Why I Stopped Paying Taxes

Quaker War Tax Resistance: In 1994, Joseph Olejak stopped paying taxes. Find out why, and what his Quaker Meeting did when it landed him in jail.

Quaker War Tax Resistance: In 1994, Joseph Olejak stopped paying taxes. Find out why, and what his Quaker Meeting did when it landed him in jail.

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My name is Joseph Olejak, I live in Chatham Center, and I attend the Old Chatham Quaker Meeting. My war tax resistance started in 1994. I was listening to “60 Minutes” and Leslie Stahl was interviewing Madeleine Albright, and she asked Madeleine Albright the question: “Was the sacrifice of a half a million children in Iraq, due to the embargo of food and medicine, worth it?” And without skipping a beat, Madeline Albright said, “Yes.”

I knew at that moment, I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t support the war. And I felt compelled to take an action.

Withholding Taxes

In 1994, I started my tax resistance by just not filling. I got the stuff from my accountant back and it had the whole form filled out and the amount that was due and I was holding it in front of me and I just looked at the numbers and I thought, “How much of this is going to go toward creating bombs and guns and nuclear weapons and everything else?” And I just set it down. And I didn’t file.

Quakers and War

The way Quakers look at war is that, when we destroy other human beings, we’re not only destroying humanity but we’re also destroying that in humanity which is a reflection of God. In the Bible, one of the things that Christ himself said was that you should do unto others as you would do unto yourself, and if you love me, you would love your brethren. And that’s really what it stems from.

And if we take that, along with the commandment to not kill, I think it’s pretty clear. It’s unequivocal. There’s no fine print there.

Where Our Tax Dollars Go

When we write that check to the IRS, we often don’t think about where those tax dollars go. According to the American Friends Service Committee, about 57% of those tax dollars are going either to the preparation for war, funding the debt on war, or funding nuclear weapons. 57% of every dollar is an awful lot of money.

If there was indeed a Peace Tax, you would write that check and what the peace tax law would say is, the funds that you’re giving to government are going to be used to support things that are other than war. I think, given our long history as peaceniks, Quakers should definitely have an exception for where their money goes, and anyone else who is a Christian who feels uncomfortable paying for war.

Facing the Consequences

In April of 2009, 11 armed IRS agents in Kevlar vests came into my office and removed all my books and records. And that’s when the prosecution started. I pled guilty to one count of willful failure to file, and told the probation department when I had my interview that I was a Quaker and that did what I did because of conscientious objections to war.

They were pretty lenient on me. They gave me 26 weekends in the county jail, which I’ve completed, and now I’m on probation for 5 years. When I was in the Columbia County jail for my war tax resistance sentence, the Meeting was deeply involved. A lot of people came and visited me, they called me up, they asked me questions, and it was really good. I would say that my spiritual family supported me more than my blood family, which was surprising.

A Step of Faith

Martin Luther King said you don’t need to see the top of the stairs to take the next step. At the time, I felt like there was an important step that needed to be taken, and I took it. Really, it was a step of faith. And, you know, I’m still alive. I’m still here. I still have food. I still have clothing. I still have the support of my children and my Meeting and I think it’s going to be OK.

I’m not unhappy with the decision I took. I won’t say that it hasn’t had its challenges, but I think the challenges have helped me to grow in my faith and have helped to make the world a better place. I know I’ve only done it on a small scale, but I think, with the help of my Meeting and with the growing awareness of the need for peace and a Peace Tax, I’m hoping that this action will shed light and help peace to grow.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Quakers and Sex: A Call to Embrace Sexual Diversity

What does the Quaker religion believe about sex? Su Penn offers one possible answer: “Quakers are uniquely qualified to transform how we deal with sex and sexuality in our culture and make it healthy and wholesome.”

What does the Quaker religion believe about sex? Su Penn offers one possible answer: “Quakers are uniquely qualified to transform how we deal with sex and sexuality in our culture and make it healthy and wholesome.”

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The communion that people have during sex is also a communion with God, and it can be—at its best, when it is full of that love and trust—that shared vulnerability which means that you’re taking care of each other, that you’re making it safe for each other to be vulnerable. I think of it as opening little spaces where God can come in, and I think that sex is one of the ways that we open that space. So I also think, then, that sex is one of the ways that we can experience the presence of God.

Quakers and Sex: A Call to Embrace Sexual Diversity

I’m Su Penn, and I live in mid-MIchigan, near Lansing. My primary worship group is the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns.

Quakers are uniquely qualified to transform how we deal with sex and sexuality in our culture and make it healthy and wholesome. I think that we’re uniquely qualified to do this because we believe in differences among individuals. We believe in individual leadings and, at the same time, we believe in accountability to the faith community.

So we have a lot of practice in our history of helping a person—helping people—to express themselves, their leadings, their personalities, whatever, within the context of a community that is both a support of that and a check on it, in the sense of helping to make sure that what the person is doing is healthy for them, healthy for the community, ideally comes from God, and helps to unite the individual, the community, and God.

Embracing Sexual Diversity

I think that this is exactly what we need around sex, is an openness to all the individual varieties of ways that people practice sex, explore sexually, and that everything from a person who spoke to me the other day who identifies as asexual and wishes people could hear that and not automatically assume that he’s broken somehow (he wishes that people would understand that for him, understanding himself as an asexual person actually is a healthy self-understanding and its a self-acceptance) all the way to people for whom sex is like a vocation (in the good way of being a vocation, something that they put a lot of effort into in their lives and really nurture) and even to people who practice kinds of sex that seem scary or dangerous to a lot of people.

“Sorting out the multitude of right answers”

Having 3 partners in a year, 3 sexual partners in a year, that can be a healthy choice for one person and an unhealthy one for another. And that’s where discernment comes in. That’s why we don’t get to make rules. That’s why we don’t get to say, “No more than one a year! No more than one a decade. More than two in your lifetime is bad.” We don’t get to do that!

We understand that the same answer is not the right answer for everybody. We have a lot of practice at sorting out the multitude of right answers and we have a lot of practice at really really deep listening with open hearts, and I think that those things put together have the power to transform the messed-up way our culture deals with sexuality.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Why I Don’t Wear a Tie in Court

Scott Holmes, a Quaker lawyer from Durham, North Carolina, felt led to stop wearing a tie in the courtroom. This is his story of exploring that leading and its implications.

