Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) giving his homily on certainty in the film Conclave. Screenshot from source.
Conclave's fictional Cardinal Lawrence, addressing his fellow cardinals as they prepare to elect a new pope, warns them of a dangerous attitude: certainty.
There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. … Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and, therefore, no need for faith. Let us pray that God grants us a pope who doubts. [Source.]
I don't totally agree. A personal sense of certainty can be a source of strength and courage. A few years ago, in a blog post inspired by Chris Hedges' When Atheism Becomes Religion, I made a distinction between personal certainty, on the one hand, and assertions of certainty in the social arena—particularly as categorical and coercive action.
I also admitted that ...
Certainty is a slippery quality. In my experience, it comes and goes—and returns. More importantly, it is relational rather than operational: I can be certain that God wants the best for you and me, and that God will be with you and me as we work for that best, but I'm hardly ever certain about what concrete steps to take next. For that decision, I need a mix of intuition, prayer, plain secular fact-checking, the wisdom of others, and a willingness to risk being wrong.
In the film Conclave, part of the context of Lawrence's homily on certainty is his understanding that the late pope, toward his end, had doubts—not about God, but about the church. It is institutionalized certainty that is the greater danger, and the cardinals would be wise to choose a pope who understands this.
This balancing act between personal certainty and socio-political uncertainty seems to me to be the way God set things up in the first place. I'm recalling the words of Anthony Bloom on God's powerlessness that I've quoted several times before. The context: In response to an interviewer's question, Bloom is commenting on the history of church/state relationships in Russia.
No party at all should be able to claim the Church as its own, but at the same time the Church is not non-party, or above parties. She must be the voice of a conscience illuminated by the Light of God. In the ideal state, the Church must be in a condition to speak to any party, any movement: "This is worthy of humanity and of God, and that is not." Of course, this can be done from either of two positions: either from a position of strength, or from a position of complete helplessness. It seems to me—and I'm deeply convinced of this—that the Church must never speak from a position of strength. The Church must not be one of the powers operating in this or that government; she must be, if you like, just as powerless as God, Who does not coerce, Who only calls us and reveals the beauty and truth of things, but doesn't enforce them on us; Who, similarly to the way our consciences work, points out the truth, but leaves us free to listen to truth and beauty—or to refuse them. It seems to me that this is how the Church should be. If the Church takes its place among those organizations that have power, that are able to force and direct events, then there will always be the risk that she would find power desirable; and as soon as the Church begins to dominate, she loses the most profound thing, the love of God, and an understanding of those who need salvation rather than the works of destruction and rebuilding.
For me, it follows that the work of evangelism is to encourage and draw out people's capacity to respond to God's call, God's offer of relationship, which would be reflected in our own offer of relationship, and our truthful testimony of how we have experienced that relationship in our faith community. This work does not depend on a convincing string of logical propositions, because no such string exists objectively apart from relationship. Just as with the turtles, it's relationships all the way down.
Photo: Judy Maurer, April 5.
Maybe God could have designed a more internally consistent and self-interpreting Bible and left manuscripts for it in perfect condition. Maybe God could have given us the ideal template for church government, along with sinless leaders to occupy perfectly-designed roles. And maybe God could have intervened more frequently and forcefully when we humans treated each other with gleeful cruelty. But as Eugene Peterson commented on the "nearly unrelieved mayhem" of the Book of Judges,
Twice in Judges (17:6 and 21:25) there is the telling refrain: “At that time there was no king in Israel. People did whatever they felt like doing.” But we readers know that there was a king in Israel: God was king. And so, while the lack of an earthly king accounts for the moral and political anarchy, the presence of the sovereign God, however obscurely realized, means that the reality of the kingdom is never in doubt.
However strong our faith, no human being ever has the whole picture—and we just make things worse when we pretend otherwise. God has, for reasons that may always remain obscure, chosen to fulfill the promises of God through us and our fractious, fragile communities. In the short run, even if our faith is strong, failure is an option, but then we dust each other off and once again wait for God's pull on our hearts. The next steps might not be clear all at once, and we may disagree any number of ways. But the certainty of God's love shared among us motivates us to keep praying for unity, discernment, perspective, and courage. There are no shortcuts; weaponized certainty and coercion are just dead ends.
Have you seen the second season of the television drama Severance? Beth Felker Jones gives us a theological commentary. (Spoilers. I have just started watching the second season, so I didn't read her commentary to the end....)
Asya, the narrator of the novel The Anthropologists, by Ayşegül Savaş, and Asya's husband Manu, are from two different countries and live in a third country:
We were scholarship students in a foreign country, which is to say that we recognized something in each other. We'd been raised by similar types of people—their worries, their discipline, their affection, their means—even though we had grown up on opposite ends of the world. We accepted, children that we were, that we would remain foreigners for the rest of our lives, wherever we lived, and we were delighted by the prospect. Back then, it didn't seem to us that we'd ever need anyone else, in our small world that was also a universe.
I don't intend to write a full review of this endearing novel; others have done a good job...
Sana Goyal in The Guardian: "The novel exists in the liminalities, distances and tensions between two states or stages of life, and traces the discrepancies between the kinds of adults the characters are and the kinds of adults they were expected to be."
Kayla D. Walker in Electric Lit (including a conversation with the author): "... a breathtaking excavation of the wonders and intricacies involved in making a modern life in a new city, of feeling both young and adult, and of growing up while settling down."
... I just wanted to give you some idea of why I loved this quiet novel so much. Its structure is a series of Asya's observations on their life together, with insertions from the interviews she conducts in a city park as she films a documentary about the life of that park. The task the young couple have set for themselves is to find a new, more "sturdy" place to live in that unnamed city, something better than the small, dark apartment they had found "in an unremarkable part of town" which they'd chosen "without much thought. Back then, we were only playing out our adulthoods rather than committing to them."
