The problem with AI ... according to AI

Source.  

It's been nearly 13 years since Gmail offered automatic classification of e-mails (sorting them into "Primary," "Promotion," "Social," etc.). I appreciated the way this organized my in-box, and I soon began creating filters that would override Gmail's decisions when necessary. Even so, I wondered what Google was doing with the data it must have been collecting to do that sorting of my mail.

More recently, Gmail has been trying to finish my sentences, and has been offering summaries of my incoming mail and my e-mail conversations. It offers to help me write letters.

I posted the following query into Google's search engine:

"Examples of unwanted and uninvited use of AI in our everyday Internet-based tasks (e-mail, for example)." I'll let AI speak for itself (but I'll return at the end).

Note: Google provides the sources of the information and advice in this essay through links in the actual Google-constructed reply to my request.

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Platforms are moving from simple "tools" to "collaborators" without always being asked.

It’s a fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) time to be online. We are currently in the "opt-out" era of the internet, where AI features are often pushed live first, leaving users to figure out how to disable them later.

While some find these tools helpful, many users experience them as "feature creep"—unnecessary clutter that interrupts flow or compromises privacy.

1. Communication & Email

This is where most people encounter unwanted AI daily.Smart Compose & Predictive Text: Gmail and Outlook now suggest the end of your sentences. While it saves seconds, many feel it flattens their personal voice or makes emails sound robotic.

AI-Generated Summaries: Some email clients now place an AI-generated summary at the top of long threads. If the AI misses a nuance or gets a deadline wrong, it can lead to costly misunderstandings.

Priority Inboxes: Algorithms decide which emails are "Important." If the AI "hallucinates" that a bill or a personal note is "Promotions," you might miss it entirely. [This happens to me frequently.]

2. Search Engines & Information

The way we look for facts has fundamentally shifted in the last year, often removing the "human" element of the web. 

AI Overviews (SGE): Google and Bing now place an AI-generated answer at the very top of search results. This pushes actual websites (written by humans) further down the page and can sometimes present "hallucinations" as factual truth.

Chatbot Sidebars: Many browsers (like Edge with Copilot) now have persistent sidebars that analyze the page you are reading, even if you just wanted a clean reading experience.

3. Social Media & Content Creation

Social platforms are using AI to keep you scrolling longer and to fill gaps in original content.

AI-Generated Commenting: LinkedIn and other platforms now suggest "AI replies" to posts. This can lead to comment sections filled with shallow, automated praise rather than genuine networking.

Feed Manipulation: Algorithms have moved beyond "who you follow" to "what the AI thinks will keep you hooked," often surfacing AI-generated "slop" (synthetic images or low-quality AI articles) in your main feed.

Invisible Editing: Instagram and Facebook have integrated AI tools that can "expand" your photos or remove people from backgrounds automatically, sometimes blurring the line between reality and digital fabrication. 

4. Workplace & Productivity Tools

The "Software as a Service" (SaaS) world has integrated AI into almost every text box. 

The "Ask AI" Pop-up: In tools like Notion, Slack, or Google Docs, highlighting text often triggers a "Write with AI" button that can get in the way of manual editing.

Meeting Transcription Bots: You may join a Zoom call only to find an "AI Note-taker" bot joined too. This can feel like uninvited surveillance, especially if the host didn't ask for everyone's consent first.

Why this feels "unwanted"

The tension usually comes down to three things:

1. Cognitive Load: Having to constantly dismiss pop-ups or "X out" of AI suggestions is exhausting.
2. Privacy Concerns: Users often worry that their private drafts or emails are being used to "train" the next version of the AI.
3. Loss of Agency: When a tool suggests how you should finish a sentence, it subtly influences your thoughts and communication style.

Even more unwanted! Google's sources did not mention perhaps the most disastrous aspect of AI's invasion into our online lives: the electricity it takes to make those often-unwanted features possible.

