The tax covenant and resistance

We talk about democracy and Christianity—and we try out a new firebomb. We talk about peace and we move thousands more men and weapons into Vietnam. This country has gone mad. But I will not go mad with it. I will not pay for organized murder.

— Joan Baez (April 1965, source.)

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Related posts:

The tax covenant

The tax covenant: idealism and reality

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In my last post on the tax covenant ("Idealism and reality") I expressed some of the disillusionment that results when our taxes and federal budgets are misspent and misdirected. When should we consider the covenant broken (held together only by government coercion) and what should we do in response?

There is one specific controversy around U.S. federal income tax and expenditures that has a long history: the war budget, and related dilemmas for conscientious objectors to that budget. The current U.S. administration is pushing Congress to approve a military budget of US$ 1.5 trillion, plus supplemental funds of US$ 67.1 billion for costs relating to the current unauthorized war on Iran. This seems like a good moment to review our covenant.

Quakers and war tax resistance have a long history together. For a brief account of that history, I recommend Wallace Collett's chapter, "Pay Thy Taxes as long as Thou Canst" (pages 170-181) in Leonard Kenworthy's Friends Face the World, available in PDF form here.

I remember a bit of this history myself. I was on the staff of Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas, when Gordon Brown, the section's executive secretary, and Cincinnati businessman Wallace Collett worked together to set up a structure for Friends to consider war taxes across our diversities of geography and theology. This was the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns, whose work resulted in a manual edited by Linda Coffin, A Handbook on Military Taxes and Conscience, and a supplemental manual for employers. I wrote more about these memories here.

For a sample of the Mennonite experience with tax dilemmas, here's a link to Titus Peachey's paper, Silence and Courage: Income Taxes, War and Mennonites 1940-1993.

Some context: even in less turbulent times, the U.S. war budget is around 50% of the annual federal discretionary budget, and if related debt service and the Veterans Administration are added in, then the proportion exceeds 60%.

As you consider your own faith in relation to paying these taxes:

1. Setting aside this particular era's scandals and causes for disillusionment, do you feel unease about helping fund the war budget? Is there a positive and persuasive comparison between refusing military service as a conscientious objector (instead choosing alternative service) and refusing to pay related taxes?
2. If you have been a conscientious payer of federal taxes to this point, do you feel that the government still honors the tax covenant it has with you and other taxpayers? Aside from force of coercion, is the covenant broken? (This assumes that the "covenant" analogy seems valid to begin with. For example, some libertarians argue that all taxes represent theft, a position I don't share.)
3. If you feel drawn to the tax resistance position, is this a dilemma that you can take to your meeting or church? (My experience at First Friends Meeting, Richmond, Indiana, was summarized in this post. We asked the church to advise us on the legitimacy of our resistance in discipleship context, and, if so, which proportion of the total federal budget we should choose not to pay—the current military budget, or a calculation including costs of past wars. We were serious about being in submission to the discernment of the community.)
4. To avoid benefiting financially from war tax resistance, would it help your decision-making to know that there are ways to direct that money to good purposes, and that there is a community that can help if/when your unpaid taxes are confiscated or penalties assessed? Check here for information and experiences related to redirecting taxes and sharing the burden of penalties.

My purpose here is not to encourage illegal or risky decisions, but in the face of unprecedented levels of corruption, misdirection, and general abuse of our taxes, I'm just suggesting that we have choices that are consistent with Christian faith as understood by Quakers, other peace churches, and well beyond.

The War Resisters League, the oldest secular pacifist organization in the USA, offers a helpful compilation of testimonies, practical help, and appropriate cautions: War Tax Resistance: A Guide for Withholding Your Support from the Military.

For more information and links to many partner organizations, secular and faith-based, visit the Web site of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

As always, I'm eager to know additional sources of information and advice that you've found useful, and experiences that you've had in dealing with these ethical issues.

