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It will be there in decline our entire lives

August 1, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A lot of the gen­er­a­tional prob­lems I see affect­ing Quak­erism are not unique to us. The val­ues of the Six­ties gen­er­a­tion have become the the new oppres­sive ortho­doxy. In Quak­erism, our “free­dom from” (the past, Chris­tian­i­ty, the tes­ti­monies under­stood as the reflec­tions of faith) has become near­ly com­plete, which means it’s become bor­ing, and sti­fling. There’s a refusal to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for mat­ters of faith and so all truth is judged by how it affects one’s own indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al­i­ty (we’re all Ranters now, hence my web­site’s name). Where Friends once talked about the death of the rebel­lious self-will and the bear­ing the cross, we now end­less­ly share self-absorbed sto­ries of our “spir­i­tu­al jour­neys” (does it real­ly mat­ter, has­n’t Christ got­ten us all here now and isn’t that the point?), while we toss out pseudo-religious feel-good buzz­words like “nur­ture” and “com­mu­ni­ty” like they’re par­ty favors.

I often feel like I’m talk­ing to a brick wall when I talk about these issues (can’t we just all be nur­tur­ing with­out being told to, sim­ply because it’s the right way to be?). For­tu­nate­ly, there are some fas­ci­nat­ing sites from thirty-somethings also see­ing through the gen­er­a­tional cri­sis affect Chris­tians. Right now I’m read­ing Pas­toral Soft­ness, a post from Jor­dan Coop­er, a pas­tor in a com­mu­ni­ty church in Saskatchewan, and this para­graph just hits me so hard:

The mod­ern church is not going to lis­ten to us, it won’t affirm us, or give us any of its resources there is no point any­more in let­ting it get to us. It will be there in decline our entire lives and will prob­a­bly go down fight­ing and wast­ing a lot of lives and mon­ey but to let that define us spir­i­tu­al­ly will be an even big­ger loss. We can’t blame it for being what it is and if we are going to have a long term future in serv­ing God, we need to stop look­ing at our envi­ron­ment and instead in our hearts.

Seri­ous stuff, indeed, and I sus­pect some Friends would elder me for even repeat­ing it. But its real­ly the same mes­sage that Christ gave a young man 350 years ago:

When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy con­di­tion”; and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my con­di­tion, name­ly, that I might give Him all the glo­ry. (Jour­nal of George Fox)

Every­one knows the first part but it’s the last sen­tence that’s been speak­ing to me for at least the last year. Does Christ make the insi­tu­tions fail us just so He can direct our gaze to the true Source? And isn’t this what Quak­er sim­plic­i­ty is all about: keep­ing our minds as undis­tract­ed as pos­si­ble so we can see the real deal?

Coop­er did an inter­view with Robert Web­ber, an author I know noth­ing about but who’s appar­ent­ly writ­ten a few books deal­ing with the new gen­er­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. I some­times stum­ble across peo­ple and won­der if there’s not some kin­dred cul­ture out there that’s just out of reach because it’s sup­pos­ed­ly on some oth­er side of an the­o­log­i­cal rift. Any­way, Web­ber says:

The prag­mat­ic church­es have become insti­tu­tion­al­ized — with some excep­tions. They respond­ed to the six­ties and sev­en­ties, cre­at­ed a culture-driven church and don’t get that the world has changed again. Prag­mat­ics, being fixed, have lit­tle room for those who are shaped by the post­mod­ern revolution.

A lot of these evan­gel­i­cals are reach­ing for some­thing that looks very much like ear­ly Quak­erism (which self-consciously reached toward ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty). I’d like to think that Friends have some­thing to offer these seek­ers and that there could be a dynam­ic re-emergence of Quak­erism. But to be hon­est, most Quak­ers I know don’t have any­thing to offer these wea­ried seek­ers except more of the same hashed out insti­tu­tion­al­ism, with dif­fer­ent fla­vored top­pings (dif­fer­ences of social stands, e.g., paci­fism, atti­tudes towards gays). I know John Pun­shon­’s been talk­ing a lot about Quak­ers’ pos­si­ble inter­sec­tion with a larg­er renewed evan­ge­lism but I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read Rea­sons for Hopeyet. I’ll do that soon.

Update:
Com­par­i­son chart of tra­di­tion­al, prag­mat­ic, and younger evan­gel­i­cals from Robert Web­ber by way of Jor­dan Coop­er. Very interesting.

More Online Reading:
Lead­ing Dying Churches
Jor­dan Cooper
The Ooze
“Indieal­lies” Meet­up to con­nect with local read­ers of these sites

Classifying Intelligence Blunders

July 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment might be throw­ing out its pros­e­cu­tion of sus­pect­ed Al Qae­da ter­ror­ist Zacarias Mous­saoui because it does­n’t want to allow him to ques­tion anoth­er Al Qae­da detainee in court. With­out the tes­ti­mo­ny of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the judge might throw out the entire indict­ment against Mous­saoui. What’s the Jus­tice Department’s ratio­nale? It says any tes­ti­mo­ny “would nec­es­sar­i­ly result in the unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sure of clas­si­fied information.”

Almost three years lat­er, what kind of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion could Mous­saoui pos­si­bly have? Sure­ly noth­ing that future ter­ror­ists could use. The only thing he could talk about is con­di­tions in the pris­ons. Bin al-Shibh is being held in a secret loca­tion under mil­i­tary law but has report­ed­ly con­fessed to being part of the 9/11 attacks. Sure­ly all the infor­ma­tion he knows about the attacks is also known by dozens of oth­er Al Qae­da mem­bers still at large. Why is U.S.Attorney John Ashcroft’s Jus­tice Depart­ment so ner­vous about let­ting bin al-Shibh speak in public?

A gov­ern­ment will clas­si­fy a piece of infor­ma­tion if it feels that its dis­clo­sure would threat­en nation­al secu­ri­ty: that with it, its ene­mies could use it to launch some new attack. But every­thing that Mous­saoui and bin al-Shibh know is already known by our ene­mies. Gov­ern­ments some­times will abuse their pow­er and declare some­thing clas­si­fied if it con­tatins infor­ma­tion that would be embar­rass­ing to its rep­u­ta­tion or its polit­i­cal leaders.

It’s a big deal to risk throw­ing away a case like this, and it seems like­ly that Ashcroft is try­ing to keep some piece of infor­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can peo­ple. He could be try­ing to keep skele­tons of past U.S. mis­deeds safe­ly in the clos­et, using “nation­al secu­ri­ty” as the blan­ket to cov­er up the truth. The two sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists might know quite a bit about U.S. intel­li­gence coop­er­a­tion with Afghani ter­ror­ists dur­ing the 1980s (when they were aim­ing their attacks at the Sovi­et Union). They might know about U.S. intel­li­gence mis­takes that could have pre­vent­ed 9/11. They sure­ly know about con­di­tions in the secret pris­ons were even detainees’ names and loca­tions are con­sid­ered “clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion.” Who’s secu­ri­ty would be threat­ened if this kind of infor­ma­tion got published?