Rejoice and be glad...

“Sermon on the Plain” Jesus Mafa series, Cameroon [François Vidil], Vanderbilt University. Source.

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Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. [Matthew 5:11-12]

You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. [Exodus 20:16]

It’s no longer Republican vs. Democrat.
It’s not even common sense vs. crazy.
It’s America-loving vs. America-hating COMMUNISTS, and today’s Democrat [sic] Party has shown us who they really are.
Democrats want to destroy America. Republicans LOVE America and will FIGHT to keep the United States the greatest country in the history of the world. [Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives]

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I cannot necessarily advise you to rejoice and be glad in this season of rhetorical venom now dominating all forms of media. Nor can anyone guarantee that today's insults and falsehoods won't lead tomorrow to actual persecution. For some, it already has. But even if you understandably want to retreat from this noise and take some time for peace and quiet, you're entitled to rejoice. You're in good company. "In the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

The interpretation I've often heard of Matthew 5:11-12 is that it refers to the persecution that Christians experience when they testify publicly to their faith. There are places in the world where skeptical publics or oppressive governments make public faith hazardous. But by and large the USA is not one of those, although performative victimhood may claim otherwise.

Here's the more likely situation: Sometimes it's Christians who are doing the insulting and false witnessing.

Howard Carter ("The Jesus Guide to Happiness, part 8"):

... This beatitude runs contra to the predominant way in which we think of people who are blessed, or happy in our society. We are a society that values comfort and ease, getting ahead and being liked, we want the worlds high five not to be slapped down. We would see the absence of persecution and opposition and oppression, not its presence, as a sign of being blessed. Being maligned or imprisoned or disadvantaged for doing the right thing or believing in Jesus does not readily sound like something to rejoice over, party down about, it seems far from being blessed.

Jamie Arpin-Ricci asks the obvious question "why would we be persecuted? Why should our faithful commitment to build a kingdom characterized by humility, mercy, peace, reconciliation and justice cause people to hate us and harm us?" It’s a good question isn’t it? His response is that "the sad truth is this: Injustice is a profitable venture.. the power structures of the world, be they political, economic, military or even religious have a long history of establishing their power base through the casual neglect or blatant exploitation of others, all too often the poor as we become a people characterized by making justice in the world, calling other to join us, we actively threaten those very systems and powers of injustice."

It may be sadly ironic that Christian politicians such as Mike Johnson, Russell Vought, and Pete Hegseth join with the forces of persecution against Christians who prioritize the Sermon on the Mount, but let's not waste time feeling smug and superior, or in sharpening our own verbal swords. Here's Jamie Arpin-Ricci ("Pope Trump? Politics and the Normalization of Contempt"):

What's especially important to recognize is that this approach is not exclusive to Trump or those who support him. While the right has unquestionably taken this further than most, everyone is prone to this tendency. It is a pattern anyone can fall into, particularly when emotions are high, the stakes feel existential, and, perhaps above all, we believe we have the moral high ground. Even after I posted about this dynamic recently, one of the first responses agreed with me, then when on to call Trump a "piece of crap." The irony wasn’t lost on me.

This isn't about tone-policing or respectability politics in the face of injustice. Anger has its place, and naming harm is essential. If someone is functioning in ways that reflect fascism, then calling them a fascist is not out of line. But the impulse to strip people of dignity, even those causing harm, mirrors the same logic used by those we oppose: that some people simple deserve it. That logic underwrites every form of systemic oppression. When we adopt it, even against oppressors, we reinforce the very dynamics we claim to resist.

Look at it this way: when we normalize contempt and dehumanizing language, we are implicitly saying that such behaviour is acceptable when you are "in the right". However, since everyone believes that of themselves, it simply reinforces the pattern. Here’s the catch: the marginalized and oppressed always pay the highest price in these dynamics, so by contributing to the normalization of this behaviour, we contribute to the very harm of those we are seeking to protect.

In case we miss the point, this Scripture is in the same sermon in which Jesus says, (verses 43 and 44, context), 

You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you....

How can we love our political and spiritual opponents and thereby experience the joy and gladness Jesus promises? There is a blessing, even a joy, to be gained in practicing restraint, in resisting the temptation to give someone the what-for, and instead persistently, prayerfully, intelligently focusing our resistance on the specifics of correcting biblical malpractice and the specifics of advocating justice in season and out of season, and thereby defending the precious reputation of the Gospel.

Repentance may be unlikely, but it's not impossible, and we are not the ones to block it.

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Related:

• Are we agents of Lucifer?
• The socialists are coming!!
• A grievously neglected commandment
• Do you want to be offended?
• Valiant for the Truth, and first principles 2.0
• The golden age of evangelism

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More commentaries on Matthew 5:1-12: Amy G. Oden. Osvaldo Vena. Jillian Nelson. Elaine Wainwright. Andrew McGowan.

How people in seven countries see the US. (Yougov survey.)

Why Trump-supporting Christians are driving Gen Z away from church. (Premier Christian magazine.)

Live Laugh Love on the road: some of the places Kristin Du Mez will be visiting on her book tour.

Poetry from Nancy Thomas: "Things that defile."

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"Clothes Line (Wrap It Up)." I've heard the Nightcats perform this song live several times, and I've also posted it here several times. This is the most recent version, I think:

Debates worth having, continued

Source.  

And our meanest Christians tend to piously and publicly worship Jesus as their King, because that’s considerably easier than following his inconvenient teachings.
—John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds.