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Rosa Packard's story of coming to a tax resistance position. Nadine Hoover's advocacy. Gordon Browne's story. The text of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act, which was for years annually introduced by John Lewis.

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Post number six in Phil Gulley's series "Why War Is Not the Answer." This time: "At its heart, war is the enemy of democracy."

Micah Bales gives Romans 8:12-25 a close reading.

Having read through this passage of Romans together, we get a picture of our existence as a part of a grand cosmic drama of struggle and transformation. Simply put, the universe is vast beyond our comprehension, and yet our lives are incredibly important – central to God’s plan for the cosmos.

The city of Muncie, Indiana, says goodbye to Dr. John Peterson, a healer and musician whose skill and care touched thousands, including me. In this MuncieArts video from last November, "Doc" tells his own story. Here he is at the keyboard for "My Girl," clipped from Robert Mugge's documentary Giving Up the Ghosts: Closing Time at Doc's Music Hall.

Michael Marsh's series of posts on "Living With a Tender Heart" includes this post on "re-imaging news" in the midst of its constant flow.

The first "official" reviews of Live Laugh Love are out, and author Kristin Du Mez is justifiably pleased. (My review is here.)

John 20:22-23: Binding sin, loosing sin, and modern Quaker practice. Brian Drayton asks where are the anchors for our Quaker communities' discernments and judgments.

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Blues and taxes ... Robert Cray ("1040 Blues"), J.B. Lenoir ("Eisenhower Blues"), Watermelon Slim ("Tax Man Blues") and (just for good measure) Lightnin' Hopkins ("It's a Sin to Be Rich, It's a Low-Down Shame to Be Poor"). All audio-only with graphics.

"Dwell in that which is pure..."

Sources: Poetry and Passion, Barclay Press (2026); The Power of the Lord, Friends United Meeting (1989; cover is from the epub version, 2023).

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In August 2022, our old friends Ben and Jody Richmond visited Judy and me in Maine. Ben brought with him several pages of an exciting project: a sampling of George Fox's epistles that he was in the process of laying out in verse form. Two years later, a full-length manuscript emerged, and last month it became available to you and me.

Canby (b/w) and Ben

Ben explains that it all started when he began using George Fox's epistles as devotional reading.

At first, I had no idea of publishing anything.  I used Canby Jones' Power of the Lord Is Over All and treated it like Hodgkin's A Day-Book of Counsel and Comfort, plowing through, one epistle per day. I started by copying out a sentence or two that was striking to me, then journal-style writing my response.

As I was doing this, I began to wonder what was behind Canby's ellipses. Using the Digital Quaker Archive for the base text, I began to try reconsidering repetitions as progressive parallels rather than redundancies. We see this in the Psalms all the time. This eventually led me to experiment with formatting selections from the epistles as poetry. Some of the first fruits of which I brought ... to see how Judy and you would react.

In Poetry and Passion, I have the entire text of Epistle 50, with the exception of a parenthetical expression, "as aforesaid" which Canby and I both delete. Here is my text, with Canby's deletions struck through:

All Friends,

[I]

Dwell in that which is pure,
and wait for the power of God
to preserve you in that which is pure,
up to God.

And know the seed of God in one another,
that the knowledge which is after the flesh may die;
and know the power of God in one another.

Let your faith stand in that
which throws out the earthly nature,
and the loftiness of man;

which overturns the worldly wisdom
and the carnal knowledge,
which is brutish and devilish.

[II]

Dwell in that which is pure,
that ye may be able to discern,
and savour, and comprehend
that which is not pure;

and wait in that which is pure,
to have your minds guided thereby,
which will let you see God,

and show you your evil thoughts,
and judge them; and is a cross
to your evil desires, wills, and lusts.

[III]

I say, dwell in that which is pure,
which will guide you to God;
but if ye lust, . . . then the pure is veiled,

and the light mind speaks at random,
with a drunken spirit,
and not from the mouth of the Lord.

