Can you believe?

04 June 2026

A debate worth having

Render unto Caesar... 'Denarius of the Emperor Tiberius, commonly referred to as "the Tribute Penny".' Source.

St Peter (7th century icon). Source.

A recent exchange on Facebook began with a quotation from U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico:

We as Christians are called to do more than charity. We are called to challenge the system that made the charity necessary.

The response:

Christians are never called to change systems. We are called to change ourselves.

The next two participants in the exchange explained why they felt that Christians should challenge systems. I have my own reasons for agreeing with them, but before I go into those reasons, I want to say why that "never called to change systems" commenter should also be heard.

We are called to change ourselves, and to be changed by our relationship with God. In his preface to George Fox's Journal, William Penn put it this way, describing the marks of authenticity among early Quakers:

I. They were changed men [sic] themselves before they went about to change others. Their hearts were rent as well as their garments; and they knew the power and work of God upon them. And this was seen by the great alteration it made, and their stricter course of life, and more godly conversation, that immediately followed upon it.
II. They went not forth, or preached in their own time or will, but in the will of God, and spoke not their own studied matter, but as they were opened and moved of his Spirit, with which they were well acquainted in their own conversion.

It was in this spirit that George Fox testified that "Christ has come to teach his people himself." In this same spirit, he resisted persuasive invitations to join the Commonwealth forces in the civil war against the forces of Charles I. If he had agreed, he would have been freed from prison. While he was still in that prison, he also felt led to protest against capital punishment for minor crimes, and (not surprisingly) against cruel prison conditions.

These are the points that perhaps the "never called to change systems" commenter and I might agree on:

Being Christian is not a solo act. In changing ourselves and our world, we are part of a community that prays and studies and offers discernment to each of us, activists as well as those of other temperaments. "... And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets," 1 Corinthians 14:32, context.
Most people struggling for revolutionary change sooner or later resort to coercion. For those called by Jesus to love their enemies, and by Paul never to return evil for evil, the illusion that we can make others' lives better through force, whatever the driving ideology, is not an option.
It is also not an option to label something "Christian" with manipulative intent, trading on the emotional strength of religious language, references, behaviors, or symbols when the Holy Spirit is not part of the performance. (See this post for my cautions about using public meetings for worship in a protest context.)

On the other hand, here are some of the reasons Christians (when mutually accountable to each other) should work on the level of systems as well as selves.

Paul's letter to the Ephesians, in chapter six, has a famous passage about spiritual warfare and "the whole armor of God." "...Our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). We are called to identify and oppose bondages of all kinds, on a systemic level, but only after having the "whole armor" for what we Quakers have sometimes called "the Lamb's War."
Within the mutually respectful and mutually accountable division of labor that is the Church, some of us are prophets. The biblical model of prophecy includes announcing God's judgment and God's promises to all who will listen—sometimes a whole city, sometimes a whole country, sometimes a whole generation. The rest of us may have gifts that overlap into prophecy (such as the gift of evangelism), but all of us are part of the prophets' discerning community.
Jesus told us to "Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s." As citizens we participate in our country's support and governance, in part by obeying laws and paying taxes, and in many countries, doing our part to choose our leaders. Although we are working as citizens to preserve some systems and perhaps to change others, our values and ethics, and consequently our vision of good governance, reflect our faith as disciples. (NOTE: I'm not saying that Christians are the only ones who have such values and ethics!!)
On a related point: when Caesar trespasses on God's territory—for example, when the authorities told Peter and John that they had to stop speaking or preaching in the name of Jesus—obedience to God takes precedence: Faced with the authority's demands, "... Peter and John replied, 'Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to [God]? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.'" (Acts 3:1-4:31.)
Finally, on a mundane level, as soon as a congregation (even a house church) actually gathers for worship and education at set times and places, they are interacting with the systems. Do they need permission to meet? Do they own property? Do they require security? Are they allowed to feed people and provide shelter? What happens when they decide to shelter immigrants? Do they stand up for people of other faiths who desire the same freedoms?

This post was prompted by an exchange I saw on Facebook. Now it's your turn; is there anything you'd like to add or correct?

Iran, biblical realism, and perpetual war
The tax covenant
The whole Jericho Road
A special brand of patriot
Exceptional pride (see Anthony Bloom on political conformism in the church, about halfway down the post)

Randy Boyagoda on Leo XIV's new encyclical: "The Pope's admirers are missing something."

Today's Daily Quaker Message: How to be a Peace Troll.

