Souperist practices, reported at the time, included serving meat soups on Fridays – which Catholics were forbidden by their faith from consuming, and by the fact that they could not afford meat in the first place.
Soupers were frequently ostracised by their own community, and were strongly denounced from the pulpit by the Catholic priesthood. On occasion, soupers had to be protected by British soldiers from other Catholics.
Below is a news photo from late February, 1965. It turned up several years back (hat tip to the sharp-eyed Lewis Lewis): it was taken on the steps of Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, when John Lewis (center-left, with a tie) announced the plan to march from Selma to Montgomery. The goal of the … Continue reading A Hidden piece of Black History: “White Lies,” Selma, Two Murders, & A Cameo
In 1988 I wrote a substantial essay laying out my views about abortion, and describing how they had evolved over time. The piece also considered the increasing parallels, both rhetorical and political, between this struggle and the Civil War. Thirty-plus years later, despite some continuing evolution and updates, much of the piece still seems relevant, … Continue reading Abortion & Civil War – 2019 Update; 2021 Postscript
There are still neo-Orthodox Friends who can’t discuss de Hartog’s novel, The Peaceable Kingdom without turning red in the face and showing signs of apoplexy. And it’s not hard to see why: a hundred or a thousand people have read of de Hartog’s rollicking, bigger than life liberal Fox for every one who searched out their querulous caviling about it in Quaker Religious Thought.
But there’s one other thing to note about de Hartog’s opus. “In his lectures on Quaker history,” Ann Sieber reports, “Jan has waged a sly campaign to shift the credit for much of Quaker faith and practice from Fox to Fell.” And she also notes that in The Peaceable Kingdom, it is Margaret Fell who is by far the more fully-developed character, while Fox remains something of a mystical wraith.
Jan was pointing toward a feminist reinterpretation of this history, one that scholars have been fleshing out since then.
De Hartog’s long life was full, not only of books, but of adventure and romance — especially in the older meaning of the term, conveying excitement, charm, fascination and a touch of mystery.
Then he turned up working for a project financed by Rev. Sun Young Moon’s Unification Church. And that somehow led to him being put in charge of an unofficial “investigation” into lurid charges of a satanic child abuse ring, which was allegedly based in Omaha, Nebraska, but serviced powerful pedophiles as far away as Washington DC.
The Omaha “investigation” was financed by a LaRouche group. But the charges of satanic child abuse were soon thrown out of court, and Bevel left town. But he stayed with LaRouche for some time. When LaRouche ran for president in 1992 from his prison cell, his standard was carried on the outside by his vice-presidential candidate — James Bevel. Apparently Bevel operated from an apartment not far from LaRouche’s estate headquarters in Leesburg. One wonders whether, given the open racism that pervaded LaRouchian rhetoric and ideology, how Bevel fit in with that cadre.
When Bevel called me, he had a declaration and a question: the declaration was that he had reformed his seducing ways, and was atoning for damage done. I wished hm godspeed in that personal work, but inwardly I wasn’t sure I believed him.
The question was: would I ghostwrite his autobiography? He’d pay me, though amounts were not specified.
It didn’t take me long to decline the offer. Surely, somebody should tell his story, in its full complexity and often harrowing detail. And withal, I still admired what he had achieved in Selma and with Dr. King. But what on earth had led him into LaRouche’s orbit?
I was not the one to write this. There was too much else that I knew, or had credibly learned. I had too much baggage, too many scars, from it all. Did I even have the talent or wisdom to do the job? Besides, as queasy as much of what I already knew made me, my gut sensed that this was not the end of the story. I wished him well, and hung up the phone with a trembling hand.