A Friendly Letter, The Blog.

I’ve been reading the book, “118 Days,” published by Christian Peace Teams, about the kidnapping of four CPTers in Baghdad in November 2005. One of the four, Quaker (and my friend) Tom Fox, was murdered in early March of 2006; the other three were rescued on March 23, 2006 by British commandos.
There is important material here for reflection, for all of us, and especially by Young Adult Friends who are weighing how to uphold and carry on the tradition they are inheriting. What was highlighted by the extremity of the situation described here, has its echoes in more mundane situations where silence and invisibility are are demanded, but without similar justification.

It’s always hard to read about Tom Fox’s death, and let me never forget him and his sacrifice. That said, I want to focus here on someone else. In this reading, two chapters in the book leaped out. They were about the Canadian captive, Jim Loney, who’s gay, and what his being gay meant in this life and death saga.

What’s clear now is that if Tom Fox had not been killed, Loney’s plight and its ramifications would have been the big story of this case. And Like Tom’s, Jim’s story transcends the specifics of his kidnapping.

The two chapters which deal with this story are by Dan Hunt, who had been Jim’s partner for more than ten years in 2005; and by William Payne, one of their gay friends. Payne is part of a community of LGBTs and their supporters, centered in Toronto, among whom Jim and Dan lived. The couple, like the community generally, had been publicly out for years.

Dan Hunt, Jim Loney’s
partner & spouse

The impact of these chapters grows out of the gruesomely undeniable fact that by 2005 in Iraq, gays were being hunted down and murdered, brutally and with impunity. (They still are.) Many reports have documented this ongoing reign of terror, which is one of many tragic outcomes of the US invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

A gay Iraqi exile, Ali Hili, who launched the website Iraqi LGBT said of this:

“Homosexuality was generally tolerated under Saddam. There certainly was no danger of gay people being assassinated in the street by police. Since his overthrow, the violent persecution of gays and lesbians is commonplace. Life in Iraq now is hell for all LGBT people; no one can be openly gay and alive.”

Corpses of alleged homosexuals in Baghdad;
many more similar photos are on the web

That’s what was happening in November 2005, three years into the US occupation. So a few days after the kidnapping, when a Toronto TV reporter came knocking at the door where Jim and Dan lived, saying, “I’m looking for Jim Loney’s partner,” a housemate did not mince words:

“’If you mention in your story that Jim might be gay, whether he is or not, you’ll get him killed.’ It was time to be blunt,” Payne writes, “and it worked.”

The reporter protested, no doubt truthfully, that neither she nor her employers were homophobic. And it was no secret in Toronto that Jim and Dan were a same sex couple. But that wasn’t the point; and the reporter soon backed off. That was only a beginning. To make the silence about Jim and Dan stick, Payne notes, “our collective return to the closet began.”

At first, Dan Hunt writes,

“my public disappearance seemed like an inconsequential strategic decision, one that would be easy to bear. I was responding to homophobia that was far away, in Iraq. It wasn’t real. How quickly that changed.”

An essentially false identity had to be constructed and then maintained:

“Publicly, Jim became known as an upstanding Christian boy and community-worker from a typical, small-town all-Canadian nuclear family. It was the only picture of him that was safe to portray. I, and everyone connected to me, including the community Jim and I began with William [Payne] in 1990, had to be erased if Jim was to have any chance of surviving.”

The erasing was done in very concrete ways. Needing a photo of Jim for CPT to give the media, they settled on one taken the night before Jim left for Baghdad. “It was my favorite photo from that night,” a friend recalled, Jim with his arm around Dan’s shoulder, both smiling, with Jim’s head tilted toward Dan’s head.”

But Dan had to go. He was literally cut from the photo. A CPT staffer who was there said,

“The defining moment for me as a queer woman during the crisis was when Dan’s image was cut out of that loving photo . . . . I watched the process of photo editing from my desk, and cried quietly. In the days that followed I worked ferociously to protect Dan, and Jim’s relationship, from an already knowledgeable media. At the same time, my active role in making Dan invisible broke my heart.”

Another gay man who was present when the photo was taken said he

“found something in the photo to hold onto. ‘I noticed . . .a little red triangle in the bottom right corner, Dan’s shirt. I thought, ‘There’s Dan. You’re silent, you’re invisible, but there’s the visibility.’ It was the weirdest thing. I don’t know why but it comforted me to know that even though Dan was cut out of the picture – at least to the few who knew—that little bit of red shirt was actually Dan. That was beautiful to me.”

The photo at left was released to the media and published around the world.

To be effective, this “re-closeting” and becoming invisible extended well beyond Jim and Dan.

“For the sake of Jim’s safety, those who love him took great pains to reconstruct the closet walls he had so painstakingly torn down a decade ago . . .” Payne wrote. “Reversing years of closet dismantling is hard to do, but we were amazingly successful.

“Gay, lesbian and bisexual people used the gifts of their lives to do whatever could be done in a situation where there was very little to do. We are used to surviving despite the closet. Though it’s not a place we want to go, we know how to craftily navigate the waters of deception when we need to protect life and limb, and we did it again for four months.”

While necessary, this invisibility was a destructive burden.

“The media is very powerful,” Dan wrote. “It shapes the way we view the world and the way we experience ourselves in it. Though I knew a myth was being created, it was difficult not to let the myth have the power of truth. Media coverage of the kidnapping was so intense that not being included in it began to annihilate me — especially because my behind-the-scenes experiences often paralleled my public disappearance. . . .
When I went downtown for the vigil following Tom [Fox's] death, I watched from a distance of a hundred yards until the vigil was well under way. The media were there and so were my friends. I did not want them to pay undue attention to me in front of the media. The myth became my reality over and over. I could not exist, therefore I did not exist.”

But then it seemed to be over.

“In the end,” Dan Hunt wrote, “Jim came home to all of us who love him.”

Dan was there to greet him at the Toronto airport, and walked with him, finally, to face the press openly and together.

But there was a bittersweet tinge to the moment:

“I sometimes wonder,” Dan wrote, “if the diminishment and debasement I endured would have been washed away in a single moment, had Jim and I held hands, walking towards the thousand cameras, when he arrived home at the airport, or if we’d embraced in front of everyone. But we didn’t. It would have been unnatural for us. Our own coming out hadn’t brought us that far. The terrible violence of being silenced was more dominant than the freedom we had thus far acquired.

‘Silence equals death.’ It was the rallying cry of the queer community as it faced the AIDS crisis. It’s a statement of truth. Non-recognition, disappearance, invisibility, are violence that can eradicate one’s very being.”

For William Payne, his chapter of “118 Days”

“is about queerness and about how the sexual orientation of one of the four CPTers kidnapped in Iraq must be seen as an intrinsic, even central part of the story.” Indeed, “. . .the narrative of the hostage-taking is incomplete without an account of how homophobia played a leading role in this drama.”

And in some concrete ways, the ordeal was not over. Both Payne and Dan Hunt report that along with the jubilation following Jim’s return home, there was a homophobic backlash.

This negative report is underlined by the note, “Why We Are Self-Publishing,” at the front of the book: First one, and then a second church-related publishing house agreed to print this book for CPT, but both later demanded that sections about Jim and Dan be deleted. More silence, more invisibility. When CPT refused, the publishers dropped the project.

“Sadly,” the CPT editors conclude, “what neither publisher seems to recognize is that their editing requirements are part of the same system of homophobia that threatened Jim’s life while he was in captivity, and subsequently condemned Dan to invisibility.”

My hat is off to CPT for standing up to this renewed call to re-closeting and silencing. It is an example that applies to issues beyond gender, and I hope others will remember and live up to it, especially Friends who are headed to Wichita this weekend.

