We don’t worship silence

May 1, 2019

Isaac Smith:

There are a lot of Quak­ers for whom the qual­i­ty of their wor­ship is mea­sured by the qual­i­ty of the silence there­in, to the point that “dis­rup­tions” — whether they come from chil­dren, late­com­ers, folks who are not neu­rotyp­i­cal, or folks who don’t com­port them­selves in the man­ner of the white mid­dle class — are regard­ed as annoy­ances. This is not just a mistake. 

We don’t wor­ship silence

Decolonizing Quaker faith

January 11, 2019

An AFSC inter­view with Oskar Castro:

Me as a Puer­to Rican com­ing into Quak­erism, I find a lot of white par­a­digms, silence in and of itself is not exclu­sive­ly colo­nial­ism, but I think the way that Quak­ers some­times lean into silence beyond the spir­i­tu­al side of it, the con­flict avoid­ance side of being a Quak­er, these are the things that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly res­onate with me, cul­tur­al­ly speaking 

https://​www​.afsc​.org/​b​l​o​g​s​/​a​c​t​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​f​a​i​t​h​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​f​s​c​-​o​s​k​a​r​-​c​a​s​tro

In Newly Found Audio, A Forgotten Civil Rights Leader Says Coming Out ‘Was An Absolute Necessity’

January 7, 2019

Wow, this should be inter­est­ing! The pod­cast series intro is all we have so far but this NPR piece is dish­ing some of the details of what we’ll hear when this episode airs:

Despite the risks, Rustin felt it was his respon­si­bil­i­ty to be open about his sex­u­al­i­ty. He traces that duty back to an expe­ri­ence he had as a black man in the 1940s Jim Crow South, when he took his place at the back of a seg­re­gat­ed bus.

“As I was going by the sec­ond seat to go to the rear, a white child reached out for the ring neck­tie I was wear­ing and pulled it,” he recalled in the new­ly released audio. “Where­upon its moth­er said, ‘Don’t touch a n*****.’ ”

As Rustin tells it, here’s what ran through his mind in that moment after the white woman called him the slur: “If I go and sit qui­et­ly at the back of that bus now, that child, who was so inno­cent of race rela­tions that it was going to play with me, will have seen so many blacks go in the back and sit down qui­et­ly that it’s going to end up say­ing, ‘They like it back there, I’ve nev­er seen any­body protest against it.’ ” 

Rustin was fired from his work with orga­ni­za­tions like the Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and he often had to work semi-anonymously behind the scenes. The famous March on Wash­ing­ton that we remem­ber for Mar­tin Luther King Jr.‘s speech was Rustin’s idea.

One of his catch-phrases in speech­es was that we should “speak truth to pow­er.” When he worked with the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee to write the famous 1955 pam­phlet of that name, not only was­n’t he not list­ed as one of the authors, but the oth­ers con­coct­ed some ridicu­lous sto­ry about the phrase being some ancient Quak­er say­ing. Shame­ful. I real­ly want to lis­ten to his sto­ry and can’t wait for the podcast!

https://​www​.npr​.org/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​0​6​/​6​8​2​5​9​8​6​4​9​/​i​n​-​n​e​w​l​y​-​f​o​u​n​d​-​a​u​d​i​o​-​a​-​f​o​r​g​o​t​t​e​n​-​c​i​v​i​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​-​s​a​y​s​-​c​o​m​i​n​g​-​o​u​t​-​w​a​s​-​a​n​-​a​b​s​o​?​f​b​c​l​i​d​=​I​w​A​R​3​e​U​S​v​E​9​R​s​H​V​j​g​Q​U​3​z​C​m​D​s​6​z​4​9​b​I​u​K​3​i​j​T​t​1​J​B​z​n​V​7​B​V​z​p​e​k​H​7​G​2​k​w​C​m2c

Mike Shell reviews book reviews

November 13, 2018

Okay, it’s not quite so ref­er­en­tial: Mike’s lift­ing up three books in Sep­tem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal book columns that “help ‘white’ read­ers go deep­er into self-awareness about the hid­den dynam­ics of racism.” He also tells a lit­tle of his own sto­ry of color-blindness.

