A Friendly Letter, The Blog.

Can I really blog from my Blackberry? Let’s find out. . . .

Good grief, I can.

No rest for the wicked.
I’ve just arrived home from the week-long Gathering of Friends General Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio, and in a couple hours must head out for North Carolina Yearly Meeting-Conservative.
There’s much to be reflected on from the earlier leg; but no time to do it now.
Stand by; and keep those card and letters coming in.

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And we have seventeen stimulating issues already in the can.
Come see why our articles are reappearing around the web.
It won’t be a waste of time.

A sign of the times:

Earlier this month, two things happened the same day.

First, a friend sold all twelve volumes of my set of The Interpreter’s Bible. This was an old favorite, a set I bought in 1980 for about $350. Sent off for it, waited a few weeks, and it came in a big mail sack all its own.

I actually studied some of it too (would you believe Revelation, the whole thing?), while hauling the dozen hefty volumes (forty-some pounds worth) among six different residences across three states. After lingering on Amazon for several weeks, the set brought a bit over $100, not bad.

One of the twelve big volumes of TIB

The Interpreter’s Bible was a monument to devoted scholarship: Open it up and each two-page spread offered two parallel translations of a given text, King James and the Revised Standard; under that was a running exegetical analysis of the text, as teased from the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic by the best western scholars of the mid-century. Under that, same pages, was a running commentary called Exposition, which I figure several generations of mainline preachers mined for Sunday sermons. User-friendly before user-friendly was cool. Each biblical book had a detailed introductory essay , putting it in historical and theological context. It was great.

But after thirty years, I’m facing the need to downsize drastically from my eight-plus bookcases full of books to the next round, when I figure I’ll need to have no more than one. Bookshelf, that is.

So these big guys had to go. I hope their new owner finds them as useful and reassuring as I did.

Now, of course, there’s a new edition, the NEW Interpreter’s Bible, which sells for about $500. I’d love to have one, though I figure I’ll have to wait for the thumb-drive version.

But anyway, about ten o-clock that same night I read a short review in the New Yorker of a novel by the Irish writer, Roddy Doyle, called The Dead Century. It’s about an old IRA warrior, looking back over his life and the history of his tormented country.

I’m interested in Doyle, not only because I’m interested in Ireland, but also because one of his earlier books was The Commitments, about a young Dublin lad who starts an unlikely but tuneful soul cover band there, which (the book and band) turned into a terrific movie of the same name.

The Commitments: For a Spot On Your Netflix Gotta See List

So I see this review and decide I’d like to give Doyle’s new one a whirl.

It’s late; and our local Barnes & Noble, if it’s still open, might not have it in stock.

But not to worry. I sit down at the computer, punch up Amazon, and within five minutes, for about ten bucks, the book appears on my Kindle.

Track this: It’s less than half an hour from knowing nothing of the book, to taking a fancy, to buying it, and starting to read it, without ever leaving the house. Oh — and the damned thing is weightless too.

This post isn’t a commercial for the Kindle; it’s about the book. Books have been at the center of my life. So I just wanted to take note of how much change, not only in books themselves, but in how we deal with them, was manifest in this one turn of the planet.

Younger folk may shrug. But my mind can still be boggled, and as I settled down with Doyle’s new tale, remembering my Interpreter’s Bible, that was one more time.

Yes, hardly is one post about the Great Quaker Turnover done and posted, than more openings arrive.

I’m not trying to be an employment agency here; but them who have ears to hear, let them hear.

The big one here it’s the Quaker UN Office in Geneva that’s looking for a Director, based in Geneva. If you go for hobnobbing with diplomats, this is the place. And the pay is big: about 140,000 Swiss francs per year, which at current exchange rates is over $120K (tho I hear Geneva is an expensive town to live in).

Quaker UN Office logo

Details are at the Quaker UN Office site.

But that’s not all. Woodbrooke, the Quaker center (err, centre) in Birmingham, is looking for two tutors and a fundraiser for its Quaker Study Centre and graduate degree program.

