Canaan

It is a blazing hot morning in a dry, dry, land. A barefoot man dressed in a ragged  brown loincloth stumbles behind a pair of skinny oxen, sidestepping over the ragged furrow dragged into the ground by the worn wooden plow. He pauses to wipe his brow, and looks over the green, sprouting barley in the next field, to the hilltop. As he watches, a mass of men appear above the horizon, the sun glinting off hundreds of spear points.

He pauses.

He watches a moment more, his mouth and fingers moving as he counts, then drops the plow handle, and runs towards a shaded grove of trees near a shallow stream. As he nears it, he shouts to a short woman already watching the hilltop, and then snatches up a toddling boy and keeps running. He and the woman splash across the stream, while a teen-aged girl looks back, dropping a basket of half-cleaned vegetables to the ground.

As she looks, the men descend the hilltop, and a mass of people begin to fill the horizon. They are led by a curious procession of oddly-dressed men, surrounding a small box carried between them on poles. When they reach the oxen, still standing placidly in the field, one of them steps aside and swings a bronze-colored axe, sweeping the head from the nearest ox. It falls, dragging the second down next to it, bawling, still yoked. A second sweep partially decapitates the second ox, and the girl turns and runs after the others, leaving the basket spilled over the ground.

The runners don’t pause until they reach a  village, where more people are arriving from other fields, hurrying through the wooden gate in the low, mud-brick walls. The man pauses while the women rush inside, and another runs out and hands him a short javelin. Together with twenty other men he watches the approaching strangers as the gate is dragged closed behind their backs. The pounding of the wedges being hammered in is the only sound louder than than the cooing of the doves sitting on the top of the wall.

The mass of men approach, the ones in the midst dragging a log. The man sees that the log is the central pole from the sacred grove near the stream, the source of his village’s prosperity and the symbol of the goddess that they trust to bring fertility to their crops and families. Now it has been cut down and turned against them as a weapon of war.

The forerunners don’t pause when they reach the defenders, who wait, standing their ground. Ten men move forward for every defender, and they are instantly hacked down. The man in the loincloth is among the first to fall. The attackers step over the bodies and drag the sacred pole to the gates, pause to gather their strength, and then smash the pole against the wood. the gates crack and bow inward. the men swing the pole against the gates again and one half breaks free from one hinge and swings aside, dangling from the gatepost.

The men drop the pole and run inside, scattering chickens and pigs, and spread out across the courtyard, filled with old men, women, and children, shouting and clutching at each other in fear. They hack at them with their swords, impaling others with their spears and javelins. The villagers scatter, running to hide, crawling into the storerooms, behind the wattle fences, into the shadow of the walls.

The short woman and her child flee into the darkness of a stable, followed by the teenaged girl. As they scrabble among the straw, a man in a short woolen kilt pauses in the light of the door, a short sword in his hand. He quickly walks to the woman, who now cowers on the ground, covering the crying child with her ragged cloak. With a blow, he slices off her arm, and the child screams, still clutching the detached arm that protected it as it falls away. The woman looks up at him in shock, and a second blow splits her skull. She falls into the straw of the stable floor, while the teenaged girl looks on, her mouth working soundlessly. The man picks the child up by the feet and swings it against the door post, smashing open its skull.  He drops the twitching child, grabs the girl by the hair, and drags her through the door. Out in the sunlight, she finally she finds her voice, and screams and screams.

The small courtyard is littered with bodies of old men, women, and young boys. The girl is thrust among a group of a dozen other girls, their wrists now being tied together by cords by two of the attackers. As they watch, pressing against each other, some of the strangers methodically set fire to the houses, stables, and storerooms of the village, while others run after the pigs, sheep, chickens, and donkeys, killing each of them where they catch them. The noise of the screaming girls and dying animals is deafening, but the strangers work silently, knowing their business, without speech.

In just a few minutes it is all over, and the strange procession of men carrying the box enters the village and sets it down. Several of them bring in a sheep from outside, and the men begin to prepare a sacrifice of thansgiving. The girls are led outside the walls, and the smoke rises into the clear blue sky as the flies begin to gather on the pools of blood, and the bodies.

