Redeeming Germany? (partly a repost)

(c) University of Bern (2015); source.

Germany's political parties are busy assembling possible coalitions to take over the government, but one thing is certain: Chancellor Angela Merkel's time as a central figure of European politics is coming to an end.

In Germany, as in most of Western Europe, Christian politicians do not wear their faith on their sleeve. Merkel is not exactly an exception, but she is more willing than most of them to express a connection between faith and public practice.

And in one particular moment of time -- the refugee crisis of 2015 -- she did not take the despicable path too often pursued by publicly Christian politicians, linking faith with nationalism and cultural "purity." She went a very different direction, one with great political risks: she linked Christian faith with hospitality to refugees, regardless of their religion.

Since 2015, when I originally wrote the post that follows, we USA citizens have had our own literal come-to-Jesus experience with public Christianity. The results have not been pretty.

Back to 2015 ...

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Redeeming Germany?

One reason I have such a visceral dislike of racism and antisemitism is that I grew up with that poison. My German mother believed that she was born into the master race, and that others' inferiority was obvious.

(Her special brand of racism had an unusual asterisk: having been born and raised in Japan, she freely admitted that the Japanese were, if anything, perhaps slightly superior to Germans.)

When my mother left Germany to live and study in Chicago, she did not leave behind this master-race mentality. I can tell you first-hand what it was like to grow up in this family micro-culture, in which any neighbor who didn't match her Teutonic ideal was dismissed. In this way I experienced some attenuated version of the mentality that seduced a whole modern nation into total war and premeditated mass murder on an industrial scale.

Maybe this explains why I'm so moved by German chancellor Angela Merkel's persistent and intelligent defense of her refugee policy, even as some pundits point out the political risks involved. Today the BBC quoted her telling an interviewer, "I'm proud that we are receiving refugees in a friendly and open manner. I don't want to compete to be the country which does best at scaring off refugees." I can't help wondering what my mother would say to that.

What's even more remarkable to me, especially in view of the too-frequent American correlation of conservative Christianity with anti-immigrant views, is (as the BBC article points out) her associating generous refugee policies with Christian faith. In defending her policies, for example, "she claims she's simply exemplifying the Christian values of the CDU" -- referring to the political party she leads, the Christian Democratic Union.

Although her party has no religious restrictions on membership, its intellectual DNA has strong connections with both Catholic and Protestant social ethics, some of whose proponents were in the anti-Nazi resistance or in prison during Hitler's reign. Merkel herself grew up in a Christian family in a politically hostile context, communist-run and USSR-dominated East Germany, where her father was a pastor.

Almost all prominent politicians in Europe are far more reticent to emphasize faith in their public behavior than their American counterparts, and Merkel is usually no different. But refugee and immigration controversies seem to have struck a nerve with her. I found her comments at her European Parliament caucus, as reported by Politico, fascinating and inspiring ... and even redemptive. Quoting the article,

In the party meeting, Merkel was especially tough on European countries that have portrayed the acceptance of refugees as a threat to religion. "When someone says: 'This is not my Europe, I won't accept Muslims...' Then I have to say, this is not negotiable."

European leaders, she said, would lose their credibility if they distinguished between Muslim and Christian refugees. "Who are we to defend Christians around the world if we say we won't accept a Muslim or a mosque in our country. That won't do."

Given my own childhood memories, maybe you can understand the healing effect of hearing such sentiments in a German accent.

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Another instance of Merkel's linkage of immigration and faith happened about a month ago [that is, in September 2015] in Switzerland, where she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern. Her comments on the refugee crisis were widely reported in the English-language press (example). According to McClatchy's Matthew Schofield, "During a news conference Thursday in Bern, Switzerland, Merkel said it was both an honour and a moral obligation for Germany to take in 'die Fluechtlinge,' the refugees."

However, most English-language reporters seem to have ignored her comments on Muslim immigration and Europe's Christian heritage. I found several references in Russian-language news sites. Drawing in part on a Polish source, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic diocese of Novosibirsk headed an article on Merkel's news conference in Bern by quoting her: "You don't want the Islamization of Europe? Go to church!"

She went on to explain, "I would like to see more people who dare to say 'I am a Christian,' who are brave enough to enter into dialogue," noting that she also supports the guarantee of religious liberty in Germany.

[The University's own coverage of the event quoted Merkel in the question-and-answer period following her acceptance speech:

With regard to the question as to how Europe can be protected against Islamisation, Merkel emphasised: “Fear is not a good adviser. It is better that we should have the courage to once again deal more strongly with our own Christian roots.”]

I find it refreshing (in the American context as well) to hear Christians challenged to go deeper into their own faith, and prepare for honest dialogue, rather than be corrupted by fear, identity politics, and searches for enemies. I think that is a reasonable interpretation of Merkel's words; I hope, but can't be sure, that this was the motivation for publishing her words here in Russia, where Islamophobia is also a sad reality.

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Merkel, "Faith in God makes many political decisions easier."

Fast-forwarding to the present (somewhat reluctantly) ...

Heather Cox Richardson, "If this is not a hair-on-fire, screaming emergency, what is?" Robert Kagan's diagnosis and warning.

Nick Turse on our forever wars and the memorial-worthy names we'll never know. (Hint: they're not Americans.)

Christians and dementia: At the University of the West of Scotland, PhD student Tamara Horsburgh is researching "the impact of holding the Christian theologies of hope and suffering, when one is first diagnosed with dementia." She would like to conduct interviews with people "who have been newly diagnosed with dementia (the past 6 months or so), hold their faith closely, and would feel empowered by the opportunity to discuss how they feel about their diagnosis and their faith." Contact Tamara at Maragal16@outlook.com for more details ... and please pass along this invitation.

John Shelby Spong was not my favorite theologian, but I've been interested to read the responses of Quakers and others to his recent death. Here's an appreciation of sorts from getreligion.com: Death of a post-theist shepherd.

Becky Ankeny: Jesus our mother.

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Diunna Greenleaf and Kid Andersen at the Greaseland Studios:

Facing criticism

I'm part of a committee that is on the side of the angels (of course), but has just come in for some sustained criticism. As with all criticism that is aimed at me, I was struck at first by how unfair it was.

Then I stopped and remembered my three interrelated rules of facing criticism. Since we live in a time when vicious criticism too often dominates public discourse, and leaders reserve the right to give as good as they get, I thought it might be a good idea to review these rules here, hoping that you will praise me to the skies feel free to criticize them and add some rules and experiences of your own.

