Can you believe?: civilsoc

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23 July 2026

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.)

The tax covenant

The tax covenant: idealism and reality

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:

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?
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.)
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.)
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.

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.

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.

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.

07 May 2026

Based in the UK? Your May 12 invitation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia's article on the Mass Observation Archive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of my favorite samples of Chicago....

26 March 2026

"No Kings" shorts

Portland, Oregon, June 14, 2025

The third "No Kings Day" program of protest actions in the USA are being organized for this Saturday. We will be out of the country that day, but hope and pray for a peaceful day, and a good turnout. I'd love to see lots of creative messaging that will reach new audiences, and a minimum of stupid caricatures.

Some USA citizens here in the United Kingdom will be marching under a slightly different banner, "No Tyrants," since here there is an actual king. The king is styled "sovereign" but, ironically, in normal times the British sovereign has practically no political power in comparison to King Donald.

The kings and queens in constitutional monarchies do have enormous symbolic power in their roles as stewards of national identity and guarantors of continuity. They would quickly lose that legitimacy and its grounding in the affections of their people if they became kings in the ancient tyrannical model described by God to Samuel, who—in vain—passed that warning on to the people demanding a king.

Many actual monarchs, having more majesty than power, still have the use of grand palaces, elaborately decorated, and they participate in impressive rituals and spectacles. They may have buildings, organizations, and various projects named after them, and their pictures may appear on currency or on the walls of government offices, but, again, if they themselves were to decree these arrangements, their legitimacy would suffer.

King Donald wants both power and spectacle. May he get an unmistakable NO on Saturday.

My June 14 sign.

On his blog, Interrupting the Silence, Michael K. Marsh points out that this upcoming No Kings Day is on the weekend of Palm Sunday.

This Saturday, March 28th, is the third No Kings Day protest and Sunday, March 29th, is Palm Sunday, but here’s what I wonder:

What if Palm Sunday was the original No Kings protest?

What if Jesus, the disciples, and the crowd that follows Jesus are protesting violence, injustice, and imperial power?

Instead of protest songs there were shouts of “Hosanna!”, a cry for deliverance and liberation, a plea for change. Instead of protest signs there were cloaks and palm branches, symbols of joy, peace, submission, and the celebration of a new way.

Please read the full post.

Here's how Nancy Thomas has been using slugs in her writing. It reminded me of the tradition among some pastors and seminarians to challenge each other to embed some incongruous word in sermons they'll be preaching.

Philosophers, political scientists, and advocates of civil discourse are grieving the death of Jürgen Habermas.

Jeremy Morris tells us why he thinks "Paul D’Anieri’s updated Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War is the single best book you can read to understand the domestic and geopolitical causes of the current war." He managed to persuade me to buy the book. I haven't started reading it yet, but I think Morris's post is interesting on its own ... as usual.

Jennifer Rubin and Martin Kelley on the hard truth about César Chávez.

Alexander Hurtsellers on healing hypermasculinity in the Church, an Orthodox view.

Rick Estrin, Steve Guyger, Mikey Junior ... harpists having fun.

05 March 2026

Convergence in the Trump era

Back when I was first interested in Russia and the Soviet Union, in my mid-teens, physicist Andrei Sakharov proposed a new twist on Marxist determinism: that, among other factors, the demands of industrial management, the rise of consumer demand, and the danger of nuclear annihilation would cause the great rival superpowers to take on each other's better traits and eventually converge. The resulting societies would feature both rational economic planning and freedom of thought.

Sakharov did not live to see much of the "end of history" phase and the idealists' disappointments in both superpower camps—both with their individual fragilities and their discontented peripheries. The year 2000 featured secret bargains, manipulations, dangerous theatrics, and general confusion in both Russia and the USA, with Vladimir Putin and George Bush ending up on top. Not exactly the convergence that Sakharov had in mind.

In both systems, the neocons (creatively defined for my purposes!) relatively quickly demanded the right to define reality for the rest of us. Putin arguably was ahead in this development, as he and his allies slowly but surely extinguished independent media and built the cult of the indispensable leader. "Putin is Russia, and Russia is Putin," proclaimed Vyacheslav Volodin, currently speaker of the State Duma, in 2014. And since that year, just in terms of government process (setting aside the ultra-nationalist intellectuals and church leaders who are his favorite influencers), Putin alone is the stubborn owner/driver of the war in Ukraine.