Scott Holmes, a Quaker lawyer from Durham, North Carolina, felt led to stop wearing a tie in the courtroom. This is his story of exploring that leading and its implications.

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I’m Scott Holmes. I’m a member of Durham Friends Meeting. When I describe who I am, I guess it’s parent, spouse, Quaker, lawyer. I don’t know in what order, but I am a trial lawyer and that’s a very peculiar group of people to be. It means in my work, I had to wear a suit, and for many years I had to wear a tie. That always felt uncomfortable in a sense of my yearning to connect with folks. Immediately I was shutting myself off to most of the people in the world.

Not Clear With the Tie

There came a point in my spiritual journey where I had been to North Carolina Yearly Meeting and I had hung out with some old-time Quakers who were doing plain-dress. It planted a seed in my mind that I was not clear with the tie.

The first few days at work I had this kind of nauseous feeling when I put on the tie, like, “this isn’t resting easy with me.” I thought maybe I should start thinking about asking for a clearness committee and talking to people who know more about this and making sure this is really a spiritual thing and not just some kind of a bug or a stubborn, bone-headed idea I’ve got.

So I put the tie on, wore it, but it was kind of heavy, and then the next day it came time to put on the tie and it was kind of heavier. By the third day, I was like, “You know what, I don’t have time for a clearness committee. I’m just not going to put on a tie today, I’ll just experiment with it and see how it goes.”

Leaving the Tie at Home

And it went great! It was awesome. I was in State Court. I was in some lower courts where I’ve been pretty much all my professional life. All the lawyers knew me, all the judges knew me. “Oh, he forgot his tie,” or I don’t know what they thought. But no one asked me any questions. I got a complete free pass, not having a tie in court. I was like, “this is good. This is great! Maybe I can pull this off and nobody will notice! That would be so cool!”

But then I had Federal Court the next day and that judge, he stopped court immediately and called me up and said, “Have you EVER been in Federal Court?”

Encountering Resistance

He took a recess to give me time to think about this and he said, “We’ll see what you really think and we’ll come back on the record here after lunch. We’ll take it up at that time.” And the impression was, “You need to go get a tie on.”

I had another encounter with a judge who made some kind of comment when we were arguing about it that, “Well if you were wearing a dress I wouldn’t let you appear in this court,” and I was like, “Well why not?” And he didn’t understand that. I said, “Well if I’m qualified and I’m licensed, if I’ve done everything I need to do to be a lawyer and my client wants me to, how can you not let me practice in a dress?”

And so what I started learning really quickly was that it wasn’t about simplicity, it was more about equality. That the tie is this symbol of male power and I started learning from my female attorney friends as they were laughing at my experiment—how women attorneys have to think about their dress everyday. There’s no standard costume that they can just put on and not have anyone question them about their appearance in court. Is the dress too low? Is it too high? Is it the right color? Is it this or that? Is it the right place for the right court?

And there’s this second guessing that happens with their dress that is oppressive, which is inherent in being a woman. They have to live up to this standard and the guys have the free pass because the guys make the rules. And so I started really learning more about oppression and what its like to be treated unfairly because of something completely arbitrary because of something like a tie.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Advice for White Men

Niyonu Spann, founder of Beyond Diversity 101, talks about her idea of heaven and how she invites everyone (including white men) to fully bring it.

Niyonu Spann, founder of Beyond Diversity 101, talks about her idea of heaven and how she invites everyone (including white men) to fully bring it.

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My idea of heaven is folks being able to be “full-up”, be fully who they are and bring their gifts or be choice-ful about that. That really is my idea of heaven.

ADVICE FOR WHITE MEN

Live up to the truth and remember my child
You are never alone
No, never

What I have yearned for forever is to have co-whatevers. Co-leaders, co-facilitators, co-musicians who can bring it—where I can bring it fully and that doesn’t mean that they then pull back, because “you’re too strong with yours” or whatever. So that’s my idea of heaven, so I’ll start with that.

But I think it’s a time in our society—at least here in the U.S., which is where I’ve been most of my life—when white men in particular have a very tricky path to healing, because I think so many of the circles that we would define as kind of healing spaces or spiritual places or activist circles jump on white men quickly as soon as they act in any way fully—full up.

So there’s so much—folks are so ready to catch a white man doing the wrong thing (the “wrong thing”) speaking too much, speaking too boldly, being too joyous about who he is, you know, any of that stuff.
And I experienced this a lot at Pendle Hill. I felt that it was very much a culture that—because it was primarily white, middle class, middle aged women—I was very aware that the culture was not very conducive to white men acting in any way except for very humble, toned down. Sort of a toned down way of being.

And so when we would occasionally get a white man that didn’t act that way, I saw him catching hell. But I was very aware of that and so, you know, the world in general has been so colonized and terrorized by white men that its such a hard thing to balance out, but where I put my energy in the moment is trying to make the space for “Bring it. Bring it. Bring yourself more fully.” Because I don’t think I can heal until you… you know. I can’t see like, “OK, put yourself on pause while I…” You know, I don’t think that’s leading towards us all being whole.

So that’s my thing. I completely get the ones that say, “Let the white men just sit in the corner and be quiet while we do our thing.” I understand where that comes from. But that’s not what I want to be up to. Probably because of my idea of heaven.

Oh live up to the Light that thou hast
And more will be granted thee
Be granted thee
Oh live up to the Light thou hast

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

What is a Quaker?

What is a Quaker? Watch this quick 5 minute video and hear from 6 actual members of the Quaker religion.

What is a Quaker? Watch this quick 5 minute video and hear from 6 actual members of the Quaker religion.

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Noah Merrill:
A Quaker is someone who is seeking to be faithful to the deepest truth that we can encounter, to be guided to that truth by the guidance of the holy spirit, by the presence of God in our lives, and by the understanding that that’s a real experience that we can encounter.

O:
A Quaker is someone who is willing to be still, enter a silence, and actually be penetrated by that silence.

Paul Buckley:
Penn said, a Quaker is defined by one fundamental principle, and that was that God had placed within each person an infallible guide, that if followed would lead you to righteousness and salvation. Anyone who follows that guide, who attends to it and does what it leads you to, is a true child of God and, by definition, then, is a Quaker.

C. Wess Daniels:
For me, one of the things that means to be Quaker is to be together in a community of people who gather and listen together. We can have spiritual practice outside of meeting, outside of worshipping, but there’s something about coming together and listening together to God as a community that is full of life, and full of conflict and challenge, and to me, that’s what makes Quakerism beautiful.