The Wittenburg Door, reprinted from 1999: Reconstructionist crusaders don't fool God.

William Yoder on Franklin Graham's "Festival of Hope" in Minsk, Belarus.

New from the World Inequality Lab: their Global Justice Project.

The Global Justice Project attempts to set out a new vision for global progress in the 21st century: grounding human development and equality in planetary habitability. It explores the conditions under which the world could move toward this horizon and traces an economically and ecologically consistent transition path from 2026 to 2100.

Its authors tell The Guardian: A good life for the 99% isn’t a pipe dream: it can be done. Here's how.

"Highway 51 Blues" with Charlie Musselwhite and Kid Ramos.

28 May 2026

"Where there was a wish, there was a way"

Source.

Early in her new book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation) gives us some context for her major history of the Christian trends that are now seeking to dominate the USA:

It was my effort to make sense of the experiences of Christian women that led me to this new account of American Christianity writ large, and ultimately, to a clearer understanding of the spiritual underpinnings of our current cultural and political landscape.
While Live Laugh Love complements Jesus and John Wayne, it presents a more complicated narrative. To trace the roots of modern Christian women’s culture, I needed to reach back to an earlier era, to the dynamic religious landscape of nineteenth-century America. I also needed to extend beyond evangelicalism to include mainline and charismatic Christianity, Mormonism, and “secular” philosophies of positive thinking. Women’s relationship to power is more complicated than men’s. Women exercise agency, but it is often circumscribed by the authority of the men in their lives. Like Jesus and John Wayne, however, this is a book about whiteness. Although women of color have participated in aspects of this consumer culture and at times have voiced astute critiques of it, the book describes a consumer marketplace that caters primarily to white women’s needs and desires.

Also like Jesus and John Wayne, this story ends in a dark place, as perhaps any history of the United States that runs up to the present must.

The research that gave rise to this book was full of twists and turns. Early on, I was surprised by the frequency with which twentieth-century Christian women quoted the wisdom of Hannah Whitall Smith. A nineteenth-century “holiness” preacher, Smith had popularized a more optimistic version of Christianity than the one I had heard preached from the pulpit of my church. In contrast to Calvinism’s depiction of the persistence of sin even in the lives of believers, Smith taught that a simple act of faith granted believers victory over sin and a profound sense of peace, well-being, and happiness. Despite the fact that Smith had written one of the best-selling religious books of her time, most histories of American Christianity mentioned her only in passing. Why was Smith everywhere in the sources, I wondered, and why had so many other Christian women repackaged her ideas more than half a century after her death?

Following footnotes and traveling to archives, I began to piece together a narrative almost entirely unfamiliar to me. My sources brought me to the court of Louis XVI and to the woods of upstate New York, to the Chinese mission field and along the Mormon Trail. When I ended up back on the terrain of twentieth-century evangelicalism, the familiar had become strange. By then, three interlocking strands had come into focus: Smith’s holiness evangelicalism, Mormonism, and the philosophy of New Thought.

Du Mez totally keeps her implied promise of tracing those "interlocking strands" right through to this very year, including the ways Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, along with the religious publishing, marketing, and broadcasting enterprises and the phenomenon of multi-level marketing, became part of the mix.

Early in the book, Du Mez addresses her audience:

This book is for the men in the room. It is for readers who have never heard of Beverly Lewis or Rebecca St. James, for those who wouldn’t dream of buying a Thomas Kinkade print or waiting in line for a Magnolia cupcake. You have no idea what you’ve been missing. But this book is especially for the women. It is for girls who braided their hair like Laura Ingalls and tried to obey like Elisabeth Elliot. It is for women who made all the crafts and know all the songs. It is for those of us who were not pretty enough or sweet enough or white enough. It is for women who loved Beth Moore and for women who still love Beth Moore. It is for all of us.

As a white male who came to Christian faith as an adult, I'm among those who never heard of Beverly Lewis or Rebecca St. James. I was aware of the "prairie fiction" and "Amish romance" genres, and of authors Janette Oke, Elisabeth Elliot, and Catherine Marshall, simply because I've worked in three different Christian bookstores, but I was completely unaware of the underlying influences and messages directed at women.

I was aware of Hannah Whitall Smith's book The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, because it was on my Canadian charismatic relatives' bookshelf as well as on the shelves of those bookstores. It had been in print ever since it was published in 1875.

