Spoilers: no wave. Four of the candidates didn’t make it out of the primaries and a fifth was running as an independent in a long-shot candidacy. The one candidate to win major-party primary was the awesome Shawna Roberts¹ of Barnesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, people I know and it was a lot of fun to follow her campaign. Her twitter feed has been a hoot:

Last night, at the BPW forum, my opponent’s statement said his childhood home “didn’t even have indoor plumbing.”

Oh, Bill. Indoor plumbing’s still pending at our old farm house.
You can’t out-hillbilly me. Unless you eat squirrel brains. I draw the line at squirrel brains. pic.twitter.com/hGMJvQ8Yhq

— Shawna Roberts (@RobertsOhioD6) October 20, 2018

Unfortunately Shawna only got about 30 percent of the vote yesterday. This election was not kind to Democrats in rural districts like southeast Ohio’s 6 and she was running against an incumbent. From my vantage point 30 percent seems pretty good, though as my seventh grade math teacher used to intone in his weary baritone, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. ² Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Washington win had me hoping against the odds. I’d love to see her continue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updated Quakers in Politics page. For anyone wondering about Quaker politicians, Paul Buckley had a nice overview of our complicated relationship to voting a few years ago.

2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

The upcoming U.S. Congressional mid-term elections already have at least seven Quaker candidates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal

The separations stem from a disagreement over whether same-sex weddings are to be permitted in member churches, or as they are often called in the Quaker tradition, meetings. The churches leaving WYM regard same-sex marriage as against the will of God.

It looks like many of the more Evangelical churches are the ones pulling out of the yearly meeting. The lines of controversy are similar to recent separations in Indiana and North Carolina Yearly Meetings. The big-tent center of Midwestern FUM Friends seems to be pretty permanently fractured.

https://www.wnewsj.com/news/78939/several-churches-leave-wilmington-yearly-meeting-over-same-sex-marriage

I’m not one of those Friends who bemoan the various schisms. The diversity of those calling themselves Friends today is so great that it’s hard to imagine them ever having stayed part of the same body. Only a strong authoritarian control could have prevented the separations and even then, large masses of the “losing” party would have simply left and regrouped elsewhere: the only real difference is that one party stops using the Quaker name. Here in South Jersey, where the only Gurneyite meeting wasn’t recognized by either Philadelphia yearly meeting for almost a hundred years, we’ve got dozens of Methodist “meeting houses” with graveyards full of old Quaker family names. Fascinating histories could be written of Friends who didn’t bother to squabble over meetinghouse deeds and simply decided to congregate under another banner.

One concept I’m chewing on is that of the “remnant.” As I understand it, the doctrine comes largely from Revelation 12 and is used by small theologically-conservative Christian sects to explain why their small size isn’t a problem; it’s kind of like Mom saying it’s better to do the right thing than to be popular. When the remnant community is a relatively isolated locale like Barnesville, there’s also the image of the Land That Time Forgot, the place where the old time ways has come down to us most fully intact. There’s truth to the preserving power of isolation: linguists claim the Ozark hillbilly accent most clearly mirrors Shakespeare’s. But Ohio Friends aren’t simply Jed Clampett’s Quaker cousins.

Like most rural Quaker yearly meetings, Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative has lost much of its membership over the last hundred years. I don’t have statistics but it seems as if a good percentage of the active members of the yearly meeting hail from outside southeastern Ohio and a great many are convinced Friends. This echoes the most significant change in U.S. Quakerism in the past fifty years: the shift from a self-perpetuating community with strong local customs and an almost ethnic sense of self, to a society of convinced believers.

The keen sense of self-sufficiency and isolation that held together tight-knit Quaker communities over the centuries are largely non-sustainable now. In our media-saturated lives even Barnesville teens can get the latest Hollywood gossip and New York fashions in real time. Yes it’s possible to ban the TV and live as a media hermit in a commune somewhere, but even that only gets you so far. Once upon a time, not so long ago, a Friend could situate themselves in the wider Quaker universe simply by comparing family trees and school ties but that’s becoming less important all the time. For those of us who enter into the Society of Friends as adults–majorities in many yearly meetings now–there’s a sense of choice, of donning the clothes. We play at being Quaker until voila!, some mystical alchemical process happens and we identify as Quaker–even if we’re not always quite so made-over into Quakerness as we imagine ourselves.

At the Ohio sessions a few Friends really loved Wess Daniel’s statement that “A tradition that loses the ability to explain itself becomes an empty form” (see his wrap-up post here). One Ohio Friend said he had heard it postulated that isolated and inward-focused communities like Ohio Conservative were God’s method of preserving the old ways against the onslaught of the modernist age (with its mocking disbelief) until they could be reintroduced to the wider world in a more forgiving post-modernist era. Looked at that way, Quakerism isn’t a quaint relic in need of the same botox/bleach blond “NOW!” makeover every other spiritual tradition is getting. Think of it instead as a time capsule ready to be opened. An interesting theory. Are we ready to look at this peculiar thing we’ve dug up and reverse-engineer it back into meaningfulness?

