I went to a Quaker meeting...

[otherlander]

When I got there this nice lady gave me a couple of pamphlets about Quakers. Then I went into the main room where they had all these benches in circles, so instead of facing a speaker in front you were just facing each other. For the first half hour or so, nobody said anything and everyone just kind of sat there and meditated. Then about 5 people talked. Then everyone got up and shook hands. From what I heard from the people talking, they're into environmentalism and women's rights. Awesome.

After sitting there for an hour and then shaking hands, everyone went into this other room where there was food and they just walked around the room and talked to each other. I started talking with this one guy who said that this meeting was "pretty unitarian" and they had people from a lot of different religions and some not-so-religious people to. Apparently the Quakers in the middle of the country are more Christianity-centered and more conservative, but still pacifists. The ones here in Pennsylvania, or at least this part of Pennsylvania, are more progressive.

I don't think I could really be one of them, though. My basic philosophy is that there is no one right way of living, and that if we can accept that and agree that nobody knows what is "best for" anyone else, it frees us to help each other without being paternalistic. And I also think that both love and rage can be used as tools for shaping a more free and more human world. I don't think they would agree with me on that one.

Another thing is, I'm not a pacifist. I used to be, but then I realized that I, living comfortably in the suburbs, had no right to say that *no one* was *ever* justified in using violence to fight oppression. What I think is that when bad circumstances cause rage and fury, these emotions are appropriate and useful. And sometimes the ugliness that surrounds a person is so great and so blinding that when they try to fight it they wind up creating more of it, becoming what they rage against. Riots, dictators replaced with dictators, paranoia, random executions, etc. But I don't think that people should therefore stop trying to use their anger to change things and only try to change things through love. I think that people who find non-destructive ways to use anger as a tool should be applauded. Rage doesn't have to mean violence. But there are a few things that I think justify violence. Overthrowing dictators, self-defense, freeing hostages whose lives are in danger, etc. It's not exactly a Quaker philosophy that I have.

But I think I'll go back, though. They sell fair trade coffee. Next time I think I'll bring money to buy some. Maybe bring up my ideas about psychology if I get into another philosophical discussion with somebody.

Edit: previous thread about this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=7651219

[u4ic]

1. I'd thought about it a few years ago

But I went to a UU congregation first and got hooked.

There are a few quakers here on the board. They sound like a great group of people. :)

[otherlander]

5. Yep.

They had this poster in the room where the food was that said like 20 different things on it and the last one was "Know that no one is silent, though many are not heard. Work to change this."

[u4ic]

8. That's a great quote

:thumbsup:

[China_cat]

2. Both love and rage?

Yes, Quakers would definitely AGREE with you about them being tools. They would probably question you about the method of applying them though. Rage doesn't necessarily mean violence.

And I think you'll find that most Quakers will admit that, though they'd try very hard not to react to anything with violence, that they don't know how they'd react if they haven't been in that type of situation.

[otherlander]

4. Ok, cool.

I said that, too, about rage not neccesarilly meaning violence. But, yeah, I've never been in that kind of situation, either, so it would be pretty damn pretentious of me to say, "Hey, you, guy whose brother got offed by a dictatorship! You shouldn't kill the guy who killed your brother because violence is bad!" So no pacifism for me. :(

[TreasonousBastard]

3. I think some more exploration of Quaker thought might...

be in order.

Partly because of the lack of clergy, few modern Quakers actually understand fully what the history of the testimonies, particularly the Peace Testimony, really is.

"Peace" in Quaker terms, is a not in itself a philosphy, but a place where you end up. The original testimony of George Fox and other founding Quakers was that they had gone beyond the need for earthly weapons in order to attain their goals. What they were describing was a spiritual place they had arrived at, not a moral position. They were also, no doubt, interested in convincing Charles II that they weren't going to choose sides in revolutions and wars of the time.

Those Quakers spent a lot of time in Olde English gaols, and many were beaten and some were hung. When not hunting witches, Puritans in Massachusetts colony found great sport in tormenting and hanging Quakers and there were plenty of Indian attacks and banditry in the colonies, so early Quakers had formed some serious opinions about precisely when the use of force was appropriate. One source says that at some points in your life to NOT fight is cowardice, but at other points TO fight is the way of the coward.

While Friends are one of the Historic Peace Churches, the sort of pacifism and war resistance we're now known for really started around the turn of the 20th century. Penn's experiment of a Quaker government in Pennsylvania is more of what we were about-- while it eventually failed in some ways and the Quakers were thrown out largely over economic questions and power competition, Pennsylavania was the only colony to have 70 years of peace with the natives and all its neighbors simply because it believed and worked for conflict avoidance.

[otherlander]

6. Thanks for the info, TreasonousBastard.

:hi:

Your name is fun to type.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. You're welcome, and...

if you want to dig around for more info before going to that next meeting, try www.quaker.org

That's the granddaddy of quaker sites, but www.quakerinfo.org is another useful one. And, since you mentioned somewhere you are in Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting www.pym.org might interest you-- it's the closest thing to a "governing" body you've got there.

Fox originally started organizing a movement to return Christianity from a church and dogma driven system to something more spontaneous along the lines of the earliest Christians, so the RSOF has deep Christian roots. However, largely because we are noncreedal and have no pastoral heirarchy, we have become far more secular than those early Quakers would have intended. Barclay's "Apology" was an early Quaker attempt to prove the existence of God, but few now would bother with it as anything more than an historical curiosity.

There are pockets of Christian faith in many meetings, but even the Evangelical Quakers don't get hysterical about it. Few of the more theist Quakers would dare attempt to define a God they have never seen, or demand you believe.

Myself, I was attracted at first by the activism but discovered a deep spirituality within the meeting that I found quite special.

And, yes, there are plenty of Quakers around who will happily demand their versions of pacifism are the only worthwhile ones, but there are many more who are as committed but not as militant.

[quakerboy]

7. Being a pacifist

does not mean that you require everyone else to be one. Others are free to have their own views and positions, between them and whatever spiritual understanding they have.

Edited to say that it does not mean being passive, either. Anger is a part of the human condition, and can spur one to action. Personally, I feel it is a force to be controlled and used, not merely vented.

[derby378]

9. I'm a Quaker who admires pacifism, but can't quite call himself a pacifist

I'm an anti-war activist. I was so against the invasion of Iraq from before it began because I knew how it was going to go down. I was against Poppy Bush waging his campaign against Iraq, not because I thought Saddam Hussein was a decent guy, but because I knew how much suffering it would inflict on the Iraqis. That, and because we were replacing the Iraqi dictator with a Kuwaiti dictator.

My own ideals as a Quaker include simplicity, social justice, civil rights, egalitarianism, and peace. But my own take on peace is that true peace is not possible in the absence of freedom and dignity - a healthy respect for what my fellow Friends call "that of God in every man." Could one really refer to the facade of tranquility and brotherly love in North Korea under Kim Jong Il as "peace," for example?

It is my fervent affirmation that peace cannot be forced upon people - it must be cultivated in the hearts of our fellow human beings and allowed to bloom and flourish. This is why I've taken the highly unusual (for Friends) stance of opposing most types of gun legislation in America. Gun control is just another way to force the absence of violence on people instead of actually cultivating peace. But that's just me.