In this book, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, Smith identifies with "we Quakers," the faith of her family and young adulthood, although later she and her husband were baptized by the Baptists and became Holiness celebrities in the context of Atlantic-culture evangelicalism. (She eventually rejoined Quakers through Baltimore Yearly Meeting.) What I didn't realize until reading Live Laugh Love was how her book was appropriated for the purpose of creating a specific message to women: you must decide to be happy, whatever your outward circumstances; that's (more or less) the only control you have. Other parts of her spiritual heritage, particularly the freedom she insisted upon to preach as a woman, and her belief in universal salvation, were de-emphasized and forgotten.

Du Mez mentions the neglect of Smith in histories of American Christianity. (I just checked Peter W. Williams's 604-page America's Religions and found one tiny mention of her, misspelled, paired with David Updegraff as "Quakers with evangelical leanings..." in a list of those participating in an early stream of the Holiness movement. No mention of her book.) This lack of recognition reminded me of Agnes Sanford, whose central role in the healing-prayer movement of the twentieth century while almost invisible to the academic world, was documented in William de Arteaga's book Agnes Sanford and her Companions: The Assault on Cessationism and the Coming of the Charismatic Renewal. (See this post.)

But the main reason I'm referring to Du Mez's careful study of Hannah Whitall Smith's work is that it is just one example of how she presents her many sources and the ways they influenced each other to this day, including the role of women in the Christian networks that now seek to remake the USA into a theocracy.

I found insights, references, and connections to highlight on practically every page of this book. It took over my life these last few days. Du Mez's writing is intense ... sometimes I was struck deeply by the bondages imposed on women under Christian pretenses, sometimes I cheered the Christian resistance to those bondages, but I was never bored. If you have any interest in these themes and variations of faith, politics, and culture, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Hoping I'm not stretching fair use to the breaking point, here's another excerpt, this time related to the book's name.

Two years after William James published The Varieties of Religious Experience, an Iowa woman named Bessie Anderson Stanley submitted a poem to a magazine contest asking readers to define “success.” The person who achieved success, Stanley wrote, was one who “has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” The poem won the $250 cash prize, enough to pay off the mortgage on Stanley’s home. Reprinted in various anthologies, the poem entered the popular lexicon in condensed form. Over the years, one variant was mistakenly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, an error popularized by advice columnists Ann Landers and her sister, Abby. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, few bothered to ask where the phrase gracing glittery tumblers, decorative throw pillows, and Hobby Lobby wall art had originated. In 2021, online retailer Wayfair stocked more than fifty-six thousand Live Laugh Love products, and DIY marketplace Etsy reported over one hundred thousand searches and listed more than eight thousand products carrying the words. ... But the phrase’s popularity was more than a décor trend associated with “basic” white women. Its ubiquitous appearance on wall stencils and household items was a result, in part, of the enduring popularity of mind-power—if the mind could shape reality, then visual reminders to think positive thoughts could produce positive transformations. Where there was a wish, there was a way....

Live Laugh Love is a book about love and fear, longing and greed, about Mary Kay makeup, Christian romance novels, Joyce Meyer Ministries, and Ballerina Farm. Its cast of characters includes true believers and charlatans, well-intentioned people and predators, and it is not always clear who is who. This is also a book about politics. White Christian women often claim to be apolitical; if you ask them, they will tell you that their lives revolve around faith and family, yet what they think about faith and family informs their views on education, taxation, welfare, economic inequality, immigration, law enforcement, and what it means to be American. Far from trivial, the products women consume influence how they see the world they live in and the world they hope to create. Ultimately, this is a book about power—about women’s power to define their own lives, men’s power over women, and the power women wield over one another. It is about discipleship and devotion, authority and submission, manipulation, cruelty, and control.

These excerpts and my comments are based on a digital galley proof obtained through Netgalley. I was made aware of the galley when I joined the Live Laugh Love Launch Team. When the book is printed and made available in September, I may need to check and revise these quotations. However, what you've read so far accurately represents the author's promises to us readers, and the amazing work she has put into fulfilling them.

Lamorna Ash, author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion, which I reviewed in this post, will speak at Westminster Quaker Meeting's meetinghouse on Saturday, June 20, 7 p.m. London time, in person and online. Theme: "Quakers and a new generation’s search for religion." Details here. (Thanks to Bunhill Fields Quaker Meeting's newsletter for the link.)

Elderchaplain Greg Morgan on Rosalie, her gratitude, and her quilt.

Pope Leo XIV and artificial intelligence: the encyclical. "...A religious imperative...." "...Counterbalancing alarm with hope...."

When I first heard this song as a teenager, I honestly didn't understand it but I couldn't stop listening.

