AS TIMELY NOW AS IT WAS THEN: "Such mischeefes as are imputed to witches, happen where no witches are; yea, and continue when witches are hanged and burnt; whie then should we attribute such effect to that cause, which being taken awaie, happeneth nevertheless?" --Reginald Scott, The Discoverie of Witches, 1584 A Friendly Letter ISSUE NUMBER 121 ISSN #0739-5418 FIFTH MONTH, 1991 Dear Friend, Last summer, before we were all so rudely them a long time to tackle sex, and in particular the interrupted, I asked (in AFL#111) for your counsel about dreaded H-word, which takes up most of this book, but what Quakers today have to say about sex. The the results were worth the wait. immediate occasion was a planned First Day School class on the subject for fourth to sixth graders at Langley Hill The book opens with Ben Richmond, of the Meeting, to be taught by my wife and another Friend. Friends United Meeting staff, cogently critiquing the arguments of some liberals that the biblical passages The class was held as scheduled, through the autumn condemning homosexuality don't really say what they and winter of 1990-91. Reports from participants, seem to say. I think he's right, too: those biblical writers including one particularly discriminating consumer, our who mentioned homosexuality clearly didn't like it. But daughter Gulie, indicate that it was a success. Marylou in response, Bob Fraser, a gay Christian Friend who takes was joined in the teaching by Walter Sullivan, another scripture just as seriously, asks, in essence, "So what?" member of our meeting. In the meantime, many of you Many biblical injunctions are ignored by orthodox responded to our request for input, some at length. The Christians. How do we decide which, if any, of its many letters came from older and younger Friends, single and commandments ought to be followed today? In sum, married, straight, gay and bisexual. All were read here where Ben Richmond excels in exegesis, i.e., figuring out eagerly, with much benefit and gratitude. what the biblical words actually mean, Fraser is ahead in hermeneutics, which has to do with interpreting and I have not forgotten the promise to share some of applying the texts, whatever they mean. these letters with you. To do this best, I have collected twenty-one of them into a document entitled Some As good as this exchange is, the Scottish Friend Quaker Letters About Sex, which is now available to Hugh Pyper's paper, "Without Apology: Reflections on interested Friends. Along with it is a tape of a Quaker Theology and Sexual Morality," is even better. conversation with Walter Sullivan, Marylou and Gulie, The sincerity, biblical learning and humility Pyper displays reflecting on teaching, and taking, such a class. in sharing his struggles as a gay Christian Friend are so affecting that they leave his respondent, the prominent The letters were thought-provoking and deeply felt; Quaker critic of homosexuality Herb Lape, all but struck some were quite eloquent. They show that the task of dumb with respect, showing much humility on his part. sorting out issues of gender and sexuality has not been ignored by Friends, even amid war and the other These two exchanges are so fine they make it distractions we have had to grapple with. Moreover, they possible to pass quietly by a discordant, gossipy tirade by give the lie to conservative claims that there are no Ruth Pitman on Sex, Society and Quaker Theology, which standards or serious thinking about sexuality among those mainly serves to highlight the unhappier features of the within other cultural circles. The tape and Some Quaker Wilburite tradition she hails from, and to underline Letters About Sex, which is about 40 full-sized pages, are unwittingly why it has declined so precipitously. available as a set for $9.95 postpaid, from my address. Sexual Ethics: Some Quaker Perspectives, is an And if you're interested in more reading in this area, excellent publication. It is available for $8.00 postpaid there's another publication you absolutely shouldn't miss, from QTDG, 128 Tate St., Greensboro, NC 27403. Copies called Sexual Ethics: Some Quaker Perspectives. This 100- can also be ordered from my address, at the same price. page paperback contains a series of papers delivered at the 1989 gathering of the Quaker Theological Discussion Group, held in Richmond, Indiana. QTDG, which throughout its thirty-year history has been something of ce;;;~ a stronghold of Orthodoxy, has also made good faith efforts to listen to opposing sides of many issues. It took Chuck Fager Copyright c 1991 by C. Fager. Subscription rates: US, Canada & Mexico--$17.9S/yr; eisewhere--$20.00/yr. 2 THE ORKNEY CASE: QUAKERS CAUGHT IN A MODERN SATANIC WITCHHUNT It began in a manner at once "[t's all we wanted and more," William Robert Hicks. Hicks, who had been a farcical and chilling--like a Kafka story McEwen affirms happily. cop in Tucson and also done graduate staged