The Atheist's Companion on "sterile" Quakers

Back in the mid-70's, I spent a lot of time in the Russian-language holdings at Carleton University's library. Somehow I came across a book entitled The Atheist's Companion. It was composed of encyclopedia-style articles on the world's religions, along with assessments of their inadequacies in Marxist terms.

Having recently discovered Quakers at the time, I flipped through the book to see if it said anything about us. It did! To my amusement, it listed a lot of our positive features, and then abruptly dismissed our "reactionary morality" as "sterile."

Thanks to the Internet, I found the text of this propaganda classic, so you can see this assessment for yourself:

---

The Quaker sect arose during the English bourgeois revolution among the urban poor, on the basis of Anabaptist and other heresies, as a result of disillusionment with a revolution that gave nothing to the people. Its founder George Fox (1624-1691) came to the conclusion that the truth is not in the sacred books, but in the hearts of people. Truth should be sought in the “inner light” that illuminates a person and that testifies to the presence of Christ in the believer. The doctrine of the "inner light", which is placed above the scriptures and the church, is the main point of Quakerism.

The term "Quakers" means "tremblers", the name given in mockery, due to the convulsive movements, seizures, which in early times accompanied Quaker prayers. Quakers deny any specific worship and sacraments, rites, clergy. Quaker meetings take place in empty rooms; silently, with covered heads, they sit in anticipation of being illuminated by the light from above, until some member of the community will feel "full of light" and will begin to preach. Singing and music at Quaker meetings are not permitted. Marriages between Quakers are accomplished with a simple promise of fidelity in the presence of elders. Burials take place without any ceremony. Quakers are characterized by a rejection of luxury; at first they did not allow themselves theatre, dance, or sports. Quakers place a high value on the independence of the individual, and therefore they do not remove their hats before anything or anyone; they deny titles and address everyone as “thee” and “thou” [not the plural "you" to individuals]; they do not kneel.

Quakers teach that one should not count on changing the people at the head of the government in order to make things better; improvement can only be expected from the spirit. They deny violence, war, oaths, and preach “non-resistance to evil”; they teach about universal brotherhood; they widely practice charitable work and religious tolerance. Quakers’ reactionary morality, which replaces social revolution with moral evolution, is sterile.

Each community meets once a month for moral discipline, to provide advice, and to resolve any disputes between individual members. The highest authority is the yearly Quaker meetings of a given country, below that level are the quarterly meetings of several congregations.

At first, Quakers were cruelly persecuted. For example, in 1656-1658, 9,000 Quakers in England were imprisoned. The Toleration Act of 1689 put an end to the persecution of Quakers in England. In 1682, the Quaker Penn bought the land on the Delaware in North America from the English government, and founded the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania, but it was not until 1724 that the Quakers ceased to be persecuted in other colonies of North America. The Quakers advocated for the freedom of blacks, some of the Quakers participating as armed soldiers in the war between the North and the South. In 1957 there were 180 thousand Quakers, of which 120 thousand were in the USA, 22 thousand in England, 20 thousand in East Africa. Quakers advocate peaceful coexistence.

---

Setting aside our reactionary morality for the moment, you can draw your own conclusions about the selectivity and uniformity of this description of Friends, and its compressed timeline. I wonder why the words "Friend," "Society of Friends," "Friends church" never appear.

You may have noticed that the word "spirit" is not capitalized, but in Soviet times publishers also didn't capitalize "God." (Dostoevsky gave God a capital G, but his Soviet-era publishers did not.)

"Peaceful coexistence" isn't just an abstract term. It was a policy and a propagandists' talking point granting that the NATO countries and the USSR could live together peacefully, and challenging the Western countries to make the same declaration. Of course, one could say that "peaceful coexistence" might be an example of a substitution of "moral evolution" for "social revolution."

