Category Archives: Divergent Friends

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A Cautionary Tale and an Inspiration? The “Life of Quaker Service” of Annice carter

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Finishing the new book Annice Carter’s Life of Quaker Service, my first query was: What if Annice Carter had ever learned to make bagels? Could that have changed history in the Middle East?

Annice in Middle Eastern dress.

She had the training and experience. With her college degree in Home Economics, cooking, including for large groups, was one of her many skills. And she was well aware of the implications of food for building community in diverse cultural settings.

Besides being a cook, Annice was a teacher, then Jill-of-(almost) all-trades, and later Principal of the Friends Girls School in Ramallah Palestine (started by New England Friends in the 1880s, and established as an elite  school for Palestinian students).

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FUM, John Muhanji, Uganda & “KILL The GAYS Laws: A Few Questions

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October is Visitation &  Board meeting month for Friends  United Meeting (FUM). Besides board members from  FUM’s shrinking but scattered territories, notable Friends will be gathering in and around its home turf of Richmond Indiana.

Among the most notable of these visitors is Kenyan Friend  John Muhanji, who heads FUM’s African ministries. Besides official sessions, he’ll be visiting several Friends meetings & churches in the Midwest during the next few weeks.

No doubt the official agendas in these sessions will be full, and discussions lively. But if FUM’s record is any guide, some issues may have a hard time getting heard.

One in particular (unless I miss my guess), despite the fact it’s been in the news, on my mind, and even the pope has talked about it. But neither the pope nor I will be in Indiana this month.

So maybe some reader will pass along the following questions, not only in Indiana but to any other FUM-connected meeting or concerned Quakers:

 

Also . . .

Also, about the gospel being preached . . .

One for all those with financial responsibilities:

Others are asking too:

In Closing: For John Muhanji & FUM:

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Quakerism by The book: A Tribute to Tom Hamm And A Call To His Successor Quaker Historians

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Tom Hamm, applauded as he concludes service as Clerk of the Faculty at Earlham College on the Eve of his retirement, May 2023.

 

Thomas Hamm was the subject of many tributes and high praise at Earlham College this month, as he retired from more than three decades as a professor of  Quaker history and director of the school’s noted archives, built around an extensive Quaker collection.
I was among those who gathered during the weekend of May 19-20 at the Earlham School of Religion, for “Quakerrama,” an extended hybrid tribute to his scholarship at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
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Woodbrooke, Finland, Sex & Jesus: Memories & Epiphanies . . .

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The collapse of the Woodbrooke Quaker center (err, “centre”) is a big deal, but a shock cushioned for most American Friends by the Atlantic. Continue reading Woodbrooke, Finland, Sex & Jesus: Memories & Epiphanies . . . →

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Renegade Quaker Theology: My Breaking Point – Summer 2011

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 September 7, 2011: Cheering for God in the Reagan Library

In my last paid job, at a Quaker peace project next to an enormous military base during the height (or better, the depths) of the Iraq-Afghan wars, I spent a lot of time looking for spiritual resources for that work, and the life that went with the job. For a long time it seemed pretty hard to find any. I read a lot of academic theology and other “spiritual” works. With a few notable exceptions (to be dealt with in future posts), for a long time it seemed pretty hard to find more than an occasional nugget; too much was weak tea or thin gruel.

But then, in early September 2011, after watching a televised Republican presidential candidates’ debate, hosted by the Ronald Reagan Library in California, I abruptly realized that in fact I had found some, and they had crystallized into convictions.

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