Half forgotten Philadelhpia Quaker cemetery at center of development controversy

May 2, 2019

As report­ed in the Philadel­phia Inquirer:

How many skele­tons might remain buried? Pos­si­bly thou­sands, accord­ing to archae­ol­o­gists, but no one knows. His­tor­i­cal maps are unclear on the ceme­ter­ies’ bound­aries, but numer­ous his­to­ries por­tray the grounds as used first by Quak­ers and then by the poor, whose num­bers increased along with the size of the city. 

They quote the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who had heard noth­ing about this. The arti­cle also cites a 1880s arti­cle in Friends Intel­li­gencer, the pre­de­ces­sor to Friends Jour­nal.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​a​r​t​s​/​s​c​h​u​y​l​k​i​l​l​-​y​a​r​d​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​e​m​e​t​e​r​i​e​s​-​p​h​i​l​a​d​e​l​p​h​i​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​b​r​a​n​d​y​w​i​n​e​-​d​r​e​x​e​l​-​2​0​1​9​0​5​0​2​.​h​tml

In the New Yorker, an article on atheism leads with a Daniel Seeger’s 1965 Supreme Court case

October 30, 2018

A review of two books on athe­ism starts with the take of Dan Seeger, who’s land­mark Supreme Court case extend­ed the right to con­sci­en­tious objec­tor sta­tus to agnos­tics and atheists:

Daniel Seeger was twenty-one when he wrote to his local draft board to say, “I have con­clud­ed that war, from the prac­ti­cal stand­point, is futile and self-defeating, and from the more impor­tant moral stand­point, it is uneth­i­cal.” Some time lat­er, he received the Unit­ed States Selec­tive Ser­vice System’s Form 150, ask­ing him to detail his objec­tions to mil­i­tary ser­vice. It took him a few days to reply, because he had no answer for the form’s first ques­tion: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” Unsat­is­fied with the two avail­able options — “Yes” and “No” — Seeger final­ly decid­ed to draw and check a third box: “See attached pages.”

Seeger’s vic­to­ry helped mark a turn­ing point for a minor­i­ty that had once been denied so much as the right to tes­ti­fy in court, even in their own defense. Athe­ists, long dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by civ­il author­i­ties and derid­ed by their fellow-citizens, were sud­den­ly eli­gi­ble for some of the exemp­tions and pro­tec­tions that had pre­vi­ous­ly been restrict­ed to believers. 

Daniel Seeger has writ­ten for and been fea­tured in the pages of Friends Jour­nal many times over the ensu­ing decades but last year he wrote a great fea­ture for us about the court case, An AFSC Defense of the Rights of Con­science. A tip of the hat to Car­ol Holmes Alpern for send­ing this New York­er arti­cle way!

https://​www​.newyork​er​.com/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​2​0​1​8​/​1​0​/​2​9​/​w​h​y​-​a​r​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​s​t​i​l​l​-​u​n​c​o​m​f​o​r​t​a​b​l​e​-​w​i​t​h​-​a​t​h​e​ism

Quaker Money

July 27, 2018

Here’s a from-the-archives piece I stum­bled again on recent­ly. It’s from New Eng­land his­to­ri­an Bet­sy Caz­den, whose insights on Quak­er cul­ture I adore. She wrote this for Friends Jour­nal in 2006:

How did Friends come to do so well? The stan­dard sto­ry is a vari­ant on the Puri­tan one: Quak­ers became wealthy by work­ing dili­gent­ly; extend­ing their exper­i­men­tal approach to reli­gion to invent new indus­tri­al tech­nolo­gies; trad­ing hon­est­ly (there­by attract­ing cus­tomers); mak­ing pro­duc­tive use of transat­lantic kin­ship net­works; and liv­ing fru­gal­ly, with­out money-drains like drink­ing or gam­bling, there­by free­ing up mon­ey for sav­ings, invest­ment, and phil­an­thropic giv­ing to Quaker-run insti­tu­tions. All of that may be true, but is at best par­tial. The unspo­ken “rest of the sto­ry” has two pieces: land and slaves.

I’m sure I’ve read this arti­cle before (I uncon­scious­ly sum­ma­rized it this past May) but I think it’s an impor­tant dis­cus­sion to rethink every so often.

Quakers minute on the child camps

June 20, 2018

San Anto­nio Quak­ers’ minute on child separations

Friends Meet­ing of San Anto­nio finds the pol­i­cy of the present admin­is­tra­tion of sep­a­rat­ing chil­dren from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der to be shame­ful and con­trary to Amer­i­can val­ues. Fur­ther, using the Gospel to claim that “God has ordained” such actions is appalling to us as a peo­ple of faith.

