To be candid, I’m not accustomed to being consulted by Evangelical Friends. I’m not one, and over the past forty years, I’ve often found myself on opposite sides from many vocal or leading Evangelicals. Nevertheless, I’ve learned things from Evangelicals, and on good days, I’m content to let them follow their leadings, while I struggle …
Category Archives: Issue #34 – Spring 2020
Spring 2020
Editor: Chuck Fager
Associate Editor: Stephen W. Angell
ISSN 1526-7482
All the essays in this issue
are copyright © by the respective authors,
and all rights are reserved by them. They are published
here by their permission.
The views expressed in articles in Quaker Theology are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of the Editors, or Quaker Ecumenical Seminars in Theology.
Editor’s Preface to “Engaging Homelessness behind the ‘Orange Curtain'” by Chuck Fager
A bulletin from southern California: The biggest Quaker church in the world wants to shut down one of the smallest. The small church sued in late 2018 to stop the shutdown.But a hearing in Orange County Superior Court on January 31 could have locked their doors and; made the small church members and its pastors homeless. The issue: the small church was helping homeless people.
Engaging Homelessness Behind the “Orange Curtain” By Joseph Pfeiffer
Homelessness in Orange County, California, is only recently coming to light. Its rapid increase in the most affluent county in the U.S. is increasingly difficult to ignore, having swelled to over 7,000 in recent years, and with few resources allocated to cope with it (Replogle 2019a; 2019b). Attempts by county and local officials to make the problem simply disappear have resulted in public controversy and federal court censure (Replogle 2018).
From “The Church, the Draft Board, and Me” by George Amoss, Jr.
This recounts my conflicts with the Catholic Church, whose ethics were called into question by the war in Vietnam, and the U.S. Selective Service System, which refused to honor my conscientious objection to participation in war. In telling that story, it sketches my evolution, despite encounters with predatory priests and a vindictive draft board, from youthful candidate for the Catholic priesthood to adult a-theistic Quaker who still asserts that “God is love.”
Four-Track Mind: The True Story of the Brothers Doug by Doug Gwyn
My early songwriting tended to be more jokey and satirical than more recent efforts. But from the beginning in 1977 to the present, I have worked with irony and paradox, humorous or not, to explore my experience of grace and my understanding of God as someone who subverts and overturns my human categories for the better. I was drawn by the irony and paradoxes in Jesus’ parables of the kingdom.
Theology & Peace Witness by Chuck Fager
A Letter to the Next Director of Quaker House, Fayetteville-Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Here’s the job description in a nutshell: as the Director of Quaker House (QH), besides managing a small non-profit, the essence of the work a call to continue a protracted, hand-to-hand combat with the Spirit of War, operating behind the lines of one of its main strongholds, far from most Quaker bastions, and largely on your own.
Political Thought of John Dickinson and William Penn — Two Books Reviewed by H. Larry Ingle
“Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson” and “Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn. Reviewed by H. Larry Ingle
The Ku Klux Klan by Daisy Douglas Barr
Daisy Douglas Barr (1875-1938) was a popular preacher in Indiana Yearly Meeting. She served as pastor for at least six different Friends meetings/churches there. She was also a key figure in the statewide women’s counterpart Klan group, and a Vice-Chairmam [sic] of the state Republican party. She read this original poem at the national meeting of Grand Dragons of the Ku Klux Klan, among whom she was the only woman, in Asheville, North Carolina, 1923.
About the Authors
George Amoss Jr. is a retired social worker living north of Baltimore in Maryland. Daisy Douglas Barr (1875-1938) was a popular preacher in Indiana Yearly Meeting. She served as pastor for at least six different Friends meetings/churches there. She was also a key figure in the statewide women’s counterpart Klan group. Chuck Fager is the …