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I wish I could say that this simple form of worship never leads to conflict, but I must be honest and admit that people in Meeting sometimes get upset about the vocal ministry. When you allow people…

As the chair of a group of people of diverse faiths who have been meeting since 9/11 to promote justice and peace, I agree with President Obama that the Peace Prize is a “call to action.” We hope it will encourage and challenge him not only to fulfill his promises, but to go further. It is not enough to withdraw troops from Iraq, he should also have an exit strategy for promptly withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

And for those wondering, this year’s U.S. Quaker nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize was Gene Sharp, whose exhaustive list of nonviolent strategies and case studies is must-reading for any campaigner.

And for those wondering about the “Quaker vote,” Friends won the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize en masse for post-war relief work. Friends were represented by what was then called the Friends Service Council (now Quaker Peace and Social Witness) in London and by the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia, both of whom have the honor to nominate future recipients. According to the FGC Quaker Youth blog, this year’s AFSC nominating nod went to Sharp. The actual vote is up to the Nobel Committee itself.

Good stuff from Anthony Manousos:

Perhaps the most important innovation in this work is its systematization of the Quaker social “testimonies.” Until the publication of Guide to Quaker Practice, there was no consensus about what Friends’ social testimonies were. Howard surveyed this jumble of advices and distilled them into four distinct and memorable social testimonies—simplicity, peace, community, equality—and one personal testimony (integrity). Howard’s formulation of the five Quaker testimonies has become so commonplace in Quaker religious education that it is often referred to by the acronym SPICE. Few Friends realize that Howard “discovered” or “reinvented” the testimonies in 1943.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the hodgepodge of testimonies in the old Books of Discipline, and reading Thomas Clarkson’s outsider account of circa 1800 helped me understand their use better. They were more practical & experienced-based that the SPICE list. Their underlying pattern was the way they addressed actual problems that had arisen in the Society of Friends. I’ve called them the “collective wisdom wiki” of Friends.

And my response in the comments:

As an old philosophy major I love the elegance of SPICE but I think the lack of specific testimonies has hurt our ability to identify and name issues when they come up at meeting. The modern world still has temptations that divide us from God, hurt our ability to empathize with our neighbors and divide our faith community but how do we talk with one another about these practices?

Yes, it’s coated in a kind of diplomatic double-speak, but listen to it:

“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes.

This is an eight year war and the US’s top general is saying he doesn’t think the other side can be defeated without an emergency influx of more troops.

The purpose is, quite simply, to reside in the light. To allow ourselves to be led to a transcendent place of unmistakable harmony, peace and tender love. And then to live out what that has revealed…

A Washington state Quaker filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the U.S. government is discriminating against him because it will not recognize his status as a conscientious objector on military draft forms.

Click for video:

A lot of pro-peace people say, “It’s not enough to be against war, you also have to be for peace.” While I agree with that, I can’t help but think: “It’s not enough to be pro-peace, you also have to…

From a self-described “Quaker, peace and development worker, vegetarian and adventurer” who is also a new member of QuakerQuaker. She explains that her blog talks”about Quakerism as part of a whole range of topics!”

Evangelical Friend AJ Schwanz writes about a new book from Mike King called Presence-centered Youth Ministry: Guiding Students into Spiritual Formation:

In my history of being part of faith communities I realized that those who are “group”-oriented seem more clubish, more “come in, be one of us”, more fractured, more self-interested. Those that were “ministry”-0riented thought of the bigger picture, had more awareness of the each other, practiced more over-arching hospitality. And in my faith gathering we have many ministries, but not a lot of groups … but the places where there are groups, we seem to have more lack of communication and conflict with each other.

Martin Commentary: On her post I asked AJ to tease out this distinction between “groups” that separate youth and “ministry” that keeps them in the church body.

I wonder if there’s some lesson for liberal Friends in this and not just for youth ministry. It seems like we have a tendency to compartimentalize our activities. Every purpose needs its own committee and we spend a lot of time starting and laying down committees. Why is “peace and concerns” separated from “earthcare” separated from “outreach” separated from “racial justice”? They’re all loving our neighbors.

My impression is that earlier generations of Friends did most things through two “committees”: ministers and elders. By divorcing our good deeds from ministry, we often secularlize them. How might we pull these functions together? Have any liberal Friends read out there Mike King’s work? Here’s the Amazon description:

How many programs does it take to change a youth group?

That question has bothered youth workers for decades, and the cracks in its logic are beginning to show. In place of the contrived, artificial mechanisms employed so widely in modern youth outreach and discipleship, Mike King proposes a ministry centered in the presence of God.

Young people encounter Christ not in the flash and pop of arena ministry, but in the sacred shadow of his presence. They learn what it is to love and follow Christ by observing others loving and following Christ—letting Christ shape their worldviews, their habits, their virtues. Presence-Centered Youth Ministry gives shape to such ministry through the classic disciplines and potent symbols and practices that have sustained the church over the centuries.

