V is for Vermont

   

Statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture
dome of the Vermont State House, Montpelier, Vermont
carved by Dwight Dwinell as a copy of a wooden original by Larkin Goldsmith Mead
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014

Virtually since the beginning of English settlement in the state of Vermont, Quakers have been part of the area's religious and social fabric. In the early part of the nineteenth century, Ferrisburgh Quarterly Meeting in western Vermont formed an active and healthy contingent in New York Yearly Meeting. During this period the word “Quaker” became part of street names not only in Addison County, where the town of Ferrisburgh is located, but as far east as Quaker Road in East Montpelier in the middle of the state.

 

Not that far from Quaker Road:
Vermont State House, Montpelier, Vermont
designed by Thomas Silloway, 1858
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014

Ferrisburgh Quarter was affected by the same theological divisions as the rest of New York Yearly Meeting in the nineteenth century. These were painful to all involved. More difficult still is the realization that those Vermont Friends who were active Abolitionists in the period leading up to the Civil War were not supported by either their Monthly or Yearly Meetings. This is despite the fact that slavery was forbidden in the state from the time of Vermont's first constitution in 1777. Rowland T. Robinson and Rachel Gilpin Robinson, the Quaker couple known for their work on the underground railroad, were effectively forced out of their Meeting in 1845. (See Elizabeth H. Moger, “Quakers as Abolitionists: the Robinsons of Rokeby and Charles Marriott,” Quaker History 92.2, 2003, 52-59.) This inconsistency in Quaker belief and practice will, unfortunately, not be unfamiliar to readers of Donna McDaniel’s and Vanessa Julye’s Fit for Freedom, not for Friendship.) Nevertheless, the Robinsons persevered on their work against slavery and helped send a number of women, men, and children on their way to safety in Canada from slavery in other US states. The Robinsons’ Ferrisburgh home, Rokeby, has been meticulously restored and is the most significant example of Quaker history in Vermont as well as a treasure of the Abolitionist  movement.

During the second two-thirds of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries, the number of Vermont Quakers declined precipitously. Friends increasingly moved to states further west, while those remaining often married neighbors who were not Quakers. By the time Quakers stopped “disowning” members for marrying people of other faiths —not to mention such “offenses” as owning musical instruments— the damage was done. Eventually, only two historic Friends Meeting Houses, both owned by New York Yearly Meeting, remained. They were from the Gurneyite tradition of Friends and had long since adopted a pastoral manner of worship. One of these two Meetings, Monkton Ridge, amalgamated with the local Methodist church several generations ago and was officially laid down in 1996. A Methodist minister serves the congregation, although Friends still own the building.

Friends Meeting House, South Starksboro, Vermont
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2007

The other historic Meeting, South Starksboro, underwent a different trajectory. Perhaps the best-known product of this Meeting is Joseph C. Greene, a physician from Buffalo, New York, who grew up in South Starksboro and who had the Lord's Prayer inscribed on a large rock in Bristol one town over as a warning to ox cart drivers who were cursing the muddy roads. (Modern motorists, who spent several years waiting for the replacement of the nearby bridge after severe flooding, will comment that neither the circumstances nor the language has changed much.) The last member of the original community, Elizabeth Birdsall Young, died in the Middlebury area in 1976. No doubt, as she watched the congregation dwindle around her, she began to wonder what would become of Vermont Quakerism. But change was afoot, and toward the end of her life, Elizabeth Birdsall Young was able to get a glimpse of it. (Note: I am perhaps the youngest Friend to have been introduced to Elizabeth Birdsall Young. It was she who confirmed that Joseph C. Greene had come from her Meeting.)

The change came from unprogrammed Friends. By the 1950’s there were small Meetings in Burlington, Vermont and Hanover, New Hampshire, one of the towns on the eastern side of the Connecticut River that was added to the latter state as a condition of Vermont becoming the fourteenth US state in 1791. As befits its location, a reasonable percentage of the participants in Hanover hail from Vermont. These Meetings, affiliated with New England Yearly Meeting, became the Northwest Quarterly Meeting in 1958. (This latter date should be readily accessible in the Yearly Meeting archives, although I do not have the source at hand.)

These unprogrammed Meetings were filled with some Friends who had grown up in Vermont or New Hampshire and had returned home after studying or living elsewhere, where they had encountered Quakerism. Susan Webb (née Howard) who had grown up in Burlington and with her husband, Kenneth Webb, founded the Farm and Wilderness Camps on Quaker principles in 1939, was an example of this post-war contingent.  Thomas Day Seymour Bassett, another Burlington native, was an archivist and authority on Vermont history; he came to Friends as a conscientious objector during World War II. (See Samuel B. Hand’s obituary for Friend Tom in Vermont History, winter/spring 2001, 141-2.) Most of the “new” Quaker contingent, however, were among the plethora of newcomers who were attracted to the natural beauty of the Green Mountain State and who found the area increasingly accessible to the cities in the Northeast, especially once the Interstates were completed. This larger body of newcomers, regardless of background or political or religious tradition, had a chance to start over and, in the parlance of a later generation, to “reinvent themselves.” The earlier arrivals found a lower cost of housing, assuming that they were selling an existing residence and were not entirely dependent on the commensurately lower salaries; that was, of course, a big assumption. They found the local inhabitants welcoming...

up to a point. The white clapboard houses snow-girt at Christmas were not so beckoning when most people in the neighborhood had a choice of relatives three generations deep with whom to spend the holidays. More prosperous suburban communities with less ice on the roads began to look attractive to some of the new arrivals.

The traditional views of many Vermonters, initially endearing to outsiders, became annoying at town meeting and election time. Even through the 1970's most of the so-called “real” Vermonters voted Republican —unless they lived in Burlington or suburban Chittenden County, both of which were already suspect. Susan Webb, representing a rural district in southwestern Vermont in the 1970’s, served as a moderate Republican. (See the obituary of Susan Webb linked above.) The newcomers, on the other hand, were politically varied, and a reasonable number were what a later governor and Presidential candidate, Howard Dean (himself a native of the New York City area), called “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” Only in the last generation or so has Vermont become the bluest of blue states and the home of “the People's Republic of Burlington” of Doonesbury fame, where the independent Socialist politician Bernie Sanders made his political breakthrough. (For those who might wonder, I come from an “old” Vermont family, but one that is politically and spiritually diverse; one of my mother’s favorite memories was running across Bernie Sanders on Church Street in Burlington shortly after he was first elected to Congress.)

