R. Scot Miller

Everyone has an opinion, especially me...

2011-05-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

I guess this will be a little briefer than usual, but I suppose everything now demands a response. Most of my own responses are intended to reveal some sort of perceived truth. However, my facebook experiences showed me that, if truth cannot be properly articulated in less than 100 words or so, I can indeed show everybody how witty I am. Of course, this invites others to show that, I may be witty, but I am seriously misinformed. This is properly referenced by a quick google check, and some well-placed sarcasm. As it turns out, my responses to each and every event – my need to have an opinion, is really not much more than wanting to feel vindicated in my world view, and feeling victorious. I like winning.
The reality is, however, that only elections seem to be won, and everyone else is suffering losses of dignity and respect. We want to win, and when we realize that the vast array of media outlets that give us more and more opportunity to share our voice serve just as well to show us how little meaning our voices have when presented within the context of opinion and self-validation instead of servanthood.
Of course, most opinions of late have to do with the death of bin Laden at the hands of special forces. Amazingly, or, perhaps not, is that now that the end has come for this individual, there is debate over whether people should cheer for his demise, or whether the killing was legal according to international law. There is also debate over the effectiveness of torture (enhanced interrogation) in gleaning information that may have potentially led to locating the “enemy of the state.” Obviously, every Quaker needs to have an informed opinion, not only about the reach of international law, but the legality of killing, and the poor taste indicated in torture.
Yet, certain questions remain. Do all the online arguments about the moral ambiguity of war and international conflict serve to provide clarity of our own beliefs, or do they exist to mock the intellectual shortcomings of our opponents. Quick wit and straw man attacks do not an argument make, a seminary ethics instructor assured me. I would drive him crazy by calling any theologian or ethicist I disagreed with a “hack.”
In fact, to speak about the morality of killing, whether it be an assassination, by bombing, in combat, or by flying airplanes into buildings, is somewhat moot if we are not changing our lives in a manner that reflects our willingness to step back from the nature of killing and reject the benefits we receive from it. It amazes me that pacifist would speak to the morality of lethal methodology and certain weaponry, when our own moral witness is that all violence is “bad” and that we should be “better” than that. It often seems to me that Friends are properly concerned with the plight of the oppressed, but rarely concerned with the plight of our opponents, and less concerned with the self-degradation that comes from our marginalization of those we see as a threat to our beliefs.
The notion that others might cheer for,an individual’s death may indeed offend our Quaker sensibilities. But arguing in a self-righteous manner that this is a poor exhibition of human nature are failing to accept folks where they are at, and how fear drives responses as much as a thirst for vengeance. More than one Friend has indicated verbally that they feel satisfaction when a politician is pointed out as having failings, though we rarely recognize our own. The other side cheers murder and accepts torture. We simply benefit from it, and I will personally be the first to admit I have the high ground. Pass me the car keys, please, and give me more stuff. I hate torture, and murder and drones make me uncomfortable. Let’s write a minute to indicate to other Friends that we are as indignant as they are.

Has the time come for a new Quaker apocalyptic response?

2011-03-11T07:57:00.000-08:00

I thank God that I am working. I grew up in a working class family that struggled, as my dad was not able to get into the shop. The economy was changing after 1973, and when it took a dive in '77 or '78, my parents were part of that undereducated population that suffered. Lost a house, moved around, and there was a lot of family turmoil. After being a drunken activist for much of my young adult life, I nevertheless made many choices about asserting myself in saying no to what I perceived as injustice. Sometimes I acted unjustly myself, with respect to my opponents. Whatever my condition then, I was prepared to sacrifice on behalf of what I felt was right.

Of course, I was not much of an employee during those years. I drank myself out of jobs, refused to work at others, and basically had a skewed vision of justice as far as my own life was concerned. I had an American activist chip on my shoulder, and had a sense of entitlement. I tended to use the plight of the “other” to justify my own shortcomings. What I later found out was, everybody should work. I still firmly believed that those who can't work for whatever reason, should receive assistance. I am not, not have I generally been, supportive of existing safety nets in our nation. However, we work with what we have, and my family has taken advantage of Bridge Cards and health care.

I sobered up, and now I take part in what I deem to be productive and satisfying labor. I engage in therapeutic relationship with other addicts, I attempt to work with young learners so they may discover how to be effective social workers, and I attempt to minister in the name of Jesus Christ. I get paid a pretty good salary for this work, earning about 32 grand a year, which is more than I have ever dreamed of making. It's pretty good scratch for an old crackhead.

It is Jesus, as experienced through a Spirit Baptism and a Quaker lens, that I have been able to properly contextualize work, ministry, and voluntary sacrifice. I believe that the life of Jesus is salvific, and that after receiving such a gift of grace, I am obligated, if I have integrity, to respond to grace. That means that I am called to reflect my experience of salvation and the meaning of Jesus' work onto those the messiah send before me. I often fail to do this, though I am committed to the attempt.

My experience of Jesus, and my commitment to understanding the gospels and allowing my life to receive meaning from this understanding of Jesus has provided a new context to my concern for justice, and how I perceive justice occurs when Jesus is properly reflected. As the gospels indicate, the early church believed that Jesus taught loving one's enemy and praying for those who persecute us is the proper response to aggression and marginalization. This reflects God's will.

The Hebrew midwives first reflected God's will, as did the prophets, Jesus, and the early church. What we learn from these characters in the narrative of YHWH and God's elect, is that when we are faced with injustice, we speak out, and do so despite the mandates of government, and despite the consequences of our ministry. Jesus' reflected the desire of God, not by relying upon twelve legions of angles or the Son's of Thunder, but by relying on saying no with dignity, and in the context of community. By being baptized in the Jordan and preparing for ministry in the wilderness, Jesus said no through prophetic symbolism instead of violence. When faced with crowds of potential militants, Jesus used the resources of community to resolve the issues of hunger. When Jesus admitted that coins wit Caesar's image in fact belonged to Caesar, he did not present a coin that he considered idolatrous, as did the temple elites. He suggested that the economy of God was one that eschewed the benefits of empire, and found ways to live on the margins of economic oppression by creating community. Acts 2 represents this understanding.

After stating many times that I believe voting is an act of coercion, I maintain that now is the time to say no to the realities of a failing empire. It is now time, not only to refuse participation in the politics of regimes, but to refuse to participate in the economy of the empire until some basic understandings of justice are met. We should not claim that nation states defend or guarantee our rights, we demand to be heard and will do so regardless of the rights that are “gifted” or, as we are seeing now, taken away. It seems as though we have finally reached that point in American politics where the hands of many are being forced, and leftist political parties and anti-war shrillness are not enough.

If Quakers are to be a witness to equality and integrity, it is time that we find a means of saying no in a corporate manner – in an identifiable manner. It is time for us to be leaders in asserting the love that God has for creation, for humanity, and begin to assert that God's love is not being reflected. This love is clearly known in the person, the life, of Jesus, and in the Acts of the Disciples. We must begin to live the gospel, which is good new for the poor and marginalized. James tells us that we must confront greed. Paul dictates our ethic in Romans 12. It is time to say no, with dignity, and welcome those who are marginalized into our communities and share our resources. Government cannot provide the love and acceptance that a community of Christ is intended to provide.

This does not alleviate government from obligations to citizens. It does mean, however, that government and taxation does not alleviate Quakers from sacrificing privilege, time, and money to serve those in need by ourselves, according to our own ethic. We should openly invite the oppressed into our midst, and not think so highly of ourselves.

Paul writes that we should obey our government. This unmistakable teaching does not mean that we participate in ungodly institutions. It means very simply, that there are consequences for saying no. It might be job loss or reducing house size. It might be sacrificing leisure to grow food and sew clothes and create community economies of scale. It may mean sacrificing our freedom in order to maintain with dignity that our social structures are failing us, and we will shut them down if necessary until the will of marginalized persons are included in the economic decision-making process of our communities and regional economies. WE may demand markets that are truly free, which includes the potential for laborers to collectively demand a living wage and security after work. Quakers can provide for this by taking care of one another as a community, and inviting others in.

In the mean time, we must still say no to oppression and economic aggression against the majority of our neighbors. It is hard for the oppressor to make a buck, if no one is spending a buck. It is time we take care of one another, and live a life of faithfulness that indicates to the oppressed what salvation looks like. The time has come for another apocalyptic Quakerism, and I hope we can identify the appropriate means of meeting that divine command.

Are Friends a People of Peace?

2011-01-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

Some observations that Friends will disagree with. Another Friend asked if we have a center, or a sense of a center, at Meeting. After thinking, I believe that, as a Religious Society we do not. I also believe that a great many, if not a potentially large majority, of Friends, want it that way. If I am perhaps mistaken that a majority of Friends do not wish for a greater sense of centeredness in the wider FGC community, it is my observation that Friends are not willing to do the things that will facilitate a “sense of meeting” amongst our diverse community.
Friends no longer have a corporate peace testimony, but seem to live as though non-violence is a preferred response to injustice, militarism, or the presence of evil, if Friends will accept the concept of evil as a legitimate concern. I say we no longer have a corporate witness to peace for a variety of reasons, but I wish to make one thing perfectly clear. Many, many, individual Friends are wholly committed to non-violence, and live a life that reflects as much. There are some Friend’s communities that reflect the peace testimony in a corporate manner. These are positive representations of faith, but I am not quite sure how they are identifiably Religious, or that they are representative of the Quaking experiences of our apocalyptic forbearers.
Yet I have digressed. Friends no longer have a corporate peace testimony because our identity is that of American citizen (perhaps FUM), or liberal democrats or Green Party activists (perhaps FGC), or insignificant in number and outreach (RSOF Conservative). We have become, “like all the other nations.” Indeed, Friends reflect the same attitude of our fundamentalists counterparts (enemies?) in that we have come to view the nation state as the primary means of reflecting the nature of our beliefs, instead of our own committed corporate actions. Friends are a people of politics, who generally come together for silence with others who would not think of challenging another Friends politics, ministry, or reflections of witness. So, our allegiances are not with meeting, and, we refuse accountability to meeting.
We have become a people who recognize that the nation state and militarism are the reality of the current age, that the zeitgeist that never changes. However, since the American Civil War, and Friends commitment to secular political action, military service, and maintenance of political power that necessitated the discarding of peculiarities by most, Friends have stopped challenging the zeitgeist. We have acquiesced to the maintenance of, or obtaining of power, in order to carry out specific concepts of Equality, Peace, or Integrity. Simplicity, perhaps most of all, has lost its corporate sense entirely. In our struggle to legislate a specific ethic, whether it be equal social status for Blacks, immigration reform or hospitality for neighbors, or the right of Gays and Lesbians to join the military without the complications of identity, we have come to believe, in my observation, that the burdens of socio-cultural reality are such that we all must compromise a sense of the meeting in order to facilitate justice through the ballot box.
Ballot boxes, however, or legislation, are not the primary vehicle for justice or peace. They are legitimate means, but are they representative of the overall aims of a Religious Society who, at least among some, indicate that reconciliation is as important to our faith as western justice. In other words, we feel like our primary aim as a religious society should be to reconcile after justice is authorized through the political process. Friends, I am not naive enough to believe that reconciliation is part of this process. While we patiently wait for our worshipful business to be reconciled before making a decision that will effect the whole of the meeting, we will not be patient servants and advocates for those who lack the experience, education, or loving-kindness to accept justice. And, we fail to love our enemies when we act as a society to pick and choose which aspect of legislation our worth our time and support, while discarding the importance of apparently lost causes. We will not end war, but we can reduce nuclear armaments by a few. They will not be destroyed, only placed in storage.
We will support someone’s right to fight, as the military is a reality of our age, and this is an equality issue. But to fight for another person’s right to fight when you yourself refuse the obligation to defend your accepted lifestyle is terribly inconsistent. It lacks integrity. Some say that it was an important event when African Americans could be seen as equals in the armed forces. I agree, and I also agree that it was a major indicator that the time to fight the civil rights battles had come. But the result of this battle for equality. The victimization of communities by the poverty draft, the fact of black soldiers often being given the shit end of the stick in combat situations, the fact that civil rights has had little or no effect in correction the socio-economic standing of most Black communities. In essence, we have asked the Black population to serve disproportionately to defend “our” way of life, all the time saying it is an equality issue.
All the this time, we work to marginalize those persons who, because of their own socio-economic circumstances, and the erosion of their own admittedly unhealthy identities, are left feeling that they either did not have a voice, or were simply disregarded. This does not defend racism, it reflects the reality of legislating morality. It also does not suggest that such legislation has been entirely ineffective or immoral. I suggest that it simply does not represent a coherent or cohesive sense of Friends. We have lost a sense of corporate testimony. We say peace and security, but really feel that equality is more important than non-violence. The funny thing is, that while we talk about equality, very few of us sacrifice to make it a reality in our lives. We have things that are worth defending, perhaps hiding behind the peace testimony as an excuse to continue on, believing that world peace will someday vindicate our view of the world, and that it may occur before Jesus returns. God forbid that Friends legitimize Jesus, who preached that we love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us. That we sacrifice to point out the injustices of domination, instead of engaging in power struggles to emerge victorious.
Friends, victory is never won. Not in war, not after the civil war, not after the world wars, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. It will not be won by gays or lesbians. It will not be won by the vast numbers of women who won the right to go into combat only to suffer incredible rates of rape and assault at the hands of their comrades. Victory is never won. We only have hope that our ethic is someday vindicated by a God who reflects our greatest potential for grace and mercy on the just and unjust. If we no longer accept this, then it is not just that we have lost our witness to Peace. We are no longer religious. We are a political club that engages in time-outs and potlucks. We are justified by our own arrogance, believing that we are a superior intellectual reflection of peace and justice than the living God, a God which we no longer know, and exclude the potential that we someday might.

Advent Conspiracy

2010-12-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

Every December, the birth of Jesus is remembered throughout Christendom. However, I have observed Advent as encompassing the liturgical overtones of dual truth claims. For Americans, Christmas is, not only a celebration of a savior born, but a celebration of a triumph of another kind. I believe Christmas is as much a celebration of American entitlement, and acts more as Christian propaganda, as it has been a time to reflect upon what the birth stories mean in our lives. We are meant to be a people who confess that Jesus is our sole authority over all matters of faith and practice. Yet, we have become a culture that celebrates our faith in a saving act of God by participating in the sacraments of consumerism - desire, decadence, and debt.
With feasts apparently bent on celebrating majority status more than reflecting the context of Jesus’ humble birth, we commit mostly to loving those who love us. We gain worth by giving, not so much in memory of Jesus, but in a manner that asserts our ability to maintain appearances. While we consume in the name of Jesus, we triumphantly thrust our majority status upon all, not only confident in own religious faith, but in the belief that our faith is properly vindicated by the complete absorption of all into the spirit that fuels, not faithfulness, but a faith in the economic and political superiority, maintained through the use of Christian language. This attempt to publicly legitimize faith, and the use of faith to underwrite socio-economic privilege, has consequences. Biblical values are commandeered to dress up utilitarian ethics as Christian in origin, then manipulated to support political supremacy. “Jesus gave us freedom - we must defend our freedom through torture.” This is not a question of policy, it is one of Christian ethic.
When I reveal that my family does not put a tree in the living room, or give gifts, to our children, others ask, “what about the kids, don’t they miss out?” I’m not sure. However, mountains of gifts and Santa’s lap, or debt designer jeans, do not indicate that Jesus has any meaning in our lives. Children should be gifted, along with our spouses and families, every day of the year. As a Quaker, I believe that every day is holy. Every day is to be lived as a celebration of Jesus, and it should be made evident, not by crèches in public places, but in how we love our neighbors and the poor.
We have reached a point where matters of faith have been co-opted as support structures for entitlement. Our economy is built upon a sense of financial and consumer entitlement that has reached a point in our market system where corporations are dependent upon meeting Christmas sales goals to stay solvent. Michigan will suffer if we do not buy enough to benefit the state through the six percent sales tax that is levied upon our purchases. What does this indicate? That Jesus come to save privileged economies by lending his name to consumerism? Or has Jesus come to save our community from the fiercely independent stream of individualism that we use to excuse our mass consumption as a provision of individual and family worth, or, therapy.
In their hearts, some are let down, so removed are we from relationship with that aspect of Jesus which is truly saving. Arguing about Merry Christmas or Season’s Greeting, and then telling them they are only valued when they acquiesce to immersion, is not indicative of Grace. We reflect God’s gifts by reflecting appropriately upon the birth of God’s anointed. We give to the poor, and clothe and shelter those in need; visit the prisoners, and serve one God, for God and mammon cannot both be served.
The birth stories, and the God revealed through Jesus, are done no justice by our purchasing video games and designer jeans as expressive of God’s love. Such faith firmly commits us to economic idolatry in which we serve the gods of entitlement and sing the hymns of our deserving, and not the amazing aspects of grace. Christmas illumines us, not by our love, but by our collection of stuff. Is this where we get worth from, and is this our sense of Christmas purpose?
God does not abhor free markets. I do not believe that God is done a disservice by wealth. I do believe that God will not be marginalized by consumption, especially to a point where consumer choice is identified as a standard of blessing. Indeed, God’s standards are established by manger and cross.

Comfortable waiting interupted by Spirit

2010-10-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

A Quaker who fancies himself a prophet lay in bed next to his wife, waiting on a word from God. YHWH El Shaddai comes to him and quietly asks, “what would you pray for, scot?” I am afraid to answer, for even I am afraid to lie to YHWH. “But, I am not concerned that you may lie to me,” says the Holy One. “I am more concerned that you might lie to yourself. What will you pray for?”

Must I be honest? God knows what I would pray for, which is generally why I don’t pray. I just wait, hoping that the Spirit will never move me to confront myself. “If I were to pray honestly, I could ask for no more than to do God’s work, and enjoy stability for myself and my family.”

“What is it you want to pray for,” I am asked. I answer: “I want to be able to pray that the desire of YHWH is carried out by those who confess.” The next question is obvious. “Why don’t you pray for that desire to be met ?” I do not hesitate to respond. “It may mean that I might have to sacrifice in ways that I am not wanting to sacrifice. You have brought me a long way, YHWH. It seems as though now, I have something to lose.”

“What is it that you have faith in, then, if not the potential for my desire to meet your every need?”

What does faith mean, I ask, to one who has a house, and livestock, a wife and children who love me. I have a lofty job with an opportunity to reveal some sort of truth, to impactthe faith of others. Why should I have faith in digging ditches while drunk. I am tired of growth. I want to pray for myself, that I might finally be stable. That I might be able to settle.

“You need to read the Book more,” is the response that I feel. Centuries of revelation can not be dismissed by the untested experience of one junkie or religious refugee. The act of rejecting the revelation of the ancients does not make one exponentially more suited for the Truths of the future. It simply means that you might be spit out a spaceship instead of a big fish.

Either way, it will be a hot day in the desert when it’s all said and done, and nothing that begins in the desert seems to end well. Only the pure, it seems, enjoy the happy endings. As a particularly attentive person once said, “Hey… It’s not all about you, Job.”

Gays in the military: Don't get me started

2010-09-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

I am at a loss as to what Friends have come to represent. Currently, I have a concern that we are no longer a Religious Society, and perhaps, not even a particularly Spirit-led society. Perhaps Quakers are no longer the Religious Society of Friends (certainly no longer Friends of Jesus as represented in John 15), but a more or less social group of liberal Greens or Democrats. Perhaps even a few Socialists who can’t yet let go of the possibility of a God. In my current state of disdain, however, I no longer know if we are a people of peace.

There appears to be a concern among Quakers that Gays and Lesbians should have the right to serve in the Armed Forces. Of course they should. There should never be discrimination of any kind in regard to an individual’s ability to participate in public, social, political, or service-related institutions. Discrimination against any group, especially a marginalized group like the LGBT community, should never be condoned. However, is this a concern that Friends should take a public stance on under the guise of our testimony to equality?

For years, I believe Quaker participation in liberal democracy has taken a toll on our sense of justice. I believe our Quaker community might seek to provide an alternative community that seeks a higher sense of justice, a justice with a alternative view of what constitutes integrity. We instead appear to be concerned with a utilitarian justice that simply welcomes individuals from marginalized groups to find their way into a socio-economic position in which they can exploit others, whose self-determination remains unrealized. It seems that all it takes for the American sense of justice to be realized is that we open our collective arms and welcome new communities of “others” into privileged status as equal opportunity exploiters.

Yet, why on earth would I commit myself to fighting for a marginalized individual’s right to participate as an equal in war making - an endeavor that not only commits murder against exploited populations, but does so in a manner that suggests to both the exploited and formerly exploited populations that violence is always considered an appropriate response to injustice. Are we as Freinds suggesting that we recognize that communitites have the right, not only to defend newly realized self-determination, but in ensuring that the formerly exploited populations enjoy the ability to enjoy to a heaping portion of the benefits derived from the entitled status as member in good standing of the empire.

If we as Quakers, or Friends, or whatever we have become, are going to be a people of peace, we need to offer an example of justice that not only refrains from using violence as a means of achieving equality, but refusing to defend such a community with violence. We must deny ourselves the benefits reaped as fruits of militarism. Refusing to fight in wars of the empire, or wars of liberation, or wars of self-defense, is a cupcake baking example of peace making if we are fighting for the rights of others to defend our status as peacemakers. This is the very claim of the empire, the assertation of liberal democracy. That we can only “practice peace” because we do not face the violent threats to property, material comfort, and privilege that those citizens of hated socialist or tyranical dictatorships do.

Quakers rightfully insist that gay and lesbian intimate relationships, sexual practice, parental competency, and community values are fully representative of the relational, spiritual, and social values of our denomination. This is the kind of community that I desire to be a part of and voluntarily commit myself to in service of the Creator God. That is why we should create communities where the rest of the world can see what peace looks like when it values an integrity that lives out an example of equality without suggesting that equality is represented by new opportunities for once marginalized individuals to participate in an economically and socially unjust political system. How odd must it be for Muslims to look at Quakers and see us proclaiming peace in the Middle East, peace in Iraq, and peace in Afghanistan, and at the same time speaking out publicly on behalf of those individuals who are seeking the right to kill them.

How can proclaimed pacifists tell people that they should not use force to resolve conflict, then participate in a political process that seeks to ensure the rights of all persons to use force equally, especially when it fills their apparently vocational dream to identify as a warrior. As we counsel some soldiers that seek to cease their participation in war by serving as CO counselors and mediators, are we to run to the court room next door in order to ensure that some one is ready to take the other’s place?

I took up a similar issue at a meeting for worship with attention to business. Our meeting has been seeking contributions to support FCNL’s stance against cluster bombs and some other such wonders of modern engineering. As the kids write these days - WTF? Our stance against all outward wars and strife is now a stance that suggests there are kinder and gentler ways of mass murder that will better express our values as an empire, until someday the killing will stop. It is one thing to have the self-awareness and integrity to refrain from pushing the values of non-violence upon an exploited population that must decide upon its own collective response to economic, social, or military aggression. It is another thing to suggest that we will be more morally acceptable as particpants in empire if we can at least stop the governments and insurgents of the world from using those nasty land-mines.

I myself insist upon a government that uses only laser guided missiles and remote controlled drones that kill fewer innocent civilians, and never intenionally target any. In fact, we hardly lose any soldiers anymore, though it seems as though as many or more are wounded, and they only kill a few women and children once in a while. While I contribute money to this cause in the name of Friends, I’ll make sure to tell the newly enlisted soldiers who won the right to fight not to make us look to bad when they might happen to make deadly mistakes due to bad military intelligence, mistakenly identified insurgents, or simply the combat trauma they've experienced because we worked so hard politically so that they might experience that sinking feeling that they have just debilitated an innocent person. The nature of combat is, you cannot trust anyone, and most often have a difficult time identifying your enemiy. Why do we need cluster bombs when we send our youth into situations that force a response to evil that does more damage to everyone involved, including the American warrior, than any modern weaponry can inflict.

Indeed, why on earth would Quakers be in favor of gun control (as some folks protested the sale of firearms to civilians in Philadelphia). If we fight for the right for individuals to kill Muslims, why can’t our neighbors defend their television sets from theft by using lethal force. Perhaps, instead of fighting against capital punishment, we should insist upon a public viewing of executions so that people can get the real feel of it. You know, make them feel a little guilty that another black guy was killed so that we could all feel a little safer about our kids ability to walk teh streets of Texas suburbs. Funny about American history. We don’t feel guilty to much about our past, and when we do, we make up for it by welcoming new groups into the system of exploitation that we are always saying we abhor. Who needs any god as a moral or spiritual authority when we have reason.

We are Quakers. We are educated, we are for peace, and you will know this by our Birkenstocks.

Jesus responds publicly to terrorism

2010-09-18T04:37:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts on theodicy

2010-08-21T04:30:00.000-07:00

"I've also been struggling with Theodicy, the problem of suffering. I imagine that is something that you have studied before. Do you have any insights? These questions have really pushed me to examine and change some of my beliefs." A Query from a Friend

Boy, this is like the first question everyone asks in seminary or philosophy courses. One kind of person gives up on getting a good answer, and another kind of person writes a book about it. Half of those books suggest that there is no answer to the question of theodicy, and the other half quit on god, or turn to Nietzsche (Ubermann!!!)

Really, I think that the question of theodicy mostly baffles persons such as those that often find their way to Quaker meetings. We are a people who are looking for a pure place to stand in life, and when we realize how frustrating it is that we cannot find such a place, we become frustrated with the possibility that perhaps God or the gods may not be so pure as we would like them to be. This might sum the Hebrew Scriptures in a nutshell, which is a perhaps far more realistic portrait of deity than the Greek/Christian expectations of literal supernatural perfection. Did the Hebrews understand life to be tough, unfair, and violent, and that it is the innocent who are most prone to suffering?

Indeed, when your experience of life is such that you cry out to your god that the heads of your enemy's infants might be dashed against the rocks (Psalm 137), you most likely attribute some fairly ferocious if not schizophrenic attributes to the deity that is also representative of grace, forgiveness, mercy and lovingkindness. So, when Jesus comes along and says YHWH is full of love, we desperately need YHWH be loving in a way that rises above the impurities of our existence, and meets exactly those standards that we ourselves attribute to God. But certainly we must ask, is love pure?

My answer to theodicy, for what it's worth, is that when Eve (remember the story?) bites into the fruit of knowledge, we should really be referring to the event as the "blessing" of sin. Think of relationships, and what makes them worthwhile. Perhaps the challenge of making them work is enticing, and so is the physical intimacy that is often enjoyed, ranging from infant-mother touching to healthy adult sexuality. However, if we engaged in "relationship" without the ability to choose whether we wanted to respond to the “other” (whether comrade, lover, or cosmic force) with real and uncoerced or manipulated love, and without the knowledge that the "other" was freely choosing to love us, there would be no relationship, and we would never experience emotional or spiritual growth, let alone real love.

If a divine entity wants to engage in real relationship with humanity, then not only is the capacity of the created being to freely choose participation absolutely necessary for healthy relationship (which, by the way, benefits the deity as well as the creature), but the ability of the deity to restrain the divine-self from interfering with the creature's free will, and accept the (logical?) necessity of showing restraint in mandating outcomes as opposed to responding to human activity is of primary philosophical importance. I suggest that the only “answer” to evil and suffering is to eliminate the opportunity for emotional and spiritual maturation. It's a catch-22...If you don't experience surd evil and human evil, there is no potential for growth, and certainly no possibility of joy. It would be a life void of climax. If a divine entity does away with the possibility of evil and suffering, neither the creature nor the creator can possibly experience growth, and, more importantly, both are rendered incapable of relationship because of an insistence on purity.

So, the question I ask is: What is the most appropriate sacrifice in a religious context? Is humanity a colossal mistake, and humankind must assuredly sacrifice the narratives of the gods in order to understand the necessity of championing reason and utility over the lure of mythical cadence? Would the earth be better off without us in order that there be no human suffering? The latter question could be answered affirmatively, as at least we could not continue the present rate of ecological degradation that we seem bent upon. The former query, however, teeters on the brink of unintelligibility in the modern context of supremacy of the individual, as we might see humanity as a mistake in general, with perhaps the caveat that one might rather enjoy his or her own privileged existence.

Because I believe there is no ultimately reasonable, or at least quasi-empirical, answer to the question of suffering, we must view the facts of our existence, which are apparently randomness, violence, and meaninglessness, through the lens of religion. Corporate expressions of faith provide for meaning, and for an ongoing human narrative in which we might choose to participate in a manner that recognizes our potential for experiencing love and joy in spite of the truth of suffering. Thus, we have theology, which provides a sense of unity and intelligibility to our spiritual experiences of meaning and wholeness.