Faith Kelley:
I think there’s also some Quaker distinctives that come out of that experience of Christ alive and in the world with us, and those are things about, you know, sacraments being inward, and our experience of worship— the understanding that God is there in the worship and is with us. And so those things, I think, make someone a Quaker.

Monica Walters-Field:
So by definition, your communication changes, because you know, if we’re all, then, therefore that of God, we’re therefore all equal, and so by definition our relationships with each other must change, and will be different.

O:
There is a way of trusting the innocence of that power, so that one is not afraid of it—not afraid of the power—but is willing to walk intimately into that power… and be informed by it. Informed. Reformed. Transformed. And in the transformation, of being touched by God, behaviors change. Something different happens.

Noah Merrill:
But it’s more than that, right, because there are many people in many traditions who are seeking to do that. So then what’s a Quaker? I think a Quaker is someone who is part of this living stream, this sense of being a people who’ve been on this journey for more than 350 years, traveling together as a community, supporting one another with these traditions and these practices that we have found. We didn’t create them; we discovered them. That help people along that journey of faithfulness, as we help each other to be set free and to grow more fully alive. And to me, that’s the Way we’re inviting people into.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Are Quakers Amish?

This week’s Quaker video: “You’re a Quaker? You mean, like, Amish?” It’s something all Quakers have heard. Max Carter, professor of Quaker religion studies at Guilford College, tells us about the differences between Quakers and the Amish.

This week’s Quaker video: “You’re a Quaker? You mean, like, Amish?” It’s something all Quakers have heard. Max Carter, professor of Quaker religion studies at Guilford College, tells us about the differences between Quakers and the Amish.

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Are Quakers Amish? That’s a question that almost everyone who goes to Guilford College (where we’re filming this today) gets. A number of my students will say when they find out they’re going to a Quaker College, “Will we have to ride a horse? Will we have to give up electricity? Will we have to wear gray?”

What I often tell my students is the main difference between the Quakers and the Amish is that the Amish drive their own buggy; Quakers drive others buggy.

Are Quakers Amish?

The real answer is that there’s a spiritual connection between the Quakers and the Amish. There’s no organic connection between the Quakers and the Amish.

The Amish grew out of the radical reformation, the anabaptist movements of the 1500’s and 1600’s, out of southern Germany, the Alsace area of France and Switzerland in response to the protestant reformation, and a desire to take those reforms further, to create the “true church” of adult, voluntary believers who accept the discipline of the church and associated themselves around the gospels especially and lived out the meaning of the gospels in plainness, in simplicity, in adult baptism, and pacifism, or what they would call “biblical nonresistance.”

The Quakers emerged out of the English Civil War period a century later. Similar desires to restore original Christianity—it was a restorationist movement too—but there’s no organic connection with what was happening on the continent.

How Quaker Used to Dress

The reason so many people make the mistake of equating the Quakers with the Amish is the Amish dress the way that Quakers used to. The Amish came into the American colonies in the early 1700’s on the invitation of William Penn and other Quakers to Pennsylvania for religious freedom. They came as German Peasant stock, dressing like German Bauern would dress, and they looked at their Quaker neighbors and saw them dressing in their broad brim hats and bonnets and plain clothes and said, “works for us.”

The Differences Between Quakers and Amish

But there are very significant differences between the Amish and the Quakers. The Amish, for example, believe in separation from a fallen world. A fundamental theological understanding is to be separate. “Come out from among them and be ye separate.”

Quakers have followed William Penn’s dictate of “loving the world with weaned affections,” to be “in the world but not of it,” so Quakers have not been as separate from the world.

The Amish have a theology that is still fairly Calvinist without the pre-destination. Quakers have a theology that is more open to the possibility of understanding one’s salvation in this life. The Amish will not talk about eternal assurance or the ability to know in this life whether one is in reconciliation with God.

And quite importantly, the Amish do not allow women to speak or have authority in church. Quakers from the very beginning have always seen the spiritual equality of men and women. So if you go to an Amish worship service, which is 3 and a half hours in German, women will not speak a word, unless they’re singing a hymn. There are no women in authority, no women in leadership, and that just isn’t the case among Quakers.

There are also a variety of differences in terms of form. Quakers do not use the outward forms of baptism and communion typically, and those are very central to Anabaptist and Amish understanding. The importance of baptism as a sign of entering into the church as an adult, and the importance twice a year of the Lord’s supper, foot washing as well.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

The Quaker Practice of Surrendering the Self-Will

Marcelle Martin on the Quaker practice of surrendering the self-will and how this practice will be absolutely crucial if we are going to avoid catastrophe.

Marcelle Martin on the Quaker practice of surrendering the self-will and how this practice will be absolutely crucial if we are going to avoid catastrophe.

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Today we live in a time of crisis, and a nearness really to catastrophe on the planet that threatens the survival of the human race and all of the other species on the planet. It’s a time of great crisis — more than we know, I believe. And also a time when God is calling us to great change.

How Will We Respond to the Crises of Our Time?

My name is Marcelle Martin. I’ve got a blog where I’m sharing what I’ve been learning from the first Quakers — the amazing discoveries they made and how people are living out that spiritual journey in our time.

I think that everything we need in order to face the challenges and the crisis in our time are within us, and we need to bring it out because every person on the planet has a piece of that, can do God’s work in helping to restore the planet and to make this a place where love and peace prevail. But we have to change our ways. It’s a time where great, great change is needed and needed quickly, and will draw forth from us potentials that really haven’t been seen except for in extraordinary people in the past, and these are potentials that are part of everyone.

Desire and the the Will of the Self

At the very beginning of the Quaker movement, they had a very strong understanding of God’s will for us and how to live being different from the normal human will, and they discovered — first of all — the amazing presence of the divine within themselves and within everyone and within the world, but then there’s — on the other hand — the will of the small individual self who feels afraid, and because of fear has greed, and of course has natural human desires, some of which become overpowering lusts — desires for comfort, for security, for social status, and when those desires are in control, that’s what they called the “self”. And so they understood that your self-will could not be in control — that this spiritual journey was about surrendering that identity — that will — for God’s will.

It’s a process by which the ego is no longer the master of your actions, or in control. There’s something larger that’s in control.