Julian Brelsford is a Philadelphia YAF who is planning to attend the Wichita YAF conference. He’s been cited here before, in a roundup post with several pieces of feedback to earlier posts here about the conference, its dress code, other rules, and general framework.

A few days ago he followed up with the following email. Below the text, I’ll interpolate some comments:

Subject: Re: yaf gathering is addicted to sin?

Chuck,

I want to request that if you leave my e-mail to you up on your blog, you add something to it:

Chuck, when i started to write to you, I was pretty angry. People who matter to me felt very much that they were being judged by you, in what you had to say about them.

To some degree, this matter has reinforced a reputation you already had: people see you as one seriously angry dude. A lot of people.

The “other” branches of Quakers have no monopoly on judgment, hate, anger. They’re not exactly like us, but they’re searching for the same spirit we’re searching for, and they are no more nor less sinful than we are.

I’ll be straight up with you. Part of my interest in attending the YAF conference is to evangelize. To evangelize a message of respect for every human being. To evangelize a message about overcoming anger with love. How can I not, then hope that “our” Quakers will love a tradition in the Quaker faith that loves evangelism?

You can’t kill the devil with a gun or a sword. You can’t kill hate with hate, and you can’t kill anger with anger.

Be the change you wish to see in the world (of Quakers). Overcome anger with love.

Now the text with comments:

<< I want to request that if you leave my e-mail to you up on your blog, you add something to it:

Chuck, when i started to write to you, I was pretty angry. >>

Props to you, Julian, for saying so.

<< People who matter to me felt very much that they were being judged by you, in what you had to say about them. >>

Not sure who you’re talking about, Julian, or what; it appears they haven’t been prepared to speak for themselves. And if you’re speaking for them, it’s too vague for a response. Except this: if it relates to the Wichita YAF conference, my judgments were about things rather than people: especially the infantilizing and repressive dress code and exclusionary framework.

Yep, I judged those things, for sure. The people who wrote them, I’d say not so much. And without any specifics to deal with, there’s little more to add to that.

Julian continues,

<< To some degree, this matter has reinforced a reputation you already had: people see you as one seriously angry dude. A lot of people. >>

Hmmm. “A lot of people” who are unidentified, I note again.

All too familiar. Such ad hominem discounting is frequent in the passive-aggressive Quaker culture, particularly in its self-styled “elite” circles (some of which are close by there in Philadelphia). The exchange goes like this:

Lucretia Mott: Sir, slavery is wrong.

Slaveowner: You’re just angry, madam.

Lucretia: Sir, I was talking about slavery: it’s wrong.

Slaveowner: Madam, you are one seriously angry woman.

Etc.


That’s about the size of it, Julian. Lame and evades the point. But some general thoughts about anger are in order, in a moment.

Julian continues:

<< The "other" branches of Quakers have no monopoly on judgment, hate, anger. >>

I agree with this. Were you implying that I think otherwise? If so, where did such a notion come from? Not from me. I’ve written extensively about various follies of “my” branch of Quakers. Have you ever read any of that?

<< They're not exactly like us, but they're searching for the same spirit we're searching for, and they are no more nor less sinful than we are. >>

I agree in part, but this is too general for my liking. No doubt many of these “others” are seeking the same spirit; yet I’ve run into some who, as best I can tell, are searching for something quite different. (Is it better or worse? I go case by case.) Also, while I agree that all of us Quakers are sinners (being quite “orthodox” in that respect), the actual “sinfulness” level among Friends varies; group characterizations are too close to stereotypes (cf. Titus 1:11-13).

Julian goes on:

<< I'll be straight up with you. Part of my interest in attending the YAF conference is to evangelize. >>

Okay. In this connection, let me quote from a post on your FB page, in which you wrote:

<<< “'I'm going to say a bad word. A word that could get me in trouble with all kinds of people.

Some of them want to judge me for it.

So I'm going to [Wichita]. . . And, child of the liberal Quaker tradition that I am... part of my interest in attending the YAF conference is to EVANGELIZE. '” >>>

[Julian's emphasis.]

Who is it you think you’ll be “in trouble” with for using this term? Or says it’s a “bad word”? Or will “judge” you for it (adversely I presume; I doubt you’d mind favorable judgments)?

Whoever, it’s not me. I’m all for liberal Quaker evangelism, with a track record to back it up. Check out my page, “The Quaker GOP”. It’s pretty primitive, but then it was uploaded in the last century – heck, the last millennium. That’s how long I’ve been urging liberal Quakes to get off the evangelistic dime. So we should be on the same page here.

Julian continues:

<< In your earlier note, you [Chuck] speak of [wanting] To evangelize a message of respect for every human being. To evangelize a message about overcoming anger with love. How can I not, then hope that "our" Quakers will love a tradition in the Quaker faith that loves evangelism? >>

Hey, go for it. And as a longtime pro-evangelist, I’m expecting you to come back from Wichita with a pocketful of “Decisions For Mott,” hallelujah! (Lucretia was probably the last great public evangelist for liberal Quakerism; and she was a doozy. Check her out here.)

Now Julian’s conclusion:

<< You can't kill the devil with a gun or a sword. You can't kill hate with hate, and you can't kill anger with anger.

Be the change you wish to see in the world (of Quakers). Overcome anger with love. >>

This is a litany of cliches, plus what sound like passive aggressive slurs and name-calling, associating my posts with “killing, guns, swords, and hate.” But it brings us back to anger.

Aristotle was not a Christian, but he nailed it anyway, in his “Nicomachean Ethics:

“The man who is angry at the right things and with the right people, and, further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought, is praised. This will be the good-tempered man, then, since good temper is praised. For the good-tempered man tends to be unperturbed and not to be led by passion, but to be angry in the manner, at the things, and for the length of time, that the rule dictates . . . .”

Almost as good is this contemporary reflection, “Have You Hugged Your Anger Today?”

That’s the change I’d like to see in Quakerism.

There’s been more discussion of the Wichita YAF Conference and its framework/dress code issues than you might think, if you looked to the self-styled “convergent Quaker” website, from which critical messages have been banned. That reaction is a telling one; and in the age of the internet, a largely futile one as well.

While some points below are made rather pungently, the overall message is simple enough: lighten up, planners. Let go of this fiction of “welcoming” everyone inside a sectarian and discriminatory frame. Get over this immature business of banning anyone who questions you.

But let these Friends speak for themselves: Here are several comments that have come to me, with a few brief responses.

CAUTION! There are images and language below that would not be permitted at the YAF Conference. I also suspect that at least one of these folks was wearing a Speedo when they wrote.

Friends are advised.

Hi Chuck,

I recently met you for the first time at the QUIP conference in Richmond, IN. I’ve been reading up on your postings about the Wichita YAF conference and you really speak my mind, Friend. Thank you for publicly writing about the expectations put forward by the conference planners, I don’t see anyone else doing it.

I am going to the conference, along with other “liberal” YAFs from my Quaker college. We aren’t going to be dissenters but to help to develop a mix of voices and perspectives at the table and to take part in the conversation.

I think Emma Goldman said it best when she said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” To me this means if I can’t be my true self (be that a LGBTQ, Liberal, Non-Christian or Non-theist YAF etc.), I don’t want to be a part of your movement.

In Peace,
(name withheld on request)

Emma Goldman.
Her clothes might pass muster, but she’s still not invited.
The problem? No interest in volleyball; and she insists on dancing.

From Deb Fuller:

First of all, I am saddened that I am now too old to be considered a “YAF”.

Rules like the ones posted for the YAF conference really burn my cookies. It reminds me of the young adult retreats my old fundie church used to try to get me to go to. I thought those rules were ridiculous back then too. Adults need to be treated like adults. It’s one thing if the site doesn’t allow alcohol or sex but it’s Buy retrovir another to impose it on a group of adults, esp. Quakers.

Burnt cookies. Sorry, Deb. We all have to compromise somewhere.