Update:

Kirk W. over at Street Corner Society emailed me that he had recently put the Journal of Ann Branson online. She features heavily in the middle part of Taber’s book, which is the story of Conservative Ohio finding its own identity. Kirk suggests, and I agree, that her journal might be considered one of the artifacts of the Ohio time capsule. I hope to find some time to read this in the not-too-distant future.

Photo: Vegan food & messy boy at Maggie’s Mercantile off exit 91 of the Penna Turnpike, an hour or so east of Pittsburgh. Enlarged photo.

Snore.

What makes my sleepy response especially strange is that except for the homosexuality issue (yay for FLGBTQC!), I’m pretty close to Scott’s positions. I worry about the liberalization of Conservative Friends, I get cranky about Christian Friends who deny Christ in public, and I think a lot of Friends are missing the boat on some core essentials. When I open my copy of Ohio’s 1968 discipline and read its statement of faith (oops, sorry, “Introduction”), I nod my head. As far as I’m aware I’m in unity with all of Ohio Conservative’s principles of faith and practice and if I signed up for their distance membership I certainly wouldn’t be the most liberal member of the yearly meeting.

I’m actually not sure about Scott’s yearly meeting membership; I’m simply answering his question of why he and the other Conservatives who hold a strong concern for “the hedge” (a separation of Conservative Friends from other branches) might want to think about Convergence. Of all the remaining Conservative bodies, the hedge is arguably strongest in Ohio Yearly Meeting and while parts of this apply to Conservatives elsewhere—Iowa, North Carolina and individuals embedded in non-Conservative yearly meetings—the snares and opportunities are different for them than they are for Ohioans.

Why Ohio Conservative should engage with Convergence:

• If you have all the answers and don’t mind keeping them hidden under the nearest bushel then Convergence means nothing.
• But if you’re interested in following Jesus and being a fisher of men and women by sharing the good news… Well, then it’s useful to learn that there’s a growing movement of Friends from outside Conservative circles (however defined) who are sensing there’s something missing and looking to traditional Quakerism for answers.

Ohio Conservatives have answers and this Convergence movement is providing a fresh opportunity to share them with the apostate Friends and with Christians in other denominations seeking out a more authentic relationship with Christ. Engaging with Convergence doesn’t mean Ohio Friends have to change anything of their faith or practice and it needn’t be about “dialogue”: simply sharing the truth as you understand it is ministry.

Yes, there are snares involved in any true gospel ministry; striking the right balance is always difficult. As the carpenter said, “narrow is the way which leadeth unto life”. We are beset on all sides by roadblocks that threaten to lead us away from Christ’s leadership. Ohio Friends will need to be on guard that ministers don’t succumb to the temptation to water down their theology for any fleeting popularity. This is a real danger and it frequently occurs but while I could tell eight years of great insider stories from the halls of Philadelphia, is that what we’re here to do?

Let me put my cards on the table: I don’t see much of Ohio effectively ministering now. There’s too much of a kind of pride that borders on obnoxiousness, that loves endlessly reciting why Iowa and North Carolina aren’t Conservative and why no other Friends are Friends, blah blah blah. It can get tiresome and legalistic. I could point to plenty of online forums where it crosses the line into detraction. Charity and love are Christian qualities too. Humility and a sense of humor are compatible with traditional Quakerism. How do we find a way to continue safeguarding Ohio’s pearls while sharing them widely with the world. There are Ohio Friends doing this and while I differ with Scott Savage on some social issues I consider tangential (and he probably doesn’t), I very much appreciate his hard work advancing the understanding of Quakerism and agree on more than I disagree.

But how do we find a way to be both Conservative and Evangelical? To marry Truth with Love? To not only understand the truth but to know how, when and where to share it? I think Convergence can help Ohio think about delivery of Truth and it can help bring seekers into the doors. When I rhetorically asked last month what Convergent Friends might be converging toward, the first answer that popped in my head was Ohio Friends with a sense of humor. I’m not sure it’s the most accurate definition but it reveals my own sympathies and I find it tempting to think about what that would look like (hint: kraken might be involved).

A reminder to everyone that I’ll be at Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative sessions in a few weeks to talk more about the opportunities for Ohio engagement with Convergence. Come round if you’re in the area.
Also check out Robin’s own response to Scott, up there on her own blog. It’s a moving personal testimony to the power and joy of cross-Quaker fellowship and the spiritual growth that can result.