Quaker Practice: “Give Over Thine Own Willing”

And I think that’s something that we learn every day. Every day we have opportunities to choose between our personal desires, our personal comfort, our personal security, and serving others. Bring love to others, bringing truth to others in ways that might not be comfortable to ourselves personally. Everybody has those opportunities every single day and we get practice in doing that every day.

One way that I get practice is that I’m a very shy person, I’m an introvert. I prefer to spend my time reading and writing. Talking to people is often a challenge to me, and yet what I feel called to do involves teaching and talking and leading workshops and being a public personality, and so every time I do that, in a sense, I’m surrendering to this larger purpose.

“A Different Kind of People”

None of us can actually see how we’re going to solve the big problems. In fact, most people are spending a lot of energy denying the magnitude of the problems that we face in our time. So that’s the first challenge really: to face the crises of our time, and then to learn how to let God direct us in solving the problem and becoming a different kind of people — letting those potentials that are within us become manifest.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How Quakers Can Transform The World

Noah Baker Merrill discusses sacramental living, Quaker Voluntary Service, and how our Quaker prophetic witness can transform the world.

Noah Baker Merrill discusses sacramental living, Quaker Voluntary Service, and how our Quaker prophetic witness can transform the world.

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Prophecy is about seeing the world as it is from a God’s eye perspective. It’s about looking at the world the way it is from the perspective of love and justice and the possibility that all things could be made new.

The Possibility of Every Moment

We live in a world where hope is scarce and fragile and where — as a species, as a whole community of life — there’s this sense deep at the roots that something is wrong, that something about the balance of the world is changing.

There’s this low level anxiety that surrounds us and I think a huge part of that is that we have lost a sense of the sacredness of our journey here on this planet, and I think one of the gifts for me of my journey as a Friend is that I find tools for what has been called “sacramental living” — for recognizing that in every moment there’s the possibility for the in-breaking of something beyond us.

The Heart of the Prophetic Message

Taking the condition of the world and all of the suffering and all of the injustice and all of the joy and all of possibility, and all of the reality of global climate disruption and the massive inequality that we experience as human being, and also says, “but this is not all that’s possible. Something could be different.” Ultimately, I think that’s the heart of the prophetic message: “It could be different.”

A Way of Living that Makes it Real

I think prophetic service is not just a perspective. It’s not just a word we would say, or a vision we would lift up, but its a way of living that incarnates that — that makes that real in our lives, in our families, in our workplaces that says, “how do I live in a way that’s invitational? That invites people into that possibility that something could be different?” That this — that we see every day — is not all that could be possible, and that together in communities, we could be living into that. We could find that place together.

And it sounds grand and it sounds huge and it sounds impossible to achieve, but living in our daily lives in that way, open to the invitation, is something that we hope we’re inviting people into in Quaker Voluntary Service. And I hope that when people come into a Quaker Meeting that once in a while they experience that invitational living, where we’re seeing things as they are and also reaching for what could be together.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

#Quaker Problems

This week’s Quaker video: When these four Earlham College students were standing in line for hot dogs, one of them cracked a joke about something being a “Quaker Problem”. Little did they know it would become a full-on international Quaker meme within a matter of weeks.

This week’s Quaker video: When these four Earlham College students were standing in line for hot dogs, one of them cracked a joke about something being a “Quaker Problem”. Little did they know it would become a full-on international Quaker meme within a matter of weeks.

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Taylor
If we were to awkward turtle, it would have to be like this.

Jonathan and Taylor
You don’t have arms! Get those arms out of there.

#QUAKER PROBLEMS

Taylor Satterthwaite
I’m Taylor Satterthwaite. I’m from Berea, Kentucky.

Miyoshi Gonzalez
I’m Miyoshi Gonzalez. I’m from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Anna Schonwald
I’m Anna Schonwald. I’m from Barrington, New Hampshire.

Jonathan Birkel
I’m Jonathan Birkel. I’m from Richmond, Indiana.

Taylor Satterthwaite
We were all standing in line together for hot dogs

Jonathan Birkel
(or something)

Taylor Satterthwaite
…and this was at the start of our freshman year when it was still warm and you could eat hotdogs outside. Something came up in conversation and we were talking about it and we all agreed that it was a Quaker problem.

So I found a picture of George Fox just by doing a google image search, and he was going *imitates Fox*. I figure he’s probably experiencing some kind of spiritual awakening or something. Within that night, between the three of us (I think Jonathan didn’t find out about it until a little while late) we came up with thirty to fifty of them.

Jonathan Birkel
It was kind of an amusing story. I actually found out about it the next morning. The previous Summer I had been on the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage and so we had a Facebook page for all the people who had been on that. One of my friends posted it on there, and I was like, “hmm! I should tell my friends here at Earlham about that!” It attests to the ridiculous speed at which things spread through the internet.

Taylor Satterthwaite
You can upload an image and then anyone can add a caption. It was pretty simple. I don’t know, within the week or so, there were two hundred or three hundred or something.

Jonathan Birkel
The majority of them were within the first couple of weeks. It slowed down a little bit after that.

Taylor Satterthwaite
…and people from Britain were posting them and people from my own youth group were posting them, like, “hey, look at this!”

Anna Schonwald
History teachers believing that we don’t exist is a thing that happens! It happened to me.

Jonathan Birkel
It’s kind of a stereotypical Quaker problem.

Miyoshi Gonzalez
Except there was a couple of times when peoples’ teachers thought that Quaker only live in Philadelphia.

Taylor Satterthwaite
I know that one of the first ones that we actually made on the image was, “No, not like oatmeal!” Which is also a thing.

Anna Schonwald
Oh, I think there was one about sneezing in silence. There’s definitely one about falling asleep.

Taylor Satterthwaite
One of my favorites was, “Locks too shaggy!”
“Leather jacket way squeakier than leather britches.”

Miyoshi Gonzalez
There’s definitely a few about acronyms. Like, “went to Quaker college. Don’t know all of the acronyms.”

Jonathan Birkel
“Went to Quaker college, don’t know professors’ last names”
“Ran out of space on car for bumper stickers”

Taylor Satterthwaite
“Business Meeting minutes take hours”

It’s http://www.QuakerProbs.tumblr.com
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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Can Self-Promotion Be Spirit-Led?

When I first received the call to do this work, my core values were offended. Hadn’t I already rejected the part of myself that strives for public attention? I was so attached to my humbleness that I refused to “self-promote”. Ironically, it was my pride and self-will that got in the way of my calling to publicize this ministry.