One final note: this is the second edition of The Atheist's Companion. Nobody apparently thought to do any fact-checking in revising the first edition from 1959. As it turns out, the 1961 entry on Quakers is almost identical to the 1959 edition, with no corrections. There are two interesting changes: 

1. In 1959, in the first paragraph, there's a bit more to the description of George Fox. "George Fox (1624-1691), having immersed himself in the Holy Scriptures, came to the conclusion...."
2. The 1959 edition also doesn't have that final sentence in the 1961 edition's third paragraph—nothing about our bourgeois morality. In fact, the 1959 edition, however inadequate, is 100% positive about us. I can't help wondering whether Nikita Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign at the time affected the book's editors.

To get contemporary descriptions of Quakers in Russian language, aside from our own site, you can get excellent treatments on Russian Wikipedia, and in the Orthodox Encyclopedia.

---

Speaking of descriptions of Friends in Russian, see this exercise from a recent Woodbrooke study course in Friends, conducted in Russian. (Here's the Russian-language original of the exercise.)

Following up on last week's link to Russian Communists' rejecting Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, here's Alexey Uvarov's article on "Rehabbing Stalin."

The United Nations on conditions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Elder Chaplain Greg Morgan on his threescore years and ten, and ours.

Why Micah Bales loves the "divergent" Psalm 82.

Please take a look at my five questions on racism and racists.

---

Austin John is "Sick and Tired"...

Nordic Yearly Meeting reflections

Friends approve the epistle from Nordic Yearly Meeting 2025, Stavanger, Norway.

---

Michael Eccles and Julia Ryberg (with Arturo) were
the Nordic Yearly Meeting's main speakers.

I wrote last week's post during the first evening of the combined Nordic Yearly Meeting of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish Friends, July 3-6, 2025.

A week later, I'm back home, a little wobbly from 27 hours of travel but very grateful for my experiences and for the hospitality of Friends. Here are a few of my main impressions.

The departure of the sloop Restauration on its commemorative transatlantic voyage (video and links on last week's post) was a highlight of the first full day of the gathering, and marked a special anniversary in the history of Norwegian Quakers (and Norwegian-American history generally).

However, in the full context of the Nordic Yearly Meeting, this commemoration was not the center of attention. Friends conducted business in business sessions of their national yearly meetings and service organizations, received a live report from the Gaza Strip and collected funds for work in Gaza, and enjoyed each other's company in worship meetings and a variety of other settings. Our main speakers, Michael Eccles (Britain Yearly Meeting and Friends World Committee for Consultation, European and Middle East Section) and Julia Hinshaw-Ryberg (who has served Sweden Yearly Meeting and FWCC EMES in a variety of roles), interviewed each other on their experiences serving Friends and their encouragement to Nordic Friends to use their differences and commonalities to serve each other, Friends everywhere, and the wider world.

I didn't attend the separate Norwegian or Swedish business meetings, but heard that Norwegian Friends minuted that "... transgender, non-binary and all others, regardless of gender identity and gender expression, are welcome among Quakers." The full minute is available on Norway Yearly Meeting's Web site. (An unofficial bilingual version is here.)

Two overall impressions and one question:

Idealism: Given all the national and temperamental differences among participants, and the general acknowledgment of crises and tragedies in our world, Friends retain our idealism. In the social evening, we sang "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" without embarrassment. In the final meeting, one Friend stood and simply said, "'Here the Gospel of Joy begins.' Mark, chapter one, verse one." We remain a hopeful people.

Discernment: Friends continue to make space for quiet discernment. Prayer was evident and was invited often. All voices were heard, whether gentle or passionate.

Question: It's the same question I've had for fifty years. In the marketplace of faith communities and spiritual options, why do Quakers remain such a microscopic presence? Will we ever overcome our diffidence on the one hand, and our exceptionalist conceits (our boutique mentality) on the other, and finally provide access to a wider range of seekers?

I asked a related question in one of the Nordic Yearly Meeting workshops. Noting that we have often provided a safer alternative for skeptics and refugees from authoritarian religiosity, I asked whether we could also work harder to welcome people who are enthusiastic about their faith in Jesus but need a trustworthy place to live out that faith without power plays, theatrics, and exploitation of their enthusiasm?

