Thank God for the Quakers!

Growing up in rural northwest Missouri and then going to two small Baptist colleges in the state, I had no opportunity to know any Quakers. But long before I knew a Quaker personally, I came to have great admiration and appreciation for those known by that name. 

Quaker Origins

The beginning of the Quaker movement goes back to Englishman George Fox (1624~91) and the “openings” (revelations) he experienced 375 years ago, in 1646. A few years later, the Religious Society of Friends was the name settled on by Fox and his followers. They were also called Quakers.

In spite of considerable opposition, the number of Quakers in England grew quite rapidly, and by 1655/6 the first Friends arrived in North America, where there was also great opposition and great growth.

In 1681, 340 years ago, British King Charles II granted a land charter to William Penn, a Quaker, and that was the beginning of what became the state of Pennsylvania—and a period of significant Quaker influence in North America.

Quaker Beliefs/Practices

According to Quaker.org, “Quakers are a worldwide, global community of people who are diverse in every way, including what they believe and practice. There are Quakers who are progressive Christians, there are Quakers who are Evangelical, and Friends who are . . . even atheist.”

A foundational belief of Quakers from their beginning is that there can be direct, unmediated relationship with the Divine. Fox emphasized there is “that of God in every person,” and through the centuries since their beginning, Friends have stressed the Light Within or the Inner Light.

Because of that basic belief, Quakers originally, and many still, reject having clergy, creeds, or sacraments/rituals (including baptism and Communion).

Quaker Contributions

Even though there are many differences among contemporary Quakers, the historic contributions of the Religious Society of Friends are considerable. They include the following:

1) Their consistent emphasis on peace and opposition to violence. 

Perhaps that is the position for which they are best known, and that is one reason I developed such a good opinion of the Quakers in the 1970s, when I learned about the work of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).

AFSC’s current website gives this vision statement: “A just, peaceful, and sustainable world free of violence, inequality, and oppression.” They also state that their mission is to work “with communities and partners worldwide to challenge unjust systems and promote lasting peace.”

2) Their emphasis on equality and opposition to the subordination of women and to slavery.

Margaret Fell (1614~1702) was one of the co-founders of the Religious Society of Friends, and she was prominent in the early years of the Quakers in England. (More than ten years after the death of her first husband, she married George Fox in 1669.)

In the U.S., the Quakers were the first religious body to protest slavery publicly. In 1790 they presented a petition to Congress calling for the abolition of slavery, and the Quakers are positively mentioned in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Several of the most prominent advocates of both the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage in the U.S. were Quaker women: Sarah & Angelina Grimké, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and others.

3) Their emphasis on simplicity and opposition to ostentation and unnecessary consumption.

Friends have traditionally believed that people should use their resources, including money and time, deliberately in ways that are most likely to make life truly better for themselves and others. 

“Live simply so that others may simply live” is a saying often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. But long before Gandhi was born in 1869, simple living was a cornerstone of Quaker practice.  

So, even though I have some misgivings about the underpinnings of Quaker theology, I say, emphatically, Thank God for the Quakers and for their 375 years of emphasis on peace, equality, and the simple life! The world now would be better off if there were more of them and more of us like them.

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** In background preparation for writing this article, I found Thomas D. Hamm's The Quakers in America (2003) to be helpful. And now I am looking forward to reading J. Brent Bill's brand new book Hope and Witness in Dangerous Times: Lessons From the Quakers on Blending Faith, Daily Life, and Activism, which is scheduled to be delivered to my Kindle tomorrow.

Hurting People Unintentionally

Two Thinking Friends wrote that they were “deeply disturbed” (which I took to mean “hurt”) by my June 30 blog post. Certainly, I did not intend to hurt anyone, but unfortunately, sometimes we hurt people unintentionally.  

Three Episodes

In reflecting upon hurting people unintentionally, I soon thought of the following three episodes that I remember with some chagrin.