Give over thine own willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know, or to be any thing

-Isaac Pennington full quote

As Quakers, we make this fundamental, unshakeable distinction: God’s will. My will.

If we are to do the will of God, we must first let go of our own striving, our own willing. And if we are to give over our own willing, how could it ever be in good order for us to reach out for something as vain and creaturely as celebrity?

I wrote this post as a part of QVS’ synchroblog on Quakers and new media. See what other bloggers had to say here.

The Allure of Attention

I am familiar with the allure of acting out my void in public. I want the attention. I want to be seen. I want to be known. I am afraid of being passed over.
Continue reading “Can Self-Promotion Be Spirit-Led?”

Quakers and the Light

In this week’s Quaker video: What is “the Light,” and why are Quakers so excited about it?

In this week’s Quaker video: What is “the Light,” and why are Quakers so excited about it?

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A.J. Mendoza (Quaker Voluntary Service, Atlanta GA)
My first couple times in trying to center down to unprogrammed worship was a struggle. Not being raised in it at all, being raised in the Pentecostal tradition, I came into this like, “Well, I’m supposed to be listening to the light… hmmm! And this isn’t working!”

What Do Quakers Mean By the Inner Light?

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
Well, the Inner Light is also called by many different names by Quakers: the Inward Light, the Light of Christ, that of God within.

Michael Birkel (Earlham College, Richmond IN)
Early Friends got the expression from the first chapter of the gospel of John, where we find in verse 9 the phrase, “the true light, which enlightens everyone coming into the world.”

Max Carter (Guilford College, Greensboro NC)
Early Friends understood that to be the Light of Jesus Christ. It was not a metaphor, but it was the real presence of Christ within.

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
It was also called “the seed” because it represented something very small of God planted inside. The phrase “the seed” suggests that that small thing might not grow if you block it up, if you ignore it, if you have all these distractions.

Naomi Madaras (Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, Chambersburg Friends Meeting)
So it’s very much an energetic, alive thing. It’s not just this sort of light switch that flips on or off depending on whether you see it. It’s this force and a Spirit that we all get to share and get to experience together, hopefully, if we’re aware that it’s there. So it’s a process of being observant.

The Light That Guides Us

Keenan Lorenzato (Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, Dover Friends Meeting)
I guess the way for me to speak about the Light that guides us is to think about what happens when we don’t have light to guide us. So we’re fumbling around in the dark, we’re humans, we don’t have night vision. We can’t see where we’re going.

Noah Baker Merrill (Quaker Voluntary Service, Putney Friends Meeting)
One of the quotations that has always spoken to me is the instructions of an early Quaker named James Naylor who talks about those times in our lives where we feel surrounded by confusion and darkness, by a spiritual sense of being lost or being in danger.

And he says, “Art thou in the darkness? Well mind it not, for if you mind it, it will feed thee more. [It will grow in you.] But stand still and act not and wait in patience until Light arises out of darkness to lead thee.”

And that has been my experience. That there is a power and a life that rises in those places of darkness in our lives if we can wait and open to it.

The Light That Illuminates

Michael Birkel (Earlham College, Richmond IN)
And so the Light is that presence of God that illuminates for us. It might show us a way forward. It might embrace us and welcome us into the inward life.

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
It’s experienced as an inward kind of illumination that shows you things. It shows you—oftentimes first of all—what is not of the Light or what is blocking the Light.

Michael Birkel (Earlham College, Richmond IN)
The Light was not simply a cozy fire to warm ourselves with on a wintry day. The Light was a beacon and this beacon spread its light over all those aspects of ourselves that we might prefer to admit weren’t there. The Light reveals to us—among other things—our own capacity to do terrible things, to do great harm in this world. And so the Light was powerful but it was also terrifying.

Marcelle Martin (AWholeHeart.com, Richmond IN)
And then it shows you God’s truth or God’s way. What the Light is in its fullness, which is love and truth and peace and unity, justice, mercy, all of those wonderful attributes that we know come from God and then it shows you how God wants you to live, according to the Light, so that those qualities of God can be manifest in society.

Holding Someone in the Light

Charlotte Cloyd (Guilford College, Future Quaker Voluntary Service Volunteer)
Holding someone in the Light, for me, means that I’m directing my positive energy towards the person that is in need of support and love.

Trenor Colby (Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, Dover Friends Meeting)
Last year my friend passed away and it was kind of difficult for me to share that with everybody here but I did and I received just a wonderful warm feeling from everybody. There was a lot less sense of pity than there was just, “I’m here for you.” Just kind of giving your energy towards somebody and being present. I think that’s when I was held in the Light the most, because I asked for that help from the community here.

A.J. Mendoza (Quaker Voluntary Service, Atlanta GA)
And that is so freeing! There’s not an authority that I need to appeal to or try to seek from somebody else. It’s here and it’s there and it’s in all of us, together. Seeking my piece of that is incredible. But being in a community that is seeking that same thing: amazing. What a thing to sit down and do every week. It gets me so excited. The Light, goodness gracious….

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Why Quakers Don’t Take Communion

Why don’t Quakers take communion? Why don’t they baptize? Early Quakers believed that the church was full of empty forms, and they sought the real substance of being filled by the Holy Spirit. Quaker professor Michael Birkel of Earlham College explains.

Why don’t Quakers take communion? Why don’t they baptize? Early Quakers believed that the church was full of empty forms, and they sought the real substance of being filled by the Holy Spirit. Quaker professor Michael Birkel of Earlham College explains.

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There’s a phrase that goes through both the gospel of Luke and its sequel, the Book of the Acts, and that phrase is, “being filled with the Spirit.” “Filled with the Holy Spirit.”

There are moments in stories in that book where they say, “and so-and-so, being filled with the Spirit, goes off and does something wonderful.” And Early Quakers I think felt that they themselves were filled with that same Spirit. So it was really that experience. Some of it was structure and so forth – or lack thereof – but I think the fundamental thing was that experience of being filled and led by the Holy Spirit.

Early Quakers yearned for a revival of primitive Christianity because – in their experience – the life of the established church around them was one of form without substance. You could have a ritual, you could have a program, you could have a structure, but it could be there with no electricity running through the wires.

So imagine going to a church service. Ok, you’re supposed to say some prayers whether those prayers speak what you’re feeling at that moment or not. You’re supposed to recite a creed that contains someone else’s theological reflections that you may or may not agree with. You’re supposed to sing some hymns. You know, there’s the old joke, “why aren’t Quaker good at singing hymns?” “Because they’re always looking ahead to see whether or not they agree with the words.” Well that’s where that comes from.