Facts, my friends, are meaningless without conversion experiences which allow for interpretation of facts (to paraphrase Foucault) and an opportunity to realize truths. Those experiences are not necessarily religious, but are almost entirely spiritual or philosophical in nature. Such spiritual or constitutional experiences of metanoia generally require a relationship with a deity, or at the very least, a community of privileged interpreters no matter how imperfect such corporate authorities might seem to be.

Some thoughts on ethics

2010-07-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

The stories we tell to one another reveal much about who we are, and what we believe. In my family, the children love to hear stories of how mom and dad met, or the ice storm that was occurring when mom went into labor with Micah. With Emma, we didn’t even own a car, and relied on neighbors to drive us 15 miles to the hospital. Such stories, which are similar to those narratives told by most families, not only keep our children or friends amused. Stories of our lives are integral pieces of identity formation. Not only do they reveal much about us to others, they provide a foundation for who we believe we are as individuals, as members of families, and as participants in community.
Interestingly, the stories we tell one another within the context of family or community often indicate the social and kinship roles that we are expected to maintain as individuals. Not only do the stories we tell about dad tell us what kind of person he is or was, but also indicate the kind of character expected from males in the family. Stories about early American heroes not only serve to bring us together as Americans, but indicate the type of individual character that best serves the interests of the overarching American themes of individualism, exceptionalism, and overachievement.
Such themes are not strictly conservative political or liberal social values in the United States. Stories we tell about the American independence movement or the Underground Railroad, the two World Wars or the Civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s, are seminal, not only to how we view ourselves as Americans, and the roles we are expected to master as American citizens, but how we measure ourselves individually against our political and religious opponents. We are a story-formed people, and, perhaps, a story-formed race of created beings. We use stories, not always as a fully fact-checked facsimile of truth, but as indicators, reflections, and re-enforcers of truth. And, like any language game, we use stories to harness the reigns of power, and legitimate our claims that we possess the knowledge of truth and the right to express it.
For much of history, stories that were once oral in nature have been codified into standard texts. Indeed, the first thing that humans do at this point in history is codify truth in the form of constitutions, contracts, rule books, and other projects of human reasoning designed to take the element of the supposed fallibility of oral presentations out of the process of human progress. If the Enlightenment, and its grandchild modernity insist on anything, it is that we must no longer allow stories to encumber us with continuity of identity, or chain us to the misleading ministrations of mythology. Stories, suggest the empiricist, are the bane of human liberation and individual freedom. Reason is the liberator of humanity, goes the argument against maintaining the ethics of the past, whether they be underwritten by religion, ancient philosophy, or even, the particular ethics of ethnic, racial, or economic experience.
You might be raising the question at this point, what does this have to do with Quakerism? I suggest that the tensions that exist between story and reason, and between past and future, and that place in between in which Quakerism should serve to mediate, have been eliminated. Reason marginalizes the stories of our beginnings, the historical nature of our moral authority, and the concept of cultural continuity. Our future is open for consumption, without the burden of the limits of ancient values, texts, or gods. We can choose our identities in America, shopping around for the right fashion, fantasy, political cause or spiritual truth that appeals to us as individuals, and serves to comfort our self-marginalizing tendencies by legitimizing the supremacy of choice.
I contend, however, that ethics should not be a matter of choice. Before you become too upset or puzzled, I will quickly explain what I do not mean. No one should be forced to practice any religion, and there should be no mandate that we become Lutheran, Baptist, Sunni, or Orthodox Jew. I do not mean that we should legislate school prayer, or that the political wishes of a faith community be codified into secular law so that there can be no gay marriage or divorce. I do not seek political legitimization of any faith, nor do I suggest that religious codes trump democratically derived legal codes within the context of our society. I am a firm believer in self-determination, and believe that the participation in any group, religious or otherwise, be voluntary.
However, I contend that faith itself, the foundation of what we come together for on First Days, is not a matter of choice. Faith, and faithfulness, is a matter of experience, discernment, and praxis, or, the practice of living out of a belief. I contend that our experience of the divine crosses the line that demarcates the distance between story and reason. For those who have experienced the risen Christ, this means that we no longer choose our identity, but assume the identity of a chosen people. As Paul says, “we are no longer our own.” As the author of First Peter writes, we are “a peculiar people.” God’s own possession. As such, when it comes to discerning community morals and the ethics that place those values on public display, we are a people of the Book, and not necessarily a people of reason.
There is a challenge of unlimited scope that becomes evident when one assumes the ethic of a religious narrative that claims to be an alternative to the supremacy of reason. Primarily, at least in the western world, we are forced to make a choice that exists in that tension I mentioned before. In order to be taken seriously as a community, and in order to have our faith legitimated, we feel we must compete in the marketplace of pragmatics in order to fully participate in our democracy. Yet there is another aspect of the challenges of reason that compete with faithfulness. That is the challenge of economic and political power. In the pursuit of both, the people of God have often chose to manipulate the ethics of the Yahwist story and marginalize the life of Jesus as the primary informants of our identity. We instead choose to pursue power in a political manner that ignores the reality of the cross, and according to an economic ethic that ignores the manner of life which Jesus lived. I believe that, in America, we have become a people whose faith and practice is legitimized by the nation state, and who view the nation state and liberal democracy as the primary means of continuing the work of God.
However, the only legitimization necessary to a community of faith is the evidence of a corporate life that reflects their faith, and prioritizes the truth of Jesus of Nazareth over the power of nation states as a means of garnering justice. The key component to living such a life of faith is the characteristic of patience. Just as Jesus’ faithfulness was vindicated by the resurrection, so shall the faithful community be vindicated by God. Faithfulness exhibits the trust that God will act in the future, and that those actions will justify those believers who chose to live without the advantage of identity surfing. One example of such faithfulness exists in the midst of the Holocaust. It is the story of a Huguenot community in occupied France.
During the occupation, very few French nationals served the organized resistance. The realities of World War I and the failure of the impenetrable Maginot Line had demoralized many of the citizens. Many French simply complied with Nazi rule, including participation in the destruction of the Jewish and other marginalized populations. However, in a town called Le Chambron, more than 6000 Jews were saved from Nazi imprisonment and worse, because there were people who considered themselves citizens of the Kingdom of God, and thus not bound to serve military or elected authority simply because of potential consequences. Academic Philip Haillie wrote in 1981 that many French citizens not only collaborated with the German occupiers, but tried to outdo them in anti-Semitism in order to maintain good relationships with their conquerors. Hallie, an American Jew, wrote that the French Protestant village, surrounded by a nation of nominal Catholics and humanitsts, were different. They were different he wrote, because he perceived that they had no choice in the matter of helping Jews escape certain death. The read the Bible, and they took it seriously. In fact, Hallie wrote, “They believed it… they were literal fundamentalists.”
Now there is a catchphrase. Fundamentalists. However, fundamentalism in the context of Christianity, does not regard literalism as any more than an aspect of certain fundamentals of faith. Literalism itself, or belief in the story, can be separated from fundamentalism, which is more of an American political movement and fairly uncomfortably developed relationship between western reason and biblical faith. For instance, many fundamentalists will concern themselves with biblical values that reinforce common social themes of patriarchy, homophobia, and heaven as the primary expression of social justice. Yet, fundamentalism does not do justice to the biblical story, or the story of Jesus, or the ability of a community to believe that the Holy Spirit can guide a community to interpret the authoritative texts in a faithful manner that bears fruit in a manner that is different from another community. Fundamentalism does not have the patience to wait for divine vindication, and has thus chosen political power to establish a semblance of God’s perceived will in dominance over the rest of an unbelieving society.
Yet, the story of God, the biblical account of Jesus’ life, the reality of the cross, and the resurrection, point to a different ethic, and this ethic flies the face of reason when given the same weight on the cosmic scales of community praxis. The story of God’s chosen people is a narrative in which God has offered salvation to humanity through the developing of relationship between Creator and creation. The life lived by Jesus welcomed the world into a covenant that was established with Abraham and Sarah, with Hannah, Ruth, and David, and with all Israel. This covenant trusts that God will act faithfully, and enjoys a faithful response to the divine expression of love. Faithfulness means an expression of love toward the Creator, and toward one another whether neighbor or enemy. And if we believe in the supremacy of Jesus’ ethic of love as the expression of God’s truth, we have no choice when it come to protecting the oppressed, inviting the marginalized into our homes, and pursuing justice.
Wwe also have no choice in the question of violence. This, my Friends, is giving literal meaning to the whole of a text, and not only shoe-horned proof-texts that underwrite homophobia and other aberrations of God’s desire. Indeed, as Quakers, we should have no choice in the question of political power. If we are faithful to the story of Jesus, we sacrifice ourselves voluntarily so that we, as a people, can reflect the desire of God for the faithfulness of humanity. A desire that is shown fully in the life and voluntary sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah.
Jesus’ life showed very little regard for empirically developed and fully reasoned ethics. Jesus simply displayed an ethic of love and faithfulness. It was an ethic of justice, and egalitarian community - of welcoming in those who repented and maintaining faithfulness in the face of persecution. Jesus was a literalist, not in the sense of Torah as a means of controlling communities as maintaining hierarchies, but as a man who believed that God existed in a literal sense, and could be trusted to be faithful to those communities who identified themselves as a possession of God, and not persons free to choose amongst ethics of other nations that would make them relevant to the politics at hand. The life Jesus is an invitation to participate in the people of God, not a coercive historical act that mandates God’s will be executed by human institutions through forced baptisms, crusades, state churches or ballot boxes.
The people of God experience God’s love, and believe the attending ethic is revealed through Jesus, then voluntarily join a community that reflects God’s love because they do not consider alternatives to love as a viable option. There is not always reason in a nonviolent ethic. There is not always reason voluntary sacrifice, whether it be on a cross, or refusing to sacrifice to Caesar, or refusing to baptize infants. There is not always reason when followers of Jesus involuntarily sacrificed in the manner of the Underground Railroad, or refusing to defend personal property in the manner of Mennonites and many Quakers during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars when they refused to take sides. There is little reason in marrying same sex couples within the context of your faith community when it marginalizes your congregation from the mainstream church. Yet, faithfulness is not always reasonable. In the ethic of Jesus, there are many things worth dying for, but none worth killing for, and this does not always make sense.
In the ongoing ethic of American freedom and justice, and the tension between liberal democracy and the rest of the world, a vast number of our neighbors and enemies believe that certain expressions of strength can be considered. These considerations are the use of militarism, including the bombing of civilians targets, and most recently even torture, as a potential means of saving innocent lives and ensuring the progress of the experiment of democratic power structures or the maintenance of academically and scientifically reasoned Marxist regimes. In each case of such use of power, whether it be the election of the socialists in Germany, or the bombing of Britain, the fire-bombing of Dresden or the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whether Stalinism or Maoism, the tenets of empiricism and reason have expressed an ethic of power as an appropriate response to evil or injustice. Though democracy progresses forward, and the Cold War has been won, “evil” still exists and another enemy rises to fight. It may indeed be necessary for the empire to maintain order and for modernism to pursue justice. Yet, such is not the example of God, or the narrative of God’s People.
The narrative of God, which informs our identity as a chosen people, reveals truth through the servanthood of the church as informed by the life of Jesus. The people of Le Chambron new that God’s ethic was revealed in the life of Jesus, and that such a life lived is salvific, not only for a future kingdom, but for communities who participate in such an ethic in the present. We are saved from the machinations of militarism that carry out a perceived will of God without really believing that God can literally bring about salvation. Western empires perceive the cross as salvific without expecting that they must carry their own in a sacrificial manner. Reason sacrifices others, whereas followers of Christ sacrifice themselves voluntarily, in order to defend the marginalized and oppressed.
As such, I hope Friends will consider a new ethic when election time comes, and when the time comes to argue for social justice in a manner that obligates a Quaker ethic upon others. First, an ethic of Jesus can only be an ethic that is voluntarily accepted by those persons engaging in a community of faith. Non-violence just might include the abstaining from obligating others who do not believe in serving the poor or serving the marginalized. To democratically force such an ethic upon others is tantamount to accepting that a majority ethic of militarism, torture, or policies that maintain institutionalized racism is properly binding to our own community of faith.
Secondly, I suggest that, as Friends, we have no business voting to obligate others to contribute to expressions of our faith, such as the peace testimony or love of enemy, when we ourselves have been unwilling, in some circumstances, to sacrifice privilege on behalf of what we perceive to be justice. If we are going to pursue justice, we must do so as a community, and make the economic and social choices that prioritize our communities as examples of what peace or salvation look like, over the tendency of many persons of faith to vote for something that resembles peace and justice. Problematically, this is most often an expression of peace an justice underwritten by empire, continued economic privilege and consumer choice, and military or legal coercion.
Finally, what are Friends to do about injustices such as racism, sexism, and homophobia if we do not participate in a system that offers opportunities to resolve such realities. I believe that we as Americans, whether Quaker or not, fully believe that justice can only be achieved through the manipulation of power. There is much more than a grain of truth to such a belief. But if a Friend is Christ-centered, as I believe our Society historically is, we believe that we do not need to wield power or manipulate power in order to witness to justice. We may indeed sacrifice ourselves in acts of civil disobedience, or act in the manner of Tom Fox, or John Woolman, or the many women who preached publically despite severe consequences. We might speak prophetically to Truth. Yet, unless we as a community provide an example of what the future looks like, we are limiting ourselves to one view of justice, and perhaps, it is not the Creator’s view.

Refusing to feel marginalized among Friends

2010-01-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

My God, My God – Why hast thou made me so different!
To begin with, I have never felt a love like I feel from the Creator God. I have never felt drawn to be close to anyone in a healthy way until I could accept that I was loved. YHWH’s love for me made it possible for me to love others, even my enemies. I know YHWH and the divine desire for my life because of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who I deem as being the person in history through whom salvation comes. I believe this salvation is universal.
To share this in a liberal meeting might mean spiritual marginalization. It’s not that folks won’t accept me for where I am at spiritually (at least most folks will), but that, because I have found a path for myself, and am able to express it in meaningful ways through the use of a specific language, I feel that I am suspect in the eyes of most “seekers.” How often have I heard it said that “there are many paths to the divine.” That may be true, but is that an appropriate response to someone whose life has been saved, and changed dramatically, through the experience of divine particularity? Where is it that I get support for my particularity in the FGC expression of Quakerism? Where do I find a place in the context of the Religious Society of Friends where I feel like I am worshipping the same God as others in the sense of a truly gathered meeting?
I found support for my particularity in Conservative Friends, and my family travels the width of the state of Michigan once a month to participate in worship in the name of the Christ, Jesus. Our family’s leading to dress plain, and make specific use of the biblical narrative, in coordination with Christ-centered waiting worship, is buoyed by our relationship with Crossroads Meeting in Flint, where we are affiliate members in Ohio Yearly Meeting.
However, I am feeling like I exist on the fringes of Conservative Friends because, as I presented at Yearly Meeting this year, I do not believe in the blood atonement. I am not a believer in a virgin birth (I do believe firmly in resurrection), or am I a believer in the infallibility of the Scriptures. In fact, while I have a deep and abiding love for Scripture, I am often the recipient of leadings by the Holy Spirit that stand in firm contrast with parts of Scripture. Am I alone among Conservative Friends in an understanding that Paul did not write many of the letters attributed to him, or that I can disagree with Pauline theology even though I value it, or that, in fact, Paul was just wrong about some things? When I presented at Ohio Yearly Meeting, someone immediately spoke aloud that my theology resembled that of Elias Hicks. I wonder what Conservative Friends think of my support of same-sex marriage. I must admit, I haven’t brought it up.
Of course, I am not Elias Hicks, but I deeply value the relationships that I have forged within my Hicksite meeting in Grand Rapids, where my family has full membership. Regardless of our differences, I know that I can contribute to the health and direction of the meeting, and that it has been one of the most valued spiritual relationships of our lives. I also enjoy that it allows me an opportunity to explore theological leanings without perceived burdens.
On the other hand, I value the community of eldering that exists in Ohio Yearly Meeting – the stability of knowing that the biblical narrative is being lived out in the manner of Friends as it has been for a few hundred years – with Jesus at the core.
As I began to write this, I felt like I was on the margins of both groups of Friends, but now that I think of it, I may have the best of the spiritual world at my fingertips. Perhaps God has brought me to a space in the middle because I can learn valuable spiritual truths from both groups. Perhaps I can serve as a reminder to Friends of one persuasion that the biblical narrative is a valuable asset to our community, and to Friends of another persuasion, that the roots of apostasy were laid in the First Century, and remind Christ-centered Friends that the “doctrines of men” are just that. The Bible informs our faith, but the Holy Spirit waters our spiritual seeds. Blood atonement, and indeed, all of Christendom, might be at the end of their long run.
In the words of some Friends, I am a (Quaker), not a Christian – But I am thoroughly Christ-centered, believing in the salvific work of YHWH through the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and if the middle is where I must be, than I guess I will just have to continue to reap the blessings.

Unapologetically messianic: Every day is the day the world calls Easter

2010-01-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

There is not really a need to offer a Bible verse concerning incarnation or the resurrection. It’s my guess that most of us are familiar enough with the story. The story is the reason that there are more of us in the church or meeting house on Easter Morning than on most other Sundays. The Resurrection Story - a story of the God of Abraham and Sarah; the God of Ruth and Isaiah, acting in history to liberate a faithful servant from the bonds of death.
It is a story of creation’s liberation from the oppression of those who would wield dominance over creation. It is also the story of our own liberation - a rescue from bondage to those forces that so often lay claim to our allegiances that should be entirely reserved for the God of Peace. The story is an ancient one. Its beginnings are remembered because it has been told and retold over thousands of years.
Once upon a time, there were a people held in bondage by a great nation. They were held as slaves, and they cried out for their release from a ruler who made claims that he was a god himself. This ruler had priests that supported his claims. The people of his nation lent their loyalties to his grandeur, identifying the divinity of the Pharaoh of Egypt as, if you‘ll excuse the expression, the Gospel truth.
It was the Hebrews who were slaves in Egypt - slaves to Pharaoh’s empire, the mightiest force in the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond. The God of all Creation, however, heard the cries of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah. YHWH hears the cries of slaves. It was YHWH who delivered the Hebrews from the grasp of Pharaoh and lead them out of Egypt, taking the form of fire, and a pillar of cloud. This people of YHWH did not need to fight for their release from captivity. The God of Moses destroyed Pharaoh’s military strength, and drowned in the Sea of Reeds any threat to the Hebrews that Pharaoh’s empire could muster.
Oh, how thankful was Israel. In commemoration of this liberating act of God, the Hebrews established a celebration. This feast, called Passover, is an annual remembrance of the Story. This celebration of the liberating act of the God of Moses and Miriam, who rescued a people from empire, has been celebrated every since by people close to YHWH’s heart. It is a time for worship, praise, and great Joy over the Story that recalls the great actions of a God who rolls up the divine sleeves and rescues the poor, the marginalized, and even lowly slaves from oppression.
It was during just such a celebration of Passover, - possibly some 1200 years after the fact, and nearly 2000 years ago - that a startling new development was introduced to the plot of this biblical Story. It would still be a story of liberation, a story of joy and an occasion for worship. But events in Jerusalem in the first-century of what became the Common Era demanded a new twist. In fact, any number of Yahwists were looking at a variety of ways to prompt another rescue on behalf of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, who were again under the dominating thumb of an empire.
This time, that empire was Roman instead of Egyptian. It was Caesar claiming godlike status instead of Pharaoh. And this time, it was personal. Israel was been economically and politically dominated on its own turf, the Promised Land of Israel had become known as Palestine. It is mostly on Easter that we remember the old liberating Story. However, this time the leader of Israel was not the Moses of old, but as his disciple Matthew tells in a story of his own, a new Moses. A Messiah who is known to all of us by the name of Jesus.
Jesus was a celebrant of the ancient Story. As a first-century Galilean, the Story was his story. It was the story of his family and his people. And the followers of Jesus realized that the Story was not just for the people of Abraham and Sarah, but for the whole world. So, for all involved, obedience to the God of Israel was the only way that liberation would visit humanity. Obedience was the way of Salvation.
While other would be Judean leaders - would-be messiahs – that believed, indeed, they knew in their hearts, that a warrior God who had already defeated the likes of Pharaoh, and other rulers, would act in history and defeat the pagan oppressors once and for all. God would finally establish the reign of YHWH as an unquestioned force that the world would reckon with, through the ruling kingdom of Israel. There was to be a holy war, believed so many Judeans, and the enemies of YHWH were going to pay a price.
But Jesus was different. He certainly preached the kingdom of God. But the kingdom preached by Jesus to his disciples meant reflecting the love of God, and the Creator’s concern for the faithful pursuit of justice, peace, and grace. This was not, according to the Messiah, achieved through holy war, but instead, through the faithful expression of YHWH’s love for even the enemies of God’s people. The liberating God of Moses and Miriam would bring salvation to the entire world, not by destroying armies with one fell swoop of the divine hand, but through the love of the faithful servants of God’s creation.
It was the familiar story – with a twist.
While the God of all Creation, Jesus, and the apostle Paul all speak about liberating creation from empire, the Bible also brings witness to specific ways that the loving justice of YHWH is reflected upon a world groaning for freedom. Loving your neighbor, even the hated Samaritan, as you love yourself. Or throwing away privilege and giving substantially, if not everything, to the poor. How about forgiving your enemies seventy times over. The Scriptures abound with stories of loving grace and forgiveness. Yet, stories are simply stories if they are not acted out in a manner that proves their credibility.
About thirteen years ago, in the Michigan town of Ann Arbor, there was an individual who made credible the story of Jesus.. The Ku Klux Klan came to Ann Arbor one June day in 1996. In fact, the Klan marched every June in Ann Arbor for a number of years. They may in fact still do just that. But thirteen years ago, and not atypically, the Klan march was challenged by a ferocious crowd of counter-protesters. Just as typically, an entire area of the city was witness to brick and bottle throwing outrage - all aimed at the parading white supremacists.
The Klan continued to march, and the counter protesters rage grew thicker with every racist slogan that emanated from the mouths of their enemy. Police were outnumbered, and things were about to turn violent. They did turn violent. The crowd raged at the Klan, and broke through the police protection that was provided for the demonstrating organization. Klan members were separated from one another, and it was quickly an event that could only be described as every Klan member for his and herself. Groups of enraged protesters isolated individuals and harassed them. In one instance, a group of protesters encircled a tattooed man wearing a clothing that identified him as an enemy, and began kicking and punching him.
Out of this chaos, the messiah appeared.
She was wearing denim shorts and a white t-shirt. She only 18 years old, and she was an African-American. Our modern day messiah’s name was Keshia Thomas.
Originally there to protest the racist enemy known as the Klan, she saw an image-bearer of God cowering on the cement and under brutal attack. Keshia Thomas sacrificed her own body, covering and protecting the a white man she had moments before demanded justice from, and shown anger toward.
Our messiah would have never received a just hearing from Albert McKeel had she engaged him through violence. Only through reflecting the love that God has for every person, even the enemy, could she radically alter the hatred that McKeel may have had harbored against African-Americans and other people of color or faith.
McKeel was radically changed, as the two consequently appeared together in public as an example of redeemed human relationships. When Keshia Thomas sacrificed herself for the love of her enemy, she brought salvation not only to herself, but to her enemy as well. They were liberated from oppressive rage, and hatred, and brought into right relationship with one another.
I have no idea if either Keshia Thomas of Albert McKeel were followers of the one true Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. But I do know that this is the kind of sacrificial love that Jesus was preaching, that God intends, and that Christendom is lacking. This is the way that followers of Christ Jesus change the world, and love of enemies is how YHWH intends for Creation to be liberated from the bonds of injustice, of inhumanity, and from empire making claims about its own authority to rule creation.
And for resurrection? Remember the Story? A story of liberation from oppressive and degrading powers of domination. A story of liberation from those who would stake a claim to be held high as gods, such as Pharaoh, or Caesar. They nailed this messianic claimant to a cross. Executed him as an enemy of the state. Jesus was laid to waste just like any number of failed revolutionaries on either side of his own crucifixion.
Yet, it is in the ministry, the obedient reflection of God’s love toward every person, and the ultimate sacrifice made by Jesus in staying faithful to YHWH, that salvation is brought to all of creation. How do we know this? Because the Sovereign God of the Universe acted in history one First Day morning and raised Jesus from the dead.
God rewarded Jesus’ obedience and faithfulness, and overturned all of the evil that empire could heap upon him. That is the Story of God’s liberating all of creation. The resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, and his liberation from the bonds of death, foreshadows the reward of our own faithfulness. A faith placed not upon the god of empire that promises our salvation through economic justification but to the One True God who resurrects the dead.
That First Day resurrection is the reminder that all of God’s faithful will someday be rewarded. In fact, both friend and foe, through the work of the Christ, will enjoy the salvation that God intends for all creation. Yet, the resurrection is also a reminder that the work of Jesus must continue, through the work of those like Keshia Thomas, or the work of one’s meeting or congregation, or the work of the believer’s church as a whole. Because there can be no salvation - none of the universal redemption such as my Quaker faith is so fond of - without the continuous striving for justice, equality, and peace.
Followers of Jesus are called - indeed, commanded - to challenge the oppressive tactics of those intending to dominate creation, whether they be the Klan, or the presidents, prime ministers, and violent radicals of any faith or nation. We are commanded, however, to do so by reflecting the love that God has for every inch of creation. A love offered for every nation, for every person, and especially for every enemy.

A view of salvation

2009-12-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

“Christ the savior is born.” So goes a popular hymn sung around the day the world calls Christmas. Of course, I have no idea when Jesus was born, but the appropriate Quaker response to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, as I see it, should be one of daily observance, as opposed to setting aside a day or season that is more of a sacrifice to the god of commerce. Yet, regardless of the Christ-centered Friends’ response to the birth of Jesus, there remains the sticking point of salvific language that turns many Friends away from the biblical narrative.

However, the soteric language used in the Greek Testament has a double meaning, if not a totally separate meaning, from the way that contemporary Christendom has come to interpret salvation. I will present the birth narrative of Luke as an example. And before I begin, I offer a caveat that might disturb some Ohio Yearly Meeting F/friends. I ask the reader to overlook the inaccurate historical accuracy of the story, and explore the meaning of the narrative. I doubt that the early Christ-centered communities were as concerned with past history as much as they were with the theological – and political – statements of the text that they heard being read to them.

While there is no indication that a census was ordered in Palestine during the time of Jesus, if ever, the point of the beginning of chapter two of Luke is not concerned with the fact of a census. There are more important narrative fish to be fried by the author. First, the author needs to be able to place a Nazarene in Bethlehem. Yet, why a census, and why Bethlehem? The persona of Caesar Augustus provides the clue. As the supreme ruler of the known world, Augustus has the authority to displace Palestinian Yahwists, whatever their circumstances. It is the power of Rome that is in control of the lives of the Israelites. And we all know why Bethlehem is important. It is the city of David, to whom YHWH has promised the throne of Israel forever. It is also to imply that Jesus fulfills the prophecy that Israel’s savior will come from Bethlehem, the smallest portion of the people of God’s inheritance. Bethlehem offers the contrast between the grandeur of monarchies like Caesar’s and the humility of the true savior of the world.

You see, Caesar Augustus was known as the “savior of the world.” He was known as the savior because he was the author of pax romana which placated the Mediterranean world to the benefit of Rome, and, indeed, to much of the Greek speaking world. But the ever-resistant Yahwists of both Palestine and the Diaspora refused to accept the claims of the emperor who was also known as “the Prince of Peace.” They knew that YHWH was the arbiter of history, and not Rome. Thus, when the author of Luke uses first-century code words like “good news,” “city of David,” “savior,” and “Messiah,” he is not suggesting that those who somehow “believe in” Jesus will go to heaven someday. He is stating that the “real” savior, the “real” prince who will bestow earth peace and Divine favor upon God’s people, is this Nazarene and not the ruler of empire. Remember the Roman patronage system, where Caesar provided favors as part of that system that was entrenched in the realm of first-century Rome. Herod was just such a recipient, who in return, promised loyalty to Augustus and the empire.. (By the way, Augustus, who claimed divine status for himself as the son of a god, and later, full divinity, was known as the “father of his country.” I wonder if the Jesus “Father God,” or “Abba” language, is a derivative of such a claim?)

Of course, when the author of Luke claims that Jesus is the Messiah, he is the person who will “save his people.” If he is the King of Israel in the line of David, what will become of the client king Herod and his dynasty? These are some pretty heavy claims for a Nazarene, and will later prove to be quite dangerous to the fledgling messianic movement. Finally, the term good news, or euanglion in Greek, was used primarily to decree the ascension or achievements of an emperor, or a great military victory. Each component of the birth narrative, it seems, is designed as an affront to the claims of empire. And, one final nod to humility is that the good news was pronounced first to shepherds, the most despised and lowliest of occupations in Palestine.

