Category Archives: The Spirit

An Easter Message For Liberal Quakers

An “Easter” Message  – 4th Month (April) 9, 2023

 I’ve been to Easter morning worship at a good many Friends meetings, mostly liberal & unprogrammed. And the most visible special character noted at many on the occasion was someone, usually female, in an adult-sized cartoon rabbit costume. It brings to mind a cartoon I turned up this past week:

It is not, of course, that liberal Quakers worship rabbits or poultry. The focus on floppy ears and colored eggs serves as a familiar, welcome distraction and deflection. It’s all-but guaranteed to avoid the framing of the occasion by the vast majority of Christian groups. Because in these Quaker meetings, that framing is believed in even less than that of a bountiful egg-laying bunny.

 Let’s recall the difference, in sum: Those who traveled more than a few miles to meeting today probably passed one or more signs or banners proclaiming “He Is Risen!”

Like such banners, Easter marks the climactic moment in a drama that began, in the traditional reading, shortly after God’s creation of a human couple. They at first subsisted in blissful divine-human communion in Eden, until something went terribly, fatefully wrong:

The couple defied a divinely-announced taboo. As a result, they were expelled from Eden, condemned to labor, bear children in painful travail, and then die.

As the tradition developed, the errant first couple, following their deaths, were to be plunged into a bottomless pit of fiery torment, which they would endure as conscious torture, forever, and ever. 

This prospect of endless torment in hell was soon expanded to include as many as all humans ever born (or to be born); or just most, with a select few (numbers were fuzzy) exempted for various reasons, or (in some major theologies) no reason at all.

All this was justified by saying the first couple’s downfall was not simply an infraction, but a sin, evil – and the stain of this sin marked all their children, through all generations, magnified by the children’s own sinful contributions. These millennia of total human  depravity added up to a kind of debt load no human could ever repay, even in theory.

But God eventually (in 33 A.D.) decided to offer (an uncertain number of) exemptions. To produce the exemptions, God would transfer the debt to their own (sinless, ergo innocent) divine offspring, who would pay for it by being killed. Lynched, in the standard script.

But as mercy, God would revive the offspring after not quite 48 hours following  his demise.

This ominously vivid scenario captured wide attention. It also soon began to evoke questions, and skepticism. The questioning even seeped into the sacred pages of the Bible. 

There were doubts about the mechanics: How does it work to transfer responsibility for evil from the evildoer to an innocent? (Like, if I murdered someone and was found out, how could I fix it so, knowing my guilt, the authorities would select some innocent person to punish, maybe execute, and let me go free? 

Put another way, how does punishing an innocent absolve the guilty?

There were also doubts about this kind of “justice”: the “sin” of the First Couple, however precedent-setting, was still finite, even petty; and for pete’s sake, it was their first offense.  Yet the punishment, for them and their spawn, was infinite in scope, everlasting, and endless.

I mean, if I were burned at the stake, even with the newest AI technology, they could only burn me once, til my bones were vaporized. In current crematoria, the process only takes a couple of hours.

But in the scriptural hell, and its tributaries, the fire and torment are infinite punishment. As in Revelation 14:9-11 (one of numerous similar passages): “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he . . . will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night . . . .

Such revenge fantasies did not mollify the doubters, primarily because it was far out of whack with their life experience.

The scriptural efforts to square such assymetric suffering, which makes the tortures of the Inquisition seem tame, with “divine justice,” can be profound (e.g., the Book of Job), but are unsuccessful (ibid.). As one of the best biblical writers to make the effort admitted, in Ecclesiastes 8 & 9:

8:11: Why do people commit crimes so readily? Because crime is not punished quickly enough. 12 A sinner may commit a hundred crimes and still live.

Oh yes, I know what they say: “If you obey God, everything will be all right, 13 but it will not go well for the wicked. Their life is like a shadow and they will die young, because they do not obey God.”

14 But this is nonsense. Look at what happens in the world: sometimes the righteous get the punishment of the wicked, and the wicked get the reward of the righteous. I say it is useless. . . .

9:16 Whenever I tried to become wise and learn what goes on in the world, I realized that you could stay awake night and day 17 and never be able to understand what God is doing. However hard you try, you will never find out. The wise may claim to know, but they don’t.”

