news reports Posts

Reports are in that link up the US torture program and the hunt for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Jonathan S Landay in McClatchy News quotes a "former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue":

"The main [reason for the torture] is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

All this is not really a surprise; I covered it in real time over on Nonviolence.org. There were numerous reports that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense were pushing the intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that would back their flawed theories.

The United States is supposed to be the champion of freedom but we resorted to the most brutal of communist-era torture techniques because our highest officials were more interested in their cartoon view of the world than the complex reality (and not so complex: anyone who's taken an "Intro to Islam" class would know that an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would be have been very unlikely). When facts and ideological theories don't match up, it's time to dig for more facts and revisit the ideologies. 

A few weeks ago a newsletter brought written reports about the latest round of conflict at a local meeting that's been fighting for the past 180 years or so. As my wife and I read through it we were a bit underwhelmed by the accounts of the newest conflict resolution attempts. The mediators seemed more worried about alienating a few long-term disruptive characters than about preserving the spiritual vitality of the meeting. It's a phenomena I've seen in a lot of Quaker meetings.

Call it the FDR Principle after Franklin D Roosevelt, who supposedly defended his support of one of Nicaragua's most brutal dictators by saying "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." Even casual historians of Latin American history will know this only led to fifty years of wars with reverberations across the world with the Iran/Contra scandal. The FDR Principle didn't make for good U.S. foreign policy and, if I may, I'd suggest it doesn't make for good Quaker policy either. Any discussion board moderator or popular blogger knows that to keep an online discussion's integrity you need to know when to cut a disruptive trouble-maker off--politely and succintly, but also firmly. If you don't, the people there to actually discuss your issues--the people you want--will leave.

I didn't know how to talk about this until a post called Conflict in Meeting came through Livejournal this past First Day. The poster, jandrewm, wrote in part:

Yet my recognition of all that doesn't negate the painful feelings that arise when hostility enters the meeting room, when long-held grudges boil over and harsh words are spoken.  After a few months of regular attendance at my meeting, I came close to abandoning this "experiment" with Quakerism because some Friends were so consistently rancorous, divisive, disruptive.  I had to ask myself: "Do I need this negativity in my life right now?"

I commented about the need to take the testimonies seriously:

I've been in that situation. A lot of Friends aren't very good at putting their foot down on flagrantly disruptive behavior. I wish I could buy the "it eventually sorts out" argument but it often doesn't. I've seen meetings where all the sane people are driven out, leaving the disruptive folks and armchair therapists. It's a symbiotic relationship, perhaps, but doesn't make for a healthy spiritual community.

The unpopular solution is for us to take our testimonies seriously. And I mean those more specific testimonies buried deep in copies in Faith & Practice that act as a kind of collective wisdom for Quaker community life. Testimonies against detraction and for rightly ordered decision making, etc. If someone's actions tear apart the meeting they should be counseled; if they continue to disrupt then their decision-making input should be disregarded. This is the real effect of the old much-maligned Quaker process of disowning (which allowed continued attendance at worship and life in the community but stopped business participation). Limiting input like this makes sense to me.

The trouble that if your meeting is in this kind of spiral there might not be much you can do by yourself. People take some sort of weird comfort in these predictable fights and if you start talking testimonies you might become very unpopular very quickly. Participating in the bickering isn't helpful (of course) and just eats away your own self. Distancing yourself for a time might be helpful. Getting involved in other Quaker venues. It's a shame. Monthly meeting is supposed to be the center of our Quaker spiritual life. But sometimes it can't be. I try to draw lessons from these circumstances. I certainly understand the value and need for the Quaker testimonies better simply because I've seen the problems meetings face when they haven't. But that doesn't make it any easier for you.

But all of this begs an awkward question: are we really building Christ's kingdom by dropping out? It's an age-old tension between purity and participation at all costs. Timothy asked a similar question of me in a comment to my last post. Before we answer, we should recognize that there are indeed many people who have "abandoned" their "Quaker experiment" because we're not living up to our own ideals.

Maybe I'm more aware of this drop-out class than others. It sometimes seems like an email correspondence with the "Quaker Ranter" has become the last step on the way out the door. But I also get messages from seekers newly convinced of Quaker principles but unable to connect locally because of the divergent practices or juvenile behavior of their local Friends meeting or church. A typical email last week asked me why the plain Quakers weren't evangelical and why evangelical Quakers weren't conservative and asked "Is there a place in the quakers for a Plain Dressing, Bible Thumping, Gospel Preaching, Evangelical, Conservative, Spirit Led, Charismatic family?" (Anyone want to suggest their local meeting?)