First, harvest any possible useful information you might get from the criticism. This isn't as easy as it sounds, especially if the criticism, however fair, is delivered with unnecessary venom. I have to be willing to acknowledge my emotions but not let those emotions keep me from learning what I need to learn. The criticism may be right or wrong -- or a mixture -- but there is always something I can learn from it.

I once made a very controversial personnel decision toward the end of my time at Friends United Meeting. The incident that led to that decision, and my response to the incident, took place shortly before a meeting of FUM's board, at which my decision was roundly denounced by several weighty members. My position was all the more difficult because I was bound to keep some details private. I sat there (probably with my face turning visibly red), wondering how to persuade a roomful of upset people that I was right, before I realized that it was far more important to learn all I could from the situation. How had people found out about the decision, what could I have done better at each stage, what was I learning about the political realities I faced, and what did the whole thing look like to those who were not closely involved?

In any such situation, as I listen to the criticism, it's important to ask myself: should I be checking with my critics to make sure that I understood them correctly, and do they see me taking that good-faith step to learn rather than contradict?

If I correctly prioritize learning over self-defense, that doesn't mean that I cannot give additional information or correct critics' actual errors of fact. But that needs to be done with a servant's heart, not to protect my wounded ego.

Second, throw the criticism into the dustbin. I've kept faith with the critics, I've gained information, I've corrected actual errors. The criticism then has no more claim on my attention. It's history. Sometimes this is also easier said than done, and there is no shame in confessing my lingering pain privately with a trusted counselor, but I always found it good to begin by declaring my intention to banish the criticism, and my feelings about the critic, into eternal oblivion.

One of my favorite Angela Merkel stories came from a visit she made to the Kremlin back in November 2012. Discussing reductions in Russians' freedom of speech, the German chancellor advised Vladimir Putin not to view criticism as destructive: "If I were sulky every time I'm criticized, I wouldn't last three days as chancellor." I confess that it took me a while -- and a string of criticisms, some well-deserved -- to learn this lesson.

Third: if I am in leadership, facing criticism is part of my role, and I need to acknowledge this reality. In fact, if I am dedicated to my servant role, my willingness to face criticism squarely and ethically will be a blessing to the people I serve. In that controversy over my personnel decision, our good order as a Quaker organization required me to be accountable for my decisions. In any organization that values justice and transparency, there simply must be space to criticize leadership and its decisions, and the leaders' personal feelings cannot be allowed to reduce that space.

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Did I choose that example of my FUM controversy to show me at my best? Maybe. I didn't choose to recount the time I lost my temper on the floor of Iowa Yearly Meeting (FUM).

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Mike Farley acknowledges that these are strange times.

This level of uncertainty is a new feeling for Christel Jorgenson.

John Vidal: Is our destruction of nature contributing to the current pandemic?

Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets tell us that freedom does not work.

Stay the **** home: a virtual bar for lonely Russians in self-imposed isolation.

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Harold and Terri Allen with their version of "Needed Time."

Quaker experiments

Meetinghouse of Friends Meeting at Cambridge (MA, USA). Source.

In the fall of 1977, not long after I arrived as a new staff member at Beacon Hill Friends House, Elmer Brown came over to the house to lead an evening Bible study for anyone interested. The book we read together was 1 Corinthians, which, Elmer proposed, included the biblical model (particularly verses 26-33) used by Quaker meetings for worship right from the start.

(Side note: I don't remember us spending any time that evening on 14:34-35, about women not speaking, but I later learned that Elmer knew and liked Margaret Fell's Women's Speaking Justified.)

One of the things that intrigued me about Elmer Brown was his role among Friends. He was the executive secretary of Friends Meeting at Cambridge, a large meeting (I think the membership then was over 500 -- very large by Quaker standards) with several local Quaker meetings and worship groups under its care, scattered around the Boston region. At that time, Beacon Hill Friends Meeting, which met -- and still meets -- weekly at Beacon Hill Friends House, was one of those subsidiary meetings.

As executive secretary, Elmer had a job description that included management of facilities and programming at the Friends Center at 5 Longfellow Park in Cambridge. What became clear to me that evening, and later from attending meetings for worship at the meetinghouse there, was that he filled many roles -- including counseling, teaching, encouraging, and visibility in the wider community -- that I associate with Friends pastors. Here was a Friends meeting whose meetings for worship had no programming and no sermons, but that didn't prevent the congregation from having a pastor in all but title. That particular combination -- a meeting that was part of the "nonpastoral" side of the Quaker world but that functionally had a pastor -- was something new to me.

It was an idea that might have come more naturally to that particular meeting because it was historically the merger of two older meetings, Boston Friends Meeting in Roxbury, a pastoral meeting where Elton Trueblood had once been pastor, and the unprogrammed Friends meeting that had gathered in a room at Andover Hall in Cambridge.

A few other unprogrammed meetings have also had similar staff roles, but I don't think the word "pastor" was ever used. (Tell me if you know of exceptions!) In the years I've traveled among Quakers of all flavors, I've seen many unprogrammed meetings that handle pastoral care well, but I've also seen many who seem to have little capacity for pastoral care -- or little capacity to focus on the meeting's accessibility to visitors and the wider community. I'm sure that just about every Friends meeting in existence has people who are gifted for these pastoral roles but lack the vision or language to empower and release those people.

At the same time, I've also run into pastoral meetings where the programming threatens to crowd out people's attentiveness to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Maybe they once had a significant period of unprogrammed worship, but over the years it shrank to a symbolic few minutes or disappeared altogether. Even those meetings that call themselves semi-programmed have sometimes prioritized the programming at the cost of time devoted to waiting for the Spirit. How might they restore the trust in the Spirit's ability to lead, and the freedom for all present to respond? That trust and freedom are the rightful legacy of every Friend.

Can "pastoral" meetings do without pastors? I know of at least a couple of Friends churches that for various reasons found themselves without pastors, and (at least for a while) found that voluntary leadership rose up to fill many of the needs they used to associate with pastors.

Do you know of Friends meetings and churches that have -- now or in recent times -- succeeded in decoupling the issue of unprogrammed vs programmed (or hybrid) meetings for worship from the question of whether or not to have a pastor? It seems to me that the established correlation of "pastoral = programmed, nonpastoral = unprogrammed" needs to be challenged, and I'd be grateful to know where Friends are experimenting with new configurations.