The USA's equivalent developments, although far less linear and absolute (we did elect two Democrats in those years), have reached the point where Donald Trump can assert to a journalist that "MAGA is Trump" and that, in starting yet another war, he faces no opposition in true MAGA.

In this Russian bookstore, someone put the Constitution
in the fantasy section. (Originally used here.)

Both of these countries' constitutions nominally have power distributed among several branches. In Russia, the legislators and judiciaries go through the motions of their jobs but, when the stakes involve the interests of those at the top, they see no point in resisting.

Our situation may be less bleak: the judiciary still displays some independence, but the president's party's majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress mostly continue to fall in line. In the present case of Iran (and Israel and most of the Persian Gulf states), what the president wants is what he gets. Iran is, of course, just the most recent target of U.S. bombs and artillery in the past 13-1/2 months, after Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran (June 2025), the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, Syria, Nigeria, and Venezuela. In almost every case, Trump gave the orders personally and did not deign to invite Congressional consent. And now he supposedly gets to decide personally who will be the next leader of Iran.

One of the lonely critical Republican voices in Congress, representative Warren Davidson of Ohio, points straight to the constitutional illegality of Trump's process, as reported in The Guardian:

Make no mistake, Iran is an enemy of the United States. As our military engages them, they do so justly. [sic] Unfortunately, they are not yet doing so constitutionally.

For some, this debate will be about whether we should even be fighting in Iran. For me, the debate is more fundamental: is the president of the United States, regardless of the person holding the office, empowered to do whatever he wants? That’s not what our constitution says.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution, and most Republicans' unwillingness to defend it, is at the heart of several of today's crises as we transition from a republican democracy to a personalist authoritarianism. Due process and equal protection of the law came into the Constitution after a terrible Civil War, but today's legislative timidity in the service of throwing out immigrants is shameful. So is the attempt to organize a permanent governing majority through federal legislation, when the Constitution makes it clear that the states are to make election rules.

In 1967, a group of anthropologists contributed papers on war at a conference of the American Anthropological Association. The resulting book, War: the Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, opened my eyes to the possibility of studying war as a human behavior just like many others, subject to the same disciplines of observation and analysis totally apart from the myths, justifications, and deference it usually gets in real life. One of the contributors proposed that societies are usually either in a "relaxed" state or a "mobilized" state, and anthropologists should study the process by which a society goes from one state to the other. A respondent pointed out that, in modern conditions, most of society can remain in a "relaxed" state while specialists conduct wars on our (supposed) behalf, often without ever seeing their opponents, not to mention the collateral damage. To me this raises a question that I hope you can help me answer: how do we mobilize, not in favor of war, but in favor of our Constitution, before our "relaxation" becomes utter and permanent passivity?

Or, as one of our Moscow friends used to say to us, ironically, "Welcome to Russia!"

Living without lying.

A special brand of patriot.

The Bible, MAGA, and a new mission field.

OK, so Kristin Du Mez has some evidence we've not all fallen into a complete stupor.

Conor Friedersdorf wants to know who the USA is at war with right now.

Sojourners Faith and Practice Forum ... a forum for "civic discipleship."

George Lakey on the relationship between prayer, aging, and getting arrested. (Part of a wonderful series on "Aging and Quaker Spirituality.")

Nigel Biggar proposes nine intellectual virtues, and the costs of neglecting them. Thanks to Faith on View for the link.

Please read this lovely tribute to Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, whose passing I noted with great regret on February 12.

Ukraine's Pacifists in a Country at War. (One of them is a faithful participant in this weekly meeting to pray for peace, whether or not his electricity is working.) I encourage you to include them in your prayers.

Speaking of Friends World Committee (previous link), the Section of the Americas has opened up registration for its annual sessions on Saturday, March 21. This year the sessions will be 100% online.

Once again, another version of "Scratch My Back." I've presented this one at least twice before, but it takes me back to Chicago like no other.... Illinois Slim does the chicken scratch.

05 February 2026

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.

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:

Cognitive Load: Having to constantly dismiss pop-ups or "X out" of AI suggestions is exhausting.

Privacy Concerns: Users often worry that their private drafts or emails are being used to "train" the next version of the AI.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

15 January 2026

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.

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.

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.)

"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

18 December 2025

Continuing the work

Maison Quaker à Congénies / The Quaker Centre in Congénies, France. Source.

There's a Russian phrase, both precise and vague at the same time, that translates to English as "in times like these...."

In times like these, we write about Friends' service in Russia with love and enthusiasm tempered with discretion. We don't give names of people and partner organizations. We do emphasize our nonviolent and truthful principles, just as we "harmless and innocent people of God" did in earlier turbulent times—the years of our movement's origin.