The sound and fury that has characterized youth ministry for so long has left too many youth workers tired and too many young people disillusioned. Come explore the deeper terrain; your students are sure to follow.

Reflections from someone who traveled to Iran last December: “When I was there, I felt the energy of young people that wanted and needed change. Nearly two out of every three people is under thirty. Many of them highly educated, including many women. A hope for change is what brought millions of women and men to the ballot boxes. A hope for change brings these same people to the streets now. Demanding their rights and demanding their votes to be heard.”

Arthur Berk on basic Christian Quakerism

Arthur Berk lives in New York City Friend but is a member of Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative). Recorded 6/20/09 at the Conservative Friends Gathering in Lancaster County, Pa.

ARTHUR BERK: Quakerism originated as a Christ-centered Christian religion which accepted Christ not only as the author of the Sermon on the Mount and other great stuff but as a living God, as a living creator, as the one who brings us to peace, and the one who shows us love, as the one who brings us together so we can hear God’s voice when he speaks to us. When we are open to Christ we can accept his peace and disarm ourselves, not just with outward weaponry, but with our own hostilities, prejudices and our own thinking.

We’re supposed to open ourselves to what God expects of us and not what we expect of each other. Too much in Quakerism is individual expectation and how much intellect one has rather than what one is hearing from the Lord.

MARTIN: What kind of suggestions do you have for people who want to get closer to Christ?

ARTHUR BERK: First, have waiting worship yourself within a group that has experienced Christ. Then you share that experience with others. You’ll see that Christ is not only speaking to thee, but to all of us. We have to sometimes suspend intellectual judgement. I’m not anti-intellectual, but we need to be able to hear and do what Jesus expects of us. God created us to bring this world into his Holy Kingdom. When we accept that we can be brought into his Kingdom. When brought into the Kingdom, we can disarm ourselves and stop thinking to exploit others so we can make a bountiful living. We can seek the good in others and encourage them to wait on the Lord so that they too can experience the same Christ that we experience.

MARTIN: People can come to gatherings like this one, an weekend gathering each year happening in Lancaster County and Barnesville, Ohio. This is one of the places people come. What other places might they look?

ARTHUR BERK: You can meet Christ-centered people in other meetings and have gatherings with them. You don’t have to wait until Ohio has something. You can encourage those who are inclined to want that type of worship where we hear and love to be able to gather together. We need to encourage that type of gathering. Wwe could go far off and speak to ourselves but that’s not the point. The point is to reach people. An important aspect of George Fox’s ministry was reaching out to those who could experience Christ. He preached to the Blacks, Native Americans and other people. People can be open to Jesus’s message if we’re willing to gather and share it.

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Books and pamphlets by Arthur Berk can be obtained from New Foundation Fellowship.

Quote: Eleven years ago, six white kids, fresh out of college, took a vow: They would shack up; they would share. They would live either in monogamous married couples or be celibate. They would work only part-time, valuing one another and their community over wealth. They would stand against injustice where they saw it, and bring about justice where they could.

Via Jayahome

Quote: The same skepticism that conservatives like to train on bleeding-heart idealists might also help create a more critical and careful examination of wealth, power, the possibility of structural injustice, and the possibility that some enemies might even become friends—and at less expense than it would take to kill them. Both progressives and conservatives, unfortunately, get too caught up in their own identities, rather than using their philosophies as analytical disciplines and sources of inspiration. Checking to see if someone puts out the right cultural signals, shares the same visceral dislikes of certain politicians (“who makes you hear the dog whistle?”), and laughs at the usual stereotypical jokes about nutcases—all that builds false community, not true national security.

Military planners are talking about a 50 year war in the “Arc of Instability” that stretches across the Middle East. What would a 50 year peace plan look like?

Quote: In this perspective, Iraq is only an immediate front, with Afghanistan and Pakistan the expanding fronts, in a single larger war from the Middle East to South Asia. Instead of thinking of Iraq like Vietnam, a war that was definitively ended, it is better to think of Iraq as a setback, or better a stalemate, on a larger battlefield where victory or defeat are painfully hard to define over a timespan of five decades.

Martin’s commentary: With President Change just redistributing the wars, it certainly seems like there’s long-war thinking going on behind U.S. military involvement.

Hayden says the useful comparison might not be Vietnam but the Indian Wars: long, drawn out skirmishes across a wide field with irregular fighters and shifting alligiences. Good as far as it goes, but those wars ended with colonization, with more non-natives living in the West than Native Americans.

Perhaps more meanacing is the idea of the classic British counter-insurgency wars that attempt to break the spirit of the occupied country through long drawn out conflict. This war depends on being fought outside of camera range—a U.S. officer is quoted saying: “you want to whack bad guys quietly and cover your tracks with humanitarian aid projects.” Hayden says Abu Grahib-style prison is being expanded in Afghanistan and Pakistan is just as much of a powderkeg ready to explode.

Via JohanPDX