I asked Google, "How much additional electricity (beyond what would be used simply by the Internet) is required to power AI?" Here is its full answer. In brief,

AI-optimized data centers require 3–5 times more power per square foot than traditional facilities, with a single AI server rack consuming 50–150 kilowatts compared to 10–15 kW for conventional computing. AI searches use roughly 10 times more electricity than standard, non-AI internet searches, driving a potential 10%–20% increase in total U.S. power demand by 2030.

I admit that I appreciate that AI is probably helping Google process the questions I ask it. Instead of guessing at the best key words and their best order, as I used to do, I can frame my queries in natural language. However, my occasional and voluntary use of AI in this direction is not the same as having it intrude when not invited.

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At the end of the original response to my query, Google asks, "Would you like me to show you how to disable some of these specific AI features in Gmail, Google Search, or LinkedIn?" I answered "yes," and it linked to these suggestions.

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In the context of ICE and other U.S. Homeland Security officers' abusive behavior, it's not surprising that audiences yearn for evidence that justice is on the way. A whole new AI-powered trope has arisen to meet this hunger: videos of officers making ludicrous and cruel arrests (it happens!) and then getting scolded by angry citizens, business owners, local police, and judges. Here's a YouTube channel specializing in such videos. The channel's front page makes it clear that every video is fictional, a similar note is on each video's individual page, and the videos themselves bear all the typical features of fakes, but the vast majority of the comments on many of these videos are cheering on those righteous resisters. Occasionally there's a plaintive "It's probably AI but I wish this were true."

Other AI-generated videos tell stories of miraculous landings of stricken airplanes, or detailed accounts of Ukrainian drone strikes, and no doubt far worse material ... and we're all paying for the power that's needed to compose these AI fakes, and the mental and spiritual pollution they spread, just when civil society needs true discernment more than ever. Among the names of the early Quaker movement were "Publishers of Truth" and "Children of the Light"; I guess we're still needed, if we're up to it!

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Was it inevitable? AI agents have their own social network?? Benj Edwards on Moltbook.

Micah Bales on the humility of God. "Be encouraged, brothers and sisters."

Sunita Viswanath: The "theology of showing up" is making Minneapolis a holy place.

Artemis II's lunar mission is delayed. Amy Shira Teitel's sad and blunt commentary on this rocket and its ultra-expensive path to irrelevance: her video and article.

A Guardian report on Dezer Development and Palestinian deportations: an infuriating glimpse into the world of wealthy presidential friends who earn big fees by transporting deportees and treating them as utter nobodies.

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One of my favorite versions of "Baby Scratch My Back" ... Jason Ricci with John Lisi, Sam Hotchkiss, Andy Kurz, and Adam Baumol.

Once again, baby and bathwater

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Several times over the past twenty-plus years of this blog, I've referred favorably to the expression "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

For example (April 2006):

Friends began, not as a relativization of Christianity, but as an intensification of Christianity. We did not throw away the Baby with the bathwater, but (sorry if you've heard this rant before!), the new scented bathwater in use among some seems to be so fine that the Baby can be left in the cold, and this is somehow called Quakerism!

More recently, in July 2024 I mentioned where I first saw this expression used among Friends:

As an old London Yearly Meeting poster once proclaimed, as nearly as I can remember, "Tired of organized religion? Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater." Let's just watch out for that exceptionalist temptation, whatever our corner of the Quaker world—to replace the Baby with our own bathwater, whether that be the subtle rose-scented water of liberal Quakerism or the soggy cliches of imported evangelicalism.

Just in passing ... my memory is that London Yearly Meeting published a number of other clever posters in the 1970's. My favorite was something like this: Don't just do something. Sit there.

My own personal interpretation of the baby/bathwater warning in the Quaker context: those early Friends no longer trusted the religion industry to interpret either faith or practice adequately, but, contrary to the angry charges of their Christian opponents, they did trust Jesus.

