The Peaceable Kingdom Lost

June 30, 2026

A sto­ry by Charles Fox of just a few of the mas­sacres of Indige­nous peo­ple in Penn­syl­va­nia in the late 1700s. While the Friends and Mora­vians often har­bored endan­gered Susque­han­nock, their paci­fism meant they were large­ly unable to stop the maraud­ing Scots-Irish who were doing the killing.

As one his­to­ri­an wrote:

The fron­tier did col­lapse in late 1763. The sur­prise was that the armed mob that descend­ed from the fron­tier into Lan­cast­er — and then to Philadel­phia in 1764 — were White fron­tiers­men. Every­body had expect­ed it would be Indians.

Even more trag­i­cal­ly, a few of the peo­ple who escaped the mobs end­ed up being slaugh­tered in lat­er attacks. Much of the colo­nial gov­ern­ment was­n’t Quak­er in the lat­ter half of the cen­tu­ry, includ­ing some of William Pen­n’s descen­dants. Still, Friends today can won­der whether the high-minded promis­es of eter­nal friend­ship between Quak­ers and Indige­nous Peo­ples were more hol­low and aspi­ra­tional than we’d like to admit. (Of course most of the Lenape and Susque­han­nock died from European-imported dis­eases, with every boat­load of set­tlers bring­ing more death to the orig­i­nal inhabitants.)

September Friends Journal

September 4, 2025

The Sep­tem­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal is out. There are a lot of sto­ries about how we get through trou­bled times. From my open­ing col­umn:

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.

www.friendsjournal.org www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org

Navigating Gender Transition as a Quaker

July 13, 2025

New from Quak­er­S­peak, an inter­view with Willa Taber:

Joy was my guide­post through my tran­si­tion,” Willa reflects. “I real­ized that at the age of 70, I was too old to post­pone joy. I real­ized short­ly after that that at four years old, I was too old to post­pone joy, but I didn’t know it then.

Willa was one of the reg­u­lar Quak­er blog­gers back in the day1. I had most­ly lost touch, only hear­ing third hand of the tran­si­tion some­where. I’m glad she’s doing well and still wit­ness­ing to the Truth as revealed to her.

In defense of Quaker media

January 3, 2019

I gath­er that the Quak­er Face­book group is going through one of its reg­u­lar debates about iden­ti­ty and tone and mod­er­a­tion. The prob­lem is Face­book. It is the most direct com­peti­tor of Quaker-produced media. Its algo­rithms and mod­er­a­tor tools are not designed for the kind of con­sid­ered, inclu­sive, Spirit-led, and non-reactive dis­course that is Quak­er style at its ide­al (yes, we blow it our­selves con­stant­ly but hope­ful­ly keep striving).

I post­ed there tonight sug­gest­ing that Friends con­sid­er a media diet that includes more Quak­er media — books and mag­a­zines and blogs and videos and in-real-life dis­cus­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties. I wor­ry that if Face­book groups become the most vis­i­ble style of Quak­er dia­logue, then we will have lost some­thing tru­ly precious.

This mes­sage isn’t new to long­time read­ers of Quak­er­Ran­ter. I extolled blog­ging as a hedge against Face­bookjust yes­ter­day and in August I wrote about some of the dia­logue prob­lems inher­ent in the Face­book mod­el.

I’ve been fig­ur­ing out Face­book strate­gies for Quak­er media since it opened up to non-students cir­ca 2006. I appre­ci­ate much of the atten­tion it’s pro­vid­ed over the years. Social media like YouTube has also been a use­ful plat­form for things like the Quak­er­s­peak projectdespite own­er Google’s spot­ty track record. But it’s becom­ing hard to deny that social media has reshaped the style of civ­il dis­course and troll­ish hack­ery, most­ly for the worse. I think it’s real­ly essen­tial that we become more con­scious of the sources of our dai­ly media diet.

Redefining rude

October 23, 2018

From Mol­ly Shee­han, one of a small “gray wave” of Quak­ers who ran for Con­gress this year (she lost her pri­ma­ry bid):

When the mar­gin­al­ized cry out for com­pas­sion, they are not cen­sor­ing any­body. They are fight­ing for their very right to exist. Non­vi­o­lent dis­obe­di­ence and rewrit­ing the rules of civil­i­ty is for these groups. It is our job, espe­cial­ly as white peo­ple, or those with more soci­etal pow­er and time to protest, to ampli­fy the voic­es of the most marginalized.