In the meantime, daily life goes on:
Manu left home early to go to work at the nonprofit organization on the other side of the city. While he made breakfast, I made a pot of coffee and sat with him at the table in pajamas. It was a ritual of sorts, sitting across from each other, face-to-face. There were few rituals to our lives, certainly none that carried any history, at least not the history of traditions, of nations and faiths. So these small things mattered. I would make sure to sit with him at the table.
Before he left, we kissed in the hallway.
Okay, Manu said, back in my shoes.
Another ritual: their periodic online conversations with family members in their respective homelands, revealing the anxieties of parents and grandparents, and their variable ability to understand what their kids are doing. And part of the progression of the book is their establishment of new, lightweight but significant, rituals of their own.
Most of their acquaintances are also expats, who vary in their comfort with the city that unites them and the culture they may or may not be adapting to. When do friends really say what they're anxious about? How do you know when someone is avoiding you ... or are you misinterpreting their signals?
The book is full of tiny but telling details—what objects they choose, for example, to decorate their apartment, and the hints of long-term intimacy in their nicknames for themselves as a couple, and their ritual catch-phrases. Some reviewers mentioned that they inhaled this novel in one or two sittings, but I found myself needing to take frequent breaks to savor and ponder what I'd just read.
We managed to fit 11 people into our Elektrostal kitchen.
Sign in an Elektrostal transport minibus: "A few minutes of TERROR, and you're home"
Judy and I have lived something like expats at times, particularly during our years in Elektrostal. We were not from "opposite ends of the world" (although Cave Creek, Arizona, and Oslo, Norway, have some notable differences), but, in establishing ourselves in a new place, we often could not be sure we heard people correctly, or understood what they really meant; and we had to develop our own mix of familiar rituals and new patterns of behavior. I mentioned a bit of this reality in my post entitled "I ain't no stranger."
Some parts of The Anthropologists also reminded me of my years in "exile" from the USA—that is, my university years in Ottawa, Ontario, during the war in Viet Nam.
The other comparison that the humane, steady, affectionate voice of Ayşegül Savaş brought to my mind was Jim Jarmusch's film Paterson. There are major differences, of course; for example, Paterson doesn't have an explicit "foreigner" context, although it's hard to forget in today's world that Golshifteh Farahani, who plays Paterson's wife Laura, is from Iran. But there are parallels, too, in the quiet portrayal of long-term intimacy and the little rituals that accompany it, the yearning to create art (Laura is a designer always seeking new media, and wants to become a country music star; husband Paterson, a bus driver, observes his passengers and writes poetry on his breaks). In both the novel and the movie, conflicts do arise, and are mostly resolved, but kindness rules.
Laura: I was dreaming that we were in ancient Persia. And... you were riding on an elephant. A big, silver elephant.
Paterson: A silver elephant?
Laura: Yeah. You looked so beautiful.
Paterson: Do they have elephants in ancient Persia?
Laura:[laughs] I don't think so. Not silver ones, anyway.
Sierra-Cascades Friends make a visit to Kake, Alaska. Reflections from Joel Jackson, tribal council president, and Juulie Downs of Camas Friends Church.
More Canadian content: Blues guitarist Sue Foley, "Come to Me."
During a prayer meeting for peace this week, a Friend read this passage, ascribed to 'Anna', from the second chapter of Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker Faith and Practice:
Prayer is an act of sharing with God, the Spirit, and not an attempt to prompt God to action. It is a promise that I will do my best, even if what I am able to do seems too insignificant to be worthwhile. When I pray for peace, and that the hearts of those in authority may be changed, it is a promise that I shall do such things as write to those in power, share in vigils, and above all lead my own life, as far as possible, in such a manner as to take away the occasion for strife between individuals and between peoples. When I pray for others who are in need, it is a promise to make my own contribution, perhaps by writing, by visiting, by a gift, by telling someone whom I know could help. When I pray for forgiveness, for strength and courage, I try to open my heart, making it possible for me humbly to receive.
I wish I were this mature! For me, prayer absolutely is full of my attempts, pathetic as they may be, to prompt God to action.
A few months ago I wrote about my prayers that God would send angel armies to the skies over Ukraine, fully conscious of my prayer's lack of logic or chances of being fulfilled. It's not that I believed that my tiny voice would push God over the edge, despite history's long evidence that, whatever God is doing, it doesn't apparently include restraining the hands of warmakers. It's more that, in the face of the constant stream of tragedies and agonies (for example, in Gaza) witnessed by the whole world, my relationship with God will suffer if I don't make this plea.
Consider the unnamed representative of God's people laying out their frustration in Psalm 44 (inEugene Peterson's paraphrase, slightly adapted), starting with verse 8:
All day we parade God’s praise— we thank you by name over and over.
But now you’ve walked off and left us, you’ve disgraced us and won’t fight for us.
You made us turn tail and run; those who hate us have cleaned us out.
You delivered us as sheep to the butcher, you scattered us to the four winds.
You sold your people at a discount— you made nothing on the sale.
You made people on the street, people we know, poke fun and call us names.
You made us a joke among the godless, a cheap joke among the rabble.
Every day I’m up against it, my nose rubbed in my shame—
Gossip and ridicule fill the air, people out to get me crowd the street.
All this came down on us, and we’ve done nothing to deserve it.
We never betrayed your Covenant: our hearts were never false, our feet never left your path.
Do we deserve torture in a den of jackals? or lockup in a black hole?
If we had forgotten to pray to our God or made fools of ourselves with store-bought gods,
Wouldn’t you have figured this out?
We can’t hide things from you.
No, you decided to make us martyrs, lambs assigned for sacrifice each day.
Get up, God! Are you going to sleep all day?
Wake up! Don’t you care what happens to us?