But what about salvation. Remember, Augustus was the “savior of the world.” While Jesus ascends to the throne through the Davidic line, he is much more than the Messiah who will liberate Yahwists from the machinations of empire. He is indeed the true savior/liberator of the world, as his lived life will fulfill the covenant that invites the Gentiles into the narrative of Israel’s God, and saves them from the violence, degradation, and domination of the empire. The true Prince of Peace liberates humanity from the domination system, if humanity chooses to live according to the example of the Christ’s life. A life of integrity, true freedom, humility and peace is the salvation that the author of Luke has in mind, not heaven. Salvation can be a change-of-life, not end-of-life, event.

When modern day Christ-centered Friends speak about salvation, we should understand that we offer a liberating way of life that challenges the domination of empire through the practice of testimonies, and not a pie-in-the-sky reward for our submission to domination. Our submission should be to living a life that interprets the life of Jesus as normative, that being a life of public witness, voluntary sacrifice, social justice, and love of neighbors and enemies.

Friends and Apocalypse Revisited

2009-12-18T09:33:00.000-08:00

I was very pleased with the responses to my previous post concerning the Book of Revelation. There are a few points that were made in the post that I feel should be reiterated, however, because I believe that some readers missed the point of the post. I expect that an individual reader will project their own meaning onto both, my post, and the apocalyptic text. That is precisely why I agree that the text should be read by a community of interpreters, as I believe I posted.
That being said, I believe that some of those who posted comments, and accordingly, some of those Quakers who felt compelled to give the post some thought privately, missed much of the point that I was trying to make. That point being, that many Friends, and I include myself in this group, are becoming the target of such texts. With our tendency, as one comment suggested, to either ignore the text, be embarrassed by it, or interpret in a manner that projects its meaning to be an attack on those who don’t meet fundamentalist purity standards, we have avoided the possibility that we are indeed the new Babylon.
First, I would like to approach the concern that Revelation presents imagery of a violent, if not vicious, god. While the fact that the ancients may have felt that some sort of justice would be leveled on their behalf by such a god, as pacifists, we should accept such understandings as, A) contributing to the ongoing discussion of our understanding of the identity of YHWH, no one should be excluded from the conversation if the Holy Spirit has the capacity to be self-correcting, and B) such understandings generally are the product of communities who are the victims of immense suffering, and have no recourse to the defense of justice other that to appeal to a god who will someday prove to be mightier than the oppressors who claim the status of deity themselves.
The reason that such views of a violent or vengeful god are so distasteful to us as modern Quakers (I say distasteful as opposed to misunderstood, and modern because early Quakers used exactly the same imagery) is that we have been comfortable enough in our leisure to limit our discussions of God or gods to beliefs that project our ability to go through life without the reality of enemies in our existence. I do not believe that the fact of enemies would mean that a violent god would be acceptable, only that it would provide context to such a belief. At any rate, it is hard for me, or others that attend my meeting, to consider ourselves as people who suffer at the hands of enemies. We are usually comfortable enough to seek an understanding of those who disagree with us at the personal, or corporate, or national level.
First-century and seventeenth-century believers had no such comfort or leisure. They were faced with the reality of the contradictions of existence and needed linguistic and literary tools to respond to and make sense of those contradictions. Texts like the Revelation to John provide possible answers to the inconsistencies of human life that often represent an unthinkable possibility to those who are “unenlightened” that their community’s god, or Judeo/Christianity’s YHWH, is not in charge of history. Revelation poses just such an answer, that being that history is in the hands of God, proof of which is in the victory of the Lamb of God over death.
I feel the need, however, to reiterate the most important point of my original post. Most important for modern American Quakers, is that apocalyptic takes to task the notion that the Realm of God can be dominated by the deified empires of past or present. Ancient and modern apocalyptic ideas answer the question of suffering and violence, and we should place an interpretive emphasis, not on the concept of a vicious and vengeful god, but on the endurance of YHWH’s people, whether it by ancient and modern Jews, ancient Palestinian and Asian Christ-centered communities, or those persons suffering form marginalization today. The truth of our own implication in this oppression is the fact of our consumption and its effect on developing nations. The reality of our implication is our dependence on a freedom and economy that is buoyed by militarism. To once again drive home the point that I perceive as truth, is that apocalyptic language is now pointed squarely at ourselves, and Quakers need to study texts such as the Revelation to John in order to understand those persons around the world who hate us as the Great Satan, or those communities who are relegated to believing that justice can only be achieved through the acts of a violent and vengeful god who will, in the afterlife, save them from the machinations of the empire.

Friends and Apocalyptic

2009-12-16T18:38:00.000-08:00

I once heard John Shelby Spong tell a crowd of admirers that the Book of Revelation should have never been included in the canon. My disagreement with the Bishop is not that he takes issue with the canon. Far from it, as I have a particular beef with Hebrews, the two Tims and Titus. The issue I take with Spong’s proposal is one of the integrity of the early Christ-centered witness. That witness being, that, Jesus of Nazareth is the rightful ruler of the world, and not Caesar, and that the cross is the standard of power, and not the legions of Rome.
I readily admit that the Apocalypse to John has been abused and misinterpreted by much, if not most, of Christendom over the past 1500 years. That is a problem of the mainstream church, and not the text. It is a very deeply embedded problem of the fundamentalist wing of Christendom, but not just on the conservative side of the spectrum. Apocalypse bashers from the left wing of all sorts of semi-faithful interpreters have a tendency to literalize the last book of the Greek testament as well. My suggestion to both ends of the doctrinal spectrum is: come on folks, it’s a metaphor fashioned in the example of a long line of Yahwist texts that bear both the literary burdens and hopes of a marginalized people. Apocalyptic texts of every religious stripe are intended to point toward a righteous god’s promise and power to overcome the enemies of that god’s people. According to my interpretation of Judeo-Christian texts, those enemies usually take on the shape of empire in one form or another. Another example of such writing is found in nursery rhymes that originated in England, amongst other places.
The Apocalypse to John is a succinct message to Christ-centered communities that the Lamb of God, who had been executed by the Roman Empire, would return and win a final victory over the anti-Christ who is representative of the emperor of Rome. Which emperor, I’m not sure, but many others are pretty sure that they know. I’ll gamble on Nero for arguments sake. At any rate, early messianic felt that they were an oppressed religious group that suffered at the hands of both Rome and Jerusalem. They needed a story of hope and vindication that could make them feel like the persecution that they may have suffered was worth the expected outcome, that being, the victorious reign of a God that they knew as just.
The great thing about Revelation is that it articulates what early Friends took up as “The Lambs War.” Whether we like war language or not, it is important to note that lambs are unalterably a symbol of weakness, and a failed messiah such as Jesus was not only a symbol of the weakness of the Yahwist faith in general, but the futility of any attempted rebellion within the borders of the empire. As for all the monsters and swords and the this and that of the Apocalypse, it is simply eschatological imagery, and meant not to indicate the end of the earth as we know it, but to articulate that the end of Caesar’s age has come, and a new age, that of the reign of the Lamb, was dawning. The age of pax romana was destined to become the age of the new reigning Prince of Peace.
I do think that most Friends, especially those FGC Quakers who are biblically literate, understand the nuances of this type of apocalyptic or eschatological text. My concern with Friends’ understanding of texts such as the Revelation to John is that we tend not to understand that such literature is still a valid representation of what many marginalized people in the world view as supreme truth. What the Religious Society of Friends, George Fox and James Naylor and so many others understood, was that God was on the side of the marginalized, and texts such as the Apocalypse pointed to the ultimate victory of peace and justice over the power of tyrants, whether that tyranny be the product of the king, the parish priests, the pope, or the justice of the “peace.”
Are Friends still hearing the message of the apocalypses of the Hebrew and Greek Testaments? Are we relating to those texts written by early Friends who toiled and ministered in the midst of a civil war that turned their world upside down? It may be time for our Society to return to the corporate reading and study of apocalyptic works in the biblical canon and extra-canonical works, so that we might gain a better understanding of the kind of message that Americans and other westerners need to hear. One thing we do not like to hear, is that we have become the Whore of Babylon, who practice peace under the auspices of militarism and minister to the marginalized under the auspices of an unjust social, judicial, and economic system.
These all sound like heady words that border on radical jargon, if not flat out class war. However, we liberal Quakers are mostly a privileged people, and only a radical response to the injustices of empire and its ethnocentric narratives of justice, free market individualism, and pax Americana will allow for the real work of justice and peace to be done. If you are reading this and thinking it’s all so much overboard rhetoric, you may be amongst the comfortable who need to be afflicted. Apocalyptic literature and action are the comfort of the afflicted.

Reflections on Barak Obama's Nobel Address

2009-12-11T16:23:00.000-08:00

After reading Barak Obama’s address to the Nobel Prize community, I am left wondering what a unified Quaker response might look like. I wonder about the response, because of the numbers of Friends that I can imagine who voted for him. I wonder about what that response may look like, because I am a firm believer in a public witness that entails actions, and not just words. All I can share with those of you who have chosen to read this posting, however, are the thoughts of one Friend.
It is my assumption that Barak Obama is a person of integrity. During the election, and during his first year in office, I have been shown no reason to think otherwise. I believe he was humbled by the Nobel award he just received. I also believe he thinks it perhaps minimally justified by his morally obligatory stand against torture of enemies at the hands of the United States and its client-countries, his willingness to take a stand against an unwarranted invasion of a sovereign nation by the United States, and his willingness to engage in dialogue with those nations who were once labeled as, or held in the same esteem as, those states deemed “The Axis of Evil.” Indeed, during his speech, he highlighted these differences between the former administration and his own. A close friend of mine told me he firmly believed that Barak Obama deserved the award because of just such circumstances.
While I admit that there are some major differences between this administration and the last, when it come down to the finer points of the American government and its capacity to wage war, it seems to me that Barak Obama and other American presidents from both parties are cut from the same cloth. (I was immediately alarmed when Obama pulled out the tired example of Nazism and labeled his enemies as “evil”) That being, that the United States will not only protect its own interests, but will flex military muscle in order to protect a standard of living here at home, and export the values of quasi free-market liberal democracies to those nations whom might otherwise be offended by those values.
Yet, if Barak Obama is the man of integrity that many of us believe he is, then he must at some deep level believe in the concept of just war and the primacy of liberal democratic values as the primary vehicle for the expansion of just societies - not just the marketplace. After reading his address, it is of my opinion that, as a man of integrity, Barak Obama has issued a challenge to pacifist Friends, who post a belief that coercive force can never be justified. I propose that Barak Obama went to great lengths to justify the use of force, and to properly place the responsibility of using such force squarely on the shoulders of “the world’s sole military superpower.” Not only that, he properly called for other responsible nations to share in the cause of this “just war” against terrorism.
I say this because, when a person of integrity, no matter where he or she is from, digs deeply into themselves and struggles with the example of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, then still comes to believe that as the person bearing the responsibility for action he or she must act with force - It can be stated they are making reasonable, moral decisions. I say moral, because it may be rightly assumed that coercive force and military action may be deemed morally appropriate when matters of justice, equality, and the often unbalanced scales of peace are in question. More importantly, it might be appropriate when innocent human lives are at stake.
As a Christ-centered participant in the Religious Society of Friends, however, I believe that myself and others must respond in a quite different manner than other reasonable persons of integrity may feel obligated to respond. I must, however, make one point that is significant to my own proposal. I fully understand all of the political and moral arguments for and against the use of military and coercive force as a means to a just end. I am in disagreement with the proposal leveled by Barak Obama and so many others that a war can be considered just. However, it would be just as wrong for me to exclude militarists from dialogue as it would be for me to exclude a religious fundamentalist or non-theist from dialogue concerning properly displayed religiosity or tenets of theology. In a world where the most moral actions are often facilitated by introspection, all must have a place at the table because of the injustices or privilege that may have brought them to their view of reality, clouded or otherwise.
As one Quaker whose perspective fits somewhere along a spectrum of Quakerisms, I will state that Barak Obama has made an intellectually sound and reasonable decision to carry out his purpose in Afghanistan. I can differ with Obama, or George Bush, or any other president on the manner of action which they order to be carried out, but arguments made from political or abstract moral considerations are always debatable. Indeed, if many Friends are willing to say that there is no possibility of knowing a spiritual Truth, they must agree that all Truth is relative, including political truth. As such, a morally justified case for war can be made just as easily and intellectually as can the moral case against it. For years Friends have spent much time and money on persuading militarists of the impropriety of their assumption about coercion and war, without providing any example of an alternative. Ridding the world of cluster bombs may be a worthwhile idea, but it is far from an alternative to war.
The world still works under the assumption that justice can only be ensured through the threat of force. It may safely be said that such justice is always the justice of those in power who can make good on the threat of force. This is as true of political liberals as of conservatives. Whether by tanks or ballot boxes, legal use of coercion rules at the end of the day.
Much of the pacifism practiced in the United States is a pacifism of privilege, where Friends and Mennonites and many others state they are against the use of force while taking advantage of all the benefits bestowed upon them by the fact of the military and economic superpower status of the American Empire. As such, the question remains, what are Friends offering as an alternative to Barak Obama’s preferred means to reaching a just end? In the end, troop withdrawals and conversations with moderate Taliban leaders may sound good, but Afghanistan is not going to be pacified, or find justice in any of the actions that Democrats or Republicans may propose. It will certainly never find a justice that meets the United States’ vision of justice. The values of liberal democracy only play well in Peoria or Paris. They do not play well in Kabul. And, they will not last without the threat of American military action, just as opponents of the debacle in Iraq have been saying for years. As such, you can pull out all the troops, but will that meet Barak Obama’s standard of justice? He has called this an action against evil, and how does a person of integrity walk away from a battle with evil?
Quakers must offer an alternative. A community of peace that lives, not in a state of political pathology, but of a peace that is formed by the story of our souls. We must be a people of peace because we can be no other way, but instead are part of a story that realizes that it is war that is evil, not combatants, and that we act justly by serving both our neighbors and enemies without distinction. Even if our enemies are labeled conservatives.
The idea of martyrdom has long passed for most Christians, but the example of Tom Fox looms large, or should loom large, in our collective Quaker psyche. When asking the rest of the world to find peace, we must be living lives that act out such a peace on a daily basis, not only pointing out the injustices leveled against the innocent by our own government as well as others, but by refusing to participate in the privileges of living within the heart of the empire. Much of what has passed for peace and justice work in the United States has been about bringing marginalized Americans into their proper place as fellow exploiters of the world’s resources. Much of the freedom that Americans try to export is the freedom for others to consume on the same level as American citizens enjoy. Now is the time for Friends to be truly plain, and truly equal.
I propose voluntary self-sacrifice, not in the manner of Tom Fox per-se, but in the manner of Jesus as recorded in the Greek Testament, and that proposed by Paul’s letter to the churches of Rome and Phillipi. Jesus, who emptied himself of privilege and lived a life that provided an example for others, and Paul, who exhorted messianics in Rome to present themselves to the God of Peace “as a living sacrifice.” Both lived the life of non-violence, as did Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. centuries afterwards. Both counted on alternative economics as the means to reflect the justice of God. Both spoke out against the assumptions of empire. And both, as did so many others who have sought justice, went on living out an example of justice that excluded violence and privilege. And, all did so on the basis of a Truth that non-violence is the desire of a God who makes it to rain on both the just and the unjust. Such should be the example of Quaker communities.
I do not know if such an example will end war. I do know that much of the world has forgotten what peace and justice really look like, and sorely needs such a reminder. We are a muddled race of beings, beset by the sin of our fathers and ourselves. We can never legislate peace, and we have never legislated a just means of fighting just wars. It is time that our efforts turn away from legislation and elections, and more toward the formation of alternative Quaker communities that live in a manner that suggest peace is possible, if only in as much as we ourselves are able.

A (very lengthy) Response to David Britton's "Knowing Experimentally" 10/09 Friends Journal

2009-12-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

With great appreciation did I read David Britton’s letter in the Viewpoint section of in the October 2009 issue of Friends Journal (www.morningsidemeeting.org/docs/KnowingExperimentally.pdf). Not only because he was thoughtfully provoked enough to respond, but because his response indicates that there is plenty to discuss among Friends regarding our identity as a religious society. It is my hope, and I believe, after reflecting on the number of letters and articles concerning Christ-centeredness in recent Journals, that this discussion has been a long time coming, and may soon find a way into the forefront of Quaker theological dialogue. I must say, that in view of my own fervent Christ-centeredness, by no means do I believe that any point of view amongst Friends should be shunned by the round tables of religious conversation.
I would like to continue by making a firm statement concerning the assumption by David Britton that my own Christ-centeredness, or that of any other Friend who has not stated as much, is a faith in a “supernatural Son of God.” It is my contention, a contention that is explicit in some of my other work, that the rigid belief in a supernatural messiah is something that is a bone of contention only among conservative fundamentalists like the late Jerry Falwell, and liberal “fundamentalists” like Shelby Spong. I have never stated that one must believe in a virgin birth or walking on water to maintain Christ-centered integrity.
Secondly, I believe that David Britton has not attempted to familiarize himself with my christology because he assumes that I prioritize a “belief” in Jesus over “behavior” that properly reflects Quaker values. I specifically used the word praxis, and have written extensively stressing the importance of Jesus’ own faithfulness and our own faithfulness in daily living, over the insistence of Protestant Christendom that a faith in Jesus is salvific. I urge others to read my exegetical article on the Book of Philippians, published on the website The Paul Page. This article makes it clear that community praxis reflects the salvific efficacy of Jesus’ work, as opposed to any supernatural aspects of death or execution. In regard to my membership with Conservative Friends, many of whom practice a faithful lifestyle that is the product of a firm faith in a supernatural messiah, I spoke at length at Ohio Yearly Meeting for a need for Friends of all persuasions to identify more closely with the faithful life of Jesus as both the atoning and liberating aspects of the Christ-centered narrative in contrast to a faith in Jesus. As a point of clarity, I am not arguing that liberal Friends need accept a Jesus that walks on water, nor am I arguing that Conservative Friends practice a pure Quaker faith. I am simply arguing for an intelligible narrative amongst Friends that provides for our place in the theological discussions that much of the rest of the world engages in.
Indeed, it is a narrative approach to Christ-centered Quakerism that I suggest as a step toward Friends maintaining a relevant place in both, discussions of faith and spirituality, and the practice of faithfulness in a broken world. My insistence upon a unified narrative that stands in continuity with early Friends and their own Christ-centeredness is not meant to be at the expense of non-theist Friends. However, it is non-theist and pagans and Buddhist that seem to be most shrill concerning diversity, all the while marginalizing Christ-centered Friends for their particularity. This has been my “experience.”
It has also been my experience that many Friends’ tolerance extends only to those who share the point of view that is common to relatively liberal, semi-affluent, and mainly educated persons. There is very little tolerance for faith expressions that are not universalist in nature. My experience is, that in the minds of many liberal Friends, it is a travesty to suggest a religious truth, but it is both morally and socially acceptable to state political truths, and even use ballot-box coercion to enforce rigidly liberal values. While this might seem like a rambling statement in the context of the discussion, it is my contention that many Friends simply feel uncomfortable about making religious statements of truth because they might offend their spiritual neighbor. Limiting the religious experience to the personal realm, as opposed to the corporate realm, is exactly what is endangering Friends’ unity and the intelligibility of our testimonies.
David Britton relies on the testimonies as the unifying aspect of Friends’ identity. Limiting my response to the peace testimony in particular, I want to stress that it is absolutely because of their dedication to a biblically informed Christ-centered faithfulness that Friends even bear witness to peace. Many early Friends were not pacifists, and there were an abundance of Quakers serving in the New Model Army. David Britton states as much when he asserts that “Fox recruited many of Cromwell’s soldiers.” What David Britton does not state, however, that Fox never suggested that Quakers leave the army, and he never insisted that they refrain from fighting. Quaker pacifism in the 1650’s was an individual expression of faith for many of the convinced, but Fox himself wrote to Cromwell suggesting military action against Catholic ruled nation-states like Spain and Italy. A unified Quaker peace testimony only came after Friends were politically threatened with extinction due to perceived plots against the crown.
However, when Friends, led by George Fox and others who had served in the military less than a decade prior, articulated the peace testimony, Friends - both pacifist and otherwise - unified over the existing example of Jesus and the witness of the Greek Testament. Interestingly, David Britton draws upon the biblical narrative himself when he uses phrases like “upon this rock that our church is built.” It was because of Friends’ perceived place in an ongoing drama of Christ Jesus, and their commitment to changing the world in the context of that particular narrative, that they could state corporately that they would not fight, and that their reasons for resisting war were not of their own making, but the directive of a creator God whom had made peace normative through self-expression in the person of Jesus. It is now up to Friends to allow this creator God to be expressed fully through our own person according to the normative revelation in Jesus.
Finally, David Britton contends that waiting worship is the practice that allows for unity. I firmly believe that waiting worship, and the ministry of the laity, are integral to Friends’ practice. My concern, however, is that many “refugees” from other traditions, or from Christendom, identify more with waiting worship as a refuge from their unfortunate experiences with mainstream faiths than as worship. I hope I am mistaken when I observe that many liberal Friends are not worshipping, but simply seeking refuge from religious professionals that might hold them hostage with sermons, lectures, or, may the deity forbid, corporate expressions of faithfulness.

Why dress plain?

2009-12-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

A lot of folks, ranging from family members to liberal Quakers, from good friends to strangers, ask us why we wear plain clothes. A lot of people ask us if we are Amish. When we tell them we are Conservative Friends, they inevitably ask, “what’s the difference?” So, I’d like to use the farm blog to talk about that aspect of our faith and practice that is related to clothing and lifestyle. Much of it has to do with the Friends testimonies concerning simplicity, equality, integrity, peace, and community. Much of it has to do with the biblical witness. And, as with everything that people do intentionally, why we do what we do has a lot to do with politics, economics, and public witness. Our family wears plain clothing, we farm, and provides ministry to people in a variety of ways because we believe that the life of Jesus is the normative life for those who express faith in the God of Abraham and Sarah. Integral parts of the Hebrew Bible, and much more of the Greek Testament, present the ideal of a community of faith that stands out as a witness to YHWH. The biblical memory of Jesus, and much of the Greek Testament, places a focus on humility as being characteristic of this community, as well as socio-economic choices that eschew the kind of pride that is often related to clothing styles of one fashion or another. Of course, Jesus sets the tone for, and is remembered by the fledgling messianic communities, to emphasize the importance of public witness in standing fast against the persecution of empire and the Yahwist aristocracies of Jerusalem and the Diaspora. So, plain clothing is a testimony to the kind of humility that is perhaps evidenced by individuals in Christ-centered communities who submit to a corporate character, while at the same time promoting an awareness that a people dedicated to God exist in the midst of communities who are not aware that alternatives to the socio-economic standard exist. As a Quaker, I am readily aware that, like early messianics, early Friends were persecuted for their ministry, but continued forward with a very public witness despite persecution. This public witness to Jesus, to peace, and equality, and simple justice, is made all the more obvious when it can be related to a people who can be readily identified as such a people. Many a conversation about the peace testimony, the Underground Railroad, or George Fox have been started because of my plain clothing. Many people also ask about head coverings. The women in our family do not wear head coverings because of the biblical reference found at 1 Corinthians 11. The women in our family, as well as the men, cover our heads as an attempt to humble ourselves before God, but also as a constant reminder that there is a Creator God who is always watching over us. We spend less time worrying about looking attractive to others and more time focused on standing along side of a Creator, who, while sometimes seems hidden, is always finding ways to present the divine self to us. Head coverings, as well as plain clothes, remind us that we must always be humble enough to see God reflected in those placed before us. Our hope is that, when we are humbled appropriately, others will see God reflected in our attitudes, instead of the consumer values that drive so many to spend small fortunes on hair styles and products like makeup that are intended to present us as something more in tune with popular culture than with a pattern that is not of this age. Another concern we have with worldly fashions is the way in which modern clothes are manufactured. We believe that we are taking a visible stand against sweatshop labor by wearing handmade clothing that we pay a fair price for, which is made locally, with American manufactured fabrics. Also, we believe that purchasing clothes at contemporary clothing stores, resale or otherwise, promotes businesses that exploit women especially, and promote sensuality in children and teens that exploits their sense of identity, sexuality, and economic sensibilities. Fashion promotes a contrived sense of individuality, marketing toward those aspects of rebellion, sexuality, or self-marginalizing behaviors that people choose to engage in as a response to their own, and the world’s, brokenness. Many think plain clothes and farming are a simple lifestyle, but really, our lifestyle is very intentional, and is expressly related to our belief that all people are equal, and all beings deserve justice. While there will never be a perfect place to stand in our world, the idea that persons should be judged more by their character and nature than by the clothing they wear is an integral part of plain clothing. Not only do adults suffer undeserved shame and disgrace because of clothes that might not comply with elite standards of society, school children everywhere suffer indignities because they cannot keep up with the changing realities of fashion. Also, fashions are frivolous, and exploit resources as well as promoting waste. They promote a double standard, as many people wear one kind of clothing to work and church, and another kind of clothing to “relax” in. As for farming, we believe that food can be the center of an intentional community, providing the inspiration for people to contribute their own gifts to community in a manner that makes use of distinctive and local resources that enhance a community’s ability to know and depend on one another, and see the ecological and labor imprint that our lifestyles leave upon our own locale and neighbors. A side of beef, pork, chickens and eggs, clothing, heating resources, milk, and labor are all much more costly than the cheap products Americans demand for goods that exploit the cheap labor and resources of other counties. It takes time and resources to produce food, it does not magically appear at Wal-mart. In the economy of the Greek Testament, it took ten peasants to support the lifestyle of one landed elite. It must take many more resources and wage slave production models to support the lifestyle of one American. As such, we wear plain clothing, and engage in an alternative economy as much as we can, in order to promote what we believe are the values that best reflect the character of Jesus and early Christ-centered communities. It is a voluntary public witness to our Quaker testimonies. We hope not to inspire others to dress plain, but to think seriously about the world around them, and develop their own community driven public witness to peace, justice, and the salvific character of Jesus the messiah.

Do Friends Worship Silence?

2009-10-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Jenn and I were looking to reference the phrase “a still, small voice” in the Bible one night. For whatever reason, she uses the NIV, and I use the NASB. We looked in the concordances of our respective Bibles and found absolutely no reference to such a verse. “Ah!” I said, “the early Friends (and many modern ones) used the KJV.” We googled the phrase and were led straight to the place in the KJV where we could find it, and we did a little study, because we know that much about Quaker worship itself has been based upon this verse. It is found in 1 Kings 19:12.
The verse is found in a passage that runs the length of Chapter 19, but for the purposes of our study, we looked at 19:9-15. Elijah, who is hiding from Jezebel’s wrath at Mt. Horeb, after destroying the prophets of Ba’al, is asked by YHWH what in the world he is doing in a cave. Elijah answers that the people of Israel are seeking to destroy him. “Go forth,” says God, “and stand on the mountain before YHWH.” Elijah remains in the cave, and awaits the presence of YHWH to act further. “And behold, YHWH was passing by.” A hurricane blows through, but Elijah recognizes that God is not in it. Then an earthquake occurs, but Elijah recognizes that God is not present in it. “After the earthquake, a fire, but YHWH was not in the fire.” Then comes verse 12, where the KJV reads something like “and after the fire… a still, small voice.”
Other translations do not use the “still small voice” phrase. The NASB uses “the sound of a gentle blowing.” The NRSV uses “the sound of sheer silence.” My wife suggested this is the Hebrew version of “the sound of one hand clapping.” At any rate, is important to know, that according to the text, YHWH was not in the still small voice, or the silence, or whatever your translation reads. It is at the point of silence, as we find in the following verses, that “when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in a mantle (so as not to look upon the divine presence) and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice came to him and said, ‘What are you doing here Elijah?’”
I suggest that God is not found in the silence, but when silence occurs in a worshipful manner we know God is imminent. The silence, our waiting in silence as Elijah did, prepares us and makes us fertile for the Word of God to be spoken among us and it is silence that prepares us to receive it properly. But what does this have to do with worship?
Many of our Quaker contemporaries seem, not to worship in silence, but to worship silence, as if it were in the lack of vocal ministry that God is most present. Many of us might even view vocal ministry as less conducive to real relationship with the Creator than is silence itself! But while God may indeed be present in waiting worship, it is through vocal ministry that YHWH is made relevant to a community of faith. While many of us might come to meeting to relax from a hectic week, others long for YHWH to appear in the midst of our waiting and replenish our souls through the Spirit guided vocal ministry of other Friends. We wait on the Spirit without recognizing that silence is intended to make us tender toward the Spirit’s impending activity. Silence without vocal ministry is to spend our full Spiritual measure quite lavishly on ourselves, without benefiting other faithful Friends who are longing for God to be fully realized among us in a corporate manner. How dare I limit God by not thinking that the Creator would speak to others through me. This goes for our lifestyles as well as our spiritual vocabulary. God speaks through us all, even if the message is intended only for one individual amidst gathering of Friends. It is time we realize that the silence makes us ripe for vocal ministry, and is not intended to protect us from it.