#livelaughlovebook

21 May 2026

Spinning Scripture

Last Sunday the National Mall in Washington, DC, hosted a nearly undiluted festival of civil religion and Christian nationalism, "Rededicate 250."

The event was framed as a national prayer service linked to the USA's 250th birthday. You will not be surprised that this "national" event was predominantly led by evangelical Christian celebrities and a few congenial others, including one representative of a religion other than Christianity (Rabbi Soloveichik of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City).

I was planning to write this evening about the incongruities of Sunday's spectacle, but Russell Moore in Christianity Today has already done an excellent job, particularly in addressing the use of 2 Chronicles 7:14—in its actual biblical context, not as a tagline for American civil religion.

We do not come to God by way of a National Mall stage, an Oval Office video, a remembered founding, or a reclaimed country. We come through a torn veil, by blood, to a throne of grace. And we come not through a mascot but through a mediator. We can’t “rededicate” ourselves any other way but that.

(For more about Rededicate 250 in historical and constitutional context, see Heather Cox Richardson's commentary from last Sunday. Here's a video of Donald Trump's recorded Scripture reading at Rededicate 250.)

It's important to detach 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 from its adoption by Christian nationalists and look at the powerful content it really has. I'd like to do that as a set of prompts for individual and communal self-examination—or, to put it another way, as a set of Quaker queries.

First of all, the Temple-centered context, and the focus on Solomon as the audience for this pronouncement, mean we should go much wider than these few verses. But for now, I'll just start with verses 13 and 14.

13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (NIV)

Comments and queries:

IF: God sets up a conditional commitment. Query: what happens if Solomon and his people don't keep their end of the commitment? Is God implying that the rain or locusts or plague could return? See verses 19-22 for a variety of other consequences.
My people, who are called by my name: Solomon is the head of the united theocracy of Israel. The most immediate identification of "my people" would be that nation, whose worship of their God has just been closely linked to their new Temple and to the successors of David on Israel's throne. The words of Jesus and Paul have grafted us Christians into "my people," but nowhere in the Bible is any other nation-state, including the USA, given exclusive rights to see itself as more "God's people" than anyone else. Query: Do you identify with the people "called by my name"?
Will humble themselves and pray and seek my face: There are many scriptural models for what this looks like (Examples: Psalm 131, Matthew 6:5-6, Luke 18:9-14.) Query: when we pray as a community, can we stay focused on God, with healthy humility, rather than on spectacle? How? Could this be how we respond to suffering, ours and others?
Turn from their wicked ways: Query: who is to do this turning? In this Scripture, God is specifically asking for Solomon and "my people" to decide to turn from evil, not necessarily Democrats or Iranians, or other convenient targets of the day.
Then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin: In 2 Chronicles 7, God is specifically referring to God's attentiveness to the Temple. How and where does God hear from you and your repentant community? (See 1 Peter 2:4-6.)
I will ... heal their land. Awkwardly, God isn't necessarily promising to heal the land from the people's misuse, but to heal it from the plagues and droughts and locusts that God apparently used to get their attention and, we hope, lead them to seek God's face. For what, in your own time and place, do you seek healing? For what do we as a community, seek healing? What is our own commitment to heal the land of our misuse?

Let's please remember that when we use biblical texts in public, we need to be honest about the original context. That's especially true if we are being tempted (or being paid) to exalt or condemn today's nations, leaders, and current enemies, using sacred texts to juice up our political rhetoric. We are certainly free to propose reasonable analogies, but not to do so with arrogance, and not to decree unbiblical limits to God's attention, love, and grace.

Esther Greenleaf Murer's Quaker Bible Index has a fascinating page devoted to 1 Peter chapters 1 and 2. Scroll down to 1 Peter 2 for references to early Quaker understandings of "temple."

George Fox, "You are the temples of God...."

"Where is the loophole in that Scripture?"

Tom Tomorrow. (Note inflation.)
Clipped from source.

Please read this "pre-message" from John Kinney's most recent sermon at Spokane Friends Meeting.