The answer I got was familiar and dismissive—more or less "let the happy-clappy people go elsewhere." But is it a coincidence that our greatest period of growth was when we risked everything in the trust that "Christ has come to teach his people himself"? Now we generally offer a choice between varieties of generic evangelicalism on the one hand or "a quiet faith for a quiet people" on the other. Creative hybrids do exist, but as far as I can see, not many. And even in our tame state, miracles do happen! Still, if it's up to us, we may functionally become chaplaincies for ourselves and people we are already comfortable with.

It's come to this: In a Nordic population of about 28 million people, Friends number several hundred. In our faith movement's country of origin, Britain, we once reached something like 60,000 (1.15% of the population at the time, 1680); with the same proportion, we would now have roughly 800,000 Quakers in Britain, rather than the current figure of under 20,000 members and attenders.

God's promises will be fulfilled one way or another, whatever we Friends decide to do about increasing access to the trustworthy communities we're trying to build, and the amazing qualities and potential of those communities. So why do I remain discontent?

---

Julia Ryberg, Arturo, Marius and Barbara Berntsen.

The story of Julia and Arturo will be published August 8.

Peter Blood-Patterson believes that the revival has come.

A Swedish-language children's book based on the story of Julia Hinshaw-Ryberg and Arturo, her 57-year-old parrot companion, is scheduled for publication in August 2025. Details here. Translations in Spanish and English are planned as well. We enjoyed Arturo's company at the Nordic Yearly Meeting.

Here are links to the epistles from Nordic Yearly Meeting 2025.

---

Meanwhile ... Rule by caprice, malice, and decree: a recent summary by Heather Cox Richardson. "Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon."

Jemar Tisby comments on Trump's personal army.

Philip Bump on useful political lessons from Zohran Mamdani's college application. "America's understanding of race and ethnicity is still woefully simplistic."

Russia's Communist Party declares its disagreement with Khrushchev's historic "secret" speech denouncing Stalin's cult of personality.

Peter Wehner ponders the lack of evangelical response to the U.S. administration's abandonment of the bipartisan PEPFAR campaign against HIV.

It’s a revealing comparison: A decision by a venerated Christian relief agency to hire Christians in same-sex relationships caused an immediate, angry, and explosive reaction across the evangelical world, while the decision to effectively end a program that has saved more than 25 million lives on the African continent barely registers. Few of those who are aware of what’s happening have anything to say about it. And many who are inclined to say something pull back, fearful of the consequences. 

Mike Farley on aging's gifts of hiddenness. "Contentment is not seen as a character flaw."

---

Nordic Yearly Meeting's multinational choir sings, and Arturo listens (visible after about 40 seconds).

A historic Quaker gathering in Stavanger

Solborg Folkehøgskole (sometimes translated as "Folk High School"), Stavanger, site of the 2025 Nordic Yearly Meeting. Photo taken at 10:15 p.m.

---

About a year ago I wrote about the 54-foot sloop Restauration, whose 21st-century version is set to leave Stavanger's harbor tomorrow on a transatlantic voyage. By this voyage it will be commemorating the 200th anniversary of the start of the organized migration of Norwegians to the USA. 

Among those aboard that original ship were several Quaker members and attenders, as well as participants in the Haugean renewal movement in the Lutheran Church in Norway. Their Atlantic crossing took over three months, during which a child was born. 

Now, 200 years later, among those planning to be at the departure of the new Restauration are Norway's king and queen, and Liv Ullmann ... and a crowd of Quakers from the Nordic yearly meeting that began today.

They won't just be commemorating a peculiar event of Norwegian and Quaker history. As the restauration.no Web site points out, the commemorative voyage is intended "to honor, among others, those who left in 1825 in search of a better life. History must not be forgotten, and is highly relevant in light of the current situation in the world."