https://​mil​len​ni​alpol​i​tics​.co/​r​e​d​e​f​i​n​e​-​r​u​d​e​-​e​m​b​r​a​c​e​-​d​i​s​r​u​p​t​i​ve/

Dynamics of Evil

July 16, 2018

From Patri­cia Dallmann:

Hold­ing the line, speak­ing the truth is the Christian’s (Quaker’s) oblig­a­tion in the Lamb’s War. If the God of truth is hon­ored in just one mind, heart, and soul, the world is not lost, as Jesus showed us by pro­to­typ­al exam­ple. In this state­ment giv­en before Pilate short­ly before the end of his earth­ly life, Jesus iden­ti­fied his life’s pur­pose not only for him­self but for us all.

https://​patradall​mann​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​7​/​0​1​/​d​y​n​a​m​i​c​s​-​o​f​-​e​v​il/

Does this need to be said?

April 11, 2018

A great piece from newish Quak­er blog­ger Josh Tal­bot on the per­son­al strug­gle to fol­low the peace tes­ti­mo­ny: Not Falling Into the Fire of My Own Ire.

Los­ing your­self to anger is pos­si­ble even with anger focused against injus­tice and cru­el­ty. You can become so focused on the tar­get of your rage. That you do not notice when you have lost sight of your goals and are only in it for the fight. Even fol­low­ing the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny of Non-Violence we need to rec­og­nize when we are no longer being Non-Aggressive.

Like many con­vinced Friends, I came to the soci­ety through activism. I had met plen­ty of peo­ple who let right­eous anger serve as cov­er for more vis­cer­al hatred. One eye-opening protest in the 90s was in a rur­al part of Penn­syl­va­nia. When one of the locals screamed the cliche of the era — “Go get a job!” — a pro­tes­tor shout­ed back, “I’ve got a job and I make more than you.” It was true even as it was cru­el and irrel­e­vant and braggy.

I did­n’t see this kind of behav­ior as much with the Friends I saw at var­i­ous protests, which is large­ly why I start­ed grav­i­tat­ing toward them when­ev­er pos­si­ble. I could see that there was some­thing in the Quak­er cul­ture and val­ue sys­tem that was able to nav­i­gate between right­eous and per­son­al anger and draw the line in dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. I love Josh’s descrip­tion of the “Craig Fer­gu­son” method:

I ask myself. “Does this need to be said?” “Does this need to be said by me?” “Does this need to be said by me right now?” Doing this cuts down on moments of spon­ta­neous anger.

This could also describe the Quak­er dis­cern­ment method for min­istry. Maybe there’s some­thing to the care we take (or at least aim for) in that process that gives us a lit­tle more self-discipline in the heat of protest or that helps us sort through thorny eth­i­cal issues that run through our own community.

https://​quak​er​re​turns​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​n​o​t​-​f​a​l​l​i​n​g​-​i​n​t​o​-​f​i​r​e​-​o​f​-​m​y​-​o​w​n​-​i​r​e​.​h​tml

The lost A List

October 11, 2017

As A List Hol­ly­wood stars come out to tell their Har­vey Wein­stein couch harass­ment sto­ries, I have to won­der about those who didn’t make it through after say­ing no — actress­es who saw their roles evap­o­rate and left act­ing. The New York Times head­lines pro­fil­ing Wein­stein accusers touts Gwyneth Pal­trow and Angeli­na Jolie but also intro­duces us a woman who is now a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor in Col­orado. How many bet­ter actress­es and strong-minded women would there be in Hol­ly­wood if so many hadn’t been forced out?

I thought of this after read­ing by a tweet from the actress Rose Marie. She’s best known as one of the jovial side­kicks from the 1960s’ Dick Van Dyke Show. Not to dimin­ish the rest of the cast, but Rose Marie is one of the best rea­sons to watch the show, espe­cial­ly dur­ing those rare moments she’s allowed to step out from her character’s wise­crack­ing spin­ster per­sona and sing or act. On Twit­ter, she shared that she lost a music con­tract in the 1950s because she wouldn’t sleep with a producer.

What if a tal­ent­ed actress like Rose Marie had been giv­en more oppor­tu­ni­ties and wasn’t just known for a sup­port­ing part in a old sit­com? What if the psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor had got­ten the Shake­speare in Love lead? (Imag­ine a world where Pal­trow was only known to 800 or so Face­book friends for too-perfect fam­i­ly pics and memes from dubi­ous health sites.)

Dis­claimer: This is a minor point com­pared with any actress­es who weren’t able to deal with the harass­ment and the indus­try silenc­ing machin­ery. I’m sure there are tragedies that are more than just career pivots.