Normally the Brits think they have these gigs all sewn up; are there any hard-charging young US Quaker intellectuals ready to give them a tumble?
Details at Woodbrooke’s site.

It continues!

The thesis in the first two parts of this discussion comes down to this: The Quaker “brand” is in trouble. Thus AFSC, as an organization which depends on the support generated by this “brand,” is likewise in trouble, and this trouble goes beyond the adverse impact of the financial crash. To get through this trouble, AFSC will have a significant part to play in renewing and restoring this Quaker “brand.”

This renewal will not be achieved by a focus on Quaker “values,” which, to speak plainly, I consider a bogus smokescreen for secularization. It is not actually the “values” themselves, like “peace” that are bogus; it is their use as a substitute for a live relationship to the motley crew of actual Quakers. The Quaker “Reputation of Truth” (i.e., the Quaker brand) ultimately depends, for better and for worse, on actual Quakers, how we live and witness in the world today, tomorrow (and yesterday).

Why has the Quaker “brand” been worth so much until recently? I think the answer is simple, and twofold: First, because the Religious Society of Friends (RSOF) has done great and good things; and second, for a long time the RSOF did a superior job of letting the world know that.

AFCS’s Nobel Peace Prize: Doing Great Things, and Letting The World Know

And why is the brand in decline? Another twofold answer: because recent Quaker generations, in the US particularly, have been undistinguished; and because we have been particularly undistinguished and inept — lousy also comes to mind–at telling the world about ourselves and our faith.

(BTW and just for the record: when speaking critically about recent American Quakerdom, I am including myself in the number.)

Why is contemporary Quakerism undistinguished? There are some good books, and better doctoral dissertations waiting to be written in response. Here I can attempt only a brief sketch, based on four decades of participant-observation.

This sketch starts with what I call “Compost Theology.”

Compost Theology: Not Just A Garden Variety

Here’s how Compost Theology works:

As an “institution,” the RSOF takes physical form primarily in its Meetings, then in associations, concern-based committees and their organizational offspring, and schools and colleges. These structures, populated by actual Friends and their experiences therein, make up the “compost” of Quaker experience.

As in your backyard compost heap, what often looks like an undifferentiated pile, when well-mixed and heated up by the Light/God/Spirit energy, produces a surprisingly rich and fertile soil base. From this “soil” spring up a variety of hardy plants — usually unexpected, and any of which may at first look like weeds –but which prove again and again to be fruitful and useful in the world.

For awhile, I thought my Compost Theology notion was perhaps something new. Then I re-read the Parable of the Sower, in Luke’s Gospel, 8:5-8.

Wouldn’t you know, Jesus got there first: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. . . . Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”

This is a familiar story; but I’d forgotten that “good soil” was the punch line.

Note that when Jesus finished telling it, “he called out, ’He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’” I hadn’t been listening so well.

Anyway, the Sower is definitely a “universalist” – the seeds of the Spirit are scattered all over. The point for us is to be tending and developing “good soil.” Then good stuff will grow.

But what will sprout there is not predictable. AFSC was one such shoot that appeared, grew and (for a long time) flourished.

Okay, so what’s happened to make our recent compost not so productive?

For one thing, we’ve lost our history. Here’s an example, drawn from my pamphlet, “Study War Some More”: during peace workshops I often write three lists of five names on a blackboard, and ask the group how many they recognize.

One list is of second tier famous US generals (e.g., Stonewall Jackson). Almost everyone recognizes the names, because our society is steeped in military lore.

Old Stonewall — I’d know him anywhere.

Next is a list of several Friends who made outstanding contributions to peace work (e.g., Lewis Fry Richardson, the British Friend who invented peace research. You remember him, right?)

Lewis Fry Richardson, a British Quaker weatherman.
Who knew he would sprout up and invent peace research in his “spare time”??

Almost no Quakers ever recognize any of these names.

The third list is always immediately recognized: announcers from National Public Radio.

Here’s what I draw from this (and lots of other related data):

Contemporary Quakers have bought into the media-centered view of war, peace and change. This media-centered view is also Washington-centered, and sees these issues in almost exclusively political terms.