*     *     *     *     *

Folks, this is a little story, one that i just made this up, right here and now. But if scripture is accurate, then this scene was repeated in many variations during the Israelite conquest of Canaan many centuries ago. I don’t have any doubt that an event just like this occurred, and that such scenes were common at that time and within that culture.

What I do doubt is that this scene was commanded by a God who tells me to love him, and to love my neighbor as myself. Many people tell me just that, and i have heard various reasons.

What is your opinon? Is this event justified by the gospel of Jesus Christ? Why?

The reason I am asking this question is because I do not believe that an inerrant reading of Christian Scripture is adequate to define Christianity. As a Friend, I hold Scripture to be very important to my understanding of God, but I also hold that the reflections of  the Light within us are affected by the color of the glass through which we perceive it. I believe that the Scriptures are inspired, but I do not believe that what I read there today is has been transmitted infallibly, nor do I believe that what I read there is likely to have been recorded infallibly in the first place.

Think about this, please. We believe that the Light provides guidance to us from heaven. Is our reception of it perfect? Can any of us stand and say, "I speak infallibly for God, because inspiration renders my understanding without flaw or error." I believe the ordinary and humble answer is, "No," and that this answer has been assumed to be the case for thousands of years among those who attempt to listen and follow, as opposed to those who attempt to speak and demand obedience. I believe that the same scrutiny that we as Friends apply to the inspired ministry in our monthly meetings must also be applied to the physical documents relating the history of God's dealings with humankind.

Scripture has it both ways. On the one hand, Old Testament Scripture records the divine sanction of violent war:

Deuteronomy 20:16: But of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth giue thee for an inheritance, thou shalt saue aliue nothing that breatheth:

And on the other, New Testament Scripture teaches that God now commands the opposite:

Yee haue heard, that it hath beene said, Thou shalt loue thy neighbour, and hate thine enemie: But I say vnto you, Loue your enemies, blesse them that curse you, doe good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully vse you, and persecute you: That yee may be the children of your father which is in heauen:

But what is your own belief, Friend? There are long-standing apologetics available within any Scripture commentary that will explain the slaughter of the Canaanites in light of a primitive people who required a progressive revelation, of a doctrine of successive dispensations, of another of continuous covenantalism, of the sovereignity of a God who rightfully destrys the flawed pottery to make way for the better. Are these explanations sufficient to reconcile the apparent views of a God who loves his creation, and of one who hates it?

What is your view, Friend? How are you led?

Not One of Us

Friends, I'd like to take an opportunity to talk a bit about something difficult. The subject is abortion—the elective termination of pregnancy. I'd like to do this here for two reasons. First, members of the Society of Friends have a long-standing united front in the areas of human life: personal violence, peace, capital punishment, euthanasia, and so on. Second, on abortion, we don’t.

I want to share some thoughts on the subject that I don't recall anybody paying much attention to. And I want to be clear that I’m not talking to the dominant culture, and advising them what they should be thinking or doing. They march to a different drummer, and they maintain a different profession than we say we do. I am talking to Friends. If that’s what you are, then I am talking to you.

You see, unity on an issue like abortion can only come about when we listen to our Guide together. As Friends, it doesn’t matter what you think of it, or what I think of it; the issue is what our Guide thinks of it. We claim to be attentive to the Light. We claim to be following our Guide. Yet when abortion comes up, the arguments I hear have very little to do with following our Guide. To me we look more like an old-time circus performer, cantering around and around the ring in our costume, one foot each on the backs of two very different horses, smiling at the crowd while we perform an impossible feat, one founded in intrinsic contradiction.

Where do Friends disagree on this subject? Most of us don’t believe in killing people, and we often cite the influence of our Guide as the source of our belief. Look at our record against warfare, violence, capital punishment, euthanasia, and so on. But I think we can all agree that aborting an embryo makes a member of the human biological species die. It's not a hamster, a tapeworm, a toe, or a fingernail clipping, after all. Yes, it’s uniquely related physically to its mother, more so than any other living creature can ever be. But equally, it’s not part of her—the placenta is a physical and philosophical barrier that is also unique and critically significant.