Why do you bury your face in the pillow? Why pretend things are just fine with us?
And here we are—flat on our faces in the dirt, held down with a boot on our necks.
Get up and come to our rescue. If you love us so much, Help us!
Look at this comment in the New Interpreter's Study Bible:
Pledging innocence and faithfulness to the covenant, the people accuse, because of you we are being killed all day long (v. 22, cf. Rom. 8:36). There is no justice in God's crushing them. The text insists that there is no congruity whatever between the people's sin and the judgment that has befallen them. It is easy to understand why this text was so frequently on the lips of those facing death in the Shoah (Holocaust) of 1939-45.
And from today's Palestine, Munther Isaac of Bethlehem Bible College does not hold back, either:
We prayed. We prayed for their protection … and God did not answer us, not even in the “house of God” were church buildings able to protect them. Our children die before the silence of the world, and before the silence of God. How difficult is God’s silence!
'Anna' (of Quaker Faith and Practice) is right about the promises that we make, or could make, as we pray: promises to do what we can in the face of violence. But those promises are in the context of our plea to our God for justice. After we pray and lament and grieve before God in utter honesty, and confess our inability to match reality with God's own explicit promises, we face what it actually means for us, our limited and often discouraged selves, to be the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27, context). So, even as I stubbornly ask for angels over Ukraine (counting on God and you to overlook my naïve ways), what I also want and need is for guidance on how we can rise up, in all our diversity of gifts and temperaments and levels of maturity, and be that Body of Christ.
It's in that context that I understand Anna's encouragement (again, drawing on the Britain Yearly Meeting text), to "write to those in power, share in vigils, and above all lead my own life, as far as possible, in such a manner as to take away the occasion for strife between individuals and between peoples." As communities, we can join and support the letter-writers and those who participate in vigils. We might find other strategic ways of influencing events: becoming diplomats, or serving in the government, even seeking elective office! Others may be led to take riskier paths: withholding war taxes, serving in medical teams, becoming war correspondents, or providing pastoral care and accompaniment in the very places of violence, knowing that in the Body, others are praying and paying in support. As Paul says (my emphasis): "[God] has committed to us the message of reconciliation."
Alice Walker wrote, "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Maybe God, the sovereign Creator, has been waiting for us, too....
Coming later this month to Youtube, the film For Our Daughters("stories of abuse, betrayal, and resistance in the evangelical church") is based on the final chapter of Kristin Kobes Du Mez's book Jesus and John Wayne. Kristin gives some context for the film on her substack blog.
Jeremy Morris on the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk, why the invasion registers so minimally among Russians, and (once again) the challenges of measuring popular opinion.
What are the specific challenges Friends face as we seek to embrace gifts of public ministry? Windy Cooler considers the results of Friends General Conference's survey on public ministry.
I'm delighted to see that Simon Barrow, long associated with Ekklesia, has just launched his substack column, Illuminations.
"Mellow Down Easy"—a version of Willie Dixon's classic, made famous by Little Walter. Here are Steve Guyger and his band at the Mojo Music Club in Kleinstaasdorf, Austria. Enjoy!
Quaker Exceptionalism. We touched on this phenomenon several times in Mark Russ's excellent Woodbrooke course on "Quaker theology and whiteness," just concluded. (If you're intrigued by the course title, ask Woodbrooke and Mark whether it might be presented again!)
I'm glad to see some new attention to this exceptionalism and its spiritual hazards. I do have one mild caution: please let's not use this problem as just another way to shame and one-up each other for being insufficiently spiritual or progressive or anti-racist compared to ourselves in our own eyes! Yes, there is arrogance and ignorance and elitism in this exceptionalism, but it's also fueled by genuine idealism (a beautiful quality I see in Quakers everywhere across our divisions), a desire to do better than the religion industry whose oppressive structures and conceits we originally rose up to oppose.
As an old London Yearly Meeting poster once proclaimed, as nearly as I can remember, "Tired of organized religion? Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater." Let's just watch out for that exceptionalist temptation, whatever our corner of the Quaker world—to replace the Baby with our own bathwater, whether that be the subtle rose-scented water of liberal Quakerism or the soggy cliches of imported evangelicalism.
One more word on the course on Quaker theology and whiteness that Mark Russ presented: within a couple of years it should be emerging in book form. I can't wait! In the meantime, I'm looking forward to Mark's The Spirit of Freedom: Quaker-Shaped Christian Theology, coming this autumn.
This past spring, via Zoom, Mark gave a sermon on the good news of sin (!!) at our Camas Friends Church.
Scandinavian Exceptionalism. I'm supposedly a global citizen. I've claimed not to have a bucket list. (I already live on my favorite planet.) However, I admit that inside me there is a vein of Norwegian patriotism, with its mixture of justifiable pride and unjustifiable smugness. It's usually well hidden (at least I hope so), but it wakes up every now and then, at Winter Olympics time and whenever I see a new survey showing Norway's high standard of living, its generous international aid policies, and its unrivaled $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund.
My late cousin Johan Fredrik Heyerdahl and I used to discuss some of the complexities and contradictions of Norwegian identity. My visit to Norway later this year will be my first since his death, and I'll intensely miss his wonderful company. I'm sure I'll have some good conversations with relatives and friends, but in the meantime I've started my preparations by reading Michael Booth's The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia.
Some of this territory was well covered by Robert Ferguson's excellent Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North, which I briefly described in this post: "Shame is what turns societies around." What I like about Michael Booth's book is his undisguised irritation at the exaggerated admiration that the Scandinavian countries sometimes bask in. It's the sort of admiration of these "almost nearly perfect" countries that doesn't take into account national patterns of conformism (see Janteloven), troubling attitudes toward immigrants, and unresolved dilemmas about national wealth and productivity, among many other shadow factors.
