The Quaker Witch Trial

November 19, 2024

There’s a great sto­ry, almost cer­tain­ly a tall tale, about Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s lone witch tri­al, in which the accused, a Swedish woman who could­n’t speak Eng­lish, con­firmed she flew on brooms. William Penn him­self, pre­sid­ing, replied “Well I know of no law against that!” and dis­missed the case. The Novem­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal has a fic­tion­al­ized account of this writ­ten by Jean Martin.

There’s no tran­script of the actu­al tri­al so we don’t know the blow-by-blow. We know that Mar­garet Matt­son was found guilty of hav­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of a witch, a strange find­ing indeed.

The Swedes were the orig­i­nal Euro­pean inhab­i­tants of the Delaware Riv­er basin. Many were eth­nic Finns who had brought folk reme­dies with them. They were close to the Native Lenape peo­ples and inter­mar­ried and allied them­selves with one anoth­er against lat­er Euro­peans rulers, the Dutch then English.

Being first amongst the Euro­peans, the Swedes/Finns had set­tled in some of the choic­est land along the mouths of creeks and there was a lot of polit­i­cal pres­sure to move them out or hem them in. Accu­sa­tions of witch­craft were part of this con­text. The Eng­lish accusers might well have been engag­ing in clas­sic scape­goat­ing behav­ior meant to steal land and resources.

Like the Lenape, many Swedes/Finns even­tu­al­ly moved across the riv­er to West Jer­sey, which had a strong Lenape pres­ence, a much slow­er influx of Eng­lish Quak­ers, and clear­er bound­aries between the two, such as Burling­ton Coun­ty’s so-called “Indi­an Line” at the head of west-flowing creeks flow­ing into the Delaware. Mar­garet Matt­son was part of this exo­dus. She might have won the tri­al but her Penn­syl­va­nia neigh­bors suc­ceed­ed in bul­ly­ing her out of the colony. The folksy sto­ry of Quak­er tol­er­a­tion may be a lot shaki­er than lat­er biog­ra­phers made it out to be.

If you’re inter­est­ing in all this, Jean Soder­lund’s work, esp. 2014’s Lenape Coun­try, is fab­u­lous and decon­structs a lot of myths pro­mul­gat­ed by lat­er Quak­er set­tlers. She recent­ly wrote about some of this for Friends Jour­nal. There’s also a pret­ty good PDF of the tri­al here.

Some of this his­to­ry lives on. I have to dri­ve 1/2 hour to Quak­er meet­ing because most of South Jer­sey’s Quak­er meet­ings are locat­ed west of the long-forgotten “Indi­an Line.” Here’s the SJ Quak­er map with the approx­i­mate line of water­sheds toward the Delaware Riv­er. (The four out­lier South Jer­sey Quak­er meet­ings are all with­in a mile or two of Atlantic Ocean bays. Sea­far­ing Quak­ers, often from Long Island/New Eng­land, set­tled them.)

Bluesky Quakers

November 13, 2024

It’s been a long bat­tle to see what might replace Twit­ter for a lot of us. One option of course is X, Musk’s rebrand but it’s seen the biggest col­lapse of social media since Friend­ster. Threads looked promis­ing but it’s Face­book and its algo­rithms favor click­bait and pun­ish links, espe­cial­ly polit­i­cal ones. Bluesky seems to have final­ly past a thresh­old in the last week: it past the 15 mil­lion user mark on Wednes­day and is one of the top apps in the iPhone App Store. 

This week Isaac (aka cat­shashi­mi) has put togeth­er a Quak­er Starter Pack. These are meant to be curat­ed list of peo­ple who new­com­ers might want to fol­low. And I’ve start­ed a Quak­ers list, which is more of a fire­hose of every­one I know with Quak­er connections. 

The art of the compromise

November 12, 2024

I very occa­sion­al­ly do a book review for the mag­a­zine. My col­league Gail thought I might be inter­est­ed in this biog­ra­phy of the longest-serving edi­tor of our British coun­ter­part, The Friend, so I reviewed A Friend in Deed: The Life of Hen­ry Stan­ley New­man.

The part of Hen­ry Stan­ley New­man’s life that I found most fas­ci­nat­ing was his generation’s abil­i­ty to bend tech­ni­cal­i­ties almost to the break­ing point in order to main­tain for­mal uni­ty. As a young man, he rebelled against the stodgy and insu­lar Quak­erism of his upbring­ing and found a way to cre­ate a par­al­lel spir­i­tu­al life based on Evan­gel­i­cal prin­ci­ples. In mid­dle life, estab­lished and respect­ed, he faced chal­lenges from a ris­ing young Lib­er­al fac­tion and man­aged to stay engaged enough to keep them with­in the fold of main­stream British Quak­erism. In the Unit­ed States, these same shifts toward first evan­gel­i­cal and then lib­er­al the­olo­gies result­ed in schisms, many of which still divide Friends.