I'm not trying to solve issues of social justice, economics, gender politics, or the sad history of treating girls or women as second-class citizens (or non-citizens), or any of the usual historical positions. These are profoundly important topics, but they're secondary. I want to explore why that developing member of the species Homo sapiens is somehow something different from you and me, why for some Friends it is somehow not one of us.


Let me start by listing some of the traditional arguments supporting elective abortion:


Poor people are penalized by unwanted or unaffordable children. I agree. Economics do penalize poor people who can't afford to raise children, for reasons not of their choosing and not under their control. But we don't let people kill their children because they discover later they can't afford to raise them. The argument is the same, so something else must be going on.


Underage parents aren’t equipped to raise children and forgo opportunities in later life, especially single mothers. I agree. Young people do make inexperienced parents, and young single mothers give up a lot of opportunity by trying to raise children too young. But we don't kill their children at the age of ten if the parent’s inexperience or opportunity cost only becomes clear when the parents are older.


Some pregnancies are the result of rape or incest, and are not voluntary. I agree. I can think of no experience more undeserved and painful than being forced to carry and give birth to a child that was the outcome of a brutal and exploitive experience, whether one-time or the result of long-term abuse. But we don’t kill a teenager because we discover later that she was the product of a rape.


Sometimes the embryo is diagnosed as deformed or mentally subnormal. I agree. But should being born crippled deserve a pre-emptive death sentence? My Aunt Alma was born with spina bifida, and couldn’t walk, live alone, or support herself for the 94 years she lived. But she gave my own mother her first bath the day she was born, and held both me as an infant and my own infant children in her arms decades and decades later. Her life was always a burden to others, but was it worthless? Did she deserve death? Are the lives of the smiling, hardworking people with Down’s Syndrome equally worthless burdens? If so, then we should be able to gather them all up and dispose of them right now, no matter how old they are. But we don’t, because something else is important.


It’s my body and my life. The private decisions I make about my body are nobody else’s business. I’m afraid this one has holes in it too, although it’s the one that makes the most sense to me. First, we all acknowledge that society can interfere with our bodies when what we do with them poses a danger to someone else. And as a culture we acknowledge that other people can make decisions that affect our bodies, even overruling our own. We deny people the right to kill or hurt themselves, to use certain kinds of drugs, we make motorcyclists wear helmets and auto drivers fasten their seatbelts. If society has a right to overrule decisions about my body for the benefit of someone living outside it, then it has the right to overrule my decisions about my body with respect to someone living inside it, if that entity living inside me is truly a someone. The nature of that embryo is very important to this question, because if it is one of us, then an abortion affects more people than just the mother. If it is one of us.


That seems to be the key. All the arguments I have heard from Friends justifying abortion seem to hinge on the assumption that somehow, the embryo is not one of us, and can therefore be treated differently without disobedience to what the Light tells us is our duty with respect to other people. But what makes it not one of us?


Is it that the embryo isn’t a human being? Ask any zoologist what it is and you will get a simple answer: the embryo is a developing individual of the species Homo sapiens. It's a genetically complete, diploid chordate, being carried and nurtured during ontogeny across a placenta in the uterus of another member of the same species. Biologically it can’t be anything but human. Killing it kills a biological member of our species, but somehow, the embryo is not considered one of us, even so. And the existence of that placenta unarguably defines a physical boundary between the mother and the embryo that marks a distinction between two organisms. Yes, the boundary is internal to the mother, and yes, all nutrition is transferred from the mother to the embryo across it, and yes, the embryo’s life is utterly dependent upon her. But they are different creatures: blood types, skin colors, body features, half of the time even different genders. If the embryo is just a piece of tissue within the mother, then that definition must logically extend to the moment the umbilical cord is cut after birth. Having personally held five wet, squirming, and hollering newborns still definitely attached to their mother through a living, pulsing umbilicus, I find it hard to extend it that far. But that would be the necessary logical conclusion.