Life as a gift

2009-10-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

People often view life as a gift. I have, over time, come to believe that my own life is a gift as I continue to recover from a tragic addiction to cocaine and alcohol. I really have no business being alive, and when times are toughest, I often remember that there were times during my life when I did not have the will to live. Liberation and salvation are biblical themes that have real meaning for me and for my family. I believe that I should voluntarily submit myself to God, Community, and my family in a manner that stresses the egalitarian qualities of such a commitment.
I think there are other people who view life a precious, but for the most part think that we belong primarily to ourselves, with potential gods, communities and lovers having no more than a peripheral claim on our being. Our life is our own, and ought to be lived as such. I am not necessarily critical of this view, but acutely aware that it stands in contrast with my own.
Then, there are some who might view life as an accident. They might believe that life is either without meaning, or only made meaningful by values that we ourselves attribute to it. I am not really clear on the particulars of this view, though I will admit that I tend to view it with a critical, even if uninformed, eye.
However, I can now say that I have experienced life as a product of laziness. There is a broody hen that sits in our garage all day and all night. She doesn’t lay, she hardly eats, and as far as hens go, she is not particularly friendly. Since all the mothering instincts are supposed to be bred out of her, she stands as an anomaly among the flock. Since farm protocol and family finances dictate that we don’t feed any unproductive mouths that aren’t human teenagers, this hen was due to be culled in July when we butchered the broilers. However, when the time came for butchering, we forgot about the broody hen and she lived to see another day because we were too lazy to butcher her later.
After a few more weeks, my wife noticed eggs were gathering underneath the broody hen, and marked them all with an X so that we wouldn’t harvest them. She was interested to see if they hatched. We were all skeptical. However, last Saturday, when we were doing chores, my wife and our daughter Rosa and I heard a distinct peeping. We checked by the broody hen, and there was a new chick, very sick looking, and being ignored by its somewhat confused mamma. The body temperature of the chick was so low that it felt cold to the touch. I silently thought that I would put it out of misery, but Rosa the 7 year old, who wants to be a vet, took it into her hands and brought it into the house. Six hours after a heat lamp had been applied, the chick was up and walking, eating and drinking, and full of the promise of life.
Then, two days later, we heard more peeping, and sure enough, one more chick had hatched. This one was in worse shape, because another hen had driven the mother hen from the nest and began to peck at the chick as a meal. Its head was pecked raw and the chick was near dead, but Rosa took it into her hands, brought it into the house, and applied a new heat lamp and some antibiotic ointment to the it. Two days later, and both chicks are healthy.
So, our family is learning lessons about life. Not only that it has value, but also that, sometimes, human arbitrariness plays a role in what lives or dies, or what thrives or survives. What does our own arbitrariness about life say about a creator God who allows such an inconsistent human value to thrive. Why doesn’t God “breed out” our ambivalence about life, which exists at every level and across the social, political, and religious spectrum. Perhaps such arbitrariness is cruel, or, perhaps it is not so much divine ambivalence as it is that God is as full of wonder as we are about the miracles of life and knows that without a certain level of ambivalence, life would lose its meaning altogether. Life indeed would be an accident, and those chicks would have no more value to my daughter or her parents than the time it would take to end it. We need the tension that exists between viewing life as something that belongs only to us, or exists as a gift from a Creator, because , I believe, the alternative that suggests it is meaningless takes away our drive to use life as a means to something greater than ourselves. There are great questions to be answered, but only when we accept that life has precious value in spite of arbitrariness are we driven to find the answers that give life more meaning.
I just hope the chicks don’t grow up to be roosters. Roosters still have meaning, but only rank a little higher than teenagers when it comes to total value of contribution.

Some thoughts on continuing revelation

2009-10-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

It strikes me as interesting that Friends who respond negatively to my Christ-centeredness most often cite the Quaker concern for “ongoing” or “continuing revelation.” While I am certainly not in opposition to the worthwhile perspective that YHWH continues to reveal the divine-self through human beings, institutions, and communities, I would like to point out a separate but related concern that ancient Friends rallied around in the 17th century. It was that those who were responsive to the Inward Light were called to participate in practices that were thought to resemble the beliefs of the earliest Church. Indeed, many Quakers believed that apostasy began as early as the second century or before, as Friends believed those folks began to veer away from the original teachings of the Christ, or, their Inward Teacher. It was a return to the “primitive church” that marked early Friends’ faith and practice far more than their concern for ongoing revelation. Even when defending the worth of women preachers and egalitarian households, Friends turned to Hebrew Testament texts concerning Abraham and Sarah before they made any reference to women in the ministry as a matter more consistent with fresh revelations from God.
I have observed, in limited contact, that many Friends who are opposed to Christ-centered Quakerism tend to suggest that they are not necessarily more in tune with the divine (though they may think so in self-comparison to those superstitious “righteous christers”), but that they understand that previous leadings or revelation has always been tinged with human hubris. We have never really understood the ancient truths to be truths until we were fully liberated by liberal democracy and the (healthy) skepticism that comes with it. Indeed, it is an ancient truth that women are most competent ministers, leaders, and servants of the divine. It is an ancient truth that we should love our enemies as well as our more friendly neighbors. It is an ancient truth that all human beings are equal, and that injustice is an evil that must be overcome. But these Truths are not only evident in some aspects of liberal democracy, but are evidenced in the early church as well. Women in the ministry is a first century CE construct, not a 16th century humanist one, nor is it born of 17th century Quakers, nor of 19th century Americans. Liberation and equality are simply not constructs of modernity. Yet, the idea that democracy has represented the apex of liberation is as much a lie as nonbelievers represent the resurrection to be.
There is veracity in the claim that truth is not only found in the biblical text or Christ-centered faith. I believe that truth is represented in numerous places and in many faiths. But for the most part, if we are to stay comprehensible to one another and maintain any integrity in our ability to claim truths, they must be part of a larger context that anchors our worldview, but particular enough so that we maintain the diversity of faiths that make for a better world. While many of my anarchist friends may deny that we are responsible for the mistakes of our forebearers, the narrative component of particularity insists that we are part of our past, and responsible not only for its maintenance, but for rectifying the evils done in the name of our particular faith and redeeming it as a meaningful contributor to the vast array of particular truths that exist in a pluralistic universe.
It is also my understanding that there are competing truths, and that many claims conflict with one another. I believe that patience will serve the Truth more than blending inconsistent claims so that there are mundane collections of aphorisms and proverbs to fill in the gaps of inconsistencies. I will stick to my story, and listen to yours, and believe that we are both experts in a Truth that will bear up both of us in future generations. I can trust that God will properly arbitrate both history and truth, and does not need the help of synchronists to make everyone happier about who they are and what God they have constructed.

Rufus Jones got me to thinking

2009-07-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

"Whatever your mind comes at, I tell you flat God is not that!"

Undoubtedly, our F/friend Rufus did not want anyone to put God in a box. It seems that so many contemporary unprogrammed Friends are drawing inspiration these days from our hero from across the great schismatic divide, that many believe he was an FGC progressive instead of a Five Years Meeting liberal.
I have been told however, that Rufus Jones knew enough about some god or another to deliver sermons every First Day at his Friends “church.” Like many contemporary Quakers who reject the idea of an even somewhat articulate deity, Rufus could articulate theology with the best of them in a manner that accepted all but marginalized each. Like most liberals, Rufus Jones seems to have had a bone to pick with particularity.
Of course, many of those intelligent persons who lean toward the left side of the religious/spiritual/political spectrum insist that they love diversity. And they love unity. But there is a conundrum that rises to the occasion every time diversity is a means to a universal unity instead of a means to better problem-solve within the context of multi-particularity. If you claim to love diversity, you must allow it to exist in all of its extremes, as well as in all of its shades of Quaker Gray. Otherwise, you marginalize all of those people who insist upon maintaining their unique corporate identity while, at the same time, you are cherry-picking - and then homogenizing for the marketplace - all of the more attractive aspects of the particular. In the end, you end up eating Chi-Chi’s instead of authentic Mexican, or drinking St. Pauli Girl instead of a real German Lager. It’s like corporate chicken versus homegrown, which has quite a few flaws in the presentation, but eats all the better. In other words, if you limit diversity to including only those particulars that are entirely aesthetically pleasing, you get a corporate chicken - minus the blood and gore and having to pick the feathers - but it sure doesn’t digest as well and you miss out on the whole process.
Food and farming examples may not strike a chord with everyone, however. But, what might, is that the more we as Friends take up the attitude of Rufus Jones, the more we limit true diversity by marginalizing all of those persons who believe that God has been revealed to them in specific ways. On the other hand, by maintaining our particularities as group founded on the principles of Jesus-centered and Spirit-revealed primitive Christianity, we have an identity with which we can contribute to a diverse world, learn from listening to other particularities, and having meaningful conversations with the Other about how we can make our world a better place. We cannot BE diversity, but we can successfully participate in the greater reality of a pluralistic society. Pluralism is great, it is syncretism and the colonialization of other faiths that is bad.

A few words about wisdom

2009-06-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

If there is a universal sense that wisdom exists in the world (especially a universally accepted wisdom), I am certain it is not found in the Holy Bible. Its not enough to cite the Book of Job as the primary example of the failure of Scripture in this matter. Nor is the lack of wisdom relegated to the odd passage or two found in Proverbs, such as Chapter 31: “Give strong drink to one who is perishing, and wine to him whose life is bitter. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his trouble no more.” (vs. 6f I don’t remember this verse being cited at my twelve-step meetings.)
It might seem odd for a confessing Jesus groupie to admonish Scripture for its lack of problem solving advice, but the whole of Proverbs, which seemingly contradicts the entire premise of Ecclesiastes, is fraught with untruths masquerading as Solomon’s moments of lucidity. Who ever believed that “the righteous is delivered from trouble, but the wicked takes his place.” (11:8) How about 19:5, that states “a false witness will not go unpunished, and he who tells lies will not escape.” Perhaps in the spiritual sense, though most politicians seem unconcerned with spiritual integrity.
In fact, Abraham lies and gets away with it, Jacob lies and gets away with it, Joseph tells lies of omission and gets away with it. Not only do they get away with it, they have the divine blessing. As for the righteous being delivered from trouble, I would love to hear the apostle Paul exegete that passage after delivering cash to the Church at Jerusalem or having an audience with Caesar. Perhaps Paul did not feel he was righteous enough, though I have a sinking feeling he privately knew he was the most righteous of all. He was humble enough to be whipped for Jesus, but he was hardly humble about the way the heavenly box score would read after martyrdom. I do believe, however, that he was outdone by Ignatius. Who else had a victory parade in honor of an impending execution.
Yet for the most part, the story of Israel and Jesus and the Church has much to do with foregoing conventional wisdom and taking the risks generally attributed to fools. Loving one’s neighbors may be wise in Solomon’s estimation, but loving one’s enemies might seem like foolishness all the way to the cross. It seems wise to pay the prescribed tribute to the political powers that be (in many parts of the modern, as well as the ancient world). It fails wisdom to suggest that the failed political movement of an oppressed minority, one who suggested that its dead leader was king, would be a threat to empire. Especially in the context of loving enemies.
This whole idea of resurrection as the vindicating event for this king who loves his enemies, however, is a notable exercise in foolishness, from the first century through to the twenty-first. It is sad, I believe, that folks might commit themselves to such folly. After all, conventional wisdom suggests that reason, democracy (or Marxism), and nuclear weapons are the sure ticket to salvation. Of course, those who are wise (or at least well educated) assure us that we need no salvation, that the nation state can not account for, through bureaucratic distribution of blessing and mercy, or, in other contexts, redistribution of wealth. Who needs resurrection when Medicare might pay for eternal life-support. Indeed, who needs rebirth when our younger years are marketed to us as nostalgia, keeping us forever in the backseat of 79 Nova. (Alas, I reveal too much) However, the sages of free-market may be the answer to our prayers. Conventional wisdom has it that after we enjoy this supposed resurrection of the saints, we won’t have to worry about accruing interest on late credit card payments. Torah usury laws are still in effect in heaven.
Forget about wisdom, I’ll take the foolishness of the cross…

A few words about grace

2009-06-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

“Grace expresses the character of God.” So states Martin Marty in his contribution to The Handbook of Christian Theology. Yet, it is left to the body of believers to define how this character is made known to an unbelieving and broken world. Thus, according to Marty, “Grace is conceived as personal, a movement from the being of God to the drama of human experience. He also suggests that grace, as it is known in the Christian Church, is a primarily New Testament concept. Marty apparently follows the “Lutheran” assumption that ancient Judaism was a religion of works related righteousness, while Paul conceived of a concept of the “free gift of grace.” (Romans 5:15)
I contend, however, that grace is apparent throughout the canon, and especially in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Exodus event and the election of Israel is clearly an act of grace, unearned by anything the descendents of Abraham and Sarah might have done towards achieving such status. The giving of Torah at Mt. Sinai is similarly an act of grace, as YHWH makes fully known what the appropriate response to God’s love is, and how Israel might order a community that reflects such a love. The prophets are insistent upon the fact of grace. Ranging from Isaiah to Jonah to Hosea, the Creator is just and covenantally righteous, yet also inconceivably forgiving. If ancient Hebrews were sure of anything, it was that YHWH would be faithful despite the nation’s own unfaithfulness and disobedience. Thus, grace is an ever-present and constantly revealed aspect of God.
The primary question, in fact, may be the question of why some people seem to be the recipients of grace, while others languish in brokenness, guilt, or victimization. There is an old saying in Alcoholics Anonymous that seems to insist that grace is not balanced evenly upon the scales of cosmic justice. When a sober alcoholic sees someone under the influence, they might say “there but for the grace of God go I.” While this rightfully suggests that God’s grace is the reason for sobriety, is it incorrect in suggesting that God’s grace has not been made available to another person for reasons that are not readily evident? Does the God of grace play favorites. Is that what election really means?
I believe that God’s grace can only be made known through communities of believers that live their lives in a manner that exemplifies grace. When brokenness needs healing, loneliness needs attending, or empty stomachs need filling, God acts most evidently through those communities and individuals that believe the Creator is indeed a God of grace. Such communities heal victims of abuse, reconcile broken relationships, care for the widow and orphan, and feed the hungry. If a community does not practice such an ethic, than there is no evidence of a God who delivers the marginalized from the abuses of life. Such is a God whose wrath must be appeased in order that post-mortem grace might be hoped for, if not actual liberation from oppression in the temporal realm.
Cheap grace, however, becomes no one, and does an injustice to God’s character. Grace can be, and often is, rejected by those who disavow the creator God, the peculiar people, and the power of relationships that bear a commitment to reflecting God’s desire for humanity. To agree with Marty for a moment, he confirms my belief by writing that “in an often grace-less world, more and more believers have stressed the wonderful and rare character of divine grace and have urged that it be responded to more than it is precisely defined.”

Let's talk

2009-06-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

I am somewhat of a streaky person. I'll post for a few weeks, then go on a year-long hiatus. I'll publish something, then think, "Oh yeah, the blog." I have no idea what's going on in the blogosphere with Quakers or anyone else over the past year, so I feel like I'm starting new - from scratch. The reason I am publishing today is because I have an essay in Freinds Journal and I am wondering if I'll get any comments on my claims that Quakerism need be identified with a Christ-centered faith if it is to be relevant - or successful - in our future. I am looking forward to beginning some conversations with other Friends who disagree, or agree, that Jesus of Nazareth is integral to the Quaker faith. This post is an invitation to have such conversations, and I hope I get a response or two. Blessings, scot miller

Postscript to Messianic Failures

2008-08-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me, before someone has pointed it out, that if salvation is made evident through the life of different individuals, some (or many) of whom are not even related to Christ-centered beliefs, why is there any need for particularism or Christ-centeredness. It is a good question, and one I have thought about. I have chose the narrative answer.
I can only make sense of those actions that potentially reveal salvific meaning if I have an actualized event that I can relate them to.
The story of Jesus, part of the larger story of YHWH and Israel, or Creation and Creator relationship, lends context to the events that I hear about, observe, or participate in. Jesus is the language of my experience, and the provides the baseline for my understanding of actions or events that pose revelatory value.
Of course, I can become a student of Gandhi, or a student of Buddha, and I can incorporate specific claims made by the followers of Hinduism or Buddhism into my framework of knowledge. Ultimately, however, my immersion in the Christ-centered faith of my original spiritual experiences will act as a filter, and I will generally not do justice to those claims.
If I do fully immerse myself into Hinduism or Buddhism, and become a "professional" so to speak, then I have either began to view the world through a worldview different than that of my original Christ-centered faith, or I have come to further identify with it and have no need for the assistance of other views that may act to distort the Christ-centeredness of my particular narrative.
Of course, I can combine the best aspects of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity (It seems no one ever chooses Islam) and live accordingly, but then this would be a new religion, necessarily rejected by the proponents of each of the original faiths. This is not to suggest that their is anything wrong with new religions (or old ones). It is only to suggest that spiritual or religious intelligibility and integrity must not only allow for the particularity of all religious claims, but must allow them to maintain their particularity and identity over and against mutations that insist upon co-opting the old identity by painting the new religion as the natural evolutionary advance of the old.
Remember, evolution is not (necessarily) an unquestionable improvement. It is an adaptation to an environment. Early followers of Jesus were certainly not out to improve on Palestinian Judaism, and I don't believe they were an adaptation of it. It was a continuation of the Yahwist faith by making a specific claim that was only intelligible within the Yahwism of its time. Messianic claims did not in anyway change the nature of the way God was acting or to act in history, according to Judeans of the first centry. they fully expected God to act, most simply rejected that Jesus was the person the YHWH acted through.
Whatever has happened to the Christ-centered witness over two thousand years, it is the witness that God's desire is fully revealed in the historical Christ, and that those who believe that the life Jesus lived is normative for our understanding of humanity that lends context to our understanding of the world around us. If I understand the world through Jesus, with an assist on the goal from Buddha, then I may be a better person for it, but I am no longer Christ-centered.
there are, of course, several implications for Quakerism in my thinking, but I don't have to spell those out. Blessings to all.

Messianic Failures and the Light of Life

2008-08-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

I have not watched any of the Olympics, but I am well aware that they are being held in China. This led me to thinking about the solitary individual that is pictured at the bottom of my blog - the man standing before a line of tanks in order to try and prevent them from moving further into Tienanmen Square. This led me to thinking about Jesus, and messianic actions, and the idea of salvation.
On the one hand, it is very easy to compare Jesus to the man standing in front of the row of tanks. Neither Jesus nor this man changed the way empire did business. Rome and its collaborators executed Jesus for his trouble, and in china, well, I believe our hero has disappeared, and his image banned throughout the country. Despite whatever intentions Jesus and the tank man had, it was business as usual for the oppressors and the oppressed after the event.
On the other hand, it is through the life of Jesus and the tank man that we know what salvation is, and how it is obtained in the midst of apparent hopelessness. It is not the probable death of the Tienanmen Square protester that gives us a sense of worth and dignity, or salvation. And it is not the death of Jesus that gives us a sense of worth and dignity - or salvation. It is the actions of such individuals that show us who we can be, and how we can be whole, by insisting upon the worth of the oppressed and marginalized as the standard of creation, as opposed to the standard of empire that insists upon power as the standard.
"But, they ended up dead, and nothing changed," one might say. Well, Followers of Jesus outlasted Rome, and I have a feeling that the bold actions of that individual who stood before the tanks will have a history that surpasses the government that ordered those tanks into Tienanmen. Stalin one responded to criticism from a Pope by asking, "How many tanks hath the Pope?" Indeed, Pilate asked Jesus, "What is Truth?"
I suggest that glimpses of truth are most evident when tanks are challenged and crosses are suffered by individuals who know what the consequences of such actions will be, but voluntarily challenge the power of tanks and threats of execution because they know that we can ultimately be liberated from such oppressive symbols if we stand up to them and expose them as weaknesses of the power elites.
As power elites are exposed, little by little, by those messianic actors who have the heart to take the stage with a script that has no happy ending, we who witness their actions are empowered to liberate ourselves and communities from the actions of empire that would keep us enslaved.
In the United States and much of the western world, the language of Jesus and the Tienanmen Square protester have been co opted by power elites. George Bush compares America to "the light that shines int he darkness, and darkness could not overcome it."
Yet, it is because of Jesus and others that we do comprehend the "light" of empire as understood by Bush, and we will overcome it. We have been shown the way by Jesus, and Perpetua and Felicitas, by Joan of Arc and by martin Luther King Jr. We have been shown the way by a Tienanmen Square protester who stood his ground. Yet it is not the death of these individuals that shows us what salvation looks like, but their life. Our witness should always be to life, and never death, as the standard of salvation.

voting for choice?

2008-08-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

Is it possible that liberal democracy frees us from an ethic of responsibility? I have been thinking about the abortion issue over the past two days, wondering what it might mean if I were to vote one way or the other according to a candidate’s stance on whether or not a woman can or cannot choose to terminate a pregnancy.

First of all, I want to make it clear that I don’t vote. Not on war, not on taxes, and not on abortion. Morally, I can’t make a decision for a woman who has not voluntarily joined herself to a community that has established an ethic concerning such an issue. Also, I’m not smart enough to know everything there is to know about anything, let alone abortion. But there lays the rub. It seems that there are quite a few people on both sides of the issue who are more concerned about establishing themselves as a morally victorious political force than they are about improving the lives of women.

I will not insist that I know all of the facts, but it is my observation that many middle class and educated women have fought tooth and nail for the issue of reproductive choice without taking an equally passionate stand concerning issues of justice for women who don’t really have such a choice despite the legal status of abortion. Most abortions are obtained by European-American women of some education and financial means. As for the poor, abortion is not in the financial cards. I would be disappointed if any reproductive rights advocate suggested that the answer to poverty pregnancies was state-funded abortions.

As such, while everyone is worried about reproductive rights being eliminated by conservative Supreme Court justices or draconian state laws in the Midwest, hardly anyone is protesting Clinton’s welfare reforms and the fact that those reforms have done more to keep poor women in bondage to wage slavery than the possibility that they might not be able to freely choose a medical procedure they cannot afford anyway. Folks, the Clinton administration took women for a ride, and it did as much damage to the welfare of women as the Bush judicial appointees might in the future.

It also seems as though poor and minority women are being punished by women of means because they choose to give birth over and against the possibility of terminating a pregnancy. Very little effort is spent on defending a woman’s right to spend the first three years of her child’s life establishing a solid parent-child relationship. Along with a right to choose an abortion, let’s demand the right to raise healthy children. And let’s start to help poor people raise healthy children. Many conservatives are willing to take in a pregnant woman who makes a decision to be a parent. How many liberal families are willing to do the same. While rightly working to empower women and make self-determination a reality, are we overlooking the fact that a woman whose ethic insists on giving birth regardless of circumstances needs to be empowered in a manner that celebrates her integrity.

Instead of making abortion rights the issue, perhaps we need to make the issues of patriarchy and the wage-slave status of women throughout the world the major issue. The fact that a 20 year old white college woman can have an abortion does not challenge patriarchy, it entrenches it by once again failing to hold men responsible for their actions, and allowing women to be objectified and then held solely responsible for addressing the results of patriarchy. It often seems as though women have less self-realization in their relationships with often dominating male counterparts than they do over their reproductive health.

The perceived sexual liberation of women is a lie, as the sexual revolution has benefited men. I daresay this has happened without a collateral wealth of orgasmic experience for our liberated mates. Liberation has meant quantity over quality for multiple partner males. Women are sexually exploited more than ever, or as much as ever, and it is done much more publicly than ever. The right to abortion has made that exploitation that much more enjoyable for males, who send their conquests to the clinic as if it is the most reasonable answer to this little problem of pregnancy. Abortion is not an answer to patriarchy, nor is it an answer to women’s economic struggles. It is simply an issue that, while important to many who are invested in elite status on both sides of the issue, overshadows the real issues of many women and families. It is time for a new ethic.

Thoughts on sin and confession

2008-08-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

Caffeine and racing thoughts have conspired to bring prayer and blog together. I have been thinking tonight about the concepts of sin and confession, and what they mean to various faith communities and more individualistic Quakers. It is a frustrating endeavor to overcome the terrible moral overkill that fundamentalists or evangelical religionists have placed upon the shoulders of the concept of sin, and it's equally frustrating to speak of such a concept as "sin as estrangement" with Quakers who fail to agree to that something is perhaps very wrong with humanity and "being." Craig, is sin an ontological problem?

As for myself, I find that I am "guilty" of sin, and that I must confess as much if reconciliation is a concept that has any integrity when I am to speak of it. It's not that I believe that I am morally corrupted beyond "worthiness." I do confess, however, that my shrillness tends to be self-serving, and that self-absorption is a major obstacle between myself and wholeness. I believe such self-absorption to be evidence of sin.

Yet, there is blessing in sin. There is blessing because it is evidence of freedom. If the story of the Garden has any meaning for me, it is not that humanity was doomed by a vicious deity because of desire, but that humanity has the joy of choosing relationship with the creator, and with each other. We are not designed as boosts to the cosmic ego, but as free agents who are capable of experiencing love for one another and for God freely. Without the concept of sin, we are stuck in Tillich's state of "dreaming innocence," a state that is not only free from temptation, but from the freedom to experience real relationship. A state of dreaming innocence is a state lacking wholeness, because there is lacking the polarities that give meaning to existence. (And no, I am not a Tillich fan.)

