One of the roles of faith is to remember that we’ve been here before. We’ve been the wandering Jews lost in the desert but fed manna to survive. We remember the disciples taken by surprise by the rush of Roman guards come to arrest our Messiah, who urged us to put away our swords. We tell stories of a young George Fox wandering England looking for spiritual teachers until all his “hopes in them and in all men were gone.” We survive by telling stories. We keep ourselves centered and calm by remembering others who found a path through uncertainty and assured us they were held up by a Comforter.
Lessons from 1842, when Indiana Friends were torn between antislavery and partisanship.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to revisit that 19th century advice, and step back. I’ve seen too much of the corrupting influence of partisanship. I’ve seen too many arguments from people who know better about which people are not really people. I’ve too many friends who have become political arguments which do not respect their humanity.
I talk with Lynette Love, who’s written an article about a post-Civil War school in South Carolina that was started by Friends.
We discuss the life and impact of Cornelia Hancock, a Quaker nurse during the Civil War who played a significant role in establishing Freedmen Schools in South Carolina. The discussion covers Hancock’s bravery, the humanitarian crisis of contraband during the war, and the legacy of education for freed slaves. Lynette also addresses the current controversies surrounding her book about this history, touching on themes of censorship and the importance of remembering the full scope of history, including its darker aspects.
In today’s political climate, not everyone is comfortable with that full scope. A report in the Charleston Post and Courier last month says that Love’s book has been flagged under Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s May 2025 order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Here’s a clip of Lynette and I talking about this.
Nice detective work in this article by Jim Fussell. In recent years, we’ve flipped the traditional script of Friends as unalloyed saviors for their work on manumissions and the abolition of slavery. We now affirm that many held slaves beginning in 1655, when Quaker missionaries Ann Austin and Mary Fisher landed on the heavily enslaved island of Barbados and convinced a number of the White enslavers to become Friends. A few years later Mary Fisher then went on travel to Turkey to try to convince the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Despite her amazing bravery, in her will Fisher named a “Indian girle Slave, named Reigner.” .
We now talk about the era in which Quakers were slaveholders but Jim goes a step further to talk about the enslaved Africans’ resistance to Quaker enslavers. In an era in which we’re once more apparently debating if violence against property is okay, the story of two enslaved women, Grace and Jane, burning a plantation tobacco barn seems almost quaintly direct action.
Jared is an atheist YouTuber whose schtick is visiting different churches. I’ve watched him before so was thrilled to see he’s now visited Friends.
He’s very good at observing and understanding and explaining what he’s seen. There’s no substantive inaccuracies here. He had a deeply moving experience that he says he won’t forget.
That said, he felt disappointed that the meeting he visited wasn’t more distinctly Quaker, calling it a “bait and switch almost.” The only ministry was political and while he does a good job defending the speaker’s compassion he says that it felt “solemn but not sacred” to him, which I think is a fascinating way of putting it:
I’m really interested in the handful of people who feel like they’ve touched God. I don’t, but It’s still a profound thing to talk to somebody who’s don’t that.
He grew up Pentecostal and knew that there was a lot of crossover with early Friends. That’s what he was looking for. I think his observations on this was probably pretty fair for most Liberal Friends meetings today. I think there are other seekers like him wanting to experience something more distinctively and religiously Quaker. Overall, an awesome video, very recommended.
I’m pretty used to the standard rhetorical paths of Quaker stories after so many years as an editor but every once in a while one comes along and knocks my socks off.
I’ve written before1 that I’m not a fan of the “when to speak in meeting” flowcharts Friends sometimes post in the meetinghouse to discourage vocal ministry. One is expected to test an incoming message against half a dozen queries and only speak if they can clear them all in the space of an hour. A lot of newcomers see these and decide to just keep quiet.
Christine Hartmann was just one of these new attenders. She writes “after studying all this, I decided to hold off speaking in meeting, if at all possible, for fear of getting it wrong.” She was so careful and so scrupulous that her silence almost cost her her life. I’m not kidding. Literally. Read the article. Wild, wild.
(Yes, there are disruptive newcomers who give inappropriate ministry in Quaker worship. In my experience they’re rarely the ones sitting down and studying flowcharts. The visitors these charts deter are the careful and thoughtful ones who are already tying themselves in knots wondering whether they should speak. These are the folks you want to encourage.)
There’s a new top-five list of articles from Friends Journal so far in 2025. We have a couple of news ones — the lawsuits against DHS and the recent Quaker Walk — but we also have more contemplative fair.
I like the story of the Friends at William Penn University in Iowa discovering some of the positive qualities of plain dress from a internet challenge. And Gail Melix (Greenwater)‘s reflection on being both Quaker and Indigenous is quite moving.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and Friends in Business sponsored a two-person panel last night called “Quaker Voices, Digital Paths” and featuring Gloria Sullivan, who has over 600,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, and Griffin Macaulay, content creator for Dungeons and Dragons. Gloria doesn’t generally talk about being a Quaker on her channel but did in January. It’s had over 300,000 views and a staggering 6,042 comments.
The scale of the newer forms of online media is really staggering, as is the simplicity of starting a channel. There’s no need to incorporate or find funders or write mission statements: you just start talking to the computer. It quickly becomes all-consuming of course, and there’s a lot of thought that goes into the topics and scope of the channel. All the popular TikToks also have lots of edits to speed them up. It’s a lot of work to do this part or full-time.
Griffin talked about being known for a thing and remaining passionate about it even in a vacuum. It’s the follow-your-passion advice: loving what you do will pull people to you and you will find a way to turn it into a business.
In some ways, I feel that at least some of the work my colleagues and I are doing 2is akin to an outfielder scanning the sky for pop balls coming in from these internet mentions. When a popular influencer talks about Quakers I’m sure hundreds of fingers open a new tab to ask “What is a Quaker?” and “What Do Quakers Believe?” We hopefully show up in the search with easily-digestible answers and links to Quaker communities. I asked Gloria and Griffin for ideas about how we could better support inquirers they might send our way. We’re doing a lot already — good search engine optimization, catchy URLs — but there was some good advice on using Instagram better and really simplifying our messaging and turning it into stories.
Friends Journal 