I imagine that many of you with tender hearts have thoughts similar to mine. How many more times can my heart be broken before there is nothing left to break? A few weeks ago, two civilian contractors delivering water for the UN children's fund were shot dead by Israeli troops in northern Gaza, UNICEF said on Saturday, expressing fury over the deaths. The Israeli military said troops saw "two, armed terrorists" approaching, so they "opened fire". The army said the incident was "under review". I often think about the bombing of the Iranian Elementary School. One hundred and fifty students ages 7-12 killed. After the first Tomahawk missile hit, the survivors were moved to a still standing prayer room. The strike was a triple tap. The second tap destroyed the prayer room. The third tap destroyed anything that was left. The “incident is under review”. So far 850 Tomahawk missiles have been used at a cost of $2.6 million each. Total missile cost =$2,210,000,000. As of the end of April the war cost was estimated to be $200 billion. I am one of 152,000,000 people in the US that filed a tax return. If spread out evenly, my contribution to the war works out to be about $1300. The department of war greatly appreciates my financial support. I am complicit. Luke 6:27-28: But I say this to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly. Please tell me. Where is the loophole in that scripture? Can it be spun so there is a work around? I pray for peace and I pay for war. I pray for peace and I pay for war. I am having a difficult time coping with my hypocrisy.

You can find John's full message here on Spokane Friends' Web site.

What's the best television show for children? I don't know, but here's my nominee for the best article on the subject.

Nancy Thomas's new Web site, with links to both of her blogs, as well as information on her books and articles.

Elderchaplain Greg Morgan on ALS and hope.

Ben Richmond's inspiring versification of selected epistles by George Fox is about to hit the streets. We can pre-order from Barclay Press or Amazon.

Source.

"Who's been talking?" Canada's Whitehorse.

14 May 2026

Henri Nouwen: "You do not have to be a great prophet..."

Screenshot from source.

Clowning in Rome: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and Contemplation (1979).

You do not have to be a great prophet to say that coming decades will most likely see not only more wars, more hunger, and more oppression, but also desperate attempts to escape them all. We have to be prepared for a period in which suicide will be as widespread as drugs are now, in which new types of flagellants will roam the country frightening the people with the announcement of the end of all things, and in which many new exotic cults with intricate rituals will try to ward off a final catastrophe. We have to be prepared for an outburst of new religious movements using Christ's name for the most un-Christian practices. In short, we have to be prepared to live in a world in which fear, suspicion, mutual distrust, hatred, physical and mental torture, and an increasing confusion will darken the hearts of millions of people.
It is in the midst of this dark world that the Christian community is being tested. Can we be light, salt, and leaven to our brothers and sisters in the human family? Can we offer hope, courage, and confidence to the people of this era? Can we break through the paralyzing fear by making those who watch us exclaim, "See how they love each other, how they serve their neighbor, and how they pray to their Lord"? Or do we have to confess that at this juncture of history we just do not have the needed strength or the generosity and that our Christian communities are little more than sodalities of well-intentioned people supporting each other in their individual interests?

I was at the book sorting table at Mustard Seed, the excellent charity shop run by the Episcopal church down Woodstock Blvd., when I noticed that someone had brought in a wonderful selection of books by Henri Nouwen. I picked up Clowning in Rome because that book was new to me. Opening it to a random page, I found myself in the "Introduction," where the words above came from.

Nouwen's closing queries haven't lost their urgency, thirty years after his death and nearly half a century after he wrote them. But here's my new query, and I'd love your comments: don't we see some evidence that the church might be actually growing in the strength needed to provide light, salt, and leaven? And here's another question, maybe secondary but fascinating to me as a political scientist: what aspects of this recent growth is being provoked by overreach among those "new religious movements using Christ's name for the most un-Christian practices," and those movements' attempts to enmesh themselves with the structures of political power? (I have more than just the USA in mind.)

One of the ways I try to stay aware of some of today's positive ferment in the church, as well as the ways we're constantly being tested, is the podcast The Convocation Unscripted, which I've linked to several times. I'm tempted to build an index of links to show more evidence, but you can think up keywords and search for them online as well as I can. What I'd love to know is what you're finding out directly through your own experiences and decisions. Still echoing in my mind are the words from John Perkins that I quoted two weeks ago: "I want worship and justice to be done in the same building."

Do you see evidence of growth in the church's capacity to challenge oppression, scare tactics, division, climate denial, and Christian nationalist heresy? (Yes, that's my particular selection!)
For those yearning to get involved, what are some points of engagement?
What new challenges are, in turn, resulting from this fresh energy?
How can we encourage each other, give each other times of respite, and make room for joy and lament among us? How do we welcome all sorts of temperaments, including those who usually get on our nerves?

Within myself, I'm finding new love for this messy church that gave me a spiritual home a half century ago, and continues to frustrate and delight me on a daily basis.