Last week I looked at a specific debate... True or false? ... Christians are called to change themselves, not systems. I agreed that it is necessary to start with ourselves, but that some of us may then be led to challenge systems. I appreciated Marshall Massey's responses in that post's comment section.

That original debate sprang from an assertion by Texas Senate candidate James Talarico and a rebuttal from one of his Christian opponents. It seemed like a textbook example of a conflict between two different understandings of Christian faith and practice—a conflict that has heated up in the USA's current political context, in which white Christian nationalists seek to dominate the country.

For a while it has seemed that the alliance between some evangelical Christians and far-right politics was defining the public face of Christians in U.S. mass media. Secular audiences could be forgiven for concluding that our Good News was actually bad news. For those seeking to offer different, more attractive and more honest expressions of our faith, help is coming in the form of both diagnoses and resources.

Some of these resources have actually been around for a while, but are worth mentioning now. Here are just a few examples, mostly from a quarter of a century ago or more:

• Elizabeth O'Connor, Letters to Scattered Pilgrims. ("Whoever joins God's liberation movement must be content to spend time in the wilderness....")
• Ron Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity.
• David R. Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism. 
• John Alexander, Your Money or Your Life: A New Look at Jesus' View of Wealth and Power.
• Kenneth Leech, The Eye of the Storm: Spiritual Resources for the Pursuit of Justice.

Are there any you'd add?

More recent, reflecting the situation we find ourselves in now:

• Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
• Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. (And coming in September: Live Laugh Love. See my review here.)
• John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate (the book I started with above).

Of these last three, Fugelsang's book is less diagnostic and more of a resource: specifically, biblically-based counterpoints to the truth claims of white Christian nationalism. It's the book I've spent the last couple of days with, trying to decide whether to recommend it here.

The person who told me about this book often engages, sometimes at surprising length, with MAGA Christians online. The MAGA participants are often surprised at encountering biblical literacy among those who challenge their claims, and it is with this goal in mind—equipping the humane left wing of the Christian movement with biblical responses (and, more importantly, biblical context)—that Fugelsang wrote his book.

Separation of Church and Hate is divided into several sections corresponding to most of the principal controversies that mark these debates.

• Jesus and Paul
• Biblical literalism
• Feminism
• "Thou Shalt Not Hate the Gays"
• Abortion
• "Illegals"
• Poverty and poor people
• Sex
• Capital punishment
• Gun control and the worship of "Warrior Bro-Dude Jesus"
• "Thou Shalt Not Hate Jews, Muslims, or Even Atheists"
• White supremacy

John Fugelsang is not a biblical scholar, historian, or theologian, but he interviewed several of them in the process of assembling this book, and his acknowledgments include some familiar names. Within each of those themes, he gives some background for the controversies within that theme, and also lists typical claims made by Christian nationalists, and suggests responses. I'm guessing that you would already have anticipated many of his recommendations, but this book doesn't take a reader's familiarity with the Bible for granted. One of the good features of this book is its value as an introduction to the depth of biblical resources for justice, grace, mercy, and radical love. And in the process, he comes up with some flashes of insight that may delight you as much as they did me.

Fugelsang anticipates that his audience will include all sorts of readers, including people altogether outside Christianity, and Christians who don't share some of his interpretations. Here's how he explains his purpose: 

[The book is] ... a guide to everything the haters got wrong. It focuses on Christianity through the teachings of Jesus, known to some as the "red letters" of the bible. And it'll show that if you're debating an authoritarian Christian on almost any subject that divides us, Jesus probably has your back. Whether you're a believer, agnostic, or atheist, whatever you think about politics, you're going to have to deal with these people at some point. they want to control the level of freedom in US society based on how they pick and choose from the Bible. It's going to be increasingly vital to dismantle their supernatural authority by elegantly pointing out that they don't really follow this Bible they claim to base their lives on. And you'll be surprised at how good it feels, too.

Personally, I hope I'm not in this conflict simply because it feels good to one-up anyone, but there's nothing wrong with modest confidence in one's desire to uphold the reputation of the Gospel. A related note: Fuglesang is, among other things, a comedian, and I sometimes find his jocularity a bit off-putting. (Note the subtitle!) Maybe you won't. It doesn't diminish the book's usefulness. However, at times it introduces a bit of dissonance when, on the one hand, he proposes excellent guidelines for pursuing dialogue in a courteous and receptive spirit, but then he himself uses some spicy nicknames for the people he's helping us oppose.

On balance, yes, I'm glad I have it.

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Here's the review that appeared in Friends Journal. And in Popmatters.

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Peter Wehner's urgent take: "American Christians Face a Choice: The faithful can still repair the wreckage they have wrought."

Lindsay Winslow Brown on the Pentagon's religious affiliation codes.

Becky Ankeny, "Lifting the Weight." ("What Big Bad John did for the miners reminds me of what Jesus does for us every one of our days.")

Kristin Kobes Du Mez on defining evangelicalism—what interests her about this theme, and what doesn't.

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From a bootleg album of J.B. Hutto and the New Hawks performing in Warsaw in 1982: "Rock Me Baby." (Audio only. Listen to the enthusiastic crowd!)

"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

"Is grief my default setting?"

Source.  

Wikipedia tells me that the novel I've just finished reading, "Will and Testament (Norwegian: Arv og miljø) is an absurdist fiction novel written by Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth."

I was about to protest the word "absurdist"—the novel captivated me with its crystalline realism—but then I clicked on the link to the entry on absurdist fiction, and I forgave Wikipedia, although I still resist any implication of meaninglessness.