And there lodgeth the dreamer,
and the lying spirit, and the false prophet,
and that which is like the truth but is not the truth;

but dwelling in the truth,
this will be discovered.

And wait upon God in that which is pure,
for the receiving of that which comes from God,
which is living, which nourisheth up
to everlasting life.

So God Almighty be with you!

[Again, Ben:] The poetic formatting allows progressions of thought to be made plain. For instance, see these early lines --

And know the seed of God in one another,
that the knowledge which is after the flesh may die;
and know the power of God in one another.

Knowing the seed of God in one another leads to the death of "the flesh" which leads to knowing the power of God in one another. The third line in that triplet is a development of the first. But what does it mean???? I'm guessing that it's related to overturning "carnal knowledge" which is "brutish and devilish." Fox's language is provocative, not to say provoking.

Note also the move from individual waiting for the power in the first stanza to knowing the power corporately in the second stanza. Is this community awareness of the power of God in one another part of our contemporary experience????

And, of course, the three-fold "dwell in that which is pure" leads to a progression of its own which I mention in the "Introductory Note."

Both Ben and I are great admirers of T. Canby Jones and his work on Fox's epistles. Canby put countless hours into making sure we had the most comprehensive collection to date of those epistles in book form, introduced with Canby's own scholarship and wit. Canby himself noted the lyrical quality of Fox's letters. From his introduction:

In the early 1970's, I spent more time meditating on Fox's letters. As mentioned in my preface, on a retreat with the Friends of Berkeley, California, Friends Church, I felt led to read aloud and share many of Fox's Letters. Their response was so joyously electric that I determined I must bring out a newly edited complete edition of Fox's Letters as my next major project. Another reason for my concern to do this arises from the fact that since 1831 no edition of Fox's complete Letters has appeared in print. There have been five editions of Selections from Fox's Epistles in the intervening years but no complete edition.

One of the most impressive things about George Fox's Letters is his use of striking and unusual words and phrases. His writing style is full of organic and down-to-earth images. Others are pure poetry. Some passages are inspiring litanies of praise. In some, his words of censure are as unique as they are severe.

Here is a poetic example. In Letter 56 (1653), Fox calls us to bring our "minds out of the earth ... towards God, where the pure babe is born in the virgin mind." Have you heard spiritual birth described in such terms?

Canby's gift to us was to provide Fox's words with a balanced approach of completeness and clarity, in a documentary format. He knew the pulsing power underneath those dense paragraphs. Ben's reformatting makes that pulse and cadence vividly available.

Other features of the book are also very helpful. Paul Anderson's preface provides additional historical and theological context. Ben includes a chronology of Fox's life. Each of Fox's letters has an introductory note and a related biblical passage. The epistles themselves are sorted by themes, but at the end of the book there is an index of epistles in numerical/chronological order. (You may be among those who love Fox's epistle "Sing and rejoice, ye children of the day and of the light," and it's right here, on page 171.)

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Source.  

One more thing. Since I just mentioned Paul Anderson, another linkage comes to mind. Paul recently published Margaret Fell's 'Women's Speaking Justified' in Modern English with his thoughtful commentary. George Fox wrote an epistle on a related theme (page 131 in Poetry and Passion):

To All Women's Meetings (Epistle 291, 1672)

Introductory Note

The equality of women and men was among the first testimonies of Friends, and was demonstrated in the prominent and controversial leadership roles of women such as Elizabeth Hooton, Margaret Fell, Mary Fisher, Mary Dyer, and many others whose prophetic preaching some found scandalous, but had a major part in spreading the everlasting gospel. In this epistle, addressed To all the women's meetings, that are believers in the truth, Fox asserts the equality of women and men in leadership and encourages “your women's meetings.” (See also, Epistle 320.) The foundational theological idea is that Christ restores men and women to the state of Adam and Eve, who were equal “help-meets” before the fall.

Note: Five years prior to this, in 1667, Margaret Fell, then a prisoner in Lancaster Castle prison, wrote the seminal tract, “Women’s Speaking Justified.” Fox and Fell married each other in 1669.

