Quaker Theology

Issue #28 — Spring-Summer 2016

Explores dialogue, death, remembrance, marriage, and conflict through Quaker practices of attention, discernment, and faithful witness. An account of interfaith education shows how silence, lived experience, and universal grace can build understanding across religious differences. Several contributions reflect on dying through Peg Morton’s deliberate decision to end her life by fasting and through a memoir of love, dementia, loss, and spiritual transformation. Memorial pieces honor Tom Fox’s journey from military service to nonviolent peacemaking and preserve his reflections on compassion amid violence. Other articles support same-sex marriage and report continuing schisms in North Carolina and Northwest Yearly Meetings over LGBTQ inclusion and doctrinal authority. A historical study of Walt Whitman further explores Quaker, transcendentalist, and perfectionist influences. Together, the issue asks how attentive presence can sustain community through difference, suffering, love, and death.

  • Editor’s Introduction, #28

    This issue covers a broad range of concerns and issues. An account of disciplined interreligious education and dialogue work opens the volume. It describes an approach that is informed by Quaker spirituality, across gaps of understanding and belief that often seem unbridgeable, but which grace and attention sometimes cross. Three further entries deal with death:…

  • Context/Content/Community: Teaching Interfaith Dialogue as a Quaker

    This article explores teaching interfaith dialogue through a Quaker lens, emphasizing practices such as peace testimony, lived experience, universal grace, and the use of silence for discernment. It discusses challenges faced in interfaith engagement and how Quaker principles foster respectful understanding, empathy, and community among diverse religious traditions. The article highlights the importance of “paying…

  • The Death of Peg Morton: A View from Eugene Friends Meeting

    The post recounts the last public gathering of Peg Morton at Eugene Friends Meeting, where she announced her decision to willingly end her life by fasting, framing it as both a personal and political act rooted in her long history of activism and Quaker beliefs. It also chronicles her life journey, including her struggles with…

  • Feeling Light Within: Peg Morton Remembered For The Way She Lived and Died

    Peg Morton, a dedicated Quaker activist known for her political engagement and spiritual life, chose to end her life through fasting as a conscious and spiritual decision. Her life was marked by a commitment to peace, justice, and solidarity with oppressed peoples, and she remained hopeful about a growing global spirit of nonviolent change until…

  • A Godly Play Story About Tom Fox

    Today I want to tell you about a Quaker man named Tom Fox who believed in walking cheerfully over the earth answering to that of God in everyone. Tom was a dad. He had 2 children, a girl and a boy. Tom loved his children and loved being a dad. He loved to cook and…

  • North Carolina & Northwest Yearly Meeting Updates: Ambushed, Sandbagged, and Kicked Down The Road

    The post details deep divisions within North Carolina Yearly Meeting (NCYM) and Northwest Yearly Meeting (NWYM) regarding issues of LGBT inclusion, doctrinal authority, and disciplinary processes. It describes attempts to reimpose orthodox control, resulting in schisms, the departure of meetings, and struggles over the enforcement of Faith & Practice. The narrative also speculates on the…

  • “One Yellow Door: A Memoir of Love and Loss, Faith and Infidelity”* A Review

    This post reviews Rebecca de Saintonge’s memoir detailing her journey through her husband’s struggle with Lewy Body Dementia, which profoundly challenged her conventional Christian beliefs and inspired a search for a deeper, more authentic spirituality. The memoir explores themes of suffering, love, loss, and spiritual transformation, culminating in her eventual finding a religious home among…

  • Reflection on Peg Morton

    The post reflects on the experience of dying with dignity through the story of Peg Morton, a Quaker who chose to accept death on her own terms rather than pursuing prolonged medical interventions. It contrasts the natural process of dying with society’s tendency to resist it through technology, emphasizing the importance of teaching how to…

  • Three Reflections on Same Sex Marriage

    The article presents three reflections supporting same-sex marriage from a Quaker perspective, emphasizing equality, love, and the importance of marriage as a societal and spiritual commitment. It critiques historical and ongoing injustices against marginalized groups, advocates for inclusivity within religious communities, and celebrates the normalcy and blessings of same-gender unions. The author also shares a…

  • Tom Fox Speaks For Himself: Excerpts from His Blog/Journal

    Collects Tom Fox’s reflections on faith and nonviolent peacemaking with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq and Palestine. Explores the struggle to resist violence without surrendering to anger or fear, drawing on Christian teachings and shared spiritual insights across religious traditions. Describes civilian suffering, racism, and colonial attitudes while examining his own prejudices, calling for courage,…

  • Tom Fox: In Memoriam: Introduction

    This article is an in-depth memorial tribute to Tom Fox, a Quaker and Christian Peacemaker Teams member who was kidnapped and murdered in Iraq in 2005. It recounts his path from military musician to peace activist, the efforts to secure his release, and the broader significance of his commitment to peace in violent contexts.

  • Walt Whitman of the New York “Aurora:” Editor, Transcendentalist, Quaker, Perfectionist

    Mitchell Santine Gould Or rather, to be quite exact, a desire…had been flitting through my previous life Walt Whitman,“A Backwards Glance O’er Travel’d Roads” Although an origin story has always naturally been part of the biographer’s bread and butter, the field lacks its own term for this, and so we must borrow the notion of…

  • About the Contributors, #28

    Ken Bradstock has been a U.S. Marine, a deputy sheriff, and for many years, a hospice counselor. He is also the Clerk of Fancy Gap Friends meeting in Ararat, Virginia. Alice Carlton is a writer and a member of Chapel Hill Friends Meeting in North Carolina. She has worked for many years as an Imago relationship therapist.…