Spending some more time with this idea, including during Meeting for Worship, I realised that I actually have a strong intuition against there being any form of life after death. Not only do I not think that any life which may or may not occur after death should affect my actions now (I don’t do things because I want to get into heaven or generate good karma for my next life, and nor do I accept eschatological verification), I actively think it’s unlikely, even impossible, that such a thing exists.

Friends Journal devoted an issue to The Art of Dying and the Afterlife a few years ago, including an introduction I wrote.

Liberal Quakers and Life after Death

We could use a little momentum. A decade ago, as I was getting started with this, platforms like Facebook took advantage of our desire for a simpler option and used it to silo up our data, lock and key. We lost an exciting blogosphere in the midst of all of this—and the first step towards getting it back is by realizing that ownership should be a first class citizen, whether or not we eventually give away those words, sell them, or keep them close to our chest. A blog that you own, that you pay the hosting bill for? That’s the first step—a form of expression that should be the future (because after all, how awesome is it that anyone can own a printing press?!?) but somehow became the past.

I haven’t been updating this Quaker Daily Read as much as I’d like over the last month or so. That’s partly the result of an early December vacation and then the chaos of late December holidays with the family. I’m sure I’ve missed some great posts that I should have shared but there’s also days when I run through my RSS collection (I use Feedly to follow about a hundred or so blogs) and find nothing particularly fresh or interesting. I’d love to see more of us trading the Facebook dopamine-rush immediacy for some more thoughtful writing and conversation.

https://tedium.co/2019/01/01/2019-independent-blogging-trends/

I have put this talk together in ebook form complete with lots of pictures and illustrations and formatting that adds to the reading experience. I wanted to share this with all of you and make it as accessible as possible, so it is free to download. It should work with most modern-day eBook readers and apps. If that doesn’t work for you, I have also turned the talk into a downloadable .PDF.

http://gatheringinlight.com/2018/11/20/new-ebook-remixing-faith-now-available/

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

Friends Journal

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://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2018/11/clifford-geertz-and-radical-objectivity.html

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.canyoubelieve.me/2018/11/quakers-and-native-americans-its.html

Daniel Seeger was twenty-one when he wrote to his local draft board to say, “I have concluded that war, from the practical standpoint, is futile and self-defeating, and from the more important moral standpoint, it is unethical.” Some time later, he received the United States Selective Service System’s Form 150, asking him to detail his objections to military service. It took him a few days to reply, because he had no answer for the form’s first question: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” Unsatisfied with the two available options—“Yes” and “No”—Seeger finally decided to draw and check a third box: “See attached pages.”

Seeger’s victory helped mark a turning point for a minority that had once been denied so much as the right to testify in court, even in their own defense. Atheists, long discriminated against by civil authorities and derided by their fellow-citizens, were suddenly eligible for some of the exemptions and protections that had previously been restricted to believers.

Daniel Seeger has written for and been featured in the pages of Friends Journal many times over the ensuing decades but last year he wrote a great feature for us about the court case, An AFSC Defense of the Rights of Conscience. A tip of the hat to Carol Holmes Alpern for sending this New Yorker article way!

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/why-are-americans-still-uncomfortable-with-atheism

So we can imagine Mark Zuckerberg and his assistant both wearing t‑shirts and jeans, but one of them buys from, say, DKNY or Kenneth Cole, while the other buys from Target or Wal-Mart. This would count as a responsible form of plain dress, per Barclay.

Quaker Faith & Podcast on Plainness