---

Usually, the Quakers of the Scandinavian countries meet in their separate yearly meetings, but every third year they have a combined gathering like the one that started today. I have never been at a combined Nordic Yearly Meeting. The only time that I was at Norway Yearly Meeting was 29 years ago. All that plus tomorrow's departure of the sloop—I've been looking forward to this visit for a long time.

This evening's sessions were a wonderful start. I brought greetings from Camas Friends Church and Moscow Friends Meeting; other greetings came from Friends from meetings and Friends organizations in at least seven countries beyond Scandinavia and Finland. The evening program included some singing: specifically some Scandinavian and Finnish lullabies. Just what your jet-lagged blogger needed.

I'm going to stop here and get some sleep.

FRIDAY UPDATE: Here is my video of the Restauration's departure. The scene starts with the royal party returning to the royal yacht Norge, and then pans to catch the Restauration entering the frame from the right.

---

Two impressions and a question: Reflections on Nordic Yearly Meeting (July 10).

You can keep track of the new Restauration's progress on these maps.

Elderchaplain on choosing life, one day at a time.

I proposed—and he [Bruce] agreed—that we engage in a dialog I called “Hard Earned Wisdom,” an open conversation regarding his experience with ALS and the insights and realizations this has afforded him. No one would choose this path to wisdom....

I continue to be eager to find out how you understand the words "racist" and "racism."

---

Blues from Sweden (Louise Hoffsten) and Finland (Wentus Blues Band).

A truly stellar news conference

Vera C. Rubin Observatory and what it's looking at. (Source and description.)

---

At Monday's unveiling of the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón in Chile, director Željko Ivezić promised, 

... At the end of presentation you will get the link [to this site/application] and then you can spend the rest of your day enjoying these ten million galaxies.

Ivezić made this promise as he presented stunning initial images from the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope and its world-record-sized digital camera. In the hour and a half news conference I linked above ("Monday's unveiling"), his wonderful presentation, given with both awe and humor, starts here. If you are a space or cosmology nerd or a fan of science journalism, you'll want to see all of the rest of this video, but if not, Scientific American has done you a great service by summarizing the presentation, and selecting several shorter videos, in their article, "Majestic First Images from Rubin Observatory Show Universe in More Detail Than Ever Before."

Most news headlines these days don't give us much joy, but I found this Rubin Observatory presentation and press conference, clunky as it was in places, very inspiring. Željko Ivezić's enthusiasm, and the heartfelt comments from the news conference panel (question-and-answer portion starts here), gave a wonderful human dimension to an otherwise tech-heavy theme and the staggering cosmic scale of the images themselves.

You might ask what distinguishes this earth-bound observatory from the Hubble and James Webb telescopes in space. Those amazing space tools can focus on very specific places, at distances that take us close to the apparent origins of our universe. The Rubin Observatory, on the other hand, will photograph the entire sky that's visible on its mountain, through full revolutions of the earth, over and over. These high-resolution images will be compiled over a ten-year period. Scientists and other viewers worldwide will be able to gain access to the images, including celestial movements and changes, and evidences of dark matter and dark energy. The compilation is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Here's how it compares to other astronomical survey projects and catalogs, but one of its main advantages is simply the combination of the unprecedented speed of its repeating image-capturing cycles, without losing high resolution.

Rubin in 1963 using Kitt Peak National
 Observatory's 36-inch telescope with
Kent Ford's image tube spectrograph
attached. (Source and description.)

Instead of spending the last two days just looking at ten million galaxies, I've enjoyed reading about Vera Rubin and some of her contemporary colleagues, such as Kent Ford, Geoffrey Burbridge, Margaret Burbridge ... and following up some of the numerous links on their Wikipedia pages.

In case you see politics in everything, as I tend to do, notice  that several of the initial speakers in the long video puffed the USA's role as the world leader in science. That made it all the more interesting to notice the incredible variety of immigrants, international participants, cultures, and languages involved in the Rubin Observatory program.

It's also interesting to note that the press conference press handler turned away a question about future funding in light of federal budget cuts. (One earlier projection estimated running costs of $40 million per year.)

