I talked this week with Bar­bara Birch, who has a great arti­cle, The True Last Sum­mer, in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal on George Fox’s view that the final last sup­per was the spir­i­tu­al one found in Rev­e­la­tion 3:20.

As I admit in the author chat inter­view, this is one of my favorite passages:

Lis­ten! I am stand­ing at the door, knock­ing; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me… Let any­one who has an ear lis­ten to what the Spir­it is say­ing to the churches.”

Bar­bara’s using a mod­ern trans­la­tion. I must admit to being fond of the more archa­ic KJV’s “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” What­ev­er the trans­la­tion, I find it a source of com­fort to know that the Heal­er, the Guide, the Christ Spir­it is right there want­i­ng to break bread with us. We are the lost sheep and He is out look­ing for us.

I think we mod­erns some­times believe that the Spir­it’s pres­ence is our midst is a rare occur­rence. We’re a skep­ti­cal peo­ple, ratio­nal and learned. We lock up poten­tial min­istry in sus­pi­cion and apply so many tests to our dis­cern­ment that we some­times fail to act at all. But what if com­mu­nion is just a qui­et knock away? What if the Com­forter is always near? A near­by pas­sage in Rev­e­la­tion says “because you are luke­warm and nei­ther cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” and likens spir­i­tu­al gifts to a refin­er’s fire. “I reprove and dis­ci­pline those whom I love.”

On a warm day last year I was vis­it­ing the very love­ly Barnegat Meet­ing. I had been mulling this pas­sage the week before so laughed inward­ly with delight when I sat down and real­ized the promi­nence of doors on both sides open to the warm weath­er. I almost laughed out loud when a near­by wood­peck­er start­ed its rhyth­mic knock-knock-knock.

The True Last Sup­per: Bar­bara Birch 

A Quak­er author chat. Bar­bara Birch’s “The True Last Sup­per” appears in the June/July 2024 issue of Friends…

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A lot of modern-day Quak­ers like to think that Quak­ers have in all places and all times been clear­ly against all wars (see this recent Red­dit thread for evi­dence). JW at Places to Go blog tells some of the sto­ries that go against this myth.

Enough Quak­ers had qualms about paci­fism in the face of these two great evils that Meet­ings wres­tled with both mem­bers who chose to serve and fight against them, and the ortho­doxy enshrined against fight­ing. What I found most heart warm­ing was the Meet­ings who wel­comed back their vet­er­ans with love and under­stand­ing and for­give­ness. What I found dis­ap­point­ing was those Meet­ings which stripped those vet­er­ans of membership.

I myself am very much a paci­fist. I have faith that the spir­it of Christ will always pro­vide a third way between vio­lence and sur­ren­der. Is this trust war­rant­ed? Backed by polit­i­cal sci­ence or his­to­ry? Prob­a­bly not. My faith is the faith of a child, which my reli­gious tra­di­tion tells me is a mill­stone I should be ready to carry.

But I’m also a human who watch­es hor­rors hap­pen­ing all over the globe. I don’t pre­tend to know any secret prayer that will stop Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine, much less the indis­crim­i­nate ter­ror of Hamas or the mass slaugh­ter being car­ried out by the Israeli Defense Forces. I can share my faith in the Prince of Peace with my fel­low humans but I can’t insist that they not strug­gle with it.

The mod­ern his­to­ry of the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny was shaped in part by the need for mem­bers of the his­toric peace church­es to pass the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for U.S. con­sci­en­tious objec­tion laws dur­ing the World Wars (though if I’m not mis­tak­en Friends helped draft those qual­i­fi­ca­tions). For CO sta­tus one needs to have a sin­cere reli­gious beliefs against all wars, con­text notwith­stand­ing. I was trained as a CO coun­selor many many years ago and this was an impor­tant point to get across (some of this strict­ness has changed over the years and I’m no expert in cur­rent reg­u­la­tions). Puri­ty is a hard stan­dard in the real world when our con­sciences are pricked by the injus­tice we see.

I’ve writ­ten about the peace tes­ti­mo­ny many times, of course, most recent­ly for Friends Jour­nal (“Wrestling with the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny”) and on this blog (“Pre­sent­ing on the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny”).

The Prob­lem with Absolutes: Quak­ers and the Civ­il War 

“Thou shalt not kill” — (unless I tell you to kill your son, Abra­ham!) All after­noon, I have…

his​toric​placessj​.blogspot​.com

Also inter­viewed this month: Matt Rosen, whose dis­tinc­tions between mem­ber­ship and con­vince­ment seem spot-on to our con­di­tion today. Matt’s also part of a group of British young adults plan­ning a very ground­ed con­fer­ence. The Friend pro­filed the orga­niz­ers recent­ly.

