Looking back at Friends’ responses to the Christian Peacemaker hostages
When four Christian Peacemakers were taken hostage in Iraq late last November, a lot of Quaker organizations stumbled in their response. With Tom Fox we were confronted by a full-on liberal Quaker Christian witness against war, yet who stepped up to explain this modern-day prophetic witness? AFSC? FCNL? FGC? Nope, nope and nope. There were too many organizations that couldn’t manage anything beyond the boilerplate social justice press release. I held my tongue while the hostages were still in captivity but throughout the ordeal I was mad at the exposed fracture lines between religious witness and social activism.
Whenever a situation involving international issues of peace and witness happens, the Quaker institutions I’m closest to automatically defer to the more political Quaker organizations: for example, the head of Friends General Conference told staff to direct outsiders inquiring about Tom Fox to AFSC even though Fox had been an active leader of FGC-sponsored events and was well known as a committed volunteer. The American Friends Service Committee and Friends Committee on National Legislation have knowledgeable and committed staff, but their institutional culture doesn’t allow them to talk Quakerism except to say we’re a nice bunch of social-justice-loving people. I appreciate that these organizations have a strong, vital identity, and I accept that within those confines they do important work and employ many faithful Friends. It’s just that they lack the language to explain why a grocery store employee with a love of youth religious education would go unarmed to Badgdad in the name of Christian witness.
The wider blogosphere was totally abuzz with news of Christian Peacemaker Team hostages (Google blogsearch lists over 6000 posts on the topic). There were hundreds of posts and comments, including long discussions on the biggest (and most right-leaning) sites. Almost everyone wondered why the CPT workers were there, and while the opinions weren’t always friendly (the hostages were often painted as naive idealists or disingenuous terrorist sympathizers), even the doubters were motivated by a profound curiosity and desire to understand.
The CPT hostages were the talk of the blogosphere, yet where could we find a Quaker response and explanation? The AFSC responded by publicizing the statements of moderate Muslim leaders (calling for the hostages’ release; I emailed back a suggestion about listing Quaker responses but never got a reply). Friends United Meeting put together a nice enough what-you-can-do page that was targeted toward Friends. The CPT site was full of information of course, and there were plenty of stories on the lefty-leaning sites like electroniciraq.net and the UK site Ekklesia. But Friends explaining this to the world?
The Quaker bloggers did their part. On December 2 I quickly re-jiggered the technology behind QuakerQuaker.org to provide a Christian Peacemaker watch on both Nonviolence.org and QuakerQuaker (same listings, merely rebranded for slightly-separate audiences, announced on the post It’s Witness Time). These pages got lots of views over the course of the hostage situation and included many posts from the Quaker blogger community that had recently congealed.
But here’s the interesting part: I was able to do this only because there was an active Quaker blogging community. We already had gathered together as a group of Friends who were willing to write about spirituality and witness. Our conversations had been small and intimate but now we were ready to speak to the world. I sometimes get painted as some sort of fundamentalist Quaker, but the truth is that I’ve wanted to build a community that would wrestle with these issues, figuring the wrestling was more important than the language of the answers. I had already thought about how to encourage bloggers and knit a blogging community together and was able to use these techniques to quickly build a Quaker CPT response.
Two other Quakers who went out of their way to explain the story of Tom Fox: his personal friends John Stephens and Chuck Fager. Their Freethecaptivesnow.org site was put together impressively fast and contained a lot of good links to news, resources and commentary. But like me, they were over-worked bloggers doing this in their non-existant spare time (Chuck is director of Quaker House but he never said this was part of the work).
After an initial few quiet days, Tom’s meeting Langley Hill put together a great website of links and news. That makes it the only official Quaker organization that pulled together a sustained campaign to support Tom Fox.
Lessons?
So what’s up with all this? Should we be happy that all this good work happened by volunteers? Johan Maurer has a very interesting post, “Are Quakers Marginal?” that points to my earlier comment on the Christian Peacemakers and doubts whether our avoidance of “hireling priests” has given us a more effective voice. Let’s remember that institutional Quakerism began as support of members in jail for their religious witness; among our earliest committee gatherings were meetings for sufferings — business meetings focused on publicizing the plight of the jailed and support the family and meetings left behind.
I never met Tom Fox but it’s clear to me that he was an exceptional Friend. He was able to bridge the all-too-common divide between Quaker faith and social action. Tom was a healer, a witness not just to Iraqis but to Friends. But I wonder if it was this very wholeness that made his work hard to categorize and support. Did he simply fall through the institutional cracks? When you play baseball on a disorganized team you miss a lot of easy catches simply because all the outfielders think the next guy is going to go for the ball. Is that what happened? And is this what would happen again?
Lots of very good questions, as usual, Martin.
One short suggestion for an answer:
Prophetic witness isn’t fortune telling but a sign pointing to what’s ahead. It requires a strong sense of historical coherence and purpose and imagination, a sense that the story of Creation has a beginning and direction and an end. A People with historical imagination and vision can be prophetic only because they know how it turns out and can name the signs of the times for what they are.
But modern people — including most contemporary Friends — can’t tell whether what is happening now are signs of the end-times or of the beginning of the Kingdom or meaningless abberations or what.
It’s like we’re driving a bus with the windshield painted black, we’re driving into the dark with no headlight to show the way ahead. At best, we have only a rear-view mirror.
Contrast this to Fox and his early comrades. They had an amazingly and audacious ability to place what was happening in 17th Century Britian into the story of what was happening with God’s entire creation, not only in the context of what had happened (e.g., the apostosy) but what was goingto happen (e.g., the Apocolypse of the Word). The setbacks they had had a purpose and were endurable because they pointed to what was coming.
Your questions are directed mostly to Institutional Quakerism, but I think their relative impotence reflects this problem. They — like us — have no long-term, prophetic vision of the world that is becoming, and therefore can’t tell us whether the witness of either the Christian Peacemaker Teams or al Quaeda are signs pointing towards anything. Thus, they — and we — can’t tell whether this is a big deal or not, or, more importantly, why.
Hi, Martin!
You write, “Let’s remember that institutional Quakerism began as support of members in jail for their religious witness,” and that’s the sentence quoted from this posting on the QuakerQuaker site as well. But I’m not sure it’s exactly true.
If my memory serves, Quaker communities were functioning in a formally-organized mode to facilitate the travels of Quaker ministers, before the serious persecution began: they were raising money among themselves to fund the ministers, and then transferring the money to the ministers either directly or through Margaret Fell.
And even before that, there were groups of Seekers who had good community organization before Fox came to them and stirred them up to be Quakers; they were, in essence, using the Quaker method of corporate discernment to make decisions; and they continued in their old organizational system after becoming Quakers. Indeed, to some extent the Quaker organizational system is simply an adaptation of what those Seekers were doing long before.
This would suggest then, that the sort of institutionalization that enables a bunch of people to function as a community, and make difficult decisions as a community, and do fundraising and resource allocation as a community, was what came first in the history of Friends, and that this sort of institutional development then provided a basis out of which systematic relief of persecuted Friends’ sufferings could arise.
It also suggests that, before there could be support of Friends imprisoned for their witness, there had to be some institutional understanding of who it was that was witnessing as a Friend, rather than as, say, an Independent or a Ranter, and that was therefore entitled to Friends’ aid.
And it further suggests that Friends had this understanding of who was bearing witness as a Friend and who was not, because they were already supporting the ones who were doing it as Friends in their travels.
Now, I don’t know the details of Tom’s situation, and I don’t want to presume. But let me ask: Might Langley Hill Meeting have been able to find words to say in Tom’s support, because it had already pondered Tom’s witness and united to support it when some earlier question of financial or logistical support came up? Could the fact that other Friends religious bodies did not find their tongues in a timely fashion, be due to the fact that they had not previously pondered Tom’s witness and united to support it?
Could it be that we Friends need to consider a ministry, and unite to support it, when the ministry first takes shape, in order to be ready to uphold the minister in a timely fashion when he then encounters persecution?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but a “Yes” to each of them seems to me rather reasonable.
Since you are an FGC Friend, Martin, and are talking about the failure of FGC bodies to support an FGC Friend’s witness in a timely fashion when he ran into trouble, I would call your attention to FGC’s Traveling Ministries Program. Due to limitations in staff and funding, and a general lack of attention given to it, this program does not presently do all that much. But it is at least potentially capable of prodding FGC bodies to come to grips with an FGC Friend’s religious witness before any crisis arises. And I think that may be the key.
Maybe if FGC Friends like yourself were to push their yearly meetings to take that program more seriously, and give it more support and more attention, we’d all be more ready when the next Tom Fox becomes a martyr.
Just a thought.
Martin, Friends,
The response (or lack thereof) to the questions about the reasons Tom Fox was in Iraq, is related, I think, to how Friends do (or do not) build each other up in the faith.
These days we have the blessings of modern communication technology that enables Friends from around the world to correspond quite rapidly.
Do we not also need more face to face contact with Friends who are so aware of the Kingdom of Heaven, who are so much a part of the Kingdom, that they inspire others to move, to act, to risk, and to make real the words, “on Earth as it is in Heaven?”
The apostles, and much later, George Fox and early Friends stood on street corners, in synagogues, temples, steeplehouses, courthouses. This is much more immediate, and risky, than electronic communications and newsletters.
They conducted themselves in a manner that inspired those around them to be bold, even when it meant imprisonment, loss of livelihoods, and sometimes death. While I am not well acquainted with most Friends, I sense that many of us, especially U.S. Friends, are not so bold. Has no one inspired us? Have we not truly been baptized by the Spirit?
Bill Taber wrote about catching prophecy. If I recall correctly, it was in “The Prophetic Stream.” Again, if memory serves, he had observed that it is helpful for Friends to spend time with those whose prophetic witness is recognizable. There is probably a better term than “recognizable.” But I pray the meaning of what I am trying to convey is clear, anyway.
Aren’t some of us being called to live visible lives, and speak directly to those around us, to stir the Seed within others? Jesus spoke of us acting in ways that bring glory to the Father.
Friends who are walking in the Light, listening to our Guide, will know if they are the ones who need to respond. And they will respond, with words supplied by the Spirit.
It is false humility to hide behind the “I’m only human” banner. Certainly, some number of us need to look closely at our lives and be willing to shed things, and habits that would impede our ability to inspire others. That will be tough, especially here in the U.S. But the Spirit is ready and waiting to hold us, show us what we need to see, guide and strengthen us as we change.
When we do change, we will stand out, we will be hard to ignore, we may attract insult and abuse. We may lose friends and gain enemies.
If we don’t, we will not be acting as friends of the Lord, nor servants. We’ll have no voice, we’ll have no part in building up the Kingdom. We will blend in, unnoticed and ineffective. And what is to be done with salt that has lost its saltiness?
Oh, I wish I had an intelligent, articulate comment that would sound like I knew what I was talking about. But I don’t: so I’ll add what God’s been revealing to me in my daily walk (literally — I’m listening to some great stuff on my headphones on my morning puppy walk), and I hope it relates somehow.
I’ve been really sensitive to the fact that I am not part of a worship gathering or denomination that acts as a corporate body: we do not have the same purpose, the same mission, the same heart. Some view church as an event, some see church as a social club, others feel church is representative of being part of a radical counter-cultural lifestyle.
Gregg recently preached a sermon on pioneers and settlers in the church: pioneers point out where God is leading us while settlers set up the organization and operations that keep the settlement going. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
Quakers seem to be a pretty squabbly settlement: so when one of our own goes out, do we even notice? If a pioneer comes back to be in our midst, do we even hear him/her talking? Or are the ‘settlers’ arguing too loudly and staking out their own territory so that they don’t notice? It seems like the blogosphere has provided somewhat of a Neutral Zone for larger discussion and discernment.