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Scripture: And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make him an help meet for him.

Genesis 2:18 (KJV)

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them.

Genesis 1:27 (KJV)

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Epistle

Friends,—

Keep your women's meetings in the power of God... and keep the gospel order.

For man and woman were helps-meet in the image of God, and in righteousness and holiness, in the dominion, before they fell; but after the fall in the transgression, the man was to rule over his wife; but in the restoration by Christ, into the image of God, and his righteousness and holiness again, in that they are helps-meet, man and woman, as they were before the fall....

And women are to take up the cross daily,
and follow Christ daily,
as well as the men;

and so to be taught of him their prophet,
and fed of him their shepherd,
and counselled of him their counsellor,
and sanctified by him

who offered up himself once for all....

Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, were the first preachers of Christ's resurrection to the disciples, and the disciples could not believe their message and testimony that they had from Jesus, as some now-a-days cannot; but they received the command, and being sent preached it.

So is every woman and man to do, that sees him risen, and has the command and message; daughters shall prophesy as well as sons.

So they are to be obedient, that have the spirit poured upon them. Women are to prophesy; and prophecy is not to be quenched. They that have the testimony of Jesus, are commanded to keep it, whether men or women....

So women are to keep in the government of Christ, and to be obeyers of Christ; and women are to keep the comely order of the gospel, as well as men, and to see that all that have received Christ Jesus, that they walk in Christ Jesus... of the increase of whose government there is no end.

So the foundation of our women's meetings is Christ, to all them that be heirs of him, and of his government... and therefore, I say, take your possessions of it, and walk as becomes the gospel; and keep the comely order of it, and in it keep your meetings....

So ... both men and women, be helps-meet in the image of God, in the righteousness and holiness in the restoration.... And so see that nothing be lacking amongst you, then all will be well.

Postscript.—

And the elder women in the truth
were not only called elders, but mothers.

Now a mother in the church of Christ,
and a mother in Israel,
   is one that gives suck,
   and nourishes, and feeds,
   and washes, and rules,

and is a teacher, in the church, and in the Israel of God,
   and an admonisher,
   an instructer, an exhorter.

So, all that are come to that office,
   growth, and stature,

   be diligent;

for a mother in Israel, or in the church of Christ,
is beyond all the mothers in Egypt, and in Sodom,
   and the mother of harlots, mystery Babylon,
   who had power over tongues, nations, and people,
   with the cup of her fornication.

But the mothers in spiritual Israel, and church of Christ,
   has the cup of salvation,
   and the breasts of consolation,
   which are full of the milk of the word,
   to suckle all the young ones,
   and to nourish, and instruct,
   admonish, and exhort,
   and rebuke all the contrary;

   and to refresh and cherish
   every tender one....

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More about T. Canby Jones. Canby in Wikipedia.

climate.us "launches independent website for trusted climate information" preserving and extending the earlier government Web site canceled by the current U.S. administration.

Tricia Gates Brown on what a rescued bird taught her.

Jack Jenkins on how Matthew 25 lands in Washington, DC, and how it becomes a political litmus test.

The European Bureau for Conscientious Objection calls upon Ukraine to uphold the right to conscientious objection—including the case of Friend Yuri Sheliazhenko—and to stop the detention and torture of objectors.

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Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, "Ten Years Ago."

More on Quaker culture and "density envy"

Thirteen years ago I wrote a post on "Quaker culture." I had just read a novel whose Jewish and Catholic characters were described with lavish details from their Jewish and Catholic religious cultures—rituals, architecture, thought patterns, built up, elaborated, and passed on from generation to generation over many centuries. I wondered if our Quaker religious cultures aren't a bit thin by comparison.

I've recently read two more novels with dense religious settings and the same thought occurred to me. Given the temptation toward Quaker exceptionalism among some of us, maybe a bit of modesty would do us some good!

