A profile of William Penn by Andrew Murphy

January 4, 2019

Mur­phy is a polit­i­cal sci­ence prof in New Jer­sey and has writ­ten a new bio of William Penn. I sus­pect this Aeon post is a bit of spon­sored con­tent to pro­mote the book but it’s still worth a read:

Penn was a man of para­dox­i­cal qual­i­ties. He espoused a rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, insist­ing that some­thing divine resided with­in each indi­vid­ual, yet he owned slaves on his Amer­i­can estate. He praised rep­re­sen­ta­tive insti­tu­tions such as par­lia­ment and the jury sys­tem, but spent years in hid­ing for his loy­al­ty to an abso­lutist king. ‘I am like to be an adopt­ed Amer­i­can,’ he wrote short­ly after arriv­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia in 1682, but spent only four of his remain­ing 36 years there. And he was chron­i­cal­ly inca­pable of man­ag­ing mon­ey, spend­ing eight months in an Eng­lish debtors’ prison in his 60s, even while his colony quick­ly became a com­mer­cial success. 

https://​aeon​.co/​i​d​e​a​s​/​h​e​s​-​n​o​t​-​t​h​e​-​g​u​y​-​o​n​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​o​a​t​s​-​h​e​s​-​m​u​c​h​-​m​o​r​e​-​i​n​t​e​r​e​s​t​ing

Somberly dressed men astride horses

October 12, 2018

Colonial-era Quak­ers weren’t all saints when it came to oppos­ing slav­ery but there are some moments we afford to look back to with a smidge of pride. In 1783, a del­e­ga­tion from Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing walked into the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress to make good on all that “cre­at­ed equal” language.

Prince­ton vil­lagers and mem­bers of the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress beheld the arrival of an unusu­al del­e­ga­tion of somber­ly dressed men astride hors­es. They had come from Philadel­phia to raise an issue that the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress did not wish to address: the plight of half a mil­lion Amer­i­can res­i­dents — one-fifth of the peo­ple — who had been lis­ten­ing to mem­o­rable words about inalien­able rights and how Amer­i­ca would ush­er in a new age of free­dom and jus­tice, but who were con­demned along with their chil­dren to life­long slav­ery. The four men car­ried a parch­ment titled “The Address of the Peo­ple Called Quakers.” 

The author, Gary Nash, has a book out about Wal­ter Mif­flin, one of the four, which Friends Jour­nal reviewed this April.

As I recall, the transat­lantic slave trade went into over­drive in the new­ly inde­pen­dent Unit­ed States. If the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress has lis­tened, the com­plex­ion and char­ac­ter and his­to­ry of the U.S. would be far different.
 
https://​paw​.prince​ton​.edu/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​m​o​m​e​n​t​-​n​a​s​s​a​u​-​h​all

Civility Can Be Dangerous

August 15, 2018

From the AFSC’s Lucy Dun­can, a look back at Hen­ry Cad­bury’s now-infamous 1934 speech to Amer­i­can rab­bis and a look at the civil­i­ty debate in mod­ern America.

Stand­ing up for peace means stand­ing on the side of the oppressed, not throw­ing them into the lion’s mouth in the name of civil­i­ty. And inter­rupt­ing racist vio­lence takes more than civ­il dis­course: active dis­rup­tion is need­ed in order for racism to be revealed and dis­man­tled. What good is inef­fec­tive paci­fism? My com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence is about sav­ing lives.

I gave my take on Cad­bury’s speech back in June. I was a lit­tle eas­i­er on Cad­bury, most­ly because I think we need to under­stand the Quak­er world­view out of which he was speak­ing. It’s nev­er good to lec­ture the oppressed on their oppres­sion, but the clas­sic Quak­er idea of speak­ing truth to all sides still holds val­ue and is some­thing I think we miss some­times nowadays.

Quakers minute on the child camps

June 20, 2018

San Anto­nio Quak­ers’ minute on child separations

Friends Meet­ing of San Anto­nio finds the pol­i­cy of the present admin­is­tra­tion of sep­a­rat­ing chil­dren from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der to be shame­ful and con­trary to Amer­i­can val­ues. Fur­ther, using the Gospel to claim that “God has ordained” such actions is appalling to us as a peo­ple of faith.

A few years ago Friends Jour­nal ran an arti­cle on the bor­der human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, co-written by one of San Anto­nio’s clerks, so we’ve added this week­end’s state­ment to the arti­cle for context.

Mafias and chaos

June 19, 2018

I like this inter­view on the Ital­ian mafia by Isaac Chotin­er in Slate, “The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been.”

It seems that this per­pet­u­al cyn­i­cism may be the great­est threat of our era. Is the child of irony? The grand­child of gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? Maybe the cause does­n’t mat­ter as much as the effect.

The mob thrives on chaos. It likes chaos. It likes to be the alter­na­tive author­i­ty that you go to because you can’t get any­thing done through the legit­i­mate state. For that very rea­son, I think there’s no doubt that it pro­motes that chaos. It likes civic dis­trust. It likes cyn­i­cism. It can prof­it from that. I think the great tragedy of Italy is that, to a large extent, it’s kind of succeeded.

I think that if we want­ed to con­struct a Quak­er cri­tique of the cur­rent Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment – and the type of cor­po­ra­tized cor­rup­tion we see in Rus­sia and the pet­rostates, it would best start with the polit­i­cal cul­ture that deny basic facts, gaslight cit­i­zens with ever-changing ratio­nales, and cre­at­ing chaos that can let finan­cial huck­sters reap bil­lions. These are not gov­ern­ments based on integri­ty and fair play­ing fields.

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml