Kristallnacht, Kindertransport, and help for refugees

November 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Quak­er refugee work cir­ca 1933:

The reports gath­ered from the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Ger­many by Quak­ers were of influ­ence when Quak­ers accom­pa­nied the Jew­ish del­e­ga­tion who went to see Home Sec­re­tary Sir Samuel Hoare to plead the case for allow­ing immi­gra­tion of chil­dren into Britain with­out the usu­al visa restric­tions. They swayed the gov­ern­ment and this planned immi­gra­tion of Ger­man and Aus­tri­an Jew­ish chil­dren became known as the Kinder­trans­port. Around 10,000 chil­dren were evac­u­at­ed from Ger­many and Aus­tria to Britain between 1938 and 1939. 

What I find most fas­ci­nat­ing is the detail that the Friends library in Lon­don does­nt have a lot of records of this work. It was so much in line with oth­er refugee assis­tance Friends were doing in Europe that they evi­dent­ly con­sid­ered it just anoth­er day on the job, so to speak. I shared a piece on the relat­ed Quak­er­speisun­gen a few days ago.

Kristall­nacht, Kinder­trans­port, and help for refugees

Mike Shell reviews book reviews

November 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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

Quakerspeisungen and an Oscar Schindler connection

November 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week marks the hundred-year anniver­sary of the end of the “Great War,” World War I, brand­ed as the war to end all wars. Our annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the armistice in the U.S. large­ly went by the way­side in 1954 when Con­gress changed the name from Armistice Day to Vet­er­ans Day. Instead of mark­ing the end of a hor­rif­ic war that lit­er­al­ly con­sumed much of Euro­pean resources and peo­ple for years in trench­es that nev­er moved, we now spend the day fill­ing lec­tures with clich­es of mil­i­tary service.

But the hun­dred year anniver­sary also means we can start remem­ber­ing the after­math of the war. The First World War set up the sec­ond. We large­ly think of the mis­takes and half-efforts of the vic­to­ri­ous pow­ers but Quak­ers were part of more right­eous storyline:

Even more food was sent by Amer­i­can Quak­ers under the lead­er­ship of Her­bert Hoover, pro­vid­ing dai­ly meals for 60,0000 starv­ing Berlin­ers for five years. The Ger­mans labelled this mas­sive effort, Quak­er­speisun­gen: “Quak­er Feed­ings.” It saved thou­sands of lives, includ­ing those of the fam­i­ly of Oscar Schindler who famous­ly went on to help 700 Jews to escape the gas cham­bers at Auschwitz in the Sec­ond World War. Schindler’s sis­ters spent six months recu­per­at­ing with the Hall fam­i­ly and one even attend­ed Thirsk Gram­mar School for a term. 

Friends Jour­nal Bonus­es: Quak­er work in Ger­many in the 1920s and 30s was the sub­ject ofQuak­ers in Ger­many dur­ing and after the World Wars from 2010. Relief efforts in Spain were part of a more recent sto­ry that tied it to present-day refugee assis­tance in Gota de Leche.

https://​www​.dar​ling​to​nand​stock​ton​times​.co​.uk/​n​e​w​s​/​1​7​2​0​7​6​8​9​.​h​e​r​o​i​c​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​a​-​f​a​s​c​i​n​a​t​i​n​g​-​l​i​n​k​-​b​e​t​w​e​e​n​-​o​s​c​a​r​-​s​c​h​i​n​d​l​e​r​-​a​n​d​-​t​h​i​r​s​k​/​?​r​e​f​=​t​w​t​rec

The gray wave that wasn’t

November 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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.


2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

2018 Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Web Pan­el (Updat­ed Nov 2018) 

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their…
Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Looking outside the meetinghouse (FJ call for submissions)

November 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Let me give a plug that Friends Jour­nal is look­ing for arti­cles on the top­ic of “Out­side the Meet­ing­house” for the March issue. The dead­line is a lit­tle over a month away. Here’s a lit­tle bit of my write-up for it, as a teaser:

There is a long his­to­ry of Friends preach­ing and wit­ness­ing out­side of the con­fines of the meet­ing­house. George Fox’s Jour­nal is full of uncon­ven­tion­al wor­ship­ing; he had a par­tic­u­lar pen­chant for preach­ing from any bit of high ground he could find, like a tree or rock out­crop­ping. His con­tem­po­rary James Nay­lor is most remem­bered for re-enacting Jesus’s Palm Sun­day entry into Jerusalem by dra­mat­i­cal­ly rid­ing a horse down a main road into Bris­tol. Modern-day Friends con­tin­ue to find uncon­ven­tion­al places to worship… 

Also, I’ve just set up a form to get on the email noti­fi­ca­tion list to get pinged when top­ic write-ups get post­ed. It’s very low-volume, as we only write these once a month. There’s only two sub­scribers. For the time being, I’m just keep­ing the emails in a list and send­ing per­son­al­ized emails.


Page not found - Friends Journal

Page not found — Friends Journal 

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Political queries from an almost-Quaker

November 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Tim­o­thy Tay­lor on rad­i­cal objectivity:

But near what feels like an espe­cial­ly divi­sive elec­tion day, it seems worth pos­ing his insights as a chal­lenge for all of our par­ti­san beliefs. While I am not a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, I attend­ed a col­lege with Quak­er roots and mar­ried a 22nd-generation Quak­er. The Quak­ers have a term called a “query,” which refers to a ques­tion – some­times a chal­leng­ing or point­ed ques­tion– that is meant to be used as a basis for addi­tion­al reflection. 

His list isn’t real­ly in the style of clas­sic Quak­er queries (sur­prise). It’s the mod­ern style of lead­ing ques­tions that get called queries. Too often this form ends up being a rather trans­par­ent attempt to impose a kind of polit­i­cal ortho­doxy but Tay­lor’s ques­tions feel refresh­ing­ly chal­leng­ing and use­ful for what­ev­er side or non-side one takes in pol­i­tics. Hat­tip to Doug Ben­nett for the link.

http://​con​versableecon​o​mist​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​c​l​i​f​f​o​r​d​-​g​e​e​r​t​z​-​a​n​d​-​r​a​d​i​c​a​l​-​o​b​j​e​c​t​i​v​i​t​y​.​h​tml

Anointing

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Mike Far­ley, of Silent Assem­blies, writes of an ear­ly Quak­er inter­pre­ta­tion of anoiting:

I have been struck by the word “anoint­ing”. Eliz­a­beth Bathurst (as quot­ed by David John­son) wrote: “But I brought them the scrip­tures, and told them there was an anoint­ing with­in man to teach him, and the Lord would teach them him­self.” We are not very used, I think, to the term among Friends today. Among charis­mat­ic Chris­tians it is much more com­mon, and seems to be used in both the sense of being giv­en spir­i­tu­al gifts… But I think Eliz­a­beth Bathurst, fol­low­ing the apos­tle John, as she says, is using the word in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent sense to either of these, and it is a sense we as Quak­ers should recognise. 

Anoint­ing

The Doctrine of Discovery, white guilt, and Friends

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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