We should be more worried about the people of integrity we're losing than about the grumpy trouble-makers embedded in some of our meetings. If someone is consistently disruptive, is clearly breaking specific Quaker testimonies we've lumped under community and intergrity, and stubbornly immune to any council then read them out of business meeting. If the people you want in your meeting are leaving because of the people you really don't want, then it's time to do something. Our Quaker toolbox provides us tool for that action--ways to define, name and address the issues. Our tradition gives us access to hundreds of years of experience, both mistakes and successes, and can be a more useful guide than contemporary pop psychology or plain old head-burying.

Not all meetings have these problems. But enough do that we're losing people. And the dynamics get more acute when there's a visionary project on the table and/or someone younger is at the center of them. While our meetings sort out their issues, the internet is providing one type of support lifeline.

Blogger jandrewm was able to seek advice and consolation on Livejournal. Some of the folks I spoke about in the 2003 "Lost Quaker Generation" series of posts are now lurking away on my Facebook friends list. Maybe we can stop the full departure of some of these Friends. They can drop back but still be involved, still engaging their local meeting. They can be reading and discussing testimonies ("detraction" is a wonderful place to start) so they can spot and explain behavior. We can use the web to coordinate workshops, online discussions, local meet-ups, new workship groups, etc., but even email from a Friend thousands of miles away can help give us clarity and strength.

I think (I hope) we're helping to forge a group of Friends with a clear understanding of the work to be done and the techniques of Quaker discernment. It's no wonder that Quaker bodies sometimes fail to live up to their ideals: the journals of  olde tyme Quaker ministers are full of disappointing stories and Christian tradition is rich with tales of the roadblocks the Tempter puts up in our path. How can we learn to  center in the Lord when our meetings become too political or disfunctional (I think I should start looking harder at Anabaptist non-resistance theory). This is the work, Friends, and it's always been the work. Through whatever comes we need to trust that any testing and heartbreak has a purpose, that the Lord is using us through all, and that any suffering will be productive to His purpose if we can keep low and listening for follow-up instructions.

• Johan M on the signs outside our churches and meetings
  Our signs often serve as filters rather than invitations. The worst kind of filters are those with unintended messages, or perhaps those signs whose messages are formed by our anxieties rather than our best hearts and hopes.
  (tags: quaker quaker.outreach)
• Links to Kenya Quaker and non-Quaker News
  Kenyan Friends, their reports and voices, are sometimes featured on blogs and sites mostly managed and authored by expatriate staff and their support teams.
  (tags: quaker quaker.kenya comment)
• Will T explains Quaker perfection to the NFL crowd
  Say that sin is like committing a penalty. You, even your whole team could play an entire game without having a penalty called on them. In that regard you have played perfectly. But you might have fumbled the ball, thrown interceptions...
  (tags: quaker quaker.christianity quaker.conservative)
• Friends church in Texas makes a video introduction (via QuakerQuaker.org)
  Profile of Friendswood Friends Church: "It's a privilege to welcome you to our page on the web but even more to welcome you to join us for worship and life together." Follow user link to see companion videos on youth and children's ministry programs.
  (tags: quaker quaker.video quaker.youth)
• Welcome to the new QuakerQuaker
  Introduction to the enhanced category and discussion features on QuakerQuaker. "It's more fun than Facebook!"
  (tags: quaker)

Back in the late 1980s when I was a Villanova University undergrad, sexual assault didn't happen. True story.

It will surprise no one to learn that I co-edited an alternative, "underground" weekly junior and senior year. We called it The VACUUM, a name whose acronym changed every issue. Reading about an early "date rape" study in my feminist studies class I extrapolated how many rapes should reasonably be expected to occur on a campus of Villanova's size. I added a few anecdotes from my all-male dorm experience and published it in The VACUUM. A short while later some friends of mine who edited the official student paper picked up the story and even cited an anonymous quotation from me in what is probably the only official documentation of the VACUUM's existence in the V.U. archives.

Right around this time a female student brought her allegations of an on-campus sexual assault to the local police. Campus officials feigned surprise and provided the local media with parroted quotes: "In all my xyz years working here I have never ever heard of an allegation of rape." Chief of Security, Dean of Students, etc., all delivered the same line, clearly coached by a public relations team, with only the years changed to reflect their campus tenure. Thousands of students, dozens of years, hundreds of frat parties, tanker-fulls of cheap beer and not a hint of impropriety.

Last night I chanced on my alma mater's website and saw a link right there on the homepage to an article mysterious titled Recent Campus Incident (generic URL, probably designed to disappear soon). It documented an alleged assault on a female student by three members of the football team last month. The announcement reports that the University found them in violation of the campus's Code of Conduct and "rescinded the admission of the three young men."