For relationship to happen, I need to confess that I am potentially at odds with an other's concept of wholeness, and that I am perhaps a candidate for reconciliation. This is an integral aspect of freedom. To be a free moral agent is to accept that I am potentially estranged from another agent, and to be in relationship with my neighbor and to love my enemy, I must confess my complicity in such estrangement. Wholeness is not an individual state of being, but a corporate state that witnesses to the importance of relationships as the foundation of human meaning and being.

an untitled short-story about drugs, alcohol, and god

2008-08-09T11:48:00.001-07:00

Untitled
By R. Scot Miller

His eyes moved from the cracked sidewalk block beneath his feet to the cracked window of the upper flat. There was a sleepy eyelid of space between the window frame and the dingy bedspread that covered the rest of it. A flickering blue light, emanated from a television, and radiated through the eyelid in contrast to the depressing gray of the Detroit neighborhood. That light, the blue light, promised that someone would be home.
He walked quickly, trying not to betray his anxiety or his intentions. Still, the look on his face, his purposeful walk, and of course, his skeletal frame, would have easily telegraphed those intentions. It was getting dark, but a basketball game continued as players moved easily under the glow of a street light, giving more attention to gambling on the next shot and game-points than to the familiar sight of yet another nobody on their way to the second-floor flat. He walked past them, thinking of his own gambles, and guided himself into the shadows of the house.
He pushed open a heavy door and stepped into a darkness that was managed from memory. A step up, then another, 24 steps to the top he remembered - as if it were a password to the second floor. He could hear the sounds of the TV now. The laughter of a game show filtered through a gap between the door and the floor. He knocked loud enough to be heard over the blaring box.
“Who is it?” demanded a voice inside.
“It’s me - like every other night.”
“You think you are the only one that comes knockin?” said the voice of the man inside as he opened the door. A familiar figure wearing thick black-rimmed glasses and a baby-blue golf hat waved him in. There were several teeth missing from his smile, and it would have affected the doorman’s speech further if he were prone to talk more than he did.
His first step into the room brought palpable change with it.. The air was heavy - burdensome to an interior that could have served only to improve first impressions of the rough exterior. It had the properties of a building being slowly demolished by neglect. The space was full of dancing shadows begotten by the only light in the room, the TV, and it made him feel as though he was in some kind of B-grad film. “I’ve become a damned stereotype,” he thought, and it hadn’t taken him long to reach this point.
After promising that he would never find himself in a place like this, he was now a regular visitor. Every night, beginning at first with the allure of a woman made attractive by whiskey and the fact she would say yes, he continued to climb the stairway in the darkness to do business with the man enthralled with game shows. The woman was, incidentally, gone weeks ago.
“You got three?” he mumbled as he pulled crumpled tip money he had earned bussing tables from his pocket. “And I wanna do one of ‘em here.”
“Yeah, you can sit right here nexta me - I likes your company. I like that extra five dollars too.”
He handed the TV man 65 dollars and sat, if not sank, into the mismatched cushion of a second or third-hand couch. He was acutely aware of his hand, shaking as though it belonged to an eighty year-old. The strange idea of sacrament passed through his mind, and he unintentionally muttered a word or two about “communion.” The TV man laughed at this, and dropped three yellow-ivory nuggets into his hand. Next he passed along a short piece of hollow metal snipped from the rabbit-ear antennae that had once served the television. In a few moments, he though, his day would change. It would suddenly seem at once vastly better, depressingly worse, and extraordinarily intense - like some sort of perverse Trinity of reality that would never be easily explained.
He grabbed a lighter from the coffee table in front of the couch. The metal top had been removed and when he lit it, the flame leapt out like a finger, beckoning him to tilt his head closer. Just as he tried to steady himself to take advantage of the flame - it flickered out. The TV man chuckled.
“That’s the last one in the house. I’ve been to busy to walk to the gas station to get another.”
He quietly considered his options. He begrudgingly accepted the fact that that he would have to wait before he went through his evening metamorphosis. He sighed to himself, but said nothing. He simply shoved the nuggets into his pocket, stood up, and walked toward the door.
“We’ll get that light for you tomorrow,” the TV man jibed. “I’m sure we’ll be seein’ you tomorrow.”
He paused for a moment, wanting to answer, but he was unable to manufacture any response. The TV man stood, holding the door to the stairwell open. “See ya,” he said, and almost seemed as though he was empathizing with his customer.
He made his way down the stairs, from memory, and stepped through the entrance onto the sidewalk. It was dark now. The basketball game continued under the street light, but there was little other activity. He remembered a time when the evenings held so much promise. He recalled with a vivid picture in his mind’s eye the intimate times he used to enjoy with friends, with women who loved him.
Everything and everybody had been used up, emotionally drained and abused. Those who hadn’t left him he rejected out of his own sense of shame. All he had left were the three rocks in his pocket. He saw nothing more in his future. In fact - he no longer cared. He no longer had a place to go. An epiphany of paralysis occurred. Immobility struck. A hyper-anxiety erupted out of the self- realization of who he had become. Self-awareness can be a vicious enemy, he thought, and along with his loss of hope he now had to deal with an expanding knowledge of his own culpability. The end was presenting itself to him, and it awaited his authorship. He drew the rocks from his pocket, and released them into the gutter grate. He started home without buying vodka, and he knew, of course, that he had just made everything worse.
He had been squatting at a vacant four apartment building on Fourth Street, a place that none of the other of the neighborhood’s tramps had yet discovered. He felt safe enough when he walked in, hoping he would still think as much when the inevitable suffering began. Throwing away the crack was insane, but it presented him with a reasonable battle. The liquor would be noticeably absent from his system in a few hours, and liquor made demands of its own that would require him to suspend reason, whether he forged ahead or surrendered. “All at once,” he muttered, “I’ll do it all at once.”
Hours into the early morning, he sat up reading by flashlight. The shakes were uncontrollable, he could no longer focus on the book he had stolen from a college student’s backpack. He had been “self-educating” himself for a few years, though it seemed like a pointless endeavor. It had never occurred to him that he might get a formal college education. His thoughts were beginning to race, and strobe-like, his mind flashed images form the text he was reading, and the text itself seemed as though to be speaking. He heard the voices of visitors, yet still, at this point, knew those visitors were the product of the liquor void he was suffering through. Talking textbooks and ghostly visitors gave way to full blown crisis. He perceived himself as trapped, feeling the presences of unwanted authorities and onlookers, of television news-copters, and of the demons who were struggling against exorcism. Terrified, he walked into the next room of the apartment.
His context changed abruptly, as though he had fallen headlong into a dream without the gist of sleep. He found himself in a room, though certainly not the room he had intended to walk into. It occurred to him that he should pay special attention. There were odds and ends of furniture. A chair salvaged from his grandmother’s house. The ever-present picture of the gray haired man praying over his bread was hanging on the wall. A recliner was sitting against another wall, and without testing to make sure, he knew there was a broken spring laying in wait for an unexpecting ass to grab. A braided rug, snagged and snared and coming apart at various seams, lay in the center of the room. It acted magnetically to attract every beige and brown and off-white that stained the walls and mix them into a puddle that resided upon the floor. A sofa, probably two decades old and probably commandeered from some bachelor uncle’s basement, drifted atop of the puddle rug. Phone books may have propped up the couch where a leg was missing. He really didn’t have to look. It was that familiar.
Two men entered the room, and he sat on the couch with them. He could sense that, even though there was a young man on either side of him, one white and the other black, they were somehow one. His experience of them together can only be expressed in terms of him. He was college-aged, and in both embodiments he looked relaxed in blue-jeans and sweatshirts. His gym shoes were canvass, dirty and worn. He thought somehow like there should be music in the background, but there was none. Just the three of them, and this sense of utter familiarity that put an end to his previous sense of urgency.
“Your on the right road,” said the presence on his right. The presence on his left put a hand on his shoulder, a reassuring gesture that heightened the intimacy he felt in the moment. He relaxed, breathing like he knew hope again. He then drifted off, into a state of promise that momentarily assured him of salvation.
Morning came, and afternoon had almost passed before he awoke. The miracle of sleep had ushered him through what should have been the most demanding period of his regeneration. Still, his shaking hands and pounding heart, his aching head and crippled extremities, betrayed the weight of the remaining burden. Working was out of the question, and he really didn’t believe that having money in his pocket would have fit into his plans for the next few days. It’s just like last night, he thought, I still have no place to go. The prospect of being alone, however, terrorized him. He closed his eyes and tried to muster a destination.
There was a church building he knew of. Actually, the neighborhood was filled with churches of all types. It had seemed to him that many of the older churches phallically represented the god of past generations the same way that missiles and skyscrapers served the phallic subconscious of wealthy males. The neighborhood was home to massive Catholic monuments and Presbyterian edifices, magnificent Lutheran complexes that were expanding into a collection of annexes, and an Anglican Church that was even whiter than the rest. He hated the god represented by these buildings, whose white suburban congregations drove into the neighborhood to worship the god of their youth in the churches of their childhoods. The buildings intended to reflect the omnipotence, omniscience, and majesty of their god as they required the space of an entire city block or more. Yet, while these white folks kept coming from twenty miles away to worship in the churches of their fathers, they were oblivious to the obvious – god had left this neighborhood. Shekinah was the lie of the city, yet the white folks insisted upon believing it.
There were the other churches, though - the ones where people were shoehorned into spaces smaller than most of the neighborhood’s liquor stores. On any given Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday night, shouts and singing and preaching and invitation were all present in the air that was drawn into the gravity of worship. Most of these churches were in disrepair. He remembered one night when he was walking through the neighborhood (in his boxer shorts, nothing else) and one of these storefront churches was having a revival. As he walked passed, he asked two doormen if the place was a cover for a blind pig. “This is after-hours for Jesus,” said one of the men. The other was more appropriately disgusted. For whatever reason, he began walking toward that same storefront. He didn’t exactly expect any god to be present, but perhaps hope might still reside there. He reflected for a moment that resources were in short supply in his neighborhood. The storefronts of God seemed to have been emptied of product, looted by the tax-base that believed the Exodus led to the suburbs.
He arrived at his destination. There was no one there, and the doors were locked. He didn’t know if anyone would come by on this Saturday. He really didn’t know if anyone still met there. He felt compelled, however, to wait there, half hoping that a savior would really could arrive and liberate him from his own bondage to self-destruction and self-hatred. He thought of the Exodus story, and he thought of Jesse Jackson. The irony of his source of biblical knowledge was lost upon him. The cry, “Let my people go” was to him the cry of an activist turned presidential candidate. But he knew the slavery story, and he knew the stories of liberation in the context of the twelve-step meetings he had been court-order to attend, and put the two together. Moses would perhaps come to this place. He had a feeling of this, though it was more a feeling of urgency than of hope.
His broken body somehow recalled the necessity of food as he sat waiting by the church doors. There was a gas station across the street on the corner, and he walked over to the two-inch thick window and asked if he could sweep the parking lot in exchange for some food. The cashier, who was working alone and didn’t like the prospect of going outdoors in the expanding darkness to sweep or do anything else, agreed. He received a broom, and a bucket of window wash to do windows and gas tanks. He set about his work, shaking as though he might rattle apart like a ’78 Chevette on the freeway. While he was working, he saw a man unlock the doors of the church, and noticed that several others followed over the time he was sweeping.
He finished his work, though the station hardly looked improved upon. He asked for a large bag of Doritos and a Hostess Apple Pie, and the clerk gave him a Lil’ Hug drink to wash it down. He thought of the Lil’ Hug drink. There were empty miniature clear plastic barrels that littered almost every street of the neighborhood. They cost ten cents apiece, and the kids would by them by the dozen, as would the drunks who chased vodka shots with them. He thought of the vodka, yearned for it for a moment, and then headed for the church across the street.
When he approached the doors, he hesitated to go in. He still didn’t really know why he was there, or what he expected to happen as a result of his visit. He forced himself through the doors. He was driven more by the fear that he would be drinking again in an hour if he didn’t do something, anything, to step into the unknown that held hope for a light at the end of it all. He was walking toward the light so to speak, upon the promise it would be ahead despite the utter despair that was swallowing it.
When he waked in, there was a circle of people sitting in the middle of a room filled with folding chairs. At the head of a room was a folding table covered with a dingy and yellowed cloth, and a wooden cross standing in the center. Behind the table on the wall was another cross, and somewhat startlingly, there were two pictures of Jesus. On the left of the cross was the “traditional” type of paining that presented Jesus as a dirty blond white boy with blue eyes and a crown of thorns. There were drops of blood streaming form the crowned head.
Hanging to the right of the cross was a picture of Jesus, but in this portrait he was black. It was Jesus alright, because he was wearing the robe and had been nailed to crude cross. There was another picture cut from a book or magazine stuck into the bottom corner of the picture frame. It was a photo of a man who was hanging from a tree, the victim of a mid-century southern lynching.
That picture cut his heart, and he silently cursed the fucked-up notion that suffering and death rescued anybody. All these Jesus folks were killing black folks left and right back in the day, at the same time they were praising the god of white supremacy. The cut-out picture showed evidence that at least one person at this church wasn’t buying into that god, who now resided in the suburbs and visited the neighborhood during holidays and weekend service-learning trips. Someone then broke into his thoughts. “Hello young man,” said a graying man, maybe in his fifties. For whatever reason, he guessed this man was a deacon or something, though he didn’t really know what a deacon was. He felt a response welling up within him.
And so he confessed. He accepted an invitation to joins the group sitting in tacircle of ten people, a prayer group that met on Saturday evenings in preparation for Sunday worship services. He was shaking, and felt ill, and was ashamed because he was smelling of sweat. He was covered by the dust of the gas station parking lot, yearning for vodka, distracted by thoughts of crack rocks and prostitutes. He was ashamed because he was sure that if there was a god left in the city, that god would have frowned upon his life,And he confessed.
His words poured out to the prayer group. He talked about his alcoholism and drug addiction. He talked about the family he had driven away. He talked about hating god and God and churches and the Church. Mostly, though, he talked about sin, his own sin, aware of the irony that stemmed from the recently held knowledge that their was no such thing as sin. A night of abstinence proved him wrong bout that. So did the pictures on the wall, who convinced him of his own complicity in sin at a depth he had never realized. He continued confessing. He confessed that he was lonely, and crazy, and wanting to drink now even more than he did an hour ago, or two hours ago, or five hours ago. He was dying for a drink, and he confessed as much. He was hoping for forgiveness, though he wasn’t sure what forgiveness looked like, and wasn’t sure he could ever forgive himself.
An elderly woman rose for her seat in the circle and sat next to him. She placed her hand on his shoulder, a reassuring gesture that heightened the intimacy he felt in the moment. He relaxed, breathing like he knew hope again. The woman offered that the man who looked like a deacon could make a few phone calls, and they could find him a place to stay so that he might not have to drink, and he might not have to be alone. “You need to go to the mission,” she said, “and we can get you in there.” He dreaded the mission. He dreaded the fundamentalism, and the baptisms, and the altar calls. Mostly, he dreaded the rules. He knew, though, that he had to do something.
The woman and the deacon drove him to the mission on Third Avenue. If there was a god, god had a sickening sense of humor. The mission, with its neon sign that brightly suggested that ”Jesus Saves,” was located next door to a pool hall. “oh no,” he thought. He know all about what went on there. “How am I gonna live next to this crap”” he asked the deacon, who replied something to the effect that he had been that crap for the past few years. “A day not drinking don’t make you better than them,” said the deacon, “And a year of not drinking might make you worse to be around.” The man laughed at his own joke, and his passenger who was crap thought to himself that the deacon knew more than he was letting on.
He stepped out of the back seat of the K-car, onto the sidewalk and toward the mission doors. The deacon grabbed his arm and guided him - not gently, but not to aggressively – into the building. There were catcalls from the pool hall next door, and he was sure he knew one of the women who was lingering outside and waved at him. He remembered the Exodus story, and how this did not seem anything like a liberation from bondage. He asked the deacon about the Exodus as they waited for someone to check him into the mission rehab program.
“Well,” started the deacon, “Remember, even after the Hebrew slaves were brought out of the House of Egypt, they kept on a-cryin’ to go back to slavery. Riskin’ the unknown of freedom made bondage seem a lil’ better lookin’. Followin’ the God of the Exodus is risky business man…he sends you everywhere and demands a lot but loves you even more.” He thought about crying to go back. He knew what was next when he took a drink or bought a rock. And if something went wrong, he would just be dead. But a life without such bondage, a life that demanded some semblance of maturity or responsibility, seemed to much of an impossibility in the shadows of getting stoned. Still, he sat, waiting for someone to make another decision for him.
A young man came through a door behind the intake area, which was bounded by an L-shaped remnant of an old bar that once stood in the pool hall next door. He sat down in the chair next to his new client. He did not smile, but looked serious. “We can medically detox you for three days,” said the young man, “You will have your own tiny room, and our nurse will check on you after the doctor checks you out. You have to eat with the rest of the men, and attend Bible study and groups. After you make it through detox, we can talk more about your future over the next few months. My name is Antohony. You’ll be welcomed to stay.” Anthony reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go up to your room,” he said.
As an afterthought, on the way up the stairs toward his room, he asked Anthony a question. “Do live in the suburbs?” he asked. “No, I live in an apartment upstairs in this building, why do you ask?”
“ I was just wondering where you went to church at,” he said. “I have an interest in learning about the Exodus, and I wondered which kind of exodus you were a participant in.
“We’re all part of an exodus,” said Anthony, “and too many of us turn back.
“What’s the point then,” he asked.”
“That God gives us second and third and fourth chances,” said Anthony. “Salvation happens where there’s hope. Hope happens when you trust God to do right by you. If you can’t trust God to guide you into and through the unknown, then there is no salvation. You walk back to Egypt, and bitch about being a slave again, blaming God the whole time. You gotta sacrifice if you want to be liberated, and sacrificing yourself is an act of trust that God is righteous.”
Anthony opened a door to a tiny room that contained a mattress and pillow with blankets folded at the foot of it. There was also chest of drawers with a Bible laying on top, and a cross hanging on the wall. “Do you think Jesus was a white guy or a black guy?” he asked Anthony.
“Jesus is evident in any person who sacrifices for the well-being of another person,” said Anthony. “Jesus is anybody and everybody. Here’s your room, someone will be up to check on you, and then you see the doctor. Until then, get some rest.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed after the door closed behind Anthony. He wanted a drink. He then wanted to be assured that tomorrow would promise relief - liberation from the desire to drink. And then he wanted a drink. And then, for the first time, he prayed. He closed his eyes, and prayed to Jesus, whoever Jesus was. He prayed to Jesus, and he prayed to God. “Please, don’t guide me toward the suburbs,” he thought. “I’m crying out – give me faith so that I can trust somebody,” he prayed. “I don’t want to turn back.

Reading the Bible as a Whole

2008-08-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

After reading Peter's Blog about Genesis, particular one of his responses to my own response, I thought I'd write a little about how I view the Bible. I'm not sure about blog etiquette, so I hope it is not out of line to comment on someone else's blog with my own. No harm is intended!

I find it interesting when students of the biblical text - and especially when scholars and professors of biblical studies courses - are critical of those who read the text as a whole. Of course, as a student myself, I am well aware that the text is not one story with numerous chapters. However, I am aware that life is a story with a variety of chapters, and that faith reflects life, and that the text is a text of faith.

If you want to read the text for what it is: a tool that is meant to underwrite a) Israel's claim to the promises made to Abraham and Sarah, and b) Israel's claim to the Land promised to Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants, then you read the text as a whole. As a whole, the text reflects the conflict that existed in the yahwist faith of many centuries Reading the text as a whole does not mean it speaks with one voice, or without conflict, or without ambivalence. It is reflective of a plethora of ideas about YHWH and inheritance and empire, but in the sixth through the first-century, such stories, whether canonical or not, were understood to be reflective of an ongoing, if not somewhat cyclical, story of God and God's people. Otherwise it would have made no sense in terms of faith. In ancient times, history was viewed as cyclical (like the seasons) and not linear, and the ancient literature was firmly rooted, not in a unified concept of how God was working, but a unified concept that God was, is, will be working as god always has, on behalf of Israel.

If you are reading the text without the lenses of faith, than you can read each story separately. There are separate stories in individual books, sometimes two versions of the same story, all with conflicting agendas. This reality may be great for those wanting to study Scripture as ancient literature, but it makes it very hard to discuss issues of faith, or even of life as narrative, if one is trying to separate Ezra from Ruth, or Kings from Chronicles by virtue of their anomalies. Of course they have different agendas, and that is what faith deals with...the conflicts that are inherent in our life of contradictions. But without question, each texts reflects the belief that YHWH rolls up the divine sleeves and reaches into history on behalf of God's people.

As for the text having no meaning without a community of interpretation, if this is bothersome to the intellect of some students, I simply suggest that they try to read any text without their twenty-first century western-world lenses and making honest sense out of any text. Even when fans argue about baseball statistics and and try to make allowances for a the era in which a certain record or accomplishment was reached, there is no unity of meaning. And remember, statistics don't lie!? But we do know that history does lie, and thus, when we read a text, it is always through a variety of lenses which color the original meaning. That is not really a problem with Moby dick, but if you are trying to make a text the center of your life, such as the U.S. Constitution or the Communist Manifesto, it requires that it be given meaning in order to make it relevant. History and texts are living, just as God is, and all living things grow together as part of Creation. Except, perhaps, Moby Dick.

"What the bleep?" Modernity in sheeps clothing

2008-08-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

For the first half of What the bleep? I was intrigued, even excited at points about some of what the movie had to say. I saw elements of process theology and various narrative concepts being discussed (at least I though as much), and for a moment interpreted the discussion about intention and context to be closely related to narrative concepts.

I had looked forward to watching the movie (shown in a graduate course at the University I attend) because I have a lot of respect for the professor, and, a friend of mine who was reading Rawls tome on Justice (I don't know if I agree with Rawls, but I am eager to talk with those who at least read him) told me he liked the movie and had a copy of it on his video shelf.

Well, then came the last half of the show, and if I have ever been witness to latent modernity disguised as progressive thinking about religion (or science), I believe I saw as much in What the bleep? I first felt guilty about wondering why none of the contributors to the film were named or credentialed during the movie. I am not all that impressed with lettered people, but at least the letters betray their tendencies to some point. Everyone who spoke with authority in this film, however, seemed reluctant to lend their name to the project on film. (I didn't see the credits, but that's a little late anyway.) I think I know why. Everyone connected with the movie would have had their agenda revealed far prior to the preaching undertaken at the end that not only suggested that followers of religion (explicitly Catholic Christianity) were victims, but that victimization was limiting their spiritual horizons and personal potential. I'll speak more toward victimization later.

Presently, I'd like to clarify why I believe that What the bleep? is more representative of modernity than it would like you to believe. In fact, this film, if it has claim to a status representative of postmodern thinking, reveals the inability of postmodernism to completely deconstruct the Enlightenment project. (Craig will say I've been reading McIntyre again.) The only thing that the movie really does is act to underwrite an individualist perspective of those persons who want to free themselves of the ancient burdens of organized religion, yet know that they will be left yoked to the emptiness of empiricism if they don't create something to fill the spiritual vacuum created by the rejection of ancient stories. Whether it is dressed up as modernism or quantum mechanics, the really Insightful people who have achieved level six of Fowler's stages of faith have an agenda that wants you to not only reject the baggage of Christianity's past (Don't Hindus have any baggage, and why does no one ever speak about Islam - it is relevant isn't it?) but anything that might provide an identity that isn't purchased online from a culture three thousand miles away.

The Enlightenment and modernity, and American individualism, is all about rejecting the past as irrelevant to your future, if not overtly oppressive. what the Enlightenment produced, amongst other things, however, was a rejection of personal culpability for the past, while all the while accepting the benefits of privileged status. And when you are privileged, it is rather easy to peel of perceived or real victim hood in favor of a self-authored identity that, when mixed with quantum mechanics, allows you to manipulate the world and the reality around you.

Liberation theology, and narrative, would have a field day with this perspective. but first, I must say that it is a healthy thing to throw the spirit of victimization away in favor of a new identity in Jesus and those communities that follow him. However, to say that adjusting a reality through the manipulation of individual perceptions is liberation, well, I offer that such liberation is incomplete at best, and serves the oppressor at worst. The reality of the burdens of empire upon conquered peoples is as real as the wall that separates Israel and Palestine, or as real as the atrocities committed by governments an individuals worldwide.

Such atrocities must not only be perceived as real, but whole communities must be willing to change their own lives according to these realities suffered by the other. When I lived in Detroit, no amount of direct thinking, contrary to the statements of the witches of Bleep, are going to stop bullets from entering young flesh, and no amount of prayer without the correlated actions of the Church is going to eliminate torture or genocide - or manipulate the past, as suggested by folks in the movie. That Alice is stuck in the rabbit hole is not the problem. The fact that the genie is out of the bottle is the problem, and very few people are praying, and few churches are acting, in a manner that throws privilege to the wind so that victims may be truly liberated from their yoke to our lifestyle.

Constantine welcomes "Legion" to the Church

2008-07-27T16:31:00.000-07:00

This picture of two of our gilts prompts me to think of a few things, the most obvious represented by the title. Secondly, I am reminded of a hippy friend I had back in Detroit who wouldn't call "bad" people pigs because it was an insult to pigs. Third, Tim Seid Ph. D of Earlham, once said he was only interested in Quaker blogs that had something relevant to say, and I'm interested in discovering the worthiness of this post. Finally, I just wanted to post a picture of pigs in hopes of encouraging new readership. People just love pigs, sometimes to scratch behind the ears, sometimes with applesauce.

Have Quakers surpassed the wisdom of Feuerbach?

2008-07-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

Feuerbach believed that God was simply a projection of a person’s (or a community’s) highest hopes for humanity onto a cosmic figure that really didn’t exist, and certainly didn’t exert any control in the day to day affairs of nature, human or otherwise. Such projection, claimed Ludwig, not only separate persons from God because we are repulsed at our failure to maintain such attributes, but from one another as well. Of course Feuerbach lived in the heady times of modernity, the salad days for those who believed human beings (or “Man”) were the tip of the top of nature’s hierarchy of truth and reason and all that might be good.
It took Hitler’s Germany and Truman’s bombs to redirect such narcissism toward greater “realities,” such as the relative status of truth, and it only took that long because most of nineteenth-century European philosophy was over the fact of Napoleon, still enamored with France’s revolution, and apparently less than cognizant of the realities of the American Civil War. Indeed, Feuerbach’s Germany was headed toward the Empire status it had dreamed of for so long while in the shadow of its fellow western white folks, and was ready to pounce upon a different Napoleon with Bismarck’s own well-reasoned projection of Prussian high hopes onto the rest of Europe. I am not sure how Feuerbach would have felt about Bismarck, considering Otto’s hatred for socialists. I haven’t read that much. But I regress – this is really a post about Quakers.
It seems as though many Quakers of a type are stuck in the muck created by the realization that modernity’s criticisms of God failed to replace the forlorn deity with anything worthwhile (unless you count weapons innovation and marketing as a worthy religious replacement for the superstitions of the past), and that postmodernism failed to realize that the marketplace of relativity only mimic’s modernity’s critique of “superstition.” Postmodernism creates an atmosphere where God is nothing more than an individual’s projection of his or her own desires onto a generic spirit that is easily removed from the box of “religion” and into the baggy of “spirituality.” Such faith is no more than a reflection of person’s political leanings or hopes for the perfect mate. Such baggies are much less bulky and easier to carry that the stale boxes of ante-modernity religion.
Baggies, however, are the containers of drug users, and individual spirituality has replaced organized religion as the “drug of the masses” by leading folks down a road of self-reliance that mimics the Enlightenment concept of freedom. I suggest real freedom is that which comes from engaging in voluntary community that is centered around the collective concept of religious identity and meaning, and a unity centered around a collective concept of telos. This may mean, not so much that we put God in a box as much as it means that we place an emphasis on revelation tested against the tradition and texts of a people and not the whims and projections of a person. Many Quakers prefer the personal to the corporate, and that is why we are quickly becoming a faith community without an identity. O perhaps too many identities.
In a postmodern world, individuals may indeed be able to purchase a new identity that suits their vision of the future while rejecting responsibility for he past. We can pick and choose from the melting pot marketplace that tells us we are capable of grasping the finer points of any faith, politic, or discipline without assuming its totality. This is not a projection of our finest attributes as humans, however, as Feuerbach had labeled it in the nineteenth century. This is simply speculating on the open market of identity and truth, hoping that we enrich ourselves without the burden of responsibility to community. Forget oil, colonize an Eastern spirituality - it’s a buyers market in the empire.

Let's Try This Again

2008-07-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

Much has changed since I made the decision to stop publishing. Of, course, I decided to give blogging another try. Before that, I graduated from ESR, moved back to my beloved state of Michigan, returned to my meeting of membership, and began studying toward an MSW. We rent a home with acreage, and have added 26 Auricana chicks, three pigs, and a bull calf to our farm. We have a home large enough to provide space for two or three more folks, maybe a small family, and hope to begin living in community as soon as we can find someone who can bear to live with me (other than my wife).

I hope to blog regularly again, though it is with some trepidation that I do. I am not a big part of a "blogging community" per se, but over the period of time that I was contributing regularly to my own space, much happened in the e-community at ESR that turned me away from further participation in the blogosphere. Primarily, I was concerned over the number of anonymous posts that were turning up, and the number of people willing to speculate, including myself, about who was doing what. The final straw, however, was when someone responded to a blog anonymously and my name was thrown into the ring. Regardless of what I have to say about anything, I would never say anything anonymously, and I believe those who know me would accept this statement as true.

There were some other minor issues, but I can address all of those as I try to reestablish an ongoing contribution to the Quaker blog community, hopefully without taking myself or others quite so seriously -but then again - I hope to continue to post about serious issues involving Quakerism and theology, social justice and the narratives of life. I also hope to involve myself in conversations with other bloggers, something that I enjoyed before but never found the time do on a regular basis. Perhaps I'll post something tonight, but in the meantime, "keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars."

Are Quakers a People of Power?

2007-10-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

A few things need to be said about politically centered non-violence, and the liberal Quaker tendency to rely upon nation-states as the primary means of achieving an end called peace. I am picking primarily upon liberal Friends because many of the more mainstream folks who attend “Quaker Churches” here in Ohioana are less concerned with a meaningful Peace Testimony than they are about keeping some members comfortable in their fond memories of “necessary wars.” Interestingly, the story I have to begin this rambling op-ed concerns a Church of the Brethren member, and not a Quaker.

I just started work at a dairy farm in the county I live in, and the owner of the farm is a devout Christian. He attends one of the local Brethren Churches that boasts a sizeable congregation. He is very involved in missions, but more importantly, he and his family are generous enough to open their homes to troubled young women who have made a few bad choices. One such woman stayed with them for several years, and many others have been helped along the path of life through the extended hand of this farmer's family.

When we were working together the other morning, I asked him about the Brethren witness to peace. He replied that his church had a broad vision of peace, but did not preach that war was always wrong, and he personally felt that war was a necessary evil. His concern was justice, especially justice for oppressed nations and peoples. I don’t believe this man is a leftist, but he does not seem like an overly politicized conservative either. I don’t know his political views or his social views, other than the ones I’ve seen him live out. His values seem to include loving his neighbor, and if possible, to be at peace with apparent enemies of justice. Yet I have to wonder, what happened in this Brethren congregation (and many of the congregations of Indiana Yearly Meeting), that overturned the idea that loving God, neighbor, and enemy were the desire of the Creator for humanity.