These little tidbits really got to me, “We’ll need clear boundaries, self-discipline, and accountability to each other,” and “We do have to hold each other accountable.”

That is “fundy-speak” or “Christianese”. I’ve never heard Quakers use these words before in this type of context. Accountable to whom? For what? This is not an AA meeting.

Also, if I was going to this conference, it would make me wonder how much I was going to be preached at. If they are telling me that I can’t wear certain clothes, drink certain drinks, or carry out relations with a committed partner in the privacy of our own room, what else are they going to try and impose on me? It just sets a bad tone for the whole conference.

It’s not the person but the act of questioning. They’re in control. How dare anyone question their rules?

After poking around on the Friends U website, it is very much a “Christian” college and doesn’t sound anything like a Quaker college any more. Friends U just screams “WE’RE CHRISTIAN”. People who wear their Christianity on their sleeve tend to be very insecure underneath it all. Insecurity breeds control issues and stupid rules. Making those rules is essentially a powerplay. The organizers want to be in control. Being a Quaker gathering, it is hard to gain control given our lack of dogma so they make stupid rules to control behavior.

So anyone who is going to challenge those rules is in essence, challenging their control. Insecure people will never be rational in their response to being challenged. They’ll either just quote Bible verses out of context or if they can’t quote Bible verses, they’ll prove that they’re in control by cutting the offending person out in whichever way they can, i.e. deleting posts, asking people to leave or otherwise cutting them out entirely. Sadly, seen it happen way too many times.

Oh and after reading your post again and Chuck’s post, I can honestly say that I can dress someone like a total skank and totally stay within the YAF conference guidelines. Just sayin’.

“Not in that skanky getup, dude.
Talk to me after the YAF Conference.
Nothing personal, man — just holding you accountable.”

Ben Schultz:

I read your post on a friendly letter.
Shit Chuck —–
Will you marry me?
( In a literary sort of way)
Thank you from the bottom of my heart or any other organ you might think of, for bothering to stand up for me, for bothering to do it so gently. With such rigor and panache….
Is someone paying you for this?
It’s priceless work. We mustn’t cheat ourselves.
All right I’ll buy the dang books.

Love Ben Schultz
La Jolla Meeting

Okay, Ben – but only in a literary way . . . . And you gotta buy the books FIRST, because alas, nobody is paying me for this.

Subject: Re: yaf gathering is addicted to sin?

2010/5/10 From: Julian Brelsford

Chuck Fager,

My name’s Julian Brelsford. I’m a member of Central Philadelphia Quaker meeting, and a young adult planning to attend the Wichita, KS YAF gathering this year. 

I was hearing a few different people talk about your recent blog posts on this topic. I resonate with your admonition to liberal quakers to avoid being spineless. Too often we are vague and indecisive when it comes to addressing violence and injustice. 

It appears that the liberal Quakers planning this conference have been a little too spineless and indecisive about the topic of affirming gays and lesbians, and treating young adults like we are adults, doesn’t it?

There’s some phrases that a lot of people on the more conservative side of Quakerism like, [one is] about being addicted to sin. This is a real problem - treatment of gays, lesbians, and young people in many ways mirrors addiction. It’s bad, a lot of people know it’s bad, and the folks who are in the thick of it can’t think straight and can’t give up their addictions.

What they need is contact with folks who can help them get over their addiction. We wouldn’t approach an alcoholic about addiction by telling him how bad he is. 

Let’s approach these folks by talking to them about acknowledging the hurt they are causing, and how stuck they are in their ways, and THEN focusing not on the bad but on the good - how can we approach things differently? How can we love our enemies, and how can they love their enemies?

Never be spineless, but have peace like a river in your soul,

Julian Brelsford

Two pieces in “Spirit Rising deal with the phenomenon known as “Convergent Friends,” a loose network of people, mostly younger than fifty, talking across various traditional divisional lines: “Convergent Friends as New Jazz Traditionalists,” by Chad Stephenson of San Francisco Meeting; and “Convergent Friendship and Playing with the Quaker ‘Other’” by C. Wess Daniels, pastor of Camas Friends Church in Northwest Yearly Meeting.

Stephenson’s piece draws an elaborate set of parallels between the convergents and “New Jazz,” epitomized in the career of virtuoso jazz trumpeter and innovator Wynton Marsalis.

Stephenson:

Chad Stephenson

Stephenson describes Marsalis’s career as one which has combined the best of many older traditions in jazz, and even some music from outside jazz (i.e., classical trumpet pieces) with new ideas of his own to lead a renewal of jazz after a period of serious decline, reinvigorating its creative vitality and rebuilding its audience.

(Not being a jazz fan, I can’t judge this account, and will stipulate to Stephenson’s version.)

Wynton Marsalis

Then Stephenson sketches his analogy:

“Convergent Friends are being offered a chance to bring alive the variances of Quaker faith through correlation of he roots of its past. By knowing one another’s faith traditions and seeing common roots, convergent Friends can build a web of support to nurture a future together.”

One hopes he is right. But I detect a lapse, a lacuna, in the analogy: the convergent discussions are happening – but where is our Wynton Marsalis, the commanding virtuoso of this projected renewal?

Says Stephenson:

“Marsalis offers Quakers a model for evangelism that is unique. He demonstrated that a revival an occur through mastering the roots of tradition with rigorous study, practice, cultivation, and showcasing new talent alongside weightier members of the community.” The obvious internal model for this is George Fox; but as Stephenson asks, where is the “one person who so embodies the Spirit that encapsulates Quakerism’s core, where disparate groups can unite?”

Where indeed? One can be hopeful about the “convergent” conversations, but if there is a Quaker Wynton Marsalis emerging therefrom, I have yet to learn about him/her. The vacuum for this person to fill, in my view, yawns widest in the matter of the “mastering the roots” and history to be plumbed and renewed. Current US Quaker culture, certainly on the liberal side, is deeply, doggedly ignorant of Quaker history and “roots,” and in my experience, often proudly anti-intellectual about both, as described here. There are parallel trends in much of the pastoral, I’m-a-Christian-first-and-foremost-then-a-Quaker-if-I-have-time “Friends church” population.

BTW this embedded ignorance is no respecter of age or region, so this barb is not aimed at the “convergents” more than anyone else; it is an equal opportunity Quaker scandal.

The convergent discussions I’ve observed so far (mainly online) have been modestly interesting. But they don’t yet seem to be yielding many signs of this deep engagement. Which is no surprise; it’s hard work, as I’m sure Marsalis could show from his own career.

Maybe the Quaker Marsalis is out there, and either hasn’t yet made a breakout debut –or has, but news has not yet reached our obscure corner of Carolina. Either way, I hope we’ll soon see unmistakable evidence. Extended chatter, especially online, is easy to proliferate, but is no substitute for substance.

C. Wess Daniels, besides being a pastor, is also a grad student at Fuller Theological Seminary, which as I recall is the largest evangelical seminary in the US. It is also thoroughly missionary-evangelism oriented.

In his “Convergent Friendship and Playing with the Quaker ‘Other’,” this academic effort provides the background and framework, and not always to best advantage.
Fuller:

Daniels starts well, repeating three of “the biggest questions asked of convergent Friends,” which are:

1. Are you telling me we need to subscribe to a lowest-common-denominator faith so that we can get along with Friends of other branches?
2. Why would we want to dialogue with them? We’ve got no interest in that form of Quakerism, their beliefs and practices.
3. “Should we be unequally yoked with people who don’t believe what we believe?

C. Wess Daniels

Number two is the easiest to dispose of: If one has no interest in talking to other kinds of Friends, then don’t do it. End of discussion; just get out of the way of those who have.

Number three is more meaty. Daniels says it is “one of the most popular questions I hear time and again . . . .” and I don’t doubt it.