A Google News search turns up that this has been extensively covered by the media with almost 500 hits. The Delco Times reports that the 1990 Clery Act and its amendments have made university cover-ups illegal and required reports and specific protocols for responding to campus crimes. The current media spotlight and long-standing federal laws certainly account for much of Villanova's 2007 enlightenment. Whatever the source of change, it's nice to see. Even three players from the beloved football team can get the boot (sorry, have their admissions rescinded) for criminal behavior. Better still, the university can fess up to the crime and take some responsibility. The times, they have a' changed.

Robin M over at What Canst Thou Say? has been hanging out with emergent church folks recently and reports back in a few posts. It's definitely worth reading, as is some of what's been coming out of the last week's youth gathering at Barnesville (including Micah Bales report) and the annual Conservative Friends gathering near Lancaster Pa., which I've heard bits and pieces about on various Facebook pages.

It sound like something's in the air. I wish I could sit in live in some of these conversations but just got more disappointing news on the job front so I'll continue to be more-or-less homebound for the foreseeable future. Out to pasture, that's me! (I'm saying that with a smile on my face, trying not to be tooooo whiny!)

Robin's post has got me thinking again about emergent church issues. My own dabbling in emergent blogs and meet-ups only goes so far before I turn back. I really appreciate its analysis and critique of contemporary Christianity and American culture but I rarely find it articulating a compelling way forward.

I don't want to merely shoehorn some appropriated Catholic rituals into worship. And pictures of emergent events often feel like adults doing vacation bible school. I wonder if it's the "gestalt" issue again (via Lloyd Lee Wilson et al), the problem of trying to get from here to there in an ad hoc manner that gets us to an mishmash of not quite here and not quite there. I want to find a religious community where faith and practice have some deep connection. My wife Julie went off to traditional Catholicism, which certainly has the unity of form and faith going for it, while I'm most drawn to Conservative Friends. It's not a tradition's age which is the defining factor (Zoroastrianism anyone?) so much as its internal logic. Consequently I'm not interested in a Quakerism (or Christianity) that's merely nostalgic or legalistic about seventeenth century forms but one that's a living, breathing community living both in its time and in the eternity of God.

I've wondered if Friends have something to give the emergent church: a tradition that's been emergent for three hundred years and that's maintained more or less regular correspondence with that 2000 year old emergent church. We Friends have made our own messes and fallen down as many times as we've soared but there's a Quaker vision we have (or almost have) that could point a way forward for emergent Christians of all stripes. There's certainly a ministry there, perhaps Robin's and perhaps not mine, but someone's.

Elsewhere:

Indiana Friend Brent Bill started a fascinating new blog last week after a rather contentious meeting on the future of Friends leadership. Friends in Fellowship is trying to map out a vision and model for a pastoral Friends fellowship that embodies Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren's idea of a "generous orthodoxy." Interesting stuff that echos a lot of the "Convergent Friends" conversation (here here and here) and mirrors some of the dynamics that have been going on within liberal Friends. The QuakerQuaker conversation has thus far been most intense among evangelical and liberal Friends, with middle American "FUM" Friends mostly sitting it out so it's great to see some connections being made there. Read "Friends in Fellowship" backwards, oldest post to newest and don't miss the comments as Brent is modeling a really good back and forth process with by answering comments with thoughtful posts.

Famously unapologetically liberal Friend Chuck Fager has some interesting correspondence over on A Friendly Letter about some of the elephants in the Friends United Meeting closet. Interesting and contentious both, as one might expect from Chuck. Well worth a read, there's plenty there you won't find anywhere else.

Finally, have I gushed about how fabulous the new'ish ConservativeFriend.org website is. Oh yes, I have, but that's okay. Visit it again anyway.

A few days ago my two-year old Theo and I took a meandering bike trip that brought us to the charmingly-named Piney Hollow Road (alas, not quite as rustic as it sounds). We stopped on the unassuming bridge over the Great Egg Harbor River and I looked for a trail into the woods. We found one about a hundred feet north of the river, hiked in another hundred feet and picnicked along the river. When I got back home I started Googling around and discovered that our sand trail was the Blue Anchor Fireline Road and that we were on one of the main paths in to the famed Blue Hole.

The Jordans Meetinghouse in England suffered a terrible fire a few days ago. Friends don't make icons of meetinghouses but if we did Jordans would be high on the list. Friends started meeting there in 1659. Isaac Penington, James Nayler, and Thomas Ellwood lived neighborhood; Penington is buried out front, as is William Penn. As if this isn't enough, the barn is said to be made from the timbers of the Mayflower--yes, that Mayflower: it was apparently common to recycle ships into buildings after a few trans-Atlantic trips (news reports don't mention the barn). Here are pictures from Bill Samuel's trip a few years ago, a thread on his discussion board and photos that someone took from a youth hostel retreat last week before the fire. One of the wardens (caretakers) of the meetinghouse was burned trying to put out the fire but later reports make it sound like he wasn't too badly hurt, thank God.

Update: the Guardian did a piece on the fire