Has the time come for a new Quaker apocalyptic response?

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.

Some thoughts on ethics

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.

A view of salvation

“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.

Reflections on Barak Obama's Nobel Address

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.

Are Quakers a People of Power?

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.