Still, the third query highlights the evangelical background from which Daniels is writing, and which shapes his piece. For it is a question more likely to be asked by evangelicals, to a “straying” evangelical like him. I mean, in forty-plus years among liberal Friends, I can say confidently I have never heard one of them complain about being “unequally yoked” with another group. We don’t talk that way.

Same goes for the antipathy to a “lowest-common-denominator faith” in query one; that’s an evangelical cavil. It’s the liberals who are constantly on the hunt for just such points of “commonality,” or, as they wistfully put it, “unity” among the various Quaker branches. And no interest? In the numerous inter-branch events I’ve attended, the liberal, “unity-seeking” contingent was always the largest.

I don’t say all this either to praise liberal Friends or complain about evangelicals; we’re just getting clear about the context for Daniels’ foray into “convergence.” Much of his essay is an apologia aimed at his parent bodies, in defense of his suspect visits among the heathen “other.”

In mounting his defense, Daniels makes two moves: one academic and one theological. The academic move speaks, as apparently it must, of “modernity” and the “Enlightenment.”

(Raise your hand if you’re getting tired of hearing these two terms . . .

. . . yeah, I thought so; but evidently it’s still de rigeur in academic circles.)

Theologically, he turns to the Mennonite John Howard Yoder. We’ll get to Yoder in a moment.

“The Enlightenment is built upon the foundation of individual reason,” he writes, “as opposed to and over against the authority of tradition.” The Enlightenment, he argues, wants to make us all the same, and that’s where the lowest-common-denominator faith impulse comes from. “This has had tremendous, and often negative, implications for the church.”

Maybe so, and maybe not. I’ve waded through a lot of more or less scholarly takedowns of the Enlightenment and its supposedly baleful impact on the world, and have come out with a rather cynical view on all that.

The tropes about it favoring individual reason and opposing “authority” and “tradition” are key. An awful lot of the anti-Enlightenment writing I’ve seen has come from advocates of various forms of churchly “authority” and “tradition” who feel they have been deprived of (dethroned from?) their “rightful” place of pre-eminence in society, the academy, and their church turf. (Which in many cases, they have been, and thank god for that!) Makes you wonder if they’re not protesting too much.

No it doesn’t: whether acknowledged or not, much such advocacy has an unmistakable agenda, the establishment, or re-establishment, of such churchly “authority” over the unruly and unwashed hordes now at the mercy of “individual reason” and Enlightenment notions.

Not just a pretty pastel picture: a potent political program

This is, of course, oversimplified, but not without evidence. I grew up within the confines of one such bastion of tradition (pre-Vatican II Catholicism), and had a bellyful of advocacy for the kind of “authoritative” church culture which has produced, say, the bottomlessly evil scandal of priestly pedophilia and its hierarchical coverups. So while Enlightenment values (e.g., “freedom,” and “human rights”) have their flaws, I’ve taken my stand with its renegades against the forces of such authoritative traditions – and I suggest that this attitude is basic to the liberal Quaker enterprise.

With this different take in mind, we can return to Question #3, with which Daniels has been hectored about whether evangelicals should be “unequally yoked” with others who have different beliefs. The phrase is an allusion to Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers . . . .”

It’s worth filling in the rest of that verse, to get the full flavor of what he’s up against: “for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”

Or as the Worldwide English version more bluntly puts it: “How can Christ agree with Belial, the devil? How can a person who believes work with a person who does not believe?”

That clarifies the matter usefully: in venturing out among liberal Friends, Daniels is not just fooling around; he’s consorting with the devil.

“Get thee behind me, Liberal!”

Nor is this merely an outmoded notion from the Bible. The head of Northwest Yearly Meeting’s predecessor body, one Edward Mott, used it in 1929 to demolish a campaign for Quaker ecumenism, with words that ring unmistakably down the decades:

“The attempt,” he thundered, “to fellowship and work with unbelievers” [which is what he considered the other groups of Friends to be]“spells death. Any conclusion to the contrary is ruinous to all concerned.”

Just to be clear. Mott’s spirit still hovers over many evangelical Friends bodies, as Daniels testifies. Thus to be among them, yet open to being “unequally yoked,” (i.e., consorting with Satan) by dealing with liberal Friends, becomes more than a personal or even an institutional matter: it raises a theological challenge to Mott and his descendants. The received doctrine is undermined by such ventures, and if they continue, it will be changed by them. I would say it will be overthrown; but we shall see about that.

Daniels makes his theological defense by way of John Howard Yoder. From one angle this is positive, because Yoder is about as good as it gets in this area. But from another it’s still not good enough, at least for me.

The problem is that Yoder, while a broad-minded and irenic Christian triumphalist, is still a triumphalist – at least as summarized here. Yoder, Daniels writes, “was a huge proponent of ecumenism, but of a particular kind. He believed that by being a faithful Mennonite, he had no choice but to work with the rest of the church. (Emphasis added.) He quotes Yoder’s contention that “Christian unity” was a biblical command: “’Christian unity is not to be created but to be obeyed.’” Daniels adds that such efforts are part of the work of “A Church in Mission” (his italics) as part of the effort to “give away the gift of the gospel.”

John Howard Yoder

And here we rub up against a big piece of unfinished business for the “convergent” network, or at least the evangelical chunks of it. Because much of the liberal end of the Society of Friends rejects this triumphalist Christian framework, and does not come to the table to be part of an internal “Christian church” reform agenda. (Or it does so, as in the impending Wichita YAF conference, either in ignorance or under duress. Cf. Liberal Emily Stewart’s comments in this same volume about the 2008 YAF event.)

The point here is that if inter-branch work in the Religious Society of Friends today is to be authentic, it will not be “ecumenical,” but “interfaith,” or even “inter-religious.” Many from the liberal end will be rightly suspicious of contacts that, when the wrapper is peeled back, turn out to be repackaged missionary programs.

As an answer to the charge of being “unequally yoked,” the suggestion that interfaith Quaker discussions are really just a better form of missionary work may persuade some Evangelical poohbahs (tho I doubt it), but it falls sort of the authenticity needed for the overall process to bear fruit.

It says to liberals, in effect, “you’re spawn of satan, but we’ll talk to you, in hopes we can thereby convert you and reclaim you from being spawn of satan.” This may make for more apparently [small “f”] friendly conversation, but still doesn’t cut it.

A better answer would also be a braver one: Liberal Friends are not spawn of Satan, but children of God, and it is not being “unequally yoked” to meet them on an equal, respectful footing, ready to learn as much as share. Such an equal meeting does not require abandoning one’s Christian identity. The Jesus who told the story of the Good Samaritan, assured us that his father’s house had many rooms, and described a judgment based on service to the least of these rather than doctrine – that Jesus will understand.

I think Daniels understands this, or most of it, even though it does not show clearly in this essay. But much of the rest of his parent body may not. To the extent that it doesn’t, it is also not yet ready for serious inter-branch conversations, convergent or otherwise. (And the record will show that US Evangelical Friends have typically been few in number at inter-branch gatherings organized by, say, the FWCC.)

So I suggest that this piece by Daniels is best understood as a contribution to the beginning of a debate within his home constituency. I wish him fortitude; it will likely be a lengthy and difficult one.

Postscript:
Another well-known Christian interfaith actor put my main point here somewhat differently, but with considerable force that caught my attention:

“What is required . . . is reverence for the other’s belief, along with the willingness to seek truth in what I find alien—a truth that concerns me and that can correct me and lead me further. What is required is the willingness to look behind what may appear strange in order to find the deeper reality it conceals. I must also be willing to let my narrow understanding of truth be broken open, to learn my own beliefs better by understanding the other, and in this way to let myself be furthered on the path to God, who is greater—in the certainty that I never wholly possess the truth about God and am always a learner before it, a pilgrim whose way to it is never at an end.”

