The Quaker who lived with the CIA

March 8, 2018

I usu­al­ly find sto­ries of Friends by track­ing a list of a hundred-plus Quaker-related RSS feeds. I’ll also find them being shared on Face­book or in the Red­dit Quak­ers group. For the first time ever I stum­bled on one in Twit­ter Moments. Anoth­er like­ly first: I’m link­ing to the CIA web­site. Read the sto­ry of the Quak­er paci­fist who lived with the CIA.

Mar­garet [Scat­ter­good] was far more skep­ti­cal of CIA and con­sid­ered the organization’s mis­sion to be in vio­la­tion of her paci­fist beliefs. She used her trust fund to finan­cial­ly con­tribute to anti­war caus­es. She lob­bied Con­gress to cut the US Intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary bud­gets. In the 1980s Mar­garet opened her home to San­din­istas from Nicaragua, while CIA sup­port­ed the opposition.

Invit­ing San­din­istas to her home in the mid­dle of the CIA head­quar­ters com­pound is eas­i­ly the most kick­ass Quak­er sto­ries I’ve heard in awhile. Chuck Fager also shared some of this sto­ry in a nice remem­brance in a 1987 Friends Jour­nal short­ly after she died; appar­ent­ly the land pur­chas­es in the 1940s weren’t quite so neigh­bor­ly as the CIA pub­lic rela­tions team seem to make out.

Conflict in meeting and the role of heartbreak and testing

September 16, 2008

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.

Conscientious Objection, After You’re In

April 30, 2004

Here’s a web­site of “Jere­my Hinz­man, a U.S. Army sol­dier who became a a con­sci­en­tious objector”:http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/faq.html in the course of his ser­vice. His appli­ca­tions denied, he moved to Cana­da and is seek­ing polit­i­cal asy­lum there.
I find I can under­stand the issues all too well. In only a slightly-parallel uni­verse, I’d be in iraq myself instead of pub­lish­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org. My father, a vet­er­an who fought in the South Pacif­ic in World War II, real­ly want­ed me to join the U.S. Navy and attend the Naval Acad­e­my at Annapo­lis. For quite some time, I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered it. I am attract­ed to the idea of ser­vice and duty and putting in hard work for some­thing I believe in.
Hinz­man’s sto­ry is get­ting a lot of main­stream cov­er­age, I sus­pect because the “escape to Cana­da” angle has so many Vietnam-era echoes that res­onate with that gen­er­a­tion. I wish Hinz­man would flesh out his web­site sto­ry though. His Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions leaves out some impor­tant details that could real­ly make the sto­ry – why did he join the Army in the first place, what were some of the expe­ri­ences that led him to rethink his duty, etc. I’d rec­om­mend Jeff Pater­son­’s “Gulf War Refusenik”:http://jeff.paterson.net/ site, which includes lots of sto­ries includ­ing his own:
bq. “What am I going to do with my life?” has always been huge ques­tion of youth, and today in the wake of the hor­ror and tragedy of New York Sep­tem­ber 11th this ques­tion has increased impor­tance for mil­lions of young peo­ple. No one who has seen the images will ever for­get… If I had­n’t spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peas­ants who dared to strug­gle against “Amer­i­can inter­ests” in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Sal­vador, and Guatemala… Faced with this real­i­ty, I began the process of becom­ing un-American-meaning that the inter­ests of the peo­ple of the world began to weigh heav­ier than my self-interest. I real­ized that the world did not need or want anoth­er U.S. troop…
There are bound to be more sto­ries all the time of service-people who find a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty when they land on for­eign shores. How many will rethink their rela­tion­ship to the U.S. mil­i­tary. How many will fol­low Pater­son­’s exam­ple of becom­ing “un-American”?

Iran-Contra alum behind Terror Psychic Network

July 31, 2003

The Idiot who came up with the “Ter­ror Psy­chic Net­work” is leav­ing the Pen­ta­gon over the flap. What’s even more strik­ing is his iden­ti­ty: it’s John Poindex­ter, one of the peo­ple at the heart of the Iran-Contra scan­dal that rocked the Rea­gan Administration.

For those too young to remem­ber, in the Iran-Contra affair Rea­gan’s kook­i­est spooks secret­ly sold arms to U.S. arch­en­e­my num­ber 1 (Iran) in order to cir­cum­vent Con­gres­sion­al demands that they not fund an oppo­si­tion army against U.S. arch­en­e­my num­ber 2 (Nicaragua), with the mon­ey being fun­neled through the coun­try that then and now still inex­plic­a­bly isn’t pub­lic ene­my num­ber 3 (Sau­di Ara­bia). It was the cir­cuitous­ness of it all more than any­thing that kept Rea­gan out of jail for all of this.

Why Poindex­ter was ever allowed back any­where near Wash­ing­ton, much less the Pen­ta­gon, is a mys­tery. Here are some arti­cles on Poindex­ter’s return to Wash­ing­ton and return of the Iran-Contra crew to the (Bush II) White House. Here’s anoth­er arti­cle on the res­ig­na­tion of the Rea­gan crook turned Bush-II fool.