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(There's a bit of background on "programmed" and "unprogrammed" in this post: Gathering to meet with God.)

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Such terms as "pastor" and "executive secretary" can be more or less helpful in conveying the roles that a meeting might like to include in providing support to release a Friend for pastoral care, community representation and access, and other roles. (What other roles?) Are there other terms that Friends have found more helpful?

Some other questions I have about Friends' experiments:

• What creative approaches have Friends adopted for meeting places, especially churches and meetings who either can't afford to build/buy/keep meetinghouses, or deliberately choose not to have them? Who is experimenting with house churches, and if you are doing that, how do you make newcomers feel at ease coming into what looks like a private home? Second Street Community Church in Newberg, Oregon, USA, rents space in a cultural center for worship, but also maintains an office in the center of town. Has anyone else tried that combination?
• As you consider questions of meeting space, signage, advertising, Web presence, how are you taking into account the social and spiritual filters you do or don't intend to convey to attenders and newcomers? Are there class signals, for example? Do people of sexual orientations other than the local majority know they are actually welcome? Do you  consciously or subconsciously want to filter out people who are enthusiastic about their faith in favor of skeptics and seekers? (Or do you practice the opposite sin -- avoiding people who ask too many questions?)
  
  I remember George Selleck of Friends Meeting at Cambridge talking about one woman he met who divided her time between Friends and a Franciscan shrine, and who saw miracles happen around her. He said that she reminded him of George Fox, but added with regret that most Friends meetings would not know what to do with someone with her level of energy.
  
  (Issues of location and accessibility, both physical and spiritual, are very real for me right now. Moscow Friends Meeting recently lost its meeting place abruptly when its host organization had to move to a new location where that organization was not allowed to host anyone else. Friends have been meeting irregularly as guests of another church, but a more permanent solution remains to be found.)
• Finally, what local partnerships are happening, or are possible to start, among meetings and churches that are dramatically different in their approaches to worship and leadership? How can (for example) evangelical and liberal Friends in a city support each other while remaining true to their respective missions? Friends in Portland, Oregon, have some experience with such experiments; where else are they happening? If Friends from your tradition have a church or meeting in a city, and Friends from another tradition come and try to plant something new, do you assert turf ownership, or do you collaborate to extend Friends' reach?

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You just missed the application deadline for one of the world's most interesting management opportunities, head of the planet's largest sovereign investment fund.

Heather Cox Richardson on disinformation and the "socialism" case study.

Kris Camealy on things that hide in plain sight ... obscured by our presuppositions.

A Moscow court revokes the license of the Moscow Theological Seminary. Paul Steeves' translation from InVictory.org. Slavic Center for Law and Justice article (Russian), including comments from the seminary's lawyer.

A quick guide and chronology for Russia's consideration of constitutional amendments. And some  of the Kremlin's possible strategies and talking points to promote the amendments.

Meanwhile, in the land of the free, George Packer considers how to destroy a government.

In his fourth year in power, Trump has largely succeeded in making the executive branch work on his personal behalf. He hasn’t done it by figuring out how to operate the bureaucratic levers of power, or by installing leaders with a vision of policy that he shares, or by channeling a popular groundswell into government action. He’s done it by punishing perceived enemies, co‑opting craven allies, and driving out career officials of competence and integrity. The result is a thin layer of political loyalists on top of a cowed bureaucracy.

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B.B. King in a London recording studio in 1972, collaborating with musicians and talking about his musical mentors and influencers. A total joy to discover.

Simon and Francis

Source: The Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love

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For many years I've been reading this booklet by (Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy annually just before Easter, but this year I've been especially struck by Simon's station.

I think the reason is Pope Francis. In the early days of his service as pope, he has been helping me carry my own little cross. I need this help and I hope he will keep it up.

The specific help I need is my ongoing struggle with cynicism. I've documented this struggle here on my blog several times. In my head, I know that cynicism is spiritual poison; and in my heart, I also know that I was born an optimist; that my natural inclination is to expect something better.

I also understand that for optimism to have integrity, it must be maintained in the face of all evidence to the contrary. My sunny disposition can't come at the cost of ignoring human suffering. It can't be based on happy accidents such as not being in Hiroshima or Cambodia or Anne Frank's annex at the wrong time.

Just before I became a Christian, I was losing that struggle. But since that day in 1974, my allies in the search for balance have been my brothers and sisters in the Christian movement. When I was down, they lifted me up--sometimes in very practical ways, such as the time I got financial help from Ottawa Friends and my colleagues at the Anglican Book Society at a truly low point. When I've been up, I've done my best to return the favor. I can't remember a single instance where I've been a hero, but I hope I've managed to be a Simon-like helper more than once. In any case, I've certainly not yet achieved a complete victory over cynicism.

Not being a Roman Catholic, I don't see Pope Francis as a formal authority over me, but in the body of Christ, I do recognize that he is a brother, and in addition, a leader. When he confesses that he yearns for "a poor church for the poor," I experience his words as a direct affirmation of my ideals, to which I cling despite evidence that much of the church industry is self-absorbed and very far from this kind of downward mobility. My own Moscow Friends Meeting seems to be destined, at least in the short term, to live in uncertainty about its own premises and its reduced attendance, but has a new vision for service--this at least is a good direction!

I like another thing that Francis said. According to the National Catholic Reporter,

Standing behind a lectern from a raised red carpet platform and looking out from St. Peter's Basilica for the homily during the [inaugural] Mass, Francis acknowledged he is the 265th successor of Peter, which he said "involves a certain power" given by Christ to Peter.

"But what sort of power was it?" the new pope asked, looking up from his prepared remarks at the crowd in front of him.

"Let us never forget that authentic power is service," Francis continued after a pause. "The pope, too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service, which has its radiant culmination on the cross."

The pope, Francis continued, "must be inspired by the lowly, concrete and faithful service which marked St. Joseph."

"Like him, he must open his arms to protect all of God's people and embrace with tender affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important," he said. "Only those who serve with love are able to protect."

