The gray wave that wasn’t

November 7, 2018

Back in March, Friends Jour­nal and the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion co-hosted an online dis­cus­sion with six Quak­er can­di­dates for con­gres­sion­al seats. The idea and coor­di­na­tion came from the awe­some Greg Woods. I went to see just how high the 2018 “gray wave” had crested.

Spoil­ers: no wave. Four of the can­di­dates didn’t make it out of the pri­maries and a fifth was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in a long-shot can­di­da­cy. The one can­di­date to win major-party pri­ma­ry was the awe­some Shaw­na Roberts1 of Bar­nesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, peo­ple I know and it was a lot of fun to fol­low her cam­paign. Her twit­ter feed has been a hoot:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Shaw­na only got about 30 per­cent of the vote yes­ter­day. This elec­tion was not kind to Democ­rats in rur­al dis­tricts like south­east Ohio’s 6 and she was run­ning against an incum­bent. From my van­tage point 30 per­cent seems pret­ty good, though as my sev­enth grade math teacher used to intone in his weary bari­tone, close only counts in horse­shoes and hand grenades. 2 Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Wash­ing­ton win had me hop­ing against the odds. I’d love to see her con­tin­ue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updat­ed Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics page. For any­one won­der­ing about Quak­er politi­cians, Paul Buck­ley had a nice overview of our com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to vot­ing a few years ago.

Quakers in Politics Live Web Panel (March 22 2018)

March 9, 2018

Back last August, Greg Woods noticed that there were some Quak­ers run­ning for U.S. Con­gres­sion­al seats. While modern-day Quak­er politi­cians are not unheard of, they’re also not par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mon and it seemed like there was a bumper crop. The idea to inter­view them took on a momen­tum, even as we start­ed to learn about more can­di­dates. It’s grown into a Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Live Web Pan­el set to take place on Thurs­day, March 22nd at 3pm EDT. There’s six con­firmed Quak­er can­di­dates and the event is co-sponsored by the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion and Friends Jour­nal. The mod­er­a­tor will be Earl­ham Col­lege Pres­i­dent Alan Price.

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their Quak­er faith inform these can­di­dates’ desires to run for Con­gress? What advice would they have for oth­er Quak­ers want­i­ng to run for office in the future?

It’s a pret­ty inter­est­ing bunch and I’m look­ing for­ward to lots of good ques­tions about the inter­sec­tion of faith and pol­i­tics in 2018.

Chatting with Greg Woods

December 1, 2016

Yes­ter­day I had a nice video chat with my friend Greg Woods, whose arti­cle, Orga­niz­ing Young Adult Friends Online, appeared in Novem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal. Greg and I have been hav­ing vari­a­tions on this con­ver­sa­tion for years. Back in 2011, we worked togeth­er along­side Stephen Dot­son to put togeth­er a now-dated Young Adult Friends web­site (watch us eat in double-time in its pro­mo­tion­al video!). I believe it was the fourth YAF orga­niz­ing web­site I had built since the mid-90s. Greg is now putting togeth­er a net­work of Quak­er cam­pus min­istries. It’s one of those obvi­ous needs that I hope Friends will support.