A Friendly Letter Issue Number Seventy-Nine ISSN #0739-5418 Tenth Month, 1987

Dear Friend.

A Quaker timebomb is ticking away script, and if they are wise they will in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the Eerd- set to work very soon to shore up their mans Publishing Co. It is a manuscript attenuated lifelines among Friends; AFSC for a book, whose working title is Peace will probably need them before this and Revolution: the ~oral Crisis of loo~ing storm blows over. Aterican Pacifist. It is set to go off next spring, probably in Fourth Month. Turning from such outward tempests to a more personal and internal one, The book is by by Guenter Lewy, a note that our last two issues have ar- retired political scientist who taught rived later than usual. In Eighth for many years at the University of Month, some postal glitch slowed it up; Massachusetts. The book examines the it even took over two weeks to get a political evolution of four major peace copy three miles from the post office to groups during and after the . my house. But last month's letter was The longest chapter in Lewy's book is delayed when an infection landed me in the Quaker timebomb: it deals with the the hospital just as it was set to be American Friends Service Committee. mailed. This latest bout with illness hardly compares with the trauma des- Lewy's politics are of a very cribed in AFL 164, and it seems to be behind me now. But it was disruptive conservative, Cold War variety, which I nonetheless, for thee and me alike. definitely don't share. But his schol- arship is solid; and working from the Finally, here is an item to file AFSC's own archives, he raises very under Of Joan disturbing questions about its perfor- Friendly Signs the Tiaes: mance during Vietnam and afterward. Baez, whose new book was reviewed in AFL#77, was interviewed in the 11/5/87 An earlier outside critique of 20th anniversary issue of Rolling Stone AFSC, in a 1979 HeN Re ublic article, aga:ine. While explaining what keeps caused an uproar among Friends that her going these days, she affirmed her lasted for months. r believe Lewy's Quakerism twice in two pages. By con- book offers a more serious challenge trast, as a cover subject of Christiani- than the 1979 article did, because Lewy ty Today's 9/18 issue, popular evangeli- cal Quaker writer Richard Foster defend- is a serious scholar and Eerdmans a highly respected publisher. Thus I ed his theology for several pages expect that the fallout from it will against charges of "New Age"-ism, with- out mentioning Quakerism even once. likely be more serious than in 1979.

When faced with such earlier cri- Yours in the Light, tiques, the AFSC has tended to ignore or play them down, or make only a token response. I doubt whether such a stra- ~~ Chuck Fager tegy will work this time. Top AFSC staffers have been shown Lewy's manu-

Copyright (cl 1987 by C. Fager. .Subscr'~pt'~ons 513 •95/yr.: Canada, S16; elsewhere S20 QUAKER EVAN6ELISM--AN EVAN6ELICAL EXCLUSIVE?