Quak­er Mem­ber­ship and Con­vince­ment: Matt Rosen 

A Quak­er author chat. Matt Rosen’s “The Light Will Be Shin­ing at the End of It All: When…

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Steven was *that guy* when he joined Friends, com­bat­ive and judgy about oth­er people’s min­istry. In ret­ro­spect, he wish­es his meeting’s clear­ness com­mit­tee had laid down the line when he joined. Even after talk­ing with him I’m a lit­tle skep­ti­cal and hope they saw some­thing in his ini­tial arro­gance that was ready to be over­turned by Quak­er experience.

Chal­lenges and Gifts in Quak­er Meet­ings: Steven Dale Davison 

A Quak­er author chat. Steven Dale Davi­son’s “Speak­ing to Our Mem­bers’ Con­di­tions” appears in the May 2024 issue…

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It’s so bizarre that some of the peo­ple most rock­ing the old do-no-wrong Quak­er mytholo­gies today are non-Quaker polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives. Exhib­it A has to be Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist Abby Abildness’s obses­sion with William Penn but this week The Wash­ing­ton Post pro­filed “anti-woke” ding­bat Kali Fontanil­la (non pay­walled link).

She told her stu­dents how Quak­ers formed some of the first anti-slavery orga­ni­za­tions in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. How Quak­ers boy­cotted sug­ar, cot­ton and oth­er goods pro­duced through slave labor. She spoke about how Quak­ers lacked offi­cial cler­gy and advo­cat­ed spir­i­tu­al equal­i­ty for men and women.

She did not men­tion that 19th-century slave­hold­ing Quak­ers some­times offered finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion to the enslaved peo­ple they freed. Or that, in 2022, British Quak­ers com­mit­ted to make repa­ra­tions for their past involve­ment in the transat­lantic slave trade and colonialism.

Asked about this, Kali said in an inter­view that she knows not all Quak­ers were per­fect, and that some owned slaves, but that her les­son was meant to give a con­trast and a bal­ance to the “overem­pha­sis” on repa­ra­tions com­ing from the left. She also not­ed that some Quak­ers have become “very left-leaning now.”

So does this mean we’ve ret­conned the Under­ground Rail­road as a right-leaning enter­prise? Per­haps. I think inten­tion­al­ly con­fus­ing polit­i­cal terms like left and right and play­ing dumb about his­to­ry of U.S. polit­i­cal par­ties chang­ing posi­tions is part of the so called “anti-woke” agen­da. It also an attempt to dele­git­imize modern-day Friends who might a) know their his­to­ry (sur­prise!, there were eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Friends advo­cat­ing repa­ra­tions) and b) have well-informed and con­trary opin­ions.

I’m glad the arti­cle does actu­al­ly push back at some of the Fontanil­la’s half-truths but it’s bad jour­nal­ism to put the counter argu­ments near the end of the arti­cle where casu­al read­ers might miss them. 

It’s even worse jour­nal­ism to not have both­ered to inter­view a Quak­er his­to­ri­an. When pro­fil­ing some­one spew­ing inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion, it’s com­mon jour­nal­is­tic prac­tice to let them go on for the first three or so para­graphs — enough time for them to incrim­i­nate them­selves — and then bring in some experts to pro­vide a series of quotes that will take down the pre­ced­ing non­sense. Just a few min­utes on the phone with a legit his­to­ri­an of ear­ly Quak­er slave­hold­ing and abo­li­tion — and some bet­ter pac­ing — would have made this a far bet­ter arti­cle. The main­stream press real­ly needs to com­mit to prac­tice aggres­sive­ly fact-based report­ing, even on throw-away pro­file arti­cles like this, even if it risks being called woke.

As I’ve said many times before, there’s a lot of lot of things to be proud of in Quak­er his­to­ry but we’ve also got­ten a lot of things wrong. Our posi­tions on issues like slav­ery, native rela­tions, and prison reform all have had mixed results. In the past it was com­mon for Friends to over-emphasize and over-mythologize the good, as these modern-day non-Quakers con­tin­ue to do. Nowa­days some Friends over-emphasize the bad his­to­ry, which also has its prob­lems. I think it’s impor­tant to embrace both so we can under­stand how our tra­di­tions have led us to past dis­cern­ments that were rad­i­cal­ly lib­er­a­to­ry and also how our process has back­fired on a num­ber of issues.