Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

Generational strategies for Quaker outreach

August 5, 2018

From Emi­ly Provance:

An under-45 com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, in con­trast, would most­ly involve social media (Face­book, Insta­gram, Twit­ter, pos­si­bly Tum­blr or Pin­ter­est). Arti­cles would be short and would con­tain most­ly con­tent direct­ly rel­e­vant to the read­er — or, if the con­tent were not direct­ly rel­e­vant, it would be single-story nar­ra­tives with an empha­sis on per­son­al impact. Announce­ments would come out through mes­sen­ger apps or text mes­sages, with a strong ele­ment of user con­trol about which announce­ments to receive and which not. Pho­tos and videos would be used frequently.

I’m always a bit wary of gen­er­a­tional deter­min­ism. I think gen­er­a­tional ideas are more like under­ly­ing trends that get more or less trac­tion over time. And Quak­er dig­i­tal out­reach in par­tic­u­lar has been a thing for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry now. But the under­ly­ing mes­sage — that some peo­ple need to be reached dig­i­tal­ly while oth­ers are still best served by print — is a sound one and I’m glad Emi­ly’s bring­ing it up.

But it’s still kind of sad that we still need to make this kind of argu­ment. I remem­ber hav­ing these dis­cus­sions around an FGC out­reach com­mit­tee table fif­teen years ago: sure­ly we’re all on board about the need for dig­i­tal out­reach in 2018?

The 45-Yard Line

Earlham College seeks to roll back expense budget by a decade after president’s resignation

August 4, 2018

From Inside High­er Ed:

Wor­ries mount that the col­lege has strayed too far from its lib­er­al arts core. Sus­pi­cions run high that col­lege lead­ers reached recent impor­tant deci­sions with­out regard for one of the key gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples root­ed in its Quak­er iden­ti­ty: consensus.

https://​www​.insid​e​high​ered​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​8​/​0​1​/​e​a​r​l​h​a​m​-​c​o​l​l​e​g​e​-​s​e​e​k​s​-​r​o​l​l​-​b​a​c​k​-​e​x​p​e​n​s​e​-​b​u​d​g​e​t​-​d​e​c​a​d​e​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​s​-​r​e​s​i​g​n​a​t​i​o​n​#​.​W​2​I​x​c​z​v​6​v​J​c​.​f​a​c​e​b​ook

What do Quaker believe anyway?

July 19, 2018

Answer quick­ly: what are three things Quak­ers believe? Unless you’ve prac­ticed an answer to this ques­tion, chances are you’ll end up with a lot of umm’s and ahh’s and sen­tences so built up with dis­claimers that your lis­ten­er has to start sen­tence dia­gram­ming just to fig­ure out if you actu­al­ly answered. Arthur Larrabee got frus­trat­ed by the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble task for explain­ing mod­ern Quak­er beliefs and decid­ed to do some­thing about it:

About 9 years ago I began to give voice to a life­long frus­tra­tion of mine. The frus­tra­tion was that I can­not answer the ques­tion “What do Quak­ers believe?” I would always answer the ques­tions some­what defen­sive­ly. I would say, “it’s kind of hard to know what Quak­ers believe, but let me tell you what I believe.” Or I would say, “well, it’s hard to know what Quak­ers believe today but let me tell you what Quak­ers believed at the begin­ning.” Or I would say what I thought Quak­ers believed and I would hope that no one else was lis­ten­ing because I did not want to be overcalled.

I think Arthur does a pret­ty good job tack­ling a very tough task. He bare­ly even men­tions Howard Brin­ton’s “SPICES.”

http://quakerspeak.com/9‑core-quaker-beliefs/

William Penn: commemorations and curios

July 19, 2018

The 300th anniver­sary of William Penn’s death is close at hand and archivists in the British Quak­er library share a post about their col­lec­tion of Penn curios:

The archival mate­r­i­al in the Library relat­ing to William Penn includes prop­er­ty deeds relat­ing to land in Penn­syl­va­nia, such as the one pic­tured below. There are also let­ters from William Penn amongst oth­er people’s papers. One notable exam­ple, dat­ed 13th of 11th month 1690 (13 Jan­u­ary 1691, in the mod­ern cal­en­dar), is a let­ter from him to Mar­garet Fox, for­mer­ly Mar­garet Fell, telling her of the death of her hus­band, George Fox.

William Penn: com­mem­o­ra­tions and curios

It sounds like there have been lots of momen­tos made from the elm tree under which William Penn is said to have signed a treaty with the Lenape in 1683. The Penn Treaty Park muse­um has stir­ring accounts of the storm that tore the tree from its roots in 1810. There were so many rel­ic hunters hack­ing off pieces of the fall­en tree that the own­ers of the prop­er­ty own­ers hired a guard. Their solu­tion was the obvi­ous cap­i­tal­ist one: chop the remain­der up and sell it.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle on the Haver­ford Col­lege site, cut­tings of the orig­i­nal tree were tak­en in its life­time and trees have been prop­a­gat­ed from its lin­eage for a few gen­er­a­tions now. Haver­ford recent­ly plant­ed a “great grand­child” of the orig­i­nal treaty elm on its cam­pus to replace a fall­en grand­child. New­town Meet­ing in near­by Bucks Coun­ty has a great great grand­child.

The idea of Quak­er relics and trees imbued with spe­cial prop­er­ties because of a lin­eage of place­ment does­n’t real­ly jive very well with many Friends’ ideas of the Quak­er tes­ti­monies. But I’m glad that the treaty is remem­bered. The tree had served as a sort of memo­r­i­al; with its demise, a group came togeth­er to more prop­er­ly remem­ber the loca­tion and com­mem­o­rate the treaty.