Some say this is cynical, others merely realistic. I oscillate.

Whichever; but if after-death salvation schemes are “useless,” in explaining how they embody or vindicate scriptural divine justice, what then to make of Jesus?

I have an extra-scriptural elder and teacher here, in the form of Lucretia Mott; she clerks my inner clearness committee on the topic. In 1849, she declared plainly to her home meeting in Philadelphia that:

“This creed based upon the assumption of human depravity and completed by a vicarious atonement–connected with a belief in mysteries and miracles as essential to salvation–-forms a substitute for that faith which works by love and which purifies the heart, leading us into communion with God and teaching us to live in the cultivation of benevolence, to visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction and to entertain charitable feelings one unto another.”

For her, Jesus is a model and a teacher. His key teachings begin in Luke 4, with his first public appearance after spending six weeks in the desert wilderness:

16 Then Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath he went as usual to the synagogue. He stood up to read the Scriptures 17 and was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written,

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free the oppressed
19     and announce that the time has come
when the Lord will save his people.”

20 Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. All the people in the synagogue had their eyes fixed on him, 21 as he said to them, “This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read.”

(How did the crowd respond? They tried to kill him.)

Then there is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the Last Judgment of the “sheep & goats” set out in Matthew 25: 31-48. Each of these is worth extended study, but my thumbnail is that: what matters most there is what you do, particularly leavened with justice, mercy & compassion, more than what you believe, or the religious rituals you repeat.

Mott also revered his example: rejecting both the exploitive empire, the co-opted and corrupt religious establishment, and the self-and community-destructive rebel terrorism; then facing his senseless fate with resolve and resignation.

But what about resurrection? What about the related issue of Jesus as the “messiah”, the widely-expected liberator of the Jews from Roman oppression??

Mott didn’t buy either of these notions as actual history. But the rise of the church — at least the good parts of it (among which she frankly preferred the Religious Society of Friends, but collaborated with many others), and the leading figures in them –those were the resurrections she believed in.

And these lasting figures in it – like John Woolman, William Penn, Margaret Fell, what Catholics would call “saints” but Mott wouldn’t (superstitious “priestcraft”, she considered such titles), could bring liberation, in fits and starts, to their people and others. She called them “the Messiahs of every age”; not just one person, one group, or in one era.

Now Mott might not agree with my next thought, but this view reminds me of the Catholic doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ. It’s one of the few beliefs from my Catholic upbringing that’s stuck to me: Rather than him climbing out of the grave, Jesus’ spirit has come back repeatedly in and among the church (and other religious bodies) again, in its good parts, and not only in his biblical name. The official Catholic version says this Mystical Body is only manifest in the Roman Catholic Church.

I don’t buy that: it can show up — or be resurrected — in many places & groups; it can also be crucified again too.

Early Quakers thought much like that as well, tho they were also mostly anti-Catholic & anti-pope, and for awhile figured Quakers were the real one & only true church. (When William Penn published his summary of Quakerism, his title was, perhaps hyperbolically,  Primitive Christianity Revived. Eventually, some Friends got over that particularist triumphalism. Some.)

In this Mystical body view, whether seen as a potentially profound metaphor or even a theological belief, Jesus can become a kind of archetype, that is, the embodiment of a story (not necessarily historical) that can come alive for people and groups. Such archetypal stories can then die and be resurrected.

From this perspective, perhaps the tomb on that ancient Sunday morning was really vacant.

Vacant, yes, but not empty: it left behind a story that continued, renewed itself (more than once) and for many, isn’t finished yet.

Ponder all that for awhile. I’m going to talk with Lucretia about it, while I go crack a decorated egg or two. And maybe eat an apple.

Part Four (Conclusion): Why September Should Be “Willie Frye Month”

Why September Should Be “Willie Frye” Month — Part Four- Conclusion

[Part One is here.]
[Part Two is here.]
[Part Three is here.]

Willie Frye Jr.

