The new double issue of Quaker Theology is titled “Quakers & Resistance.” It considers highlights (and some lowlights) of Quaker resistance to oppression, both inside and outside the Society of Friends. For example, it recalls what happened to Lucretia Mott when she showed up in Richmond, Indiana in 1847, at the time when Indiana Yearly … Continue reading Quaker Theology: Highlights of New Double Issue
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.
As Israeli author Larry Derfner powerfully puts it,
“the mindset here is very much like that in red-state America. I think of Israel as a small, Hebrew-speaking Texas, with Tel Aviv the country’s answer to Austin. Like Israel, Texas used to be split between its liberal and hardass wings, but in recent decades the hardasses have taken over completely there, too.”
This comparison was written before the 2016 U. S. election; it’s even more trenchant now. And it brings back the image of Clare Hanrahan having to struggle and negotiate to find a place to sit in a public park, packed full of those who are discarded and “disappeared” in plain sight by our own society. Could even Asheville, North Carolina’s Austin, be joining what seems to be emerging as an American version of Derfner’s Israel?
The haunting phrase is Derfner’s: “the country gets more paranoid, more racist, more aggressive.” He wrote it of his adopted country. But is it now true of this country too?
If so, these two memoirs may become more than gripping personal stories; they could turn into poignant memorials to the loss of something crucial – and reminders of the haunting question that Derfner grapples with in his last few pages: in these increasingly parallel settings, how do you “keep hope alive”?
Nantucket is a fascinating pilgrimage spot for Quakers; it’s best to visit off-season, when it’s easier to look past the opulence, and see how thick the small town is with stirring Quaker history. Among its numerous distinctive features, the one we want to home in on here was the fact that while the harbor was populated with Quaker ships, the town was populated by many Quaker women. And these women, even the most prosperous ones, were kept plenty busy; not just with children, but also with business.
I mean both Meeting business, and business business. Many Quaker men were away from the island for years on end (Lucretia’s father was gone for three years), sailing halfway around the world (or farther) on trips that were always dangerous, and not rarely fatal — and during which communication with home was rare or nonexistent.
Meantime, Quaker women, while still heavily encased in what we would now think of as stereotyped women’s roles, were more educated than many other females of their day; they also had official status in the Meetings; and they — well, let’s hear how Lucretia describes it:
Yes, Lucretia Mott would be 225 years old on January 3, 2018.
And 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 many other) exciting questions.
One is hard, the other is easy . . . .
The first way is the harder one:
One: Read this letter Lucretia wrote to a Friend about it. (Good luck!)
Or– Watch this space on Wednesday, when more will be revealed!