Yet many of the new arrivals stayed. The Quaker community blossomed. Once again, many Friends were from out of state (disproportionately convinced Friends) or newcomers seeking a fresh faith community in their new home, although others were long-time inhabitants. Monthly Meetings were established in Putney, Bennington, Plainfield, Middlebury, Wilderness (near the Farm and Wilderness Camps), and Barton in Vermont and in the western New Hampshire community of Keene. A few years after Elizabeth Birdsall Young passed away, the ownership of her old Meeting House, which had been opened once or twice during the summer and on Christmas Day, was turned over to New England Yearly Meeting. There were enough Friends between Burlington and Middlebury to keep it viable year round. The property was renovated in 1985, and before too long South Starksboro once again had a Monthly Meeting. This time, however, it was an unprogrammed Meeting in New England Yearly Meeting.

There are now several hundred Friends in Vermont, of a wide range of interests and from many walks of life. Quakers have made particular contributions to education, social services, small and medium-sized businesses, and the arts. Regrettably, Quakers have not added appreciably to the ethnic diversity of the state, but neither have most other people. This problem, along with the increasingly precarious social and economic footing of many Americans, is among the principal moral issues affecting Vermonters both inside and outside our Religious Society.

If I, as an expat Vermonter who votes by absentee ballot, might comment on some of the challenges facing Friends there, I might look at two other areas: outreach and the peace testimony. Neither is is unique to Vermont, but both have factors germane to it. Quaker Meetings have done well in Vermont since the 1960's thanks to population growth and increasing political and religious diversity —not to mention the foresight of Friends who established a Kendal retirement community in nearby Hanover, New Hampshire— but further growth may require more effort. The unprogrammed Quaker reluctance to “proselytize” has left Friends unable to capitalize effectively on the growth of secularism and the increase in the number of people seeking spiritual alternatives. This is a real shame in Vermont, which is now ostensibly the state in the country with the highest percentage of people without religious affiliation. I hope that Friends in the Northwest Quarter will be able to take advantage of the new outreach initiatives of Friends General Conference.

In terms of the peace testimony, many Americans believe that we Vermonters have it lucky. Classmates, colleagues, and “capital and small f” friends from out of state post quotations from Vermont politicians on their Facebook pages and are overtly envious that I am privileged to vote for them. By and large, they are right, but we as Friends have to reckon with the fact that our Congressional delegation and our governor have all supported posting a squadron of F-35 fighter jets in the Burlington area. Burlington Friends Meeting is one of a number of organizations and individuals attempting to stop this plan.

There is also the matter of military recruitment. Because of its solid high school completion rates and academic standards, Vermont is a prime target of recruiters. The high cost of in-state college and university tuition does not help matters. Add to that a tradition of military service that in some cases goes back generations, as is true in other parts of the U.S. Vermont had one of the highest number of Union fatalities per capita in the Civil War (see especially the information from civilwar.org and the Vermont Historical Society). Although the percentage of Vermonters who died in Vietnam was lower than many states, it was still significant. It had the highest per capita casualty rate in the Iraq conflict, which makes it at outlier among relatively prosperous states. (See the study by Charles Maynard in Population Health Metrics, January 6, 2009). Thus, for cultural reasons and several other factors, there is sometimes pressure on young people to enlist. 

door of state office building, Montpelier, Vermont, 1949
across the street from the State House
building designed by William Freeman
of Burlington (VT) architectural firm Freeman, French, and Freeman
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014

Finally, Vermont’s rural hunting culture, which is often different from political affiliation, makes gun control a difficult sell, although there are some signs of progress. For instance, Governor Peter Shumlin, a liberal Democrat, posed on his FaceBook page last fall with the carcass of a deer he had shot and wished all of his supporters a safe and happy hunting season. (As a vegetarian, I admit that I was not amused.) Shumlin’s views are complex, as are those of Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and Representative Peter Welch.

As Friends, we have a distinctive peace testimony and social witness. How can we best bear witness to Vermont's motto, “Freedom and Unity?”

close-up of door of state office building, Montpelier, Vermont, 1949
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014

The author would like to thank her father, Arthur Lord, for making it possible to take the photographs in Montpelier.

U is for Universalism and Unitarianism

Under normal circumstances, the local Friends Meeting would have not have asked someone living twenty miles away from the new Unitarian church to join the Quaker delegation at the dedication ceremony, but a number of Friends had scheduling difficulties on the night in question. I felt honored to attend, and not only because of the similarities in outlook between Unitarians and many unprogrammed Meetings. My maternal grandfather was a Universalist minister —the Universalists are the other part of the “UU’s,” the joint Unitarian Universalist Association in the US. Admittedly, he left religion altogether around the end of World War I, but he was an exception. The First Universalist Society of Hartland, Vermont, was founded in 1802. My ancestors were in the town at the time of the American Revolution and were long-time members before my grandfather came along.  Members of the church were helpful to a relative who was a conscientious objector during World War II. My maternal grandmother, the last “card-carrying” member of that congregation, was a devoted Universalist until her death in the late 1970’s. I could only regret that she was not alive to hear about the occasion. 

First Universalist Society, Hartland, Vermont
©Kristin Lord 2014

Although some time has passed since that gathering, and the church in question moved to larger quarters a few years ago, the spiritual and cultural familiarity of that evening has stayed with me. In my case the cultural associations were indirect, though my grandmother and her oldest sister rather than my parents. Because there was never a UU church available at a time when my parents were moving to a new community (in one town, the church had closed, while in another, one opened about a year after my parents had settled in somewhere else), I have never personally been a member of that Association. The connections were nevertheless there, waiting to be aroused from hibernation.  The approach to worship, the choice of lyrics in the music, even the decor —the minister was sitting in a virtual clone of my grandmother’s favorite wing chair— all were familiar. The initial lines from one of my favorite poems of William Blake, “The Divine Image,”  formed one of the hymns: “To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love/All pray in their distress;/and to these virtues of delight/Return their thankfulness.” (Blake traveled in the same circles as Joseph Johnson, who was in turn associated with Joseph Priestley and other Unitarian reformers.) Downstairs in the Sunday school rooms were posters showing Emily Dickinson, Clara Barton, and members of the philosophical school of the New England Transcendentalists. Hundreds of miles away from New England and an ocean away from Britain, I saw the New England culture of my childhood and the British connections of my late adolescence in front of me.