As much as I would like to recommend this novel without spoilers, it's important to reveal that emerging memories of incestuous rape are part of its story and its energy. 

As the narrative starts, the three sisters and a brother grapple with family conflict over an apparently unfair division of their inheritance. The stakes get higher when their mother overdoses, and later, when their father has a fatal accident.

 (But was that division of the inheritance truly unfair or isn't it?—even the central character, daughter Bergljot, wants justice but not to be bribed for her silence or forced to reconcile with a family that doesn't believe her.)

Once that basic conflict over the inheritance (and the alienation Bergljot persistently defends) had fully engaged me, several constant features of Hjorth's writing kept pulling me deeper in. Some of them touched on my own experiences, and some echoed my family history.

The first element is obsessive repetition, Bergljot's need to keep returning to her wounds, grievances, arguments, suspicions, self-doubts, self-justifications, over and over.

I thought to myself, don't I too lose sleep rehearsing what unfair thing had happened to me, and what I would say when I got my day in court, so to speak, and what chances were there that anyone would believe or even hear me?

As Bergljot tries to cope with all these personal uncertainties (including a mother who seems to attempt suicide as a way of punishing the alienated daughter), her feverish prose reflects her stress:

I existed in a trance of fear, of loss, it was fog and confusion, I did the laundry. It felt like I was drowning in laundry, I hated doing the laundry, back when my life was normal, that is to say numb, I used to regard it as the dullest, most exhausting chore, having to do the never-ending laundry. The contents of the laundry basket and the mountains of clothes lying next to the overflowing laundry basket, the heavy bedsheets and duvet covers and tablecloths as well as curtains, piles of underpants and socks and dirty tea towels, I would curse all that laundry back when my life had been simple and undramatic. If it hadn’t been for all that laundry, I used to think back then, then I would have been more content, I would have been able to read the books I ought to read and longed to read, but rather than read them, I was forced to start yet another load of washing and when that was finished, I had to hang up the heavy, unmanageable sheets to dry, and it would rain or it would be winter so I had to drape them over doors and chairs because the clothes horses were too small and already covered with socks and pants and shirts and tops, I cursed the laundry. But now that my world had imploded and I was raging and grieving, it was the laundry that kept me going, the time it took to do the laundry and hang it up and when it was finally dry, to fold it, put it away in the cupboards when the children were asleep at night, and then fall asleep myself knowing the laundry had been done and dried and folded and was ready, clean and waiting in the cupboards, I’m surviving on laundry, I thought to myself.

She looks for comfort in marriage and affairs, but mostly in alcohol. Over and over, she retreats into the fog of glass after glass of beer or red wine. Her stresses leak into her dreams, and she turns to psychotherapy.

Four times a week I lay on the couch talking in turns about pain, shame and the minutiae of everyday life, and every now and then we would suddenly experience a breakthrough. I dreamt that I picked up a hitchhiker who was going to Drøbak, as was I. Then I took a wrong turn, I went off the main road to Drøbak, I got lost and couldn’t find my way back to the main road, and I felt guilty on account of the hitchhiker who was inconvenienced by my uselessness and would be late getting to Drøbak. Then I thought I saw the main road, the lights from the main road; if I drove under the garage door in front of me, I would get back on it. I had accelerated to drive under the garage door when it started to close, I stepped on the gas to get through before it closed completely, but didn’t make it, it came down too quickly and it slammed into the car, we were startled and shocked, but at least we were alive, the hitchhiker ashen-faced and with his trouser pockets turned out and the car a complete write-off. Then Mum showed up and said in her usual cheerful manner that it could probably be fixed, although everyone could see that was impossible. Then I spotted a five-øre coin on the road and bent down to pick it up because finding money brings good luck, and I told myself by way of consolation that it might turn out to be my lucky day after all. I picked it up only to discover that it was just a button.

A five-year-old? he asked. 

No, a five-øre coin, I said. 

You said a five-year-old, he said. 

I meant a five-øre coin, I said, and repeated my dream: When the garage door came down, it felt as if I was crushed.

Almost as crushed as a five-year-old, he said, and I felt an electric shock go through me.

As I read her recounting this dream to her therapist, I absolutely recognized having had similar dreams about my life and my parents. As for the role alcohol played in my family, I don't even want to start.

Bergljot is a dramatic arts magazine editor and theater critic, so it is not surprising that writers and poets are mentioned and quoted: In the midst of crisis, she goes to see Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, for example, in an intriguing updated staging. The Danish writer and poet Tove Ditlevsen, and the Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen, also flash by several times.

Bergljot demands that her family believe her account of her father's crimes. After all, if she made up all these public charges, she would be a monster, in which case why is everyone demanding that she return to the family? This endless loop of contradictions doesn't get resolved in the novel, leaving us readers to ponder what a resolution might look like—in Bergljot's life and in yours and mine. At the end, just a reminder: trauma is intergenerational, and children have questions of their own.

Have I always been grieving? Is grief my default setting? And is it only the emotional side of my grief that has lessened? Deep down have I always been sad? Only when I’m calm, when I’m alone, when I work intensely, is my sadness less painful. That’s why I’m calm, that’s why I work so hard, that’s why I’m alone.

...

 ... Every war ever fought on this earth has proved that you can’t ignore history, sweep it under the carpet, and that if you want to reduce history’s destructive impact on the future, everyone’s version of what happened must be brought out into the open and acknowledged.

