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Back during Richard Nixon's Watergate crisis, I was in the office of Edward Lee, one of my Russian professors, and our conversation turned to those events in the country to our south. (I was a Carleton University student, in Ottawa.)
Lee pointed out that there was a silver lining to the daily parade of distressing revelations: as it turned out, we had been right about Richard Nixon. Our misgivings were based on reality.
Today, as the evidence of unbridled authoritarianism under Trump and Musk keeps streaming in, I thought about that conversation. I confess that part of the reason I stay on top of each day's political news is not just to refresh my sense of horror. There's a perverse satisfaction in getting confirmations that our misgivings are not exaggerated.
For Christians who cherish the cycle of the church year, Lent has just begun. (This year, Lenten observances in the Eastern and Western churches roughly coincide.) One of my friends in England takes a complete break from the Internet during this season. I am not following her worthy example; I'm online daily to watch events unfold around me, and to consider my modest role in resistance.
Still, I need to take into account the purpose of this season that culminates in my favorite holiday, Easter. In Lent we go into the desert in search of Living Water so that we can meet the risen Lord with our hearts refreshed and ready, undistracted, in essential unity, ready to share the seeds of hope.
... Undistracted? In unity?
I sometimes forget how much support there is around me if I just stop and look! My English friend's discipline blesses her—and me, too. So does every community in the family of faith that keeps holding up the reality of that Living Water, and reminds me in many ways, liturgical as well as Quaker, in order not to get dried out with my steady diet of difficult news. Anger and cynicism are roaming that desert, ready to complain about the lack of water, tempting me to ask, "Is the Lord among us or not?" (See Exodus 17:1-7.)
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A decade ago I originally posted "Theological mathematics." The essay that inspired me was by Thomas R. Kelly. It was part of the collection of writings published as The Eternal Promise. The context of his brief essay entitled "Reflections" was another period of high tension: World War II was just ahead. What's more, in those very months Kelly was writing, Germany and her opponents were in a strange competition to enlist Russia as an ally.
In another essay from the same book, "Where Are the Springs of Hope?" (also summer 1939), Kelly said, "In such a world as ours today, no light glib word of hope dare be spoken." Such words are not suitable unless "...we know what it means to have absolutely no other hope but in Him. But as we know something of such a profound and amazing experience, clear at the depths of our beings, then we dare to proclaim it boldly in the midst of a world aflame. But the words are no good if the life experience is not behind them."
I think Kelly's writings in The Eternal Promise (and, of course, in the earlier collection, A Testament of Devotion) are helpful Lenten sustenance, and not just for me as an individual. They might speak to all Friends, and to all who may find themselves and their communities in a dry, fractious place just when the world needs their seeds of hope. As it turns out, the more variety we have in our Lenten disciplines, the more we need to support each other, drawing upon the experiences of all people everywhere who know what it means to challenge the principalities and powers.
Theological mathematics (2015), edited
In the summer of 1939, just weeks or perhaps days from the opening guns of World War II, Thomas Kelly was staying at an Episcopal monastery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While there, he wrote some reflections that were published posthumously among the essays collected by his son Richard Kelly in The Eternal Promise.
Among other reflections, Thomas Kelly wrote:
Outside the shadows of the evening are falling upon the quiet, friendly garden where a few moments ago three of us, two Fathers of the Catholic tradition and a Friend, were speaking of the sacraments. There was much talk of the "covenanted channels," of the seven to which Catholics hold, of the two which Protestants practice. So long as questions of theological mathematics were upper, of seven or of two, there was a danger which we tacitly avoided. It became evident that I, an "unbaptized" Quaker, was not a Christian, except for the saving provision which allowed one to be a "Christian by desire."
Yet as the conversation moved to the love of God, to the need of Christ being formed in us, to the outgoing love of the Nazarene, to the blind and lame and wounded in body and soul in these days, the conversation became a sacrament where the Presence was as truly in our midst as He is in the Mass within the chapel walls. For the time being, Sacramentalist and Quaker were one, in the fellowship of the Church Universal.