Despite the utopian "myth" of his book's title, Booth isn't relentlessly snarky or negative, not at all. He gives credit wherever he thinks it is due, and cheerfully owns up to his prejudices. His discussion of Norway's gigantic "oil fund" is a good example: his interviews and reflections touch on the blessings of all that money for Norway's quality of life and governance, and he acknowledges the amazingly careful stewardship of that money. At the same time, he points out the contradictions of Norway's internal culture of ecological sensitivity vs the source of all that fabulous national wealth (sales of carbon-based fuels), as well as the apparent impact of that wealth on Norwegians' work ethic.
In any case, I'm eager to gather some fresh impressions of my own, in the land of my birth.
Tim Alberta, author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, writes in The Atlantic: "Trump Is Planning for a Landslide Win. (And his campaign is all but praying Joe Biden doesn’t drop out.)" (14-day gift link.)
Biden quitting the race would necessitate a dramatic reset—not just for the Democratic Party, but for Trump’s campaign. Wiles and LaCivita told me that any Democratic replacement would inherit the president’s deficiencies; that whether it’s Vice President Kamala Harris or California Governor Gavin Newsom or anyone else, Trump’s blueprint for victory would remain essentially unchanged. But they know that’s not true. They know their campaign has been engineered in every way—from the voters they target to the viral memes they create—to defeat Biden. And privately, they are all but praying that he remains their opponent.
I was struck by the irony. The two people who had done so much to eliminate the havoc and guesswork that defined Trump’s previous two campaigns for the presidency could now do little but hope that their opponent got his act together.
That’s what’s changed. These ideas aren’t new, but the tone and tenor of rhetoric has shifted perceptably in the past few months, even weeks. Growing numbers of Christians are not even trying to hide their nativism, misogyny, anti-semitism, and authoritarianism.
And where are the moderate voices? Where are the principled conservative leaders, organizations, and institutions? Where are individual conservative Christians digging in their heels, defending our Constitutional government, religious liberty for all, and democratic pluralism?
They are few and far between.
All of this should be cause for alarm, even if you aren’t looking at the poll numbers.
Diana Butler Bass on talking about politics in church, and the intellectual grounding her childhood church gave her to do just that.... (And, fast-forwarding to now: "Who's Reinhold Niebuhr?")
It isn’t that Reinhold Niebuhr had all the answers. He didn’t. I now disagree with much of what he wrote. I draw from a much wider range of theo-political options.
But Niebuhr represented a tradition — part of that long Christian argument that shaped the imagination of an elementary school girl in a Methodist church in Baltimore. From him, and from those others, I learned that it was good to argue about faith and politics in church. Indeed, it was our birthright.
Paul Anderson: John as the universalist gospel and as the "only way to the Father."
Last week Can You Believe? turned twenty years old. My post last week on "Rocket Science" was post number 1,081. Those posts have collected 2,005 comments on the Blogger platform, plus an uncounted number on Facebook and a handful elsewhere.
When I started this weekly weblog, in early June 2004, I was in my last weeks of a year-long academic fellowship at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Center in Birmingham, England. Two experiences in that year helped whet my appetite for a blog-like channel:
First, during my very first two weeks at Woodbrooke, Dan McCracken and Ron Woodward asked me to contribute to a feature on the Barclay Press Web site at the time, the Conversation Cafe. The assignment: two weeks of daily essays from me, followed by similar series of essays from a group of other writers. During those two weeks, I ended every day by writing an essay, which would arrive eight hours earlier in Newberg, Oregon, owing to the time zone difference, and be ready for that day's post. Here's one sample.
When my two weeks were up, I had enjoyed the experience very much, and found it helpful for my own personal reflections, but it didn't dawn on me to find another channel to continue creating that sort of expression.
My theme for my Woodbrooke academic year was "Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies," and I began reading and corresponding to build up resources for this theme. This title was admittedly a bit provocative, since the word "evangelism" was not in frequent use among British Friends, but my Woodbrooke collaborators were good-natured about my choices. My goal was to help Friends begin conversations between the Quaker groups that, broadly speaking, preferred to do outreach by emphasizing the Christian invitation to "repent and believe the Good News," and those who preferred to demonstrate their faith through prophetic action in the world, in the service of peace and nonviolence, simplicity and equality, leadership based on spiritual gifts instead of social status, governance based on community discernment, and care of Creation. Were there ways that the advocates of each emphasis could make creative connections with the advocates of the other priority?
After several months of accumulating resources, I realized that I needed a new way of sharing those resources and drawing more people into the conversations. I turned to the most popular form of Internet-based discussions in those years, namely Internet forums. I set up a forum on a service called Network 54. When it appeared that this platform might not last forever, I exported its contents to a Google group, which can be found here: Evangelism and the Quaker Testimonies.
Toward the end of my Woodbrooke year, my hunger for such exchanges of ideas, and my desire to provoke further consideration of the connections between faith and practice, particularly faith and politics, was not satisfied by the static format of online forums. That's when I discovered the Blogspot platform and decided to give it a chance by posting a paragraph or two. To my immense delight, a Friend who may have been the very first Quaker blogger, Martin Kelley, responded right away with an encouraging comment. (Also see Martin's "The Early Blogging Days.")
I actually think my desire to go public with blog-like essays and invitations to dialogue started even earlier—when I was part of the Quaker Life staff, during the years 1993-2000. I provided a column for just about every issue during my tenure. There's a sample editorial halfway down this blog post. The pace was more leisurely for a monthly publication, as I now remember fondly, and I'm thinking that after twenty years of weekly posts on this blog, maybe it's time to slow things down.
Another reality: blogs don't have the readership they used to. In my peak month, some years ago, I got about 40,000 views. Last month my count was down to 16,349. That is a raw total; it includes people who are drawn by some search that somehow included me in the results, and I'm sure that it took the vast majority of them just a second or two to realize they weren't going to find what they needed on a blog mainly intended for a Christian and mostly Quaker audience.