A few years ago Friends Jour­nal ran an arti­cle on the bor­der human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, co-written by one of San Anto­nio’s clerks, so we’ve added this week­end’s state­ment to the arti­cle for context.

Lifting up the vocabulary

May 22, 2018

This week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is Sell­ing Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two promi­nent Quak­er board­ing schools in the Philadel­phia area, and he talks about the brand­ing chal­lenges of “Quak­er val­ues” which his­toric Quak­er schools so often fall back on when describ­ing their mis­sion. We often describe these with the sim­plis­tic “SPICES” foru­mu­la­tion (Eric Moon wrote about the prob­lems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encour­ages us to expand our language:

We can use any num­ber of descrip­tors that do not sound so haughty and near­sight­ed. I think we should con­tin­u­al­ly lift up some key pieces of vocab­u­lary that real­ly do make the Quak­er way dis­tinc­tive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add oth­ers: “that of God in every per­son”; “the Inner Light”; “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”; “dis­cern­ment”; “sense of the meet­ing”; “right­ly led and right­ly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice with­in”; “way open­ing”; “clerk­ing”; “query”; “wor­ship shar­ing”; “expec­tant wait­ing”; “cen­ter­ing down”; “Quak­er deci­sion mak­ing”; “Quak­er tra­di­tion”; “faith and prac­tice”; “seek­ing clear­ness”; “Quak­er tes­ti­monies”; and of course, “meet­ing for worship.”

Long­time FJ read­ers will remem­ber a much-discussed 2008 arti­cle by Hoopes, “Young Fam­i­lies and Quak­erism: Will the Cen­ter Hold?” It cer­tain spoke to my con­di­tion as a par­ent strug­gling with fam­i­ly life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard real­i­ties fac­ing many Quak­er par­ents of young chil­dren today. They are fre­quent­ly exhaust­ed and fraz­zled from attend­ing to their children’s needs in addi­tion to their own all week long. They des­per­ate­ly need a break from their own chil­dren, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expect­ed — to serve as First-day school teach­ers or child­care providers. Hence, their expe­ri­ence of meet­ing is not one of replen­ish­ment, but of fur­ther depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadel­phia Friends took the 2008 arti­cle to heart.

President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminiary on Simon Jenkins article

May 15, 2018

Chalk this one up as anoth­er whisper-down-the-lane. As read­ers will prob­a­bly remem­ber, a few weeks ago, non-Friend Simon Jenk­ins wrote an opin­ion piece in The Guardian about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of British Friends drop­ping God from their Faith and Prac­tice. There were a lot of exag­ger­a­tions in it; the year­ly meet­ing ses­sion was most­ly decid­ing whether it it felt led to start the long process of revis­ing the doc­u­ment of Friends’ belief and prac­tice. Many year­ly meet­ings do this every gen­er­a­tion or so. AFAIK, there was no sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion on what the revi­sions might bring. At the time, I spec­u­lat­ed that “Jenk­ins is chas­ing the head­line to advance his own argu­ment with­out regard to how his state­ment might polar­ize Friends.”

Now we have anoth­er head­line chas­er. The pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary more or less reads Jenk­in­s’s piece aloud on his radio show (hat-tip havedan­son on the Quak­ers sub­red­dit). He light­ly skips over the fact that Jenk­ins isn’t Quak­er and admits to lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence of Quak­er wor­ship. The SBTS pres­i­dent, Albert Mohler, repeat­ed­ly calls the Guardian arti­cle a “news report” even though it is clear­ly labeled as an opin­ion piece. If any pub­lic­i­ty is good pub­lic­i­ty then it’s good that non-Friends like Jenk­ins and now Mohler are talk­ing about the decision-making process of a Quak­er year­ly meet­ing, but this is stu­pid piled on stupid.

From a media per­spec­tive, I get it: Mohler has a dai­ly 24-minute pod­cast to fill. He has interns who scan buzzy news items. They rearrange the text with inter­sti­tials like “he con­tin­ues, and I quote” and “he goes on to say” so that Mohler can spend five min­utes read­ing an arti­cle with­out sound­ing like he’s just read­ing an arti­cle. But seri­ous­ly, how does the pres­i­dent of a major sem­i­nary have such dis­re­gard for any­thing approach­ing aca­d­e­m­ic rig­or? Also: how much regur­gi­tat­ed junk is on the inter­net sim­ply because peo­ple need to fill time? The Quak­er cau­tion about giv­ing min­istry just because you’re paid to give min­istry and it’s time to give min­istry seems apt in this case.

https://albertmohler.com/2018/05/14/briefing‑5 – 14-18/