If he persists in this approach to leadership, he will surely have a huge ministry to all who want to orient (or re-orient) the church for service. And as I said in my Facebook response to Margaret Benefiel's blog post on Francis and leadership, he may also have a key ministry to other world leaders:

It's a mysterious and (hopefully) fertile anomaly that the titular head of a Christian confession automatically becomes a world leader, entitled to visibility and influence in an otherwise severely secular and often ruthlessly pragmatic circle. By design, Providence, or both, John Paul II became a hugely important figure on the global stage in his own time. He created and exploited disequilibrium in Eastern Europe on a mass scale. What I hope for Francis is that he will create and exploit disequilibrium in a more specific realm: the "world leaders" themselves, in how they envision leadership, the image of leader, the "God-bearing" quality inherent in spiritually grounded leadership. By helping them, consciously or unconsciously, "confront the gap between their espoused values and lived values," he might help accomplish a shift that is just as important as adoption of this or that policy.

If he persists, I say. Maybe spiritual protection and the ability to persist are prayer concerns for us, his brothers and sisters in Christ, to adopt as part of our "Simon-like" service to him.

2025: Simon and Francis, part two.

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Judging by the "most popular" sidebar on this screen shot of BBC's news site two days ago, I'm not the only one who finds Francis empowering--or at least intriguing. The article about his decision to remain, for the time being, in his "modest" two-room apartment was the most-read article on the BBC site--and also the most shared.

From openDemocracy's Russia pages, more on idealism and cynicism: Banderlogs and network hamsters and is culture the new politics? In the meantime, "More Inspections Hit Rights NGOs in Russia." (Also note this item: "...by singling out Russia for censure, the U.S. opens itself up to well-grounded charges of hypocrisy....")

Alvin Plantinga: "Richard Dawkins is not pleased with God."

Chickens by Esther Greenleaf Mürer. "Using repetition to splice two genres – the oriental ghazal and the blues – this humorous offering demonstrates the poet's joy in language and form."

I use some of Mumford and Sons' music in my classes, so I'm always interested in news items about their relationship to faith.

"This Is It" ... a tasteful variation on this classic's original title. Enjoy!

Recording ministers; calling pastors

At a recent Friends' pastors gathering, one pastor mentioned that he was leaving his meeting this summer. He said that they had not yet found a new pastor, and recommended that anyone free to consider a pastorate should pay attention to this meeting, because they treat pastors well.

That comment came back to me when I was looking at my earlier post on "FUM and symbolic politics," because the very last comment on that post (as of now) was from Lisa, who asked, "Johan, for all of us out here in Quakerdom, would you please explain exactly what is 'the recording of ministers' and the 'calling or recalling of pastors'?" Somehow I never noticed that question, for which I apologize.

"Calling pastors" is a subject I'm tempted to avoid in writing for an audience that includes people with documented skepticism about Quakers even having pastors. If I reveal how similar the process is to making sausages, will their skepticism be confirmed? So let me stall for a bit by looking at the recording of ministers.

Others may give more official or more nuanced descriptions of what this is all about, and I can cite the books of faith and practice used among us, but I've always taken the term "recording" very simply and literally: It's when a meeting for business records in their minutes that they've noticed sufficient evidence that Friend X has gifts of public ministry. In some yearly meetings, that minute, recorded in the monthly meeting's minute book, is the end of the process; Friend X is a "recorded minister." In other yearly meetings, such as the one where I was first recorded (Indiana), the monthly meeting initiates a process that culminates with a minute approved, usually after at least a year of consideration, by a plenary session of the yearly meeting sessions. That year or more of consideration may include discussion by their yearly meeting of elders or of ministry and counsel, and may also include asking the potential recordee to complete seminary courses or yearly meeting workshops or a reading program to correct perceived deficiencies in their biblical, theological, pastoral, or denominational preparation.

At the time I was in the recording process, those deficiencies could be addressed in a wonderful little program called the Tri-Yearly Meeting School on the Ministry, operated together by Wilmington, Western, and Indiana Yearly Meetings. I taught classes for that school twice, once before I myself was recorded.

There's nothing super-spiritual about being recorded; it's essentially a more permanent (though revocable) form of obtaining a minute for travel in ministry. It is a compact way for your meeting to tell Friends elsewhere that you've been found to be reliable in expressing Friends faith and practice in public. It is theologically different from ordination, although on a practical level it may open doors (for example, for prison ministry) that ordination opens in other denominations.

I've run into several sources of confusion about recording of ministers, and how it relates to pastoring, and here are some of them, expressed as questions:

In recording ministers, aren't you setting up a hierarchy, implying special status, or putting people on a pedestal? In theory, no. Our doctrine of the equality of all persons is not threatened by saying "this person has a public gift, and we feel led to confirm it publicly." However, if gender or social status or other irrelevant criteria entered into the process, smoothing the way for some and blocking others, that would compromise the practice of recording. Also, if recorded ministers were treated with undue deference, or were given any privilege other than being permitted to exercise their gifts, that undue deference would also be a problem.

The denial of recognition of public ministry, especially when denying people who by social stereotype are not seen as carrying spiritual authority, can represent the opposite problem--a form of marginalization. I remember one example of a modest but spiritually gifted woman being considered for recording, in the face of opposition by men who used the equality argument despite their own prestigious credentials in their work settings. Moreover, the absence of explicit recognition of public gifts does not prevent elitism and power plays. When criteria for recognition are not explicit, those who want recognition or influence for the sake of their own agendas will still find ways of getting it, but without transparent criteria and accountability.

Nevertheless, the concern about equality is probably the single most important reason that recording of gifts has fallen into disuse or dropped entirely by some (especially unprogrammed) yearly meetings. The fact that there are now many other ways we can find out about who ministers "acceptably" may also play a role.

Is it okay to want to be recorded? This is a fascinating question to me. I think there's a tradition among Friends that recording should be entirely initiated by others in the meeting, and the person who is proposed for recording should be surprised, or pretend to be. I'm sure this still happens--it happened to me. Donna Moore, now a UCC minister but then a pastoral intern at First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, was my nominator. But, although I was surprised, it was a pleasant surprise, an affirmation of the ministry I was already doing. Although I'd hope that elders in every meeting and church are concerned to support and nurture public ministry (and recording is a particular form of encouragement), I don't see anything wrong with someone asking, "Should I be considered for recording? I would like to undergo this discernment process."

Some Friends emphasize that the full name for this recording process is not "recording of ministers" but "recording of gifts in the ministry." I agree in theory, but the gifts are embodied in the flesh and blood (and spirit) of a person, and we're recording that person's name.