Thank you for your good company to this point. As for the future, I've decided nothing so far ... except that I will be back next week.
Our friend, Ukrainian pacifist Yurii Sheliazhenko, has been on trial in Kyiv.
Many Palestinian farms, properties, and orchards in the West Bank are under constant physical and legal harassment, including the Tent of Nations near Bethlehem, while the world's attention is (for good reason) focused on the Gaza Strip. (Thanks to Gordon Matthews for the link.)
In my Genius of the Cello post, mentioned above, I described how we used such films in our classes in Russia. Another film we used was Standing in the Shadows of Motown, because so much American English slang comes from musicians. In the first clip below, Jack Ashford of the Funk Brothers demonstrates the "Motown Sound," using the song "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" as his example. ... "You see how that feels? That's part of the Motown sound, right? Now I'm going to add my tambourine to it."
The second clip: Joan Osborne, "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?"
THE Truth of God, being received into the inward parts, is found to be of a living, powerful nature, working mightily there for the cleansing and redeeming of the hearts. Yea, this is certainly witnessed, that as the mind joined to deceit is thereby defiled, so the mind joined to the truth of God is, by its power and virtue, purified.
Now, having felt this, and being filled with the love and good-will of God to the souls of others, how can we but testify it to others, who stand in need of God's truth (and its cleansing property and virtue) as well as we; especially being thereunto moved and drawn by the Spirit of the Lord?
— Isaac Penington, published posthumously in 1680; source. (My italics.)
In our meeting, we're frightfully private.
— Member of an unprogrammed meeting in Britain Yearly Meeting.
Yesterday I had my second cataract surgery this year, and I'm still getting used to the results. To reduce screen time on blog night, the solution is obvious: repackage an old post. So the second half of this post is an item I published back in 2016, near the beginning of our last academic year in Russia.
What reminded me of that post, "Barriers," was a conversation just a week ago with a British Friend. We were talking about whether Friends in her meeting felt freedom to reveal their faith. From her comments I gathered that, whatever the reasons, this kind of sharing rarely took place.
It may have been small comfort, but I replied that this sort of diffidence was not unique to unprogrammed Friends. (For a brief definition of "unprogrammed," see the sidebar here.) I particularly remember our beloved First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, forty years ago, discussing how to grow their rapidly-shrinking congregation. "What we need are young couples," someone said. (I'm sure I've told this story before!) My internal reaction was, "No!" What they needed was more confidence in their identity as God's people. It was a congregation with many mature disciples who had done amazing things with their lives. We found out accidentally that one of the harmless-looking older members had been a worker for racial justice in the South in the late 1940's! We were in great sympathy with the Sunday school teacher who asked those older Friends, "Some of you have been Quakers for 60 years—why can't you tell us more about why you became Friends and what you've learned about God in those years?" One of the answers she got was, "Our generational culture is very private."
In the first generation of the Quaker movement, there was little or no social incentive to be among us; you'd be risking legal danger and possibly mob violence, and you'd certainly earn the disapproval of the religious establishment. Either direct experience of God's power, or the desire to be among people who persuasively testified to such a direct experience, might overcome those dangers and lead you to throw in your lot with those despised Quakers.
What attracts people to us now? I've known Friends who reflect this same power, joy, and convincing conduct, but in my experience, our most attractive feature for many is a social atmosphere of gracious idealism and doctrinal vagueness that draws in seekers who are much like the people already among us. There are variations, of course; some of our churches echo the cliches of the (American) evangelical culture, but however pointed the preaching may be, the ethical consequences of that preaching (discipleship, or if you prefer, the Quaker testimonies) are often weak or absent altogether. If this seems unfair, let me know! (And what drew you?)
One explanation for our reluctance to testify to a powerful faith might be that we simply aren't experiencing the spiritual outpouring that shaped the first generations of Friends. The torch has been passed to others in the Christian movement who are living out a reality that we'd rather read about at a safe distance, for example in quaint ancient Quakerese.
But there's another explanation that may be less pessimistic. We have developed a barrier, an inhibition, that keeps our mouths shut. Maybe, if we dared, we might be free to share words and deeds (according to our gifts and temperaments, and always subject to the discipline of knowing when to speak and when to listen!) that would convey the love of God and the demands of justice.
I'll leave it at that. Here, with some minor edits, is that original "Barriers" post.
"How can I explain something to you if you don't even watch TV?" A meme found on vk.com (original scene from late-era Soviet film Heart of a Dog, which I recommend).
When I was around eight years old, the subject of God came up one day in my grade school classroom. (There weren't the same restrictions on God-talk in public school then that there are now; that's another discussion.) Our teacher said, "Why should we be afraid to talk about God?" I was startled and panicky—in fact I was afraid to talk about God, and couldn't even imagine making my mouth emit the word.
I made a mental note of this reaction, but didn't analyze it at the time. Later, I connected it with the fact that, in my family, any mention of religion was absolutely forbidden, along with any mention of disease or death. Whatever the roots of this barrier, it blocked me from communicating with anyone about a huge part of what it means to be human.
Obviously, something happened between grade school and my decades of working for the church! But I'm glad that I remember that block. These memories came back to me the other day when I was talking with some colleagues about expanding our students' access to informal English-speaking opportunities. "Some of my students do a great job with grammar and vocabulary," said one colleague. "But when it comes to speaking in a group, they just can't open their mouths. There's that old psychological barrier."
These young people aren't exactly facing the same barrier in speaking English as I encountered in talking about God. (Or, rather, not talking about God.) There's no actual danger in overcoming the language barrier, but there are several hazards in crossing into God-talk territory. For me as a child, there was a safety issue within the family. But, on another level entirely, do we want it to become too easy to talk about God? Is there a place for some reluctance to become glib about the Ultimate?