The ideas behind what became the Universalists and Unitarians arose independently with different people in a variety of locations, with the Protestant Reformation as it developed in Britain and New England providing the catalysts to the modern form of both. The fundamental belief of Universalism is in the universal nature of salvation. Since God is a God of love, the Deity would never create a person knowing that that individual was destined for eternal damnation. The Unitarians believed that that God was one entity and that Jesus was fully human; in contrast, the view of Christianity as adopted by the Councils of Nicaea in the fourth century CE was that God was three persons, father, son, and holy spirit, who together form the Trinity. My mother used to put the differences between the two groups and between them and Christianity quite succinctly: “The Universalists do not believe in Hell and damnation, while the Unitarians do not believe in the Trinity.” (It was the belief in freedom from damnation which brought in my grandmother, who had witnessed the tail end of the Wesleyan Revival movement in nineteenth century North America and who was from that more traditional background.) These core beliefs became the nucleus of many others. The current Unitarian Universalist Association, formed from the two groups in 1961, has embraced religious pluralism. Only a minority of members of the current Association would consider themselves Christian.

Many unprogrammed and some programmed Friends have a favorable view of Universalism, and the practical ramifications of Quaker and Universalist Universalism (so to speak) are similar; but the two movements are very different in the way the concepts developed. The Universalists’ belief is ultimately one about the afterlife, or eschatology. Friends, on the other hand, have from our earliest days in the seventeenth century CE believed that it is the understanding of the Inward Light (the manifestation of the Holy Spirit) that is universal. This was the experience of Mary Fisher, the seventeenth century Friend who visited the Ottoman Empire (“the seed of them is near unto God,” as cited in Quaker Faith and Practice), and to some extent William Penn. To put this belief in philosophical terms, the Quaker belief is ultimately one of knowledge, or epistemology (for a discussion of the latter, see Jeffrey Dudiak and Laura Rediehs in Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion, The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, 2013, pp. 511-12). Whether this universal experience of the Inner Light leads to the kind of religious pluralism understood by modern Universalists in that denomination is another matter. John Punshon, in his Letter to a Universalist (Pendle Hill, 1989), advocates for Friends reclaiming their Christian roots; establishing mutual respect and tolerance between faiths is what creates world peace. Daniel Seeger takes a different viewpoint. Writing in The Quaker Universalist Reader Number 1 (1986) and elsewhere, he speaks of the kind of religious pluralism that entails participants to be grounded in one religion. For Seeger, that religion is Christianity. In fact, even among contemporary liberal branches of Quakerism, Christianity is a theological and cultural foundation. (For a broader understanding of the complexities of modern Quaker Universalism, see the resources of the Quaker Universalist Voice, Ralph Hetherington's 1993 Pendle Hill pamphlet Universalism and Spirituality, and the summary in J. William Frost’s discussion of modernist and liberal Quakerism in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, pp. 88-89.)

Sultan Ahmed Mosque (colloquially known as "the Blue Mosque," Istanbul
Upload via Wikimedia Commons
This mosque had already been built by the time Mary Fisher visited the area.

Speaking about Quakers and Unitarianism is equally complex. Neither George Fox nor Robert Barclay, the author of the first methodological theology of Quakerism, refers to the Trinity. William Penn, on the other hand, does. In Keys, Penn is quite specific about Friends’ acceptance of the doctrine, citing scriptural documentation in I John 5:7, the passage as it stands in the Greek manuscripts, not with the gloss “in heaven: the Father, the Word [Jesus], and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one added” which appears in some Latin manuscripts. Despite some ambiguities as to what exactly the early Friends meant by the Trinity,  a basic accord with it is understood in the affirmation used by Friends in the Toleration Act of 1689, which ended much of the persecution against early Quakers. (Stephen W. Angell’s article in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, pp. 160-61, contains an up-to-date summary of the scholarship concerning Quaker beliefs about the Trinity.)

The limitations of the Toleration Act of 1689 made me blush scarlet when I first visited yet another Unitarian church, this time the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The topic of the day’s sermon was the history of Unitarianism. After brief references to Michael Servetus and other Continental reformers, the minister provided a biographical sketch of Joseph B. Priestly, the English Unitarian theologian, political theorist, and chemist. More than a century after Friends were living reasonably freely in England (albeit without access to university education),  J.B. Priestly was forced out of London; one of the places he stayed in his exile was Pennsylvania, which in turn was inhabited by many beneficiaries of the Toleration Act of 1689.  Changes to the Toleration Act that removed the requirement for Christians to accept the Trinity came only in 1813. When the Winnipeg Unitarians greeted me with great warmth during coffee hour upon learning that I was a Quaker, I responded with sorrow that Friends’ determination to ensure their own acceptance in the Toleration Act had inadvertently left no room for the early British Unitarians when they came along later. (Talk about the law of unintended consequences!)

Both Friends and Unitarian Universalists have been instrumental our own ways in developing the separation between church and state that was enshrined (so to speak) in the US Constitution, and which has in turn become a part of the legal foundations of a number of Commonwealth countries. This is one of many areas which we have in common. We share a commitment to gender equality and a strong social witness, as well as support for science and the life of the mind. Seekers using the on-line tools of Beliefnet sometimes get similar answers for both liberal Quakerism and the Unitarian Universalist Association. When I wrote in an earlier post of the importance of other Friends Meetings and other religious groups as a “home away from home,” our  “UU” counterparts are a superb example. Indeed, one Meeting known to me has pooled resources for religious education with the local Unitarian Universalist church.