What constitutes "expressing Friends faith and practice"? What is public ministry? In his article on "Ministers" in the Historical Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers), Larry Barker writes, "Public ministry is the calling to repeated preaching, prophecy, or other vocal spiritual leadership." (Bold words indicate that the dictionary has articles on those topics.) Is that a wide enough definition? When I was recorded, my "vocal spiritual leadership" was as a staff member for Friends World Committee, and its Right Sharing of World Resources program (now a separate organization). Another person recorded the same year, Dick Wood, was president of Earlham College. Both of us spoke frequently, but we were not classical ministers in a more typical model, either programmed or unprogrammed, within a local meeting.

I wonder how many recorded ministers have served as staff members of Friends organizations, including Friends Committee on National Legislation, the American Friends Service Committee, or similar organizations outside the USA. And what about Friends who are serving those organizations but are not recorded? If they're speaking publicly in the name of Friends, representing Friends faith and practice, and are doing so to the satisfaction of their local meetings and churches, wouldn't it be a helpful practice to minute this fact? Or would that weaken the concept of recording? I really don't know.

Those whose ministry is nonverbal provide another variation on the question of the scope of public ministry in the context of recording ministers. I would rather trust the discernment of a gathered meeting, than decree that a musician or a sculptor, for example, wouldn't fit the criteria, if by their ministry they were providing reliable public access to Friends faith and practice.

So what is the connection between being recorded and being a pastor? Within unprogrammed meetings where the practice of recording of ministers survives but where there is no role quite like that of a released and compensated pastor, the answer is simple: none.

It's more complicated in yearly meetings such as Indiana and Northwest, where most recorded ministers are pastors or former pastors (or missionaries). But they're not synonymous. In most pastoral yearly meetings, a meeting can call a pastor who's not recorded; and you can be recorded without serving or intending to serve as a pastor. Sometimes a meeting records its pastor (or initiates the recording process) as a form of assessment and appreciation; I know several young pastors who've had this route to recording. I suppose it is possible that someone has somehow initiated or welcomed the recording process to improve their credentials and their chances of snagging a lucrative pastorate (!!!), but, honestly, I've never seen it.

Several yearly meetings encourage pastors to go into the recording process if they're not already recorded, because that process includes a substantial component of exposure to Quaker faith and practice, or to the faith and practice of their particular yearly meeting. This helps integrate pastors who come to Friends from other denominations, or whose meetings are geographically or psychologically isolated from the yearly meeting.

What do you mean by "calling" a pastor? The Historical Dictionary doesn't include either the verb "to call" or the noun "calling," but their popular meanings are fairly simple:

"To call" means to recruit someone as pastor (or other role) on the basis of a meeting's decision that it has been led to this particular candidate. And as in some other Christian communities, a "calling" can be a specific sense of being led to a ministry, or a more general conviction that ministry is one's personal vocation, what God created you to be; and to "answer this calling" is to respond faithfully to God. So, you can feel called to be a pastor. And, once you are known to have this calling, it won't be surprising that a meeting might call you (sometimes worded as "issuing a call" to you) to serve as their pastor.

I chose the term "recruit" partly for its unromantic tone. The call should originate from the prayers and discernments of a meeting for business, but we shouldn't spiritualize our description of the process beyond all recognition! A few years ago, David Brock wrote an article for Quaker Life entitled "The ABC's of Finding a New Pastor," which is refreshingly candid about what the mechanics of the process often actually look like. And it's fairly true to my own experience of being called by Reedwood Friends Church back in 2000.

Is this calling of pastors done any differently by Friends than by other Christian communities? I think it would be straining the truth to say we do it better or more spiritually than anyone else. The politics of discernment and persuasion work the same way for us as for others. But here are some features of our process that make it congenial to us, whether or not we're unique:

• Many meetings still consider one candidate at a time. There's a willingness to say, "This is the person we're led to, and we're not going to the next candidate until the process is complete with this one."
• Although in some yearly meetings the staff of the yearly meeting office exercises considerable influence, generally the actual decision on whom to call is exclusively a monthly meeting decision, made in a meeting for worship for business.
• Throughout the whole history of Friends pastors, both men and women have been called, though mostly not in equal numbers.

The whole story of equality of sexes among Quaker pastors could probably not be told without knowing how many women never even considered the possibility of being pastors for lack of encouragement or role models. There's a related challenge for all Friends: We've claimed that we choose leaders based on gifts rather than social status. But if we actually don't consistently use ways of discerning and calling out gifts, our theoretical virtue does us little good. I'll never forget the Friend who said, "We Friends ought not to evangelize. Let people find their own God." How did she think Quakerism survived long enough to reach her, and how many Friends with the gift of evangelism has she discouraged with her anointings of cold water? (I have a theory that the gift of evangelism is present among unprogrammed Friends in roughly equal proportion to its presence among evangelical Friends.)

Finally, I haven't heard "to recall" used in these contexts. However, I have heard of people's recordings being rescinded, and at least one yearly meeting (mine) asks each recorded minister every year, "Do you continue to feel called to public ministry in keeping with your recording or do you feel your ministry responsibilities have been completed?"

Update: recording of ministers as practiced by our new yearly meeting, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends.

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Righteous links: The online Faith and Practice makes it easy to compare practices among some Friends yearly meetings. For example, using the keyword "recording" I found this description of the recording process in my yearly meeting. ~~~ Tuesday the New Sanctuary telephone/e-mail tree here was active because of a large Immigrant and Customs Enforcement raid. Oregonian coverage here; Portland Indymedia here. ~~~ This Time magazine article on Anglican leader Rowan Williams was better journalism than I've come to expect from mainstream coverage of the religion-and-sexuality wars. I wanted to say, "I've been there!"--although in a constituency that did not, even in the worst of times, subject me to the pressures he's going through. ~~~ We don't anoint our recorded ministers with oil, but if we did, I'd advocate using this Palestinian olive oil distributed through the American Friends Service Committee. ~~~ Goodbye to Ruth Bell Graham.

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One of my favorite lines from a blues song: Bonnie Raitt singing "I ain't a porcupine, take off your kid gloves." ("Thing Called Love")

Sorry for the cheesy video, but the music makes up for it.... Update: Below the video I've posted my gapfill exercise for our students in Elektrostal.

Where our hearts are, and who cares?

Some theological debates are worth having. For example, Protestants are rightly proud of the principle that we are saved by faith, not by works. (Romans 4; Galatians 3:6-9; Hebrews 11.) Others counter that genuine discipleship requires action as well as belief because "faith without works is dead" (James 2:14-20; 1 John 3:17-18; Matthew 25:32-40).