21. 1994-1995 — In a 1994 statement to the NC Yearly Meeting Ministry and Counsel Committee, Willie wrote,

“It seems somehow odd to be on trial for heresy within the Society of Friends, when Quakerism itself was born amid charges of heresy. It is not surprising that, in Puritan England, a group that rejected creeds, depended on the guidance of the Spirit, believed in the Inner Light, taught the equality of all people, advocated a universal priesthood, and allowed for diversity of individual religious experience would be suspect. It seems almost bizarre now, however, to be put on trial for believing these very articles of faith on which the Society of Friends was founded and for which Fox and others suffered so much.”

Nevertheless, the “trial” dragged on. Still stalled over the demand for an antigay manifesto, as well as the matter of banishing Willie and the calls for a broader purge, desperate finding a way out of the impasse, NCYM leaders agreed to undertake a “Listening Project.”  This would be a series of in-depth, non-directive interviews with Friends from each of its 80-plus meetings and churches, in search of enough common ground to recover civil, patient Quaker seeking.

The project took time and faced obstruction, opposition, even intimidation; nevertheless it seemed a temporary success. At least, many tempers had cooled enough by 1995 for NCYM to set aside the stalled 1992 minute (but the issue did not vanish). Much of the talk of division and expulsion seemed to subside (though a few churches did leave NCYM). Willie’s recording was left intact.

Willie finished a 1996 report on the experience on an optimistic note:

“[The Listening Project] played a key role in helping the yearly meeting avoid a serious division, drop the idea of disowning people over the issue of homosexuality, and begin the process of attempting to communicate.

Perhaps its most important contribution was that it served to bridge the gap between a complete lack of communication to the beginnings of dialogue. . . .”

Perhaps.

Or perhaps not.

22. 1995-2007 — For Willie and Agnes at least, their public, if impromptu “coming out” in 1993 as committed  parents in an affirming family, may have closed  many doors to them in NCYM, but it also marked a way opening into a much broader emerging community, namely that of openly LGBTQ Friends, friends of Friends, and family members. These made up a rainbow chorus of voices that, despite frequent setbacks, were becoming inexorably more visible.

In an address at the 1998 mid-winter gathering of the national lesbian-gay Friends network, Willie said,

“When homosexuality became a prominent issue in NC Yearly Meeting, Agnes and I took what was to become a very unpopular stand. There were times in the 1993 sessions when we stood virtually alone and people became very upset with us.

We’ve not only been disappointed and frustrated by the hostility of our fundamentalist Friends toward our positions on social issues; we have been equally disappointed and frustrated by the reluctance of liberal Friends to stand with us.

We were reflecting recently on the fact that so many liberal Friends have remained silent both during the social issues of the 1960s and 1970s and now during the gender issues of the 1990s.”

Yet Willie and Agnes found a renewed and deeper sense of ministry as they began to share and speak to the spiritual needs of LGBTQ Quakers. They helped to form Piedmont Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (PFLGC). They also started a non-sectarian chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in Mt. Airy and another in Clemmons.

With all this, his pastoral work at Mt. Airy continued. He wrote gratefully that:

Mt. Airy Friends, Surry County, “Mayberry” North Carolina

“We are in a meeting that supports us. They don’t raise a hue and cry every time I appear on TV or do an interview for the newspaper. They have clearly given me not only their permission to carry out this ministry, but they have given me their blessing. . . .”

With this home support, the scope of their work kept growing:

Kathy:  “Willie and Agnes partnered to minister to gay individuals and their families. They were surrogate parents to men and women whose biological parents had rejected them because of their sexual orientation. They attended Friends General Conference gatherings all over the US as they formed close relationships with Friends in the FLGC group.”

23. — In 2001, Willie retired from full-time ministry, but he and Agnes continued to participate in organizations that supported LGBTQ persons. Willie participated in “Gay Pride” events, even marching in “Gay Pride Parades.”

This closing period of broader ministry only ebbed in 2007, when Willie’s health began to give way to an advancing cancer, to which he at length succumbed in September 2013.

Their final round of wider work had brought much consolation to Willie and Agnes, especially after their hopes for reconciliation and progress within the yearly meeting they had served so long were dashed. The Listening Project’s “cooling off” proved to be only a temporary truce: at the 2014 sessions of NCYM-FUM, a year after Willie’s passing, the “urge to purge” burst out in its sessions again.