I can hardly believe it, and God help me, but this is a quote from the Pope.

“Interreligious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian Relations” 25, no. 1 (1998): 29-41.

So I’m out and about Thursday, trying to be a Christian (Matthew 25:36 variety), by visiting a friend who’s got some issues.

And when I arrive at the door to his place, there’s this notice on the door. Seems they’ve got a dress code:

Uh-oh. I wasn’t expecting this.

Well, this called for a closer look.

So I stepped up behind these two weird-looking guys who were already checking it out . . . .

Well, I knew I was in trouble, because I’m a male, and I was wearing shorts. (A Christian in shorts? Hey — it was nearly ninety degrees out there.)

But they were kinda long, cargo type. And instead of a problem, they turned into another indication that I’m approaching the age where we’re mostly invisible to younger folks, because nobody hassled me when I went in. I visited with my friend and walked out, bold as brass with my bare knees hanging out, and still nobody said anything.

But where was this place?

Of course it wasn’t a Wichita YAF preview; and yeah, I made up the part about Batman.

But the list was just as shown, and it did have an eerie sense of familiarity to it.

Here’s where it really was:

“Detention Center”; that’s JAIL to more plain-speaking folk.

I said the fellow I was visiting had issues. They’re with the sheriff and some ridiculous state laws.

The details are for another forum. But the apparel parallels here, once I tuned into them, were just plain unnerving.

(Of course, there are differences too: unlike Wichita, my homies will evidently let me, as a male, do my next visit in pajamas. Not sure why it’s a no-no for the “ladies.” Must be something from Paul’s epistles.)

What’s that verse from Mark? — 4:9, I think: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And her too.

That’s the first code mentioned in the heading. As to the second one, as has been said here before (more than once), the point about the Wichita YAF dress code and other expectations is not that they’re rules, but about whether they’re appropriate rules, wise rules, the right kind for adult Quakers. (And the answer here has been: they need some work. Seriously.)

But what would better rules look like? Here’s a positive example that deserves careful consideration.

Its from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

At EMU they have a very fine Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, which is a classy outfit, la creme of its field — BTW way ahead of any Quaker college peace studies program I’ve ever seen; college presidents take note.

Anyway, one of the annual programs of this Center is its Summer Peacebuilding Institute, two week-long sessions that bring together serious peace professionals from many countries and religions.

Since peacebuilding often takes place in locations ravaged by wars, it can happen that participants bring with them the marks of violent trauma, just as many US soldiers return from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan marked by PTSD. So all might not always be peace and light among them.

Hence, the Institute has a set of Expectations for participants designed to cope with such stresses, and it is worth a close look. Here it is:

Our objective at SPI is to provide a structured environment where people can share ideas and experiences in order to learn. Some of these ideas may be new to us, or may contradict cherished beliefs. Some of the experiences may be challenging to articulate or to listen to. In public sessions and in classes, everyone at SPI commits to do their best to listen respectfully to others and to engage in learning activities.

Our fields of work and study expose many of us to difficult and sometimes traumatic experiences. We try to establish an environment which is conducive to learning for every person. SPI has also arranged with a local counseling service to assist anyone who feels they need counseling. Nonetheless, if an individual is unable to adjust to the learning environment and thereby threatens the learning or safety of that individual or the group, SPI reserves the right to intervene, to outline behaviors that are required in order to participate, to make available counseling and mediation services, and, if necessary, to ask the individual not to return to class.

These feel both solid and respectful to me; also appropriately minimalist: if there’s trouble, they can handle it; otherwise, the participants are expected to hang on and enjoy what may be a roller-coaster ride of diverse experiences, convictions, cultures and responses, working out kinks as they go along.

EMU adds a few more housekeeping no-nos: no booze or illegal drugs; keep your room neat; and no pets.

(No PETS??!!??) [Kidding.]

This is a fine model for what a better alternative to the current Wichita rules could look like.

Friend John Stephens on his “Quaking” blog, has linked to some additional examples of less legalistic but still workable models, in Quaker settings.

It’s not really so hard.

This blog banned on Quakerquaker. Friends are advised.

A woman Friend who, like me, is not age-eligible to attend the Wichita YAF Conference, has sent on the best rationale I have yet seen for the planners’ no-sex-even-for-married-couples policy for the event. She deemed the policy, “quite lovely.” So Let’s hear why, and then consider it:

She writes:

“ . . . to me the Expectations speaks volumes about LGBT stuff. To put it in shorthand, the liberal end says we welcome pretty much all forms of sexual expression that aren’t harmful to self or others, and all persons regardless of mode of sexual expression. The other end says the only form of sexual expression we welcome is between a heterosexual married couple, and we welcome all persons as long as they’re not engaging in unwelcome sexual expression. Both ends say they try to welcome all persons, but not all behavior. So where’s the intersection? I think asking everyone, including those who normally feel free to have sex with one another, to ‘abstain from sexual activity’ for the weekend is really good. It’s analogous to a straight couple in an FGC meeting foregoing the privileges of marriage until gay couples are allowed to marry too.”

The strong point here is the appearance of equality the policy presents: no sex for anyone means all are treated alike in that respect.

There are at least two important aspects to this policy. We’ll take the most obvious one, concerning same sex unions, first.

If this were 2007, and the policy were being prepared for the 2008 conference (which it actually was, I have been advised by a Planning committee member; this person told me that they simply re-adopted it for 2010), this kind of “equality” would have much more surface appeal.

Let’s review: in 2007, same sex marriage was legal in only one state: Massachusetts. And a vigorous campaign to end that legal status was in full swing.

The Massachusetts Statehouse, in its once-solitary glory, circa 2007

Flash forward to 2010. It’s a different world:

The Massachusetts repeal effort failed. Same sex marriage is now legal in five states and the District of Columbia.

– Ten more states and numerous localities have legal provisions for same sex “civil unions.” (Which means that such couples can live together and do whatever they do in bed without legal jeopardy.)
– Many large corporations recognize them for benefits.
– The 2010 census included an option for counting same sex marriages.
– Even the hoary “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell” policy of the military is clearly on the way out.
– Over a dozen countries in Europe have legally recognized same sex unions in some form, many as marriage. Australia and South Africa too.

Sure, same sex unions are still very much in dispute in the US. But they are no longer an isolated, one-state anomaly. In a mere two years there has been enormous change. A degree of change that makes the no-sex-for-anybody-because-it-might-connote-even-tacit-recognition stance, well, “quaint.” Or more plainly, obsolete. The “volumes” that it “speaks” are out of date.

This is a level of change the YAFs can hardly ignore; it’s time for them to catch up.

Now, I said there were two major problematic aspects to this version of “equality.” The other is that it also denies any recognition to heterosexual domestic partnerships. But these too are much more common, and very widely legal; also counted in the Census.

This is personal for me, because that’s my status. And recognition counts. In fact, just this week the tax exempt status of my employer’s house was called into question by local authorities because they had “discovered” that there were two of us living here, and the North Carolina law is that if anyone other than “clergy” resides there, the property can be taxed.

But as soon as I explained that the other person now living here was my domestic partner, that was the end of the discussion. The “clergy,” I was assured, can have such, and families too, without jeopardizing the tax exempt status in North Carolina.

I’m tempted to say, “Whew! That was close!” But really it wasn’t. Even in my very conservative area, this debate is essentially over. That it is not in Wichita is what is anomalous, even shocking.

Yet the only “recognition” the YAF policy tenders for all this change, and the settled relationships that are their basis, is an equality of invisibility and unspeakability. The planners expect to proceed as if nothing has happened since 2008, or many years before.

This may be good enough for some, such as the Friend who advocated for it above. She compared it to a heterosexual couple foregoing the “privilege of marriage” until same sex couples have the same option.