Friends are among those who say that both sides are correct. There are two different definitions of "works" at play (sorry!) here. We cannot reach our full stature in Christ with pious practices, ceremonies, or self-enhancing efforts. The letters to the Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews make it clear that the sacrificial system had its chance, and simply didn't get us where we want to go. The only law we now require is the one that God is ready to write on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33-34, echoed in Hebrews 8:10 and Hebrews 10:16).

However, our faith is communal, not merely individual, and we are helping each other live in that unguarded covenantal closeness to God, guided by the laws written on our hearts, that is the essence of Quaker faith (and not Quaker only!). Therefore, we (ideally) don't just stay in our separate orbits. We rightly ask each other whether "God's laws on our hearts" is a reality for you, for me; and whether we are in touch with our hearts or are perhaps numb from addiction or fear or injury. The question, "How is our faith bearing fruit?", is not a denial of the primacy of faith, it is an invitation to go deeper in faith, to put more life-weight on it.

We don't expect each of us to be identically gifted in biblical insight, or in intercessory prayer, or in prophetic civil disobedience ... or, for that matter, in spiritual maturity and confidence. That's why it is all the more important that we lower the barriers of autonomy and learn to ask each other, tenderly, even with tears, about where our hearts are. The point is not a sudden and dramatic restoration of the whole Friends Church (aka Religious Society of Friends). The point is to begin where we are, building a community of love one relationship at a time.

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How do our structures serve us in this task? Many of our churches and meetings have elders or the equivalent, and I've appreciated the discussions of eldering that have appeared in our blog community (for example, Marshall Massey's survey and the comments that followed; and also see the comments on this item on Mark Wutka's blog). Although I do think that some spiritual gifts lend themselves to eldering more than others do, I also think Marshall's cautions about exalting the elders is a good one, especially since the main obstacle to eldering has almost nothing to do with gifts. It has to do with interpersonal barriers of almost pathological individualism. More than once, I've heard from those who've been approached to serve on elders or on a meeting of ministry and counsel, "Who am I to talk to someone else about their private life?"

The reason I appreciate Marshall's unromanticizing of elders is that the correct answer to this question applies to all of us, not just to the person who uses genuine or false modesty to avoid service as an elder. "Who are you? You are a brother or sister in discipleship. I need you to listen to me and talk to me. I need to be able to tell my beloved community—but sometimes not to everyone—how my heart is doing. I need you to dare to respond to me, even taking the risk of being wrong, which isn't the end of the world, because we already have a commitment to each other's well-being."

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Among Friends, neither elders nor pastors enjoy exalted status. They exercise functional leadership, not leadership by virtue of status, and if their roles are not functional in a given situation (such as a tiny meeting where it truly works to have the roles carried out informally), filling these "offices" should not be a priority. But communities that may have become complacent and ingrown sometimes overlook one important aspect of those roles: the ministry of providing access. Having a designated pastor is one way that the meeting serves newcomers, the wider community, and those who don't participate in the tacit networks of long-time members, to help put them in touch with the resources they need. This is true whether the "resource" is instruction, access to the pulpit to follow a prophetic leading, referral to others who are more able to meet a particular need, sources of food or clothing for people whose paycheck or welfare check didn't last the month, or pastoral care and counseling. I'm not arguing that the pastor should be the only or even the prime contact person for any of these situations, but by liberating someone for pastoral service, the meeting is making that access far more consistent. In any case, when nobody has a specific concern for the ministry of access, the community probably might as well be dead to the world.

A pastor of a rural Friends meeting once told me about a woman in his community whose husband was abusing her. The local sheriff was a friend of her husband's. She went to the pastor for help because he was a visible access point for ministry. It was not a spiritually exalted role, but was nevertheless lifegiving in that specific situation.

Likewise, elders are also points of access. Some of us are comfortable confiding in just about anyone, or have good intuition about whom to approach. But the meeting that publishes a list of elders is, in effect, saying that "these people have committed themselves to be accessible for concerns about individual or corporate spiritual health." They may not be any more spiritual than the rest of us, but they've agreed to be more visible simply to provide that access. They've also agreed to a discipline of confidentiality. And, while we should all be willing to intervene when we see a brother or sister apparently suffering from heartsickness, and our structures may provide other roles, committees, and individuals to do those things often done by pastors and elders, I think it's helpful and maybe even urgent for the meeting to let its members and attenders know that some Friends have a specific commitment to accompany those in distress. And that access to that accompaniment doesn't depend on being socially connected.

Reedwood Friends Church makes this "access" a regular feature of meeting for worship. In the printed bulletin, and sometimes in the announcements at the end of meeting for worship, we are told that anyone who wishes to speak with an elder can go to a particular spot, and the elders take turns being present at that place for a period of time after the close of worship.

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Sometimes I wonder whether, in our nice, congenial, and dysfunctionally private existences as Friends meetings and churches, there aren't people living the sort of tortured realities that Ted Haggard was apparently living during his leadership at New Life in Colorado Springs. (Background: read his PDF letter of confession and apology.) Given the choice offered by our culture—self-gratification with whatever rationalization numbs the conscience; or uncreative suppression of sexuality, with whatever secret compromises enable public compliance—our churches need to do a lot better at providing safe eldership to the anonymous brother or sister and the celebrity alike. I've seen more than one Friends meeting deal with "outreach" issues of addiction and abuse with theoretical correctness but with an assumption that this concern serves outsiders, not anyone inside the church. Wrong!

One of the worst consequences of not being deliberate, thoughtful, and explicit in providing for human hearts in distress, is that when distressed people come to our meetings, they exercise (without any malevolent intent) a disproportionate influence on us nice people. When someone comes to my meeting and says, "There's too much Christ language, too much salvation language" (yes, it does happen even in a member church of Evangelical Friends International!), our options should not be limited to those polarized twins, abject codependence or defensiveness.

Of course, we should check to see whether our faith language has become formulaic; we owe that to ourselves as well as to newcomers. But we can also ask whether the allergic reaction to Christian language is the symptom of a wound that deserves tender attention. We're not just moderately Christian, subject to political negotiations about how much language to use and to balance out with other constructions; we're Friends of Christ, and those with the least commitment to the future of this precious friendship don't get veto power over how we express it and embody it. But they are entitled to our genuine, active, painstaking love, a love that at times dares to ask, "How's it going with your heart?"