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Suddenly – in December

Suddenly – In December. I stand knee-deep in snow
Talk to you and get no answer. You’re keeping quiet.
My love, now it’s happened after all. Our whole life,
the smiles, the tears and the courage. Your sewing machine
and the long nights of work. Finally our travels:
   – under the snow. Under the wreath of cedar.

It all went so fast. Two staring eyes. Words
I couldn’t catch, that you said over and over.
And suddenly nothing more. You slept.
– And now they’re all lying here, days and summer nights,
the grapes in Valladolid, the sunsets in Nemea
   – under the snow. Under the wreath of cedar.

Quick as a switch flicking off,
the tracings behind the eye flash out,
wiped from the slate of a life-span. Or maybe not?
Your new dress, my face and our old stairs
and everything you brought to this house. Is it gone
   – under the snow. Under the wreath of cedar?

Dear friend, where is our happiness now,
your good hands, your young smile,
your hair’s wreath of light on your forehead and that
girlish glint in your eye, your spirit and
steady abundance of life and hope?
   – under the snow. Under the wreath of cedar.

Companion beyond death. Take me down with you.
Side by side, let us see the unknown.
It’s so desolate here and the hour is getting dark.
The words are few now and no one’s listening anymore.
Dearest, you who are sleeping. Eurydice.
   – under the snow. Under the wreath of cedar.

Rolf Jacobsen (this poem was partially quoted in Will and Testament). Translation by Roger Greenwald, published in Did I Know You? Selected Poems.

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Vigdis Hjorth's novel, with its elements drawn from her own life, became controversial in Norway when her own family members objected to the publication of these supposed family revelations. For more on this aspect of the novel, see the reviews by Holly Williams in the Observer, and by Lara Feigel in the Guardian.

Tim Adams interviews Vigdis Hjorth.

Natasha Sholl on writing people you know.

I'm very interested in the ethics of disclosure of family secrets in autobiographical writing. I've been fairly open about my own experiences on this blog, in part to make up for an incident I've probably told before. One day after a particularly painful beating the previous evening that I'd received for some undoubted mischief on my part, I ran into a neighbor on our apartment building's stairs. What was all that shrieking and crying that was coming from your apartment last night? she asked. Without missing a beat, I answered that we must have had the television on too loud.

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In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's unjustifiable and tragic death yesterday in Orem, Utah, in the online world we're often being presented with a menu of two choices for our response. Kirk is a worthy martyr, ultimate victim of leftist cancel culture, or he was a fascist fanatic and a Christian heretic. I appreciated this calm appraisal. I can grieve his loss and pray for his family and friends while continuing to reject his theology and its political enmeshments.

Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum (Foreign Affairs) on "The Logic Behind Trump’s Assault on the Administrative State."

Ungoverning also dissolves the branches of government and unifies the separation of powers into a single office—or more accurately, a single person. It is not about creating what some constitutional scholars call a “unitary presidency”: an executive branch that responds to the president’s directives. It is about creating a strongman. This motivation explains Trump’s reliance on executive orders, which signal not only policy shifts but also the necessity of personal command. As Trump once put it, 'I alone can fix it.'

...

In his desire to weaken the state and rebuild it around him, he has made chaos the new standard. The range of future possibilities for Washington is thus wide. It is reasonable to wonder whether there will even be a regular presidential election in 2028. Trump, after all, has flirted with the idea of seeking a third term; his official store sells 'Trump 2028' hats. The worst-case scenarios seem more plausible than ever before.

Philip Gulley on good goodbyes. (На русском языке.)

On 9/11, we remember that war does not work. (From the Daily Quaker Message, which again I highly recommend.)

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Rick Holmstrom, "Lucinda."

Fiercely inspirational

Source.

Source.

Two writers in two countries, published 64 years apart....

Lamorna Ash.

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Sometimes, as I sat in the outer ring of chairs during my silent Sundays at the Muswell Hill meeting [London; link added], I wished I could have seen Quakerism as it was in its beginning: an exuberant, fiercely heterodox expression of the Christian faith. [Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion (2025), page 136.]

In line with the secularisation-theory sociologist Steve Bruce, Dandelion notes how liberal forms of British Christianity are contributing to their ‘own demise through diffuse belief systems, poor belief transmission and the lack of seriousness’, all of which discourages conversion. He includes Quakerism among this trend. And while Quakerism might function as a gateway drug to ‘religious seriousness’ for the 47 per cent who come from ‘no immediately prior religious affiliation’, it is often the features which first draw the non-religious to Quaker meetings—a laxity and neutrality in the place of dogma and formality—which then sends them off to other denominations, looking for services with a more robust structure, elders and leaders who might help teach them how to believe. [Page 128.]

The year reached its end, and I was still attending St Luke’s [West Holloway, London, link added] any Sunday my hangover did not intern me to bed. I learnt the order of ceremonies. Each time I felt something unlock within me as I admitted my guilt for whomever I had harmed that week alongside everyone else in the congregation, after which the associate priest, Rev. Martin Wroe, would say, ‘Whatever it is, whatever it was, whatever it will be, God forgives you. Forgive yourselves, forgive each other,’ and then offer us the sign of the Cross. Not every time, but most times, after taking communion I felt a further unlocking, even a coming together of the disparate parts of my life. [Page 280.]

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Albert Fowler.

