quakers - Re: What is consensus?

Steve Kinney admin at pilobilus.net
Tue Dec 12 19:49:32 PST 2017



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)







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