arse Posts

Just finished: Kenneth S.P. Morse's "A History of Conservative Friends" from 1962. Like most histories of Conservative Friends, it's both heartening and depressing. It's great to read the quotes, which often put the dilemma very clearly, like this one from Iowa Friends in 1877:

In consideration of many and various departures in Doctrine, Principle and Practice, brought into our beloved Society of late years by modern innovators, who have so revolutionized our ancient order in the Church, as to run into views and practices out of which our early Friends were lead, and into a broader, and more self-pleasing, and cross-shunning way than that marked out by our Savior, and held to by our ancient Friends.... And who have so approximated to the unregenerate world that we feel it incumbent upon us to bear testimony...and sustain the Church for the purpose for which is was peculiarly raised up.

I love this stuff. You've got theology, polity, culture and an argument for the eternal truths of the "peculiarly raised" Quaker church. But even in 1962 this is a story of decline, of generations of ministers passing with no one to take their place and monthly and yearly meetings winking out with disarming regularity as the concept of Friends gets stretched from all sides. "It is certainly true that most of those who call themselves Friends at the present time are only partial Friends in that they seem not to have felt called to uphold various branches of the Quaker doctrine."

Putting the book down the most remarkable fact is that there are any Conservative Friends around still around almost fifty years later.

The task of sharing and upholding the Quaker doctrine is still almost impossibly hard. The multiplicity of meanings in the words we use become stumbling blocks in themselves. Friends from other traditions are often the worst, often being blind to their own innovations, oftener still just not caring that they don't share much in common with early Friends.

Then there's the disunity among present-day Conservatives. Geography plays a part but it seems part of the culture. The history is a maze of traditionalist splinter groups with carefully-selected lists of who they do and do not correspond with. Today the three Conservative Yearly Meetings seem to know each another more through carefully-parsed reading of histories than actual visitation (there is some, not enough). There's also the human messiness of it all: some of the flakiest liberal Quakers I've known have been part of Conservative Yearly Meetings and the internet is full of those who share Conservative Friends values but have no yearly meeting to join.

No answers today from me. Maybe we should take solace that despite the travails and the history of defeat, there still remains a spark and there are those who still seek to share Friends' ways. For those wanting to learn more the more recent "Short History of Conservative Friends" (1992) is online and a good introduction.

To American eyes the news of the escalating war in the Caucasus nation of Georgia almost reads as farce: a breakaway region of a breakaway region, tanks rolling to maintain control of... well, not that much really. We wonder how it could be in either Russia or Georgia's interests to pick a fight over all this? Why does it seem like Russia's de facto leader-for-life Vladimir Putin is still fighting the Cold War? And what must be going through the mind of Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili to be taunting the giant to its north?

But the farce turns to weariness as we realize just how familiar this all is. Tiny ethnic enclaves with centuries of animosities and well rehearsed stories of atrocities committed by the other set fighting by the breakdown of an empire that had uneasily united them in repression. Change a few details and we could be talking recent conflicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, the Sudan, Palestine/Israel and Iraq. Blood money from the drug trade, from oil billions and human trafficking add fuel to the fire. We've been fighting these same wars since at least 1914. Why haven't we learned how to stop them?

Seriously: otherwise strong economies collapse under the chaos that these territorial wars bring. Most of the wars seem to be fought in marginal areas and all sides would be better off if the politicians stopped worrying about these contested territories and just focused on building a economy attractive to international trade.

Why hasn't the world learned the mechanisms to end these conflicts before they erupt into open warfare? Where is the political will to end this class of war once and for all? Disease and terrorism are the invariable fruits of these conflicts and strike us all across national boundaries. The "international community" needs to be mean more than impressive choreography and a few thousand athletes in Beijing. This week's real gold metal will go to the leaders that can transcend macho posturing and weak-willed apologizing and get those Russian tanks out of Georgia.

A guest piece from Rob of Consider the Lillies

Rob describes himself: "I’m a twenty-something gay Mid-western expatriate living in Boston. I was inspired to begin a blog based on the writings of other urban Quaker bloggers as they reflect and discuss their inward faith and outward experiences. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m usually with my friends, traveling about, and/or generally making an arse of myself."

I've been emailing back and forth with a friend who's considering starting a blog [update: as she has, The Good Raised Up]. She's thinking of approaching a couple of Friends to act as elders "so as not to outrun my Guide."

When you’ve acknowledge the Power, what does faith become? It becomes a testimony to the world. The Quaker way breaks through both the religious and activist narrow-mindedness of our day. We’re not talking about faith without action and we’re not talking about action without faith. Either one without the other is sacrilege. Combine the two and you have something real, something powerful.

I've met many "supra-religionists": those who believe that all religions are the ultimately the same, don't sweat the details of religious practice or duty and proudly hyphenate their religious life. I'm reminded of the people I meet who grew up in a little dinky Midwestern town but now crave to be seen as urban sophisticates and world travelers... Can we get off the cloud of supra-religiosity and get dirty working the soil of peculiarities and particularities?

More word games at the Pentagon. They've recently denied reports that they used napalm against troops in Iraq. Reporters have claimed they did and so to have Air Force pilots "We napalmed both those bridge approaches":www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20030805-9999_1n5bomb.html said one. Turns out the weapons used were "remarkably similar" to napalm, "the firebombing agent used extensively during the Vietnam War":http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm. Those burning Vietnamese kids running from giant orange balls of fire in the classic pictures were being "napalmed." Highly controversial, it was banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 that the United States refused to sign. The U.S. did claim to have destroyed its napalm arsenal two years ago but here it is napalming Iraqi troops. When is napalm not napalm? When you switch gasoline for for jet fuel apparently. The new not-napalm has the happy name of "Mark 77," which sounds more like the latest boy band than the latest firebombing agent. Marine spokesperson Col. Michael Daily explained the difference between the gasoline of napalm and jet fuel of Mark 77 in a recent email: bq. This additive has significantly less of an impact on the environment. Nice to know the Pentagon is environmentally-senstive when it's roasting people alive.