Now, back to the images .... Or as Željko Ivezić says, "Warp One, engage!"

---

A few more words about the Rubin Observatory: here are the project's four main science goals.

"Racist is a tough little word," wrote linguist John McWhorter in The Atlantic. "Many of us think its meaning is obvious, but it has evolved quite a bit from its original signification over the past several decades."

What would you say? What are useful current definitions of "racism," "systemic racism," and "racist," based on your own experience or on sources you trust and recommend? In a brief survey, I'd like to ask you five questions that may help me write a related blog post, but, if that happens, nobody's comments will be attributed without permission.

Citing COVID-19 restrictions dating to 2020, city authorities in Moscow are not allowing protests (not even single-person picketing) at the site of the restored Joseph Stalin sculpture at Metro station Taganskaya. It reminds me of the scandal that surrounded restoration of a quotation lauding Stalin in the rotunda of Kurskaya station back in 2009, a time when we often passed through that station. (You can see part of that quotation in my photo: "Stalin raised us to be faithful to the people, and he inspired us to work and to perform great deeds.") Back in 2009, protesting didn't seem to be all that risky.

An urgent question (and an offer of practical resources for local Friends meetings) from Wess Daniels: Who gave us Guilford College?

Joseph and his brothers: Tom Gates continues his series on Quakers and the end of scapegoating.

Micah Bales on the Gerasenes and their unhappy reaction to a healing. (Context: Luke 8:26-39.) And how would we react?

Our reading this morning leaves us with no doubt: Healing is hard. True healing disrupts as much as it restores. The transformation that Jesus brings ripples out from those who are being healed to touch the whole fabric of society. When we get healed, we’ll find ourselves in a new kind of trouble. Holy trouble. 

Nadya Tolokonnikova (of Pussy Riot fame) and her prison cell installation in a downtown Los Angeles gallery.

“One thing that I just don’t vibe with in modern American society – there’s an entire thing about safety. And I’ve lived my life in a way that safety was the last thing that I would care about,” she said. “This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they’re not afraid.”

---

At least the second time I've ended with this clip: Gino Matteo and Jason Ricci ... "I need Jesus to walk with me."

Belonging to Friends

Speaking with my mentor, Deborah Haight, at
Canadian Yearly Meeting 1976. Also in the frame,
Duncan Wood (at right), Katharine Wood (behind
Deborah). St. Thomas, Ontario.

My very first experience of a Quaker meeting took place in Ottawa, Ontario, on August 11, 1974. In my diary entry for that day, the headline was "My first visit!!!" There were 24 of us altogether in that four-sided meeting space, including two relatives I brought along for safety, since I was very nervous about this unfamiliar thing called "church." (If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that I grew up in an anti-church family.)

I needn't have worried. By the time the hour of silence (during which there were four spontaneous messages arising from various participants) came to an end, I knew I belonged.

As I got more and more acquainted with Quaker ways, I learned that the process of realizing that one "belonged" had various names, especially "convincement" and "conversion." In my own life, conversion came first, earlier that same year, when my reading of the Sermon the Mount, Matthew's version, led me to trust Jesus. I concluded for myself that conversion was a matter of opening my eyes and heart to an inward light that could illuminate a path through life. Becoming convinced, on the other hand, meant that, at least in my specific case, the companionship of Quakers provided the best, most direct guides along that path.

All this was no random accident, I realized. My family's chaos (combined, ironically, with its cult of obedience) and the public agonies of the Viet Nam War era, had already led me to nonviolence and a rejection of authoritarianism. I couldn't say where worldly contingencies and the Holy Spirit's guidance merged in my case. But once I realized that I didn't want to practice my newfound faith all alone, a peace church with almost zero hierarchy was bound to appeal. I wanted to go public. I wanted to belong officially!—whatever that meant.

---

Despite my inherited suspicion of the religion industry, I came to realize how important a concrete sense of belonging was to me. As I found out, that led to another term in Quaker culture: "membership." With indecent speed, I applied for membership in Ottawa Meeting. I was interviewed and accepted into membership in less than ten months after that first visit. My fiftieth anniversary as a member of Friends was June 5 of this year.

