I talked with Peterson Toscano about his fiction piece in the November issue of Friends Journal and we segued into all sorts of byways into how fiction can show us parts of spiritual lives that straight-ahead essays can’t.
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Standing with the Marginalized, with Anthony Manousos)
September 22, 2025
This week I talked with my old Friend Anthony Manousos about the [waves hand in the air] political situation we’re in. I’ve known Anthony for over 28 years now, back when we were part of a conference to try to kick-start what later was reborn as Quaker Voluntary Service (spoiler: our attempt failed for what I think were mostly generational issues). Anthony is still protesting and witnessing to make a better world. I loved hearing his story of coalition work and the joy of organizing with music. His article, “We Have No King,” appears in this month’s Friends Journal.
I asked him what Quakers bring to protests:
One of the important things that we bring is our way of worship. And our way of worship helps to bring the temperature down. I think what the current regime wants is a violent movement opposing them. That plays out what they want (and certainly the assassination of Charlie Kirk plays into that scenario). What Quakers bring is a commitment to peaceful protest. And when we’re around, we can be that strong, committed, peaceful presence. And that’s important.
I also asked him a follow-up question of what we need to do to get out of the way and accept the leadership of others in social change. You can listen to his answers or read them in the show notes.
A Journey of Conscience: Ron Marullo’s Story
September 16, 2025
I talked with Friends Journal author Ronald Marullo this week. His article, “I Aint’ Marching Anymore” (a nod to Phil Ochs of course), recounts his path to conscientious objection during the Vietnam war, helped by a very knowledgable Quaker counselor. It always amazes me that just a few conversations at the right time can help someone clarify their beliefs and set their lives on a different path.
I was especially interested in talking about the after-effects of the CO process since I went through something similar myself. Around age 17 my father started lobbying hard for me to go to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Except for a few years in Presbyterian Sunday School we had grown up mostly a‑religious and I found the idea intriguing. I think in retrospect I was mostly excited by the idea of an orderly life that might address my ADHD (called hyperactivity in those days). I got far enough into the process to take a physical and get a letter of commendation from our congressperson but then thought more about the military itself. I realized I didn’t feel comfortable joining an organization whose purpose was threatening to kill. I had on principle, and without much deliberation, decided not to engage in schoolyard fights years before, and suffered the regular humiliations that comes of being the smallest kid in class who everyone knows won’t fight back. To the disappointment of my father I stopped the application process for the navy. As I pondered what to do next, I asked myself what other values might come from my newfound pacifism. Over the next few years I explored various leads and — being in the Philadelphia area — started running into Quakers, some of whom had a kind of inner conviction I found intriguing.
So while I was far too young to ever worry about a draft, I did have a similar defining “what do I believe” moment as a teenager. As Ron says in our author chat podcast:
That was a turning point in my life. I made decisions from filling out those forms and answering those questions actually made concrete what I had inside me, ideally. You think about this and think about that and whether or not you hold it true. But when you have to put it all on paper and you have to submit it to the world, it changes you. And I’ve lived by that philosophy since that age. I’ve done it in my educational experience with children. I’ve done it in my private life with friends, caregiving others. My wife and I have been doing that, you know, for decades.
www.youtube.comReady to die for the silence
July 15, 2025
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.)
Fifteen years of blogging
November 15, 2012
Even I’m a bit shocked by the title of this post. Have I really been blogging for fifteen years? I keep double-checking the math but it keeps adding up. In November 1997 I added a feature to my two-year-old peace website. I called this new entity Nonviolence Web Upfront and updated it weekly with original features and curated links to the best online pacifist writing. I wrote a retrospective of the “early blogging days” in 2005 that talks about how it came about and gives some context about the proto-blogs happening back in 1997.
But I could arguably go back further than 15 years. In college, my friend Brni and I started an alternative print magazine called VACUUM. It came out weekly. It had a mix of opinion pieces and news from all over. Familiar, huh? Columns were made up from a dot matrix printer and pasted down with scotch tape, with headlines scrawled out with a sharpie. The ethos was there. Next April will mark its Silver Jubilee.