Of course it's not that simple. A beautiful and rich culture can honor God, and can do so through so many emotional and sensory channels that go far beyond the doctrines and propositions that were hallmarks of that highly contentious period of English history when we got our start. (Come to think of it, doctrines and propositions, and our conflicting feelings about them, continue to exercise us Friends to this day!) But those rich, dense, beautiful cultures can, at their worst, also exclude, entrap, and alienate.

Those two newer novels illustrate this beauty and this hazard in very different ways. I highly recommend both of them. The one I read first was Niall Williams's Time of the Child, set in a rain-soaked village in the west of Ireland in the year 1962, the year that, among other things, the first television arrives in the town. At the center of the story is an agnostic general practitioner who attends Mass faithfully, and whose relationship with the parish priests is fascinating. Also in the center of the story is his eldest daughter, who serves as his receptionist; his other two daughters have moved away. Almost every important action in the story is somehow linked, whether by intention or habit, to the region's Catholic culture and faith. I loved this story so much that I hope you'll read it without further commentary from me, so I can avoid revealing its compelling and gradually unfolding plot. Williams, in all the novels of his that I've read, somehow manages to convey love with extraordinary depth but without sentimentality.

If you still need a bit more detail to be persuaded, here's a review.

The other novel is Kate Riley's Ruth. I think it is a small miracle that this book even came to be published. It is by turns deadpan and laconic, reverent, snarky, sad, and wicked funny. Ruth's story is a near-lifetime compressed into a chain of telling incidents from a life lived in an Anabaptist commune, with similarities to Hutterite and Bruderhof communities. Ruth understands the rules, until she doesn't. Her son doesn't. She loves her husband, and despises his annoying habits. In the community she's loyal and skeptical, a total insider who is somehow not trapped. 

For a time, the community seems oddly totalitarian, but the leaders confess their inadequacies. Misdeeds can lead to temporary shunning, usually on a voluntary basis! Travel to the outside world is permitted when necessary—for example, to meet and pray "with a Quaker colloquium at the Wyndham Sault Ste. Marie." "In the van Ruth had erred in wondering aloud whether Quakers might love peace more than they loved Christ, which she'd read somewhere and liked the sound of. No one responded."

(Talking about people behind their backs is not permitted in the community, but, just between you and me, it's worth listening to Ruth!)

Here are two reviews: Englewood Review of Books and Anabaptist World.

If you've read either of these books, or this post reminds you of other books you'd recommend, I'd love to know!

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If I were to live in a high-context religious community, I think I would want these two needlepoint mottoes on my wall:

"Christ is the 'yes' to all of God's promises." — St. Paul.

"All knowledge is local, all truth is partial." — Ursula K. Le Guin.

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Related: Ohio Byways; Core sample of a Quaker culture; Games, sports, comedies....

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Rachel Muers does an amazing job of describing Friends faith, practice, worship, and diversities in a compact, even-handed, and well-organized article for the St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, with lots of useful links. Thanks to Jim Fussell for the reference.

Kristin Du Mez, Live Laugh Love, and the librarians.

Ashley Wilcox on "Alaska in my bones," and the example Anchorage provides us.

Adrienne LaFrance wishes happy 100th birthday to Mel Brooks, "the funniest man who ever lived."

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Kelly Zirbes and her band Kelly's Lot perform "Ship." Kelly's tour dates include Klamath Falls (July 25), Burns OR (August 5), Spokane (August 10), and Portland OR (August 12, with Carolyn Wonderland).

"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.

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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.

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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.

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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...."

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

#livelaughlovebook

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.

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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...." 

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"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.

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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.  

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

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."

1. 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!)
2. For those yearning to get involved, what are some points of engagement?
3. What new challenges are, in turn, resulting from this fresh energy?
4. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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....)

Based in the UK? Your May 12 invitation.

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

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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?

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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.

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

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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."

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One of my favorite samples of Chicago....