Quakers’ specific political views vary predictably based on their demographics: in 2008, for instance, in the liberal groups all were hard at work for the Democratic ticket. And when I visited a pastoral yearly meeting just after the Governor of Alaska had been put on the Republican ticket, the place was electrified and agog. The spirit of secular politics reigned in both places.

There are many problems with this political-media fixation (whether it be on NPR or Fox), not the least of which is that it is completely disempowering, since the “Quaker vote” (for whichever party) is but the tiniest of microblips on any worldly radar screen.

And it’s disempowering in another, perhaps more important way: the historical amnesia it breeds leaves us out of touch with the potential strength of our own tradition, and its achievements, which are many. One of my favorite quotes is from Sun Tzu, in his strategic classic, The Art of War:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

(And never mind “battles”; if we don’t know our history and its achievements — which we don’t — just how are we supposed to tell the world about them? Actually, that is a “battle,” for our own identity and brand, and it’s one US Quakers have been losing for almost fifty years.)

Quakers 2010: Oatmeal . . . and what?

Most American Quakers today are caught in a mass media “matrix” that leaves us in just that “know-nothing” plight. It’s hardly a surprise that I so often hear Friends speak about feeling as if their efforts are futile. They’re not wrong; in secular political terms, they pretty much are.

AFSC too, with exceptions. One recent exception was the “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit. It succeeded because it substituted a powerful visual symbol for the usual political rhetoric, and moreover took the symbol to the people, not merely to Washington. Big win for AFSC.

Liberal Friends have another debilitating cultural characteristic: despite being generally highly educated, we are resolutely anti-intellectual about our religion, and religion in general. In a world which is increasingly shaped by religious ideas and movements (many of them bad), this is a distinctly dysfunctional stance; yet we cling to it.

AFSC is little better here. Consider this from its Mission Statement: “The American Friends Service Committee is a practical expression of the faith of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). . . .”

And what might that “faith” be that they’re getting practical about?

There’s no indication of that, except to assert that whatever it is, “the leadings of the Spirit and the principles of truth found through Friends’ experience and practice are not the exclusive possession of any group.”

In institutional terms, this is a rationale for why the large majority of AFSC staff are non-Quaker. But theologically, it is utterly vacuous. Its Quaker “faith” is emptied of any distinct content, and with it, any reason for separate existence.

AFSC is hardly alone in this. One hears widely among liberal Friends the conviction that above all and before all we are all about “seeking,” typically in a privatized “spiritual-but-not-religious” manner. All tradition, scripture, and the witness of those that went before are of only incidental interest. (The Evangelicals have a somewhat different form of this spiritual virus, with distinct but not much better outcomes.)

To sum up: a mass media, Washington-centered, politicized view of the world, and our witness within it. A Quaker faith without content or history; a religious “community” of privatized “seeking.”

This is a recipe for mediocrity, and that’s how it has turned out.

Again, any claim to originality in this analysis is already trumped in the Parable of the Sower. (Why does this keep happening to me?) There some of the seed of the Spirit (Mark 4:5-6) fell “where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.”

That about nails it.

Note that I am not here trying to blame AFSC for this unhappy development. That would be facile, and give the body too much credit to boot. Yet AFSC certainly shares in this condition, contributes to it–and has paid the price.

AFSC also has a role to play in ameliorating the situation. It could be an important role; possibly even a pivotal one. Such an effort would mark a drastic departure from its path of the past several decades. But it’s possible.

We’ll consider what such a role might look like in the next post.

(But here’s a hint: Think Compost Theology, and Peculiar People.)

We mentioned briefly in our first post about this that Friends United Meeting was likely on the list for a change of leadership.

The details of that are at the FUM website (scroll down to the link to the Memo from the Executive Committee), and applications are due by September 1.

FUM has been a troubled organization, about which much has been written online. My own analysis, called “Wrestling With A Roomful of Elephants,” was posted in 2007, and still seems largely on target. Perhaps the most extensive comments in recent years have come from Johan Maurer, a former FUM General Secretary, via his blog; here’s an archive.

