Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ Virginia
Christian peacemaker Teams News
March 23, 2006
On Saturday, November 26, 2005 four members of “Christian peacemakers Teams”:www.cpt.org were abducted in iraq. On March 20th the body of American Quaker Tom Fox was found; on March 23rd, the remaining three hostages were freed by U.S. and British military forces.
Here at Nonviolence.org, we have always been impressed and highly supportive of the deep witness of the Christian peacemakers Teams. Their members have represented the best in both the peace and Christian movements, consistently putting themselves in danger to witness the gospel of peace. Not content to write letters or stand on pickett lines in safe western capitals, they go to the frontlines of violence and proclaim a radical alternative.
While we can be grateful for the release of the three remaining hostages, we should continue to remember the 43 foreign hostages still being held in iraq and the 10 – 30 iraqis reportedly taken hostage each and every day. As iraq slips into full-scale civil war we must also organize against the war-mongerers, both foreign and internal and finde ways of standing alongside those iraqis who want nothing more than peace and freedom.
Here’s links to recent articles on the situation: https://delicious.com/martin_kelley/news.cpt-four.foxmemorial
And a personal note from Nonviolence.org’s Martin Kelley: I myself am a Christian and Quaker and one of our folks, Tom Fox, of Langley Hill (Virginia) Friends Meeting is among the hostages. I don’t know Tom personally but over the last few days I’ve learned we have many Friends in common and they have all testified to his deep committment to peace. Some of the links above are more explicitly Quaker than most things I post to Nonviolence.org, but they give perspective on why Tom and his companions would see putting themselves in danger as an act of religious service. I am grateful for Tom’s current witness in iraq – yes, even as a hostage – but I certainly hope he soon comes back to his family and community and that the attention and witness of these four men’s ordeal helps to bring the news of peace to streets and halls of Baghdad, Washington, London and Ottawa.
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FGC Gathering program is up, whew…
March 23, 2005
Thank you to everyone who refrained from commenting after 9pm last night. I finally slogged through the work of putting the FGC Gathering program online in my role as FGC webmaster. Whoo-whee! For those who don’t know, the Gathering is a week-long conference held at different locations each summer: this year’s takes place Seventh Month 2 – 9 in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Now I guess it’s time to think about workshops. Zach Moon and I are offering up one called “Strangers to the Covenant” but then you know that already. Liz Oppenheimer aka the The Good Raised Up is leading one called “Quaker Identity: Yearning, Forming, Deepening” that I suspect will be informed by her “own experience of stepping into a Quaker identity”. There’s also an exciting history workshop being led by Betsy Cazden, “Dilemmas from Our Quaker Past” (I have to admit when I saw the listing I wondered if I should call Zach up and assure him he’d be fine doing the Strangers workshop on his own so I could take Betsy’s). Other mentions: my wife Julie really liked the Lynn Fitz-Hugh workshop she took a few years ago.
As always there are workshops whose leaders I know to be more solid and grounded than the workshop they’re proposing; conversely, there are workshops that sound more interesting than I know their leader to be. Like always there are plenty whose appeal and/or relevance to Quakerism I just don’t comprehend at all, but that’s the Gathering.
Any recommendations from the peanut gallery? I should say that I’d like to refrain from ridiculing all of the workshops that beg to be made fun of. It feels as if this would edge too close to detraction. We will only get to Kingdom by modeling Christian charity and wearing our love on our sleeves.
Visit with Christian Friends Conference & New Foundation Fellowship
March 15, 2004
In late January 2004, I went to a gathering on “Quaker Faith and Practice: The Witness of Our Lives and Words,” co-sponsored by the Christian Friends Conference and the New Foundation Fellowship. Here are some thoughts about the meeting.