You know, you can force someone in a sense – in that circumstance – to sing something that is dishonest for them. And then you listen to a sermon and a good puritan sermon has been crafted for days by the preacher who has given a lot of thought to it. But if it’s all up in your head but not in your heart – if it’s all in your book but it’s not led by an immediate sense of Divine presence, it’s form without substance.

The same thing for the sacraments – there was a lot of debate going on about communion and about baptism – what they ought to look like, how such rituals should be performed, what the theological and spiritual meaning of these experiences ought to be. If communion meant union with God, you can have the formal elements of communion but no real unity, no sense of union with God happening.

And so form without substance was their experience of the organized churches and they said, “we’re going to get together and let the Spirit guide us, and that may lead us in radical directions.” Like, even women ministering, which was shocking. Perhaps one of the most shocking parts of their message to those around them.
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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How Do Quakers Read the Bible?

Quakers believe that the real way that you understand what the Bible has to say to you is to let the words be illuminated. Paul Buckley explains.

Quakers believe that the real way that you understand what the Bible has to say to you is to let the words be illuminated. Paul Buckley explains.

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How Do Quakers Read the Bible?
Paul Buckley

A lot of Quakers don’t. I actually asked this question of a dozen/fifteen different Quakers from across the spectrum: from evangelical Quaker pastors to a woman who describes herself as a lesbian-feminist bible believing Christian, activists and people who are more theologically based. I asked them exactly that question: how do Quakers read the Bible?

The result is a book. Gotta plug the book.

–The Quaker Bible Reader– http://www.quakerbooks.org/the_quaker…

Each one of them gave a very different answer to the question on some level, but if you looked at all the essays that they produced — as a whole — you find that there is really an answer to that question, how do Quakers read the bible, and that is: Quakers read the Bible under the immediate direction of the holy Spirit.
We may be scholars. We may know a lot about exegesis and the history of biblical criticism or we may not. But in each of the answers that I got — from Evangelical to Liberal — it was very clear that the real way that you understand what the Bible has to say to you as a Quaker, as an individual, is to let the words be illuminated. Let that inward Light light up the text that you’re looking at. Let the holy Spirit speak to you, and to listen for that voice of God underneath the words.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Coming Out As Gay in Kenya

Quaker Speak: Justimore Musombi talks about being a Gay Christian Pastor in Kenya, homosexuality in Africa, and coming out as gay in Kenya.

Quaker Speak: Justimore Musombi talks about being a Gay Christian Pastor in Kenya, homosexuality in Africa, and coming out as gay in Kenya.

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I’m looking for a new family honestly, because my family has disregarded me. They did a ceremony in the African context of when you are gay or you commit suicide, they perform a certain ritual that people don’t want to associate themselves with you. To me, they performed it. They burned my clothes. They destroyed my things. They have sold my commercial plots in town. Some of the things I have bought. They have sold my things, meaning they don’t want to associate themselves with me.

I don’t have family in Kenya. I don’t have support in Kenya. I don’t have friends in Kenya.

Being Gay in Kenya
The law of Kenya is against homosexuality. If you are gay and found having sex with a person of the same gender you are jailed for 14 years. People need to understand, you know, what we mean by sexual preference and sexual orientation. I think that is the big thing that Africans are struggling with. So if they come to the fullness of understanding what is sexual preference and what is sexual orientation I think they can distinguish that and not demonize people and I think it is just homophobic, you know.

Being brought from where—I just don’t know because people say it is a Western thing, but honestly speaking it’s not a Western thing because I have done research and I found out that in the African context we have some terms that they used to refer to people of the same sex having sex—and so it is something buried down that they don’t want to bring it up. And yet it is there.

Coming Out
When I came out, close friends of mine heard about my coming out and they demonized it. They started calling me—that I am evil, I am possessed—and they treat me as someone who is suffering from mental illness.

“Praying for God to lift this curse”
I can say that what Paul says, “a thorn in the flesh,” something that disturbed me for many years and so I wanted this thing to come out. But it didn’t come out. It is something that I have grown up with my entire life. The first time that I discovered that I was gay it was far away in high school. I was being attracted to men sexually—those who dress well and they look nice. It was just me.

I would go to people to ask, “I have these feelings about my sexual desires. How am I going to do it?” Most of the time people advised me to pray and fast because they were telling me that it is a demon. And so I believed maybe, you know, people who are heterosexual and they engage themselves into gay sex: it is an abomination. It is a curse.

So I was praying God to lift this curse away from me.

Reconciling
So it has been so difficult for me to reconcile my faith, to reconcile my culture, and my sexual orientation. People refer me to books like Leviticus: “It is wrong for people to be together, have sex with the same gender,” and then they quote so much what Paul said. But you know, they don’t look into the culture of that time. The context and the content.

Why did Paul say this? Why did the writer of Leviticus write this? They take the scriptures literally the way it is and they want to apply it. Maybe it was that time, it is not this time.

Can’t Go Home
So right now I am operating as a refugee. Not on student status, but student vis-a-vis refugee. So I can’t assure you I will be going home right now, but I do love my country and I want to go back and support my country. But I have no means of going back because of the fear that I have for my life. Sort of like, I have shifted my minds to be here and to look for the Quaker organization and work with the Quaker church to support me and to be there.

Hakuna Mungu kama wewe

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Paulette Meier: Quaker Faith in Song

Quaker Speak: Paulette Meier sings songs from early Quaker Quotes. The act of creating music from Quaker spiritual writings helped Paulette through a difficult time in her life. These songs are unlike anything you’ve ever heard.

Quaker Speak: Paulette Meier sings songs from early Quaker Quotes. The act of creating music from Quaker spiritual writings helped Paulette through a difficult time in her life. These songs are unlike anything you’ve ever heard.

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“Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit, from thy own thoughts. Then thou wilt feel the principle of God, to turn thy mind to the Lord God. Whereby thou wilt receive God’s strength and love from whence life comes.”

I’d had an intense prayer experience at Pendle Hill where I clearly got the message that I had a role to play in spreading knowledge of the Quaker faith because it’s so little-known. The message was, “you have a role to play” and that it’s important right now, that the Quaker faith has important things for the world.

“Whereby thou wilt receive God’s strength to allay all blustering storms and tempest”

My name is Paulette Meier and I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we’re here at my meeting house, Community Friends Meeting in Cincinnati.