I think the idea that political power is a good thing, and must be used in a manner that the early church (and Jesus too, I guess), couldn't conceive of. The early Church was only pacifist because they would have been stomped out if they had tried to exert political power or engage in violent revolution. The second option was certainly attractive to many throughout the empire. Yet I contend that such power, once acheived (per Constantine), is to the degredation of Jesus' ministry.
Of course, the political infrastructure of liberal democracy seems like such an attractive way to make progressive values a force in the nation, and the world. "We all have a say" in democracies, and we have opportunities to empower the disenfranchised by insisting that governments listen to their (our) voices, and then act upon their (our) demands. We all love empowering the disenfranchised, as long as they respond to our loving kindness by fully participating in the liberal project. It’s not just voting that counts, but that the new voters elect the right persons with the right values.
But what are the values we are investing ourselves in when we rely upon political process to mandate progressive responses to injustice. The values of the ballot box, and of maintaining a powerful voice for all that is right, whether liberal or conservative or middle of the road, are not only coercive in their very practice, but protected and enacted by the threat of violence. The very fact that India is a nuclear power and uses force to maintain public order and national sovereignty shows that Gandhi’s efforts poured living water upon the tree of liberty, but that tree has not borne fruit.
While Martin Luther King Jr. is fully representative of the Exodus narrative, and exuberant social commentators insist that the liberation of marginalized African-Americans has been realized, the realpolitik of empire has used the narrative in ways that have delegitimized valid outcries concerning the failure of liberal democracy to truly empower a great majority of the community. Indeed, the only real progress in race relations beyond the scope of personal relationships and a plethora of street fairs has been that African-Americans have achieved equal status as American consumers.
The point I am trying to make amidst all this harsh language, is that the mandating of social justice, peace, or equality through the ballot box (or limited boycotts that fail to address the injustice of the economy as a whole), is not only an act of coercion in itself, but is only made possible, and then protected by, the threat of, or use of, militarism or police forces. It fails to address the core necessity of loving the oppressor until reconciliation is possible. And in the meantime, communities of Quakers, and Brethren, Mennonites and others, must live out the progressive values that we are championing by inviting the marginalized, the oppressed, and the broken into communities that practice what they preach. Not only must we establish Quaker communities intent on living out the justice we want so badly for the world, but we must establish Quaker communities that reflect upon the world what justice, peace, and equality look like. How can we call for an end to racism and economic injustice when much of our denomination reflects the lifestyles of a privileged class? How can I personally call for an end to war when I am mired in a economy that thrives on coercion as a means of keeping markets open in order to feed an insatiable American consumer appetite?
If we don’t begin living lives of radical “otherness” - of radical commitment to justice and equality and peace at the expense of comfort and power, we are destined to become a people who think that violence on our own part might be necessary to limit injustice. Just like the farmer who, having the means to do good (and he certainly does good), cannot understand the audacity of enemies that fail to respect reason and continue to misbehave. Voting is a sensible thing, and peace is reasonable, until voting fails to resolve issues without violence, and peace becomes a liability to political power. I know people who are dedicated to nonviolence, who, if the right to unlimited birth control options is overturned, or limits upon various other rights find their way into our society, will believe that physical coercion looks mighty necessary. After all, no one is going to infringe on my rights.

I see violence in our future as Quakers. I see violence because if all of our peace and justice eggs are in the political basket, we are doomed to assuming the oppressor's terms as our own in our desire to maintain power over our own political futures, and the futures of others. We will have forgotten what it means to be a people of peace, because we have politically evolved into a people of power. Film at 11.

The Politics of Faith

2007-09-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

Faith might be one of the more difficult things to explain to others, but it might be even more difficult to identify it in others. So many of us (and them!) seem to define faith in a manner that insists upon political manifestations of our theology. How many people voted for the current president because they felt that he was representative of “Christian” values, hoping that the faith of George Bush might somehow prompt some god to erase the evils of liberalism. Political power, while possibly a more abstract idea for some, seems to be the primary task of much of Christendom in the United States, as if though YHWH might only be made real through the ballot boxes of liberal democracy.
This is not just a problem of Republicans on their knees, however. There is much of the same behavior evident among the more left-leaning church-goers, spiritualists, and of course, Quakers. I still recall the time I ran across bumper stickers for John Kerry on the table at Meeting, and the time that some Friends engaged in vote-trading with Nader supporters in other states.
It is troubling that faith in God, or a persons’ theology, is often most visible during an election cycle. Gratefully, not many Quakers seem to suggest that their vote reflects the will of God as some other voters or politicians have done. But just the same, many of us seem to have a faith that is more informed by our personal socio-political desires than by a community of faith that reflects a revelatory experience of the divine nature.
Quite often, Friends are defending the Peace Testimony as a political construct, instead of a corporate experience of God. Of course, it might be argue that the Peace Testimony originated as a political construct - or a political necessity – and that may be true. But the foundation of the Quaker Peace Testimony is the tradition of the Believers’ Church that takes seriously the example of Jesus. It is, inherently, a statement of faith in the example of Jesus as the proper reflection of YHWH’s desire for human relationships. Without Jesus as the central aspect of our witness, the language of the Peace Testimony loses its intelligibility.
Yet, when we strive for the political implementation of our witness to peace as the primary manifestation of our faith, or the most appropriate means to an end, not only does it relieve us of the responsibility to sacrifice on behalf of our belief, it relaxes the importance of a community of faith committed solely to providing an example of faith, so that others may know what peace looks like. How dare I attempt to legislate an ethic that I cannot fully engage in as an act of faith. How dare I engage in legislating what is inherently a voluntary act of sacrifice for an individual or community.
I would like to vote for the redistribution of wealth, but I fail to properly share my own. I would like to vote for an end to war, but I so enjoy my privileged consumer status as an American. I cannot in good conscious vote my faith, because I am in no position to ask others to follow a path that I cannot navigate.
Yet, I also have certain beliefs that I try not to compromise (though I often fail). One being that, in the example of Jesus, dominance and power are located furthest from the edges of the realm of God. If Jesus is reflective of God’s desire, then loving one’s enemies and praying for those who might persecute us takes priority over the dehumanizing of political opponents as being less than God’s beloved. It takes a lot of faith to believe that God will work for peace and justice over and against the machinations of human politics. It takes even more faith to live them out alone amongst an unfaithful world. As for voting, well, it simply lends credibility to a system that thrives on domination and power.

Quaker distinctives

2007-09-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, Quakers were a people who were easily identified by those who were not Quakers. This fact predates the era of Church prescribed clothing and the hat brim police (Mine is three and three quarters inches). Early Friends were identifiable by their insistence the leveling of unequal relationships, such as the eliminating of status markers like bowing and scraping, or the use of "you" in place of "thee" or "thou" when speaking with individuals of greater (or lesser) social status. Quakers were kicked out of the New Model Army for refusing to abide by military hierarchy and protocol, and did not insist upon receiving reverential treatment from servants or other common folk. They refused to address political or religious authorities by using commonly accepted titles. Early Friends never called anyone sir.

Other distinctives, such as the eschewing of elaborate clothing, jewelry, and furniture in favor of plainness was an early marker of Friends' faith. there is one episode of mass convincement remembered where hundreds of new Quakers burned their ribbons and other finery on the spot. There are a few other distinctives that were particular to Quakerism.

One that I have identified is that early Friends were very public in their faith. Not only did Friends insist on worshipping publicly despite persecutions and laws directed specifically against such meetings, but they insisted on publishing Truth, and using metaphor for spreading the gospel. Going naked as a sign, interrupting church services, and walking through towns and calling them to repentance were all meant as signs that the kingdom of God was being realized, and the Friends were ushering it in. Friends were constantly gathering petitions and speaking before authorities in their attempts to change public policy on everything from prison conditions and tithing laws to freedom of conscience and religious tolerance issues.

Another particular of early Quakerism is voluntary sacrifice, which is most often coupled with an insistence upon public witness. Quakers insisted on public displays of faith, and as such, suffered imprisonment, loss of property, and public beatings for refusing to be silenced (no pun intended) concerning the Word of God. Many Friends were people of economic means, and they sacrificed when they gave up certain luxuries or finery in pursuit of faithful simplicity. Quaker business people often suffered for using set prices and refusing to sell worldly goods (such as ribbons and jewelry!).

Of course, Social justice was an inherent aspect of the Quaker refusal to pay tithes, or to recognize an established Church, or to engage in socially abhorrent markers of class distinction. Friends commitment to equality in the ministry and between marriage partners was significant for women in the 17th century, and did not happen without inner struggle on the part of many. Still, Social justice, and especially care for the poor, was a particularity of early Quakerism that significantly impacted the rest of society.

Finally, as William Penn (among others) commented, the Friends were a distinctive people due to their commitment to love their neighbors and their enemies, and to pray for those who persecuted them. After 1660, nearly all Friends were commit ed to a pacifist expression of their faith, and the commitment to non-violence became the most identifiable aspect of Quakerism. I certainly believe that Quakers are still primarily a people of peace, despite some among us who question such a commitment.

What are our Quaker distinctives today. How do folks know that we are, a people of peace, and a people of justice. Are we a sect who continues to voluntarily sacrifice in order to see justice done, or have we settled into the mainstream methods of comfortably critiquing injustice while avoiding the suffering that often comes along with moral striving. Are we public, as the Religious Society of Friends, in our witness to peace and justice in a manner that stakes a claim in the truth of a God that desires peace and justice for creation.

I think that individual Quakers are meeting all of these suggested criteria in a variety of ways. The question that remains is, are we doing so as a people dedicated to such in a manner that identifies us as primarily committed to such distinctives as a corporate expression of faith. Are we Quakers committed to peace making in the manner of Friends,, or are we individual participants in a liberal democracy that is primarily committed to wholly other ends, and most certainly, wholly other means. I would hope that our faith is not rested in the individual's expression of justice, and I exhort all not to place their faith in the nation state. I pray that we will once again be a distinctive people committed to God and living lives of faithfulness, despite the rejection that may bring from mainstream religion, enlightenment idealists, or social scientists who have rejected corporate faith as a means of offering the world an alternative to the brokenness of the world.

Sorry, This is sort of a Rant

2007-09-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

Lots of people are hooked on the idea of Truth these days. For instance, some might say the Bible is true, every word of it, and others might suggest that it does not meet the criteria reserved for judging the veracity of fact claims. Others might say that it is certainly true that human beings or nation states have a right to defend themselves from violent attacks on personal or national sovereignty. I believe that, amongst Quakers, there is a consistently held view that universal human rights not only exist, but that human beings are obligated to struggle – politically or militarily – to preserve the universal application of such rights. The question that I have for all of you who demand that universal human rights are – well – rights, is…who says.
How can anyone empirically prove that rights do in fact exist, or, that there are “universal rights” that should receive protected status? Where do human rights come from, if they do exist? Are they a universal expression of what is best for humanity to thrive, or are human rights simply a projection of a collective western fantasy that all people are born equal.
It is my experience human beings are born no more equal to one another than they were in the eighteenth century when a few white guys suggested that we were. Of course, women and slaves were not born into equality, and while the western world has spoken out against slavery and sexism over the past hundred and fifty years or so, the assumed equality enjoyed by every human is still not universal.
I suggest that if westerners really believed that humans had basic rights, they might extend beyond universal suffrage, free speech, and prohibitions against discriminating against one’s involuntary particulars such as race.
It seems to me that if Nicaraguans or Haitians, Afghanis and Palestinians were born equal, they would have immediate access to western health care, control of their own capital resources, and freedom from foreign intervention concerning economic decisions. I’ll hazard to guess that most Quakers will agree with these premises, and even say that they stress such values in their daily lives. This brings me to two points.
First, values are not rights. Values are, at least in the western world, individual preferences concerning one’s personal ethic. Values in the 21st century are fairly subjective, if not arbitrary. I might even suggest that most peoples’ values are more informed by their quest for political power than any sense of good or bad. So, just as one might question the validity of values based upon religious faith as subjective values centered upon beliefs and not Truth, I suggest that “rights” are simply the secular expression of certain values with the implication that they are somehow “objective.”
Secondly, I want to suggest that our Quaker perception of “rights” actually interferes with our ability to agree upon values that more properly reflect a just society, or a society that focuses on social justice as the ultimate expression of humanity, and not universal rights.
How do Quakers feel about the rights of certain historically marginalized peoples to hold combat roles in the military? Should women and homosexuals have the right to fight for the empire? How do Quakers feel about free speech when the rich dominate political speech, and the marginalized cannot afford to enjoy it? How do Quakers feel when a personal right to acquire unlimited resources and wealth conflicts with the right of marginalized peoples to control their own economic destiny? None of us generally discuss the possibility that the personal rights we enjoy might conflict with the human rights we suggest exist, possibly so that we can formally claim our own right to enjoy the benefits of exploitation without taking responsibility.
Many of us will say that we believe in a God who directs us toward lifestyles that benefit humanity, that strives for social justice, and most importantly, that does so in a nonviolent way that reflects the love our Creator has for creation. Of course, then we are admitting that God has a will for humanity, a purpose that we can discern and live out the best we are able. If the striving for justice is to be anything other than just another values claim to be thrown upon the Enlightenment’s trash heap of assertions that failed to meet the criteria of empiricism, Quakers might consider a corporate expression of who God is, and what that God’s will might entail. Or is a God of justice and peace a God who has been put in a box?

Rantings about Baptism

2007-08-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

As I sat around at ESR the other day the topic of discussion was baptism. Water baptism. The question was raised, actually it was repeated second hand, that one of our seminarians (FGC no less) might have wondered why we don't have water baptisms, especially if someone might think it would be a nice thing to do? I wonder if this is from the same person that defends the recognition of non-theists as Friends. Wouldn't that be interesting. Maybe I could get soaked with a power washer by a non-theist Quaker.

But seriously, my concern isn't with yet another dive into the depths of water baptism, but with the total lack of discussion about real Quaker baptism, the Baptism of Fire by the Holy Spirit. How many Friends have you recently heard speak of their experience of the Holy Spirit in terms of baptism? How many Friends talk openly about the moment when they suddenly knew, not only that God loved them, but that God had plans for them? How many of us talk about that time when our lives began to change so significantly that others could experience our radical turn toward the risky business of serving God? Have Quakers so lost the language, and possibly even the experience, of the Baptism of the Spirit as a central tenet of our sacramental theology?

And let's not forget that Spirit baptisms are not a once-off event. Convincement can happen at any time, for who can limit God's yearning to teach and guide and water the seed over and over again. Our nurturing Creator knows us as a people thirsty for the Spirit, and we are blessed with multiple opportunities for such an experience as we venture through life. The Baptism of Fire and the concept of convincement are one and the same. Baptism opens our eyes and convicts our soul, and convincement generates never ending opportunities to see ourselves in relationship to God and one another with sudden clarity of purpose...of Truth.

As for water baptism, my take on such an event is that it is a marker of membership for those adults who wish to join a church community. (Let's not even discuss infant sprinkling!) Yet, the Apostle Paul warns against any works or badges of membership, insisting that we are God's people as a matter of faith. We are not allowed into a club once we have been dunked. We are members of the Body of Christ because we believe in the faith of Jesus Christ. While Friends might not see water baptism as a deterrent to true faith any more, it certainly is an unnecessary, and possible spiritually misguided, attempt at forcing a faith instead of waiting upon the Spirit to act in magnificent ways.

But more importantly, someone who participates in a water baptism outside of a community of faith that truly experiences such an event as a sacred event, makes a mockery of someone else's faith. I hope that no Quakers are getting baptized in water because it seems like a neat thing to do. And I also hope that we continue to support our neighbors who worship in such communities when they invite us to witness their baptisms, and share how we Quakers understand such an event. Ecumenism shares faith, it should not co opt it.

A lttle bit on faith

2007-08-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

It has been a real eye-opener to spend the last two first-days surrounded by people who have faith. My family visited a Bruderhof community about a week ago, and this past Sunday, I attended worship at a Richmond African Methodist-Episcopalian church. These experiences stand in stark contrast, not so much to my experiences at seminary, where people have often been accused of losing their faith, but in contrast to my experience of Quakerism in general, as practiced outside of my seminary bubble.

At the Bruderhof, I witnessed a people who feel as though action is the proper expression of faith, as opposed to interpretation. This is not to say that the Bruderhof folks don't interpret Scripture, they do, but they do so by dedicating an entire life to the living out of their faith as the only appropriate expression of thier truth claims. I am certainly not in agreement with all of the expressions of faith that I witnessed, but I was certain that I viewed a people who practiced their theology in their everyday relationships, and that they dedicated each aspect of their lives to peacemaking, a sense of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation. they ordered their lives around the gospel message of Jesus, and the Acts 2 church. They made no excuses for the troubled reality of the world as an impediment to true community. Indeed, they opened themselves to the outside world by opening their school, their modest medical and dental facilities,dining resources and worship to any and all who were interested.

At the AME church, I was thrilled by the expression of the Holy Spirit through the "testimony" of a young man who had apparently made a beeline for the church that morning with a message in his head that had to be shared. He had not been to church in a while, but responded to his leading, and shared it smack in the middle of the sermon, which was fully accepted with great joy by the pastor and congregation as a fully legitimate expression of faith. It was an inspiring story about how God had worked in his life while he was suffering from physical and emotional pain. All present gave glory to the God they new was the author of such experiences. they gave testimony to the truth of their faith, and faithfulness, without regard to the apparent discrepancies that might be lurking in their theology, at least in the eyes of more intellectually astute seminary trained or academically inclined "Quakerisms" of the present.

My wife and I also visited a Quaker meeting during these two weeks. As we shared some of our experiences with those present after meeting had ended, we were informed that some of our peers "have some problems with the Bruderhof," though in hindsight admitted that "they do do some good things." Actually, these Friends were more concerned with our plain clothes and the message we intended to relay in wearing them. They were very concerned about my wife's head covering, though they did not seem concerned with my hat. At any rate, they did not discuss the issue of faith, or their own expressions of it. They did like my baptism jokes however.

As I enjoyed these recent experiences, I am hoping that I can somehow find similar expressions of commitment to living out faith in the realm of contemporary Quakerisms that do not require the acquiescence of the academy in order to be legitimate in the eyes of Friends. Indeed, I hope I can find ways of expressing my own faith in YHWH, and the hope I experience through the faith of Jesus the Messiah, in a manner that dares suggest the truth of such beliefs through a life lived in accordance with my theology, not just statements intended to bring others into Quaker orthodoxy.

Cheap Grace Denied Deity, Film at Eleven

2007-08-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

Though I was aware of an ongoing discussion amongst Friends, especially those who are familiar with Friends United Meeting, and Western Yearly Meeting, concerning the price of grace. While there are a lot of folks out there who believe that a mighty god is always looking to take a pound of flesh from those who refuse Jesus as the way to postmortem bliss, I would probably find more agreement with those who believe in a more universal expression of God's love for creation. However, I do not believe in cheap grace, or find any reassurance that God might not be seeking real relationship with human beings but simply lets us drift through life without any real say in the matter.
A few years ago, my monthly meeting's book discussion centered on a book that suggested that God will not allow anyone to refuse grace, but instead gave non-theists any number of chances to repent and agree to some kind of fruitful relationship that might somehow make them better postmortem people. I wonder if this approach would work on my ex-wife.
Regardless, if there is no opportunity to refuse the grace of everlasting relationship with the Author of Life, then the relationship itself becomes meaningless. It would be a coercive act on the part of God if real choices were denied in the ultimate scheme of things. As so many cheesy popular music lyrics have suggested, you only truly love someone if you are willing to set them free.
My problems with the idea of an overreaching grace is that it implies that all relationships with God are, in the end, only truly engaged by God with no commitment to participation in such a relationship necessary for the created. Why would I want to be in relationship with someone who not only rejected my overtures, but refused to even engage in discussions concerning my shortcomings. I would never want to force someone to love me, though the pain of such rejection might be unbearable. I believe that God experiences unbelievable pain every time someone rejects the possibility, not only of a relationship with the Creator, but when we reject relationships with one another. Still, free will means we experience painful consequences, as our human propensity for broken relationships so often shows.
This is not to say that there are consequences for rejection of God. God stays faithful, loving and waiting and wooing humanity to love God and one another with all our hearts. There is no hell to be sent to because we don't love Jesus. Very simply, there is only death, and for so many of us, we look forward to a reunification with the Creator when God once again comes to dwell with humanity. (Rev 21) No I'm not suggesting we all go to heaven when its over, but I still hold out that full reconciliation with creation will be a reality for those who choose to be in relationship with God, and with one another. Perhaps, this even happens in a lifetime.

a brief bit on prayer

2007-07-29T17:11:00.000-07:00

My prayer experiences are taking an interesting turn these days. And even as I write such a statement, I realize how difficult it is for me to write about prayer. I have been striving for a prayer experience that brings joy to God, and satisfies my thirst for relationship with God, yet I realized at some point last evening that too much was standing in the way of fulfillment. I have caught myself in a cycle of attributing to God those characteristics that suggest that God really is who I have always been told that God was. I have come to be involved with a god who exists solely to make my lifer easier, or if not easier, more navigable and stable than it has ever been. However, I have been reminded by the God who created me that I can only have a fulfilling prayer life if I am giving, instead of being solely intent upon receiving.
When faced with difficulties, I do in fact know that I will be taken care of. It is not a cliche to be reminded that others are indeed suffering, and often alone. Because I am in relationship with a loving God, and because I am in relationship with family and community, I have hope that some may not, I see a light at the end of the tunnel where others might not, and I choices that others might not have, or might not see, I am far from the bottom of life's experiences.
But what does this have to do with prayer. It means that I can finally stop filling my conversations with the Creator with wish lists, honorific titles, and invitations of blessing, and replace such prayer with that of honest discussions about who I am, what can I learn, and how should I continue forth in a manner discerning of God's plan for me.
Honesty in prayer is a big step for me. Not because I was full of lying to God, but because I was not taking inventory of my relationships with, and to, others in my life. I was praying for providence, without understanding why it is that I might be hurting, or why I might be expected to experience pain or difficulty. The fact is, life goes on in fits and starts, and God promises to be there for me, especially in prayer and in presence throughout the day, so that I might have clarity on living out a loving response to tragedy or suffering.
What I am truly thankful for is not that God solves my problems as I wander through life in obedience and faithfulness, but that God's presence is so real even when I am not obedient or faithful. I am finding that using prayer as a means of to an end of self-awareness and honesty is much more fulfilling than saying thanks for the many blessings, please pass some more.

Do miracles really matter?

2007-07-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

It seems that a whole lot of people are insistent that miracles either really happened, or, just as equally, they insist that they really didn't. Or should I say, they couldn't happen. I really don't have much at stake in the fact or fiction of God's working against the grain of nature in order to shock the world into accepting that it is a truly strange universe. I'm not expecting any miracles beyond the one that, after years of narcotic and alcohol abuse and homelessness, I am still alive today. But I believe that statement may miss the point as badly as the insistence upon demanding proof for or against the veracity of miracle claims. I do find it interesting though, that many people who don't believe in miracles that subvert science, do intend to pray for healings and such. Some Friends apparently believe that the creator of the natural world can heal cancer or bring world peace, but can not be known truthfully in the context of resurrection.

For one, I have never believed that the world was created in six days, or that the sun revolved around the earth, or that millions of Hebrews marched across the desert for forty years. I am perfectly aware of scientific realities and the limitations of faith based upon the truth of miracles. I also have a faith in the idea that somehow, while God does not know the future, the Creator has a plan for creation and is constantly responding to human faithfulness, or human seeking, or prayer, in a manner that has real effect on our lives, and the world at large. If this is simply psychologically effective, I suggest it is no less integral to human wholeness than the same psychological effect of a sense of freedom, or liberty, or safety,; human conditions often facilitated by healthy spiritual experiences.

I also find it difficult to understand why people reject the Bible, or reject the possibility of the authority of Scripture, simply because it contains unhistorical and scientifically impossible events, or because it offends their 21st-century (or even 19th-century) social sensibilities. The truth of the Bible is not found in statements that wives must submit to their husbands, or that homosexuality is a doomed relational endeavor. The truth of the Bible is found in its revealing of a people's relationship with a God who has revealed the divine self to a people in a very specific way. That these people may have interpreted the message of the Creator in an unrealistic or seemingly immature manner is assuredly prototypical of our own contemporary relationship with any one of the many gods we experience relationship with.

Regardless of whether or not the Bible makes us feel good or bad, the Bible has been the text upon which much of the right and wrong- or the evil and compassionate - human actions are based upon. Much of our American privilege, much of the American empire, much of our American "rugged" individualism, is based upon readings of Scripture that have promoted violence and patriarchy and suffering. Many of us, especially Quakers, are particularly tuned in to the misery of such interpretations.

Yet, instead of interpreting the story in a manner that maintains the beauty of the Hebrew, Jewish, and early Christian experience, and the intensity of the creator-creation relationship that is revealed throughout, we tend to reject the text, and with it, the whole story of a God and a people who have chosen to experience the universe in covenant relationship, culminating in a reconciliation, a sense of Shalom, that will set human beings right with one another. If this is not the story of Jesus, the story that Quakers should interpret and live out, then not only those who engage in gay-bashing and patriarchy claim ownership of the text, they gain ownership of the only god most Americans have any relationship with at all.

The argument here is not whether or not Jesus walked on water. The struggle we face is one of which interpretation of the story of YHWH will give a people renewed hope for the wholeness that Abraham and Ruth, David and Mary, and Prisca and Paul all held onto as they stumbled through a similarly repressive world that was underwritten by popular religion. It is integral, however, that we reclaim the story, so as to be intelligible to the Church, to one another, and especially, to make the past intelligible to us.

What is the Quaker version of Truth?

2007-07-12T16:13:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about the comments made by Paul L. concerning Marcus Borg, and especially the tendency for contemporary FGC Friends to be particularly interested in those theological thinkers such as Borg, Spong, and the notorious Jesus Seminar. I have been present at tow of Borg's presentations, and read a number of his books. I think he has some very good things to say, and I also believe that he is not representative of the majority of Jesus Seminar entertainers who are vying for the public's theological dollar.

I have also witnessed John Spong (the bishop!) speak, and was amused by the number of folks willing to compare him to a modern day prophet (please insert ad-hominem attack). It is even more interesting that he wears the traditional clerical garments while delivering more a consumer savvy theology.

I have made the observation that some Friends have grown fond of such theology simply by browsing the available titles in the FGC Bookstore catalog. In seems to me that so many folks are trying to distance themselves from the unfortunate or violent interpretations of the Bible that they are willing to throw away the entire story. Because Jesus didn't really walk on water, because he didn't really stop any speeding bullets, every fantastic event in the Bible must be scorned, and Jesus must be demythologized. We must have a mystic, or a sage, or a shaman, or something more interesting, because this Jewish Messiah business doesn't really hold water. And, if the words attributed to Jesus in the don't qualify him as some sort of 20th-century liberal, then he must not have really said them.

In fact, Jesus may not have said much of anything attributed to him by the biblical authors. What matters more is what the community of folks who remembered this revolutionary peace-maker as the human expression of the one true God. Just because Jesus may not have said "blessed are the Peace-makers" (though I believe he did) or did not really make comments in favor of Torah (though I think he said, and meant, something like it) he was remembered by people faithful to the vision expressed through the life of Jesus as exemplifying just such a statement.

Martin Luther King Jr. made a number of statements about a number of things. Remembering them accurately really does no-one any good if they don't live a life that gives meaning to them. And if you don't think the story of Moses and the Exodus is true, then you have not looked very closely at the life of Dr. King. And if you don't think the story of Jesus as a man of sacrifice and non-violence, then you don't know the story of Keshia Thomas of Ann Arbor, MI. when a racist white man who was marching near the Klan one Saturday morning was attacked by leftist demonstrators (many of them probably called themselves Christians), this African -American woman did not jump in, but threw her body over the white man so that he would not be beaten any worse than he already was. The Jesus of the Bible is not a man of words, but a person of action, and through the lives of the faithful, he is not a sage or a really good guy, but a reflection of his one true God, whose life an ministry welcomes us into the story of a God of rescue and liberation.