Members of the Society of Friends are increasingly disturbed by the comment that Quaker Meeting is a fine place for seeking, but one must go elsewhere if one’s object is finding. [Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought: A Statement of Belief (1961), page 12.]

Much has been made of the argument that the universal variety of Quaker belief is the growing edge of the Society of Friends. Large numbers of convinced Friends have come in through this door. That the universal may also be the dying edge of the Society is seldom mentioned, but many would-be Friends turn away when they find the Christian ties of a Meeting no longer binding and the drift toward what John McCandless calls practical atheism running strong. Paul Lacey tells of people he has talked with who have found the Society of Friends a kind of incubator where they can develop just enough to realize that the real conditions of life and worship lie outside it. Many of these people, having looked to the Quaker Meeting as a source of inspiration and deepened faith, pass beyond it to find fuller meaning elsewhere. [Page 19.]

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I first heard about Lamorna Ash in the pages of The Guardian. The opening teaser for Ash's edited excerpt in The Guardian, "Could I become a Christian in a year?", was irresistible:

After two friends unexpectedly converted, Lamorna Ash discovered a new generation of young people turning to faith. As she investigated the phenomenon, one of her first steps was to spend a week on a working retreat on Iona. And then something strange happened…

This intro is a bit misleading. In just about all of her fourteen chapters plus prologue, introduction, conclusion, and epilogue, strange things are happening every few pages, so the intriguing part of the teaser is not the "something strange" dot dot dot, but "a new generation of young people turning to faith." This is not your typical glib summary of contemporary church life in Britain. In any case, the excerpt sold me: I had to buy the book. And, most likely, so should you.

Ash makes me think about what a conversation between Francis Spufford and Flannery O'Connor might be like. Her survey of Christianity in the UK ranges from rigidity with a happy salesface, to bass-driven ecstasy, to personal histories of toxic power games, to encounters with mysticism ancient and modern, to utter serenity, and everything in between. Her 60 interviewees have variously been converted, disillusioned, reconverted, with all levels of investment in making—or not making—their personal experiences and confessions congruent with the institution they're in at the moment. She candidly reports how this research and writing project is affecting her own life, even as she awaits a diagnosis on her mother's symptoms that suggest dementia may be coming.

She is not simply reporting on what Christianity looks like to some of her Generation Z contemporaries. She's also wrestling with Christianity's own primitive and sometimes compelling strangeness, and its multifaceted persistence. She thinks about the difference between the Nicene theologians wrestling so deeply with the nature of Christ, and those Christian thinkers of our own era who can't get beyond sex. And she wonders out loud about her own path. Should she remain an outside observer, or should she be open to crossing the line into conversion territory; and is she being influenced by what we, the readers, might think?

Lamorna Ash's paternal grandmother "was the last true Christian in our family. She went to an Anglican church every Sunday of her life, except for the few years she attended a Quaker meeting in Muswell Hill." For part of the time of Ash's writing project, when she wasn't on one of her many research visits elsewhere, she attended that same meeting, which led to some very interesting comments about British Friends. I couldn't help remembering some of Albert Fowler's words from his 1961 pamphlet on Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought, quoted above.

I don't want to press the parallels between Ash and Fowler too hard, because I know that many British Friends are already aware of contemporary liberal Quakerism's weaknesses as well as its strengths (and the same goes for Friends in the USA), and I personally know that some of them would certainly not fit into the "laxity and neutrality" description. Also, I'm not sure those early Friends were "fiercely heterodox" exactly, since Fox and others were arguing for a more faithfully biblical Christianity. "Fiercely nonconformist," maybe. Even so, I am grateful for the frank assessment from this clear-eyed young commentator who has seen Christian alternatives many Quakers would either not know about or perhaps shrink from with horror.

Lamorna Ash has a lot of credibility with me simply based on the homework she's done. (I'm sure she'd have a more fun way of putting it.) You already know she references Ben Pink Dandelion, who has, she suggests, "the best name in academia." She also knows one of my favorite contemporary British books on Christianity, Francis Spufford's Unapologetic. (My comments on his book are here.) Her other sources include Harold Bloom, Julian of Norwich, Gillian Rose, George Fox, Rosemary Moore, Thomas R. Kelly, Karl Rahner, William James, David Bebbington, Tanya Luhrmann, Krista Tippett and Eugene Peterson in conversation, Pope Francis, and two Augustines.

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Yesterday's MAGA scandal of the day (or at least in the top five): According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to be sure that no federal disaster relief money would go to agencies or nonprofit organizations that help undocumented immigrants.

Also among the top five: Chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Mark Russ and Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre team up for a six-session online course: Whose Friends are we? Mark explains on his blog: "Emerging from my PhD research on Quaker theology and Whiteness, I’ve developed an online course for Woodbrooke reflecting on what it might mean for Quakers to be friends of God, Christ and each other in the 21st century." Mondays, October 13 to November 17. More details here.

Discipline and Punish: Kristin Du Mez assesses James Dobson's legacy.

Cherice Bock explains the background of the chapter she wrote with Catalina Morales Bahena for the new book Hungry for Hope: Letters to the Church from Young Adults, due to be published today. Their chapter is entitled, “Reclaiming ‘Enough’: Away from Scarcity Toward True Abundance.” For more on the book, visit hungryforhopebook.com.

Abolitionism and compromise, a Jay family/Indiana Yearly Meeting case study. (Thanks to Martin Kelley for the link.)

John Kinney at Spokane Friends, speaking on contemplative prayer: "If we don't get this right..."