The phrase that struck me forcefully: theological mathematics. Kelly is gently putting the question of sacramental observances in perspective, but I sat there wrestling with a different arithmetic: subtraction. We serve such an amazing God, we are led by such a luminous Saviour, the world is so demonstrably in need of authentic Christian hope, that I'm having a hard time with all the public Christians who seem intent on telling us (whether crassly or with endless theological subtlety) why this person or that should have the church's door slammed in their face.
It's not that we shouldn't have boundaries. Apparently many people are, at any given moment, not attracted by the Light we ourselves have found irresistible; they are entitled to their choices. But our invitation must remain honest and real and the door must remain open, fully lit. What we can't tolerate is a false welcome, an ostensible invitation with hidden screens to be sure nobody we're uncomfortable with stumbles in. Yes, we will have healing work to do; wounded people are not entitled to remodel the household of faith to suit their allergies and addictions. We will have to struggle, together with newcomers, over different understandings of the ethical consequences of conversion, whether the sharp edge of the struggle is sex or money or the obligations of citizenship. God knows, we're dealing with all this ourselves. But, the point is, when people come to us and say that they're ready to embrace Jesus, we then face these problems, even these conflicts, together.
The conflicts between theological conservatives and theological liberals in our evangelical corner of the Quaker world are not to be dismissed or taken lightly. At our best, we challenge each other's pretensions and false heroism, and keep each other honest. But I fear that when we let those conflicts take up too much space, we lose our perspective and our priorities. It's not that we need to conceal these conflicts in order to avoid scandalizing potential converts. People aren't stupid, they won't be surprised that we "mature" Christians are just as human and fractious as they are. But woe unto us if we diminish Christ's ability to create unity where the world would predict, even encourage, division.
(Back to 2025.) I love how Kelly's reflections on his visit to the monastic community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the eve of wartime, model the kind of wideband mutually supportive relationships that we'll need in these times. I am also remembering Beacon Hill Friend Howard Segars, who in our own time was also a participant in this same Cambridge community.
Related posts: "The gathered meeting," parts one and two.
See original post for some helpful comments from readers.
You may have noticed the words "our evangelical corner of the Quaker world...." When the post was first written, we were still in Northwest Yearly Meeting. Many Friends in our current "corner" of the Quaker world would probably not use the adjective "evangelical" for themselves. The word has suffered a lot of abuse as a result of its politicization.
I mentioned my practice of monitoring online sources of political news. Kristin Kobes Du Mez lists some of the sources she finds helpful for this calling. Her Convocation Unscripted colleague, Robert P. Jones, has an Ash Wednesday commentary on the U.S. president's speech to Congress. (I may have given the Convocation Unscripted link before, but just in case....)
Despite limited legal victories in the Supreme Court and a U.S. district court, the USA's international aid programs and partnerships are still in grave danger. Here's FCNL's online campaign facility for this concern. My one caution: e-mails to my Oregon senators are getting through on these facilities, but our congressperson's e-mail has a filter to catch "automated" e-mails even if the actual e-mail has been substantially rewritten by the sender. I now write to her using the form on her own congressional Web site.
Right Sharing of World Resources just held another online gathering of former board members, giving us a chance to meet the new executive director, Traci Hjelt Sullivan, and the country coordinator for Guatemala, Ruth Bueso. I wrote about the first two gatherings here and here. Among other things, the RSWR staff asked for our help in publicizing these job openings.
And ... Right Sharing takes a turn guest-editing the Daily Quaker Message.
Michael Albertus (Foreign Affairs) on climate change and the coming age of territorial expansion.
Juan Cole's Tomgram on how science fiction anticipated DOGE.
Nancy Thomas's unruly saints and questionable angels.
Hubert Sumlin (1931-2011) and David Johansen (d. February 28, 2025) had a marvelous collaboration, with Johansen supplying voice after Sumlin's lung surgery.
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