I’m aware of at least one Monthly Meeting which has adopted a similar stance, declining to perform any marriages until same sex couples can do so legally. That is their prerogative, but I do not think it wise or prudent as a model for our Society. One does not expand rights by giving them up. One does not end atmospheric pollution by refusing to breathe until the air is clean.

Those who are wedded to religious views that regard anything except monogamous heterosexual marriage as immoral need not approve any of the tide of change noted here. One hardly expects the YAF conference policy to go in that direction.

But the words of the 2004 FGC minute, quoted here before (and which, we hope, their heralds in Wichita will remember and stand up for this time around), apply: “We will never go back to silencing those voices or suppressing those gifts.”

Marriage, whether same or mixed sex, and whether formalized in law or not, is one of those gifts. Silencing and suppressing their presence is no longer good practice, if it ever was.

To underscore these reflections, let’s shift gears and consider a real-life parable, which starts with a question:

How are inter-branch Quaker events like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?

Bear with me; this is important. Last First Day I heard a talk by a sociologist about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and how it “operates.”

Fascinating, telling stuff.

The church, a major pilgrimage destination, is on a site traditionally viewed as where Christ was buried and from which he rose. It’s been demolished and rebuilt several times as various wars and empires came and went. For the last several centuries, the church has been occupied, or “occupied,” by no less than six different church groups.

Not in succession, one after another.

At the same time. Right now, today.

Five of them are Orthodox and variants: Eastern (or Greek) Orthodox; Armenian Apostolic; Coptic Orthodox; Ethiopian Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox. Plus a large Catholic presence, in the form of a Franciscan community. (More on this here.)

Christ’s burial and rising are just about the only thing these groups have in common. They are theological rivals, each claiming to embody the “true” meaning of the events there, each regarding the others as schismatics or heretics.

Further, they are hugely divided by culture. Even among the four “orthodox” groups, languages and liturgies vary widely; they can’t understand each other.

So how does it work? How can they possibly get along?

The answer is, they do — and they don’t.

The groups have staked out various pieces of turf in the church and its grounds. They follow an intricate schedule of prayers and liturgies, each in carefully delimited sections of the inner sanctum and at times specified to the minute. Slots are also allotted for pilgrim visits (which is where the money comes from).

Note: This map, which is complicated enough, only begins to outline the intricacies of the turf divisions and struggles.

Much of the time, pilgrims can see this complex “dance” taking place in relative order, like some sort of strange old-fashioned mechanical timepiece, a set of custom-designed cuckoo clocks, with various bells, whistles and figurines jangling and clanking and parading when the successive hourly chimes ring out. It must be intriguing to watch.

But this kabuki ballet is also enacting an ongoing set of conflicts. While often in a kind of stasis, they are never static, or settled. The rival churches frequently try to encroach upon each other’s prayer times and spaces, and the resulting shoving matches and fistfights are not so rare; sometimes the Israeli cops, and ambulances, have to be called.

As I heard all this described, I got this eerie sense of deja vu all over again. The languages might be strange, the liturgies foreign – but the whole jostling-and-elbowing-in-the-name-of-God bit was all too familiar. All too familiar.

Quakers are like that. Even to the fact that some of our sub-sects barely speak the same language when it comes to matters of religion, ethics or politics. (This condition is masked by our common use of English for lesser matters such as “Do you want fries with that?”). However, our jostling and shoving matches have a characteristically passive aggressive coloration, including a chronic unwillingness to admit that they are happening.

Our “Holy Sepulchre” is the notion of authentic original Quakerism: the physical site is less charged, but could be Pendle Hill in England; or perhaps Firbank Fell.

Quakers would likely quarrel over Pendle Hill, if it wasn’t so hard to climb.

We haven’t struggled over a particular place. But the evidence is plentiful in the record, if you’re prepared to look, of struggles for control over the “authentic” and original Quaker faith:

From the day in 1828 that Ohio Friends rioted in the Mt. Pleasant Meetinghouse, tossing each other out the upper floor windows and smashing the clerk’s table to toothpicks, while the farmers from round about looked on, swigging their homebrew whiskey and laughing.

Or, a couple decades later, in the struggle over slavery within the Society of Friends, as recalled by Elizabeth Buffum Chace of Rhode Island:

“Several persons, in various parts of the country, were forcibly carried out of the Friends meeting for attempting therein to urge upon Friends the duty ‘to maintain, faithfully their testimony against slavery,’ as their Discipline required. A few meeting houses in country places, had been opened for the Anti-Slavery meetings, whereupon our New England Yearly Meeting adopted a rule that no meeting house under its jurisdiction, should be opened except for meetings of our religious Society.”

There is much more, down to our own day, including several vivid episodes I have myself witnessed, been in some measure party to, and/or chronicled. Indeed, I often think that one can hardly claim to be a fully-credentialed, mature Friend today, unless she or he has been denounced as an agent of Satan, or at least a racist, by another.

Chace again:

“One young Friend in Massachusetts had written a very earnest, open letter to Friends, in remonstrance for their pro-slavery position. He was universally condemned by all the powerful influences of the Society.Talking with one of the most influential members at our Yearly Meeting, who expressed strong condemnation of this young man’s presumption, I said, ‘But is not what he says true?’ And the man replied, ‘Well, thee may be sure, it will certainly kill him as a Friend.’”

Friend Elizabeth, thee nailed it there, for sure!

More typically, though, our struggles go on with a certain faux gentility, and one of the gravest offenses against this propriety is to state clearly what is going on. As Chace said, totally nailing it:

“No belief in Papal infallibly was ever stronger in the Catholic mind, than was the assumption, not expressed in words, that the Society could do no wrong . . . .”

Despite many protestations to the contrary, this spirit has been quite often detectable in the efforts at cross-branch communication. From one angle they can be legitimately viewed as noble efforts to reach across barriers and speak to those strangers who somehow bear the same name of “Friends.” Yet from another – and here again, the evidence is plentiful – they repeatedly have included attempt to draw the new circles so that certain tendencies are still left out or made invisible — as, for instance, critics of the Wichita YAF policies have been banned from the self-described “quakerquaker” site, while supporting messages there are still permitted. As the old elders used to say, what goes around comes around. Ironic.

On the other hand, there are sorties from these outsiders to elbow their way in, claim some small piece of turf, and then defend it, or if possible expand it.

Today this jostling centers on two major sets of concerns: those related to sex, and those related to godlessness.

It bemuses me to ponder that these are the current sticking points. There could be, and once were, other flashpoints among Friends: war, for instance. In the late 1960s, New England Yearly Meeting spent something like fifteen hours straight in agonized debate over whether to send a token sum to the AFSC for war relief on both sides in Vietnam.

Or the use of alcoholic beverages. Paying taxes of certain sorts. Opposing slavery (as opposed to pretending to oppose slavery).

Contemplating the current matter of the Wichita YAF Conference and its list of expectations, one is tempted to look back at the reports of Friends being carried out of meetings for denouncing slavery and sigh, “Those were the good old days.” In 2010, mere matters of life and death on the grand scale barely merit a mention.

(If anyone can find a place on the Wichita YAF conference schedule for consideration of the US militarism which has spawned two current wars, legitimized torture, recruited more terrorists than Al Queda, eats up most of our taxes, is the biggest emitter of carbon, and generally threatens the world’s future, please let me know; I can’t find it. But no matter; Osama doesn’t like Speedos either.)

Instead, we are reduced to squabbling over whether attenders should be permitted to wear tank tops, or to say “damned” (unless it is part of the sentence, “if you don’t accept Christ, you’ll be damned”); or whether even married sex must be proscribed, lest some same sex couple (or perhaps an intersex unmarried one) might actually privately do the deed; or by not doing it but retaining the option, thereby gain some implicit shred of tacit recognition. The circle must still be drawn to keep them out, and all midriffs covered. And meantime, please, don’t raise criticisms of this out loud. The public arena is for promotion. Send your concerns and criticisms along in private.