("Angry charges"? Read the accusations and responses in William Penn's tract, "A Key, Opening the Way to Every Capacity; How to Distinguish the Religion Professed by the People Called Quakers, from the Perversions and Misrepresentations of Their Adversaries.")

Today I was following up some Internet rabbit trails on deconstructing faith, and I found Jim Palmer's comments on the usefulness and limitations of the baby/bathwater expression. The responsibility is always upon us (individually and as a community) to define who/what the "baby" is that we are being advised not to throw out.

Palmer points out that, honestly, nobody actually advocates throwing out a baby with its bathwater, so the expression is sometimes used manipulatively. Yes, your deconstruction can go so far, but no farther. Palmer challenges us to decide for ourselves Who or what the baby is.

So ... should we Quakers still be using this expression in addressing prospective seekers? We're promising that, by giving up the structures, doctrines, and ceremonies of their previous affiliations (or the choices they dislike in the religious marketplace), they'll still be able to keep that which is essential. But will they really do so? Take that story of the (alleged) Philadelphia Quaker culture that the late Gordon Browne told (according to my imperfect memory):

A recent convert went into a Friends meeting in Philadelphia and burst into enthusiastic testimony: "Friends, I have to tell you—I've met Jesus! I've found religion!" Not content with one outburst, he got up again and said, "I can't hold it in! I'm reading the Bible—I've found religion!" After a third such exclamation, an elder stood up and addressed him directly: "Friend, you may have 'found religion' but you didn't find it here."

I want to say, gently (because this can certainly be overstated!), that the fastidious reserve of particular Quaker cultures has become a sort of bathwater that obscures the Baby and deserves to be drained, or at least diluted! After those cultures have molded several generations of Quakers, the centrality of Jesus has, at times, faded, to our loss and our potential irrelevance.

How would we know whether Jesus is still at the center? We could dutifully answer, "By gathering in his presence and prayerfully seeking his guidance in our decisionmaking," but that requires

• persistence in discernment, not falling for convenient shortcuts—formulas, ideologies, rhetorics of shame, and persuasive personalities that can distract us from listening deeply to each other as we wait for clarity;
• knowing and loving ourselves and each other to such a degree that we learn what helps and hinders each of us in our own hearts in seeking (or avoiding) clarity, and we discover who among us has shown this capacity to speak God's guidance clearly.

To quote Thomas S. Brown ("When Friends attend to business"): 

We are called to love those present enough to listen to what they have to say and to speak what is worth their hearing.

If Jesus is not relevant to a seeker's condition, there are certainly many other options in the religious marketplace, including the deceptive anti-baby of Christian nationalism. But we Friends who have experienced the liberating power of Jesus, can continue to offer (or ought to offer) a thoughtful and passionate devotion to the Lamb's War combined with a radical skepticism concerning the religion industry and its claims and priorities.

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That skepticism is not a license to indulge in Quaker exceptionalism. It ought not to stand in the way of our cheering the Anglican communion for having chosen Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to serve in that office.

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From the Daily Quaker Message: Primitive Quakerism Revived.

From "Discrediting" the Military to High Treason and Terrorism: Sergei Davidis on the evolution of political repression in Russia since the start of the current war. It's a disastrous and discouraging progression for those who yearn for "the beautiful Russia of the future."

In summary, political repression in recent years has clearly intensified: sentences have lengthened, convictions under the gravest articles (treason, terrorism) have reached record highs, and the victim count continues to grow. At the same time, measured as a proportion of the population directly subjected to politically motivated criminal prosecution, the scale remains comparatively moderate—especially relative to Belarus (where the per capita rate of political imprisonment is significantly higher) and, even more so, the Stalinist period of the 1930s-1950s.