Is it that the embryo is still dependent on its parent, and can’t survive on its own? That can’t be it, either. Children are dependent on their parents for years, and very young ones can’t survive on their own at all, either. The difference between a very late-term foetus and a very premature newborn infant is a moment-in-time, a philosophical distinction, not a natural one. This is clearly shown by the earlier and earlier ages at which a premature baby can now be born and be expected to live as medical techniques improve. But in some circles it is acceptable to abort a late term foetus, but not to kill a premature newborn. Somehow, merely by virtue of being unborn, that organism is still not one of us.


Is it that it’s undeveloped, incomplete, and doesn’t even look very much like a human being? I’ve already addressed how underdeveloped premature infants are still treated as human beings. Does it have to already look like us to be human? Maybe it has to be pretty, as well, or have the correct number of legs and arms. If that was the case, then the adult mainframe computer operator at a university I attended wasn’t one of us either, as somehow he had been born without any arms at all. Still, he was a very knowledgeable and helpful computer operator, in spite of his status.


Is it that it's not a person that makes it okay to kill it? It’s not someone who grew up, and has a life story, and matters to someone somewhere? After all, the embryo has no connections to society that we need to honor and maintain. It has no family stories known to anybody, and is a stranger. But when an elderly stranger dies in my town, the coroner takes the body and performs certain legal procedures, spends taxpayer money making sure that the body is treated honorably, and ensures that all due process is followed that is required by the natural death of a human being. We assume he was a person, although we know nothing of his story or history. We treat him as one of us anyway.


Is it that the embryo isn’t a citizen, something with legal rights and standing administered by the government, and so it doesn’t merit equal legal status or protection? This is the usual pragmatic legal approach, where laws arbitrarily allow elective abortions in the first trimester but not later in the term. This is a distasteful compromise, what the dominant culture does. But it isn’t what Friends do, or at least, it isn’t what we are supposed to do, as I see it. I want to achieve that unity that we claim is how we make decisions. Besides, even if it isn’t a citizen, and has no legal rights in society, it still is not treated as one of us the way other non-citizens are treated. The apple pickers in my town on work visas from other countries aren't citizens, either, but I can't kill them without legal penalties. We treat them as one of us in spite of their lack of legal equality.


And as a Friend, I don’t grant my local government the right to make moral definitions for me anyway. I don’t want to hear legal definitions or arguments. I want to hear the moral ones.


And now that we’ve come to this point, I would like to hear them from members of the Religious Society of Friends. Respectfully, Friends, I would like to know what it is that makes that little blob of cells that we call an embryo something different from the Mohandas Gandhi or the George Fox that it might be destined to become. It must be different in some way, because our Society has no unity on how to treat it. But I can’t figure out what it is.

And to answer this question, I would like to hear us practicing what we preach, that we listen to our Guide, that we follow a leader larger than ourselves, that we rely on the Light, on immediate revelation to show us the Way. I want to hear the debate shift from secondary pragmatic discussions of social justice, economics, and gender politics to a primary discussion of conscience, morality, right and wrong, and the leadings from the Guide.


If the embryo is one of us, then it deserves the same consideration from the Society that we extend to condemned criminals, victims of warfare, those helpless individuals abused by social injustice, and the terminally ill woman given a secret overdose of barbiturates to put her out of her misery. If the embryo is not one of us, and doesn’t deserve that consideration, then I would like to understand why, and I would like to hear it explained in terms that we as the Religious Society of Friends can unite on.


I think we need to decide what it is we stand for, and reconcile our position on abortion with our positions on violence, peace, capital punishment, and involuntary euthanasia. I would like to achieve unity with our Guide and with each other, and begin to labor openly and charitably on this topic until we come to that unity. I want us as a Society, as a community under a Guide, as a people who claim to follow a special Light, to choose which horse we will ride, and to let the other one go.


I think it’s time.

To Tell a Lie

Friends, is it okay to lie? Can you, as a Quaker, tell a lie? To save your life, or someone else’s?

Do you ever wonder about this question? It’s a significant one, I believe. Many of the old Quaker testimonies are considered out-of-date these days, not appropriate to our more sophisticated and complex times. Most of us don’t wear the funny clothes, or do the funny Quaker-talk much anymore. When’s the last time you kept your hat on in court when the bailiff told you to take it off? But truth-telling is fundamental to integrity, which is arguably the most important Quaker testimony of them all. For me, this question is important because I try to integrate my religious profession into every aspect of my life, and telling a lie would often make my life a whole lot easier. And while I can’t predict the daily difficulties that I might face, I try to consider the ultimate consequences of following through on what I believe.