We Quakers have a number of indirect ways of referring to divine realities—terms such as the Inward Light and the Seed, used generations ago to avoid an unseemly familiarity with holy realities, much as biblical Hebrew and its readers made substitutions for the Name. In my early years as a Friend, I remember hearing vocal ministry that referred to "the Author and Finisher of our faith" rather than naming Jesus explicitly. Nowadays Quaker terms such as Inward Light can mistakenly be used in the service of weakening our ties with Christianity, but that old impulse to curb our verbosity when referring to God still seems valid to me.
Even so, "faith comes from hearing the message," so there is something to be said for not letting psychological barriers get in the way of that communication. Part of our evangelistic task might be to confront the false barrier of cultural piety. Are we marked by a gooey sentimentality, a cloud of goofy cliches, or any other signals that you must, to gain entrance, turn off your critical faculties?
In John Updike's novel Rabbit Is Rich, there is a fascinating scene where the Episcopal priest, Archie Campbell, attends a family meeting to discuss Nelson's and Pru's intended marriage. The minister mildly defends "our brand of magic" while everyone else is trying to negotiate how much or little churchiness is necessary to accomplish the desired outcome—a respectable wedding. Rabbit's own defense of faith is not exactly zero ("Hell, what I think about religion is ... is without a little of it, you'll sink") but the church-wedding discussion is mostly about appearances, not reality.
As long as it seems that the religion industry is just selling one or another form of respectability, people will find their "magic" elsewhere. And rightly so. Maybe it's not a psychological barrier that blocks the audience from yielding—maybe it's a healthy boundary!
What exactly is the alternative that evangelists with integrity are offering? I think that there is no formula, no doctrine, no scare tactic, no magic that equals meeting someone who looks at you with God's love in their eyes, who offers access to a community that is shaped by trust in God. Some people in that community will know how to communicate this invitation quietly, with an assurance that doesn't depend on using loaded words. Others will know how to communicate with contagious enthusiasm, with generous love that covers a multitude of incautious cliches. There are infinite variations on this spectrum, and somewhere in God's economy, they probably all meet some blocked person's condition.
Along my own route, several people and incidents helped me overcome the barrier. Studying Asian civilizations in high school introduced me to whole cultures not shaped by the assumptions of Western materialism. The anti-war movement brought me physically into churches for the first time in my life. (It wasn't as weird in a church as I thought it would be. Specifically, it was the Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Evanston, Illinois.) My high-school fascination with writers such as Dostoevsky and Alan Paton played their part. But I remember a much earlier crack in the barrier: a tract I happened to pick up off the floor of our apartment building's lobby, not so long after the incident with the teacher. This tract described someone's conversion. In the process of getting to know God, this writer would walk way outside of their normal routes to pass a church that had Christ's name on it. That Name had such an attractive power for the writer. Hmmm, that's interesting, I thought. Even though I didn't understand or respond to that tract's invitation at the time, I somehow understood even then what the writer was feeling.
If I have any ability at all to represent the Gospel effectively, I believe that in part it's because I still vividly remember being a non-believer who couldn't even say the word "God." But I am not permitted to define my path or emphasis as the only one. I'm glad to share the responsibility of communicating God's welcome with many others, some of whom have very different approaches to removing barriers.
(Originally published on September 7, 2016. To date there's one comment, from the late Vail Palmer, referring to Adria Gulizia's then-new blog: "That blog about suffering and God's suffering with us is so profound. What else would a God who truly loves us be up to?")
Sam Adams (Slate) asks why A24 is burying its January 6 documentary.
The Fines have called their film nonpartisan, and in a less toxic political climate, its premise, that an election should not be disrupted by mobs in tactical gear assaulting law enforcement officers, ought to be one both sides could endorse without pause or equivocation. But....
“My power is great, greater than you believe, and I have gold and silver in abundance.” That was [Robert Bly's] Iron John’s promise to his acolyte. It is also Trump’s promise to MAGA and the manosphere. Thus do hordes of Redditers, Snapchatters, Xers, Instagrammers and sundry other amo-packing denizens of incel message boards feel the pain of the billionaire who now stands trial for hiding hush money payments to a porn star. And here, too, Trump will rely on truths Bly articulated decades ago — that much like infants, his followers will “refuse to remember ugly facts”, that they will “look away from disorganisation, abuse, abandonment."
The dream is almost always the same. I'm out in the open country. There's a roar overhead, and I see a missile crossing the sky, and I instantly know it's carrying a nuclear warhead. It's on its way to a target somewhere behind me. I take off and run. There's a blinding flash and the dream ends.
Well, occasionally I manage to dive into a depression, feel the heat and shock pass by, shake off the dust, and realize that I've apparently survived. Then the dream ends.
I've continued to have these dreams since childhood. They're stored in my brain alongside memories of the Cuban missile crisis, air raid shelter signs, the air raid siren tests every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., and classroom instructions on what to do during a nuclear attack.
On March 26, 1970, our high school classes were canceled owing to a snowstorm, but I was already at school. One class had scheduled a viewing of the British pseudo-documentary The War Game, portraying a fictional nuclear attack on the UK. The teacher decided to offer a viewing to anyone interested. Not really wanting to trudge two and a half miles back home in the snow, I joined the audience, and got many more searing images for my apocalyptic dreams.
We are not yet really free from the threat of nuclear warfare, but the shadow of another threat has become at least equally prominent in our times: global ecological catastrophe. The first threat may seem more vivid and immediate; some would argue that the second may be more inevitable in the long run. Has this second threat—climate change's worst scenarios—become our younger generations' version of nuclear dread?