It may be true that the resurrection did not happen, but only because the communities of Christ do not live the kind of lives that make it a reality. Truth is identified by the fruits that the story told on behalf of truth produces. Liberal democracy produces a truth of nuclear bombs and economic domination. Communism reflects the truth of its own story. As does Quakerism. The question I pose to FGC Friends is, what story do you want to represent the truth? That of the Biblical Jesus as represented by a community of non-violence, non-coercion, and faith, or that of John Shelby Spong and the Jesus Seminar, who only have room for a truth that has no meaning.

What covenant, and who's marriage...relationships and the Church

2007-07-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

I am terribly sorry that I have to miss the exchange of marriage vows taking place under the care of my monthly meeting in Grand Rapids. I look forward to the public affirmation of covenant relationships, and find that such occasions bring forth feelings about my own marriage. And today, Jenn reminded me, is our 11th anniversary. I can't think of anything that reflects my own relationship with the Creator more than my covenant commitment to my partner. I forgot today was our anniversary, just like I forgot to pray this morning. We don't celebrate, but it appears I am as full of myself as others suggest, for I thought nothing of it.

However, my forgetfulness is but a reminder of the priorities that covenant relationships demand. Just one of those priorities, as suggested by my reading of the Bible, is submission to the greater good of the relationship. This is not a "wives submit to your husbands" thing. It is not a suggestion that relationships that are marred by domination and violence take a priority over the stability of an abused (or abusive) partner. It is a suggestion, however, that the health of covenant relationships are one of the most important aspects of faith and community. And, the very idea that we publicly affirm such relationships, under the care of the community, suggests to me that marriage, or any other covenant union, is not only expressive of the love between two people, but an expression of the importance of intimate relationships to the health of the community.

Relationships are very much the business of the church. Indeed, if we are to see a reversal of the failure of so many covenant relationships in our generation, it might be said that the faith community need to take a more active role in nurturing, guiding, and eldering those couples who are falling in love. Relationships are the business of the church, because it is the church that some couples turn to as a legitimizing factor in their covenant with one another. Yet, if we are not caring for our peers while they are exploring the realm of covenant, it suggests that isolation is the norm for partnerships, and not active reflection of God's love to the world around us.

Relationships need to be public, or they are doomed to dysfunction. I remember when a woman at seminary asked me why my name alone was on the carton of eggs my partner sells, and not hers, though she does most of the work. While the reasons Jenn did this is not important. What is important is that a woman in the community expressed an interest in the health of our covenant because it appeared for an instant to be lacking in a commitment to the egalitarian values of Friends. How many of us would have simply felt sorry for Jenn that she was so dominated and has to wear that head covering.

I don't mean to be facetious by using this example. It is healthy for a community, when it feels uneasy about the power differences in relationships, or the ability of both partners to thrive, to bring concerns to the forefront, not only as a matter of love, but as a matter of integrity for the health of every relationship within the community.

And, I am not suggesting that we use proof texts from the Greek Testament to define appropriate marriage practices. Matthew 18 offers the proper narrative approach. Whatever a community lovingly approves of on earth (binds) will be met with the approval of the Creator. It also suggests that what is rejected as inappropriate or coercive (loosing) is rejected as a possible reflection of God's will for covenant relationships. Where two or three will be gathered, Jesus will be there in support of decisions reached in love. By this measure we offer guidance to newlyweds and 50 year veterans alike.

So, when committed partners approach our meetings with a request that they receive a public affirmation of their relationship, we are not providing a civil service. We are instead committing ourselves as a people to lift up such relationships as integral to the community's ability to love and care for one another, and celebrate through our commitments to our partners our own commitment to God.

Thinking of John Woolman

2007-07-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

This song is written by a band called Temple of the Dog, and it is called Hunger Strike
For a variety of reasons, it brings to mind the integrity of John Woolman. While I am very aware that Woolman would never steal food from anyone, this song nevertheless captures the struggles of Friends trying to live lives of justice in the midst of unjust and exploitative economies. Whether we are products of the18th century, or 21st century, faithful living requires sacrifice.

I don't mind Stealing Bread From the mouths of decadence...
But I can't feed on the powerless When my cup's already overfilled
But it's on the table, The fire's cooking
And they're farming babies, and the slaves are all working...
Blood is on the table,the mouths are chokin'...

I'm goin' hungry...

I don't mind Stealing Bread From the mouths of decadence...
But I can't feed on the powerless When my cup's already overfilled
But it's on the table, The fire's cooking
And they're starving babies, And the slaves are all working...
And it's on the table,The mouths are choking...

I'm going hungry...

Warning: Ad-Hominem Attacks and Random Thoughts on Michael Moore

2007-07-03T15:14:00.000-07:00

You gotta hand it to Michael Moore. He has found a gold mine in the mass-media market, using the same old tricks that right-wing media commentators have been using for years. Characterize your opponents as the evil enemy. Make use of extraordinary hyperbole and utilize emotion wrenching visual images, mixed with market-tested ad hominem attacks, and laugh all the way to the bank. The funny thing is, he is not only profiting handsomely from a medium that makes million in profits by exploiting tragedy and manipulating truth, he could be a poster boy for the mainstream myth of the "American Dream." Poor boy from Flint makes good, Viva la America!

The work of this fellow former Flint resident (folks in my family worked for Buick for years, and I have relatives who have stayed) shows that free speech is truly a profitable endeavor if marketed in a professional manner. We should all be thankful that Hollywood is witness to the fact of what a really astute person working within the existing market structures can accomplish politically. Because of Michael Moore, We are now better equipped to insist that the consumerism and decadence that drives us (especially me) to the very mental and emotional state of dysfunction that we currently disdain be cared for by corporate America for free. You made me this way, now treat me.

Yet, this is not a rant about the evils of socialized medicine. Every single citizen of the World is owed an equal opportunity to enjoy medical care regardless of income. However, we had better be working to prevent the diseases that are making all of us ill, such as free-market or state-sanctioned capitalism, and the demand that our lives be free from sacrifice or want.

Perhaps I should give up on watching movies, and stop listening to talk-radio or NPR, and give up the profit-driven life. We could survive together, and then we could invite the poor, and the sick, and the elderly to contribute to our community as we know they can. Jesus healed so that people who were ritually excluded from community could find covenant relationships again. We can reflect God's desire that people enjoy wholeness by offering relationships free of consumer driven priorities, schedules, and values. I wonder if anyone would make a movie about that? Perhaps Remember the Titans?

Promises, Promises, Promises

2007-06-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me in the midst of prayers last evening how thankful I am for the relationships that I enjoy in my life. Particularly the relationship that continues to develop between the Creator and myself. Things have not been going smoothly over the past few weeks, and at points I have felt overwhelmed by the obstacles that have appeared. Years ago, of course, I would have simply ignored them and drank more whiskey, made things worse for everyone, and blamed everyone else for my troubles. But now, I pray - and last night, it came to me that God was not looking for me to pray for a way out of, or around, the problems that are present in my life. He was just asking me to be present.

So I didn't pray for magical intervention and deliverance from the difficulties of life. I did experience, in the fullness of God's presence, a joyfulness at one in the morning, because God was there for me. I knew that despite the fact of failures, tragedies, and bad choices, I was loved. And accepting that I was loved, and valued, and wanted by a Loving Spirit, makes it possible for me to enjoy the fruits of other relationships that help me get through the pissy parts of life. Because of that sense of pure lovingkindness that I experience with YHWH, I can truly love and receive love from others in my life. I can love my wife and children, and I can love the stranger and see God reflected through her.

The funny thing is, there would not seem for most to be much deliverance in this experience. My problems are still real, and they will not go away because God loves me. Also, the wars of the world still rage on, people still starve, and young people are still being murdered and imprisoned in our nation's cities. Sometimes, it really doesn't seem like the God that is revealed by Jesus does a damn thing for anyone. Jesus goes to the cross, the disciples are mostly martyred, and I can't buy any food.

But I don't really think this is God's problem. I certainly don't follow the script of Job, and I am not prepared to blame God for not acting in my life according to the dictates of my own preferences or will. Indeed, God doesn't promise us much of anything, other than we are saved as a people from our rejection of God's will by the ministry of Jesus. It is Jesus who welcomes us into a narrative that reminds us that salvation comes not through liberal democracy, freedom fighting, or free markets, but through a community of servants who act as a reflection of a reality that exposes the world's offer of freedom as a lie. YHWH is a God of love, peace, and justice, and YHWH expects that the people of God will strive to live such a life. But there is no promise that it will be easy, and there is no promise of individual success. There is only a promise (or hope?) of relationship between the Creator and the creature, and between the created in the context of the Church. Our salvation may be that we never have to go through our difficult times alone.

I know this doesn't seem fair, especially if your getting the crappy end of the stick. What the hell does relationship do for you if your losing your house? Or have lost your husband, or have been imprisoned unjustly. I can't even try to answer questions of theodicy, so I 'll spare you. But I will once again state that if your faith community is not helping you find food and shelter while your at rock bottom, then you need a new community. And if your church is not walking down the lonely path of loss when your husband is gone, then you need a new church. And if you are not exhorting your fellow worshippers to labor intensely in order to liberate the oppressed, you are inviting similar circumstances into your own life.

It is because we know that life isn't fair that we pull together in communities that offer themselves as salve for the wounds of life. We offer relationship, because it is relationship alone that offers the hope we need as a people of peace and justice to make the changes necessary to reflect God's intentions. The problem so many believers have today is that they have been sold a bill of goods by preachers who tell them that God exists to underwrite our American lifestyles, profit margins, and foreign policy. If your not a member of the middle-class, then you must not have the faith required by God to be blessed with a Cadillac.

Believe it or not, I saw a Cadillac in West Alexandria, OH with a vanity plate that read "askd rcvd." It's theology like that that drive people to blame God for injustice, and not their own apostate churches. But what is truly amazing, is how quickly I have turned a gentle musing about prayer and love into a rant about socio-economic injustice. Who says there is no such thing as sin.

A few thoughts on the 17th century

2007-06-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

I'm certainly no historian, and I am well aware of the dangers of trying to draw conclusions from a few weeks of research on any topic, but something has struck me about early Quakerism and continuity. Many of you probably understand this, but it is simply amazing to me that the Society of Friends still exists. Not because of any recent problems in our denomination (though I've had plenty to say about that), but because of the odds of any religious sect of the mid 17th century struggling through the treacherous political and religious environment of the English Civil War and restoration.

The more I learn about the peculiarities of early Friends, the more it seems that those earliest pioneers were not so unique. Many of the peculiarities that we cite today as uniquely Quakerly, such as women ministers, refusal to tithe, simplicity or plainness in speech and dress, and the prioritizing of social justice issues, were common to various sects throughout 17th century England. In fact, the critique of ceremony, rites, and outwardly lavish worship services, and a professional clerical class were founded in the work of Wycliffe in the 14th Century. Some of the seemingly peculiar Quaker tenets were simply common to a variety of radical, and not so radical English religious and political movements.

Yet, with the exception of more mainstream expressions of Protestantism like Presbyterianism, which was well established in Scotland and on the Continent, and Puritanism, which had a great military leader and had its roots in the Tyndale/Lollard movement inspired by Wycliffes's work, only the Religious Society of Friends and Baptists made it through the toughest times of this radical era.

Persecution, infighting, (and in the case of the Levellers and outright extermination) and apocalyptic burnout were the demise of movements like the Seekers, the Family of Love, and the Fifth Monarchists. But Quakers and Baptists made it through, and I think there might be two reasons, though academically trained Friends' Historians might disagree.

For one, the Baptists and Quakers organized and developed structure. As much as I have railed against the work of modern Yearly Meetings in the past, I remain convinced that the support and discipline of the organized ecclesiastical structure of early Friends pushed them through to the point of taking advantage of their extraordinary growth during more apocalyptic inclined times. Friends had staying power because, at some point, they invested in a future and stability instead of maintaining apocalyptic theology as their source of fuel.

Secondly, Friends insisted on worshipping publicly, even when it was illegal, and dangerous, and there was the threat of violence. We have all heard the stories of the meeting that was kept alive by the children of imprisoned Friends during the worst times of persecution. Friends worshipped publicly, because they sought to prove that they were not among those who sought to overthrow the existing order, per say, but to be numbered among the righteous, who could do nothing else than to practice their conscience driven theology publicly as a witness to the desire of God. Friends insistence on worshipping in public despite persecution was a source of much support, not only from sympathisers, but from opponents as well.

What does this mean for contemporary Friends? I suppose that we might take a look at our public witness, what we say to the world as Friends, and declare ourselves committed not only to the idea of peace, but to publicly providing examples of what our vision of peace in a broken world looks like. I think we might also look to our Yearly Meetings to be more active in the maintaining the spiritual health Monthly Meeting, and commit to forging new commitments to statements of unity or commonality that we might use to make our witness more visible.

In the end, it all has to be Spirit driven, and I pray that we all receive a healthy dose of the Spirit.

achoo!

2007-06-22T14:41:00.000-07:00

My son Dylan sneezed today and I said "Bless you." He replied, "No dad, you mean bless my community."

Don't put God in a box

2007-06-21T15:02:00.001-07:00

I am having a difficult time finding ways to respond to the already worn phrase "you can't put God in a box!" As soon as someone suggests that I am putting God in a box, I am fully aware that they are gauging my Fowler stage at a level that is far below their own familiarity with stage six, or even seven. You can tell a person who has reached stage six, or even seven, on the Fowler gauge because they always spend more energy on denying their superiority than they do on reflecting a God that actually has personality. But, I digress. It may be that anyone who has had a definite, if not defining, experience of God in a manner that allows for intimate relationship with the Creator is just plain spiritually immature. Who are we to say that God is a God of Peace and Justice.

I believe that God has been revealed in specific ways, most specifically as a God of peace and justice. So when I say that, along with suggesting that God has created humanity for relationship, and is best reflected in a community that is dedicated to witness to peace and justice, am I putting God in a box? How can I make a claim that God wills peace for humanity if I do not believe this has been expressly revealed by the Creator? Of course, many would suggest that God does not will anything. Heaven forbid those radical peacemongers go around inspired by some delusion that they know what God is thinking.

Of course, there are plenty of people who are very comfortable going to church on Sundays who feel that it is indeed they that know the will of god, and not those other apostates. That is fine. Let the guide to discerning revelation be non-coercive expression of such revelation by a voluntary community of believers. God's will is might be known by the fruit that a community produces. Hatred might be a product of failed theology, but love is the measure of God's will. And it is my intention to limit the possibilities of God's will to those that reveal a god of Peace and Justice. Even if that puts God in a box.

If we don't believe that God has somehow defined the divine self for the purpose of strengthened relationship with creation, or revealed the divine self in specific ways, such as the ancient narrative of chosen, and fallen, individuals and prophets, then we are never to understand who we are. We are not only defined by our God, but we only know ourselves in relationship with God.

But what does any of this have to do with Fowler stages. Most sixes and sevens feel that universals and "enlightened" sensibilities are the mature path to tolerance and peace. That may be true in one sense, but there is another sense of universalism (not salvation theories) that concerns me. Once a majority has decided upon the universal, who will listen to the prophets? Will there even be a need for prophets? Because without distinctives and peculiarities, we become one big homogeneous faith community that thrives upon the co-opting of heresies as a means of unity, without the valuable and challenging growth that comes from ecclesiastical diversity. Trust me, the call for diversity that is on the lips of so many is simply an insistence that everyone evolve into a corporate reflection of a more marketable god. Someone easier to be in relationship with, who will underwrite our spiritual picking and choosing so that we are wrapping God into a nice package... sort of a gift to ourselves.

musings about grace

2007-06-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

I was talking with some friends a few days ago about the idea a individuals being blessed, or someone personally receiving God's grace as a gift solely intended for that person. It is an unwelcome idea that there is a God who acts in day-to-day activities, bestowing blessings on nice middle-class westerners, but overlooking those poor Nicaraguan papists or Haitian pagans.
Did slave owners believe they were blessed by God when they reaped profits from the slave economy. Do American fundamentalists believe they are blessed because they believe in a six-day creation epic and others might be cast into a fiery Hell because of their faith in science.

I think that God has blessed the whole world, and that the distribution of Grace has been once-and-for-all event, through the fulfillment of covenant in the life of Jesus. However, just as YHWH had hoped to bless the nations through Israel, and just as Jesus called together groups of followers to usher in the realm of God, so God has chosen the Body of Christ as the corporate vehicle for the dissemination of God's blessings and grace. According to my account, the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the every nation being blessed, and every person experiencing God's loving grace, is the Church! It is the fault of the Western world that God's blessing and grace has been hoarded and manipulated and defended militarily at the expense of the poor and oppressed. Salvation comes not through some magic incantation memorized from Romans (10:9-10), but through the work of the Church.

Am I suggesting that there is no salvation outside of the Church? No, I am suggesting that as long as the Church remains patently unfaithful to the example of Christ, the world cannot know an alternative to violence through which to experience, or share, blessing and grace. Even those preaching peace politically or ecumenically, can not do so truthfully unless they do so from a position of powerlessness. Political power does not bring salvation, any more than war is a means to justice. Only through the non-coercive work of a community of faith can God's love be truly reflected. Upon the world's recognition of such a loving response to fear and injustice, Salvation becomes not an idea, but a hope for everyone who chooses to participate, regardless of the path they choose.

It is through community that blessings are known, because blessings are the product of relationship. Not only with God, but between Friends, and especially with enemies. People know love and become whole, not because God has decided to bless them over another. People know love and wholeness because they experience it through relationship with others.

theology of suffering?

2007-06-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the place of self-sacrifice and suffering in Quakerism, and I'd like to share some of those thoughts. Early Friends sacrificed a great deal in terms of personal liberty, economic stability, and their physical safety and well-being. If you wanted to be a Friend in the mid 17th century, it was going to cost you. We have all heard or read the stories of the brutal oppression of those who called themselves Friends.

Yet, similarly to Anabaptist thinking, Friends may have expected the persecution because they knew that the darkness would persecute God's "Children of the Light." Of course the Quakers of the past participated in the legal process to try and end persecution, whereas Mennonites did not, but few Friends of that era express surprised that they were being attacked violently, legally and theologically by most of their contemporaries.

I believe that those Friends remained faithful despite the persecution because they knew in their souls that they were being obedient to the very Christ within, or the will of God as expressed through the Light of Christ. Once one was privy to such religious truth, one became willing to suffer in order to remain faithful to the truth. In fact, one went on specific missions to preach the truth in spite of the suffering that would result. George Fox held a Meeting for Worship in prison while he was at liberty after the 2nd Conventicles Act, lamenting that he hated prison meetings because if he was going to be arrested, he'd rather it happen in public.

Without such sacrifice, which I believe is an integral part of the Christian-Quaker spiritual narrative, there would be no community of truth with the willingness to offer real alternatives to the violence of empire, economies, and cultures. However, the very suggestion that suffering is a necessary aspect of any spiritual truth is unquestionably dangerous. Haven't enough women, slaves, and oppressed peoples everywhere been told that suffering is the proper response to sexism, injustice and powerlessness. How many housewives have suffered through abusive relationships for the "good of the marriage" or the "sake of the children?" How many victims of empire were told that part of their colonized status was to accept their new Christian role as servants to their masters?

In light of this truth about the way theologies of sacrifice have been used to inflict suffering upon those the church was intended to liberate, how can I ask others to sustain such a spiritual path. I believe, first, that self-sacrifice or suffering must be intentional. It must by well founded in healthy emotional and psychological states, by persons who are not already victims of oppression. Secondly, such intentional sacrifice and suffering must be borne by communities, and not individuals. Without communities of peace that are intent on liberating others from bondage to church or state (or enlightenment rationality or the current relativism), individuals will suffer alone, and that is a state of being that cries out injustice. But, sacrifice we must, if we are to leave a legacy that grows into a strong public witness for peace. If we sacrifice together, as communities of faith, we might suffer, but we will suffer with dignity. Remember, God works through us when we are weakest, when we are most Creator-reliant and committed in our faith.

Roosters, The true test of the non-violent Friend

2007-06-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

I've often said that I am not a pacifist at heart, nor am I intuitively pacifist, nor am I a very good pacifist. But I do try, because that is the example of Jesus, and I believe that non-violence is God's desire for humanity. If you'll allow me to say as much, pacifism is God's will. But I believe that it is nearly impossible for an individual to successfully respond to evil (or even just really mean people) in a non-violent manner, simply because it is God's will. I am convinced that it takes a community of folks that support and carry on the non-violent tradition, in order for anyone of us to fully commit to the non-violent vision of Jesus.

I worked for three years at an inner-city mission, and I first believed that I was going to instill non-violence as a value at this mission. I quickly found, that without a community of peers to reinforce non-violence as a commitment, or to lend support to non-violence as a means of conflict response, I soon forgot what it meant to value non-violence as a means to achieving justice.

I would talk to folks at meeting, but many of them were unfamiliar with the ongoing level of violence that I was dealing with, and I felt, perhaps totally incorrectly, that Friends had no experience of the level of violence that I was experiencing. I was totally conflicted in my relationship with many of the men I served, because I was failing to maintain standards of communication that were reflective of the manner of Jesus. I really felt like a failure.

Then, when a time came when I had to physically coerce a man to prevent him from doing great physical harm to another, I was even less prepared to deal with the propriety of my response. i had lost the ability to respond to violence with integrity, because I had lost sight of the story which informs my ability to act in any other way than that which is generally deemed acceptable to the world.

It was not the fact that I needed to physically restrain another person. That was a necessary act. But the anger, and lack of respect that I had for that person at the moment of conflict, could have easily ended in a less favorable manner than it did, because I was prepared to escalate. My inner-city alter-ego had won the day.

I believe that I lost sight of that vision that Friends claim as their heritage, which identifies us as a peculiar people who do not use violence as a means to an end, because we a part of different story than the one that so many others have accepted violence as the appropriate response to fear. I am convinced that the most necessary aspect of non-violence is that of maintaining a community of people who act regularly to inform one another that we are a people who only know one response to fear. A people who have forgotten what it means to commit violence, and have raised children who have never known that violence was once acceptable.

Now, I am surrounded by pacifists, many who have never been confronted with the violence that so many struggle with every day. It will be easy for me to forget that responding to fear with love is laborious, and can never be truly accomplished without the experience that sometimes, the bad guys win, and we are called to sacrifice as a reflection of God's love, and not God's strength.

Regardless of who I am, or who I'd like to be however, reality is always lurking around the corner at my family farm. We have roosters, and it seems that roosters have been created for no other purpose than to test my commitment to peace. Roosters are always on the attack, and while they don't much mess with me because I wear steel-toed boots, they are always messing with the kids. As a family, we had the kids carry rooster sticks to ward off any attacks, but more often than not, it was one of my boots that drove the rooster off. It seems that god is always reminding me that, while I claim to be a pacifist, I am more of a sinner, and I need to constantly remember both.

Why I Love my Friends

2007-06-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

I should provide everyone with some background concerning my journey along the Friendly path. It's really quite amazing that I bring such a heaping helping of Christocentricity to the FGC potluck. When I first came to the Grand Rapids Friends Meeting, I made it very clear to everyone that I was a non-believer. This was quite acceptable to all of those great folks that I latched onto early on in my experience. As most of you who read this blog can tell, I am not your typical reserved, or "seasoned," Friendly presence. My seminary peers will tell you in no uncertain terms that I am conversationally challenged when engaged in certain subject matter. (But I do try to listen.)

Anyway, It was only due to the great patience shown by GR Friends (especially during Meeting for Business or during committee meetings), that I ever enjoyed the opportunity to mature - not so much as a Quaker - as a person. My spiritual journey, and my relationship with YHWH, would have never left the starting point if not for the nurture of some very open-minded and tolerant folks. I am joyfully indebted to those seasoned "elders" of the GR Friends Meeting who walked with me as I recovered from alcohol abuse and mental illness and received a faith that has brought with it new possibilities.

It is not my suggestion that Friends look to abort such faith experiences such as mine by declaring ourselves so Christ-centered so as to limit faith commitments to Quakerism. Yet, I am suggesting that Friends retain our historical identity as a Christian community, and that we publicly state as much in our faith and practice. I do not see how such a commitment would drive others away, or make experiences like mine an impossibility. I would think that it is easier for people to build stronger spiritual ties with a faith that retains an consistent message, than one who is losing its common language.

In the end, It might be simpler to say that I have some ideas about the future of Quakerism as a whole, because ESR is an international group of students that have an interest, not only in the future of Friends, but in theology and faith in general. These are probably not the discussions that my meeting at home are particularly interested in engaging in. I think they are more vested in peacemaking, community building, and faith exploration between friends. And in the end, that is where I want to be.

lions, tigers, and nontheist quakers -Oh My!

2007-06-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

As you can tell, it is a very slow day at work. While taking a break from reading work-related literature, I found myself staring at various items concerning the idea of "Convergent Friends." Indeed, the blog of my fellow GR Friends member Kim states that she is a convergent Friend. Since I am sojourning at Earlham School of Religion, I have not been dutiful in keeping up with Kim's theology, and I can't quite get a grasp yet what convergent friends represent. Through some research, however, I came across a "mythbusters" page and two of the things that caught my eye were 1) the idea that liberal, conservative and evangelical Friends could reach unity, and 2) the accusation that non-theist Friends were somehow unwelcome in convergent Friends circles.

Now, I want to make it perfectly clear, again, that I know nothing about the Convergent Friends "movement," and that the opinions expressed in this blog are not in anyway a comment on any such movement. I was simply intrigued by the two thoughts mentioned above.

As for non-theist Friends, and we were just talking about this a few weeks ago at ESR, I simply don't know why they would call themselves Quakers. Of course, it seems that anyone these days can apply the Friends label to themselves, and indeed, claim faithfulness to the ongoing Quaker narrative that began in the 1640's. Yet, I somehow don't see how non-theism and Quakerism can be appropriately aligned withing the context of a "Religious Society."

Does this mean that non-theists should be rooted out and burned at the stake? No, though the idea of persecution might provide a focus for Quakers to unify around. I do think, however, that it is important that Friends resist the continuing trend toward accommodating non-theist and pluralist or sychronist views by altering the language of our faith to reflect such attitudes among worshippers. I firmly believe that if we lose sight of our Christ-centeredness, our firm rootedness in the early Friends belief in the saving work of God through Jesus Christ, then we will lose our identity as Quakers as well. Without the language of Jesus Christ, as expressed by early Friends, we will become a people without a history.

This denial of history, the denial of responsibility for, or the our benefit from, our past as a people, is troubling. We do as much, especially by erasing from the Christ language of early Friends while retaining other peculiarities that we find more comfortable, such as waiting worship. A denial of Christ-centerdness is a denial of our family, and while we can certainly change our supposed destiny, we should never distance ourselves from roots.

An example of such distancing is found in the modern way in which many European-Americans deny any complicity with the institution of slavery. "I never owned any slaves" is the popular modern refrain. The fact is, however, that many white folks continue to benefit from years of the suppression of economic and social opportunities for a people who built much of this nation without proper compensation. To deny our complicity in fact is a denial of responsibility to redeem and reconcile relationships that were expressions of racial dominance and injustice.

Many Friends come to Quakerism as "refugees" from Christianity, and I can understand that many have been hurt by the tradition. I also understand that Christianity is responsible for underwriting unjust and oppressive relationships throughout history. Both early and contemporary Friends try to address such issues. But if we lose our history in the process of reconciliation, we forget all of the harm of the past. The past cannot be rejected in favor of something more palatable for the future. If we forget our role as the oppressor, we are doomed to allow it to happen again.

George Fox and his cronies saw real problems in the Christian Church, and sought to correct them. They did not, however, throw out the narrative that gave them their identity. they worked within the narrative to offer an alternative to the apostasy that had overrun established religion. They new who they were, and they operated within the framework of an ongoing identity that gave them an accountability to the tradition.

Oh my goodness, I'm rambling, What in the world does all of this have to do with non-theist Friends. Paul Buckley stated in class that it is one thing to accept a fish out of water. but if that fish is smart, he or she will flood the environment for its own benefit, at a great cost to those who cannot otherwise thrive.

Another day in the life

2007-06-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

The situation my 15 year-old son has gotten himself into should inspire plenty of confused journaling, if not a superb plot for popular teen literature. Imagine this. Mom is cleaning the room of her guitar playing son, and finds much evidence that guitar playing son is journeying down a wayward path. A path that goes beyond simply taking the guitar away for the weekend. So, this concerned mother calls the father of the young man cited above and suggests that maybe a summer spent on the farm might be a good idea. So - we have an inner-city Detroit youth who enjoys rule-breaking, being sent to an Ohio farm to straighten himself up and redeem himself. But wait, there is plenty more...