When “UU” friends and acquaintances speak about differences between Quakerism and their own traditions, the contemplative tradition of the Meeting for Worship and the sense of the Meeting which forms the basis of our corporate business practices are subjects of great interest to them. In terms of contemplation, some members of both groups have worked with labyrinths. I do not think it coincidental that in a single week I was photographing a labyrinth at a Universalist church and invited to walk one that was being set up at a Quaker Half-Yearly Meeting. (Unfortunately, scheduling problems prevented me from walking either.) Conversely, one of the great treasures of the Unitarian Universalist tradition —not only for themselves, but for all humanity— is providing a spiritual home to interfaith couples and families. Friends also have much to learn from their excellent religious education for both children and adults. Finally, Friends can benefit from the Unitarian Universalist breadth as a part of world religion, while at the same time offering the variety of world-wide Quaker experience as it relates to the Christian Oikoumene.

In writing this post, the author would like to acknowledge the generosity of the First Universalist Society of Hartland, especially the minister, Paul S. Sawyer, to her family in ways that can never be repaid.  She would also like to thank the hospitality of the Grand River Unitarian Congregation (Ontario) and the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg (Manitoba) at different times over the years.

 

the labyrinth at the First Universalist Society, Hartland, VT
©Kristin Lord 2014

T is for Ten Years

“...for ye have no time but this present. Therefore prize your time for your souls’ sake.”

--George Fox in Letter 5, to his parents

I. No time but this present:

Tough decisions are not supposed to be made in haste. We have the aphorism, “Marry in haste; repent at leisure.” Membership in the Religious Society of Friends is often compared to marriage. Friends believe that both should ideally be life-long and life-changing commitments. Indeed, the comparison of the church to the bride goes back to the Bible. For this reason it is not surprising that, as common-law relationships have now often become accepted alongside formal marriage, many would have a similar relationship to our Religious Society. (For a discussion of this and related issues, see Alastair Heron, Caring, Conviction, Commitment: Dilemmas of Quaker Membership Today [1992] and the surveys discussed by Mark S. Carey, Pink Dandelion, and Rosie Rutherford in Quaker Studies 13/ [2009] pp. 238-245.)

I raise the issue of complexities regarding membership at the outset because of the paradox that the ability to change religious affiliation that we see in many western countries may make it harder to commit. Again, the parallel to marriage is useful. It is a commonplace of sociological research that people who have experienced their own divorce or that of their parents are more reluctant to marry (or remarry, as the case may be) than otherwise similar peers.

So, what can I say about membership? I will make the typical disclaimer cum biographical statement, although some details are atypical. I am a convinced Friend who became involved with Quakerism as a teenager. My parents belonged to a variety of ‘mainline’ Protestant denominations and also had connections at different times with the Unitarian Universalists. I attended what was at the time a Preparative Meeting under the care of a Monthly Meeting over an hour away. (This is not uncommon in North America, but British Friends may wish to bear in mind that Monthly Meetings here are not usually deliberately set up to be groups of several Preparative Meetings; for instance, Jesus Lane Preparative Meeting in Cambridge, England would be a Monthly Meeting if it were in New England or Canada.) That Preparative Meeting was being nudged into becoming its own Monthly Meeting in a process rather similar to a long-time attender being encouraged to apply for membership, but they were only initiating the process when I applied. I thus applied for and was accepted into membership into a Meeting which I never physically attended, because I obtained my driver's license only around the time I met with the clearness committee that considered my membership. (I had been to other Meetings, though.) This made me the youngest founding member of the “new” Monthly Meeting. Because of the vagaries of my life, I have participated in some six other Meetings in four Yearly Meetings and visited numerous others in different parts of the world. I have retained my membership in the first Meeting, however, in part because I was a founder but also because I vote by absentee ballot in a town within its catchment area. I contact the local Congressional delegation with some regularity, usually about issues of Quaker concern. I was married under the joint care of that Meeting and the one of which my husband (another convinced Friend) is a member. The Meeting I currently attend is quite small and encourages Friends in its midst who are members of other Meetings to participate in a wide variety of Quaker business, including clearness committees of all types. I have handled the gamut of membership issues.

I may not be the best person to talk about membership, but, like other Friends, I have my opinions. First and perhaps foremost is the infrequency with which we invite attenders to consider applying for membership. Although we Friends talk about transparency, the discussion of membership (at least in the unprogrammed Meetings familiar to me) is taboo because of our concerns about proselytizing. I learned just how taboo when I was a teenaged attender and was considering applying to a college that had a Quaker history. In those days, applicants with a Quaker background of any sort were encouraged to self-identify (that question became illegal under human rights legislation probably around the time “to self-identify” became a verb in English, and no doubt for related reasons). I asked the clerk of the local Preparative Meeting whether she would back me up if I made such an identification. “Of course, I would be happy to write a letter explaining your situation, but I think you should apply for membership. It is a pity that Friends almost never invite attenders to take this step. My husband and I attended (our previous Meeting) for ten years and were never asked or even encouraged to apply. We kept thinking we were unworthy. Finally, we gathered up our courage and asked about joining. They said, ‘We were wondering what took you so long.’ Ever since, I have felt that Quaker practice on this point was wrong, and not just because no one should feel the way we did.”

I applied for membership a few months later, coincidentally a matter of weeks after putting down a deposit to attend a college with no Quaker connections. Over the years, several Friends who were much older than I and who worked on membership issues have spoken with me with the thought that at some point I might have some influence, however minor, on the broader discussion. Although all of these discussions have been important, that first statement cut to the core.

When Friends who have been attenders for some time inquire about membership or moot about the possibility indirectly, I retell the story about the people who waited for ten years under the fear that they were “unworthy.” I explain briefly what membership entails and show them a copy of whatever document the particular Yearly Meeting has that discusses the process. In some Yearly Meetings it is Faith and Practice; in Canada, it is Organization and Procedure; still other Meetings have pamphlets, of which Philadelphia Yearly Meeting provides an excellent example written by Jennifer Goetz. However, I do wait for at least a broad hint from the other party: I think this is as proactive as my Friend from high school days ever got.

