My intro­duc­to­ry col­umn in the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal, regard­ing the light­ning fast deci­sion to file a Quak­er law­suit about immigration:

I think Quak­er busi­ness meet­ings have anoth­er pur­pose: they give us prac­tice in deci­sion mak­ing, and we build trust in one anoth­er. When some­thing extra­or­di­nary comes up that has to be dealt with imme­di­ate­ly, we kick into action using the mus­cle mem­o­ry from all of those Sun­day after­noons spent talk­ing about the finances. Because we’re a reli­gious body that has tak­en the time to know one anoth­er, we can antic­i­pate con­cerns and move sur­pris­ing­ly quickly.

Every­thing is mov­ing crazy fast in the polit­i­cal world these days. That’s the plan, of course: to over­whelm us with the speed at which the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is being dis­man­tled. But we are prac­ticed; we too can respond with stead­fast love and solidarity.

A reminder that you can fol­low my link shares much more quick­ly via my Bluesky account. If you’re there you should def­i­nite­ly fol­low my Quak­ers list for every­thing that Friends are talk­ing about.

I also rec­om­mend Jason Kot­tke’s blog, long one of my favorites, who is turn­ing it over to links and cov­er­age about the coup in progress. Mike Mas­nick has been writ­ing impor­tant stuff about the insan­i­ty of Musk’s twenty-something crew tak­ing over and rewrit­ing pay­ment sys­tems across var­i­ous agen­cies (see, for exam­ple, “A 25-Year-Old Is Writ­ing Back­doors Into The Treasury’s $6 Tril­lion Pay­ment Sys­tem. What Could Pos­si­bly Go Wrong?”)

Pre­pared for This 

How do Quak­ers make swift, faith­ful deci­sions in times of cri­sis? Mar­tin Kel­ley explains the role of trust,…

Friends Journal 

I wrote up a pre­sen­ta­tion that Sarah Clarke and Bo Mén­dez gave about their work with the Quak­er Unit­ed Nations Office.

Quak­ers Learn about Work at the Unit­ed Nations — Crop­well Quakers 

On Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 26, a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Crop­well Friends Meet­ing­house in Marl­ton, N.J., attract­ed near­ly two dozen…

Crop­well Quakers 

Philadelphia-area Friend Tom Gates has start­ed a blog. Tom’s a very ground­ed and thought­ful Friend and I’m glad to know we’ll be see­ing more of his writ­ings. From his intro:

Con­tem­po­rary lib­er­al Friends (Quak­ers), in com­mon with oth­er lib­er­al denom­i­na­tions, have large­ly drift­ed away from the Bible, due in part to its seem­ing sanc­tion of divine vio­lence. Girard, by con­trast, sees the over­com­ing of “sacred vio­lence” as the cen­tral theme of the Bib­li­cal wit­ness, and so can pro­vide the means by which Quak­ers (and oth­ers) might reen­gage with the Scrip­tures. Girard’s claim that the bib­li­cal God has “noth­ing to do with vio­lence” will res­onate with Friends tra­di­tion­al com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence and peace­mak­ing. His insights into “the scape­goat mech­a­nism” can also help us to under­stand the wit­ness of ear­ly Friends, who func­tioned as “the scape­goat caste” in 17th cen­tu­ry England.

Quak­ers and the End of Scape­goat­ing | Tom Gates | Substack 

Part explo­ration of Rene Girard’s ground­break­ing ‘mimet­ic the­o­ry,’ part Bible com­men­tary, and part dia­logue with ear­ly and contemporary…

tgates​.sub​stack​.com

Gra­ham Tay­lor with a well-cited arti­cle on the proto-socialism of ear­ly Friends. There’s a bit of anachro­nis­tic think­ing going on here, which he admits to. But it’s also the case that a lot of Quak­er his­to­ry is viewed through the lens of lat­er Quak­ers and often ignores what was hap­pen­ing out­side of Quak­erism at the time. This can lead to bad his­to­ries. I’m not sure I buy some of Tay­lor’s argu­ments but it’s a good exer­cise and Fox cer­tain­ly did talk about eco­nom­ics as part of his call for justice.

George Fox – The First Quak­er Socialist? 

by Gra­ham Tay­lor. What fol­lows is the lec­ture I deliv­ered to the Quak­er Social­ist Soci­ety on 04 November,…

Quak­er Social­ist Society 

Decem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal is online and looks at “Spir­i­tu­al Opti­mism vs. Spir­i­tu­al Pes­simism.” I wrote the open­ing col­umn this month and explained why I want­ed to see Quak­ers tack­le this. It seems to me that hope and pes­simism are atti­tudes that tran­scend typ­i­cal reli­gious and polit­i­cal divi­sions. Pick a top­ic or dis­sect a social group and you can usu­al­ly find among them peo­ple who are undaunt­ed by the chal­lenges ahead and oth­ers wor­ried to the point of paral­y­sis. Our reac­tions to Covid these past five years have exposed these fault lines, as is our respons­es to the recent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. I wrote:

Has there ever been an age in human his­to­ry in which we could be pure­ly opti­mistic or pure­ly pes­simistic? Quak­er founder George Fox wrote that his min­istry arose “when all my hopes in [preach­ers and expe­ri­enced peo­ple] were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could tell what to do.” He famous­ly found inspi­ra­tion, guid­ance, and courage in “one, even Christ Jesus,” who could speak to his con­di­tion. What keeps us going today in a world always ready to implode or blossom?

Where Do We Find Our Hope? 

Explore how Quak­er prin­ci­ples inspire hope, action, and resilience in times of cli­mate cri­sis and social upheaval, balancing…

Friends Journal