Probably most of us would agree that it’s wrong to tell a lie for personal gain—to lie on our income tax, for instance. Or to lie about who dropped the cookie jar, or about where you went last night, and who you stayed out late with. You might even say that you wouldn’t tell a lie to save your own life, if it came to that.

So let’s cut to the chase.

You hear a knock on the door. You open it, and it’s your Jewish neighbor. She says, “They’re after me. Will you hide me?” You drag her in, stuff her in the closet, and close the door. Then comes another knock. You open it, and there, resplendent in his uniform, is the local Nazi Party chief, with the police. He says to you, “Good afternoon, Quaker. Do you know where the Jew is?”

Well, what do you do?

This is a very serious question, one that I don’t in any way want to diminish by trotting out the well-worn parable above. The implications are deadly serious. Lying is held to be fundamentally wrong in most cultures, so wrong that it is seldom even addressed as a question. This is true even though those same cultures often routinely excuse or recommend lying as a means of solving difficult social problems (like the one above). Read the Jewish Tanach, in Yisro 20:13:

“You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness against your fellow.”

There have been cultures that interpret this to mean only that you shall tell the truth in certain legal proceedings—both Jewish and Christian. But the Christian interpretation of this Jewish precept has most often been that God informs us that a lie is wrong, anywhere, and if it is wrong to lie in a courtroom, it is just as wrong to lie in the hallway outside, or anywhere else. And of course, there are many Proverbs that condemn a lie.

As for Quakers, in my 1863 copy of The Discipline of the Society of Friends of Ohio Yearly Meeting, it reads under “Conduct and Conversation:

“Such are to be treated with, as are guilty of lying, drunkenness, swearing, cursing; together with other immoral and scandalous practice: and when persons are guilty in these respects, or any of them . . . the said meetings ought speedily to testify against them.”

And in 2001, it reads:

“Carefully maintain truthfulness and sincerity in your conduct, and encourage the same in your families.”

That’s all pretty clear, I think. There’s no fine distinction being made about white lies, or lies for compassionate purposes. Lying, without qualification, is judged to be simply wrong, lumped with immorality and scandal.

Quakers have always interpreted truth in speech as one of our foremost testimonies. In fact, speaking briefly, clearly, and with scrupulous honesty was one of the original meanings of the term “plain speech.” We used to make sure that we didn’t participate in truth rituals in a court of law—it implied a double standard of truth, as if we weren’t enjoined to be carefully honest at all times. And Quakers were historically noted for their honesty, for telling the truth to all people, always. If you’ve been associated with Friends for very long, you know most all of the stories. Honesty and telling the truth are so fundamental to Quakerism that interestingly, Nickall’s Journal of George Fox has no index entries at all for “truth,” “lying,” “honesty,” “integrity,” or anything associated with telling the truth as a testimony, although there are 15 references to “swearing.” Even Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity which mentions lying four times, does so only in other contexts, where it uses the practice to demonstrate that something else is wrong, because it forces the Quaker to lie.

And yet, Quakers hiding escaped slaves from the legal authorities routinely lied to save the fugitives. There were weasel words used to good effect, such as the famous “There are only free people in this house,” meaning that the concealed slave was, of course, actually a free person. I’m afraid that was a lie, but telling it saved lives and meant freedom for the escaping slave. So there is Quaker precedent for personal dishonesty in a more important cause. Or is that what is going on?

But to get back to our question, what do you tell the waiting Nazi? If you say, “The Jew is in the closet,” she dies, and although you have been faithful to one witness, you have betrayed another: that of protecting a fugitive who trusted you. If you say, “She’s not here,” you save her life, at the cost of betraying a command from an omnipotent God. If you refuse to answer, or act stupid, the police will likely search your house and find her anyway. So what do you do?