Buttonholing individuals about membership is no doubt contrary to Quaker practice because of our history of being on the receiving end of persecution. There are other reasons we usually wait for someone to approach us, rather than the other way around; most notable is the concern that some attenders have had a negative experience with a denomination with its own expectations of membership.  So, within these parameters, what can we do to encourage membership? Meetings that have regular discussions of Quaker testimonies and topics can put membership into the rotation if they have not done so already.

Such discussions can and probably should include information about how to apply and what really goes on in a clearness committee meeting. Faith and Practice and general guidebooks keep the description on clearness committees for membership general  because of the variety of circumstances. The description in Howard Brinton’s Guide to Quaker Practice is typical: “It is the committee’s duty to ascertain whether or not the applicant understands the beliefs and practices of the Society of Friends and is in substantial agreement with them and intends to conduct herself or himself accordingly.” (p. 47, 1993 edition) However, people are often terrified of these meetings, and not only because there is the chance, however unlikely, that they might be encouraged to wait awhile.  My thesis supervisor gave me more of an idea of what was likely to come up in my dissertation defense than most Friends tell potential applicants for membership (or marriage, for that matter, if one wants to carry forward that earlier comparison). When the latest person to apply for membership locally asked what the clearness committee was likely to discuss, I had only the information listed above. And yet we tell people that a clearness committee is not the Spanish Inquisition.

II. Some Queries for those contemplating membership or serving on a clearness committee for membership:

Neither a thesis advisor nor a clearness committee can or should anticipate all questions in advance. No one wants to give or hear answers that are completely rehearsed, but a list of questions for people to think about in advance would not hurt. It might help attenders decide if they were ready to apply for membership. Here is a list, drawn up primarily for those in unprogrammed Meetings who do not have an expectation that Friends will support a formal statement such as the Richmond Declaration. Some of these questions are of the sort that might come up in a clearness committee, although we would have time for no more than a fraction; others are more likely to be used for an attender's own reflections.

A. General issues of experience and comfort level:

How long have you been attending Meeting for Worship? Are you able to make attending Meeting a priority to the extent that physical proximity to the Meeting and other considerations such as work and family commitments allow? If these practical considerations are onerous, in what other ways can you contribute to the life of your Meeting? If you are physically distant from a Friends Meeting, are you aware of what resources your Yearly Meeting may have for you?

If your Meeting allows attenders to participate in Meeting for Worship with attention to Business, have you done so? If you are able, can you contribute to the Meeting financially if you have not already done so? How can you contribute to committee work or other responsibilities that allow Quaker Meetings and organizations to function, if such efforts are feasible for you? If a personal problem not relating to Friends (e.g., issues at work or family illness) were to arise, are there Friends with whom you would feel comfortable discussing it? If someone inside the Quaker ambit does or says something that makes you uncomfortable in belief or practice, how might you respond?

Membership in the Religious Society of Friends is through the Monthly Meeting, but it is nevertheless a membership in the worldwide Religious Society. Have you visited other Meetings and larger Quaker gatherings or Quaker-affiliated programs (e.g., Quarterly or Half-Yearly Meeting, Yearly Meeting, Friends General Conference, Friends United Meeting, Powell House, Pendle Hill, or Woodbrooke)? If you move, can you anticipate participating in a new Meeting? Friends have often accepted members, including students, who expect to move in the foreseeable future. We are experienced and (we hope) helpful in assisting with such transitions.

Do you have a rudimentary understanding of Quaker history and how Quakers in your area are organized (i.e., Monthly and Yearly Meetings), and do you inform yourself of broader current Quaker concerns?

Friends often have periods of dryness in their spiritual lives. Also, sometimes people come to a new faith community with the feeling that the community perfectly meets their needs. Friends are human beings and Friends’ organizations are comprised of human beings; we are fallible and have at least our share of warts. Can you anticipate dealing with a period of dryness or disappointment while maintaining your membership in our Religious Society?

B. Quakers and the family and close friends:

Most Friends have family members who are not Quakers. Indeed, this is often the case even inside one's immediate household. How do members of your family view your interest in Quakerism? If differences arise, as in the religious education of children, how might you approach them? If you are currently single or unpartnered, can you envisage a Quaker life for yourself if in the future you have a spouse or partner with no interest in Quakerism? Can you discuss your beliefs with family and close friends if the subject comes up without feeling the desire to try to win them over, or without being defensive if any of them try to do the same?

C. God and Christianity:

The Friends in this Yearly Meeting do not have a creed or formal statement of belief (see introductory paragraph for Friends that do have a formal statement). Nevertheless, you should have a broad familiarity with the religious traditions of Quakers, how they have developed, and the range of such beliefs today. What have Quakers traditionally thought about God and Christianity? What is your understanding, within the Yearly Meeting you now attend, about such beliefs today? Allowing for human limitations in describing the range of their own religious experiences, how would you describe your own beliefs about God and Christianity? How comfortable are you with the range of belief within your Yearly Meeting (or a lack of diversity, as the case may be)? In particular, how do you feel about the Christian history of the Religious Society of Friends?

How do you perceive the relationship between religion and science?

D. Vocal ministry and the general conduct of Meeting for Worship:

How do you feel about vocal ministry in Meeting, or the lack thereof? If your Meeting has long periods or silence and/or plenty of completely silent Meetings for Worship, how would you feel about attending a so-called “popcorn Meeting” with lots of vocal ministry, or vice versa? Can you listen respectfully to a message that may not be meant for you, but which may be meaningful to another?

Are you familiar with Friends’ principles about the outward sacraments (water baptism and communion with bread and wine or juice)? How do you feel about these?

If your Meeting is completely unprogrammed, how do you feel about the lack of designated periods for music in Meeting for Worship? If you enjoy religious music, are there other opportunities, inside or outside of the Religious Society, that provide what you need in this area? Likewise, how do you feel about the absence of religious art in most Quaker Meeting Houses?

E. Quaker testimonies:

There are a number of areas of community, national, and global concern in which Friends have traditionally been active. These concerns come out of core beliefs, which we call testimonies. Quaker testimonies include, but are by no means limited to: sincerity or integrity, equality (whether of gender, social status, education, or other aspects of the human experience), simplicity, and peace. Modern Friends have also developed a testimony of environmental concerns, including the welfare of species other than our own. In addition, the testimony on integrity has led Friends to use affirmations rather than oaths.