I have often differed with Johan, but in his latest comment is a response that I can only second. He writes:

When I first saw the [FUM General Secretary job] announcement, I immediately thought of several people who should consider applying. I didn’t think about the details of the announcement; instead, the people who came to my mind were creative, energetic, visionary, expressive. I was still under the impression that being the general secretary of Friends United Meeting is the best job there is among Friends. I still want to believe that FUM is the strategic center of the Quaker world, the best place to catalyze the revival of the Quaker movement, if we can just shed the perennial jockeying over who will be the first to leave if the others don’t straighten out.

The very first person I encouraged to consider applying gave me a healthy reality check. Bottom line from this observer I respect highly: this is not an attractive organization to work for.

(Emphasis added.)

Somebody will fill the post, no doubt; and I hope he/she will do a good job. But if I were to make a list of Friends who seem to me, as Johan says, “creative, energetic, visionary, expressive” (and committed to peace and justice and serious Quakerism), I don’t think I would urge any of them to apply for it.

FUM is a mess. Maybe a terminal mess. I’m not at all sure it is the “strategic center of the Quaker world,” or if it ever was; indeed, I’m not sure there is such a “center” just now. Nor am I sure that’s a bad thing.

Can FUM be fixed? We’ll wait and see; but optimism is not in much supply on that front.

On June 11, at Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting (SAYMA), I heard a rising young Friend, Christina Repoley, talk about her longtime leading to see the creation of a new Friends service program, to be called Quaker Voluntary Service, or QVS.

Having heard mentions of and references to this idea for several years, and Christina’s special concern for it, I was eager to hear about it from “the horse’s mouth,” so to speak. My expectation was that with this much time for gestation, the idea must be about ready to get off the ground.

Christina Repoley

It sounded like that at first. Christina spoke of the idea having roots as far back as 1998, when she joined the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage to England’s “1652 country,” where Quakerism emerged. It took more definite form in 2003, and since then she has visited with the Mennonite Central Committee (where, in my view, they know how to do this volunteer service thing right), and consulted with various Quaker worthies here and in England.

Conscientious Objectors in world War Two doing alternative service.

By 2008, she was in seminary and learning about some previous efforts to start such a program, and then taking part in a consultation at Pendle Hill. A steering group emerged from that meeting, which has been in conversation since, and this coming weekend (June 25-27) an initial board of directors for QVS will meet, again at Pendle Hill.

As I say, I began the evening with great expectations. By the end, however, I was feeling much more cautious. That’s because, despite Christina’s enthusiasm and dedication, some big questions still hovered unanswered over the concept; and when they were asked, the answers indicated they had not yet been addressed; which was not good, especially this far along.

Here are the questions:

First, how does the QVS leadership plan to manage the “killer issues,” that sank the previous version of a Quaker service program?

These killer issues are three: 1) affirming (or not) the presence of open GLBT persons 2) insisting (or not) on celibacy or marriage-only sex for of-age heterosexuals. And 3) requiring (or not) a Christian identity for the program and/or participants.

Of course, these issues are alive and unwell across the Quaker spectrum. I wouldn’t expect QVS to resolve them. But managing them in their bailiwick had better be part of their policy framework.

“Managing” them means having policy responses worked out in advance, which they are prepared to articulate and stand up for, having carefully weighed the costs and benefits. Otherwise, the history of other similar efforts indicates these persistent conflicts will tear at the program’s fabric and morale; and once morale is gone, the rest is likely to follow.

A previous program, Quaker Volunteer Witness was sunk by just such a combination: fights over Christian “identity” and participation by gays alienated much of the institutional support, sapped morale and bogged down recruiting and fundraising. It was not pretty to watch. (Two brief accounts of the associated controversies can be found here and here.)

Sure, I have opinions on what the optimum policies on these vexed matters for the new QVS might be; but let the new QVS board to come to their own conclusions – as long as they don’t dither or equivocate about them. Because they won’t wait.

Neither will the other major unanswered question about QVS, which is: how will it be financed? Where will the money come from, not only for a launch, but to keep it going?

