What interests the apostle [Paul] is not the last day, it is not the instant in which time ends, but the time that contracts itself and begins to end (ho kairos synestalmenos estin, 1 Cor. 7:29), or if you prefer, the time that remains between time and its end… .” — Giorgio Agamben — Some years ago, while I was serving on the Committee for Ministry and Counsel (M&C), a member of the Homewood Friends community asked for a special meeting for worship. She had miscarried in the fifth month of pregnancy, and she and her family felt that a Quaker worship service would offer solace in their gri ..read more

WWJD? “a question that has captured the minds and hearts of millions” — John D. Caputo1 The popular query “What would Jesus do?” is a modern reframing of the traditional idea of following or imitating Jesus. The original trope, attributed to Jesus himself, called for emulating him in self-denial and acceptance of suffering, as in this passage from the devotional classic called The Following of Christ: That seemeth a hard saying to many, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his Cross and follow Me.” But it will be much harder to hear that last sentence, “Depart fr ..read more

(This essay replaces the 2009 post “There Is One” in my “George Fox Series.”) Convincement as Event In its peculiar Quaker usage, the word “convincement” referred to a revolutionary event in which a person was convicted of sinfulness and raised into spiritual life by the light and power of Christ within.1 I use the word “event” here in a peculiar sense as well: with Alain Badiou’s philosophy in mind, I intend it to refer to the disruptive emergence of an element that had been excluded or repressed in the construction of a society’s standard worldview. “An Event happens when the excluded part a ..read more

“The Psychology of Salvation” was first published in 2008 in the independent journal Quaker Theology. Interpreting the early Quaker view of salvation — conversion of heart — through contemporary psychological concepts of schemas and cognitive dissonance, the essay seems appropriate for this time of pandemic when many are rejecting the advice of medical experts and refusing to protect themselves and others. I am reprinting the essay in serialized form for readers of The Postmodern Quaker. A full PDF version is available here. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SALVATION Recovering, Reframing, and Reclaiming the ..read more

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SALVATION Recovering, Reframing, and Reclaiming the Early Quaker Experience Part 2 Our Principal Source Text: Love to the Lost Our primary early Quaker source text will be Love to the Lost6 (1656) by James Nayler (1618–1660), the leading Quaker in London as the Quaker movement took hold in the mid-seventeenth century. Nayler is best known for his imitation of Jesus’ reported “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem, and for the resultant trouble that his action brought upon him and the movement. But he is also known for his deep, love-centered spirituality and his skill in writing, b ..read more

Vocal ministry, transcribed and emended, originally offered during worship on November 7, 2021. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” There’s a story in a couple of gospel books in which Christ curses a fig tree. He wants fruit, but it’s not the season; bearing fruit now would be against the tree’s nature. Nonetheless, Christ tells the tree that no one will partake of its fruit ever again. Drying up from the roots, the tree withers. Sometimes when the Christ-li ..read more

Into your hands I shall place my spirit. — Ps. 31:5; Lk 23:46 On the evening of September 10, the beginning of the liturgical day of the 11th, I watched the live-streamed lighting of the rebuilt Orthodox Church of St Nicholas, the original of which had been destroyed on 9/11/2001. Before the church was illuminated from within (a metaphor dear to the Quaker heart), the priests prayed outside for those who had died because of the 9/11 attack. They also recognized the suffering of those left behind. As I walked outside later that night, I thought about a saying (which may have been quoted by th ..read more

The highly contagious and often fatal disease called smallpox was still ravaging the world in the time of John Woolman (1720-1772), a Quaker who would be revered for his anti-slavery work among Friends. Outbreaks were not uncommon, and the general conduct of daily life could be affected greatly—as we might appreciate from our own pandemic experience. Woolman’s elder sister, Elizabeth, died of smallpox at the age of 31; her death, says historian Geoffrey Plank, was “a formative event for John.”1 The disease, which would cause his own death as well, was an important factor in Woolman’s life. Va ..read more

“But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition.” — George Fox In 1999, my essay entitled “The Making of a Quaker Atheist” was published in the inaugural issue of the journal Quaker Theology. Twenty years later, when I included a revised version of the essay in my memoir “The Church, the Draft Board, and Me,” I changed the title to “Becoming an A-theistic Quaker.” By that time, I had acknowledged that “atheist” seemed virtually synonymous in popula ..read more

The following is a transcription, revised for publication, of vocal ministry offered on 4/25/21 during Homewood Friends‘ meeting for worship. More than 45 years ago, I was invited into a peculiar1 way of life. A way of unity in diversity, a unity that does not demand conformity, as what earlier Friends called “the world” tends to do. A way of authentic encounter and relationship with persons in their alterity, their unique otherness, unlike the world’s way of treating people as mere instances of categories and as objects to be used and discarded if regarded at all. A way that eschews the wor ..read more