If I forget Tom’s experience, I cease to learn from it. I pray that God continues to redeem Tom Fox’s experience to speak to us and transform us into God’s people.
A few thoughts on the “institutional Quaker response” to Tom’s captivity.
At the beginning, there was confusion not only among Quaker groups but in CPT: the first signals we got from them were for everybody to keep quiet — no real explanation was offered, but the implicationw at that there were behind-the-scenes efforts afoot which loudmouthed outsiders might upset.
This seemed unlikely to me, and I (plus a few others) consulted some non-CPT experts with experience in hostage and emergency work, who alo knew Tom.
Their counsel was just the reverse: that the higher the captives’ public profile could be drawn, the greater the cost would be to the captors of harming them, so the better chance they would have of surviving. (And in retrospect, Ithink this counsel has been borne out; 3 out of 4 did get out alive; I only wish it had been all 4.)
So the initial confusion reflected, in my view, more a lack of experience in dealing with such situations rather than theological/moral/ecclesiological disarray.
How many of us, after all, regardless of theology, have tried to save the life of a hostage lately? Not me, for sure — I was on a very steep learning curve.
And in the beginning, until the second execution deadline passed in December, KEEPING THEM ALIVE was my overriding priority. That trumped and shaped all talk of theology, morality, ecclesiology, etc. It also put a lid on public criticism over the stumbles of various groups. And in retrospect, this still seems like exactly the right priority, from all those points of view too.
Once the second deadline passed, the concern of John Stephens and I, on http://www.freethecaptivesnow.org, became the keeping of a daily vigil for the four.
Along the way, during the almost three months of daily updates, various comments about the theological character of what was happening cropped up, but again, the focus was still on staying on top of a situation which could change fatally at any moment; and did in the end.
At this point, I can say the the big Quaker-related organizations don’t seem to to have led the way on all this, and others may draw their own conclusions about the meaning of that.
For me, though, my sense is that Friends of various stripes are only now begining to grapple with the context and implications of Tom’s witness. I think this is all very scary. And I don’t limit the fear to any one branch.
During my travels this summer I have mentioned him frequently, and noted that he is much less visible than I would have preferred. So I bring him up often. As my labors are mainly in the unprogrammed branch, that’s where their impact, if any, will likely be felt. But there is wodk on this, I suspect, for all.
Hi Chuck,
Thanks for mapping out your own response and how it evolved. Just to make it clear for readers: Chuck and John Stephens were the two “friends of Tom” who put together and maintained FreetheCaptivesNow site. They got it up and running quickly and kept it going over the long wait of Tom’s captivity. It was an excellent resource.
I would say your priority list was right. The first few days of chaos were understandable, I don’t fault anyone for that: our religious society is rather rusty on the how-to’s of supporting members jailed by hostile forces.
I thought that explaining “why a Quaker would do a crazy thing like that” was one way to support his release. There were a lot of claims that he must be a spy and on the face of it I can see why some would think his actions too crazy to be explained by simple spirit-led witness. Explaining Quakers to the world was one way to counter that. It was alos important to try to keep his situation in the forefront of Quaker and peace activist consciousness. I’d like to join the chorus thanking you and Stephen for all you did. We’ve had our differences (’nuff said) but it was good knowing you were on the job at FreetheCaptives. Thanks too for the post here, it’s very helpful.
Chuck, if you get a chance I’d be curious to hear how your organizing related to your work at Quaker House. The odd piece about our critiquing Quaker institutions is that you and I are both “professional Quakers” very emeshed in various institutions. It’s not inconceivable that I would have done my work on behalf of FGC or that you might have done it as Quaker House or that either of us might have found some sponsorship under another body. But we didn’t. Why?