Almost twen­ty years ago I vis­it­ed a small Mid­west­ern U.S. year­ly meet­ing that real­ly felt like a fam­i­ly, both in its bonds and its dys­func­tions. I liked it. One of the most respect­ed mem­bers was gay and at some point in ear­li­er ses­sions he had been nom­i­nat­ed to be the year­ly meet­ing clerk. This was a non-starter for a mem­ber church that was also affil­i­at­ed with an Evan­gel­i­cal year­ly meet­ing. After some back and forth he was was approved as an assis­tant clerk, a solu­tion every­one could live with. Log­i­cal­ly it makes absolute­ly no sense — if gay­ness pre­cludes one from one year­ly meet­ing lead­er­ship posi­tion it should pre­clude them from any. But the year­ly meet­ing want­ed him and found a way to make it work and he cheer­ful­ly accept­ed the log­i­cal irony of the sit­u­a­tion. (The sit­u­a­tion didn’t last and the dual-affiliated meet­ing even­tu­al­ly had to make a choice and dis­af­fil­i­ate from one of its year­ly meetings.)

There’s an impulse toward puri­ty that wouldn’t have allowed these kinds of nego­ti­at­ed com­pro­mis­es. A young New­man, start­ing Evan­gel­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions left and right that were nom­i­nal­ly out­side of Quak­er struc­ture but full of Quak­ers, would have been dis­owned. The Mid­west year­ly meet­ing would have splin­tered over the Lib­er­al’s insis­tence of a clerk sta­tus or the Evan­gel­i­cal’s insis­tence on no sta­tus. Don’t get me wrong, I cer­tain­ly under­stand puri­ty: some­times we need to make a stand. But some­times it’s more impor­tant to be a log­i­cal­ly incon­sis­tent fam­i­ly than to be alone in our cor­rect­ness. Hen­ry Stan­ley Newman’s com­pro­mis­es is an inter­est­ing mod­el for us, still.

We Know

November 6, 2024

Trump is back. He won clean­ly and quick­ly this time, report­ed­ly final­ly win­ning the pop­u­lar vote. I think a lot of this is the glob­al back­lash against incum­ben­cy fol­low­ing the dis­lo­ca­tions and infla­tion of Covid but it’s also yet anoth­er data point in the twenty-first cen­tu­ry rise of strongmen.

The future is pret­ty clear. Trump has been telling us what he’ll do and there’s lit­tle rea­son to think he won’t do it. With Con­gress, the Sen­ate, and the Supreme Court under his con­trol and the GOP in full alle­giance, there’s noth­ing to stop Trump from reshap­ing the Unit­ed States in his image. Sup­pres­sion of polit­i­cal oppo­nents, the dis­man­tling of the reg­u­la­to­ry state, and a pull­back from inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty agree­ments will all be imme­di­ate actions. Ukraine is screwed. The Mid­dle East is like­ly to get even worse, as if that’s pos­si­ble. The Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion­ists will be par­doned and embold­ened to focus their atten­tion on who­ev­er they deem to be domes­tic trai­tors. Lim­its on the police or mil­i­tary will be lift­ed. We’re going to get our own Russia-like class of unreg­u­lat­ed oli­garchs, with Musk first in line. There’s like­ly to be some sur­pris­es — mem­bers of Trump’s whis­per­ing class some­times have dif­fer­ent goals and he him­self not sys­tem­at­ic enough to always fol­low through on his stat­ed log­ic. But the big pic­ture is clear. And the effects will be rip­pling for decades.

This time we know what we’ll get. Trump’s shown us over and over that he’s a crook, a liar, a misog­y­nist, a racist, and an lover of strong­men. Vot­ers have seen that and decid­ed this is what they want. As things start to fall apart they’ll blame oth­ers for the col­laps­es. It’s all as pre­dictable as it is sad. 

Dave Karpf’s “What the future looks like from here” seems pret­ty spot on:

What I find myself star­ing at is the future. What will these next few years look like? Where, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, can we go from here? And the answers are all pret­ty bleak.