Friends approach these testimonies in different ways. How do you approach these testimonies yourself? Does it bother you if another Friend has a different response to one of these testimonies than you do (e.g., differences of belief and practice about the peace testimony or views on gender, marriage, and sexuality)?

F. The world of Quakerism:

The Religious Society of Friends has members and attenders all over the world. For historical and other reasons, they differ enormously in the way they understand Quaker belief and practice. Traditionally, the organizational “building block” of Quakerism is the Monthly Meeting, called a “church” in some parts of the world. Monthly Meetings in turn belong to broader organizations, usually Yearly Meetings that meet annually (often with regional gatherings that meet more often); these are in turn connected to the Friends World Committee for Consultation, which represents Quakers from all over the world. Do you have a basic idea of the range of Friends in the FWCC and what their beliefs are?

If your Yearly Meeting is part of another Quaker organization, such as Friends General Conference   (FGC) or Friends United Meeting (FUM), do you have a basic understanding of what that organization is and what its beliefs are? People in North America should be especially aware that some Yearly Meetings have dual affiliations with Friends United Meeting and Friends General Conference and that tensions have arisen due to differences in beliefs and expectations among members of these two umbrella groups. These Yearly Meetings are: Baltimore, Canadian, New England, New York, and Southeastern.

The Religious Society of Friends is a living organism. As such, it is changing and developing. In what ways can you see yourself contributing to any changes that might occur?  If any current trends make you feel uncomfortable (and many Friends have felt such discomfort), what are they, and how can you relate to them? Remember that there is no one answer to questions like this.

G. Other questions and concerns:

Is there anything you would like to ask a clearness committee?

III. Other issues related to membership:

I have some broader issues in mind as well. Committees on Ministry and Counsel or their equivalent can keep up with people who are in the process of drifting away, if only to maintain the conversation and have accurate contact information. (I have known of membership clerks being approached by Ministry and Counsel because they do not have current addresses of all members, only to reply that membership clerks are likely to be in the same position.)

We might also consider saying something similar to what some other religious organizations put on their monthly newsletter: “those who are interested in knowing what membership in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) entails should feel free to contact the clerk, the membership clerk, or a member of the Committee on Ministry and Counsel/an Overseer (with names and contact information).” A letter applying for membership is sent to the clerk, but it is important to make it clear that the clerk is not a stand-in for a member of the clergy.

One final point: when the subject of raising the age limit for people on the “temporary list” (called “junior members” in some Yearly Meetings) came up in Canadian Yearly Meeting, I was one of many who were generally supportive. Times have changed. Whereas previous generations of Friends might have been likely to have permanent jobs and even children by their twenty-sixth birthday, the cut-off for many temporary lists, this has been unrealistic for some time. Although others have worked for some time and written at length on the subject, I also would encourage Yearly Meetings (and Monthly Meetings, where flexibility exists) to consider raising the age limit or to look at ways in which people who otherwise move a lot might feel comfortable applying for membership in our Religious Society.

Despite the noblest intent of all concerned, Friends who have served on committees to look over the membership list (the name and participants of such committees differ according to Yearly Meeting and sometimes within Yearly Meetings) sometimes have tales to tell about people who have applied for membership in the Religious Society of Friends and been accepted into it, only to sink into disillusionment later. Certainly some have applied when they had insufficient experience outside their local Meetings and were dissatisfied with a new Meeting in a different town. Some rethink their spiritual values and go elsewhere, the same as other people come to us. But does that make the idea of membership a hot potato? I hope not. The fact of a divorce does not by itself preclude remarriage under the care of our Religious Society (at least in the Yearly Meetings familiar to me). Likewise, we all know that “divorce” from membership happens from time to time. When people leave our Religious Society, it is important not only to see  why the Friend wishes to leave (like a marital divorce, such separations are occasionally called off) but also to ensure that the process is “no fault” and transparent. Friends try to arrange visitation for the member who wishes to resign not only to ensure that such a person feels “clear” about the Meeting (and vice versa) but to reduce the risk of hard feelings. Occasionally we have had a happy reunion later.

Exterior of Sparta Meeting House,  Yarmouth, Ontario
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2013

S is for Second Chances

Native Design inserted into the floor
between Air Canada Centre and Union Station
Toronto, Ontario
A reminder that Toronto's old nickname for itself was (and maybe still is)
"Toronto the Good"
photo ©Kristin Lord 2014

Serious study of early Christianity is not my field. I specialize in authors who were what we now call pagan. Right now I am devoting most of my research activities toward the Greek poets Sophocles and Euripides, although I have given conference talks on Catullus and Vergil, who are both on the Roman “side.” Nevertheless, in the final week of my introductory Roman civilization class I touch on what the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder calls the Constantinian shift, namely, how both Christianity and the Roman Empire changed when Christianity changed from the faith of the persecuted to the religion of the Roman Emperor under Constantine I (“Constantine the Great”) and ultimately of the Empire. This transformation is of particular interest to Quakers and other pacifists in the Christian tradition because it was part of the change in the attitude toward military service inside and outside of the early Church. In short, as a result of the changes in the period up to and during the rule of Constantine it became acceptable for Christians to serve in the Roman army, and the Roman army was for its part Christianized.

It might be argued that Constantine I, as a leader of exceptional ability, was instrumental in giving the western part Roman Empire a second chance that lasted for the better part of two hundred years. There is much to be said for this. As it happens, though, I think of Constantine as the emperor of second chances for another reason. He was involved in decisions about several movements within early Christianity that are now considered heresies. One of these movements was Donatism, which took a severe view about the readmission the Christian fold of both parishioners and clergy who had returned to paganism under duress during the persecutions of Constantine's immediate predecessor, the emperor Diocletian. The Donatists believed that people were out of the Christian fold once they were out. They were especially concerned about restoring priests and other leaders to position of authority, as they believed that the sacraments needed to be administered by a holy person in order to be considered sacred. Other people in the early Church believed that penance was there precisely to allow for people to be forgiven for making mistakes. If we consider the latter approach to be the way Christians normally believe —and by and large Friends adhere to it— it is, at least in part, because this view was accepted by Constantine and worked well for a huge number of people under different circumstances throughout later history. Although there are multiple reasons why the “orthodox” concept of forgiveness won out, it is worth noting that the pagans themselves were quite willing to give people a second chance to return to paganism by performing rituals in the non-Christian state religion. The Christian church needed to have a more attractive set of ideas, and being exclusionary would have ceded an important point to the pagans.