It would be very easy to take potshots The list could be longer, but I will at the International Friends Conference on stop there. Already It s enough to enable a Evangelism. Too easy, in fact. liberal Friend to dismiss or ignore the con- ference. It won't be dismissed or ignored In case you haven't been following it! here, but neither will this list of shor the International Friends Conference on Evan- comings be pressed very hard. That's n~_ gelism is about to get underway. It is spon- because these concerns have no merit, because sored by the Evangelical Friends Alliance, they do. It is rather that when they come and most of the organizational work has been from a liberal Quaker vantage point, such done fro I the Evangelical Friends Church- complaints have serious credibility problems. Easte Region office in Ohio. The confer- Let me explain why by way of an example: c~ce n fro 11/ to 11111, at a hotel G e~e~~:a :.,.. About LbO Friends are In late 1984, I visited the Quaker mis- re;:s:er::. :. ~~- atoL: alf are co ing sion to the Mowa Indians in southern Alaba- .r- ~- -'r.,:::;::,-er :.=.~ :; E 1.5.. ainlv malsee AFL #45). I liked the work being done there by Phil and Lee Herr, for the Asso- gati,erl ~ s t ,e e is • esus Chrlst Is Lord", ciated Committee of Friends on Indian Af- and its goal is to enhance the missionary fairs. Yet some of these same questions efforts of the various national groups. occurred to me then, not least the one about the specific Quaker character of the Mowa Given these objectives~ the conference project. But on reflection, there were two crogra is preolctable: Large group worshlp ain reasons why these concerns did not seem : ice a av feat rl g ajor addresses: work- worth dwelling on in my report. They were: s ops on various aspects o. the evangelical Christian essage, nuts-and-bolts sessions on The Advantage of Being There preaching, how-tos on "church planting" and other forms of missionary work. First, given the alternatives in the area--mainly exploitation by semiliterate A List of Possible Complaints holiness preachers, many of whom would make Jim and Tammy Bakker look honest by compa- And as I say, the Conference is a very ison--even the most evangelical kind easy target for criticism, especially from a Quakerism, presented with integrity, was a liberal Quaker perspective like mine. Here great improvement. Secondly and most impor- is an opening list of possible objections: tant, if the Herrs' theology differed from mine, well! they had one big advantage in any • Start with the fact that while billed debate I might start: they were there, on the as a ter ational gat ering, the planning scene, doing the work; I ~jasn't. a~c ~roara co I :ees are ade up entirely ;) ericans. These same considerations, especially the second, come to mind again when I ponder • Then one could note that of twelve possible criticisms of the International major addresses at the Conference, only one Friends Conference on Evangelism. Certainly is to be delivered by a woman; moreover, it exhibits the limitations of its sponsors ~ erE are fe wo e on the progra and selec- strain of Quakerismlyet to be fair, it shows :io- co it:ees, F-.1"': er or2. tie ain eve- some openness, too: Philadelphia YM's Sam -i-g s""e=. er fer :~2 22' is a no ,-Friend. Caldwell and the AFSC's Dan Seeger will be leading workshops on "Quaker distinctives"); • o_ice a.so that t e conference will but to me it has a commanding rebuttal to gat er in a region long torn by civil and liberal critics in the simple fact we are not International strife, yet one looks in vain planning an International liberal Friends for any mention of the phrase "Quaker Peace Conference on Evangelism(though we would Testimony." For that matter the words probably call it Outreach). Indeed, the very "peace," "justice" and "human rights" are idea would probably precipitate a crisis in likewise found nowhere in the program. any liberal body where it was raised.

* With no mention of Testimonies! Quaker For the embarrassing truth is that process, or silent worship! one is bound to liberal American Friends talk a lot about ask just how recognizably Quaker is the universalist aspects of Quaker faith lana missionary work being nurtured here, as rightly so, I think); but most of the time we distinct from just another minor variety of act as if it were mainly a family, or at best generic evangelical empire building. a neighborhood affair. To be sure, many of us enjoy attending international Quaker con- Yet these Quietist scruples are not the ferences which bring together Friends of whole story, it seems to me, but only the different nationalities and traditions. But best part of it. Much of the rest of our we do so while evidently managing to ignore reluctance comes down, I believe, to little the fact that it is because some Friends have more than a kind of elitism that is in part een dedicated to mission-ary evangelism the "peculiar people" idea gone decadent and that there are these other Friends to have in part no more than parochial suburban international conferences with. (And for snobbery. In this setting the oft-cited that matter, there are American Friends only phrase might more accurately be restated be-cause British once felt compelled thus: .The best sort of Quakers (Ia.ely ours) to pursue "foreign" missions .••. ) don't stoop to proselytize ••