As a former member of the board of Friends House Moscow, I appreciated receiving this report on the meeting held this autumn in southern France. I'm grateful for the permission to use it here, with one or two edits. Links were added by me.

— Johan

Maison Quaker Congénies warm embrace of FHM

Seventeen Friends travelled from far and wide to be in Congénies in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France during the weekend of the 24-27th October, 2025, coming from as far away as Berlin, California and Moscow. For some, the journey took several days to complete, which made it all the more gratifying when we were offered a warm welcome on arrival at Maison Quaker by the resident staff, Eli and Miranda. Their generous hospitality extended over the entire weekend.

Asked about the massive amount of work the FHM meeting entailed for them, both Miranda and Eli responded in the same manner: “It is lovely to see Maison Quaker so full. It is rare to have such a large group of Friends present all at one time. This makes it really special for us.”

Even the weather seemed to make an extra effort, sharing the last warmth of summer, while much of the rest of France suffered downpours in the wake of Storm Benjamin. In the beauty of Congénies, war felt a very long way away. Heavily laden persimmon trees in the garden sagged under the weight of their late-summer abundance; butterflies, including two-tailed pashas and fritillaries, flitted among the flowering bushes; the balmy nights were punctuated by the hooting of tawny owls. Congénies was a fine place to be: a place of quiet and peace, ideal for discernment of difficult and pressing questions.

The task of the board was to discern the future strategy of Friends House Moscow. This was no easy challenge. Given that the war in Ukraine shows no signs of ending any day soon—astonishingly, there has already been nearly four years of fighting, rather than the three or four days many commentators had predicted—nothing about the work of FHM can be taken for granted. The board thus needed to answer tough questions. Should we continue the work? And if we should, how do we do so practically, given all the challenges it now faces?

Our deliberations started with a look back in time through the lens of Sergei Nikitin’s history of Quaker relief in early twentieth century Russia, noting that there has been constant Quaker interaction with Russia for more than a century. We then examined how our personal motivations for this work live into the Quaker Testimonies of Peace, Simplicity, Integrity and Equality, before pivoting to look at the current political environment in Russia. We considered how these changes have affected the relationships of Friends to Friends House Moscow, asking whether or not there was continuing support from local and yearly meetings in Europe and the U.S. We agreed that there is still support.

Tight finances mean that FHM cannot do all it would like to, nor meet all the needs of those approaching it for help. Three days of discernment led us to the conclusion that we should continue to support the refugee centre, bolster our publishing work, and maintain our support for the language club.

Three priorities

The refugee centre continues to help the socialisation and education of children whose families have come to Russia in search of a better life and greater security. We have been supporting the Centre since the mid-1990s. The refugees and other migrants come from a wide variety of countries. Once in Russia, they face many challenges, and often need to keep a very low profile, which makes the centre so critical for them.

Richard Foster's
Celebration of Discipline.
Source. Online version.

Our publishing efforts remain central. We have published 22 titles in Moscow, following translation into Russian. “Best sellers” include Plague, Pestilence and Famine by Muriel Payne, The Fruits of Solitude by William Penn, and Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.

We will continue to support the language club. Over the past year we have conducted hundreds of language lessons for students who wish to develop confidence is speaking in public in another language. We view it as a sign of hope that students wish to continue learning another language and that cultural contact with other European countries has not stopped completely.

The way opens

By the time Friends gathered for meeting for worship on Sunday, which included members of the local meeting, board of Friends House Moscow had already spent two days in contemplation and debate, chewing over the difficult issues facing the organisation. There was still a further day to go, but by the time of meeting for worship, we were feeling positive about the future of FHM.

Around thirty, including partners and Friends from Congénies local meeting, shared lunch on Sunday. Like every meal in Maison Quaker, it was graced by excellent food. Each day’s breakfast were notable for being laden with pastries and croissants from the local boulangerie, L’ Amandine, which also supplied the cake for Sunday evening when we celebrated Pat’s birthday. Lunch and dinner were prepared by a local cook, so no one went hungry!

The final day was something of a threshing meeting, as we needed to match our finances to our priorities. Sterling efforts by those of us who understand spreadsheets and IT gave us all a clear understanding that, whichever way up we looked at things, they did not square—there simply was not enough money in the pot to do all we wished FHM to do. We the leading to continue the work, we concluded the three days by committing ourselves both to the budget and to urgent need to raise additional support.