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An irony: American churches that stress the importance of faith over works (often those tending toward legalism or doctrinal purity) have a skewed definition of works. They minimize "works" of justice and mercy, but often seem to value the "works" of formalism: using the right words, observing the behavioral rules of the holiness culture, and so on. Now, it's a bit easy to make fun of these double standards, but I'm not sure I'm totally sold on the opposite approach—serene ignorance of the cleverness of sin and addiction. To risk an oversimplification, both groups need to grapple with the messy reality of being embodied believers. Maybe a greater effort at dialogue would help.

A tangent: What does it mean to use Scripture verses the way I used them in the first paragraphs of this post? Last week I criticized the "Pokemon-card methodology" of biblical interpretation. I do not use verses of this beloved text as power cards to trump opposition, but as a sign that I've looked for evidence that my thinking is in resonance with the foundational document of our faith community, and to open up a dialogue with anyone who cares as much about that document but sees it pointing a different direction. In the eternal dimension of God's commonwealth, I cherish the "elders," the ancient ministry and counsel, whose words were collected by the church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in forming the Bible.

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Righteous links:

I've criticized the American media's almost unrelieved negativity about Russia more than once, and Konstantin's Russian Blog has sometimes been my ally in this effort; he keeps finding awkward instances of double standards. He's found two allies of his own recently: N. Petro's article, "Sticking it up Vladimir the Impaler," and Mark Ames's article, "Where is America's Politkovskaya?" In both cases, I'm linking to Konstantin's own blog rather than the sources because I also recommend reading the comments on his blog.

The OOZEletter also gets a pair of links for their latest issue. Last week I gave my own thoughts on Saddam's impending date with the gallows; here's OOZE's take: "Jesus Says about Saddam: 'Hang Him! Hang Him High!'" ... and a reflection on Ted Haggard: "God's Heroes: Speaking Out about Ted Haggard."

Civil Justice: I've appreciated watching the development of the Georgia Civil Justice Foundation's campaign to promote "fair play" as the foundational value of our civil court system (helping citizens deal with pressures to reduce the independence of the judiciary through such alarmist pitches as tort "reform").

• Fair Play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O26MbTexwxI
• Adversarial Process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY5GwQSoAsA
• Independent Judiciary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljFs03lp3U4

While we're on the subject of the Bible, I'm grateful to Paul at Shower of Blessings for telling us about Slate's "Blogging the Bible" feature.

A couple of weeks ago, I was worried about the music clips disappearing from Youtube and similar services. Blues are rare enough as it is! But in the last few weeks, a whole crop of new blues clips has blossomed on Youtube. [However, many have been removed since--hence the substitution, below, that I made in April 2009.] Here's just one, by a man whose music and presentation both move me very much, Otis Spann. He and Albert King were the first two blues musicians I ever heard--thanks to the legendary 1960's radio personality on WCFL Chicago, Ron Britain. As I said some time back, for decades I listened with admiration to Otis Spann's music without ever knowing what he looked like when performing:

The face of courage

This is Anna Politkovskaya, as shown on the front page of yesterday's online edition of Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper in Moscow for which she wrote.

The newspaper's tribute stated, in part:

She was beautiful. What's more, as the years went by she just became more beautiful. After all, at first God gives us a face just to get us started; then we shape our own face--by the way we live.

And then they also say that in maturity our soul begins to show on our face. Her soul is beautiful.

She was feminine. She could be charming as she laughed at a successful joke; she wept at injustice. But she regarded any injustice--whoever it might be related to--as a personal enemy. An enemy to be struggled with to the end.

She was amazingly courageous. Far more courageous than those many many macho types with their armor-plated vehicles, surrounded by bodyguards.

They threatened her, tried to frighten her with surveillance and searches. In Chechnya "our" commandos arrested her and threatened to put her in front of a firing squad. On her flight to Beslan she was poisoned. She pulled through. And though after that her health was never the same, her greatest sensitivity to pain remained, as always, in her conscience.

Many people, even our newspaper's well-wishers, sometimes said, "Well, your Politkovskaya ... maybe she went just a bit too-too ...." Not at all! She always wrote the truth. The truth might be so horrible that many go into denial, but that's beside the point. It's that defensive reaction that comes up with "just a bit too-too." Sometimes even in our editorial team.

Probably the hardest thing for an ordinary person is not to turn away from terrible things. But when you look evil straight in the eyes, it can't stand it, and backs off. Anya looked evil straight in the eye. And maybe that's why she emerged victorious from difficult situations. And maybe that's why she survived when averted eyes would not have survived.

For us, Anya still remains alive. We will never reconcile ourselves with her death. And whoever took it upon themselves to commit this barbaric murder--in the center of Moscow in broad daylight--we ourselves will search for them. And we can guess where they might be....

Anne Applebaum responds to this terrible story with a thoughtful and subdued Washington Post column, "A Moscow Murder Story." She and some other commentators come close to accusing Vladimir Putin and his associates for creating the climate in which political contract killings occur, if not actually signing the contracts, but I have my doubts. Aside from the moral issues involved (which may or may not play a role with power politicians--who am I to say?), all Putin needs to make his life complete is political assassins running around Moscow just when he's trying to create at least a semblance of stability. It seems more likely to me that someone personally threatened with exposure by Anya's journalism would be the most likely suspect.

What should the politicians say at a time like this? Both Putin and Chechnya's Kadyrov have expressed condolences; Putin has pledged a full and objective investigation. To my utter frustration, most Russians interviewed in the media seem to be totally cynical about such pledges (example); the cynicism may be justified but it doesn't help the cause of justice, especially for one who was unafraid to "look evil in the eyes." Cynicism simply solidifies evil's victory. In the meantime, Novaya Gazeta has pledged nearly a million dollars in reward money to help find the guilty.

Our own (Western) politicians are also responding to the murder. George Bush says, "Like many Russians, Americans were shocked and saddened by the brutal murder of Anna Politkovoskaya, a fearless investigative journalist, highly respected in both Russia and the United States." I hope it is equally true that "Americans" and American leaders are shocked and saddened by the fates of journalists in Iraq killed by coalition gunfire.

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While I'm preaching about cynicism, I should acknowledge that I've continued to think about my near-blanket condemnation of celebrity leaders of the evangelical establishment in last Thursday's post. I stand by my description of the climate of conformity and lack of intellectual integrity I find in much of that establishment, which was one of the most disillusioning aspects of my seven years as head of the Friends United Meeting staff. But in those years, I also met my share of church leaders who wanted to do better.