This scale likely reflects the «functional» nature of current repression: it provides the regime with adequate control at minimal cost. Several thousand imprisoned for political reasons (plus thousands facing criminal charges without incarceration and tens of thousands prosecuted administratively) suffice under present conditions. Several factors facilitate this efficiency. First, the modern information environment vastly amplifies the deterrent effect of even targeted repression. The variety, unpredictability, and broad social and geographic reach of charges foster a widespread mindset of keeping one’s head down. Second, society has been conditioned over 25 years of deepening authoritarianism to accept the status quo as inevitable and without alternative.

Tom Gates connects Rene Girard's mimetic theory and Quakers as "scapegoat caste."

Becky Ankeny on prayer as the most important act of resistance to evil.

A Tornado through our Republic: A message by Doug Bennett at Durham Friends Meeting, Maine, USA.

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As promised, another back is scratched. Curtis Salgado, Igor Prado Trio, Ivan Márcio, Roger Guttierrez. São Paulo, Brazil.

When grief just won't come, part three: Erika

Left to right: My mother Erika Maurer, me, great-grandmother Jenny Christine Maurer, my sister Ellen, my aunt Ada DenBraven, and, finally, Ada's brother, my father Harald Maurer. Evanston, Illinois. Late 1950's.

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When grief just won't come, part one, part two. A dream of my mother. My father's guns. Do I really need to forgive?

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I've written before about how difficult it has been to grieve my parents. That inability has left a hollow place in me.

A little over a decade ago, at a retreat center for international workers, I promised a therapist that, after our month at this center ended, I would continue to work on this grief. 

It's taken some time, but I'm glad to report that I'm finally saying goodbye—first to my mother. It involves speaking to her and my father directly, in the presence of a therapist (a trained and trustworthy witness is important to me)—that is, looking at the place in the room where I imagine my parents to be, asking them the questions I wish I'd had a chance to ask when they were alive, and saying goodbye.

I spent my earliest years with my father's parents in Oslo and then my mother's parents in Stuttgart, before going to Chicago to live with my parents and the two-year-old girl they'd had in my absence—my sister Ellen. Hence this sample from my questions: 

"Did they send you photos of me? What did you think?"

I won't list all my questions here. My final questions to my mother: "How would you like me to remember you? What would you like me to remember about you?"

You may be among my readers for whom this kind of therapy is familiar territory. Maybe you've used a similar approach to address painful relationships or unresolved grief. In my case, even though this was my own initiative,  I'll admit that I had to overcome some skepticism about the play-acting that seemed to be involved. To my surprise, the longer I stuck with the exercise, the more real it became.

I plan to continue.

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I began the day thinking that today's blog post would be personal, and I could take a rest this week from the unfolding calamity of a rogue presidency. Then I saw the photo of five-year-old Liam Ramos, a photo you might also have seen in today's news. I first saw it in this article by the Washington Post's art and architecture critic, Philip Kennicott.

There was more shock to come. Asked about this case, vice president J.D. Vance said, "So the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. What are they supposed to do? Let a five-year-old child freeze to death?" (Quoting from the CBC report.) 

Did it really not occur to Vance or to ICE that there was another obvious option?—not to make the arrest!  ... To use their better judgment. To have the humanity to leave these people alone! For God's sake, make a moral calculation (after all, you know where the family lives!!) in favor of the child and family and due process rather than an artificial urgency that inevitably leads to blatant public cruelty.

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Canadian prime minister Mark Carney's remarkable seventeen-minute Davos Conference reality check. (And, sorry, PM, your invitation to the Board of Peace has been canceled!)

Crystallia Lastala reads about Maria Skobtsova and "when faith stops being a cage."

What strikes me most is how clearly this perspective exposes the spiritual sicknesses we too often mistake for holiness. As someone who loves Christ deeply yet hesitates to call herself a Christian because of how distorted the faith has become in practice, I feel this tension painfully.

Another perspective on distorted faith, from Peter Wehner: In case you were still wondering, "MAGA Jesus is not the real Jesus."