Now the demands went beyond a statement to a massive purge. Meeting and individuals who had opposed the 1992 statement or its underlying doctrines were called on to leave NCYM immediately.

Among the targets of this effort was Spring Meeting, which this writer attends. Spring had taken a public affirming position a few years earlier. We too were told we should either leave NCYM, or we  would be expelled; words like “unsound” and “abomination” were directed at us.

Spring calmly but steadfastly stood its ground: we had done no wrong, violated no provision of Faith & Practice, and hoped any differences in NCYM could be patiently and civilly worked through.

Nice thoughts, but no chance. The purge efforts became a struggle to the death, and the yearly meeting ultimately went out of existence in August 2017, after 320 years.

A handful of the surviving meetings have formed small, loose associations; some others (e.g., Spring) continue as independents; many have simply withered and disappeared.

24– The saga of Willie and Agnes Frye remains both an inspiration for many (like this writer) and a solemn warning about the costs of pursuing authentic witness in turbulent times. Willie Frye, with much struggle, managed to keep up and complete his career of ministry through decades of racial strife, war, and continuing cultural conflict.

NCYM-FUM was once, in the early 1900s, one of the largest Quaker bodies in America. Since its founding, it had weathered the American Revolution, the Civil War, the tragedies of failed Reconstruction, deep economic depressions, a century-plus of Jim Crow, successive waves of KKK terror and many other trials. But it succumbed to the multiple-pandemics of homophobia, militarism, racism and fundamentalism after 320 years. (This sad tale is chronicled in detail in the book, “Murder at Quaker Lake.”)

But if there is hope here, it can be glimpsed in the life and witness of Willie and Agnes Frye as examples and precursors.

Such examples should be preserved, remembered and celebrate, in my view at least twice a year. Once could be around the date of a significant life event, which for Willie points to September, as Willie & Agnes Frye Month.

The other occasion would be any time those who are striving to follow examples like theirs, in the beleaguered Society of Friends or other faith communities, need encouragement and models.

Which in these days, is pretty often.

It’s been a century since this anti-Kan editorial was published. As an organization, the KKK has again largely faded from the North Carolina scene. But its “state of mind” and basic agenda are still very much present.

“Tell It Slant”: The New Quaker Biography’s First Review Is Out!

The Western Friend is continuing evidence (tho it’s still news to some) that there is lively Quaker periodical publishing outside Philadelphia. When the editor learned about Tell It Slant, she didn’t hesitate: Friend Mitchell Santine Gould’s review, the first, was included in its current online newsletter edition.

Mitch is a distinguished independent historian with a theological bent. His special interest in the quasi-Quaker poet Walt Whitman has produced many impressive essays, including Walt Whitman: 10 Misconceptions, Least to Greatest, which is here,  and very much worth a look (but read this review first . . .)

Published: June 22, 2024, in The Western Friend:

Emma Lapsansky-Werner “Tells It Slant

in a Mammoth Biography of Publick Friend Chuck Fager

Tell it Slant: A prophetic life of adventure and writing on religion, war, and justice, love and laughter (Kimo Press, 2024)

More book details here.

Reviewed by Mitchell Santine Gould, Multnomah Monthly Meeting (6/19/2024):

Emma and Chuck at a 2017 history roundtable at Earlham School of Religion.

Emma Lapsansky-Werner offers us a sprawling biography of Quaker journalist, activist, and gadfly Chuck Fager, in Tell It Slant. I read the first half with growing appreciation for two essential aspects of Chuck’s life. The first is his truly impressive involvement with so many historic moments in politics, society, and religion. The second, which nicely humanizes this history, is a very frank, very modest account of his own life – warts as well as triumphs. It must be rare that a biography succeeds so admirably on both aspects.

Chuck’s long experience as a professional journalist and author gives perfect clarity to his parts of the overall narrative. However, he had so much to say, that in order to marshal some flow and organization to so many anecdotes, memories, and histories, he was lucky that Emma Lapsansky-Werner extended her invaluable editorial contributions into the role of co-author.

