On 12/12/2017 08:40 PM, juan wrote:
got a few more comments about quakers but Ill start with this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_of_drugs
"in 1874 the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade was formed in England by Quakers led by the Rev. Frederick Storrs-Turner."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Suppression_of_the_Opium_Trade
Early Friends were opposed to recreational drugs of any kind. But in modern times, I have attended "meeting for drinking with a concern for business" and nobody noticed it was funny until I pointed that out. Ya see, the local Meeting's outreach committee reserved a table for a meeting at a restaurant, but the table was not ready when we showed up so we were seated at the bar. Lucky me, they had Rolling Rock in stock. Friends have always had their say on social and political issues. George Fox sailed to the West Indies to preach against the evils of slavery, and John Woolman is credited as one of the first major American abolitionists. Quakers, Mennonites and their ilk who refused to serve in World War II were sent to prison with black radicals who also refused to serve (history seems to have forgotten them), and the resulting cross fertilization of ideas and methods help shape the later Civil Rights movement we are told so many pretty lies about today, starting with the one about how it succeeded and is over and done with. Every town of any size named a street after MLK Jr., what more do "those people" want?! During the Vietnam War, thousands of draftees who knew the score refused to serve and were /not/ jailed, thanks to laws lobbied for by Quakers and etc., and help from draft counselors who themselves were mostly Quakers. I seem to recall that /five/ people who had assistance from NIBSCO were successfully prosecuted as draft dodgers during that war; the rest just sat out the war in the U.S., living their otherwise normal lives. I got my NIBSCO / CCW Draft Counselor training back during the Bush II Administration, when it looked possible that the draft might get started back up. Richard Nixon was a "birthright Friend" but that means nothing unless one also becomes a "convinced Friend," which he most emphatically did not. Joan Baez is still a Friend, although she never talks about that in public because she doesn't want to disrupt her Meeting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_%28United_States%29
"Prohibition was supported by the dries, primarily pietistic Protestant denominations that included Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, New School Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Quakers, and Scandinavian Lutherans,"
Any time one sees Friends misidentified as "Protestant" check to see what part of the world the "Quakers" in question came from. If the American Midwest (and today, sub-Saharan Africa), they are not what George Fox would have called Friends: Long story short, Protestants managed to co-opt the Quaker name and some of its outward appearances during the first big western expansion into the Ohio River Valley and etc. They managed this by virtue of massively outnumbering the Friends who went west and built the first schools, which were also the first Meeting Houses (and later, so-called Quaker "churches") in the new farm towns on what was then the Western Frontier. The descendants of these congregations are now called "Conservative Friends," and yes they are Protestants - complete with hireling ministers, programmed religious services, right-wing political commitments, gender discrimination written into their policy docs, and etc. As individuals most are very nice people, I prefer their company to any other Protestant denomination I can name. But as an organization it's fatally flawed, and many Yearly Meetings in the U.S. have formally disaffiliated themselves from the "Conservative" national body, Friends United Meeting. Just now my own Yearly Meeting is supporting efforts to educate the African congregations started by FUM "Protestant Quaker" missionaries, on the actual history and religious practice of Friends. Reports from the field indicate very enthusiastic uptake, perhaps in large part because the typical problems in African social politics and Protestant social politics are a good match and potentate each other, reliably creating worst case outcomes. What I call "real" Quaker practice provides cognitive and organizational tools that can be applied to attack and solve those problems... "on a good day, all else being equal." :o)