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.

I got to talk with fre­quent Friends Jour­nal author John Andrew Gallery this week. His lat­est arti­cle for us explores a gospel mod­el of par­ent­hood. I most appre­ci­at­ed his take that many of the fig­ures in the para­bles were not nec­es­sar­i­ly metaphor­i­cal fill-ins for God but faith­ful peo­ple already liv­ing in the pow­er of the king­dom. I’ll be chew­ing on his take on the prodi­gal son’s for­giv­ing father for awhile.

John Andrew Gallery Inter­view — Friends Journal 

Quak­er author John Andrew Gallery is inter­viewed about his April 2023 arti­cle, “The Gospel Mod­el of Father­ly Love.”

Friends Journal 

There’s a page in Friends Jour­nal with oth­er recent author chats. You can sub­scribe to the Friends Jour­nal YouTube chan­nel and watch inter­views going back to 2011 all our Quak­er Author Chat playlist.

We’re look­ing for arti­cles on rela­tion­ships for the Sep­tem­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal—fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, roman­tic ones, men­tor­ships, or spir­i­tu­al Friends.

Pen­dle Hill’s The Seed pod­cast has a great inter­view with Adria Gulizia this week. Some good stuff. Here’s a sam­ple: “Peti­tions and demands is how the world works. That’s how the polit­i­cal sys­tem works. That’s not how the reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is sup­posed to work. And yet, they felt like the stakes are too high to do things the Quak­er way. ‘We can’t do it the Quak­er way.’ ”

Real­ly great arti­cle in The Verge about the cables that route inter­net traf­fic across the oceans and the peo­ple who keep them in repair. Well writ­ten, amaz­ing­ly illus­trat­ed, with grip­ping per­son­al stories.

A great arti­cle by Mar­celle Mar­tin in this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal: Quak­er Dreams. I love the sto­ry of Mar­garet Fell being pre­pared for the wild entrance of George Fox by way of a dream. And Robert Pyle’s image-rich dream that led him to abo­li­tion­ism is tru­ly amaz­ing. I also appre­ci­ate Mar­t­in’s explo­ration of more recent Quak­er dream work. I inter­viewed her this week in an FJ Author Chat:

The third annu­al fic­tion issue is avail­able on the mag­a­zine’s web­site. From my introduction:

I remem­ber a friend once telling me if you do some­thing once, it’s a weird thing you do. Do it again, it’s a trend. Do it three times and it’s a tra­di­tion every­one expects you to repeat till the end of time. This is Friends Jour­nal’s third Novem­ber fic­tion issue in a row. I guess this is a thing we do now.

It’s not imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous that we should be in this game. Quak­ers have had tes­ti­monies against read­ing made-up sto­ries. They’re a waste of time. We’re “Friends of the Truth” after all, a con­cept tak­en quite lit­er­al­ly and some­times to extremes by ear­ly Quak­ers. Colo­nial Penn­syl­va­nia Quak­ers half-heartedly con­duct­ed a witch tri­al (pop­u­lar leg­end has it that after a defen­dant admit­ted to fly­ing on broom­sticks, William Penn dis­missed the case with the argu­ment that he knew “no law what­ev­er against it.”). A cen­tu­ry lat­er, abo­li­tion­ist trav­el­ing min­is­ter John Wool­man tried to shut down a mag­ic show in his home town of Mount Hol­ly, N.J., for encour­ag­ing superstitions.

But some­times fic­tion reveals deep­er truths that sim­ple report­ing can’t touch. Good sto­ry­telling can pro­duce pow­er­ful para­bles, sim­ple sto­ries that stay with us and guide us. And with a touch of mag­ic, it can hint at the mys­ter­ies of worship.

From The Truth of Untruth, my intro­duc­tion to the Novem­ber 2023 issue.

The first fea­tured short sto­ry is Annalee Flower Horne’s Refuse All Their Col­ors, an alter­na­tive his­to­ry of 1777 Val­ley Forge in which the Friends liv­ing in the area have a lit­tle extra skillset. Once you’ve read it you can watch my inter­view with Annalee, which I found par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. Annalee has made a deep dive into the his­tor­i­cal record of the Friends com­mu­ni­ty in Val­ley Forge and is quite con­fi­dent that the only made-up part of the sto­ry is the fan­ta­sy ele­ments and the imme­di­ate dialogue.