Dynamics of Evil

July 16, 2018

From Patri­cia Dallmann:

Hold­ing the line, speak­ing the truth is the Christian’s (Quaker’s) oblig­a­tion in the Lamb’s War. If the God of truth is hon­ored in just one mind, heart, and soul, the world is not lost, as Jesus showed us by pro­to­typ­al exam­ple. In this state­ment giv­en before Pilate short­ly before the end of his earth­ly life, Jesus iden­ti­fied his life’s pur­pose not only for him­self but for us all.

https://​patradall​mann​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​7​/​0​1​/​d​y​n​a​m​i​c​s​-​o​f​-​e​v​il/

A Quaker Response to this Moral Crisis

July 3, 2018

A Quak­er Response to this Moral Crisis

Friends are seek­ing ways to respond to the cur­rent refugee cri­sis. One exam­ple is a minute of con­cern recent­ly approved by San­ta Mon­i­ca Meet­ing. Oth­er Friends are tak­ing action by vis­it­ing detainees in the Ade­lan­to Deten­tion Cen­ter. Some are accom­pa­ny­ing refugees in the courts. Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions like FCNL and AFSC are call­ing for com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform and an end to ICE. I am includ­ing this let­ter in hopes of stim­u­lat­ing more dis­cus­sion among Friends (and oth­ers) about what we can do to respond to this lat­est moral crisis. 

https://​laquak​er​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​7​/​r​e​u​n​i​t​e​-​r​e​f​u​g​e​e​-​f​a​m​i​l​i​e​s​-​s​e​p​a​r​a​t​e​d​-​a​t​.​h​tml

Henry Cadbury’s 1934 speech and us

June 28, 2018

In 1934, Philadel­phia Friend and co-founder of the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee Hen­ry Cad­bury gave a speech to a con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can rab­bis in which he urged them to call off a boy­cott of Nazi Ger­many. A New York Times report about the speech was tweet­ed out last week and has gone viral over the inter­net. The 1930s does­n’t look so far away in an era when author­i­tar­i­ans are on the rise and lib­er­als wor­ry about the lines of civil­i­ty and fairness.

Make no mis­take: Cad­bury’s speech is cringe­wor­thy. Some of the quotes as report­ed by the Times:

You can prove to your oppres­sors that their objec­tives and meth­ods are not only wrong, but unavail­ing in the face of the world’s protests and uni­ver­sal dis­ap­proval of the injus­tices the Hitler pro­gram entails.

By hat­ing Hitler and try­ing to fight back, Jews are only increas­ing the sever­i­ty of his poli­cies against them.

If Jews through­out the world try to instill into the minds of Hitler and his sup­port­ers recog­ni­tion of the ideals for which the race stands, and if Jews appeal to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and the Ger­man nation­al con­science, I am sure the prob­lem will be solved more effec­tive­ly and ear­li­er than otherwise.

The idea that we might be able to appease Hitler was obvi­ous­ly wrong-headed. To tell Jews that they should do this is patron­iz­ing to the extreme.

But in many ways, all this is also vin­tage Quak­er. It is in line with how many Friends saw them­selves in the world. To under­stand Cad­bury’s reac­tion, you have to know that Quak­ers of the era were very sus­pi­cious of col­lec­tive action. He described any boy­cott of Nazi Ger­many as a kind of war­fare. They felt this way too about union­iza­tion – work­ers get­ting togeth­er on strike were war­ring against the fac­to­ry owners.

When John Wool­man spoke out about slav­ery in the 1700s, he went one-on-one as a min­is­ter to fel­low Quak­ers. Dur­ing the Civ­il War, Friends wrote let­ters one-on-one with Abra­ham Lin­coln urg­ing him to seek peace (they got some return let­ters too!). Cad­bury naive­ly thought that these sorts of per­son­al tac­tics could yield results against author­i­tar­i­an twentieth-century states.

Miss­ing in Cad­bury’s analy­sis is an appre­ci­a­tion of how much the con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er in indus­tri­al­iz­ing soci­eties and the growth of a man­age­r­i­al class between own­ers and work­ers has changed things. Work­ers nego­ti­at­ing one-on-one with an owner/operator in a fac­to­ry with twen­ty work­ers is very dif­fer­ent than nego­ti­at­ing in a fac­to­ry of thou­sands run by a CEO on behalf of hun­dreds of stock­hold­ers. Ger­many as a uni­fied state was only a dozen years old when Cad­bury was born. The era of total war was still rel­a­tive­ly new and many peo­ple naive­ly thought a rule of law could pre­vail after the First World War. The idea of indus­tri­al­iz­ing pogroms and killing Jews by the mil­lions must have seen fantastical.

Some of this world­view also came from the­ol­o­gy: if we have direct access to the divine, then we can appeal to that of God in our adver­sary and win his or her heart and soul with­out resort to coer­cion. It’s a nice sen­ti­ment and it even some­times works.

I won’t claim that all Friends have aban­doned this world­view, but I would say it’s a polit­i­cal minor­i­ty, espe­cial­ly with more activist Friends. We under­stand the world bet­ter and rou­tine­ly use boy­cotts as a strate­gic lever. Cad­bury’s Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee itself piv­ot­ed away from the kind of direct aid work that had exem­pli­fied its ear­ly years. For half a cen­tu­ry it has been work­ing in strate­gic advocacy.

Friends still have prob­lems. We’re still way more stuck on racial issues among our­selves than one would think we would be giv­en our par­tic­i­pa­tion in Civ­il Rights activism. Like many in the U.S., we’re strug­gling with the lim­i­ta­tion of civil­i­ty in a polit­i­cal sys­tem where rules have bro­ken down. No AFSC head would give a lec­ture like Cad­bury’s today. But I think it’s good to know where we come from. Some of Cad­bury’s cau­tions might still hold lessons for us; under­stand­ing his blind spots could help expose ours.