1) Part of my July 10 blog post was about Magic Eye pictures, and I mentioned how in the 1990s I used such pictures in sermons a few times—and I remember one such time with some embarrassment.

As the guest preacher at a Japanese church, I talked at some length about magic eye pictures and had some on hand to show during the sermon and for people to look at afterward.

After the service, a woman came up to me and said that she was visually impaired (=blind), so she was not able to get much out of the sermon. I was embarrassed that I had unintentionally hurt her by not realizing that there could be someone present in the service who was unable to see.

2) This month I have read the slim and powerful book The Cry of the Poor (2010). In the first chapter, author Eduard Loring quoted all four verses of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s powerful poem “Richard Cory.”

One Sunday at Ekron [Kentucky] Baptist Church, which I served as pastor while a seminary student, I taught the teenage boys’ Sunday School class, during which I read “Richard Cory” to them.

You can read all of that poem here, but the last two lines say, “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, / Went home and put a bullet through his head.”

Just as soon as I read that last line, I realized that I had “goofed”: not long before, the grandfather of one of the boys in the class had committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot. I had potentially, but certainly unintentionally, hurt the boy in my class

Even though that incident was nearly 60 years ago, I still remember it with some chagrin. It is embarrassing when we hurt people unintentionally.

3) Back in the 1990s when I was the part-time pastor of the Fukuoka International Church in Japan, one Sunday in December I was preaching about the great joy of the old couple Zechariah and Elizabeth when John, their first child, was born in spite of their old age.

In talking about the joy of John’s birth, I mentioned how happy my oldest daughter and her husband were when after several years during which it was uncertain whether they would be able to have children, Kathy gave birth to a fine baby girl. They named her Katrina Joy.

During the sermon, one young woman got up and left, seemingly upset. After the service, I found her outside, and she was still disturbed. Why? She said my talking about people being joyful at the birth of a child made her feel very sad because she was an unwanted child—and that made me sad.

Three Suggestions

1) Try to be sensitive when speaking to a group, realizing that there are many people who harbor hurts that can be exacerbated by insensitive remarks.

2) Try to speak with political correctness as much as possible, seeking to be aware of the feelings (and internalized hurts) of those who are BIPOC (the acronym that stands for Black, Indigenous, and [other] People of Color), LGBTQ, or any other discriminated-against group of people.

We don’t hear quite so much about it now, but “political correctness,” as I wrote in my 2/19/16 blog post, when used positively “describes the attempt not to use discriminatory or demeaning language about other people, especially about those who are ‘different’ from the one speaking.”

3) Don’t let fear of unintentionally hurting others curtail speaking a “prophetic” word when needed. Sometimes the attitudes, words, and actions of our friends and acquaintances, as well as our own, are injurious to groups of people such as mentioned above.

If our friends or acquaintances are offended when we advocate for the well-being of individuals in such groups, shikata ga nai.*

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* Shikata ga nai is an oft-used expression in Japan. It means “it can’t be helped.” 

Peril in the Pursuit of Political Power

Peril is defined as “serious and immediate danger.” I think it is not hyperbolical to say that at the present time, the U.S. is facing serious and immediate danger because of the way some politicians and their supporters are pursuing political power to the detriment of democracy. 

Perils of the Past

This nation was founded after the colonists proved to be a peril to the rule of Great Britain’s King George III. The way they pursued and achieved political power may not have been the best way they could have done it, but that is how the U.S. was founded 245 years ago.

The biggest challenge to the admittedly limited democracy established in 1776 was by the formation of the Confederate States of America 160 years ago and the Civil War that began a couple of months later in April 1861.

Then, the democratic rights of formerly enslaved American citizens came under peril again after the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the enforcement of Jim Crow laws that persisted until 1965.

Perils in the Present

Pursuing political power by violent means is prevalent in several countries at present. On Feb. 1 there was a coup, described as a “military power grab,” in the beleaguered Asian country of Myanmar.