Speaking (very respectfully) of clowns, as Henri Nouwen does in his book, I see that Paulist Father Joachim Lally has recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of his ordination. I vividly remember Joachim Lally from our years in Boston, when I was on the staff of Beacon Hill Friends House and Father Lally was at the Paulist Center, just a short walk away. In those years, his diverse ministry gifts included clowning, but I knew him best from our work together with the organization Social Action Ministries of Greater Boston, where I represented our residence and program center.

One of the participants in The Convocation Unscripted, Jemar Tisby, is ringing an alarm bell: "Pastors, You Cannot Stay Silent on Civil Rights."

Speaking of respite, here's an extraordinary (but also ordinary in an essential way) post by Beth Allison Barr, "Writing at a time like this."

Something in Nouwen's words about "exotic cults" and "new religious movements" reminded me of this article, "Is It the Voice of God, or Just Craziness?" by Joe Kelly in Quaker Life back in 2000. Now, as then, Joe ministers among Friends of the Light Meeting in Traverse City, Michigan, USA.

You already know that "the far right doesn't have a monopoly on Christianity" but it's nice to see an acknowledgment in secular media. Bill McKibben writes in The Guardian....

...A generation of Americans has grown up convinced that Christianity is a freak show, and another generation – those inside the evangelical tent – have grown old unchallenged in their thinking that scripture somehow demands the various cruelties we’ve seen play out in the “culture wars”.

Micah Bales (Berkeley Friends Church) on "Becoming Servants of the Unknown God."

I’ve never debated any Athenian philosophers. I’ve never even visited Greece. But my situation – and yours – is in some ways very similar to the one that Paul faced two thousand years ago.

From "The Bible and the Blues" at Reedwood Friends Church, here are LaRhonda Steele and Ed Snyder with "Up Above My Head." (This is the last of the six songs LaRhonda Steele performs in the course of the full meeting for worship; I encourage you to play the whole video.)

(Let me know if you can spot Judy and me....)

07 May 2026

Based in the UK? Your May 12 invitation.

Clipped from the 12th May diary invitation page of the Mass Observation Archive Web site.

Every year on the 12th May, MO asks people across the country to record their day. This might include what they did at work, what they ate, what they heard or watched, and whatever else they got up to. Anyone based in the UK can send us their diary, and we accept submissions both online and by post.
Diaries can take whatever form you feel comfortable with. If you’d rather type, great! If you’d prefer to photograph or sketch your day, that’s also great! Diaries don’t have to be formal, and they definitely don’t have to be perfectly written or spell-checked. We’d always rather receive an imperfect diary than none at all.
This year, we are keen to hear your thoughts and feelings about nature and wellbeing, as well as anything else you would like to share about your day. Tell us if you go out and experience nature on 12 May. Where did you go? How did this experience make you feel? If you were at work or indoors, is there somewhere else you would have liked to have been instead?

Source: The Mass Observation Archive (MO), Get ready for our national diary day.

I found out about the Mass Observation Archive from an English Friend who is a registered observer for the program. I've been fascinated ever since.

Mass Observation seeks to document the everyday lives of British people as directly as possible from the people themselves. Registered Mass Observers respond several times a year to "directives," which ask about specific aspects of daily life. For example, the current directive seeks attitudes and experiences related to immigration and asylum-seekers, among other topics. Here's the official explanation of this observer role and a link to the handbook for observers, along with a description of one-off opportunities to submit observations.

The other major documentation project, and the one that especially interested me, is the annual May 12 diary invitation, which is open to anyone living in the UK. The Mass Observation Archive's May 12 program began in 1937, with the coronation of King George VI, and, in its original conception, ran well past the end of World War II. The project was relaunched in 1981. Its early years can be sampled through compilations, including these two fascinating books available on the Internet Archive: Private Battles: How the War Almost Defeated Us, and Wartime Women: A Mass Observation Anthology.

Sources: History Workshop (left); Internet Archive (center and right).

Do we in the USA have similar efforts to collect direct accounts of daily life, as well as responses to shared national experiences? StoryCorps comes to mind, but it seems far more controlled, edited, and packaged for media.

I answer surveys regularly from three different research organizations, but they decide the topics and questions, and I usually have to choose from a very incomplete set of possible answers. Usually there's no room for my own voice.

A very specific but worthwhile channel in the USA might be the logbooks at National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management interpretive stations and similar guestbooks at other major tourist sites. For example, when our family moved from Indiana to Oregon (via Madison County, Virginia!), we visited several sites marking the historic Oregon Trail. At Baker City we were invited to write our own family's story of how we came to be on the Oregon Trail in the interpretive center's logbook. I haven't been able to find out how those stories are (or aren't) collected and preserved. Do you know, by any chance?

