) would. Right?
But what alternative? And how to raise it?

I didn’t know. But Quakers in circumstances like these are taught to wait for “way to open.” Our spirituality is that if we are properly attentive, we will be given “leadings,” which will point us in the way to go.

Who’s More Scared of Free Speech? Baltimore Friends School, Or The N.Y. Times?

Baltimore Friends School Philosophy: “Quaker education is a pilgrimage–a continual seeking after Truth. The search for truth requires a willingness to listen openly to the ideas of others, even in fields of controversy.”

Except they were not about “to listen openly to” THIS controversy:

“At Friends, we work together to build and sustain a community that is inclusive, respectful, and supportive of all people; we value diversity and cherish differences. With this ideal in mind, the celebration of divergent viewpoints is not, and cannot be, without boundaries.”

And linking to an article in which conservative BFS alum Ryan Anderson argued for leaving same sex marriage decisions to the states was, Matt Micciche determined, beyond the boundary; it was evidently in the same league with organizing a lynch mob or shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

Oy vey. There’s no blinking it: The BFS head’s actions and statements were incoherent, anti-intellectual, cowardly, and un-Quakerly. If this sounds harsh, so be it. Right-wing blogs and pundits had a field day, and who could blame them?

Carolina Quakes: One Crisis Past; more To Do

Maybe it was reassuring that, with the crisis past, the Saturday afternoon session seemed to revert to annual routine: reports from Quaker Lake Camp, the ongoing work trips to Jamaican Friends, and more– fascinating to some, tedious to others.

My attention soon wandered. Which on this day, was likely a good sign. Even though this blog will likely have competition from a Greensboro daily paper, following up on the Quaker “Civil War stuff” here. Is it good news when what old-time Quakers called “The World” starts to follow our inelegant internal travails?

Breaking: NCYM Expulsions Overturned!

Scarcely an hour after loudly overturning its Executive Committee’s over-reach, the NorthCarolina YM session agreed to have distributed among its meetings a new “Plan” to “deal with” the divisive issues that have dogged the body, a plan that is highly like to stir more dissent.

Who’s Afraid of “Dual Affiliation”?? A Carolina YM Preview

“Orthodoxy and heterodoxy cannot coexist in one and the same person or organization,” evangelical Quaker leader Edward Mott thundered in 1946, as New England Yearly Meeting adopted its reunification proposals. “It has been, and is being attempted, but the result is always the same, namely failure.” And again: “All such interminglings should be canceled in the interest of truth and vital influence for Christ and His Church.”

Does this sound familiar? Seventy years later, the arguments have not really changed. Yet the reconstituted New England Yearly Meeting is still around (as, for that matter, is Oregon, now Northwest). And the verdict of experience points in a different direction: dual affiliation, in specially conducive circumstances (as in Philadelphia’/New York) can be very healing. But usually it is no big deal. When it serves a meeting community’s interests, it can work; if it doesn’t, it will eventually be set aside.

And crusades against it are little other than part of doctrinal purges, which are much more like the biblical plagues, as NCYM ought to be figuring out.

I won’t dissemble here.

Have we had enough of attempted doctrinal purges yet? I hope so. And if we have, then let’s also hope that North Carolina Friends will push this minor, manufactured problem of dual affiliation off the YM agenda.