Let me spell out the question:

Is it, or is it not, appropriate to disobey a commandment of God with the intent of being faithful to another of his commandments? Do we decide which ones he meant us to take seriously, and which ones he meant for us to let slide, if necessary? Or do we follow them all to the letter and let him decide what will transpire?

Are we authorized to disobey one of God’s commandments on the basis of an anticipated tragedy that we think might result from that obedience?

Does God require you to betray his commands in order to be faithful to him, in a larger sense?

It’s worth pointing out here that Jesus himself is never recorded to have told a lie, but didn’t hesitate to overrule Mosaic law when he thought it appropriate.

So, Friends, what do you think?

I'm a Quaker. I Own a Gun

I’m a Quaker. I own a gun. I see no contradiction there.

I don’t normally read newspapers, but a headline caught my eye at the grocery store the other day: U.S. Supreme Court rules it’s a right to own a firearm. As it turns out, in something over 200 years, the constitutional amendment permitting American citizens to keep a gun in their possession has never been explicitly defined. Shorn of the legalese, the new decision states that citizens have a right to keep a firearm in their home for self-protection, without government interference. Plain and simple.

Personally, I applaud this decision. I’ve grown up around firearms. My rural grandparents kept a loaded 12-gauge in the corner next to the telephone. My uncle kept a lever-action .22 rifle under the seat of the pickup. Other aunts and uncles kept hunting rifles, pistols, and old nostalgic military weapons in their homes and vehicles. They were all country people, who lived close to a nature that didn't always welcome their presence. My grandmother used a rifle to kill the rabid dogs that visited. Coyotes killed the stock. Skunks, possums, and raccoons ran off with the chickens. The firearms encouraged these neighbors to keep their distance, and dispatched the ones that wouldn’t. And of course, the guns were used to hunt animals for food and during butchering. The rural Quakers in my meeting often own guns today for the same reasons my non-Quaker ancestors did.

But urban Quaker culture these days sometimes looks askance at private ownership of firearms. A gun is a weapon, after all, and has no real purpose other than to dispense death. On one internet forum a while back, the attitude of some Quakers towards firearms was expressed to me clearly, in a conversation regarding the murder of some young people on a college campus:

I really feel that we're just living the logical consequences of our lack of gun control in general. To change things would require a national push for a saner interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and then a long process of cleaning up the guns that are already in circulation.

I’m afraid I would respond with non-violent resistance to anybody wanting to “clean up the guns that are already in circulation.” And many people besides me don't want to be "cleaned up."

The justification for Quaker involvement in gun control is often tied into an expression of the Peace Testimony. Because guns can be used to kill people, the reasoning goes, their ownership contradicts this testimony. Therefore, gun control is something that Quakers should support.

I don’t buy that argument. Peaceable early Friends here in America used long guns—the assault rifles of their day—as tools for protecting their livestock and providing food for their families. In the event of political difficulties, various Quaker histories describe how they would send their guns into town with friends, so that they could remain unarmed should hostile soldiers or Indians visit. Quaker Pennsylvania became a national leader in flintlock rifle design and manufacture (usually by the non-Quaker Scotch-Irish), and different counties of the colony were famous for the different styles of firearms manufactured there.

These Quakers saw no contradiction between owning a gun and maintaining a testimony of peace and Christian love towards their neighbors, and neither do I. They owned guns in the same way that they owned a shovel or an axe. They used the gun to control wildlife or to provide food. Where I live, coyotes eat my cats, feral dogs run wild and bring down deer (among other things), and rare but occasional black bears move through my woods. Raccoons kill my beehives—many of them. I support peace, but that's not the same thing as shooting a rabid raccoon in my children's playhouse.

My own weapon is a Colt Government Model .45, a semi-automatic handgun used by the American military as the standard-issue sidearm for around 80 years. It’s rugged, simple, reliable, and serves the purposes for which I use it. I keep it locked and unloaded, but all my older kids know where it is and how to use it. My three-year old has had carefully supervised shooting practice. It’s part of our household inventory of tools. Not the most accurate or the cheapest gun, but it’s what I have.