More recently, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7. There is also ongoing military conflict between the rebel forces in the Ethiopian region of Tigray and the central government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Fortunately, in the U.S. there has not recently been pursuit of political power by means of assassination or physical violence—with the notable exception of the horrendous events at the national Capitol on January 6.

The present peril in the U.S. is largely because of the Republicans currently pursuing political power by dubious means. That, at least, is the considered opinion of the conservative writer and historian Max Boot, who in 2015-16 was a campaign advisor for Marco Rubio.

Boot (b. 1969) contended in a July 15 opinion piece for The Washington Post that “Republicans are increasingly willing to resort to undemocratic, even violent, means to defend conservative, White hegemony.”

Dana Milbank, who also writes for The Post but is definitely not a conservative, also posted on July 15 an opinion piece titled “American democracy survived its Reichstag fire on Jan. 6. But the threat has not subsided.” He asserts that history “warns of greater violence” ahead.

Milbank (b. 1968) quotes words spoken to him recently by Timothy Snyder: “We’re looking almost certainly at an attempt in 2024 to take power without winning elections.”

A noted Yale historian, Snyder (b. 1969) also said,

If people are excluded from voting rights, then naturally they’re going to start to think about other options, on the one side. But, on the other side, the people who are benefiting because their vote counts for more think of themselves as entitled—and when things don’t go their way, they’re also more likely to be violent.

Promoting the Peril of the Present

The serious and immediate danger of the present is exacerbated not only by Republican politicians, especially by the previous President, but also by the right-wing news media, primarily Fox News and, to a lesser degree, Newsmax and OAN.

There are also numerous websites and broadcasts of people promoting the pursuit of political power by lies and misleading statements.

Recently, I learned of Candace Owens when one of my cousins posted a tweet of hers on Facebook. Owens (b. 1989), who now has her own weekly broadcast on The Daily Wire, tweeted on July 13:

Nobody believes that January 6th was a domestic terrorist attack executed by Trump supporters. It’s outright pathetic that the Democrats keep playing pretend. The conservative movement grows every single day because with time, all of their lies and motives are uncovered.

My cousin and millions like her accept such untruths as well as the perilous propaganda about a stolen election and about the dangers of critical race theory and Covid-19 vaccinations.

And yes, when conservative Republicans cheer because the President’s covid-19 vaccination goal was not met, we know we are living in perilous times. 

Blessed are the Good Troublemakers: A Tribute to John Lewis

It isn’t one of the Beatitudes, but I think Jesus could have said, Blessed are the good troublemakers. And I am sure Jesus would have many positive things to say about John Lewis, who died on July 17, 2020, and the way he espoused “good trouble.” 

The Making of Good Troublemaker Lewis

John Robert Lewis was born in February 1940 near Troy, Alabama, about 50 miles southwest of Montgomery. His parents were sharecroppers, but he had a happy, though very segregated, life as a boy.

He was 15 years old and in the 10^th grade in 1955 when he heard of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Later, as an adult he told high school students how when he was their age, “I got in trouble. I got in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

He challenged the students he was speaking to: “Go out there and be a headlight and not a taillight. Get out there and get in the way, get in good trouble, necessary trouble . . . .”

His first troublemaking was when he tried to integrate his local library. That was in 1956 when I was a freshman in college, but Lewis couldn’t even use the public library because he was Black. Then he tried to enroll in an all-White college, and his application was never answered.

Lewis wrote MLK, Jr., asking for help, and King sent him a round-trip bus ticket to come to Montgomery to meet with him. By that time Lewis was a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville. In 1958 he made the nearly 300-mile trip back to Alabama to talk with King.

In Nashville, Lewis also met and was deeply influenced by Jim Lawson, known as “the non-violent activist who mentored John Lewis.”

Lewis said that Lawson taught him “the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence”—and that way was integral to his activities as a good troublemaker.*

The Legacy of Good Troublemaker Lewis

Lewis had a long and distinguished career in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death last year.