When my “white” friends said I couldn’t bring my “black” best friend to their lunch table, I shrugged and sat with him at a “black” table. On the minus side, when some­one in the school park­ing lot shout­ed nig­ger lover, and my friend want­ed to fight, I just told him I didn’t mind the insult. That was prob­a­bly my first seri­ous­ly hurt­ful act of “white color-blindness.” It took me decades to real­ize, to my shame, that it was he who was being insult­ed, not me. 

https://​uni​ver​sal​ist​friends​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​t​h​r​e​e​-​b​o​o​k​s​-​f​o​r​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​p​e​o​ple

The Doctrine of Discovery, white guilt, and Friends

November 2, 2018

Johan Mau­r­er starts with “it’s com­pli­cat­ed” and goes on from there. A pas­sage I find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is his expla­na­tion of why look­ing at large-scale state-level atroc­i­ties like the steal­ing of native land or the kid­nap­ping of mil­lions of Africans is not just some­thing to be done out of guilt:

Whether you believe in an intel­li­gent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wag­n­er’s ideas) or a more imper­son­al mech­a­nism of demon­ic evil (Wal­ter Wink), we should­n’t pre­tend that such nodes just go away. Their evil per­sists. The basis for apol­o­gy and repen­tance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to con­duct spir­i­tu­al war­fare against the demons of racism and oppres­sion and false wit­ness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can con­duct our future stew­ard­ship — and make our pub­lic invest­ments— in free­dom and mutu­al regard. 

I’m drawn to the old notion of “The Tempter” as a force that leads us to do what’s per­son­al­ly reward­ing rather than moral­ly just. I think it explains a lot of inter­nal strug­gles I’ve faced, even in sim­ple wit­ness­es. As Johan says, these mas­sive injus­tices can’t just be undone but they need to be rec­og­nized for the immen­si­ty of their scale. I’ve also seen this weird way in which pro­gres­sive whites can blithe­ly dis­re­gard Native Amer­i­can per­spec­tives on these issues. Lis­ten­ing more and wait­ing for com­pli­cat­ed answers seems essen­tial in my opinion.

Anoth­er good deep-dive for Friends inter­est­ed in this is Bet­sy Caz­den’s Friends Jour­nal 2006 arti­cle, Quak­er Mon­ey, Old Mon­ey, and White Priv­i­lege. It’s one I turn to every so often to remind myself of some of our monied Quak­er norms. Johan gives a pass to William Penn but I think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that his colo­nial ambi­tions were deeply enmeshed in at least three dif­fer­ent wars and con­ve­nient­ly served the polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions of two empires, the per­fect storm of an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a group of paci­fist idealists.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​i​t​s​.​h​tml

Redefining rude

October 23, 2018

From Mol­ly Shee­han, one of a small “gray wave” of Quak­ers who ran for Con­gress this year (she lost her pri­ma­ry bid):

When the mar­gin­al­ized cry out for com­pas­sion, they are not cen­sor­ing any­body. They are fight­ing for their very right to exist. Non­vi­o­lent dis­obe­di­ence and rewrit­ing the rules of civil­i­ty is for these groups. It is our job, espe­cial­ly as white peo­ple, or those with more soci­etal pow­er and time to protest, to ampli­fy the voic­es of the most marginalized.

It’s Time To Rede­fine “Rude” and Embrace the Disruptive

Sam Walton: Putting the protest back in Protestant

August 17, 2018

From the Peace and Dis­ar­ma­ment Pro­gramme Manger for British Friends comes a plea for us not to be afraid of going back to Quak­er roots and chal­lenge the abuse of power.

Society’s val­ues are so often in oppo­si­tion to God’s pur­pos­es. Slav­ery used to be legal. Love between two peo­ple of the same sex was ille­gal in our life­times. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s cre­ation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrich­ment rather than loy­al­ties lying with the King­dom of Heav­en and work­ing for the enrich­ment of all human­i­ty. When being loy­al to God’s pur­pos­es runs counter to what soci­ety expects it can get pret­ty rough. There may be per­se­cu­tion, though it varies a lot: from tut­ting, telling you off for being veg­e­tar­i­an, being giv­en white feath­ers, right through to impris­on­ment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.

Putting the protest back in Protestant