Whose faith? Whose practice? (part two)

Vatican logo (source); Quaker star (source, adapted)

When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the vicar of Christ.

With these words, Bishop James Massa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, responded on behalf of that conference to U.S. vice president Vance's criticism of the Pope.

(The full statement is here.)

You probably won't be surprised that my eyes immediately went to the words "universal Church." There's a certain confidence in that formulation, as there is in Massa's words "vicar of Christ." Leo XIV's words, and James Massa's explanation, are rooted in the Roman Catholic identity as an uninterrupted witness to the apostle Peter and to Jesus himself. The Catechism of the Catholic Church carefully explains the Catholic peace testimony, as we might call it, in its commentary on the biblical Fifth Commandment and specifically in its notes on "Safeguarding Peace." 

Last week I advocated seeing our Quaker books of "Christian faith and practice" as not just being for internal use, but as our advocacy for a way of Christian discipleship that we recommend to the whole world. In offering these recommendations in good faith, we're also ready to receive, also in good faith, the recommendations of others committed to following Jesus in ways that may differ from ours. It's in that spirit that I took a look at the Catechism, the Catholic book of Christian faith and practice, and its teachings on war and peace as Leo XIV and James Massa explained them to the world.

Pope Leo doesn't have formal authority over Quakers beyond that of a brother in Christ, but in the wider economy of the followers of Christ, he's in a peculiar position. Beyond his formal authority among the over one billion Catholics in his communion, he has worldwide visibility and influence. Not only is he in the center of worldwide webs of ecumenical relationships (not counting his linguistic, tennis, and auto-mechanic credentials), but his persistence in advocating peace has won him many admirers among people who never thought they'd be saying kind words about a pope.

Many of our books of Quaker faith and practice support our teachings on spirituality and discipleship with quotations from the full range of Quaker experience since our earliest days. We're saying, in effect, that there is historical and scriptural substance to our teachings. The Catholic Catechism does the same, drawing on a history that is (speaking institutionally) five times longer than ours.

That seniority doesn't require exaggerated deference; they may have been wrong about some things five times as long as we've existed! We've come to some very different conclusions concerning such central issues as the functions and qualifications of priesthood. I would personally not affiliate with a communion that has a list of gifts and offices for heterosexual men and a shorter list for everyone else. However, "good faith" requires me to study what's behind those differences as well as our places of unity.

I don't share the Catholic doctrine of "just war," because we Quakers, at least those who identify with the Richmond Declaration of Faith (1887), cannot see a Christian license for any war whatever. Earlier, during a period of persecution, Quakers declared that ...

The Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.

(A declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God, called Quakers, 1661; the full text is very worthwhile reading.)

However, a close study of the Catholic just war doctrine reveals how much effort Catholic theologians put into finding clear ways to limit war—to the point where, functionally, they arrive at almost the same point we do. There is no place in Catholic doctrine for aggressive war or for targeting the innocent. Therefore we have a basis for powerful collaboration, and a reason to take heart when our influential brother the Pope speaks for peace.

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Pope Leo also loves movies.

In our Irony Department, given the MAGA criticism of Pope Leo, Church-state separation is a ‘lie,’ says Trump's Religious Liberty Commission chair.

Juhyun Nam, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: AI policy is built for oversight, not crisis. That needs to change. (AI policy is another major interest of the pope.)

How a small Quaker meeting has helped shape Kalamazoo (Michigan, USA) for nearly 80 years.

What's happening at the Friends Incubator for Public Ministry: A lot! From the many programs and activities, I particularly enjoyed seeing Pam and Ron Ferguson on "being released" as ministers, and Paul Anderson on Margaret Fell's ever-relevant Women's Speaking Justified. And there's a reminder about the Kickstarter campaign that needs just $3000 more to make its important goal.

Nancy Thomas on Library Week, Poetry Month, and a special place that has no Internet....

Friends United Meeting's Pentecost Devotional booklet is available here for download. (I contributed an essay.)