Now the illustrious legacy of Lewis is being widely recognized. Last year eminent author Jon Meacham’s book His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope was published. Also in 2020, CNN Films produced Good Trouble, a splendid documentary about Lewis.

This month, an imposing statue of Lewis has been erected in a new Atlanta park. A Nashville road named for Lewis will be dedicated this week. The christening of a Navy ship named after Lewis is scheduled for July 17.

A crowning tribute will be the passing of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act later this year.

Blessed are the good troublemakers; their legacy will live on.

Learning from Good Troublemaker Lewis

Lewis stands in a long line of good troublemakers. Earlier this year, Andy Roland, a retired Anglican vicar in the UK, published a book titled Jesus the Troublemaker.

Last year I posted a blog article about Daneen Akers’s book Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, which includes people of the past such as Francis of Assisi and Harriet Tubman. I suggested that she should include Lewis in her planned second volume.

It needs to be noted, though, that there are no “good troublemakers” for those who benefit from the status quo and wish to protect it. Those who inveigh against troublemakers are mostly people who like the way things are in the present and want to preserve their privileged position.

In the Afterword of Meacham’s book, Lewis wrote,

The teaching of individuals like James Lawson, Gandhi, and Dr. King lift us. They move us, and they tell us over and over again if another person can do just that, if another generation can get in the way or get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble, I, too, can do something. I, too, can get in trouble for the greater good (p. 248).

Can we learn, and act upon, that from John Lewis?

And can't we affirm that, indeed, good troublemakers are blessed?

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* The above paragraphs have drawn heavily from a February 2020 article by Marian Wright Edelman, founder of Children’s Defense Fund. (My 11/25/14 blog post was about Ms. Edelman.)

Seeing by Faith: Using our “Magic Eye”

In all the nearly 900 blog posts I have made to this point, only one has mentioned bees: “The Plight of the Bumblebee” posted on 7/20/14. But I now know much more about bees as recently I read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees (2001) and watched the 2008 movie based on that novel.

More than What the Eye Can See

Sue Monk Kidd (b. 1948) is an engaging writer. Her The Invention of Wings (2014) is on my list of the “top ten” best novels I have read this century. But her earlier novel was also a delightful and thought-provoking read.

The central character in The Secret Life of Bees is Lily, who turns 14 early in the book. She is splendidly played by Dakota Fanning in the movie, which also stars Queen Latifah as August Boatwright, the second main character in the book/movie.

About halfway through the book, Lily reflects on what August has said to her about “spiritual” things, and she thinks,

maybe I had no idea what kind of world I was actually living in, and maybe the teachers at my school didn’t know either, the way they talked about everything being nothing but carbon and oxygen and mineral, the dullest stuff you can imagine (p. 176).

Perhaps things that the eye can see—things that can be thoroughly investigated by science—is all that can be taught in public schools. But how unfortunate is any child whose education is limited to only what the eye can see!

Seeing with One’s “Magic Eye”

Most of you are probably familiar with “magic eye” pictures. Their technical name is autostereograms.

Only 30 years ago, in 1991, a computer programmer and an artist created the first color random-dot autostereograms, later marketed as Magic Eye. I was fascinated with them when I first saw them in the 1990s and several times used them as sermon illustrations.

I was somewhat surprised when I discovered that the “magic eye” pictures could be seen on a computer screen as well as when printed on paper. So look at the image below. On the surface, it seems to be only a random-colored, meaningless picture.

But now use your “magic eye” and look for the depth in the picture. Do you see the 3-D picture? Believe me, there is really a meaningful image there, and I assume that most of you can see it. 

It is only an illustration or an analogy, so there are limitations to the explanation, but similar to seeing a magic eye picture, faith is seeing the “depth” of reality rather than just “carbon and oxygen and mineral.”

What Is Essential is Invisible to the Eye

Moving beyond what we actually can see with our eyes if we look at a magic eye picture in the right way, I am thoroughly convinced that by faith we can “see” what is not visible to our physical eyes.