How do we view second chances today, in both religion and society? I have been thinking about this question for several reasons, both spiritual and political.  A telephone conversation a couple months ago with my father put the political aspect into high relief. “What is the deal with your mayor?” “I” don’t have a mayor, and my Dad knows it. I am an American expat who votes in the same Vermont town of  roughly 400 voters where he was on the checklist until he moved to another small Vermont town. Neither of these communities has a mayor. The rural municipality of Centre Wellington in the Canadian province of Ontario, where I now live, does have a mayor. A hard-working public servant who is respected by people across the political spectrum, she lives a few blocks away from us, but my father would not know that. In any case, when I replied, “What mayor?” he knew I was pulling his leg, as he had been pulling mine a moment before. My father lives on a sparsely-populated mountainside and has chosen to eschew Internet access, but one could never accuse him of being ill-informed.

I expect almost every person reading this blog knows to whom the phrase “your mayor” refers if the person hearing the question lives in the same province —maybe even the same country— as the mayor of Toronto, Ontario. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Rob Ford. (For an overview see Wikipedia, the Star, the Huffington Post, and the Globe and Mail.) People who live in parts of Ontario outside of Toronto feel especially justified in having one because all Ontario residents and taxpayers have a vested interest in seeing Toronto succeed as a livable and cosmopolitan city. Every year that Toronto fails to get a grip on its traffic problems adds to the expenses all of us will have to pay when it finally does make progress (see recent articles in the Huffington Post, the Star and the Globe and Mail for different perspectives on this issue). And that is just the beginning.

Panoramic Photograph of Toronto, September 2009
Martin St.-Aimant
reproduced with permission via Wikimedia Commons

A number of serious political commentators in the United States and elsewhere have been trying to figure out why a significant portion of the Toronto electorate has given mayor Rob Ford a multitude of second chances. From recent polling, he can probably rely on a core support of around 30 per cent of the electorate for his reelection in the fall (although that support has been dropping lately). Part of the answer to this conundrum is that conservatives in Ontario and elsewhere can be political or social conservatives, or both. Canada has a Conservative party, called by somewhat different names with different coalitions of voters in various times and places, and also has people who are conservative with a “small c” who do not vote for that party. In Ontario, people who are attracted to the conservative end of the political spectrum are more likely to be the small-government types and may have libertarian beliefs as well. This is Rob Ford’s general platform. Only a few are Bible-belt conservatives; in fact, they run the range of ethnic and religious backgrounds, although they tend to be socially conservative to some extent. (Municipal elections in Ontario are officially non-partisan, but municipal politicians run under partisan banners when they move to provincial or federal politics, and vice versa. The Ford family is associated with the Ontario Progressive Conservatives.) On the other hand, the politicians who try to appeal to this part of the electorate, even with a diverse and increasingly secular crowd like Toronto, often take a “tough on crime” approach. Mayor Rob Ford and his brother, Counsellor Doug Ford, will not be able to appeal to this latter demographic indefinitely.

Pollsters have so far found that the “Rob Ford Nation” can be divided roughly into two overlapping groups: those who agree with his economic approach and those who feel themselves hard done by elites. Although the Ford family is very wealthy, in political terms they are populist opponents of political, social, and —especially— intellectual elites. They also have the poise and charisma from which their opponents can learn a great deal (but probably not emulate, as experience can take someone only so far in the absence of innate talent).  In sum, there is a core group in Toronto and everywhere else in Canada and the United States that is sick and tired of being lectured at by people with advanced degrees. (In contrast, the late Jack Layton, the distinguished Canadian leader of the New Democratic Party/NDP, a social democratic party, had the kind of charisma that allowed him to attract wide support despite having an earned Ph.D.; his widow, Olivia Chow, who is also an intellectually engaged politician, is one of Ford’s opponents in the upcoming mayoral race.) For whatever reason, the Ford brothers seem to have an instinctive understanding of economically stressed people of average education.

Even these facts do not explain everything about Rob Ford’s popularity, let alone the degree of sympathy some have for him. (For an overview see Robyn Doolittle, Crazy Town: the Rob Ford Story [2014] passim, especially chapter 16.) Like many people, I have been trying to figure out what it is. The possibility of redemption is a part of it, and I will get to that in a minute, but related to redemption is the question of whether Rob Ford is a tragic figure. To a great extent he is a tragic figure, in the technical terms that would be familiar to a student of Greek tragedy. (Rosie DiManno of the Star, a fine journalist who has been following the Ford brothers for years, has a different definition and comes to a different conclusion.) Aristotle, whose understanding of tragedy and the ideal tragic figure forms the basis of much western thinking on the subject, believed that the ideal tragic figure is —in layperson's terms— of high status and better than average, but not blameless. The example Aristotle gives is Oedipus in Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King. To a great extent, Rob Ford meets this description, although for different reasons. Ford is indisputably of high social and political status; while he is no intellectual, his ability to “read” a large swath of the electorate, strike a hard bargain with labour unions (despite the controversy surrounding that bargain), and, perhaps most significant of all, to stay out of criminal court, shows that he is no fool. Many have underestimated him at their peril.

In Aristotle's view, the reason the ideal tragic character is successful is that he causes the audience watching a tragedy to experience a catharsis, i.e., an emotional release, of pity and fear as this character moves from good to bad fortune over the course of the play. (It is also possible, indeed likely, that the tragic characters themselves experience this catharsis, although this depends on interpretation.) The catch, once again, is that this character must be of the sort Aristotle recommends. If the person is completely innocent (for example, a toddler dying of a horrible disease), then one feels a sense of horror and outrage rather than pity and fear. If someone is a base character, then those watching his downfall feel he has gotten his just desserts. Indeed, some members of the Toronto electorate, and, by extension, some Ontario taxpayers, are feeling just this sense of revulsion. If nothing else, Rob Ford is a polarizing figure.