Yes, this kind of rulemaking for Quaker adults in the Year of Our Lord 2010 can hardly help but bring a blush of shame to a grownup cheek. Are these really the matters that must be spelled out to make inter-branch conversation possible? Can anyone actually imagine that this represents progress? Or that it is other than aggressive against significant segments of the potential constituency– silencing voices and suppressing gifts?

Then returns the image of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Under its dome, tomorrow, or perhaps even as you read this, the Franciscans may be duking it out with the Armenians, or the Copts (again), over whether one or another prayed two minutes past their allotted hour, or pushed three inches too far onto the Greek Orthodox turf.

Most often these scuffles are minor; so maybe tomorrow the Israeli police will not need to be called. And the pilgrims will still come in at their appointed time, to light their candles and tremble at what they think they see, and feel in the air. (Must keep the dollars or drachmas or euros trickling in.)

Candles do wonders at maintaining the Illusion of peace.

And somewhere in the holy of holies, at the heart of it all, a stone slab lies heavy and silent, yet bearing in every molecule the whole point that underlies and might someday transcend all the skirmishes and brawls.

I suppose if whatever of Christ remains in the church can withstand the shameful antics of the Christians that inhabit it, perhaps it can even encompass this folly of ours, over sites not even on the map.

That such an encompassing could be possible, would say a lot for Christ. That it is undoubtedly necessary – what does it say of us?

Very interesting – the conversation about the “Expectations” and the framework for the Wichita YAF conference gets more interesting by the day. Two recent communications are especially intriguing and revealing.

First, yesterday a member of the Wichita Planning Committee contacted me, and asked if I really thought they and their rules were really unwelcoming.

My response was meant to be polite (don’t know how to ensure that one “sounds” polite on a Facebook IM, but the effort was genuine). It was that “the very, very short answer is yes.”

How come, she asked? After all, “. . . I am an evangelical friend and for me it has been a sacrifice to allow some liberalism in the gathering. If we are giving in I think that the other side should sacrifice something as well. Evangelicals have sacrificed to not condemn it and why should liberals advertise it?”

I agreed that “folks from all the branches will need to make adjustments so the session can be as peaceable as possible. The question is what kinds of adjustments, and what kind of spirit they express.”

It took some more probing to figure out that in the phrases “Not condemn IT,” and “why should liberals advertise IT,” the pronoun did not refer to the conference or the guidelines, but to anything connected with LGBTQ matters.

Is THIS “IT”?? Evidently not.

She added that the committee did not really write the rules, they were prepared for the 2008 conference, and “We just adopted guidelines that have worked in the past events and no one felt unwelcomed with them, in fact in the past gatherings it has been mostly liberal participation.”

Now here’s a point: did in fact anyone feel “unwelcomed” or constrained by the rules at the 2008 conference?

Today I found an answer, in the second “conversation.”

It was in the new book, Spirit Rising, just published by FGC, in association with Quakers Uniting In Publication.

A long entry in the book was by Emily Stewart, a young Friend who has been on the FGC staff for a few years.

She also attended the 2008 YAF conference, and reported in the book on how she felt there. Here’s her description of the climactic worship:

“In the calm of the moment, I wrestle with whether I have listened hard enough, spoken up enough, and if I have truly been faithful. I feel upset for not sharing what I believe and publicly naming my support for gay and lesbian Friends. In trying to create a space where everyone feels welcome, I have held back from sharing my own beliefs.” (p. 64)

Held back? Not spoken up enough? Been unfaithful? Felt upset?

Hmmmm. Does this sound like constraint? Sure does to me. And something else, too; but before we get to that, a query: was this restraint matched by Friends from other branches?

To some extent, but with a very different outcome. Here is more of Stewart’s report:

“Out of the silence a woman stands. She shares with us her internal struggle about whether to water down the message she was given for fear that Friends would disagree or be angry with her for what she believed. Yet, she stands and delivers the message. She asks us, ‘What are you waiting for?’ Over and over again she asks, ‘I’m sorry that anyone has ever hurt you in the name of Jesus Christ. That was so wrong and I’m so sorry. It should not have happened. But you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is that of Jesus Christ who can speak to thy condition and he lives in each one of us, right now. He loves you. He is speaking through us even today. Why aren’t you listening? There is so much going wrong in this world. When will you act? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?”

This message is a good model for what in my view Emily Stewart or some other Liberal Friend ought to have stated equally clearly and affirmatively. Reciting the brief but strong FGC minute of 2004 in support of LGBTQ Friends would have been a good start.

Memo to Liberal YAFs: a lot of life is about courage. The “What are you waiting for?” speaker above had it. Liberals should have no less.

That needs some work. A few years back FGC’s youth program put out a tee shirt bearing the motto, “Quaker Youth, Speak Thy Truth.”

I’ve seen it on many of you. I recommend that yes, indeed, you speak it, and live it, as well as wear it. Especially if you’re going to Wichita.

There’s that great tee shirt motto,
worn by Emily Stewart at the FGC website.
“Quaker Youth Speak Thy Truth.”
Wear it, live it.

The “What are you waiting for?” message is revealing in another way: with its repeated, insistent (some might even say aggressive) challenging, it expresses a frame that the conference planners also put forth as something beyond question (see the item about everyone acting as a part of the “body of Christ.”)

And the frame is this: The only good reason some Liberal Friends are not “Christian” is because a misguided believer was mean to them. That’s too bad, but they should hurry up and get over it and come back to being Christian again, which is what Quakerism really is.

So here is a second aspect of the rules’ constraints: they leave no space for stating the alternative reality that lots of Liberal Friends are neither Christian nor even theist. That is not only because some were abused by believers. For many, it’s because they’ve thought it through, and Quakerism works quite well for them as a religion without either. (One articulate description of this rethinking is here.)

The roots of this tendency go back quite far, as has been shown by Os Cresson among others. It has also produced some very stimulating publications, such as their book, “Godless for God’s Sake.”

They maintain a detailed website here.)

Thus to continue the analogy, when they threw out the bathwater, there was no baby in it. They have nothing to hide or apologize for. And it is fair to ask why they would not have every right to expect full recognition of their existence and views at inter-branch events – by timid Liberal Friends as well as those from other branches.

So along with LGBT folks, this substantial group of Friends is also delegitimized and made invisible by the YAF conference framework. That is “unwelcoming,” and it’s time it was changed.

Stewart does not report any speaking to this very important point either. Instead, she finally sang a song, which begins, “How could anyone ever tell you . . . .” The ditty appears to be a coming successor to “Kumbaya” in liberal circles. I’m not a big fan of “Kumbaya,” especially as a substitute for plain speaking and facing up to issues. So I won’t disguise my disappointment with that denouement.

As I said, these were two very illuminating expressions relating to the Wichita Conference. I hope the insights they yield will be grasped and affirmed, not only by the planners, but by attenders as well.

Quaker Youth, Speak Thy Truth
In all its marvelous and unruly variety.

Well, one of the messages mentioned in the previous post about age-related putdowns Buy neoral has already disappeared from the web.

Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten.

Here’s the text, mercifully brief but to the point, about:

>> 1. An almost 70yo man decrying moral choices of youth–ironic. >>

“Almost 70yo” BTW, is Tweet-speak for nearly 70 years old. And on that point, I am so busted.

I’m still looking for the irony, tho; maybe it got mislaid in transmission.

Some more choice tidbits have turned up, which we may get to presently.

Wichita YAF Update: Well, there have now been two responses to the posts here questioning ground rules at the Memorial Day conference, here and here.

In both, the one specific “rebuttal” was a disparaging reference to my age. (Which is 67, for the record.)