The following summer, July 26-31, 1976, I attended my first ever Quaker yearly meeting sessions, at Alma College, St. Thomas, Ontario. There I found out that perhaps my yearning for membership was not universal for Canadian Friends. The subject of membership was one of the hot topics of the yearly meeting sessions—specifically, should committee service be limited to members?

Although it was clear that Friends were split on the issue, I was impressed by the civility with which Friends on both sides put their cases, and by presiding clerk Philip Martin's care in guiding the process without putting his own thumb on the scale. Friends eventually approved a decision not to limit committee service to members in most cases. After the decision had been adopted, Philip spoke personally of his deep concern that weakening the concept of membership was a dangerous precedent.

Much more recently, during my academic year in Birmingham, England, I attended a monthly meeting in which an application for membership was approved for a long-time attender who was 85 years old. He stood up and, with a twinkle in his eye, conceded that his application was a bit late in the day.... To which I can only add that temperaments vary! For me, at age 21, ten months to seal the deal seemed like forever. But those dear Ottawa Friends, almost before the ink was dry on my membership certificate, put me on a Yearly Meeting committee and sent me as a representative to what was for me a life-changing experience, a triennial conference of the Friends World Committee for Consultation.

---

A link to the Kindle version.

I found a somewhat different but very fertile understanding of convincement, conversion, and membership in a recent Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Matt Rosen's Awakening the Witness: Convincement and Belonging in Quaker Community. In particular, he suggests putting convincement first, something like an inward baptism, or as he suggests with a phrase sometimes used by early Friends, they "received the Truth in the love of it."

(Unfamiliar with Pendle Hill Pamphlets? Here's an introduction.) 

Rosen's description of convincement has, indeed, the fragrance of conversion already in it, as if it would be unnecessary or unhelpful to make too fine a distinction between the two. Convincement can also have an element of conviction, a realization that God's grace has been denied or resisted up to that point.

In Rosen's exploration of convincement stories from Quaker history, we see that it might also involve decisions that will involve commitment and sacrifice. To embark on the Quaker path in the early years of persecution certainly did involve personal risk. Even now, risks are there, ranging from mystics facing ridicule among the militantly secular, to financial sacrifices for war tax refusers, and jail time for prophets engaged in civil disobedience or evangelists in closed societies.

What distinguishes conversion in Matt Rosen's pamphlet is its progression beyond the point of convincement. 

As convincement leads into lifelong conversion of the heart, and as the heart is turned around, one slowly becomes “established in the Truth.” One learns to recognize and follow the voice of the inward Teacher and learns to hear this Teacher speaking in the experience of others. Convincement is an initial step. Some early seekers were convinced of the Truth by itinerant preachers but did not “grow up in the Truth” once those preachers left town. They were not settled on the foundation they had been pointed to. So, part of the work of publishing Truth was helping to establish the newly convinced. This meant encouraging and supporting community, grounded on the promise of Christ’s presence in the midst as gatherer, leader, priest, prophet, and friend.

As powerful as my initial conversion seemed to be (and its precedence in my own life, having happened before I began attending Friends meeting), I cannot say that I'm still just riding the momentum of that experience. Learning to pray without ceasing is still the aim of my life, and, fifty years later, success still varies. So, for me, Matt Rosen's reflections ring true.

His observations on membership are equally interesting.

Historically, Quakers have understood membership to be a covenant relationship between an individual and a meeting community. Membership is a little like a marriage. The member commits to supporting the community, to growing in fellowship, and to being accountable for their gifts, and the meeting commits to supporting the Friend in ways both pastoral and practical. The process of applying for and being welcomed into membership recognizes that someone already belongs to a community, just as a Quaker marriage recognizes what God has already done in the life of a relationship.

My suggestion, then, is that membership and convincement can come apart. It could be possible to be a member who is not a convinced Friend ... and it is possible to be a convinced Friend not in membership....