by Gilbert and Sullivan: Early work in anthropology at the University on the morning of 2/27 of this year, * * * * * of Arizona, now works as a criminal six policemen and four social workers justice policy analyst in Virginia. Soon burst into the bucolic home of William About the time that the McEwens he was attending cult crime seminars as and Sandra McEwen, Friends on South were finding their idyll on an island in a professional task, one after another, Ronaldsay, one of the Orkney Islands the North Sea, a police captain in Ohio becoming familiar with practically all off the northern coast of Scotland. named Dale Griffis was becoming the self-proclaimed experts working the known among police departments police training circuit, as well as their The police began searching the around America. He gave professional stories and claims. He took many notes house, confiscating such items as all seminars on what an admiring reporter and collected thick files of the materials their videocassettes (''Mostly programs called "satanic worship, mind-control handed out at the seminars. taped off the lV," William McEwen cults and destructive religious groups." said ruefully, "no sex or violence; Griffis was but one of a growing "At first alarmed by what [ some constable will have a very tedious number of circuit-riding "cult crime" heard at the seminars," he says, "I time watching them all"), a framed specialists, who during the 1980s became progressively more skeptical, picture of a stand of trees, an old spread warnings among law enforce- then even more alarmed by the cult photo album with snapshots of the ment, social work, and church groups experts' anti-intellectual and anti- family visiting a ruined abbey, and a about what they said was a rising wave rationalist stance." Trained as a gas lantern used for night farmwork. of hideous outrages committed by such working cop to find evidence that can underground criminal conspiracies. stand up in court, Hicks soon went At the same time, the social beyond taking notes at seminars; he workers were hustling the McEwens' THE FOEMAN BARES HIS STEEL began challenging the experts to back two younger children, aged 11 and 15, up their claims about a satanic cult out of their beds, into their clothes and This cult crime wave, Griffis and human sacrifice bloodbath with a police through the door. No stops for food, the others told their typically large and officer's bottom line: hard evidence. bathroom, or personal items were rapt audiences, was not simply a matter allowed; in seven minutes they were of church or synagogue vandalism, THEY UNCOMFORTABLE FEEL gone. Then the parents were interro- heavy metal music and drug use. Nor gated by the police for several hours. was it limited to bizarre and gruesome Here the experts began to hem murder cases involving the likes of and haw. On the one hand, they could POOR WAND'RING ONES? Charles Manson and Los Angeles' point to people like Manson, or a band "Night Stalker" killer Richard Ramirez, of drug murderers in Matamoros, The interrogation disclosed that who ranted about Satan at his trial. Mexico, some of whose killings were the McEwens have been teachers for indeed accompanied by torture and more than twenty years, first in Surrey, Even more ominous and strange rituals. But in the Matamoros where they ran a unique working farm unnerving, they alleged, these case, for instance, while there was a as part of a school program aimed at underground satanic cults engage in mishmash of Mro-Cuban and Aztec providing problem kids a therapeutic widespread human sacrifices, usually rituals, there was no identifiable hands-on experience. There they accompanied by horrible tortures and Satanism; and neither Matamoros, became Friends in the early 19708, hideous rituals. The production of Manson, nor the Night Stalker cases joining Petersfield Preparative Meeting. kiddie porn and snuff films are also involved anything resembling a And there they began to feel drawn said to be among their specialties. As hereditary ''family'' undertaking; the toward a life centered more on farming many as 50,000 such human sacrifices perpetrators were either loners or small and less on fulltime teaching. are committed per year in the U.S. by and shortlived groups of unrelated these groups, many of them children people. This quest led them to the borne on demand by captive women Orkney islands, where land was "breeders." Griffis, among others, So where, Hicks demanded, was affordable and the people reserved but insists that behind these bloody crimes the evidence of the traditional satanic open-minded. The islands also had a is an international underground family cults, with their breeders and wild kind of beauty, with their nearly network of hereditary satanist family their human sacrifices? Fifty thousand treeless fidds dotted with sheep and groups, made up of persons outwardly corpses a year, far more than the clad in heather.