Jeremy Morris on Russia, Ukraine, and the "Western-culpability thesis," with Richard Sakwa as a case study.

Becky Ankeny on "chaos, hope, and meaningful action"—highly recommended.

John Calvi "had a small miracle occur"—see his year-end letter.

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Blues from Canada: Whitehorse's version of "Baby, Scratch My Back." 

Slim Harpo's original classic (including the chicken scratch) lives on! I've probably posted more versions of this song than of any other, but so many musicians find it irresistible. (More in coming weeks.)

Radical left lunatics?

Sources: top; bottom. Is there a Christian version?

Last week, in the links section of my post, I quoted Adam Serwer's commentary on Federal officials' description of Renee Nicole Good, who had just been shot to death by a Federal officer.

Serwer went on to summarize the situation: "The federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest, and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public."

In a more recent commentary, Serwer's colleague David Frum proposes an explanation for "Why Vance Committed So Hard to the Minneapolis Shooter. The vice president knows what ICE means to MAGA." As Serwer noted, "informing the public" is not the Trump administration's goal. Instead, Frum believes, (links in original)

For MAGA America, ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence. Visit ICE social-media accounts and you’ll see, again and again, videos of armed force against unarmed individuals, against a soundtrack of pumping music. There’s a montage of aggressive arrests in Minnesota of unarmed, nonwhite men, many of them thrown to the ground and cuffed, set to the 1977 hit “Cold as Ice”: “Someday you’ll pay the price.” A dozen heavily armed and armored agents round up a single unarmed woman in a T-shirt and two similarly defenseless men in California. In Indiana, armored agents throw handcuffs and ankle chains on a big haul of men and shove them in a cell, where they can be seen pacing, weeping, or with their heads plunged in their hands.

...

ICE is violence-prone in part because the agency has lowered its training standards and ditched much of its background vetting to meet the president’s grandiose deportation targets. But more fundamentally, ICE is violence-prone because its main purpose has become theatrical. Under present leadership, ICE is less a law-enforcement agency than it is a content creator.

...

MAGA is many things, but above all it’s a movement about redistributing respect away from those who command too much (overeducated coastal elites) to those who don’t have enough (white Americans without advanced degrees who feel left behind). You see that redistribution at work in the Trump administration’s project to devalue medical experts and empower wellness gurus and vaccine skeptics, and in its dismissal of “deep state” national-security professionals in favor of TV pundits.

Vance and his colleagues quickly called the just-killed Renee Nicole Good a "deranged leftist" and "domestic terrorist." Most of us ordinary citizens who oppose this administration may be statistically unlikely to feature in gleeful ICE arrest videos. (Don't count on it! Especially if we're not white.) Instead, we are part of the nefarious "network" that Good belonged to; we're "radical left lunatics." Day after day, the public space is flooded with these messages, which may be shrugged off by the majority of the audiences, but which reinforce the project Frum describes: the creation of content that demeans critics and "redistributes respect."

Most of the target audience may never understand how diverse MAGA's critics are, and how absurd the charges brought against us by those with an interest in making us look super-organized, ruthless, and scary. Many of them will not see the irony that many of us critics are devout Christians, as are many of the people being arrested and deported by those who claim to be defending Christian civilization. But we need to stand up for truth in whatever ways we can, for at least three reasons: first, to defend the very idea of truth and give the lie to these charges; second, to remain sane and resilient in the face of these constant smears; and, third, to preserve a memory of what our semblance of democracy was like before the MAGA occupation began.

To be honest, some critics of MAGA are also pretty handy with insults and invective. Let's not go there. A few days before the second Trump administration began, I asked, "Are we agents of Lucifer?" No, we are not, but there is something demonic about this proto-fascist occupation we face. This evening, I'd like once again to refer back to the ideals of the Lamb's War: We don't search for enemies, we search for prisoners—and do everything we can collectively to free them.