Rosen notes that the earliest generations of Friends did not have formal membership at all. (And in the context of persecution, there would hardly be an incentive to claim to be a Friend except on the basis of actual convincement.)

The structure and significance of meetings and membership may change, as they have before, but convinced Friends will recognize their Guide in the experience of others and seek each other out. Truth doesn’t stand or fall with our current structures. I experience this as a liberating realization. As Sydney Carter reminds us in the “George Fox” song, “the Light will be shining at the end of it all.” And if that is true—if, like Fox, we are not building one more religion—then we have time to stop and listen, to experiment and re-imagine, trusting that the Light does and always will shine in the darkness, and that come what may, even if we are pressed on every side as the early Friends were, the Light will not be overcome. The foundation will stand. And all people will be drawn to God in God’s good time— rescued, guided, and knit together by the Divine hand.

I recommend Matt Rosen's pamphlet as a good resource for looking at the interplay between conversion, convincement, and membership in your own faith community and in the full variety of experiences and temperaments among you.

---

Screenshot from source.  

Next in the USA's bombsites? Rick Steves wants to help Americans get to know Iran.

Matt Fitzpatrick seems to think that you can't assassinate your way to peace.

Dana A. Williams on what it was like to be a writer whose editor was Toni Morrison. (And here's an article I linked to in an earlier post, Toni Morrison's rejection letters.)

Steve Curwood interviews Rev. Mariama White-Hammond: Juneteenth Plays a Role in Environmental Justice for All.

A Yougov survey tells us what we already suspected: men are more likely than women to rate themselves as above average in their sense of humor, intelligence, confidence, and self-awareness. (!) (However, most people I know personally seem to be above average in not claiming to be above average.)

---

Blues from Denmark. Michelle Birkballe, "Cry to Me."

The benefit of the doubt, part three (prequel)

As Israel strikes Iran with the stated purpose of eliminating that country as a nuclear threat, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy points out, 

Iran would not be this close to possessing a nuclear weapon if Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu had not forced America out of the nuclear agreement with Iran that had brought Europe, Russia, and China together behind the United States to successfully contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This is a disaster of Trump and Netanyahu's own making, and now the region risks spiraling toward a new, deadly conflict. A war between Israel and Iran may be good for Netanyahu’s domestic politics, but it will likely  be disastrous for both the security of Israel, the United States, and the rest of the region.

Quote: "This is a disaster of Trump and Netanyahu's own making."

The U.S. Secretary of State says that there was no U.S. participation in Israel's attack, but is Trump guilty of a share of the responsibility for Israel's perceived need to attack today?

Truthfully, I'm not in the mood to give the president, who has zealously reversed so many policies of the Obama and Biden years respectively, the benefit of the doubt in this case. Is that fair?

"The benefit of the doubt" has become an important concept to me, a way of identifying and warding off false witness, needless self-pity, and cynicism. I first wrote about this principle in my regular column in Friends United Meeting's Quaker Life magazine, back in June 1998:

---

About a year and a half ago, Ellen Cooney, the co-founder of Start-Up Education (see her article), spent six weeks with us at FUM as a volunteer. She had told us she was willing to do anything; she simply wanted to spend time being part of a working group which met daily for Friends worship, and (as a General Conference Friend from Atlanta Meeting) to get to know FUM better.

Knowing of her professional consulting background, we wanted the benefit of her observations of FUM as an organization. She interviewed each staff member privately, talked with several leaders at the yearly meeting level, and studied our organizational charts and documents. She then made a presentation to all of us staff with suggestions for working more productively with each other and more responsively to the constituency. Of her many good ideas, one stood out for its simplicity and central importance: "Learn to give each other the benefit of the doubt."

Ellen said that this principle was one of the ground rules at a large consulting firm where she had worked. When she and her co-workers did not know why someone had done something, and especially when it looked like a mistake or a personal slight, this principle was so ingrained in the corporate culture that many negative assumptions and grudges were nipped in the bud.