Point taken, guys. What else ya got?

Micah Bales, one of the planners and main promoters of the Wichita YAF conference, recently replied to an inquiry about the long list of “Thou Shalt Nots” set for the event. He referred the inquirer to a blog post by his wife, Faith Kelley, another of the planners. It’s on the William Penn House blog, entitled, “What Should I Eat? Community & the Individual”

This blog post is very illuminating about the “frame” being put onto the conference, and deserves some careful unpacking. So this commentary will run on a bit; please bear with me.

Faith Kelley (FK for short) notes that in a religious community like Friends,

. . . The group as a whole may have different needs or expectations than I, as an individual, do. Some other individuals in the community may feel strongly convicted about something in a way I do not. Greater society tells us when this happens that it is always the rights of the individual that override the constraints of the group. I, the individual, am the ultimate authority on all things pertaining to me.

But, is this the way that we, as Christians and Quakers, are called to live? Does this reflect the kingdom of God? Can I be part of a community and do whatever I want?

Right here there are some assumptions that need to be named and called out: First, the post describes the conference list of restrictive rules as “reflecting the kingdom of God,” and “the needs of the community.”

Really? Did the planners get some special revelation about the particular needs of this community? And/or the kingdom of God? Frankly, I doubt it. There’s been no evidence anywhere to back that up.

Then the post sets up a dichotomy between these listed “community needs” and the wish of some to “do whatever [they] want,” and “override the constraints of the group.” This too is an assumption without basis.

The questions I’ve raised about the Wichita rules have in no case suggested that individuals should be able to “do whatever they want” free of any rules or without reference to the group. Such a false characterization is what is called a “straw man.” It is illegitimate and unfair.

Instead, what’s been suggested here is that the present rules list and theological agenda of the event are legalistic, too restrictive, even oppressive. It’s been proposed that there are other approaches to community life which would be more inclusive and welcoming, without sacrificing legitimate group concerns. That is very different.

FK goes on to state:

Jesus calls us to love one another, be in community with one another, and be members of a body. And sometimes this will mean that I will give up some of my individual agenda in order to be caring for others in the community.

This statement is mostly unobjectionable: of course community life requires compromise. But what kinds of things are to be given up, and for what? FK offers a homely but revealing example:

. . . In a somewhat mundane example, I like boxed macaroni and cheese, especially with tuna in it. My husband, Micah, is not a fan. And so, I choose to not eat boxed mac and cheese when we have dinner together, instead eating something we both will enjoy. Of course, I could say “I want macaroni and cheese and that’s what we’re having. So there.” I would then get what I want to eat, but I also would be selfish and choosing my own needs over those of a person I love. The beautiful thing about this situation is that I know that Micah would eat boxed mac and cheese for dinner because he knows I like it. He too would surrender his own agenda so that I could enjoy my cheesy noodles.

This surrender of our own demands so that others might be welcome and a full part of the community is part of being a family of faith.

So here we get to what can be called “tunafish theology.” The key implication is that what participants at the YAF conference are being called upon to forego is essentially trivial, self-indulgent personal preferences of no great consequence.

But are they? The list of Thou Shalt Nots is rather lengthy and detailed, and involves not only some individual behavior (no Speedos), some indisputably private acts (married sex) but also constraints on what can be said and talked about (no “distractions” about sexuality), and rather weighty religious frameworks (all are to act as if they are part of “the body of Christ.”); etc.

Much of the criticisms of this list in these columns has been based on the conviction that for many Liberal Friends, such matters are not tunafish trivia.

Let me repeat that: imposing such a limited religious framework on Friends in advance, and proscribing behaviors that are legal, moral and not performed in public is not at all in the same category as foregoing mac and cheese with tunafish. The failure to perceive or acknowledge this difference of conviction is quite disturbing, and ominous in portent.

FK notes that differences over tunafish-type matters are not new in religious communities. She points out that

Paul felt the need to write in Romans advice on how to proceed when we differ on such things:

Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong. For instance, one person believes it’s all right to eat anything. But another believer with a sensitive conscience will eat only vegetables. Those who feel free to eat anything must not look down on those who don’t. And those who don’t eat certain foods must not condemn those who do, for God has accepted them. Who are you to condemn someone else’s servants? Their own master will judge whether they stand or fall. And with the Lord’s help, they will stand and receive his approval. (Romans 14:1-4)

This is indeed an apt quotation. But a closer look shows that the burden of the text runs in just the opposite direction from the way FK and the conference planners have used it. Here Paul is arguing against such legalism, rather than for it. What part of “Accept other believers,” is not understood here?

This contrary meaning is made clearer in another rendering of the same passage, from the Bible in Basic English:

 Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

  For instance, a person who has been around for a while might well be convinced that he can eat anything on the table, while another, with a different background, might assume he should only be a vegetarian and eat accordingly. But since both are guests at Christ’s table, wouldn’t it be terribly rude if they fell to criticizing what the other ate or didn’t eat? God, after all, invited them both to the table. Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help.

One might even appropriately sum up the passage to the YAF planners, as the Extremely Concise Version does, to wit: “Chill Out, People; Jeez.”

Here’s a thought experiment: Take this passage and substitute, “wear a tanktop” for “eat anything on the table.” Or “not consider himself part of something called ‘the body of Christ.’” Dare we still say, “Welcome them with open arms,” and go on to affirm that “God can handle that without your help?”

Of course, not everything that happens in community is a matter of tunafish. Sometimes in the sea there are torpedoes, that can blow up a community. So there will need to be rules. But it is not a sellout to blind individualism to expect such rules to respect the spirit of this Romans text.

FK also asserts that the conference rules are necessary in order that “others might be welcome and a full part of the community . . . .” But this raises two key questions:

Who exactly requires the rule against, for instance, private married sex in order to be considered “welcome” and a “full part” of the event? I’m not seeking individual names here; I mean, for what branch of Friends is this a requirement to feel “welcome”? I can think of a wide range of Friends for whom it isn’t, and not a libertine among them.

Frankly, I doubt there is such a branch; in 35 years of attending Quaker conferences across the branches in three countries, I’ve never before run into it.

Likewise, who finds it necessary that all attenders regard themselves as part of “the body of Christ” to feel thus welcomed? And how does proscribing large chunks of very active issues among Friends make for those under the weight of them to be a “full part” of the proceedings?

Forgive me, but this is too much. These are torpedoes, not tunafish. What FK fails to recognize here is that for a great many Liberal friends, the “glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21) is something they have had to struggle and suffer for, in the face of manifold forms of religious oppression. Equally absent here is an acknowledgment that this experience deserves as much recognition and understanding as that of any other branch. “Welcome” and “full part” are a two-way street.

These are not small oversights. Torpedoes, not tunafish. I hope they can be remedied.

They also smack of an unacknowledged agenda. I’m aware that in 1 Cor 7:5, Paul tells couples, regarding sex, “Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”

To speak plainly, this is what I sense is behind this rule: somebody thinks this would be a good idea for couples to “try out” in Wichita, a salutary discipline to sample, like it or not.

If this is so, I charge them to reconsider, for it’s not theirs to impose it on others. Even Paul agrees with this, in the very next verse: “I say this as a concession, not as a command.”

Yet FK concludes that,

“what is more loving for a community than that? I show I care for others by putting their needs above my own. By loving their spiritual health more than I love my freedom to do whatever I want.”

“Their needs”? Not buying it. “Their agenda” is more like it. And as she repeats another canard, I reiterate that the “freedom to do whatever I want” is a false and unworthy characterization of what is being said here and by other critics. Reasonable, minimally restrictive rules are not only possible, but customary, even among very Liberal Friends. And the glorious freedom of the children of god, not legalism, is vital to “loving their spiritual health.”

Tunafish matters are indeed no big deal. Torpedoes are another thing altogether.