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The attempted cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel's television show a few months ago seemed like a Reichstag fire moment on our path to authoritarianism, but this past year now seems to me to have been a seemingly endless parade of such emergencies. 

Sometimes I feel as if we're in a more or less permanent state of crisis for our constitutional republic and its paralyzed legislature and overworked courts, and sometimes it seems like we're in an utterly absurdist dream—now NATO allies are landing troops on Greenland!? When will we wake up?

Let's keep up our fierce campaign of ethical vigilance, a mutually respectful and prayerful division of labor (mystics, accountants, artists, journalists, musicians, prophets, healers—we're all needed!), and the miraculous joy of the Lord.

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Diana Butler Bass on Witnesses to the Bad News.

Here's how Russian forces are weaponizing winter in Ukraine.

Judy and I recently enjoyed the newest movie in the "Knives Out" series: Wake Up Dead Man. Kristin Du Mez has some interesting reflections on the movie. Don't miss the comments, too.

As an immigrant, I appreciated Heather Cox Richardson's first commentary of the new year.

Anthony Esolen and David Bentley Hart discuss suffering. (Thanks to Eclectic Orthodoxy for making this available.)

Mark Russ takes a look at whiteness and universalism among British Quakers.

Nancy Thomas on mercy from God coming through strangers. (Nancy mentions Pete Greig's Lectio 365 program, which I also use.)

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"Masked Man Blues." (Lyrics below the video.)

Lyrics by Ani Rider:

I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
He says he wants to see my papers, or send me to El Salvador

I said masked man, what gives you the right?
I said masked man, what gives you the right?
He said I've got a gun in my holster, don't you put up no fight

I said masked man, why don't you leave me be?
I said masked man, why don't you leave me be?
He said there ain't no law in this here country, could ever apply to me

I said masked man, don't you take my baby child
I said masked man, don't you take my baby child
He said I'm breaking up your family, that masked man's running wild

So many masked men, running all around my town
So many masked men, running all around my town
They might pull your mother over, and then they'll gun her down

Oh there ain't nothing, that a masked man won't do
Oh there ain't nothing, that a masked man won't do
First he'll come for all your neighbors, and then he'll come for you

Oh the masked man, says he ain't the one to blame
Oh the masked man, says he ain't the one to blame
But he wouldn't hide his face honey, if he wasn't full of shame

I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
If he shoots me or detains me, you won't see me no more

"A king to lead us"

In the aftermath of the seizure of Venezuelan president Maduro and his wife, political strategist David Brock urges Democrats not to give in to a familiar (he alleges) impulse to "oppose first, think later."

Not exactly Trump derangement syndrome, but the effect is the same. I understand the revulsion most of us feel toward President Donald Trump, but Democrats’ first obligation is not catharsis. It is political competence and survival.

If Maduro exported cocaine and cartel violence to the U.S., he belongs behind bars, not in a palace. A large share of Americans will hear “the U.S. captured the head of a drug ring” and think: good. They will not parse legal niceties. They will want to know two things: Did it make Americans safer, and will it stop there?

Who exactly "will not parse legal niceties"? Are they by any chance related to those for whom the U.S. president can do no wrong? Do "legal niceties" include the U.S. Constitution? Is it true that a "large share of Americans" are incapable of disliking a corrupt tyrant (Maduro in this case) while at the same time holding their own government accountable for its actions?

The people who believe that an all-powerful MAGA administration is what's best for the USA remind me of the book of the biblical judge/prophet Samuel. Frustrated by the inadequacies of Samuel's sons, the elders of Israel beg for a king. (1 Samuel 8:6-20; context.)

But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

Back to the year 2026. I agree with the importance of Brock's two questions that he believes a large share of Americans will prioritize: Did the president's decisions make Americans safer, and will he stop there? But I do not believe that Trump's happy supporters will really ask those questions seriously. Will Americans be safer in an international context of imperial spheres of influence instead of the post-WWII rules of collective security? And is there anything in the MAGA movement's record that serves to assure us that it "will stop there"...? 