What’s most striking is not the huge leaps of technologies, but the single-mindedness of my pursuits all these years. There are cross-decade echos of themes and ways of packaging publications that continue in my work as editor of Friends Journal.
The Morality of Patriotism redux
July 5, 2012
For the Fourth of July, a peek back at one of the more talked-about articles in recent Friends Journal history, Tony White’s The Immortality of Patriotism. A sample:
Patriotism clouds our judgment; it hinders objectivity and detracts from our ability to assess political situations rationally. Patriotism biases us toward our country’s perspective, encumbering our desire and ability to consider outside perspectives. Put briefly, patriotism breeds conformity and closed-mindedness. Furthermore, patriotism makes us overly trusting of those in power over us, and susceptible to abuses of that power.
This was published before I came as the Journal’s editor. The letters forum and Google searches will pull up some very insightful critiques that basically points out the discrepancies between the secular lefty critique of the article and the historic Friends peace testimony. Over on the Friends Journal Facebook page, there’s a lively discussion currently happening about patriotism and the Fourth.
(H/T to Danny Coleman for the reminder link to White’s article)
A Friends Journal page on G+
November 8, 2011
Not that exciting yet. We’ll see.
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Hey who am I to decide anything
April 9, 2007
Over on Nontheist Friends website, there’s an article looking back at ten years of FGC Gathering workshops on their concern. There was also a post somewhere on the blogosphere (sorry I don’t remember where) by a Pagan Friend excited that this year’s Gathering would have a workshop focused on their concerns.
It’s kind of interesting to look at the process by which new theologies are being added into Liberal Quakerism at an ever-increasing rate.
- Membership of individuals in meetings. There are hundreds of meetings in liberal Quakerism that range all over the theological map. Add to that the widespread agreement that theological unity with the meeting is not required and just about anyone believing anything could be admitted somewhere (or “grandfathered in” as a birthright member).
- A workshop at the Friends General Conference Gathering and especially a regular workshop at successive Gatherings. Yet as the very informed comments on a post a few years ago showed, theology is not something the planning workshop committee is allowed to look at and at least one proponent of a new theology has gotten themselves on the deciding committee. The Gathering is essentially built on the nondenominational Chautaqua model and FGC is perfectly happy to sponsor workshops that are in apparent conflict with its own mission statement.
- An article published in Friends Journal. When the the Quaker Sweat Lodge was struggling to claim legitimacy it all but changed its name to the “Quaker Sweat Lodge as featured in the February 2002 Friends Journal.” It’s a good magazine’s job to publish articles that make people think and a smart magazine will know that articles that provoke a little controversy is good for circulation. I very much doubt the editorial team at the Journal considers its agreement to publish to be an inoculation against critique.
- A website and listserv. Fifteen dollars at GoDaddy.com and you’ve got the web address of your dreams. Yahoo Group is free.
There are probably other mechanisms of legitimacy. My point is not to give comprehensive guidelines to would-be campaigners. I simply want to note that none of the actors in these decisions is consciously thinking “hey, I think I’ll expand the definition of liberal Quaker theology today.” In fact I expect they’re mostly passing the buck, thinking “hey, who am I to decide anything like that.”
None of these decision-making processes are meant to serve as tools to dismiss opposition. The organizations involved are not handing out Imprimaturs and would be quite horrified if they realized their agreements were being seen that way. Amy Clark, a commenter on my last post, on this summer’s reunion and camp for the once-young members of Young Friends North America, had a very interesting comment:
I agree that YFNA has become FGC: those previously involved in YFNA have taken leadership with FGC … with both positive and negative results. Well … now we have a chance to look at the legacy we are creating: do we like it?
I have the feeling that the current generation of liberal Quaker leadership doesn’t quite believe it’s leading liberal Quakerism. By “leadership” I don’t mean the small skim of the professional Quaker bureaucracy (whose members can get _too_ self-inflated on the leadership issue) but the committees, clerks and volunteers that get most of the work done from the local to national levels. We are the inheritors of a proud and sometimes foolish tradition and our actions are shaping its future but I don’t think we really know that. I have no clever solution to the issues I’ve outlined here but I think becoming conscious that we’re creating our own legacy is an important first step.