Although both threats originate in a sort of shortsighted human arrogance, there are important differences between them. The decision to use nuclear weapons is in the hands of specific human beings who are, or should be, perfectly capable of choosing not to use them. (Of course I'm glossing over the possibilities of miscalculations, insanity, and equipment failures.) Nuclear war is not inevitable, whereas ecological degradation is already well underway. Human interventions to avoid catastrophe are possible at several points on the chart above ("Global warming and climate change"), and many scientists and activists have specified what those interventions should look like, but the track record of our species in acting at the required scale is not promising.
Sometimes I'm tempted to succumb to a doom mentality. For all we know, extinction might be inevitable no matter what we do. Countries and empires have come and gone, civilizations have perished, species have vanished. The planet itself will survive our misdeeds—as Richard Feynman reminded us in his famous appendix to the Rogers Commission investigation into the Challenger explosion, "... nature cannot be fooled." However, at some point even planets will vanish into their dying suns. Our loving Creator will archive us one way or another (I vote for "heaven"!) but, short of that, nothing about our long-term future is guaranteed.
There is, however, some evidence that doom and gloom messaging can spur climate action, as long as it falls on the right ears at the right time. For example, research has found that climate distress, climate anger and climate anxiety are all associated with increased climate action under some circumstances.
I'd like to recommend a better way. Cherice Bock, an environmental scientist and theologian, and Quaker minister, has an alternative vision—one that has two major advantages over the doom mentality. She describes this vision in her short, carefully organized and well-written book, A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends.
The advantages of her approach:
First, her vision of an Eco-Reformation has great persuasive power. She anchors her vision in powerful biblical insights and the raw honesty of acknowledging the toxic effects of individualism, racism, and colonialism, even in our own Quaker histories. She writes beautifully about the healing effect of repentance and of reweaving ourselves into the ecology around us and within us through what she intriguingly calls "watershed discipleship." If a new, wider Reformation among people of faith adds to our united ability to reach the scales needed for crucial interventions, Cherice has made a valuable contribution toward that end.
Second, no matter how far we succeed in sharing this vision, no matter what the eventual outcome of our efforts to mitigate climate change might be, this is how we should live along the way. Cherice is blunt when she needs to be, but she personally models the power of honesty and a non-shaming repentance in describing, for example, the history of her own family on lands once inhabited by Indigenous nations. And her watershed awareness carries with it a sense of joy and embodiment.
Cherice subtitled her book, Meditations on the Future of Friends. Although I'm convinced that her theological and ecological insights have wide application beyond Quakers, the history and current state of Friends in the USA give an important context to her book—and give me a sense of positive urgency. As she says, "I was inspired by earlier generations of Friends; I want to be part of my own generation's faithfulness."
Nancy Thomas looks at the patriarchs, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes ... and old age. "The tree or the insect."
This link is hard to post. Ashley Wilcox tells us that ALS is likely to keep her from reaching old age.
More ripples, via Meduza, from the death and burial of Aleksei Navalny. Shura Burtin cautions us against unrealistic faith in the "beautiful Russia of the future." On the other hand, here is a Russian university instructor who is tired of being afraid.
The documentary film Butterfly in the Sky celebrates the legacy of the long-running television show Reading Rainbow, which I remember watching with our kids. Here's the trailer and context. (Thanks to Lithub.com for the link.)
Michelle Birkballe (Denmark) covers Solomon Burke's classic "Cry to Me." (Link to Burke's original.)
"When speaking with non-Quakers, I find it more exact to say I’m a Quaker. Among other Quakers I prefer Friend to reinforce to each other our relationship with Jesus and each other."
—Survey respondent, explaining the occasions or contexts which determine whether they choose the term Quaker or Friend.
Last week I noted the powerful content of both terms among the early Quakers. The "scorn" they met with in the larger society when labeled Quakers, especially among the religious polemicists who opposed them, was an important differentiator. It was almost guaranteed to bring them the public attention they urgently wanted so that they could proclaim and demonstrate their revolutionary message.
As I said last week, the more I read, the more I got the impression those early Friends did not often use the term Friends as a public label. But it wasn't really a private label, either. Instead, it was used much more literally as an affectionate term of address within the community.
This aspect of the term may not have entirely disappeared. When I'm writing to a meeting or church or committee, I find that I almost always write "Dear Friends." I don't think I've ever written "Dear Quakers" in that context.
This week I'd like to sample some of the other responses to the survey. But before I do that, I'd like to say something about the state of the world we're in today, in comparison to which these questions about what we call ourselves may seem narrowly sectarian and scandalously trivial. You know as well as I that innocent civilians are being killed and maimed, and their homes are being destroyed, this very day, and you know where. You hear the outrageously bland and lying explanations from the leaders that command these crimes. Your tax money may have paid for some of the munitions.
Whatever we call ourselves, what might be our response? Should we be crowding the prisons with our civil disobedience, should we accompany with our own bodies those who are being bombed, should we stop paying taxes? All of these have parallels among early Quakers. At the very very least, should we not be telling the Judge Gervases of our time to "tremble at the word of God"?
Let's remember whom we might be addressing. The state of Israel claims to be the haven and guardian of the legacy left by the biblical People of God. Part of that legacy is a rich ethical heritage, summed up by the promise to Abraham that his descendents will bless all the peoples of the world.
The state of Russia claims to be the last line of defense for Christian civilization. Before it became a compliant government chaplaincy, the ancient Russian Orthodox Church differentiated itself from western Christianity by its so-called capacity for mercy.
In both cases, the leaders ought to be made to tremble, and many of their people will have to answer for their meek conformity. (Do some of us also fit this description?)
So, we ourselves ought to be quaking, and warning others to quake at the word of God—while seeking with passion and creativity to make actual contact with those we want to reach instead of just self-indulgently preaching to the wind.