It's easy to criticize leaders for the empty posturing that they may do in their public personae, while neglecting to acknowledge their far more complicated private realities. Criticism needs to be accompanied by prayer and personal honesty. In my own leadership of a microscopic denomination, I tried always to say the same things to all audiences, whether "liberal" or "evangelical," and to help construct a shared language without compromising the Gospel. It's for others to say whether I succeeded. Some leaders (notably some in Evangelical Friends Church Southwest, as it is now called, and in Iowa Yearly Meeting, and also a few in Baltimore and New York Yearly Meetings) twisted my words to suit their agendas, but by and large I was treated fairly by most Friends.

In much larger denominations, it is a legitimate chicken-and-egg dilemma for leaders to try to decide: Do I challenge conformity at the possible expense of my career, knowing how vicious the opposition can be, or do I exercise a quieter leavening leadership that will make things better for my successor? More than once, I heard such questions asked off the record at U.S. Church Leaders meetings. I might express the hope for more courage among those leaders, who never faced the kind of risks Anya Politkovskaya looked at unflinchingly, but I acknowledge that my situation as an FUM leader was probably far more congenial than theirs. In fact, we probably need more open conflict among Friends rather than less, given the grave state of our long-term corporate outlook (but we need to conduct that conflict with the same mutual concern and care that I benefited from as FUM gensec; our teenagers and our alienated donors may well respond to useless and abrasive church fights with even more defections).

Returning to my Thursday words, I am not backing off one bit from my bitter disappointment with those leaders who have had access to the White House. The constant association in the public mind of evangelical Christianity with imperial arrogance and the protection of economic privilege is anti-evangelistic, both domestically and internationally. A tiny hint of a breakthrough has occurred with evangelical leaders signing pro-earthcare and anti-torture statements in the press. But we need more. We need what Anna Politkovskaya had in abundance: courage.

Friday P.S.: Righteous links

These shorts are to remind me to keep it short. My last post went way too long. These Web sightings are in no particular logical order or relationship.

First, Slate carried an interesting commentary by Amy Sullivan on Sen Obama's speech to the Pentecost 2006 meeting, mentioned in this earlier post. I confess that I didn't know how much venom was being spewed Obama's way (and also at those writing sympathetically about his speech) until I followed some of the link trails in her essay.

The Waterfront Blues Festival was a great success, reaching its goal of half a million dollars income for the Oregon Food Bank, and providing us blues music lovers a solid five days of ecstasy.

It was, however, sobering to see the demographics of the attenders. Perhaps 10% or fewer of the people I saw were what I'd call young adults. Most of the time I felt that my 53 years put me at the low end of the age range. Music aside, it felt like a boomer convention much of the time. A very NICE boomer convention, but chronologically sobering....

This year's harvest of performers I didn't know about before, but will be watching for, included the two International Blues Challenge winners who appeared at the Festival: Eden Brent, a wonderful keyboardist with a rollicking sense of showmanship and a voice like Janis Joplin; and Joey Gilmore, who could easily qualify as a young and mellow version of B.B. King. ("Mellow" refers to his easy stage personality, not to his guitar playing.)

Lauren Sheehan, whom I commented on last year, was back for three appearances, including two on the intimate Workshop stage. I arrived on day one just in time for her first appearance and was delighted to be greeted with a beautiful gospel song.

Blues music only accounts for about 5% of today's U.S. recorded music sales, if I remember correctly, but it's really an umbrella term for a whole bunch of subgenres, many of which were part of the festival. Saturday, for example, was zydeco day, and one of the best bands that day was T. Broussard and the Zydeco Steppers. Sunday was jug band day. (The Delmark Goldfarb Quartet were a high point.) Bill Rhoades' Harmonica Blowoff took place on Tuesday. British blues guitarist Ian Siegal appeared both in the acoustic segment and the big-stage full-out band context, doing well in both settings.

Speaking of blues, a few weeks ago I was in Atlanta, sharing a cemetery picnic lunch with a couple of co-workers and a human rights activist who told us about his search for music of all kinds that incorporate human rights themes. Right after I got back home, I was listening to the Roadhouse blues podcast and heard Corey Harris singing a song about police brutality, "5-0 Blues." The song is fascinating, both lyrically and musically—(featuring a tuba, which I don't hear much in a blues setting!). There's a link to the song in the playlist for that week's Roadhouse podcast.

George Lakoff, the "reframing" guru, posted an important suggestion on the Rockridge Institute website: The "war" in Iraq is not a war, it is an occupation, and we should stubbornly refer to it as such. To the average American, in wartime "these colors don't run," but every occupation must end.

The US won the war three years ago when Bush said, “Mission Accomplished”. Then the occupation started, and our troops were not trained or equipped for an occupation under predictably hostile circumstances. Finally getting the courage to tell the truth that the US is an occupying force drastically changes the picture in Iraq. You cannot “win” an occupation. “Cut and run” does not apply to an occupation. Occupiers have to leave; the only question is when and how.

Back in December 2004, I challenged the use of the word "war," but my challenge was essentially one of outrage. Maybe more of us could get behind a simple issue of accuracy. Especially us Quakers, who have a conceit about being "publishers of Truth" and about "speaking truth to power."

C. Wess Daniels wrote a helpful article for Quaker Life concerning the budding "convergent" movement among Friends, which I see as a movement toward converging dialogue, a source of new energy and creativity and renewal, rather than an actual large-scale convergence among Friends.

The secret truth that many Quaker leaders of the past don't mention is that, among the leadership of the larger Friends organizations, similar dialogues have taken place for decades, in venues such as Friends World Committee for Consultation, and the annual gatherings of the Superintendents and Secretaries of Yearly Meetings. Some of the participants in those dialogues probably treated them as personal retreats, not to be talked about much back home. But the tendency among some of the Evangelical Friends leaders to boycott these events is relatively recent.

The refreshing difference now is that the dialogue is taking place under people power, not just for the benefit of the managerial circles. (Note: I am NOT minimizing the importance of that benefit—I'm not a hypocrite; I benefitted!) Nobody requires official authorization or budgeting to participate. The ripples may go a lot further, thanks both to technology and to the fact that the participants in this converging dialogue acknowledge no organizational taboos. They're not afraid of being seen with each other.