Some Quakers propose gun control today in the same spirit that an earlier generation of Friends used to introduce Prohibition, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States. The most lasting result of Prohibition in America was the jump-starting of organized crime, which began by bootlegging alcohol. That Quaker experiment proved a failure, with many decades of repercussions. I object to Quaker support of intrusive government practices like this.

But my main objection to gun control is that it violates the basic Friends testimony of following the Inward Light. This is the most important Quaker foundation—much more basic than an interest in peace. As Friends, we are to follow the Inward Light in our actions. The organ used to perceive our measure of this Light is our conscience, and when we are faithful to it, we are faithful to our measure. As we are obedient, our measure is increased, and so on. But if we do not see the Inward Light pointing to a certain path, then we do not live by our own experience if we make a pretence of obedience. And we are not to impose our personal leadings upon the consciences of others, for to do so means that we encourage them to be unfaithful to their own measure, and to follow ours instead.

The old story of George Fox and William Penn’s sword is instructive. When Penn asked whether he should continue wearing his sidearm now that he was a Friend, Fox supposedly replied, “William, wear it as long as thou canst!” William at first demurred, but after a while he left the sword at home. Before he had been convicted by the L:ight, Penn would have been disobedient to set the sword aside. After, he would have been disobedient to have left it on. In both cases, Penn was faithful to the Light that had been granted him. And in this instance, Penn chose to leave his sidearm at home, where I leave mine.

To coerce people into obedience to someone else’s leading where unity does not exist contradicts the fundamental Quaker testimony that we should listen to our Guide first, and the discoveries of other Friends next. It also throws in the common mistake of taking a secular issue and wrapping it in religion for added support. Where I live, this simply doesn't fly. In my own rural meeting community, we have no inclination to seek unity on restricting gun ownership. The situation is obvious—it’s a non-issue in the country.

And to claim that the Peace Testimony requires me to give up the gun I use to protect my beehives from a marauding raccoon is a connection that I don’t understand. Were I using my weapon on people, or even storing it to keep that option available, then of course it would be a different matter. But I don't, and without an explicit connection, the Peace Testimony argument simply falls down, leaving gun control as just another secular concern like fair wages or low-sulfur diesel fuel.

So Friends, until I am led otherwise, I shall keep my firearms in my house, with the understanding that by doing so I act in consistency with my religious values as a Friend. And I encourage you to do the same, if you are so led, should you live in an area where gun ownership makes sense.

As a Quaker, I merely suggest that you be careful with them.

Go Elsewhere, Gently Speaking

I collect old Quaker documents. I’m always interested in how Quakers responded corporately to the challenges they faced in their own time and place, so I’m always interested in Disciplines, books of Faith and Practice, Committee reports and guidelines, old Minutes, and the endless minutiae of the Society. We Friends tend to write a lot, so there’s lots of text to scrutinize for insight into how the Society felt and acted about issues of concern in their time and place.

My interest extends into the present, too, in looking over current procedures and guidelines, both from my own Meeting and those from others around the country and the world. Sometimes there are insights that can be gained into our own problems by looking at how others have dealt with those of their own. Sometimes there are red flags, too, when I discover something going wrong, something that might not be apparent to the Friends so close to it that they can’t see it clearly.

I came across one such example the other day, in looking over a recent description of the tasks assigned to the “Welcoming Committee” of an active urban Meeting here in the United States. The description was several pages long, and contained practical information such as how to unlock the heavy doors, setting out the guest book, providing name tags and markers for newcomers, and re-stocking the pamphlet titled “You and Your Children Are Welcome.”

And here is where I discovered the red flag. This Meeting is in a big city, with the usual big-city problem of homeless people wandering the streets at night looking for shelter. Five paragraphs cover how to welcome strangers at the door, introducing them to the Society, explaining what is going on, making sure they have the right pamphlets, checking the street for latecomers, and so on. Very comprehensive and hospitable. But just before them comes the single paragraph about sending the poor people away:

If there are homeless people sleeping or camping in front of the building, this would be a good time to gently ask them to go elsewhere. I like to tell them about [a Roman Catholic Church] as a place to sleep or [another Roman Catholic Church] for food etcetera.

And a little further along, another guideline:

Occasionally homeless people will wander into the lobby during Meeting. You will need to handle these situations as well.