As she put it, “In crafting this narrative, I have echoed Chuck’s scaffolding, weaving my spin together with many of Chuck’s own words; biography is interwoven with autobiography.” Although Dr. Lapsansky-Werner is an academic — a professor of Quaker history — she delivered the kind of powerfully clear and simple journalistic prose that seamlessly matched Chuck’s own. I think given all the constraints, Lapsansky-Werner acquitted herself well.

We’re no longer in an age of book-reading — info-snacking is more like it — and one might set the book aside rather read the whole thing at once. But should you resume in the middle of the book, its humor, charm, interest, and insight will even more deeply impress you. Tell It Slant is inspiring and above all, highly relevant. In addition to his decades of involvement with Quaker faith, practice, and internal politics, Chuck really kept his finger on the pulse of American society and politics — precisely because of his investment in his faith, of course.

When the stories are this compelling, you want the book to be perfect. Viewing Friend Chuck as the modern-day equivalent of history’s Publick Friend, I wanted him to be the exponent for liberal Quaker faith as I understand it. I hoped to see a conscious allegiance to the key innovation of Quakerism: its Inner Light theology. Informal polling that I did years ago revealed that Friends today have reduced the doctrine of Inner Light to little more than a sentimental “that of God in everyone.”

But historically, the Inner Light was recognized as a secret, silent hotline to the Divine, quite specifically as a source of guidance in times of an ethical crisis. Crucially, it was seen as capable of over-riding the two ubiquitous avenues for all moral supervision: the Bible and the clergy. Chuck mentions the Inner Light only twice, exclusively in anecdotes about an old Quaker lady he once admired. In reality, the Light is the power behind the often-praised Quaker virtue known as “discernment.”

Mitchell Santine Gould

Having said all this, let me turn to the controversial proposition that Quakerism can be succinctly described as SPICE: simplicity, peaceableness, integrity, community, and equality. I could write a whole sequel review showing how Chuck hits quite robustly on all these cylinders. And that ultimately trivializes all my criticisms of his book. I believe every Quaker should read it, and non-Quakers will also be deeply inspired, as I have been, by it.

– Mitchell Santine Gould, Multnomah Monthly Meeting (6/19/2024)

“Tell It Slant”: Author Emma Lapsansky-Werner Speaks

This excerpt is adapted from the new book, Tell It Slant, which charts Chuck Fager’s prophetic life of adventure & writing on religion, war, and justice, love and laughter.

Tell It Slant is available now, in paperback & Kindle versions. Details here.

By Emma Lapsansky-Werner

A short bio:  Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner is emeritus Professor of History and emeritus Curator of the Quaker collection of Haverford College.

Chuck, Emma, and Douglas Gwyn – November 2019, at the launch of “Passing the Torch,” to which each contributed.

Emma lives near Philadelphia, PA, where she continues to teach, to do research and to publish, to consult with scholars, to work as a professional editor, and to host periodic writers’ workshops at Minerva’s by the Sea, her bed and breakfast near a lighthouse in coastal New Jersey. [Check out her website for another Writers Workshop upcoming November 2024:  MinervasBandB.com]
Continue reading “Tell It Slant”: Author Emma Lapsansky-Werner Speaks

Coming June 19, “Tell It Slant”: The Author Speaks

A Preview

Emma Lapsansky-Werner, author, “Tell It Slant.”

“A life generously served on wry with plenty of mustard and no cheese, Emma Lapsansky-Werner’s compilation with Chuck Fager on his eighty years captures his unique synthesis of investigative journalism with religious concern, activist engagement with theological reflection, Quaker identity with wide-ranging, empathetic identifications.

Chuck’s story traces an engaging trajectory through our era, one to evoke both joy and sorrow from fellow travelers. His sixty-five-page bibliography itself is breathtaking, un grand oeuvre….”

— Douglas Gwyn, Quaker author, scholar, minister and songwriter

(Hear Doug’s music online for free here!)

Emma: By that time I had already decided that Chuck was among the most interesting Quakers alive in the twenty-first century. Investigative journalist, essayist, novelist, resolute pursuer-of-history, independent publisher, provocateur, activist, “whistle-blower”; teacher, father, F/friend, community-organizer, theological “seeker” (and self-defined finder)-and more. . . .

Watch this space for more, soon.

Tell It Slant is available now, in paperback and Kindle, here.