This is, effec­tive­ly, the end of the Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry. We’ll still have an impor­tant glob­al role, because the dol­lar is still the world­wide reserve cur­ren­cy and also we have nuclear weapons and a mas­sive mil­i­tary. But we’re going to aban­don Ukraine and NATO. The inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions that we built in the last cen­tu­ry — inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions that gave the Unit­ed States a first-among-equals advan­tage — will all with­er away.

David Hunter’s “There is hope” talks a lot about trust­ing our­selves and one anoth­er and set­tling in for the long haul.

Trust-building starts with your own self. It includes trust­ing your own eyes and gut, as well as build­ing pro­tec­tion from the ways the crazy-making can become internalized. 

This also means being trust­wor­thy — not just with infor­ma­tion, but with emo­tions. That way you can acknowl­edge what you know and admit the parts that are uncer­tain fears nag­ging at you. 

I hope you all take care of your­selves. It’s going to be a long ride. Remem­ber to love your neigh­bors no mat­ter who they vot­ed for. We’re all hurt, com­pli­cat­ed peo­ple. Give grace, be the mod­el of love you want to see in the world.

Miracles with Diane Allen

November 5, 2024

Crop­well Meet­ing had a nice pro­gram on mir­a­cles last week­end. Diane is local­ly famous for natives past a cer­tain age because of her ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence in Philly TV back in the day. She gave a great talk. Every­one was hushed and atten­tive through­out, with gasps Olof aston­ish­ment at some of the profiles.

Cropwell hosts Halloween family outreach event again

October 30, 2024

My meet­ing host­ed anoth­er Hal­loween event ear­li­er this week. When we did it in 2022 we arranged to have fly­ers dis­trib­uted by the home­own­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion of devel­op­ment behind us but we missed the Octo­ber mail­ing dead­line this time. So a few mem­bers fly­ered in the neigh­bor­hood and it worked! Some­one saw it and shared it on a par­ent chat for the near­by ele­men­tary school. A few further-off peo­ple came because of the Face­book event, which frankly sur­prised me.

What do you want to see in Friends Journal?

October 23, 2024

From our email newsletter:

“We have themes mapped out for our (most­ly) month­ly issues through the end of 2025, and we’re already think­ing about what comes next. What top­ics would you like to see cov­ered from a Quak­er perspective?

Here’s a list of themes since 2012. Maybe you’ve got a sub­ject we’ve nev­er addressed. Maybe you see some­thing we cov­ered a decade ago and could look at with fresh eyes. Email us with your suggestions!”

I’m actu­al­ly the one who is com­pil­ing sug­ges­tions so if you’re get­ting this as part of the Quak­er­Ran­ter newslet­ter you can just hit reply with your ideas.

A Future Vision of Friends

October 22, 2024

Craig Bar­nett, in his Tran­si­tion Quak­ers blog, talks about the future of Quak­erism in the UK. Here’s a snip­pet but go read the whole thing:

There is like­ly to be an even larg­er num­ber of peo­ple whose most reg­u­lar engage­ment with oth­er Quak­ers is online, per­haps sup­ple­ment­ed by retreats, camps or oth­er in-person events. There will almost cer­tain­ly be a broad range of Quak­er activist groups and net­works focussed on par­tic­u­lar con­cerns such as the cli­mate emer­gency, migra­tion and peace. Along­side this, I antic­i­pate a greater diver­si­ty of forms of Quak­er prac­tice, belong­ing and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, with most Friends hav­ing a much loos­er con­nec­tion to area meet­ings and Britain Year­ly Meet­ing as a whole. In oth­er words it looks much more like a move­ment than one mono­lith­ic organisation.

I think a lot of this is rel­e­vant to Friends in North Amer­i­ca and not only because of some shared cul­ture. For bet­ter or worse, the inter­net is decou­pling spir­i­tu­al­i­ty from geog­ra­phy. Blogs and mag­a­zines, pod­casts and YouTube chan­nels are all acces­si­ble from any­where. Covid taught us all how to use Zoom and the con­tin­ued avail­abil­i­ty of online wor­ship have led iso­lat­ed Friends (or Friends frus­trat­ed by local, in-person options) to wor­ship from anywhere.

I’m intrigued by Craig’s anal­o­gy to the orga­ni­za­tion and of west­ern Bud­dhism though I think we still need to focus on local wor­ship. Part­ly because of the inter­net, peo­ple are seek­ing in-person, live com­mu­ni­ties but we have to be ready to receive them. Craig talks about the need to pro­vide reli­gious edu­ca­tion — to be able to answer what we believe — and sup­port for fam­i­lies and children.