In the future: 

• Will the Venezuela raid be a model for other left-leaning governments in Latin America (good or bad), or will those leaders whom Trump likes have nothing to fear? (Ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras, for example.) What about other countries facilitating drug shipments to the USA? Wouldn't more resources for helping addicts reduce the scandalous demand for those drugs?
• If the Venezuela raid was strictly a law-enforcement operation, how do we account for the 70-100 deaths of non-criminals killed in the raid? How heartless is it to boast of its success at that cost?
• Another will-it-stop-there question: does it help international maritime behavior for the USA to confiscate ships and their cargo? Where's the line between unilateral embargoes and piracy?

Iran, Syria, Somalia, and Nigeria have all been attacked by U.S. forces under the president who wants a Nobel peace prize. Meanwhile, on a quieter note, the best deal proposed by USA's leadership for Greenland right now is for us to purchase the island rather than seizing it, despite repeated denials from Denmark and Greenland that the island is for sale. Where will it stop?

"He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants." I have not even touched the subject of self-dealing and corruption in the current administration, or its vindictive campaigns against critics.

David Brock urges us to display "political competence," by which he seems to mean concealing our ideals to earn the attention of those unwilling to follow his two questions all the way to their evident conclusions.

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Related: Iran, biblical realism, and perpetual war.

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A different take: Perry Bacon's reflections on the politics of the Venezuela raid.

Timothy Snyder on the raid, its precedents and implications. (Link in original.)

In invading Ukraine, Putin deliberately exploited the language of law, claiming that his aggression was justified by the UN Charter. The point was not to affirm but to ridicule the principles of international law. Russia has worked hard to create a world in which everyone treats international law as a joke. The American government made no effort to justify its extraction of Maduro in terms of international law, which is an obvious Russian intellectual victory—even if the Kremlin itself might be displeased by the consequences in this particular case.

Also, Nataliya Gumenyuk on the war in Ukraine, via Timothy Snyder: What if Trump wants Goliath to win?

On Renee Nicole Good and the smear campaign: First the shooting. Then the lies.

Administration officials’ indifference to facts, to due process, to the dignity of the deceased, and to basic human decency is remarkable. They could have pleaded for patience and said the incident would be investigated—the standard response in such circumstances. They could have even done so while defending the federal agents they have deployed to terrorize areas they perceive as Democratic Party enclaves. Instead, they proceeded to make ostentatiously dishonest statements that they knew would be contradicted by the video evidence available to anyone with eyes to see it.

Quakers Rock the Midwest: Western and Wilmington Yearly Meetings and the New Association of Friends present a retreat for 8th-12th graders, January 16-19, at Evanston (Illinois) Friends Meeting.

Greg Morgan (Elder Chaplain), Gabby, and hope.

Nancy Thomas's unexpected adventure. (Best wishes, Nancy!) And her Advent poems part 4, "The Star" and "Refugees."

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Corey Harris, "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?"

A fair comparison?

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The last book I finished reading in 2025 was Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson, by Claire Hoffman. I'm sure I am not the first person to compare McPherson, the founder of the Foursquare Church, with our Quaker pioneer, George Fox.

I already knew the broad outlines of McPherson's three decades in the public eye as an evangelist, healer, pastor, and founder of the USA's first megachurch. Hoffman's book gives a fascinating and balanced account of her life. She begins the book with one of the most dramatic events of McPherson's life—her disappearance from a Los Angeles beach in 1926—but provides historical, biographical, and theological context for her precedent-breaking career as a whole. The author gives us plenty of material from which to draw some connections with Fox.

