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.

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It’s my pet theory that Quakerism is always dying and simultaneously always being reborn. It’s been a messy process with lots of hurt feelings. Many people have left Friends, and there are a bewildering number of institutional schisms still dividing us. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated.

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As a unprogrammed Friend, it’s a bit outside my comfort zone to write formally about a religious topic like this but it’s a good kind of stretching. I look forward to hearing more about how others have approached it in October.

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Woodbrooke

“Most Quaker communities now have no children’s meeting, and this has come to seem normal. Many people who have joined in the last couple of decades have never seen a child in a Meeting House, and take it for granted that a Quaker Meeting is only for retired people.”

I don’t know the situation in the UK where Barnett lives but around me in the U.S. the cynical answer would be that they’re at soccer practice. All of the churches I know have seen sharply declining Sunday School classes in recent decades.

Because neither my wife’s churches or my Quaker meetings have provided good Sunday Schools, our family has long juggled services to be able to go elsewhere to provide our kids with a Sunday School class and friends. For the past number of years it’s been with a very friendly Moravian church over in the next town. We’ve been so involved that we think of them as our other church family and many of the members have become friends. We’ve known them through years, from births to marriage break-ups to kids graduating and going off to college. Just earlier this week I took three of our kids to their bowling outing. It’s really community and something I don’t see happening in any nearby Friends meeting.

But even at this church, with a strong, longstanding program going back over 100 years, it’s not hard to notice classes getting just a bit smaller every year and Sunday school teachers getting a little more thinned out. Even the children of core members will miss Sunday morning classes for weeks at a time because of Sunday morning sports.

My wife’s new Orthodox church has a Sunday school, which is nice, but it doesn’t seem to be that large. I’m glad the kids have it though.

I’d like to build up a children’s program at the small Friends meeting that we’re rebuilding but I must admit to being unsure about what’s realistically even possible. This is a problem far greater

Nurturing the seed

Young people need multi-generational community

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