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Flaco Jiménez and Raul Malo, "Seguro Que Hell Yes," a video we sometimes used in class in Russia for its specific glimpses of USA culture. (And it's a song I can always recall to kill earworms.)

A clip from Flaco's memorial service. From puroconjunto210's caption on YouTube: "Flaco Jiménez, conjunto legend passed away July 31, 2025. A memorial service was held in San Antonio at the Carver Community center. Artists included Santiago Garza, David Lee Garza, Dwayne Verheyden, Max Baca, and Josh Baca all played their hearts out celebrating his Life!"

More occupation shorts

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement-branded GMC SUV, left, and an ICE-branded Ford pickup are parked at the Capitol on Aug. 13. [Note the "DEFEND THE HOMELAND" tagline.] (Andrew Leyden/Getty Images via Washington Post; trimmed.)

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I'm sure you have more and better sources than this blog to keep up with the chronicle of malice, corruption, and ineptitude that is the USA's current presidential administration. But every once in a while, I want to note, for the record, how utterly bizarre it all is. And it's not just bizarre exhibitionism—you already know that real people are in constant danger, whether they are immigrants and children of immigrants, or targets of Russian guided bombs and drones, or in need of food, health care, shelter, and a safe environment. I'm not even counting those who had once experienced American care through USAID before being cut off by MAGA fiat.

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For me, today's trigger (not the most serious piece of news, but maybe the most ... spiritually symptomatic?) ... was this article in the Washington Post, concerning an urgent government purchase:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to spend millions of dollars on SUVs and custom, gold-detailed vehicle wraps emblazoned with the words “DEFEND THE HOMELAND,” according to a contractor’s social media post and records that describe the decked-out fleet as urgently needed in President Donald Trump’s stated mission to improve safety on the streets of the District.

Screenshot from a Homeland Security video on X.

As the article notes, these purchases and decoration orders are not being made through competitive bids. But what really triggered my "occupation" nerves was the following detail. In addition to the vehicles for use in D.C., some specific purchases were made to enhance the image of ICE for recruitment purposes. Here's a quote from the end of the article:

The vehicles the agency proposed purchasing include two Ford Raptors, two GMC Yukon AT4s and two Ford Mustang GTs. ICE wrote in the documents that the Mustangs were “an immediate request by the White House, on Thursday August 7, 2025.” The Mustangs — which are set to cost $121,450 — will aid in recruitment “by serving as a bold, high-performance symbol of innovation, strength and modern federal service,” the documents say.

It all reminded me of the connections Kristin Du Mez has been making for years. For example:

My own research on masculinity focuses on just one facet of the evangelical worldview—but a foundational one. In many ways, gender provides the glue that holds together their larger ideological framework. For years I’ve been tracing evangelicals’ embrace of increasingly militaristic constructions of masculinity, which go hand in hand with visions of the nation as vulnerable and in need of defense.

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Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of posts about the Christian movement that is animating much of MAGA leadership: Are we agents of Lucifer? and Enthusiasm and politics.

Given the depth of religious enthusiasm displayed by these apostles and prophets, I can't help wondering whether they pray for the people they're arresting, deporting, and rendering with wild abandon. I tried putting variously worded questions to Google, along the lines of "Do dominionists pray for the people they arrest?" " Do MAGA Christians pray for immigrants?" Google's AI provides the vaguest of answers, mostly "it depends," with no examples.

I used the specific name of Sean Feucht with one of these questions, and found his prayer for Los Angeles on Facebook, with a fascinating string of comments. One specific prayer struck me right away, but it wasn't Sean's:

We pray God that your mercy comes upon those suffering from massive deportation and family separation, even though they have done nothing deserving of deportation. May your grace touch the hearts of those encouraging hate against immigrants, and turn them into a loving and caring heart....

Google also told me that Feucht has worked on behalf of refugees in the past, so this evident militancy may be part of his more recent MAGA profile.

Signe Wilkinson.

In any case, "What does the Bible say about refugees and immigrants?" The Bible makes no distinction based on what documents the immigrant is holding, but just in case that is the issue, the awkward truth is that Congress has been resisting immigration reform and providing adequate judicial resources for immigrants and asylum seekers for years—not just under Trump.

(One specific border-crossing incident in the Bible fascinates me: the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus. See Matthew 2:1-12. They came from abroad to follow the star to Bethlehem, and then defied King Herod by returning home without reporting to him.)

Finally, our Christian MAGA politicians should take note that many (most?) of those being arrested, deported, or rendered may be their Christian brothers and sisters. N.B. When Christians abuse power and mistreat non-Christians, it is just as awful as mistreatment of Christians! Maybe worse, since its gleeful and gratuitous cruelty compromises the reputation of the Gospel. Be warned!

See John Woolman's Journal, page 128. (Click link to chapter XII in table of contents.)

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Under occupation

Occupation shorts

Occupation: Myrtle Wright's experience

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Christian refugees caught in the crosshairs of U.S. immigration policy.

Litigation Tracker. When I mentioned this resource back in February, it was tracking 37 cases against Trump administration actions. Now it's tracking 381.

Judge Fred Biery rules against the Texas Ten Commandments law. (A side note: why aren't these Christian activists campaigning for the Beatitudes? Is it their deep interfaith sensitivity?)

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Is there a religious resurgence among members of Gen Z? Data may actually show a growing divergence between men and women.

George Orwell's son writes about his parents' collaboration on Animal Farm, and on why they had a hard time finding a publisher. (Anna Funder's fascinating book Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life may add some less flattering details to the picture of Orwell as husband and collaborator.)