Perhaps the most important support that Friends House needs is the energy and vision of people who may have never heard of this program, and might not speak Russian, but who recognize the need for Friends House and its potential for healing, reconciliation, and encouragement in times like these. If you have follow-up questions or ideas, write to me, and if I don't know the answer, I'll find someone who does. Also see the related link below.

In The Friend: some context for the board meeting described above.

Two appreciations of filmmakers Rob and Michele Reiner: Andrew Pulver. Kristin Du Mez.

Homeland Security (USA) is proposing to require certain tourists coming to the USA to make available their social network posts for the last five years and all e-mail addresses, personal and business, over the last ten years. Here's the form to read the details and make your comments. In the list of "newly proposed changes" to the data required from travelers, see especially (3) "Mandatory Social Media"; and (4) "High Value Data Elements," requiring data from family members as well as travelers themselves. Deadline for comments: February 8.

Mattea Kramer (TomDispatch) on antisemitism and freedom of speech.

Bradley Bell (Upstream Collective) on racial reconciliation in cross-cultural ministry.

The promise of Genesis 3–4 is that despite our best intentions we will inevitably cause ruptures (such as on my second to last day on the field when in a wave of cultural exhaustion I exploded on my closest friends because they asked for money). The aim of cross-cultural service is not solely to avoid such things, though it’s worth our best effort. It is to be sent as ambassadors of the entire Ephesians 2 gospel, true ministers of reconciliation who abide the often mortifying work of repair—the costly reweaving of trust.

Cherice Bock was co-editor for a special issue of Quaker Studies. (That page has links to the individual articles, including Cherice's on “Quakers and Ecospirituality: Spiritual Grounding for Climate Action.”)

Sergey Kadyrov's music, and his scenes and holiday decorations from the cities of Noginsk and Elektrostal. Instant nostalgia, of course. Thank you, Sergey! (The cafe at our former workplace, the New Humanities Institute, appears briefly starting at 1:12; three views altogether.)

23 October 2025

October shorts

Klamath Falls. This shirt is available here.
Photo by Judy Maurer.

No Kings Day v.2, October 18, found us in Klamath Falls, Oregon. For some reason, I didn't expect much No Kings Day participation in Klamath Falls, maybe because in 2024 Klamath County voted for the current U.S. president by a margin of 41 percent over Kamala Harris.

As it turned out, participants made an impressive showing in Klamath Falls, lining along both streets, both sides, of a major intersection, and garnering lots of car-horn (and truck horn) approval.

The evening before, in a segment entitled "Older, Wiser," Rachel Maddow spoke on her television show with environmental activist and journalist Bill McKibben concerning the impressive proportions of older people in public actions such as No Kings Day. Back in 2021, McKibben launched an organizing campaign, Third Act, to mobilize people over the age of 60 for climate change activism. Among other things, McKibben said,

I think one reason that older people have been turning out in such large numbers, and they have been heavily overrepresented in these demonstrations, is because everybody can tell, with the heart, can tell that the Trump regime is bad news. But if you have 15 presidents, in your experience, you know that it's not just bad news. You know that it's utterly different from every president that we've ever lived through before, good or bad; that this is a complete rupture with the America that we knew. And I think that may strike old people harder. We've certainly noticed at Third Act that there's a huge willingness of people to be out in the street over and over again, and not just at these demonstrations.

I didn't do a count, but I'm fairly sure well over half of the participants in Klamath Falls were in the demographic group McKibben described.

In this archived interview, Bill McKibben describes his Methodist faith and experience.

While in Klamath Falls, we enjoyed a reunion with Klamath Falls Friends Church. We stayed with the pastors, Leigh and Joe Tolton, and enjoyed the incredible view of Upper Klamath Lake from their home.

This was our seventh visit to Klamath Falls Friends over the years, and we felt very much at home. Joe gave a sermon on simplicity (and how it differs from plainness), based on Matthew 10:7-14, and with illustrations from the life of Diogenes the Cynic. It evoked a number of fruitful reflections from attenders during the open worship.

Why Trump's demolition of the East Wing is so shocking. Is it shocking to you? Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott explains his own reactions.

The leader as builder is an ancient idea, older than the Egyptian pyramids, older than the great public monuments of Rome, older than Emperor Constantine’s clumsy effort to eradicate memories of his predecessors by repurposing and rebranding their works as his own. Photography reanimated this ancient idea for a mass modern audience, rendering the leader as a colossus relative to the toy-sized representations of his architectural legacy. For democracies and authoritarian regimes alike, the image projected competence, the power and skill to serve the people with public works and leave a lasting legacy.