Other attempts to cover at least a bit of this territory in the USA are represented by the books and recorded interviews by Studs Terkel and other oral historians and archivists. However, none of these quite approach the idea of the UK's Mass Observation Archive: inviting direct and unfiltered contributions to the national record from potentially the whole population, along with topical observations from hundreds of volunteer observers. It's very tempting to me to ask whether this difference in data collection reflects different ideas of civic duty and community-mindedness vs individualism.

One important aspect of MO's May 12 program is, of course, the use of this specific date every year, whether or not anything "important" happened on that day in the nation's life. In 1937, that was the date of the new king's coronation, and researchers wanted actual testimony rather than the mass media's take on the event, but, since then, MO simply wants accounts of people's ordinary day. The occasional one-off invitations are also fascinating—I remember being very moved by my friend's account of the funeral of Elizabeth II.

Have you found ways to contribute to the national memory of your country?

Speaking of one-day archives, do you remember the series of photography books entitled A Day in the Life of ... a number of countries including Canada, the USSR, Spain, Japan, the USA, along with the states of Hawaii and California? They were published back in the 1980's, assembled by the editing team of Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen with the participation of hundreds of photographers. Here on the Internet Archives is the volume on the Soviet Union, and here is the one on Canada. Pictured: the volume on Spain, the edition we've owned for nearly forty years.

Related: Diaries; Innocence (scroll to Studs Terkel interview at end).

Wikipedia's article on the Mass Observation Archive.

Alfred McCoy on American "micro-militarism" in historical perspective.

Like Britain at Suez in 1956, Washington will likely pay a heavy price for its “micro-militarism” in the Strait of Hormuz. Close allies, the bedrock of U.S. global power for 80 years, have refused any military support for Washington’s war of choice, prompting Trump to call them “cowards.” In response to his thundering threats of civilian and civilizational destruction (both war crimes), Trump has been condemned by world leaders. Oblivious to the dangers of war in a region that is the epicenter of global capitalism, Washington is now proving ever more dangerously disruptive of the global economy, making China look like a far more stable choice for world leadership. Moreover, while the U.S. military has proven its tactical agility in destroying targets, it clearly can no longer capture meaningful strategic objectives.

On "local hero" John Henry Newman, the Cadburys of chocolate fame, and "parochial" life at its best. Thanks to Mary Raber for the link.

This year, Russia's Victory Day (May 9) will look a little different, particularly in Moscow.

Robert P. Jones on the U.S. administration's report on anti-Christian bias, including the report's absurd selectivity.

"Nobody likes to be called a quitter," says Nancy Thomas. But as she writes, she concedes that some losses may also be gains. "As often happens when I write this blog, I’m processing my situation and coming to a place of hope."

One of my favorite samples of Chicago....

30 April 2026

Remembering John Perkins (1930-2026)

Source.

The apostle Paul, before his conversion, knew all about fighting. He condoned extreme violence—and maybe even participated in it. After his encounter with Jesus, though, he became the kind of man who would endure violence at the hands of others without returning blow for blow. When Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy, “I have fought the good fight” (2 Tim. 4:7 NKJV), he was not referring to anything he had accomplished with his fists. My prayer is that as I approach the end of my days, I too will be able to say that I have come to understand what the “good fight” is and that I have persevered in that battle.
John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win.

John Perkins reached the end of his days among us on March 13 of this year, in a new season of privilege, xenophobia, racism, and Christian nationalist heresy. Just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court's reframing of partisan gerrymandering took the remaining teeth out of the Voting Rights Act (under the guise of strengthening that act's constitutionality).

In this new environment of enthusiastic racism whipped up by national leadership and expressed in near-daily waves of social media noise, it is easy to feel very discouraged or just plain numb. This is why I've wanted to return to the words and vision of John Perkins, to be reminded and reassured that his immense legacy is still ours.

The book that I've been re-reading, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win, was one I first read just months before our time in Russia came to an end. When Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election (the result announced in full view of our students in our Mass Media class at the institute in Elektrostal) and began his xenophobic administration the following January, we knew we were in for a rough time. Reading John Perkins' book was encouragement we needed.

Today his words are even more important to keep before people of goodwill. In his book he doesn't just explain his central principles (such as relocation, reconciliation, redistribution), he candidly talks about the costs and heartaches of a life lived by those principles, the lingering regrets he had and mistakes he made, and above all, the central role of love. He makes it clear again and again that he does not want to be the hero of his own story; and to illustrate his point, he gives many case studies of churches and leaders who have embodied the vision of a multicultural church.