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Mavis Staples will take us there, with Rick Holmstrom on guitar.

Whose faith? Whose practice? (part one)

Editions: London Yearly Meeting, 1959 (my copy);
Britain Yearly Meeting, 2013.

I received my first book of Quaker faith and practice in 1975, when Ottawa Friends Meeting accepted me as a new member. Canadian Friends of that era had adopted London Yearly Meeting's Christian Faith and Practice for that purpose, alongside their own loose leaf supplement entitled Organization and Procedure.

British Friends, in the renamed Britain Yearly Meeting, published a new faith and practice book in 1995, now entitled Quaker Faith and Practice.

The word "Christian" was not exactly being deprecated—the full title of the book is Quaker Faith and Practice: The book of Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. It may be tempting to interpret the title change in terms of the post-Christian trends among some British Quakers, but that's not what interests me today.

I suppose that in either case, Christian or Quaker, the prevailing assumption was that these books are for internal use among Friends. This is who we are, more or less. But what I like about the title Christian Faith and Practice is another interpretation entirely, one I have no permission or evidence to propose: this way of faith and life is not just for us; it's recommended for all Christians.

This way of thinking rubs against the ecumenical/interfaith spirit of our times. It paradoxically conflicts with both the modesty and diffidence of contemporary Quakers on the one hand, and our sectarian exceptionalism on the other. But it makes sense to me to interpret these books as our contribution to an ecumenical conversation: this is how we are trying to live with Jesus at the center of our communities; how about you? Can we learn from each other? Are we ready (with kindness) to point to each other's strong places, and each other's defects, blind spots, and worldly accommodations? Ideally, we Quakers are not forming yet another community of self-contained "enthusiasts" (in Ronald Knox's sense) but are eager participants and ecumenical allies in turning the world upside down in the Lamb's war against all forms of oppression.

I don't know how George Fox and his companions would feel about my interpretation of the true audiences of our "faith and practice," but one of his late interpreters, Lewis Benson, once told me, "I don't have an ecumenical bone in my body." He firmly believed that Fox didn't intend to organize a new sect, but to revive or reconstitute the entire Church. However, as Knox points out, the reality is that most reform movements, inside and outside the established confessions, have similar ambitions, so it's up to us to keep the lines of conversation open with all of them rather than tending to our own exclusive conceits.

The work of our late Friend Eden Grace at the World Council of Churches is a wonderful example of these kinds of conversations. Given the range of concerns among Friends worldwide at this grave moment in human history (speaking of ecological as well as political and economic challenges), there probably won't be many of us who will be called to make ecumenical conversation a priority. But if you are one who happens to understand "Christian Faith and Practice" as a contribution to a potentially unlimited audience, I hope these words are encouraging.

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Related: Meditations on sectarianism; Functional ecumenism; Core sample of a Quaker culture, Are Quakers part of the Church? Your thoughts and links are very welcome.

To be continued next week in Part Two: Pope Leo XIV and "just peace."

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Bill Samuel's list of online books of faith and practice.

Grace Spencer (Prospect): Disagreement among Friends. ("Keep or dilute God?")

Eden Grace: Quaker and ecumenical essays. Her Swarthmore Lecture (2019) with video and transcript.

George Demacopoulos (Orthodox Christian Studies Center): Is Donald Trump the Arius of American Democracy?

Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku (Washington Post, gift article): Can AI be a ‘child of God’? Inside Anthropic’s meeting with Christian leaders.

Nancy Thomas, Poems of the Beatitudes, part one, part two, part three.

Kristin Du Mez comments on Keri Ladner's newly published book American Dominion, and provides us an excerpt. (Also see link to today's live episode of The Convocation Unscripted.)

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"...When I heard that song, I said, 'Man, it's just what my soul needed.'" Eric Bibb remembering Lightnin' Hopkins performing "Needed Time" in the film Sounder. (Here's Lightnin' Hopkins' version.)