Reddit AMA on American Revolutionary-era persecutions

June 18, 2018

Over on Red­dit, his­to­ri­an Jason Agli­et­ti hosts an Ask-Me-Anything about eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er his­to­ry in Mary­land. There’s some good dis­cus­sion about the ways the largely-neutral Quak­er pop­u­la­tion was treat­ed in var­i­ous colonies, espe­cial­ly Mary­land, which is Agli­et­ti’s focus.

“The Friends They Loathed” was defend­ed in April 2018 and exam­ined a chap­ter of Mary­land his­to­ry that had nev­er been explored in detail before — the reli­gious per­se­cu­tion against Quak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Despite being a his­to­ri­an of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, I hold no reli­gious beliefs.

[delet­ed by user]
by inQuak­ers

Wikileaks Whistleblower is Arrested

June 7, 2010

The NYTimes is report­ing that a mil­i­tary ana­lyst who leaked the “Col­lat­er­al Mur­der” videos to Wik­ileaks has been arrested. 

atwar-wikileaks-blogSpanIf you missed the leaks at the time, you can watch them at Col​lat​eral​Mur​der​.com. They are videos tak­en from the gun-sights of US heli­copters, com­plete with the com­men­tary from mil­i­tary per­son­nel fir­ing down into the Iraqi neigh­bor­hoods below them. The videos cap­ture the killing of civil­ians, includ­ing two Reuters jour­nal­ists. They show just how imper­son­al mur­der has become. This is a video game war and there’s no real con­se­quence to shoot­ing the wrong tar­get from thou­sands of feet away.

The arrest­ed sol­dier is Spe­cial­ist Bradley Man­ning, 22, of Potomac, Md. Motives for leak­ing the videos are unre­port­ed at this time, but one would sus­pect they include a moral revul­sion to what the Amer­i­can war has become. The war has large­ly been fought out of sight. Man­ning has helped give us a glimpse of what’s hap­pen­ing. It’s hor­rif­ic in its banal­i­ty but so is the war in Iraq.

QuakerQuakers in the World

January 19, 2010

I was able to make up this list that displays Quak​erQuak​er​.org membership profiles and upcoming gatherings in a geography-focused way.

Countries

Aus­tralia
Bel­gium
Cana­da
France
Ger­many
Greece
Ire­land
Kenya
Mex­i­co
Nether­lands
New
Zealand

Unit­ed
Kingdom

Unit­ed
States

Select Cities

Lon­don

Philadelphia


New York


Richmond


Greensboro


Portland


Seattle


Birmingham


Boston


Minneapolis


San Francisco

U.S. Regions

New
England


Mid-Atlantic


South­east US


Great Plains


Southwest


Midwest


North Pacific

U.S. States

Alaba­ma
Alas­ka
Ari­zona
Arkansas
Cal­i­for­nia
Col­orado
Con­necti­cut
Delaware
Dis­trict
of Columbia

Flori­da
Geor­gia
Hawaii
Ida­ho
Illi­nois
Indi­ana
Iowa
Kansas
Ken­tucky
Louisiana
Maine
Mary­land
Mass­a­chu­setts
Michi­gan
Min­neso­ta
Mis­sis­sip­pi
Mis­souri
Mon­tana
Nebras­ka
Neva­da
New
Hampshire

New
Jersey

New
Mexico

New
York

North
Carolina

North
Dakota

Ohio
Okla­homa
Ore­gon
Penn­syl­va­nia
Puer­to
Rico

Rhode
Island

South
Carolina

South
Dakota

Ten­nessee
Texas
Utah
Ver­mont
Vir­ginia
Wash­ing­ton
West
Virginia

Wis­con­sin
Wyoming

Gatherings by Theme

Con­ver­gent
Year­ly
Meetings


Gatherings

Retreats
Online

Young Adult

Gatherings by Location

New
England


Unit­ed Kingdom


Mid Atlantic


Baltimore


Philadelphia


Great Plains


Northwest

Ohio

FGC Gathering Workshop

January 29, 2005

This fall Zachary Moon and I put togeth­er a work­shop pro­pos­al for the 2005 Gath­er­ing, which has been approved: “Strangers to the Covenant” is the title and here’s the short description:

This is for young Friends who want to break into the pow­er of Quak­erism: it’s the stuff you did­n’t get in First Day School. We’ll con­nect with his­tor­i­cal Quak­ers whose pow­er­ful min­istry came in their teens and twen­ties and we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order togeth­er to build a move­ment that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quak­er his­to­ry to reclaim the pow­er of our tra­di­tion, to explore the liv­ing pow­er of the tes­ti­monies and our wit­ness in the world.

This was very much an “as way opens” process. At the 2004 Gath­er­ing I felt sad that there weren’t more work­shops that I’d like to attend. And obvi­ous­ly I have a long-standing con­cern to sup­port younger Friends. But I was­n’t sure if I had the skills to han­dle this. One piece of dis­cern­ment was lead­ing the Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing: I knew I would have most of the ses­sions under my belt by the time the work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line came around and I hoped I’d have a feel whether I actu­al­ly like lead­ing workshops!

The Med­ford expe­ri­ence was sur­pris­ing­ly good, even on weeks where I could have been bet­ter pre­pared. I learned a lot and gained con­fi­dence in “teach­ing” Quak­erism to Med­ford’s class of very weighty, expe­ri­enced Friends.

Still, the Gath­er­ing work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line was loom­ing and I had no spe­cif­ic top­ic in mind. Julie, my wife, was get­ting a lit­tle sus­pi­cious whether the work­shop would hap­pen or not. I knew that the most impor­tant thing was attract­ing the right mix of eager, curi­ous par­tic­i­pants and that for me the top­ic was almost sec­ondary. Still: a focus and top­ic is impor­tant, yes.

The week before the dead­line, I attend­ed the FGC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee meet­ing in New Wind­sor, Mary­land, as a staff­per­son. In a lunchtime dis­cus­sion I learned that my friend Zachary Moon was also con­sid­er­ing lead­ing his first work­shop. As soon as we sat down and start­ed talk­ing it seemed like the obvi­ous thing to do. The dis­cern­ment to co-lead this took two a half sec­onds or so, but of course this quick process was built on the thought, prayer and dis­cern­ment both of us had already been giv­ing the mat­ter. I’ve found that when I’ve laid the ground­work for a deci­sion, things can often move supris­ing­ly quickly.

The work­shop has devel­oped dif­fer­ent­ly than I sus­pect­ed. The most sig­ni­cant piece is its age lim­i­ta­tion: it’s for high school and adult young Friends only, mean­ing it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion is lim­it­ed to 15 to 35 years olds. I’ve always been a lit­tle wor­ried about con­struct­ing youth ghet­tos but I think it will work in this case. I apol­o­gize in advance to those Quak­er Ranter read­ers who might like to take it but can’t because of age (I’m too old myself, after all!). There will be many oth­er chances to spend time at Gath­er­ing and Zachary and I are only a part of a shift that’s been hap­pen­ing at the FGC Gath­er­ing over the last few years.