One important factor that isn't a parallel is, of course, gender. However we feel about McPherson's claim to be empowered directly by the Holy Spirit, she had plenty of talent, giftedness, persistence, and amazing audacity behind her ascendancy as a woman to a status of, arguably, the most famous Christian celebrity in the USA of her time, far beyond her Pentecostal community. There were occasions when she could draw spontaneous crowds of tens of thousands of people, of whom thousands simply wanted to experience her healing power.

Here are some of the points that caused me to compare McPherson and Fox.

They both emphasized the possibility and importance of the immediate experience of the Holy Spirit. Theologically, McPherson was rather a centrist in the spectrum of evangelical Christianity of her time. She didn't deviate much from the fundamentalism of her early Christian experience, but her presentation of Christian faith emphasized grace and intimacy with God rather than legalism and fear of punishment. I think that many of Fox's evangelistic presentations in his itinerant ministry, and his epistles, could have (with updated English) come from McPherson as well.

They both used the communication channels of their time effectively. For Fox and his companions, it was the printing press, which is where McPherson also started, but she became a radio pioneer as well. (Toward the end of her life, McPherson was researching the possibilities of television.) Both of them published constantly, not only to present their own message, but also to argue with detractors. Fox and his movement were, at times, under attack from the Christian establishment and under persecution by their government. They responded nonviolently but certainly not passively as they flooded the market with books, tracts, and petitions. McPherson's disappearance and subsequent very controversial reappearance led to massive campaigns both for her and against her in the mass media of her times, and in the courtrooms of Los Angeles.

Both Fox and McPherson relied on women gifted in administration, fundraising, and oversight. Aimee Semple McPherson's support and accountability person for much of her career was her mother, Mildred Kennedy. For George Fox, Margaret Fell took on this role, alongside her evident gifts as theologian and communicator, and eventually she and Fox married. 

In both cases, they developed leadership structures, with boards and committees, and those structures (with major changes over the years) exist to this day. The Foursquare Church continues as a worldwide fellowship, and so do we Friends. We have dispersed accountability and leadership arrangements compared with the more unified and centralized Foursquare structure, and we don't have one official statement of faith as Foursquare does, but we've both managed to take a fellowship that began with a single powerful personality and make it durable.

This leads to another similarity. Both movements have succeeded in honoring their founders without exaggerating their status as heroes. At the end of Claire Hoffman's book, she emphasizes this point about McPherson; there's little evidence of a personality cult around her in the present-day Foursquare Church. Neither is she hidden; she gets full credit for her role in starting the church, but is not an object of adoration. Fox's status among us Quakers is rather ambiguous; we quote him when it suits us, but often leaving out the full context of his intended meaning. In both cases, some of these leaders' more extravagant behaviors and claims have been downplayed since then. Speaking in tongues and healing continue to be expected in Foursquare fellowships, but Fox's accounts of miraculous healings (such as those included in Fox's Book of Miracles) have not led to similar expectations among us.

Contents of George Fox's 'Book of Miracles',
compiled and introduced by Henry Cadbury.

The expansion of the Quaker movement in Fox's lifetime was remarkable, although in the succeeding centuries we have lost momentum numerically, to say the least. It may be too soon to draw comparisons with Foursquare's growth. Nor did we ever have megachurches or anything resembling McPherson's Angelus Temple. The differences between our two movements may be just as fruitful to explore as the similarities; I just wanted to point out those similarities as I closed the covers of Hoffman's fascinating book. What instructive differences and similarities occur to you?

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Related: Happy Birthday, charismatics. (2010.)

Something even older: here's an interesting article by Carey Mcwilliams on "cults" in California, from the March 1946 issue of The Atlantic. It was cited in the notes of Claire Hoffman's book.

Another year's worth of "useful theology from a Quaker-shaped Christian," Mark Russ.

From archive.org: Public Domain Day 2026.

Martin Kelley (Quaker Ranter) traces the origin of the Quaker SPICES testimonies.

A favorite-books list I always look forward to: Nancy Thomas. PS: We agreed about Sister, Sinner.

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Sue Foley is a force of nature....