What a small church in North Carolina did with its real estate, to the possible benefit of affordable housing in its area.

Nancy Thomas remembers an extraordinary, even life-shaping, vision.

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Kid Ramos with two late greats, Henry Gray and Lynwood Slim.

Nancy French ... on not bearing false witness

Source.

Eiffel Tower, Paris, Tennessee Nancy French's home town. Source.

Nancy French, Instagram, 2024. Source.

This high praise for Nancy French's book Ghosted: An American Story from Christianity Today editor Russell Moore will save me a lot of words:

I didn't know writing could be this haunting and hilarious, heartbreaking and exhilarating all at the same time. I did not want it to end. This tour de force of storytelling and sense-making is one of the most gripping and beautiful memoirs in a generation.

Nancy French was born and raised in the Appalachian foothills, a grandchild of the mountain culture, and grew up in a church community that nurtured her faith and gave her love and care ... until the devastating day that it didn't. She attended a Church of Christ college ... until she couldn't stomach the chapel's lazy positivity and stopped attending, even though chapel attendance was compulsory.

As a result, at age twenty, "by now my affection for Rush Limbaugh and church had disappeared and I considered myself a feminist, atheist, liberal." That was the moment when she encountered David French, a Republican Christian law student, an encounter that resulted in a restoration of faith (well, not the exact same faith), a marriage that has lasted three decades and counting—and a career in ghostwriting for Republicans that didn't last quite as long.

Obviously, there's nothing terribly linear about French's story, with each swoop and dive reflecting something of the wrenching spiritual, political, and cultural turmoil of her country in those decades. Her story includes betrayal, giddy hope, predators protected by churches, miracles, allies lost and found—it's a good thing she's an excellent storyteller! Take a look at these reviews for more of what I mean:

• A secular review (Publisher's Weekly).
• A review from a Christian viewpoint (in the late lamented publication Current).
• A slightly more critical review ("But I complain too much") in the Englewood Review of Books.

Ghosted has many important messages, including powerful testimony against the shame of being a childhood target of sexual assault in the church. I hope everyone who needs these messages will read this book. But there's something else that intrigued me as a lifelong lefty: the passing references to the way conservatives see us. I'm not necessarily talking now about who is objectively more correct about policy and morality; it's the cultural assumptions and conclusions that seemingly entitle them to dismiss us (and us them).

For example, here French is commenting on the reactions to the book she co-authored with Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol:

I’d thought that people of both parties would rally around Bristol and show her compassion. That’s not what happened. It slowly dawned on me that when the Democrats loudly proclaimed “believe all women,” they really meant “the right kind of women”—meaning not “right” on the political spectrum at all. I shouldn’t have been surprised. They had embraced Ted Kennedy, even though he flipped his car, sent his female passenger careening into a pond, and left her there to die. They revered Bill Clinton, even though he was credibly accused of rape by multiple women.

Bristol was well spoken and the book was clear. However, a nuanced, trauma-informed conversation did not arise from her revelations. Bristol told the truth, and Democrats laughed. After seeing how people mocked this young mother, I was fully confident the Democrats were not only wrong on the issue of women, they were callously wrong. They harbored and protected abusers of women, and Republicans alone would stand against sexual injustice.

In spite of my certainty, the truth turned out to be much more complicated than I thought.

Soon a major turning point for French came: the acclamation Donald Trump received from the very people whose ostensible values she cherished and represented in her writing, and who, as it turned out, turned against her and her husband when they found that contradiction intolerable. As those contradictions mounted up with every Trumpian assault on rhetorical decency, she lost many clients, and kept the few that agreed to her condition that she would not write pieces in favor of Trump.

In my mind, however, I made a vow: I would not bear false witness against my liberal neighbor.

That one decision was the beginning of the end of my political ghostwriting career.

I hope that progressives, even in the shadow of Donald Trump's devastating attacks on political and ethical norms, are willing to make the same commitment against bearing false witness against their (our) opponents.

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On the "conservative" label.

A grievously neglected commandment.

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Here's a podcast in which Julie Roys, a Christian investigative journalist who often focuses on church-related corruption and abuse, interviews Nancy French.

Back on March 27, Medardo Gómez, Lutheran bishop of El Salvador, died. He made a deep impression on me during a visit back in the time of the civil war and death squads. Rest in peace!

Christine Patterson on the importance of cultural intelligence for service in a divided world.

A poll suggests that Israelis increasingly hold genocidal views concerning Palestinians. Not coincidentally, the Israeli government announces the creation or "legalization" of 22 new settlements on the West Bank. Britain Yearly Meeting minutes its discernment that genocide is occurring in Gaza.

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Sue Foley, the "Ice Queen" of blues guitarists, gives us an extended solo....

Enthusiasm and politics

Screenshot from source.  

In his book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy, Matthew Taylor documents how two movements overlap: the Christians he classifies as Independent Charismatics, and the political phenomenon that brought victory to Donald Trump in the USA's 2024 presidential election.

It is no surprise that many Americans have not heard of the "network of networks" that compose Independent Charismatics, particularly those centered on Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation. (See this post, Are we agents of Lucifer?, for a brief introduction.) Those of us who just catch occasional glimpses of Pentecostal and charismatic subcultures may find them either absurd or disturbing, especially if we rely on video clips of "preachers gone wild" and the like. We are therefore likely to underestimate the appeal and reach of those subcultures.