“Go elsewhere?” “Situations?” I know the problems of dealing with poor people in urban areas from personal experience. I’ve given away my food (and my spare shoes) to homeless people in Columbus for years, because sometimes they have no food, and sometimes they have no shoes. In the winter I reach into my pocket and give them extra money to help get them into a rooming house for the night, because sleeping behind a dumpster in the Ohio snow is a short ticket to death. I am under no illusions that I can solve all the problems, so I concentrate on who God puts in front of me, that day, and I do what I can. I can’t always help, but these are children of God--I never make a blanket policy of sending them away.

The origins of the Religious Society of Friends were among social misfits, ostracized people, often rendered poverty-stricken by circumstances of faith. And the origins of Christianity itself were among the slaves, beggars, servants, widows, and orphans of the totalitarian Roman Empire. Money and food was regularly allocated by the Christians for the local paupers, and disparity in sharing food between richer and poorer people at the agape meal led to a stern admonition in one of Paul’s letters. But here, in modern America, a Friends Meeting sends poor people away to Roman Catholic Churches, which apparently are more interested in them. What in the world is going on here, to have a Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends make a written policy of sending beggars away, without even a question, and to another church, at that?

What message does our Society have for these poor people, sleeping in doorways?

“Go elsewhere.”

I’m not interested in identifying this Meeting. Like many others, this one maintains a vocal position in opposing world oppression and injustice. On its website for this month, its Advices and Queries highlight “Social and Civic Responsibility.” But most of the wording is focused far away, and addresses governments, communities, nations, the world-- large groups, humanity as an abstraction. And most of the means for solving problems seem to be committee work, civil disobedience, mass social advocacy, promotion of group change, the seeking of just laws. What is missing here is personal responsibility, the traditional concern of the Friend to turn his eyes from the bleeding world, to attend to the bleeding friend asleep on the Meeting House steps.

It was Jesus Christ himself who said, “For ye have the poor with you always,” and truer words have never been spoken. There will always be beggars sleeping in doorways, but rather than sending them away, would the Son of God perhaps have suggested another response? Jesus took the beggars, the tax collectors, the crazy people, and the sinners, and singled them out for special attention. He spoke with them, touched them, fed them, and treated them as people for whom he had a message of great importance. What lessons did he teach? Who hears them today?

Urban paupers are sometimes dirty, smelly, foul-mouthed, and ungrateful, and occasionally are drunk and mentally disturbed. But there are other ways of remaining faithful to the greater testimony of answering that of God in everyone than “gently asking them to go elsewhere.” For instance:

- Assign a Friend to invite the beggars inside to learn that the Society of Friends has a message of interest to their spiritual growth. If they are disruptive, then ask them to go elsewhere, not while their only offense is choosing the wrong steps to sleep on.

- Make up a dozen or two small bags of food—a doughnut and a box of orange juice. Hand them to as many beggars as are willing to eat quietly in a back room, while meeting is going on, or let them eat on the steps.

- Assign the Welcoming Committee the weekly task of Welcoming the Beggars to the Society of Friends, each Friend to spend one hour per month, or per year, sitting out on the steps with them during meeting, learning who they are and hearing the messages Jesus Christ might be sending with them to the worshippers inside.

- Hold an all-night vigil on the Meeting House steps with them, to learn about tragedy and injustice close to home, and what to do about it.

- Occasionally cancel the regular “No Injustice in Far-Away Places” demonstration to allow time for a “No Hunger on the Meeting House Steps” demonstration to take place instead.

And so on. None of these things will make the homeless people go away, or solve all their problems, or make them smell better or speak more quietly. And yet, isn’t it a fundamental testimony of the Religious Society of Friends that all people are equal in the sight of God, and that our responsibility on this earth is to help our brothers and sisters, right here, right now, successfully or not, dirty or not? When we “gently ask the homeless people to go elsewhere,” what are we telling them about what we believe? What are we telling the Roman Catholics who feed and house the beggars that we send away? What do we tell ourselves when we look into a mirror that evening, about our own faithfulness to that of God in everyone? And what do we tell our God about how we live up to our measure of the Light he has given us?