...

Trump made speedy demolition his priority, and speedy construction of the new ballroom is essential to his symbolic purpose, to offer a stark contrast to the dysfunction of Congress and, by extension, the torpid rhythms of democratic self-governance. He is the master builder, the developer who can cut through red tape. That image, whether deserved or not, is why many people voted for him. But to shred precedent is simply to set new precedents. And the precedent he is setting is that history doesn’t matter; laws, procedures and customs are irrelevant; and there is no role for collaboration, transparency and review in the construction of new buildings. Buildings are gifts to the people from leaders who are infallible, not the organic expression of civic values and ideals.

I can't tell whether the visceral shock of seeing FDR's East Wing utterly destroyed helped distract us from an arguably more important story: the U.S. military strikes on boats in South American waters. Another instance of making "speedy demolition" a priority?—and again we see striking passivity among the representatives and senators whom we pay to behave as coequal participants in governing the country.

Julia Steinberg entered Stanford University as a progressive. Her path to conservatism began her first year. Her story, "The Appeal of the Campus Right: It's Not About Trump," interests me because I have a friend in England who has undergone a similar transformation.

Steinberg arrived at Stanford expecting to participate in the progressive community there.

As the school year got under way, however, I began to notice something that grated on me. Debates in the classroom, whether about socialism or Plato or the Quran, felt highly delicate, as if everyone was afraid of offending everyone else. Rather than “I disagree with so-and-so,” it was more socially acceptable to say “piggybacking on so-and-so’s point,” even if there was a disagreement. When I finally found someone willing to have an extended intellectual debate with me—my problem-set partner for a logic course—I was interested to learn that he was a staff writer at the Stanford Review, the conservative publication on campus. He invited me to a meeting during winter quarter, and, mostly out of curiosity, I decided to attend.
What I saw there was the opposite of what I’d found in my classes: Students were encouraged to disagree with one another. At each meeting, students had to present—and defend—the articles they were working on; then the group would debate three topics, such as how the U.S. should respond to the war in Ukraine and whether Silicon Valley’s relevance was waning. I kept going back to Review meetings, but I didn’t tell many of my friends—I didn’t want to be judged.

Why the eggshell-walking among progressives? (Yes, I've noticed this, too.) I think it is partly because of the compulsive need to be right, and consequently to one-up everyone who differs. Deviations on issues of effective anti-racism, for example, cannot be tolerated. I hunger for the arenas where differences can be argued on their own alleged merits and defects, rather than as reflections of your or my obvious and intolerable defects.

These tendencies have made their way into a number of progressive Quaker communities. If these tendencies toward monopoly-style rightness are not challenged, I see a real danger of decline and an eventual future as small clubs of Quaker specialness rather than genuine churches. If I'm worrying needlessly, please tell me!

As Britain Yearly Meeting's Advices and Queries advise us (under no. 17), "Think it possible that you may be mistaken."

I'm not asserting that these kinds of personalizing of arguments and threats of shunning don't happen among conservatives as well. I particularly think of the theobros.... But I hate to see it among those who claim to defend freedom of speech and thought, and trustworthiness of process, as crucial values for an interdependent community.

Much of MAGA is not conservative in any classical sense.

Becky Ankeny looks at the Beatitudes for their prophetic content.

What can we learn from these beatitudes and the Old Testament sources they derive from? We learn that centering our hearts on God’s character and God’s faithfulness is the place to start. (I’m trying contemplative prayer for this purpose.) It is always right to pray. It is not the last resort; it is the only resort in hopeless times. Prayer is the expression of hope when there is no basis for hope.

Death Bloom: a message of hope for times of transition. Amy Straub prepares to leave Zambia, not knowing what comes next. She reminded me of what it was like to realize we were approaching the end of our time in Russia.

More on powerlessness and prayer from Tricia Gates Brown. Her post reminded me of Anthony Bloom's words here (scroll down to the second quotation).

C. Wess Daniels on the power of the persistent widow—and on translators' choices.

Mike Farley on silence and language. "All of practice comes down to stillness in the end...."

"Needed Time" (Eric Bibb, surely a rerun here! But it's a needed time.)

02 October 2025

The Bible, MAGA, and a new mission field

The 2020 census counted about 258 million adults in the USA. If about 23% of them were evangelical Protestants, that group number would number about 36 million. And, as surveys indicate, if 80% of those 36 million voted for the current president, that means 20% of them did not. That's 7.2 million evangelical Protestants who dissented one way or another from the majority choice.