I was the artist in residence at the Quaker retreat center outside of Philadelphia, at Pendle Hill, where I had a chance to delve more deeply into the Early Quaker history and writings. The next year I went back to Philadelphia and was sojourning among Friends. It was challenging. I wanted to get my children’s music out there and wanted to learn more about Quaker history and be in Philadelphia in the “Quaker Mecca” but it was challenging for me and my spirits sank a lot, struggling with some isolation feelings even there.

So one day I picked up this quote from George Fox and said “I need to internalize this message” and the only way I know to memorize things is to put them to song, so I just ended up singing it.

“Art thou in the darkness? Mind it not, for if thou dost it will feed thee more, but stand still and act not and wait in patience.”
I was really struck by the wisdom in these texts and how relevant they are today.
Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plainsong is a collection of 21 Quaker Quotations that I happened to put to melody. After I’d compiled this collection of quotations, I realized that there was a group of 4 themes in them and they seemed to relate to what I see as the process of Quaker spiritual practice.

Centering

“Ye have no time but this present time. Yet have no time but this present time”

The first one is all about centering and entering into the stillness. Rex Ambler, this theologian from England said—in a class I took at Pendle Hill—that Fox didn’t tell people what to believe. He was very unusual at the time in that. He told people what to do. It was directives about being still and letting go of thoughts and letting go of preoccupations and centering. So that’s the first theme: how to get there.

Experience

“When we should see the great creator stare us in the face.”

Early Quakers talked so frequently about entering into the Kingdom of Heaven within. They took that quote from Jesus, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” When one arrives at that deep, centered place, one experiences deep peace, deep healing, restoration into the image of the divine, and love—the eternal Christ spirit, which is love. That’s the second theme.

Community

“Our life is tenderness and bearing with each other and forgiving one another.”

That meeting in silence together fostered a tenderness for each other. Like the Early Christians I think experienced this indwelling of Spirit and this deep connection with each other that seemed to bring home this awareness that there’s that of God in everyone. It’s so much easier to love when one is living in that awareness.

Outward Witness

“May we look upon our treasure and try to discover whether the seeds of war are nourished by these our possessions.”

I think a lot of religious traditions may invite one into this centered space of refreshment and everything, but I think the thing that I loved about Quaker faith is that one can be centered but experience promptings of the Spirit to undertake action in the world and to witness to truth in the world.

I think this theme of outward witness is really so important to Quaker spiritual practice and listening for where and how we are to do that outer witness in the world is really important.

“We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love, and unity. It is our desire that others feet may walk in the same. We do deny and bear our testimony against all strife and wars and contentions”

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

James Nayler – “Art Thou in the Darkness?” (Sung by Paulette Meier)

A quote by early Quaker James Nayler, sung by Paulette Meier.

A quote by early Quaker James Nayler, sung by Paulette Meier.

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Art thou in darkness? Mind it not, for if thou dost it will feed thee more. But stand still, and act not, and wait in patience, till Light arises out of Darkness and leads thee. James Nayler (1659)

James Nayler (or Naylor) (1616–1660) was an English Quaker leader. He is among the members of the Valiant Sixty, a group of early Quaker preachers and missionaries. At the peak of his career, he preached against enclosure and the slave trade.[1] In 1656, Nayler achieved national notoriety when he reenacted Christ’s entry into Jerusalem by entering Bristol on a donkey. He was imprisoned and charged with blasphemy.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

George Fox – “Be Still and Cool” (Sung by Paulette Meier)

A quote by early Quaker George Fox, sung by Paulette Meier.

A quote by early Quaker George Fox, sung by Paulette Meier.

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Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit, from thy own thoughts. Then thou wilt feel the principle of God, to turn thy mind to the Lord God, whereby thou wilt receive Gods strength and power from whence life comes, whereby thou wilt receive Gods strength to allay all blustering, storms, and tempests. George Fox (1658)

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

Why Are Quakers Pacifists?

Swarthmore College professor George Lakey in this week’s Quaker Speak on why Quakers are nonviolent, pacifism and nonviolence (also known as nonviolent action). We talked with George Lakey about Quakers’ call to struggle, the myth that violence works, and how that’s all changing.

Swarthmore College professor George Lakey in this week’s Quaker Speak on why Quakers are nonviolent, pacifism and nonviolence (also known as nonviolent action). We talked with George Lakey about Quakers’ call to struggle, the myth that violence works, and how that’s all changing.

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Fox said that we do not war with outward weapons. Our understanding of Jesus is he will not ask us to do outward weapons. We don’t understand a holy Spirit that one minute says “be peaceful” and the next minute, “Go out and kill a lot of people.”

We don’t understand that kind of Spirit. The Spirit we experience is one that is consistent and wants us to not war with outward weapons.

I’m George Lakey, Philadelphia Quaker.

We’re going through a paradigm change right now. It’s something that I didn’t know if I would ever live to see because the paradigm that says, “when push comes to shove, you have to use violence,” is so tough and it’s been around for tens of thousands of years. It seems as obvious as the paradigm once was that the Earth was flat. Everybody knows the Earth is flat, right? Well, not any longer.

But that’s how toughly in-built the paradigm is that violence is what needs to be used when we’re going to really exert power and do humanitarian interventions or anything we want to do. “When it’s tough we have to use violence.” But that’s shifting now.

Quakers understood it 350 years ago because it was what they felt naturally you do when the spirit is in you saying, “love people and do what’s right. Set up the conditions under which it is easier to do right and stop oppressing each other.” The practical dimension of Quakers was expressed through nonviolent struggle.

Struggle, mind you. Not everyone responds in that way. Some people say “spirituality means I should avoid struggle.” But for Early Quakers, the Spirit wanted us to go out and do struggle. And so Quakers would pick fights.

Quakers would go into churches for example, and after a preacher had preached something that they felt like was really wrong, they would stand up and contradict the preacher even though that meant that it was pretty likely that they would be grabbed by the parishioners nearby and dragged out of the church and beaten up just outside the church. But they would do that, that’s an example of nonviolent struggle.

It’s because, “yes we make war with inward weapons”, and they even called themselves people who were struggling for the Lamb’s war. They were fighting the Lamb’s war. So this was a warrior outfit, these 17th century Quakers, who were fighting with nonviolent means.