I was troubled to learn that after all the discussion and discerning, there does not appear to be any clarity about this most mundane of matters either. The most we heard about funding was Christina’s description of how last year the QVSers submitted an application to a Quaker fund for a large grant.

They had high hopes for the grant, she said: the application seemed well-prepared, and they had enthusiastic letters of support from several eminent Friends.

But QVS did not get the grant, or even part of it. The most money they have collected came in the form of unsolicited donations sent in after Christina published an article about the idea in the “FGC Connections” newsletter.

This report was also very discouraging, on several counts.

First of all, fundraising is basic. It’s what turns ideas into actions, and actions into ongoing programs. Second of all, the spontaneous response to Christina’s article about QVS suggests that there are Friends ready to respond to a clear and organized call for support.

But third, fundraising, especially for an ongoing, long-term effort, calls for more than enthusiasm and dedication: it requires skills and planning. One can learn these skills, including planning. But as the old chestnut goes, to fail to plan is to plan to fail; and QVS financial planning is still a worrisome unknown.

Personally, I think the Quaker fund likely did the QVSers a big favor by turning down their grant application. That’s because the program will need to built its own ongoing financial base if it expects to last. And the sooner it gets to building it (like from the start), the better.

All these items precede the perhaps more interesting questions of organizing and administering the QVS program itself: finding projects, attracting and orienting volunteers, communicating about it to Friends and others. Those matters are probably more fun to talk about; but to focus on them prior to dealing with the others is like trying to build a house from the attic down, rather than from the foundation up. There are problems with that.

So as the QVS board gathers and gets down to its work, here’s hoping they will dive directly into these knottier matters which are so critical to their hopes of success.

I wish them well. It’s been forty years since the collapse of the legendary Quaker workcamp program that only senior citizen Friends now remember, but with depthless gratitude, and hope for some kind of revival or resurrection. How the QVS leaders manage the killer issues, and organize for serious fundraising should tell most of the story about how much of those hopes can be safely pinned on their new venture.

And please Friends, remember, you’re builders now, so: foundation up, not attic down.

This is excerpted from The Friend of London:

Talking About God with Karen Armstrong

‘”We are talking far too much about God these days, and what we say is often facile.” Karen Armstrong has never been one to dodge calling a spade a spade, and last week at Friends House London, without a note, she gave a dazzling, scholarly and inspiring address on what is wrong with lots of God-talk today . . . .

Karen Armstrong — A Skeptical cartoon from the Guardian

‘About 500 Friends and members of the public flocked into the main hall. . . . Her theological range is huge, she has something to say, and she says it. . . .
‘It is not that she rejects all the criticisms of religion made by Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. Indeed her book makes clear that some of their criticisms are valid. The problem in her view is that their analysis is not only intemperately expressed, but disappointingly shallow. . . .
“Besides, there is another context – a growing appreciation of the value of unknowing. That is what she wanted to share last week. Her talk was a veritable Cook’s tour of insights from the world’s great religions stressing the importance of recognising the limits of our knowledge and the value of silence, reticence and awe. . . .
“To anyone tempted to think that surely everyone knows what God is . . . Karen Armstrong has a firm answer: God is not a being at all, and we really haven’t a clue what we really mean when we say that God is “good,” “wise,” or “intelligent.”
‘Taming and domesticating God’s otherness it not helpful. . . . Earlier ages had a far better grasp of symbolism, allegory and myth.
‘In the Middle Ages, the word “belief” did not mean intellectual assent to a particular proposition. It came from the Middle English bileven, which meant “to love, to prize, to hold dear.”
‘She emphasised religion as a practical, not a theoretical, discipline. Something that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart. . . .Like any skill, it requires perseverance, hard work and discipline.’

–Rosemary Hartill The Friend June 18, 2010.

An audio of Armstrong’s talk is here.

I’m with Armstrong. I think we non-non-theists too often try to make god as familiar and cozy as my calico cat sleeping right next to my elbow, flicking her fluffy multi-colored tail and knocking old papers off the top of the desk. . . .

A great cat. But an adequate metaphor for god? Not.