Taylor points out that, contrary to some stereotypes, the Independent Charismatic leaders who enter the political realm are ethnically diverse, have women in major leadership positions, and are far from biblically illiterate. Their political significance is rooted in several interrelated theological themes that, as Taylor describes, unite the vast majority of this Christian movement: they believe that their leaders are apostles and prophets, with all the authority that comes from the biblical models linked to those labels; they believe that Christians are (directly or indirectly) to dominate all the major institutions of society, including government; and to get there, they are to confront the territorial demons wherever those demons are in control. Given these beliefs, it is not surprising that this enthusiastic core of Trump's political support are (so far) apparently not disturbed by the blatant authoritarianism evident in the first month of the new presidency.

The largest part of Taylor's book examines the formation and careers of several of the major figures in the movement, and how together they built up the theological pillars of their politics ... and came to identify Donald Trump as the crucial "Cyrus" they were to anoint to high office. Those figures include Peter Wagner (arguably the central figure in the formation of the New Apostolic Reformation), Paula White, Cindy Jacobs, Lance Wallnau, Dutch Sheets, Rebecca Greenwood, Ché Ahn, and Sean Feucht.

Matthew Taylor and others have done a useful job in examining the personalities, theologies, and politics of these and other leaders, along with their congregations and networks. I'm intrigued by something else: the sense of mobilization and enthusiasm among their followers, compared with the rest of the USA's Christians.

Taylor writes,

To be charismatic is to seek fulfillment of two deep and driving desires. The first desire is mostly individual: charismatics want to feel supernatural power flowing through them. This personal desire usually gets discussed under the rubric of the biblical "spiritual gifts." Charismatics want to be filled with the Holy Spirit on a deep, existential level so that they can participate in a world of miracles, ongoing revelations, and a personal sense of closeness to God.

The second desire is more communal and global: charismatics want to be part of an extraordinary work of God in the world. This is usually framed in terms of seeking "revival": a fresh, unpredictable, collective outpouring of God's Spirit in such a way that thousands or millions of people are rejuvenated in their faith. Many Christians in many traditions hope for revival and talk about it in different ways. But I have never encountered any section of Christianity so singularly preoccupied with revival as Independent Charismatics. They pray for revival, prophesy about revival, strategize for revival, study revival history, and hanker for a bracing new work of God.

The steady pursuit of these two desires is what gives charismaticism its remarkable energy and even gravitational pull. For many Christians, the promise of having Holy Ghost power flow through you and seeing the extraordinary outpouring of God's energy into the world is irresistible.

Taylor and other observers of these movements also point out that their worship experiences, including immersive music and inspirational sermons, play a role in building up feelings of "supernatural power flowing through them." They are blessed, not just by their own spiritual gifts, but by each other's.

Source.  

With these "two deep and driving desires," it's not hard to see how participating in the enthronement of a supposed Cyrus figure such as Trump would be deeply satisfying. It would not be fair to describe these millions of people as spiritual zombies without wills or minds of their own; many of them have made the deliberate calculation that, to defeat the demons corrupting our country, it is worth the risk of having an authoritarian in charge who is (they believe) answerable to them through their prophets and apostles.

At the same time, it's also important to say that many Christians of a charismatic temperament have not signed up for this. They may share those same personal and communal desires, but work for goals along different lines: revival, yes; but in the meantime, planting churches that love their local communities in practical ways. They are not busy trying to flip presidencies, but they do understand that their local faithfulness will have global effects.

And that brings me to Quakers. When I read about "ongoing revelations and a personal sense of closeness to God," am I not right in detecting desires that we Quakers share? Don't we want to be part of "an extraordinary work of God" in this world where so many suffer from violence, poverty, and degradation of the environment? (Not to mention the principalities and powers, and evil in high places. "The world is dying for lack of Quakerism in action," said Hugh Doncaster in his address to the Friends World Conference in 1967.) 

If so, how do we encourage and express these personal and communal desires as Taylor described them, or reasonably similar desires? What factors get in the way? Do we assume that we are spiritually or culturally superior to those whom Taylor describes? Do we think there is something unseemly about sharing enthusiasm? Or, as in the case of some in my own extended family, have we been burned by communities that emphasize obedience to the apostle or prophet, rather than mutual trust? How do we find a healing that doesn't involve quenching the Spirit in others?

Also: if a political leader rose up who was far more palatable to us than Donald Trump, would we become as starry-eyed on their behalf as his current followers are on his? (Truthfully, I have several candidates in mind!)

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Related posts on enthusiasm...

Enthusiasm

Some cautious thoughts on enthusiasm

So Peter wants to build dwellings?

What does it mean to live life with expectancy?

The ecstasy of worship is connected to pure intention

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Robert P. Jones offers a reality check on the reach of white Christian nationalism in seven charts.

Minutes of support for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's participation in the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

John Muhanji, Stop the Blame Game!!—on colonialism and corruption. John is the African Ministries director of Friends United Meeting.

Daniel Smith-Christopher is coming to Reedwood Friends Church, Portland, Oregon, USA, to present a program, Digital Doubts? Faith in the Future with A.I. Wednesday evening, March 5, 6:30 p.m. Pacific time. 

Jane Ciabattari talks with author Elyse Durham on "depicting the artistic side of the Cold War in Fiction."

In the spirit of the times, Nancy Thomas has a modest proposal: to rename America.

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Lazy Lester is "A Lover Not a Fighter." With guitarist Eve Monsees.