Mayor Ford's outrageous behavior is closely related to his substance abuse problems; for this reason, following his decline over the past year makes me feel a sense of pity and fear rather than revulsion or outrage. I have seen others suffer horrific effects of addiction, and, like many people, it is frightening because we know that many good people could be in the same situation but for a roll of the dice of heredity and environment.

Aristotle claims that the ideal tragic figure undergoes a reversal (in Greek, peripeteia), from good to bad fortune because of something called hamartia. Classical scholars nowadays translate hamartia as error, specifically, as D.W. Lucas puts it in his commentary on the Poetics, an error arising from “ignorance combined with the absence of wicked intent.” (Lucas, 1968, p. 302) For instance, Oedipus in Oedipus the King kills his father and marries his mother because he does not know that he was adopted. While we cannot say that Rob Ford acts out of ignorance in the formal sense of the term, the very nature of substance abuse problems often makes it impossible for the person suffering them to understand them in a way that allows them to act on them. I am giving a contemporary description of cognition, but one that is still relevant given what addiction does to the brain. Such an effect was not unknown to the Greeks. In Euripides’ tragedy the Bacchae, the character Pentheus, who is forced to participate in the rituals of the wine-god Dionysus, becomes unhinged to the point that he kills his own mother in a Bacchic frenzy. Aristotle himself uses the word hamartia in the Nicomachean Ethics, one of his other works, to refer to someone whose error occurs because he is drunk or angry; in this case the individual, although not seeming to be ignorant, actually is so because of these mitigating factors (EN 1110b.25-30; cf. Lucas, p. 301).

Thus, as the situation stands now (May 28, 2014), Rob Ford seems to me a tragic figure in the Aristotelian sense, except that he is living his life and not acting on stage. Those who are not convinced by this approach, Rosie DiManno probably among them, might consider how Rob Ford's time in office compares to another model of ancient Greek tragedy —and, indeed, Greek thinking about human behavior. In this model, which we see on stage in some of the plays of Aeschylus, a character becomes too full of himself or herself. Such an individual shows a kind of overweening arrogance with a bit of verbal and/or physical violence thrown in; the Greek term is hubris, which can also be found in Athenian law for verbal harassment or physical assault. This hubris invites the envy (phthonos) of the gods or other humans, or both. Inevitably, the individual involved makes a reckless error in judgment (the Greek word is atasthalia), which in turn results in his or her destruction. The trick for a writer turning this kind of person in to a character for the stage, or for a journalist describing someone in the media, is to humanize him or her so that the audience can relate  —which, I suppose, brings us back to that whole “pity and fear” shtick.

However, North American society is influenced not only by the ideas of ancient Greek tragedy but also the concept of redemption, which comes through Christianity and other religions. In fact, even Oedipus gets a second chance on the Greek stage, in the later play Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles.

When it comes to Rob Ford and redemption, the people of Toronto and Ontario are waiting with bated breath, as he undergoes inpatient treatment at a facility north of the city. What can I say about Rob Ford from my vantage point as a Quaker? As both a Friend and a human being, I can only hope and pray that his treatment is successful. If I were a Toronto voter looking for policies in passable tune with Quaker values, I would consider other mayoral candidates. Nevertheless, when listening to Rob Ford speak about the influence of elites and his sense of himself as an outsider (whether or not this is justified), I remember that George Fox had issues with the elites of his day. Some of the people to whom Fox appealed held roughly the same positions vis à vis the power structures in society that the “Rob Ford Nation” has now. George Fox upended the religious power structure by saying that one did not have to be educated at Oxford or Cambridge to be a minister of the Gospel (The Journal of George Fox, ed. by John L. Nickalls [1975], p. 11). He succeeded to a great degree because of his ability to create an alternative organizational structure for religion. Although the men and structures to which George Fox objected were spiritual elites, given the way England worked in seventeenth century, they had enormous temporal power as well. Both Oliver Cromwell and King Charles II had to be reassured that George Fox and his associates were not aiming to overthrow their physical authority. The first —and one of the most eloquent— expressions of the Friends’ peace testimony, the letter to King Charles II in 1660, was this very reassurance.

If George Fox was able to appeal to people who felt unsupported by the social structures of his day, might a less divisive figure than Rob Ford appeal to voters of varying degrees of affluence who are disillusioned by conventional politics? This is unlikely on the face of it, as lower taxes seem to be the “third rail” of politics for this group today. On the other hand, the situation demands thinking outside of the box, and a truly original and gifted politician will have ideas that we have not yet considered. It is possible that Olivia Chow (on the left) or John Tory (on the centre-right) or perhaps one of the other candidates could become this type of leader if winning the election. Certainly, whoever wins the election will need to gain the respect of people who voted for someone else.

How can Quakers, who are relatively small in number, help to bring about new ideas and encourage mutual respect? One of the major problems Toronto (and some other cities like it) faces is that it is a “forced marriage,” created by the Ontario government some years ago, of the urban core with some of its suburbs. People in different parts of the city often do not meet, except perhaps on a superficial level, and their children will probably not be educated together unless they attend the same university or community college. It might be very helpful if some of the religious groups in the area could facilitate informal discussions among both leaders and “ordinary” people who might otherwise never meet, much as Quakers have done with international political leaders through the United Nations in New York and Geneva.

Regardless of the form Toronto politics ends up taking, I am optimistic about the longer-term prospects of the city. God willing, all of us will have second chances, whether these opportunities are financial, political, educational, or spiritual. Although North Americans believe in the importance of these second chances, we are not always taught to use them well. When considering the life trajectory of leaders, be they Constantine, Rob Ford, or George Fox, it is instructive to see how they did or did not use their second chances, and how we may learn from what they did.

Native Design inserted into the floor
between Air Canada Centre and Union Station
Toronto, Ontario
photo ©Kristin Lord 2014