No only is this youngster being sent to an Ohio farm, but his father and step-family are plain Quakers. No TV, no video games, no stereo, and no Internet in the home. Better yet, the house that he will be moving to is only 1000 square feet. The inner-city youth will have to keep his belongings, including his guitar and amp, out in the shed adjacent to the house. I have already envisioned this self-described anarchist sitting outdoors with his electric guitar playing before and audience of our 40 chickens. I think all involved will be amused, except perhaps the lad from Detroit. Did I mention no game-boys?

Anyway, this is all in the planning stage, but I am hoping that all the plans that are falling into place will be set into motion. I am looking forward to one terrific summer.

Plainness, its not just for librarians anymore

2007-05-31T15:27:00.000-07:00

Right from the start, I'll have to apologize to Kim, and Mary, and Betty, and oh so many others. Quakerism is full of Librarians, and they are damn good ones as well! But for the life of me, I can't think of anything more stereotypically plain that the stereotype of the common librarian, or libronus plainiatis? Anyway, there is a point to all of this.

Most Quakers don't wear plain clothes anymore. Plain clothes are decidedly an anomaly amongst the Society. There are many Friends who "dress down" and wear only clothing from resale shops, or go the jeans and sweatshirt route, and feel they are fulfilling the "spirit" of the early Friends insistence on wearing prescribed clothing. That may or may not be true, but it's not the issue of plainness that I want to discuss.

Plainness was an expression, not of Quaker insistence of looking alike so that they could keep people in line (though it might have turned into such an endeavor later). It was an expression of self-denial that reflected the knowledge that Jesus' call to bear one's cross necessarily included the tearing away of those luxuries that could get in the way of discipleship. Quakers practiced self-denial because, like waiting worship, it stripped away the will to be who we aim to be, and not who the living God wants us to be. Waiting worship is self-denial in the sense that we deny ourselves all those comforting rituals and aesthetically pleasing religious practices in favor of a more formidable experience of the Creator. An experience where all the trappings that keep us entertained are stripped away, and whatever it is that we experience is undoubtedly the invitation of the Spirit to know and understand the message that God intends for us to hear.

God's presence is not invoked through the singing of praises or the reciting of creeds. God's presence is constant, and once we deny ourselves of the comfort of religious clutter, we can wait on that ever-present spirit to shape us in the image of the Creator, and not vice-verse. But, you might ask, what does this have to do with clothing?

There are plenty of great reasons why Quakers should dress plain, but I will only focus on the aspect of self-denial. When we practice such self-denial as the wearing of plain clothes entails, we can begin what to learn what it means to be an outcast because we don't wear power ties or bell-bottoms. In fact, once we rid ourselves of adornments, we might know what it is really like to be pre-judged or discriminated against based on first glances. Or, we might finally know what it means to be committed to a public statement, not only against sweatshops and frivolity, but against the machinations of an industry that engage in the manipulation of people's self-image and self-worth, their sexuality (especially), and desire for an expression of an individuality that has left them unable to communicate outside of the fact that they dress in a manner that publishes their lack of self-worth, their acceptance of the degradation of their sexuality, and their willingness to be consumers first and foremost.

And as for the "plain" librarians. Well, the librarians I know are not plain at all. While they certainly don't wear flashy clothing, that is not my point. My point is that they are all obvious expressions of God's lovingkindness for the world, and they are some of the most incredible people to talk with, and to worship with, and to walk through life with. All it took was to develop a relationship that was not based upon uncertain projections of who they would like me to think they are, but who they really turned out to be. Plain clothes are not necessarily a projection of who we are, but who we refuse to be. The affirmative aspect of plain clothing, however, is more edifying. We empty ourselves of insecurities brought on by social standards, and fill ourselves with the identity that will reflect who God wants us to be.

The Plain Quaker is Back!

2007-05-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

Hello all, I am back on the blog scene and hoping to keep up with it through the summer, as I have started a new job and might be able to find 15 minutes a day to let the world know what the difference between right and wrong is! Yes, I am quite aware that this statement is not very reflective of Quaker admonishments against claiming any real truth outside of the idea that peace is nice, and Buddha is an appropriately Quakeresque path to a god. I am deeply sorry to offend any Friendly sensibilities by saying such things, but indeed, It makes me feel better to rant and rave about the many things I can do nothing about.

Incredibly, I succeeded at passing my Basic Greek II course with Susan Jeffers. Susan is a great person, and a more that competent ESR/Bethany/Quaker instructor. The next time I have the opportunity to be a student under her tutelage, however, it will be in a traditional classroom setting. I will never take another e-course again. I have neither the discipline nor the temper for such an endeavor. Susan will be happy to know, however, that I am continuing to work on my Greek skills by translating the Sermon on the Mount during my evening free-time. I must say, however, that my skills are still lacking at this point.

Anyhow, I hope to keep up to date on things, and I hope everyone who once read the content of this trash will return as faithful supporters. Blessings, Scot

Super Bowl iconoclasm

2007-02-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

So, it's that time of year when all eyes are focused upon the NFL prize, and all true blooded Americans, as well as a multitude of cosmopolitan Midwesterners, will anxiously await to have their regional loyalties and marginal gambling allegiances vindicated by the ultimate victory. Indeed, somewhere in the middle of an Indiana or Illinois cornfield, it will smell like napalm on Monday morning.
As a marginal sports enthusiast (and a dedicated U of Mich. football fan) I can understand the excitement of this culmination of athletics and consumerism as an experience that every pop culture adherent must participate in. Yet as someone whose loyalties are bound up by an ancient regionalism that commands allegiance to the Lions, I am uniquely qualified to pooh-pooh this weekends event as nothing more than an idolatrous festival to capitalism and consumerism run amok.
I have vowed not to participate in the Super Bowl festivities for the past four years, only to be co-opted by the fact that I have worked along side of marginalized Americans who feed into the holiday-like atmosphere of Super Bowl Sunday. I have found that homeless folks and institutionalized teens somehow feel as if they had some stake in all of the pageantry, as the tributes to multi-millionaire players and multi-national corporations flicker across the wide screen televisions that are fully glorified by the spectacle.
The odd thing is, that the Super Bowl parties I participated in over the first three years of this stretch were all sponsored by churches or para-church organizations. Of course, these parties included prayer time and spiritual sharing amidst the partially exposed breasts and geriatric entertainers of the half-time extravaganzas. While it seems fairly obvious to me that followers of Jesus might do well to steer clear of the mammon worshipped during Super Sunday, it appears that I am in the minority (imagine that). Even my fellow Quaker seminarians are invested in the epic struggle between modern day gladiators (or plantation tenants) that, according to some feminist organizations, is also the occasion of the highest incidence of spousal abuse during the year. So come on everyone, put on your blue jerseys, drink lots of Budweiser or Coors light or Absolut and cheer your gambling interest on to victory. And enjoy the commercials. I hear their often better than the half-time shows.

should we be relevant?

2007-01-23T07:58:00.000-08:00

My question in ethics today was, should Christians insist upon social relevance when developing ethics or in responding to social issues. I raised the Question because I was reading a book for class written by John Cobb, and he was fairly insistent upon developing an ethics that was relevant to the world at large, possibly in hopes of guiding the culture toward a Christian end, if not necessarily by Christian means. Of course, one has to ask if unethical means justify an ethical end.
For example, many Quakers voted for either John Kerry, or the Green Party in the last election as a response to the horror of the Bush administration. When questioned about the ethics of voting for someone who would continue the "war on terror" and was totally absorbed in a quest to defend an American way of life that is inherently oppressive to millions, if not totally obscene in it consumerism, many said it was a matter of getting Bush out of office. Oh, I see, the lesser of two evils route.
Yet, isn't participation in the American electoral system participation in an unjust system. Did not a vote for John Kerry undermine any real chance that an alternative voice to the American political spectrum would be heard. And, aren't we ethically wedded to challenging every injustice at the core, such as the illegitimacy of most claims to authority and power made by any government that refuses to value life when it comes at the expense of profit or individual freedoms? and don't get me started on the dope smoking hippies of the Green Party! Ok, some of them are nice folks...
Anyway, if voting for the liberal anti-war agenda personified in the form of Dennis Kucinich is being relevant to our society simply because it is participation in the liberal democracy that holds the world at bay with nuclear weapons and Baywatch, no thanks. I might rather watch Baywatch... or the Super Bowl. Then my opinions will not only be relevant to most Americans because I am culturally informed, but because I hold on tightly to those values that suggest the right to oppress and objectify women ethically trump any woman's right to deprive me culturally mandated bliss.

Business as usual gooood...sectarianism baaad!

2007-01-18T08:26:00.000-08:00

The only reality in the world, or so it seems, is that there are three natures of truth. Most folks are oppressed, a few folks are oppressors, and many of us simply underwrite the status quo. Within this context, it my contention that A) there will never be world peace, and B) most Americans have little or no interest in a real world peace, because it would require a great deal of sacrifice on our part. This leads me to the role of the church, which, upon recognition that the world is oppressive, and full of violence all of the time, and reticent about suffering on behalf of others, needs a new game plan.
Oh, we should still try to change the world, or at least recognize that the world was changed drastically by the victory of God over the world's rejection of peace and justice through the resurrection, but we need to do it on Jesus' terms, and not the terms of the world that has accepted the reality that has been stated above. We need to live our lives as though the world has been changed.
It is the church's role to offer an alternative to the injustice and violence of the world by creating a lasting alternative to it, not by coercing the world into an existence that suits a morality that makes sense only to the People of God. Justice and peace are terms used by most Americans only when American interests are involved, and with little regard for how such hopes are achieved. Military might has generally failed to promote a lasting peace of any kind, unless you consider that the welcoming of defeated enemies into the domination system of western powers counts as justice. It's a tentative peace at best, held together by the fact that the US still dominates oil interests and remains the head puppeteer for most developing countries. Wait until Europe gets frustrated again. Well, except for France.
Anyway, back to the point. If we accept that there will never be world peace, then it should be the church's place to be a community separate from the world, yet insistent upon serving a world that rejects the truth of the resurrection because God commands us to relieve the suffering of those who are oppressed.
We cannot relieve suffering, however, by continuing to acquiesce to dictum of socialist nation states or the tenets of liberal democracies. We can only witness against oppression by refusing to benefit from it. They world might refuse to buy into our truth claims, but AC/DC said it best "Prophecy ain't no riddle man, to me it makes good good sense!" Actually, that's a paraphrase, but I don't think they will mind.

Am I really Shrill?

2007-01-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

Brian Young once said, "I can't wait for the parousia to happen so you won't have any more axes to grind." Well Brian, parousia is best translated as "royal presence," not "second coming" and if I'm grinding axes now, you can bet I have a thing or two say to Jesus at night about the state of the realm of God. I'm not quite falling for that "almost/not yet" stuff. The Kingdom is now!

Yet, I am more fully aware now than ever that stating there is "no king but YHWH" can offend Quaker sensibilities, primarily because there is no consensus in the ecumenical community that reflects such awkward truth telling. What I have learned now is that truth telling is in fact a practice in shrillness.

Perhaps most folks don't often quote the Hebrew Prophets because - well - they don't want anyone to think they're being shrill. Politicians and MSW's can rely on questionable empirical data to create programs for broken people that never seem to work, but a prophet challenging the whole system as being corrupt and unjust is shrill, not because she makes people feel uncomfortable, but because she challenges their very right to comfort when the culture is responsible for such suffering around the world.

It has been suggested that we all need to quiet down about issues such as same sex marriage because no one is listening. First of all, no one is listening when the state of marriage itself is challenged as a practice in self-centered relational fulfillment. Is the state of most modern marriages the crap that the anti gay and lesbian crowd is fighting to defend.

Communities need to listen to others as a practice in self-awareness and critical reflection. But they should never shy away from claiming truth, such as the truth that all covenant relationships find God's favor when the partners stay faithful to one another, and to God. I'm sorry if stating that same-sex marriages are sanctioned by God, and that those denominations that refuse to accept this as a truth are wrong, is shrill.

I'm sorry that I have so many axes to grind, but blessed are those who thirst for righteousness and justice, and insist upon it as a primary tenet of the realm of God.

Hello Again!

2007-01-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

I am very sorry for the length of time it has taken for me to get back to blogging. I am fairly inept when it comes to computer competency, and I could not figure out how to get blogspot to accept my login attempts. Anyway, the holidays are over, we've all been sick at home, even one of the hogs, and I am buried in intensives - Quakers and the Bible. In other words, I not feeling up to enlightening anyone right now, though it feels good to write again. I look forward to more long lost friends like Anne Marie. Anyway, I'll think of something more profound to write over the next few days and get back to you all. Peace and Grace to y'all, as My Greek teacher likes to paraphrase the Apostle Paul, So long

2006-12-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

Wow! this blog stuff brings surprising results. Yes Anne Marie, this is the same Scot Miller that used to go clubbing in Detroit.I never quite made it to Stanford. I have, however, had some interesting life experiences since we last talked. Send me an E-mail if you can bear the thought of me!

As for the rest of you who might think that a repentant person of marginal integrity might have money to repay my drug debts, you are sorely mistaken.

However, I can pray for you!

2006-12-17T14:05:00.000-08:00

I have just finished with meeting for worship and I was led to share some thoughts about the idea of an abusive deity. Of course, I don't feel that God is an abusive provider, but it is often mentioned at ESR, and there have been books written on the subject. I suppose some examples of God as an abuser are not only the book of Hosea, but the whole matter of the Holocaust. It seems to me, however, that if you are going to believe in a Creator God who participates in and responds to the ongoing struggles of day-to-day life, you might assume it healthy to mend the relationship. Hey, if God is prone to suffering and loss, then God is prone top the whole range of emotions, including some that might need to be forgiven. If a believer is in the state of mind that God has been more abusive to them than say, the Haitians or Vietnamese, maybe they could try practicing some forgiveness. Indeed, YHWH seems like a forgiving chap, might we practice the same type of loving response to the deity who brought us through all of the tough times in good enough shape to practice such sound theology.

Just checking in

2006-12-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've checked in, with it being the final week of the semester and such. My mind has been busy with a paper on the non-violent atonement, and with Biblical Greek, though not so much with Biblical Greek! Thinking of non-violence, however, has led me to consider the last four years of my life, spent working with many folks who do not place much stock in non-violence as an appropriate response to very much of anything.
I have spent much time in the recent years with the homeless community of Grand Rapid, and the last year with some pretty broken teens. Of course, my ideal is that I will always introduce non-violence as a way of life to the communities I work with, hoping that they might "see the light" and refute violence, and embrace conflict resolution techniques that will solve every problem and lead to world peace.
What I have learned is that it is primarily my self that needs to recommit to certain principles, but understand that non-violence is not achieved easily, nor is reconciliation, nor is justice. I am often confronted with crisis, sometime physical danger, and while I have never taken a swing at anyone, I have had to break up fights, wrestle people to the ground, and otherwise act in ways that seemingly (not seemingly, they in fact do) conflict with principles of non-violence.
My point is not that non-violence is unachievable, but that it is hard work. When we work with at-risk or oppressed communities, or even our loving neighbors, we are often confronted with the reality of violence that permeates our society.
After calling myself a pacifist for a few years, God actually put me to the test. I have come to realize that while I make many claims about non-violence, I am indeed a sinner, and I thank God for the grace I receive when I fail to love my neighbor, and when I fail to reflect God's loving will for all of creation.
The work of Jesus was tough work, and he calls us to do the same. My prayer for the night is that I might learn from my failings, to help others respond to crisis more lovingly than I often do, and that I may someday be able to contain my impulses that often guide my response to troubled and broken people and situations.

community, or not

2006-11-30T15:25:00.000-08:00

Everyone is clamoring to be part of a community, the problem being that no one wants to give up their individual desires in order to do it. Those who have had to listen to me over the past year and a half are probably sick of hearing me say it, but contemporary ideas of community are nothing more that one finding a nice club of like minded people to underwrite personal desires. Community in the postmodern sense is a collection of individuals seeking the support of friendly folks who will ooh and ahh over their dreams (which is nice, I like when people ooh and ahh over my dreams) but fail to contribute in any way to the edification of the community's growth.
Let's just say that, for instance, that there is a terribly unhealthy relationship in the midst of community, or simply one person engaging in unhealthy decision making. It is not very often that people are willing to accept personal direction for the betterment of community, at the expense of personal desires being met. Most of us would rather feel good about maintaining unhealthy relationships that meet specific needs, that might be best left unmet, instead of sacrificing for the benefit of those surrounding us.
An interesting thing is that most of our desires, most of our dreams, are dreams of self-fulfillment and aggrandizement, and not dreams that will further build our community in a manner that brings ourselves and others closer to being a community of God.
Really, it is a matter of self-definition. Am I willing to identify more closely with the needs of my neighbor than my own personal desires. That is a tough thing for an all-American boy or gal to do. It has proven difficult for me to grasp for my own behavior, yet easy to point out in others. Most of our dreams (my dreams) are based upon the idea that we have met our full potential, if not economically, than spiritually. It is amusing to me that the means that we employ to be successful financially seem to be closely related to the means we employ to move forward spiritually. We measure ourselves by personal fulfillment, (how many people have I helped today), instead of how we have served the living God by reflecting the sacrifice of Jesus, who invited people to be part of his community. Instead of serving individuals through a system of social services (which are important) we should build communities that invite and welcome the marginalized as possible contributors. Building communities that offer alternatives to those desire based clubs is one step the church needs to take in order to build faithfulness to a God that is not propped up as a mere proponent of the American experiment.

Oh, he's just a guy saying that

2006-11-29T09:17:00.000-08:00

I find it interesting that in the pursuit of equality between sexes, which should never have had to been pursued in the first place (the church has been a little behind), women continue to get the crappy end of the stick. In a movement that suggests women have been viewed solely as objects of sexual desire/fulfilment for males, or objects of sexual desire that also birth male heirs and house help, I fail to see how equality has been reached for females in the past four decades, other than the ability to perform as wage slaves, or successfully exploit wage slaves while earning lesser wages than their male counterparts for the same work. The main thrust of what I see as the biggest injustice, is that women are still viewed primarily as fodder for the ever prowling male libido, or ego. (is the really a difference?)

What seems to have happened is that while women have continued to be mostly rejected as equals in a continuing male dominated world, Western, and especially American women, tend to view themselves as being liberated primarily through a variety of expressions concerning sexual freedom. While I can definitly relate to an all out battle for a womans demand for orgasmic opportunity to be fully met, I have a hard time understanding how the ability to freely participate in a culture dominated by unhealthy, (i.e. exploitative) and still male dominated, views of sexuality and womens health concerns, equalls true freedom. Sexual fulfilment within the confines of covenant relationships are healthy. Male and female counterparts parading their availability in a context of free market intimacy is simply giving in to the ever present male need for constant stimulation, leaving women as nothing more than the sex objects they have always been to the male point of view, only now they are also responsible for supporting the family as well as doing the chores.

What might really address the problem is an all out assault on male dominance and privilege, instead of acquiesence tothe female quest for sexual opportunity that allows everyone to let their hair down, but not their guard. And for all you women in committed relationships, demand those orgasms!

Rambling on about diversity

2006-11-25T13:15:00.000-08:00

I am in the midst of an interesting conversation at work, and the question being discussed includes issues of privilege, as well as the responsibility of those who are suddenly "credentialed" to make a living in the United States. Also, there is the question of the purposes served by "diversity" projects that are common at most colleges in the US.

At the root of the question is the moral issues involved by fighting an oppressive entity, not necessarily in order to overturn the injustice that is inherent to the entity, but in order to more fully participate in it. For example, lets take the issue of gays in the military. From the Quaker perspective, homosexuals are equal to heterosexuals in the eyes of the Creator, and certain civil rights should be granted to gays and lesbians, and protected, by the state. Yet, one of the issues involved in the battle for equal rights under the law is the right to join the military.

In what way is justice served when the victim of oppression is granted the freedom to protect an oppressive system through the use of violence? On the same token, how is justice served when economically disadvantaged persons suddenly increase their earning potential. How just is it to grant someone who could not previously take advantage of economic exploitation new opportunities to further exploit. Questions like this should certainly be asked as we engage the wider culture about personal rights.

So, the question of credentialing and diversity comes up. How am I living according to the example of Jesus by participating in an academic system that primarily serves persons of privilege? How would inviting oppressed persons into academia serve to overturn that oppression?

I see possibilities for change, even through those dastardly religious institutions known as seminaries, but only if we pay more attention to hands on theology than we do to trinitarian or Eucharistic issues. And only if we listen closely to those diverse voices that we invite, perhaps hoping they might come 'round to agree with our own way of thinking, so that we can continue to facilitate change according to our own privileged terms.

2006-11-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Our family had a discussion about Christmas today at dinner. Of course, the kids are all for fully decorating the house, lots of presents, and anything else that we might fit into our small living room. Jenn likes Christmas, and would like to have decorations up as well. As for me, I can stand what Christmas has become; a commercial bonanza of glitz and debt that not only promotes the sin of materialism, it promotes the type of idolatry that Constantine hoped it would replace when Christmas was placed in competition with the foremost pagan holiday of the time. The fact that Jesus was probably born around late August or early September seems to be lost on everyone, perhaps because the very idea of Christmas has evolved to be a larger event the the humble beginnings of the Messiah.

Our daughter Emma suggests that the gift giving commemorates the story of the magi giving gifts after the birth of Jesus and his identification as a king. That is pretty clear thinking, but it seems to me that we might better celebrate the birth of Jesus by regarding his humble beginnings with a type of reverence that certainly seems missing from the debt circus that Christmas has become.

As for giving gifts, Emma is exactly right that we ought to give of ourselves, both spiritually and materially, in remembrance of Jesus, but this should certainly be done on a daily basis by both individuals and meetings as a standard liturgy of giving in the name of Christ. Once a year events magnify the boasting aspect of gift giving. Daily humility recognizes the importance of rightly sharing resources with those who need them the most.

If I hear one more commercial on the radio suggesting that a diamond proves that my wife is "the most important chapter of my life story," I'll puke. And then I'll try to express my love by dedicating every day to her emotional, spiritual, and physical needs, that we might write a life story together that doesn't need a diamond to sponsor it.

By the way, I fudged and said their could be decorations as long as they were home made, and that Emma could have Christmas lights in her room - though it might end up looking more like a Cass Corridor bar than a Quaker girl's bedroom. http://sem.earlham.edu/~millesc1/

Truth, Constantine, and Free Speech - but not necessarily intelligible

2006-11-18T07:26:00.001-08:00

Interesting thing about truth these days, is that everyone seems to cling to some concept of it, but generally rejects competing truth claims out of hand. Still, they continuously seek validation for their own reality. The claims of the mainstream church are that A) God has worked in history through Jesus Christ, and generally couches this statement in salvific terms; B) Jesus inaugurates a new way of life that reflects the presence of God's kingdom (at least partially); and C) this is the truth that preempts any other claim and should inform every legitimate world view.

However, reality and truth are indeed only real and true to the point of the explicit outcomes generated by faithfulness to a claim. In other words, the truth of the church is that A) much of its claim is propagated by coercion, and the portrait of a suffering servant as Salvific is vandalized by the violence and oppression used by the Church as a method of "evangelization" of the rest of the world. B) The new way of life that has been lived out by much of the Church, especially in the Western world, is that of economic exploitation and social injustice that betrays the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as recalled by the authors of the Gospels. C) This lived- out truth has indeed trumped the claims that the church has somehow carried on the salvific work that God has fashioned through the life of Jesus. Apparently, the ingredients of a faithful servants community have not been followed faithfully (though, perhaps, religiously) by those invested in the truth claims made by the church for centuries.

It is easy to blame Constantine for all this, though not enough Christians do, and more than enough view him as a divinely inspired hero who conquered justly in the sign of the cross. The fact may be that once Christianity became a duly recognized legal religion within the empire, it lost its radical vision of a Jesus who saves us from the machinations of empire, to the Jesus who would rather be protected and propagated through the militarily defended gospel of Caesar.

So what does the first amendment mean to the Church of God. First of all, it means that it is very easy for me to sit here and write about it because I am in fact protected by it. But we should all beware that we are still worshipping the God who liberates humanity with or without constitutional guarantees, according to God's own sense of justice, and not according to the will of a benevolent government who may or may not like what the church has to say. It seems to me, that the more we hurrah the state as the protector of justice, the less critical we are as the Body of Christ of the injustices the state carries out against those who are not protected by our Constitution. How long will the church support a system that props up dictators who suppress the same rights it reserves for its own subjects/constituents.

As we can tell by uprisings that happen throughout the world, free speech is an ideal that forces itself into political reality sooner or later in every society. Sometimes, very painfully, with tremendous loss and tremendous sacrifice on the part of those who seek it. Free Speech is a matter of justice that the people of a Living and Liberating God should insist upon. But lets not be grateful for a state that allows it on specific terms. Let's be thankful for a God who inspires us to speak out about justice and liberation and obedience to the command of equality for every person.

Let's be thankful for a Messiah who spoke out against the empire who claimed to be Representative of divine will, and more critical of a nation state that feigns to be the benevolent protector of divine interests.

Ecumenism and liberal politics

2006-11-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

At the risk of seriously offending some of the folks at my meeting back in Grand Rapids, I have been thinking about ecumenism this afternoon while talking with a theology prof. While discussing things such as liberal democracies and other things that are generally only discussed openly within the realm of liberal democracies, the subject of truth or narratives as being inherently oppressive came up. Reinhold Neibuhr suggests that their are two types of utopias, those that are dangerous such as communism or fascism, and those that are not, such as Quakerism or other non-violent communities. Obviously, Neibuhr didn't think that Quakers were particularly competitive in the marketplace of ideas, or if he did, you would only find Friends on the clearance rack of the religious apparel aisle. Circling back, does a narrative have to be competitive with others in order to be legitimate, and if so, can it survive without doing a certain kind of violence (not necessarily physical, but perhaps cultural) to those who do not subscribe to it. Can a story-formed community experience growth and retain intellectual integrity if it does not compete, in some sense, with other narratives or truth claims.

This brings us to ecumenism. What is possibly gained by Quaker communities who engage in a dialogue but refuse to insist upon non-violence, social and economic justice, and equality as understood truths upon which God is properly reflected. Friends who have been anxious to participate in ecumenical organizations, especially with churches or faiths that do not adhere to the non-violent example of Jesus as understood in Scripture and by the early church, are selling our peculiarity short. Already, many FGC Friends are dedicated to the support of liberal political institutions that (mainly the Democratic party)
have historically and contemporarily done nothing but underwrite the national narrative of wealth obtained and defended through physical and economic violence. A liberal corporate machine is still a machine, and human beings that exist outside of the operators chair get caught up in the grind. Ecumenism, especially alongside of mainstream institutions of faith, dilute the Quaker testimonies to non-violent peace-making, equality, and justice, by yoking Friends with institutions that thrive only on coercive power, whether it be through military means abroad or the ballot box at home.

While ecumenism might win Quakers friends and respect from those who subscribe to the mainstream narrative of political power struggles and victory at all costs, it does very little to enhance the once distinctive elements of our faith that made Quakers a peculiar people.
How much more will people be lovingly served by a community that insists upon serving from a place of humility, than by a community insistent upon the acquisition and maintenance of a political machine ordered to do the job that Quaker communities should be doing on their own.

trinitarian thinking in brief

2006-11-15T14:22:00.000-08:00

In preparing for my Theology of Jesus class I have been reading a Kathryn Tanner book concerning the Trinity. Of course, being the heretic that I am, I have a plethora of questions about the Trinity and what it means for believers in a modern way. I am certainly uncomfortable with the traditional renderings of trinitarian thought because of the perilous discomfort it causes in my wonderfully monotheistic mind. I suggest that the Trinity is better explained in terms of modalism than by the classic Athenasian statement. Perhaps the Creator God takes human form for the purposes of Salvation, and that is exhibited in the life of Jesus. Of course, Jesus maintains a place in the Godhead, but is not still materially or spiritually active apart from the Creator or the Holy Spirit. God is one, and God's work through Jesus and the Holy Spirit are simply aspects of the One Creator God.
A classmate has raised the question, what does this mean for the traditional Quaker understanding of the work or "teaching" of "Christ within?" I do believe that early Quakers certainly beleived in the traditional Trinitarian formulation of three distinctions within one Godhead. I don't necessarily believe we have to stay true to the traditional language any more than we are bound by traditional Trinitarian thought. As a side not to Universalist Friends, sorry, but the work of Jesus is necessary to redemption and the reconciliation of creation with the Creator.
I'll have more thoughts on this after the discussion tonight. Blessings, Scot

Testing...Testing....

2006-11-14T15:43:00.000-08:00

I've tried this blogging stuff once, and after about five posts I stopped updating it. I'm not exactly sure what I might pursue with this electronic opportunity, but it will be a major accomplishment if I can simply keep it going. Expect more tomorrow.