Penn was a man of paradoxical qualities. He espoused a radically egalitarian Quaker theology, insisting that something divine resided within each individual, yet he owned slaves on his American estate. He praised representative institutions such as parliament and the jury system, but spent years in hiding for his loyalty to an absolutist king. ‘I am like to be an adopted American,’ he wrote shortly after arriving in Pennsylvania in 1682, but spent only four of his remaining 36 years there. And he was chronically incapable of managing money, spending eight months in an English debtors’ prison in his 60s, even while his colony quickly became a commercial success.

https://aeon.co/ideas/hes-not-the-guy-on-quaker-oats-hes-much-more-interesting

As I am working on a revision of my book on the Quaker ministry, I am revisiting historical accounts of times when a minister was given guidance (eldering, oversight, nurture, discipline). As part of that work, I will from time to time post “case studies” on this blog.

Nuturing ministers: Case studies, Intro

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://universalistfriends.org/weblog/three-books-for-white-people

Often churches that fail to reflect their changing local community die off in a generation or two. Implicit bias has been a point of discussion in some yearly meetings in recent years, and this is related.

In fact, a Friend once told me they’d been asked, “can we target these Facebook ads only to people who are just like us?”

Actually, Facebook can create what they call lookalike audiences. It’s very cool and very creepy at the same time. It’s part of the suite of fine-grain targeting tools that’s letting political propagandists and lifestyle-focused companies control our media consumption at the social feed level and reinforce liked-minded groupthink. Attention silos are dangerous for our democracy and they’re no good for our churches. If the Quaker good news has any meaning left in it, it has to be widely applicable outside of our cultural, style bubbles.

Autopsy of a Deceased Church

What is it like to read someone else’s scripture? I think it’s quite possible that it can change you in ways that I can’t predict for any reader, except to say that it will make your life richer.

In addition to the QuakerSpeak video there’s also a book of Birkel’s project, Qu’ran in Conversation.

On its face, the decision by the Society of Friends to censure a flagrant arms merchant in its ranks may not seem surprising. Pacifist principles were central to Quaker ideology, as was opposition to slavery. Guns fueled not just war but the slave trade. Yet Mr. Galton’s father, and his father before him — and indeed many other Quakers who long dominated Birmingham’s arms industry — had been unapologetic gunmakers for 70 years without attracting rebuke. What had changed in the interim, in ways that are deeply interrelated, were society and the guns themselves.

Today the debate on guns in the U.S. is focused on assault weapons being used by individuals but the Galton debate is more about the role of a Quaker-produced product in war. Britain of course was an empire, an empire held together by force of weapons. Some percentage of the industrial revolution in Britain was financed by war and its products often were employed overseas in the maintenance and extension of the empire (I’m thinking for example of trains).

When I first read John Woolman I was struck by his calling slavery a product of war. I usually think of it as a human rights and dignity issue (and of course it was and Woolman was particularly sensitive to the human dimension) but it was also a type of highly organized warfare. Seeing the systemic nature of the trade as a whole let Friends better see the unacceptability of slavery—and imperial weapons manufacturing.

Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Challenges the Role of War in Industrialization (Published 2018)

In her new book, Professor Priya Satia aims to overturn the conventional wisdom about the role of guns…

www.nytimes.com

Though Traditional Quaker Christianity is intended to convey the tradition among Conservative Friends, it may find readers among Liberals and Evangelicals. Should another generation of Quakers come forth and undertake the restoration of “the desolations of many generations,” they could find this book a resource for building up a Quaker Christian society.

I must admit that after spending my work days reading manuscripts and my commutes reading blog posts, the enjoyment of books has gotten a bit squeezed out. This looks like a useful one to try to fit it. Friend Marty Grundy reviewed this title for Friends Journal a few years ago. After posting the link to Patricia’s post, Mackenzie reminded me that Quaker Faith and Podcast has also been going through the book in recent episodes.

https://patradallmann.wordpress.com/2018/04/05/review-of-traditional-quaker-christianity/

Even knowing that I’m coloring this interpretation through the use of a Quaker lens, I believe that a Quaker perspective can help the meaning of the Bible become more clear.

I must admit that I take claims that any denomination has some sort of special connection to the early church with a heaping spoonful of salt. But the early church was disorganized in a way that Friends can be.