Now, what about that word that early Quakers loaded with so much affection: Friend? It seems to me that the more people we can evangelize and bring into loving communities of Friends, the fewer will remain to conduct war. I'm not joking: each new person who experiences the power of God to form communities that do not depend on coercion, wealth, or social distinction, but on God's grace, is one person closer to tipping the balance. Our affection for each other is an internal and an external witness: there is another way to live.
We Quakers are of course far from being the only Christians who have a heritage of nonviolence and mutual love. It's not a competition—as in the days of the New Call to Peacemaking, let's encourage and support each other. Let's keep building ties to other faith communities who are also refusing to support governments and cultures dependent on violence. The affection represented by the word "friend" does not depend on whether we capitalize it.
As I showed last week, almost three-quarters of the survey respondents said they use both terms, Friend and Quaker. Here's how some responded to the follow-up question about what occasions or contexts their choice depends upon. Most of these responses (as well as the ones I didn't quote) seem to be in broad agreement.
I prefer “Friend” if it will be understood by everyone being spoken to. “Quaker” if that is clearer because some people might not recognize “Friend” as an address.
I use them relatively interchangeably. Personally, I would probably lean towards "Quaker" because I think it's more distinctive. In Evangelical Friends contexts (where I currently am most of the time) I will mix in "Friend" more since that a part of the official idiom, but I am still comfortable using "Quaker."
I use Friends in the description of my church and when pressed to ask what that means I say we are a Quaker church, because there is some knowledge of what that means but most people I have encountered are not aware of what "Friends" means as a denomination or movement.
Who I’m speaking to—Quaker has more ‘brand recognition’ for people who may not know much about us; Friend is friendlier to people I know are fFriends! (unless it’s being used as a form of admonishment!). (Notice the double fF—I've seen others use a similar device.)
Both are interchangeable for me, but I'm more likely to use 'Friend' with people that are more Christ-centered theologically and 'Quaker' with Liberals.
On the blog post itself, Kevin Camp commented as follows:
The term "Friend" seems convivial and affectionate to me. I've applied it to others with whom I regularly worship and have fond feelings. Most people I have encountered outside of the Society of Friends know us as "Quakers" first and foremost.
I don't prefer one over the other. Sometimes I use them interchangably.
I asked whether respondents used church or meeting in referring to their current congregation. Almost 62% said meeting and 23.5% said both; it depends. (Note: I'm dividing up 34 respondents in total for this question, so I can't claim scientific precision among all English-speaking Friends!) About 12% said church. Some of the reasons for their choices seem parallel to the responses for the Quaker/Friend choices. Examples of the responses:
Church: I'd like to use "meeting" more instead of "church," but I think this could just be weird and counterproductive to most of my fellow congregants.
Church: I prefer "church" because it marks us as a Christian body and is less sectarian.
Meeting: The word "meeting covers so many things, I do not know where to start: the act of meeting God; the act of meeting Friends; the collection of people who make up a meeting; the session in which worship takes place; the session in which business is conducted; etc. I suppose the words "congregation" or "assembly" could be used in some of these ways, but they come to mind less often.
This same Friend made another interesting observation in the "here's a place to comment..." section of the survey:
The individuals in my conservative meeting who at least part of the time use the word "church" are people whose families have been Friends for hundreds of years and tend to see the meeting as another religious group such as the Methodists or Baptists. Those who have made a break with other denominations are more consistent in saying "meeting".
Meeting: Church carries too much negative baggage for many people (in UK).
It depends: I generally say "my Quaker Meeting" when speaking about something where the phrase "my church" would be appropriate. I learned not to say just "my meeting" when I found out that a co-worker thought I was a very open alcoholic talking about my AA meeting!
It depends: I attend both Friends churches and Quaker meetings. But for me personally the word 'Church' refers to the congregation and not the church building.
There were several other interesting mini-essays that I plan to quote next week, but my main focus in part three will be responses from people who are not now Friends.
If you would like a spreadsheet with all the questions and responses (slightly anonymized where needed), write to me at johan@canyoubelieve.me.
Last week I linked to an article on the New Apostolic Reformation. Martin Kelley commented with another link to illustrate that "some of the New Apostolic folks have this bizzarro obsession with William Penn and use him to justify their Christian nationalism." Here's the link he provided: www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/08/abby-abildness-lobbyist/.
This brought back memories of the Bicentennial Conference on Religious Liberty, held in April 1976 at Arch Street Meetinghouse in Philadelphia. I had come down from Ottawa to serve on the Friendly Presence nonviolent security team for the conference. One of the security factors we were briefed on was the presence of the famous fundamentalist leader Rev. Carl McIntire and his supporters, who planned to (and did) picket this conference. Part of their message was that modern Quakers had betrayed the spiritual legacy of William Penn.
Alireza Doostdar on witnessing genocide—and specifically the self-giving of journalists.
It is difficult to square this hopeless situation with the radical hope required to continue the deadly work of journalism in an unfolding genocide. There is an excess, a surplus, in the hopefulness and urgency of Dahdouh and his colleagues’ daily reporting that cannot be explained through our ordinary secular sensibilities. The only way to account for this surplus, I think, is through faith: the journalists’ conviction that even if their witnessing does not stop the war, even if it does not end the genocide, even if it does not liberate Palestine, it is worth doing—on pain of death—as an act of shahāda, truthful witnessing before God and humanity.
On the way to movie screens, a "less mean" Mean Girls—and critics have mixed reactions. (There's a potential plot spoiler in this BBC article.) Back in 2007, as I reported here, I showed the first Mean Girls film to my American studies class in Elektrostal, Russia, observing that the campus depicted in the film was based on my own high school. After we viewed the film, we listed all the features of high school life that they saw in the film, and then in a second column, features of their own high school experiences. It was interesting that there were more similarities than differences.