We are beginning to learn that when we want to know, "Why would he do that without checking with me? Why did she send that letter without copying to me? Why were they invited and not me?" we need to think, "Until I get a chance to ask, I better give them the benefit of the doubt. They must have had a good reason."

Recently I served on a committee, but missed a meeting because I was not notified. I could have dreamed up all sorts of reasons why I wasn't invited: My input was not valued. I had asked too many questions at the previous meeting. Maybe I was only on the committee as a token to appease some faction. The reality was much simpler: this time, notifications had been done within the committee instead of by a yearly meeting office, so the procedure had been unclear. It was the sort of simple oversight that I might easily have done myself.

The principle of "the benefit of the doubt" is incomplete without personal follow-up whenever necessary. We gave National Friends Insurance Trust (see cover story, March 1998) the benefit of the doubt long after we should have demanded clearer information on the security of our health insurance. The "benefit of the doubt" principle simply says that, if we don't understand why someone did something, we assume that "they must have had a good reason" until we have more complete and direct information; it doesn't excuse us from obtaining that information (first-hand if possible) whenever we should do so.

This principle is just as important in relations between groups as it is between individuals. When FUM decided to stop sending doctors to Lugulu Hospital in Kenya (intending to send money to pay Kenyan doctors instead), some Kenyans saw this as a sign that FUM wanted to weaken ties with Kenyan Friends. Thank goodness they didn't just keep this negative and incorrect interpretation to themselves. The leaders at Lugulu, and our own appointees, told us that the personal relationships were more important than money; the human exchange needed to be continued. As a result, the decision was reversed.

Right now, we're trying to make FUM more productive and responsive to God's leadings and to you. We are trying new ideas, taking more risks and will inevitably make more mistakes. Never stop holding us accountable, but our work together will be much more lively and joyful if, until we all have our facts straight, we agree to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

Original article (archived) is here. The March 1998 cover story on the National Friends Insurance Trust is here. (See table of contents for that issue to see the full coverage.)

At the time this was written, I was serving as general secretary of Friends United Meeting, sometimes nicknamed the "orthodox" branch of Friends. Ellen Cooney's Atlanta Friends Meeting was part of Friends General Conference, a broadly more liberal association of Friends congregations. Ellen is currently serving as the director of development for Monteverde Friends School in Costa Rica.

---

In an earlier post on this blog, Benefit of the doubt, part one, I described this principle's value in helping me distinguish between realism and cynicism.

In Benefit of the doubt, part two, I applied the principle to my observations of our then-new president, Donald Trump. See if you think my analysis there still applies (if it ever did!).

---

Marilynne Robinson's Notes from an Occupation.

Simultaneous with corruption there is also a clash of worldviews that is rarely acknowledged. The country is said now to be polarized, an image that implies that we lie along the same continuum of belief, at opposite extremes but with an expansive middle ground between the two sides that awaits only certain moderating concessions to bring us closer. This metaphor does not really suggest the nature of our problem or the depth of it. It has not been helpful. It is past time to try considering a new image for our situation.

It's Martin Kelley's "pet theory that Quakerism is always dying and simultaneously always being reborn." (Introductory article for the June-July issue of Friends Journal, "Quaker Revivals.") Martin also has some interesting observations on how "Insiders" and "Seekers" use the Quaker Net.

Mark Russ on God's wrath and vengeance—and what we lose if we entirely deny those aspects of the Divinity. It might just be me, but I was reminded of R.W. Tucker's "Revolutionary Faithfulness."

Robert Garon on Genesis: God's rest vs Egypt's pyramid scheme.

Aristotle reminds us that politics is not just power.

Brian Zahnd's tribute to Walter Brueggemann.

See you at No Kings Day.

---

Ending scenes and credits from Blues Brothers 2000, including glimpses of my lifelong blues icon Junior Wells. He died a month before the film was released. As some reviewers acknowledged, it was not much of a movie—except for the soundtrack and the incredible list of participating musicians. It's bittersweet to watch this clip now; so many of them are no longer with us.