Of course these estimates are rough, and there are many other Christian categories not included, but I'm intrigued by that specific minority. It may seem discouragingly small, but it's far from nothing, and as MAGA continues to pursue an aggressive anti-Christian agenda behind its thin Christian facade, might it be growing?

(If these sorts of statistics intrigue you, I recommend this and other research by the Public Religion Research Institute, along with this election study by the Pew Research Center.)

What do I mean by "thin Christian facade"? I certainly don't mean a facade that is inexpensive to produce. You can look no further than Charlie Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, and its Web site, and its YouTube channel (4.48 million subscribers) for evidence of voluminous content and high-quality production values.

What is missing? I don't see much evidence of whole-life conversion, of putting our loving Creator at the center of one's life and relationships, of "regarding" others as Paul invited us to, of loving enemies, of engaging the principalities and powers spiritually, of remembering the Matthew 25 priorities that Jesus taught, not to mention God's promise that Abraham and his descendants will bless all the nations of the earth, even as they're commanded not to mistreat or oppress foreigners/strangers/immigrants.

The facade is thin because it differs so little from all those blood-and-country mythologies that falsify history, identify danger with "the other," misuse sacred language served with hypnotic music to whip up enthusiasm, and license extreme responses.

One writer, Mitchell Sobieski, has taken the risk of inventorying these scandalous divergences from biblical faith in the form of an open letter from Jesus. (I wouldn't use this device myself, but the inventory itself is important.)

Drew Strait speaks during the Catholic Social Tradition
Conference at the University of Notre Dame in Notre
Dame, Indiana, on March 21, 2025.
(Brian Kaylor/Word&Way); source.

Another helpful commentary comes from Drew Strait, who teaches at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary: "How to Challenge MAGA's Biblical Authoritarianism." It's a good presentation, but I'd like to expand on his apparent assumed audience, "progressive ecumenical Christians." It's urgent for some of those 7.2 million evangelicals who aren't sold out to MAGA to participate. Could some of them serve in a new mission field—an outreach to those among the 80% who might be ready, even yearning, to consider genuine good news for all nations?

I appreciated Peter Wehner's recent Atlantic article, "Fully MAGA-fied Christianity."

Politics fills the void left by faith, and it’s doing so in ways that I’ve never quite seen before. For many fundamentalists and evangelicals, politics meets the longing and the needs that aren’t being met by churches and traditional faith communities. If there is something useful that has come of the Trump era, and there’s not much, it is that it has offered a diagnostic CT scan of much of American Christianity. Trump and the MAGA movement capitalized on, and then amplified, the problems facing Christian communities, but they did not create them.

After giving us a gallery of the kinds of personalities filling that void and meeting those needs, Wehner seems, in my own mind, to be addressing the new mission field:

The churches and denominations that are not militantly MAGA but are still overwhelmingly composed of Trump supporters often get less attention than churches and denominations that are hyper-politicized, but they’re also essential to the Trump coalition. So it’s useful to understand the complex dynamic at play in those spaces.
I say complex because, every Sunday, millions of Christians attend churches that are nondenominational and that are affiliated with conservative Protestant denominations. These churches aren’t particularly political, and they are led by pastors who preach thoughtfully on topics such as loving your enemy and turning the other cheek, which Jesus talked about during his Sermon on the Mount; and on verses like this one, found in the Book of Ephesians, written by the Apostle Paul: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
The great majority of people attending these churches wouldn’t consider those verses to be woke talking points; they would view them as the inerrant word of God. They would earnestly pray that those words would sanctify their life and that they would become more like Jesus. And almost to a person, these congregants would say that Christ is at the center of their life, their “all in all.”
Yet many of them will spend part of the rest of the week, and maybe much of the rest of the week, in the right-wing echo chamber, in the company of conflict entrepreneurs, having their emotions inflamed, feeling the same way toward their enemies as Donald Trump does toward his enemies. And it will all make perfect sense to them.

How might we begin (or, more hopefully, continue) to chisel away at this "perfect sense to them," this immersive correlation of Christ, their "all in all," and Fox News? Judy Maurer wrote recently about the power of narrative and community in offering a better way. To my mind, it's an incomparably better way of experiencing the love and power of Jesus and his community between Sundays, and re-engaging in missions that really could bless the nations. Do you have useful experiences in your own community to overcome this gap between Sunday faith and daily practice?

Can you believe?