There’s a new scholarly book [“Why Civil Resistance Works” by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan] that the hardboiled political scientists who wrote it are getting enormous credit for. It describes in ways that political scientists and hardboiled realists, governance people, are taking deeply seriously because the book describes over 300 struggles in which regime change has been the issue: overthrowing governments or getting out from under an empire or stopping an occupation — big stuff. In this book, they prove that the movements that chose nonviolent means were twice as effective as the movements that chose violent means.

To anyone who is pragmatic of mind, this is news. This is extremely important. So it’s not only seeing the Egyptians overthrow Mubarak, or seeing the Tunisians overthrow their dictator or the other kinds of recent experiences that we’ve seen, but it’s also the scholarship—which is important in terms of idea formation—is beginning to catch up with this idea of nonviolent struggle.

It’s just believing that the Earth was flat. You can’t really hold it against people for believing that the Earth was flat. At a certain time in history, everybody knows that the Earth was flat. And at this time in history, most people just know that violence is the only way to do things when it’s tough. However, the excitement for me is there have been sufficient breakthroughs so that now an opening may exist. And maybe some adventurous person watching this will decide to open themselves to new possibilities.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

How Quakerism Began

Quaker Speak: Max Carter shares the story of George Fox, a Quaker who went seeking for spiritual answers and found them not in a church, but within. Max is a professor at Guilford College.

The first QuakerSpeak video ever! In 2012 I was gearing up to launch a Quaker youtube channel and talked with my old friend and professor Max Carter in the hut at Guilford College about how this whole Quakerism thing got started. Thanks Max!

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Quakerism started as part of the English Civil war period, 1640s. There were a variety of movements during the civil war period that were seeking address some of the disparities in English Societies: ecclesiastical, political, economic. Some of those groups were Diggers, Levellers, Muggletonians, 5th Monarchists, Seekers groups.

Some that were trying to seek reform within the church (the Puritans), some who had given up on the Church as a dead corpse and left and started their own chapels or conventicles, and Quakerism emerged out of that chaotic social, political, religious time.

George Fox was one of the leaders of that movement but he wasn’t alone in that. He has become a major figure in understanding the origins of Quakerism.
He became tired of what he saw as hypocrisy in the church of his youth and about the age of 19 he left the church and started wandering about seeking a direct spiritual experience that spoke to his condition and he didn’t find it in any of the outward forms, didn’t find it in any of the the clergy of the time, didn’t find it in other authorities.

In 1647 he had an experience in which he heard a voice telling him, “there is One, even Christ Jesus who can speak to thy condition.”

“And when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.”

Which, in contemporary expressions would probably be: what he was seeking outside of himself as authority, he found available to himself within.

He then started sharing that message: that what you’re seeking outside of yourself is available inside of yourself, and you can turn to that inward teacher, that prophet, priest, redeemer, lord within and be led into salvation and truth.

Quakerism spread from the initial insights of Fox and others who came out of this gumbo of seeking reform in the church of England in the 1640s and 50s initially by word of mouth. They would share their experience. Fox, for example, would go about the countryside sharing his understanding of the fact that Christ had come to teach the people directly, to direct them inwardly to God, to Christ their teacher and priest.

Sometimes he would speak to larger gatherings, but it wasn’t until about 1652 that there were larger numbers of people who came to hear his message. Those folk then shared the message with others. Pretty soon they started going out two by two, sharing the gospel message and people came into convincement.

By the time Fox died in 1691 there were some 50,000 Quakers so in 40 or 50 years it spread, much of that coming out of that social milieu of protest and the seeking of reform and it really was one by one by one.

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org

The Faithfulness Lecture

Quaker Speak: Traci Hjelt Sullivan on Quaker faithfulness. When Traci gets a nudge to give vocal ministry, sometimes she feels resistant. That’s when it is time for “The Faithfulness Lecture”.

Quaker Speak: Traci Hjelt Sullivan on Quaker faithfulness. When Traci gets a nudge to give vocal ministry, sometimes she feels resistant. That’s when it is time for “The Faithfulness Lecture”.

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For me faithfulness is a very key element of Quakerism, perhaps the key element of Quakerism. And the hard part about faithfulness is it actually takes courage. We wouldn’t talk about it unless it took some work.

There’s many stories in my life about encountering that struggle to be faithful. There was a big one pretty early in my religious life. I had been worshiping regularly in a Meeting for maybe 3 or 4 years and I had been married about a year before and I went to someone else’s wedding and it was a big wedding.

(In a Quaker Wedding, those present are invited to stand and speak if they feel led. This is called “spoken ministry.”)

The other thing you should know is that I had given spoken ministry before but I believe I had never given ministry in song. At this wedding I had this little nudge to sing the song that had been sung at our wedding, and I thought, “Nah, I just have an association between weddings and that song. Ok.”

And the nudge came back and I said, “I’m not going to stand up in front of all these people and sing that song!”

And then the nudge came back again and I said, “I do not know all the words to that song!”

But my husband was sitting next to me and I knew he had memorized all the words to that song.

So it came back again. And finally I had to give myself a lecture and I have since named this. It is: “The Faithfulness Lecture.” And the faithfulness lecture goes something like this:

“Do you believe in this religion or not? If you do, it does not matter whether you will be on tune, whether you get the words right, whether people will hear you, whether they approve of this message. If you are supposed to give this message, give it.”

And really, I knew I was supposed to give the message. I had all those signs: it came back and back and back, I was having this quaking feeling. I was supposed to give this message.

So I leaned over and I got the words from my husband and I stood up and I screwed my eyes tight and I grabbed the bench in front of me and I sang the song. And, as so often happens when there’s singing ministry, a few other people sang with me so there was this wonderful sense of support.

But I have had many occasions since when I have had that nudge to speak or act and especially in Meeting for Worship when I’m feeling kind of resistant but its really clear I’m supposed to give, sometimes I just say to myself, “The Faithfulness Lecture” and that’s all I need. I screw up my eyes closed and I stand up and I do what I’m supposed to do.

Tags: Traci Hjelt Sullivan, Friends General Conference, Quaker Worship, Quaker Wedding, Vocal Ministry, Singing Ministry, Jon Watts, Friends Journal, QuakerSpeak, Quaker Voluntary Service, Religious Society of Friends, Max Carter, Quakerism

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It has been an honor to serve Friends as the founder and director of QuakerSpeak. Now I am pleased to announce my next endeavor, a Quaker media project for the modern era. Find out more at TheeQuaker.org