As he reinforces throughout his book, he's not opposed to parachurch agencies, but his vision is intensely focused on the local church. He wrote, "I want worship and justice to be done in the same building"—and his stories often make that point.

I first met John Perkins in 1975, in Jackson and Mendenhall, Mississippi, and I tell that story here and here. The next time I had a chance to talk to him was during his visit to Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1981. Our final visit came in 2007 not far from where we live in Portland, Oregon.

Here are a few more samples of his vision for our churches and our discipleship:

I think one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible is found in Revelation 7:9–12. It says,
After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen.” (NKJV)
All nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues will be together, praising and worshiping God in unity. I long for the day when this vision becomes reality. I long for a kingdom in which we aren’t divided over issues of culture or hatred of the past. I hear people arguing about everything from church pews to worship songs to old cultural traditions, but we need to start getting beyond this stuff.

Acts 17:26 declares that the people from every nation are “made from one blood” (NKJV), so we are all one race. Issues related to ethnicity and tribalism may divide us, but we have to start recognizing that we are one race—the human race. The problems that divide us are surmountable. We have been given a clear picture of what this kingdom is to look like—multiethnic, multicultural, multigenerational, multiclass—and we need to be on the side of that coming kingdom now.
No, we are no longer in a society in which white church councils have meetings about whether to even let black people enter the doors, but we still live in a time when the majority of churches today do not look anything like John’s vision in Revelation. But people like Bryan and Eugene [two of his case studies] give me hope that we might become one as Jesus prayed we would. Their thriving congregations and the many people catching hold of their visions remind me that there is a cloud coming up over the lake, even if it is only the size of a man’s hand. The people who gather together and worship at CCDA [Christian Community Development Association] and the energetic church planters who are part of these other conferences show me that the rain is coming. And be prepared for when it does, because if it is anything like what happened in Elijah’s day, this little cloud is about to take over the entire sky—and the heavy rain will come.

Part of the reason the church in America faces some of its current challenges is because of where we live and how we see the gospel message. The fullness and adequacy of the gospel is a message of togetherness and love across ethnic barriers. Churches that understand the fullness of the gospel and the greatness of God will serve people best. It’s also important to understand that our problems are always multifaceted. Areas such as economics, behavior, family, and customs all stop us at the door to truth, when in reality, we should view these in light of God’s justice.

We need to create an environment where truth can be told. Of course, we need the Holy Spirit to guide us in this task, but I think that can happen. This is really what our worship should be all about—seeking and telling the truth. Ideally, both the preacher and the congregation are there for this purpose. They should hope to hear and discover truths about themselves, about society, and about doing life together. And then, in the midst of seeking and telling truth, we find God’s presence.

"This is really what our worship should be all about—seeking and telling the truth." Thank you, John Perkins, for this vision!

Polls, war, corruption, and gerrymandering: Heather Cox Richardson sums it up.

More from Heather Cox Richardson: her comparison of Donald Trump's speech on the occasion of the British king's visit, and Charles III's own speech.

Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk's own country "has been under occupation, dogged by corruption and war. Yet even I’ve been bewildered by the way the US seems to be fracturing.... What I see now in the US is a profound inability to discuss seriously how the state can serve the public good."

Among the places in the USA she visited as a journalist is Wilmington, Ohio, where we lived during Judy's time as financial aid director at Wilmington College.

This coming Sunday at Reedwood Friends Church and online: "The Bible and the Blues: a comparison of biblical laments with African-American blues," with Daniel Smith-Christopher, LaRhonda Steele, and Ed Snyder. 9:30 a.m. Available later on Reedwood's YouTube channel.

LaRhonda Steele, a Blues and gospel singer and songwriter, is recognized as one the region's best rhythm and blues vocalists. She has been dubbed "The First Lady of Portland Blues"—a title of leadership that she lives up to as she shares songs that carry forth directly from her soul and spiritual life-force.
She currently fronts the LaRhonda Steele band, is music director of the nonprofit Portland Interfaith Gospel Choir, and is music director of Portland Center for Spiritual Living. LaRhonda regularly lights up the stage at the Waterfront Blues Festival, Alberta Rose Theatre, and clubs around town.
LaRhonda’s voice can be enjoyed on recordings of national and international artists including Gino Vannelli, Curtis Salgado, Lloyd Jones, Mary Flower, and Norman Sylvester, to name a few.
—Reedwood Friends Weekly