Quaker Theology

AFSC

  • 00. Can the American Friends Service Committee Get Its Quaker Groove Back?

    Chuck Fager I: The Background of a Concern What we’ve dubbed “The Great Quaker Turnover” has been rolling through Quakerism over the past year. Practically all the “alphabet soup” Friends groups have been changing their top executives: FUM, QUNO, FCNL, FGC, FWCC, Friends Journal. Read More

  • PRELUDE: Two Documents From Discussion held at FGC in Richmond, Indiana, July, 1979

    Chuck Fager [INTRODUCTORY NOTE: These discussions were sparked by an event that is unmentioned in these documents: the publication in The New Republic magazine of a cover story by Stephen Chapman called “Shot From Guns: the Lost Pacifism of the Quakers,” in its June 9, 1979 issue. Read More

  • 01: “Truly Radical, Non-violent, Friendly Approaches”

    (1): Challenges to the American Friends Service Committee H. Larry Ingle Reprinted from Quaker History, Volume 105, Number 1, Spring 2016. Published by Friends Historical Association Nearly twenty-five years ago, on the occasion of the American Friends Service Committee’s seventy-fifth anniversary, Swarthmore College historian Read More

  • 02: From Supporter to Friendly Critic: How AFSC Changed Me

    H. Larry Ingle Friends learn from experience, actually from a dialogue with experience; at its best, the dialogue is actually a trialogue with God’s Spirit an essential third participant. That’s what happened to me as I reflect back on my encounters with the American Read More

  • 03: The Cold War’s Effect AFSC, 1947-49

    H. Larry Ingle Reprinted from Peace & Change, 23 (Jan. 1998) In a year when it received the recognition of a Nobel Peace Prize, the American Friends Service Committee entered into a period of marked transition. This study of the impact of the cold war on the organization Read More

  • 04: Pickett vs. Chambers: A Case Study of Elite Class Power

    H. Larry Ingle Reprinted from: An Early Assessment: U.S. Quakerism in the 20th Century. Papers from the Quaker History Roundtable, 2017. The story I am about to tell is not one that I take great pleasure in relating. For one thing, it deals with a Friend whose life was, in most ways and as Read…

  • 05: “Speak Truth to Power:” A Thirty Years Retrospective (1985)

    H. Larry Ingle When the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) published “Speak Truth to Power” in the spring of 1955, it did two important things, one advertent, one inadvertent. The authors intended to, and did, produce the most lucid pacifist tract ever penned in the United States; Read More

  • 06: AFSC and Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting & Association

    An Exchange About Numbers; (SAYMA), 2011-2012 From SAYMA’s minutes, 2011: [SAYMA =] Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting & Association June 9-12, 2011[Below: SAYMA’s logo & Map of Meetings] Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina41st Annual Meeting 41-32: AFSC and Quakers Free Polazzo serves as one Read More

  • 07: A Flicker of Hope: A Friendly Letter

    Written & published by Chuck Fager Issue Number SevenTenth Month 1981 Dear Friend, On the 30th of Ninth Month [1981], near the Oregon coast, a meeting took place which could be very important for the future of American Quakerism. The two top executives of the American Friends Service Committee Read More

  • 08: Another False Dawn: AFSC, 1991-1992

    A Friendly Letter, Written & published by Chuck Fager, Issue #127, 12th Month 1991 As the Corporation and Board of the American Friends Service Committee gathered for its annual meeting on 11/15-17, AFSC was on the brink of important change: A new Board clerk has taken hold. A new Executive Secretary, the most pivotal Quaker…

  • 09: Introduction to Quaker Service at the Crossroads – 1988

    Chuck Fager There’s an old Quaker joke: a young woman attends her first business meeting as an adult member, looking to make her mark, and sits next to a weighty older Friend in a grey bonnet who is knitting quietly. An agenda item comes up which requires nominations Read More

  • 10: Gilbert White & AFSC: A Letter to the Editor, Friends Journal, 2006

    H. Larry Ingle & Chuck Fager (Published in the April 2006 issue.) Dear Editor, We were very disappointed in Margaret Bacon’s review of the biography of Gilbert White, Living With Nature’s Extremes. The reviewer dismissed with a throwaway comment the deep concerns Read More

  • 11: Can the AFSC Get Its Quaker Groove Back?

    By Chuck Fager Adapted from Quaker Theology, Issue #18, 2010-2011 I: The Background of a Concern What we’ve dubbed “The Great Quaker Turnover” has been rolling through Quakerism over the past year. Practically all the “alphabet soup” Friends groups have been changing their top executives: Read More