I have many “top ten” lists, and one is a list of my favorite quotes, which includes these words from The Little Prince (1943), written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

In that delightful story, the little prince declares, 

I have always felt a bit sorry for people who were unable to see the 3-D objects in magic eye pictures. But that inability is trivial to the inability to see the “depth” of existence, the essential meaning of life that is invisible to the physical eye, i.e., to science alone.

Most people, though, who are open to suggestions about how to look at magic eye pictures do come to see what is really visible there.

Similarly, for those who are open to learning what kind of world we are actually living in, as Lily was, the “magic eye” of faith makes it possible to see the wonderful splendor of reality that is invisible to our physical eyes.

How marvelous is the magic eye of faith!

Fifty Faithful and Fruitful Years: Jim Wallis and Sojourners

During the academic year of 1971-72, my family and I came back for a year in the States after living in Japan for five years. Those were turbulent times in the U.S. and only a little less so in Japan. During that year, I learned of a young man named Jim Wallis and a new publication, The Post-American.

The Beginning of the Sojourn

Jim Wallis was born in Michigan in June 1948, so he is nearly ten years younger than I. But he is a thinker/writer/activist from whom I have learned much over these past 50 years. 

Jim Wallis in the 1970s

Wallis enrolled in Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) in 1970 and on his very first night in the dormitory, he talked with a next-door student about his disillusionment with the evangelical church’s support of the war in Vietnam and its indifference to racism.

Jim tells his story in Revive Us Again: A Sojourner’s Story (1983). Chapters two and three narrate the main contradictions he saw between the teaching of Jesus and the evangelical church at that time: racism and “the war.”

Part of what drew me to Sojourners was that the two main criticisms I had heard during my first three years of teaching in Japan (1968~71) were of “Christian” America’s racism and involvement in the war in Vietnam.

Here is the link to the foundational statement of the original Sojourners community (before they used that name).

The small group of Christian “radicals” that formed at TEDS published the first issue of their new magazine in August 1971. They named it The Post American, as an indictment of the civil religion in the U.S. which was supporting the Indochina War in contradiction to the Gospel of Jesus.

Fifty Years for Sojourners

In 1975, the community moved from the Chicago area to downtown Washington, D.C., and took a new name, also changing the name of their publication to Sojourners.

Last year, dissension at Sojourners resulted in Jim being replaced as editor-in-chief in August, and in November, Adam Russell Taylor replaced Wallis as president of the organization. Then last month, on June 24, Jim published “My Farewell to Sojourners.”

Wallis wrote, “I am deeply thankful for the last 50 years with Sojourners; I am honored to be its founder...and will remain an ambassador of this unique organization going forward.” This marked the end of fifty faithful and fruitful years.

In that article, Jim also announced, “I have accepted an invitation from Georgetown University to become the inaugural Chair in Faith and Justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the founding director of the new campus-wide Center on Faith and Justice.

My Sojourn with Sojourners

For nearly 50 years I have read and been influenced by Sojourners magazine, including the years before it took that new name in 1975. I learned from Jim Wallis, of course, but also from the wide range of perceptive authors who wrote for the publication.

In January 1977, during our second “furlough” from our work in Japan, I was able to make a two-day visit to the Sojourners’ house in Washington, D.C., spending the night with them. I was disappointed that Jim was not at home at that time.

Later, I did get to meet Jim on a couple of occasions. In April 2005, I heard him give a powerful public talk/sermon. In my diary, I wrote, “It was a wonderful talk... He stressed that religion should be a bridge, not a wedge. And he said that hope is a choice.”

My appreciation of Jim Wallis still runs deep. When I published my life story last year, I included him as one of the “top ten” stimulating, challenging speakers/writers that I have heard/read. Also, Jim’s God’s Politics (2005) is one of my ten favorite 21st-century non-fiction books.

I close this article with these words by Jim Wallis published in the first issue of The Post-American, words badly needed now as they were 50 years ago. 

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** For a list of many significant statements by Wallis, open this link to the Goodreads.com quotes page.