When this topic has come up in liberal Of course, we do "share our faith" one- Quaker circles in my hearin~, it hasn't been to-one, and indeed many liberal yearly meet- long before someone, usually an older, birth- tings are growing more rapidly than many right Friend says, "Yes, but remember, evangelical meetings(see AFL#57 for data on 'Friends do not proselytize.'Y This phrase is this trend). But we are growing almost ex- cited with clear quotation marks, as if taken clusively among people just like us; indeed, from Holy Writ, straight out of the one of our favorite pasttimes is to bewail Disci lile, George Fox or Paul. This despite the homogeneous character of our meetings. :-e ;~~t -ia a'ter no little searching, I ~a e not found it in any Faith and Practice, To bewail it, yes, but certainly not to and it is certainly contrary to everything do anything about it. Which is hardly sur- Fox(or Paul) ever did or said. Yet it is not prlslng, because if actually tried to demon- only repeated, it hangs over most liberal strate the supposedly universal character of Quaker bodies as a mostly unspoken but essen- our faith by attempting to gather people to tially unshakable principle of operation. in a drastically different cultural back- ground, we would be stepping willy-nilly Good Reasons For Doing Nothing? into, good grief, lissiolary evalgelis •• And we couldn't do that because, you see, Why? Why this dee~ly-ingrained resis- "Friends don't proselytize." Jnce to what the first generation of Friends took for granted? My suspicions are that one Glimmers of repentance? part of it goes back to the generation after Fox, the one which came to maturity just as Needless to say, this mishmash of histo- the Society achieved the legal toleration it ry and hypocrisy is embarrassing to me, as I had struggled and suffered so long for. think it should be to most thoughtful liberal This was when, the historians say, the Socie- Friends, especially the majority of us who ty changed from a aoveaent out to conquer the are convinced. This is so not least because world into one sect among others. These I believe that if we were ever to sit down Friends settled into Quietism, more devoted and actually think about our kind of Quaker- to guarding their children and upholding ism as something we ought to share widely, we :-;::-.:-:. :E5:: c-ie:------~ ~. ~ ere could develop our own approach to mission r~:.:. t rning into peculiarities--than work. It would differ markedly from that of ~:reading the gospel of the Light of Christ. other groups no doubt, even while acknowledg- ing our debt to their example. There are a There is much to respect and cherish few, a very few glimmers of such an approach: about that era of Quakerism, and the The concern of Janet Minshall of dwindling band of Conservative Quakers who Meeting to work with women in Kenya is one, are its living monument. Its emphasis on and the project being developed by alumni of respecting the invisible workings of the the World Gathering of Young Friends to put Spirit, and its doubts about the "creaturely" meetings on different continents in meaning- nature of organized missionary activity, as ful touch with each other is another. well as the tendency for Quaker identity to get Jost in larger "cooperatove efforts" But these are only glimmers. For the deserve to be taken seriously. Unfortunate- most part, American liberal Quakerism remains y, the near-disappearance of Conservative mired in its parochialism. And this leaves ,roups undercuts the force of these concerns; any liberal criticisms of the Evangelical if the Quietist way leads only to the conference in Guatemala, however theoretic- cemet~ry, those who want Quakerism to survive ally sound, carrying little force against the may have to be forgiven some compromises. sheer fact that they, at least, are there. 8NOI88IN H3JlV!1CJ,10 X:JV'l aHtL aNV --8NOI88IN H3JlV!1CJ,10 a!1CJI;EIH:J V : aaI8NI

6((' 'a. 6 40.nlt{:) Sl'IVd

O'Yd

THIS HONTH IN QUAKER HISTORY

a e 1956. Vi i~la as i. volved l~ lat as called - assi\e resistance- not directly involved in any desegrega- to sc 001 desegregatIon. Much of Its tion lawsuits, but he was a longtime effort was aimed at the NAACP, which had NAACP supporter, and a staunch civil filed several suits against all-white libertarian. They had called him first schooling. In 8i1956 the legislature the month before, and were stunned when created a special investigative commit- he quietly defied them. tee, which launched a state-sanctioned witchhunt, travelling around the state So in Tenth Month, the Committe interrogating and intimidating as many called him again, and again he refused, integration supporters as it could find. stating in part that "my position is consistent, I believe, with the ancient Nearly a hundred citizens underwent testimony of the Religious Society of closed-door grilling by the committee, Friends upholding the rights of the and while many protested its blatant individual against the tyranny of denial of their civil liberties, none government." The committee, unimpress- actuallY refused to testify. ed, tooK David to court the next week, where he was found guilty of contempt, None, that is, but one: In fined $100 dollars and given a lO-day 10i1957, the committee summoned a Quaker jail sentence. The u.S. Supreme Court printer na!'led David Scull. Scull was later vindicated his defiance.

QlJAKER CHUCKLES ftati g It Perfectly Clear Grounds for DisoNn.ent, .2

"What do you mean," insisted the Or was it this couple's young son, Hicksite, "that we liberal Friends don't several years later, who was coming in believe in Jesus? Of course we do. we from the garden when his mother asked believe he came to separate the chic if he had dug that new potato and he from t~e gauche." answered, "Sure, mom. This spud's for thee." Grounds for DisoNn.ent, '1 This Is No Joke What did the shy Friend say when he came courting bearing a newly-blossoming hope Friends will consider rose for his plain-dressed lady love? sending gift subscriptions to A Friendly ~Ihat else but: Letter this holiday season. "This bud's for thee.H._------_._------