This is a continuation from posts a and b. I’ve caught myself in the last few years reacting to my Evangelical upbringing around conversion. Why does it have to look and sound one way for everyone? It’s as if to say, “Come, go through the motions, say the
Continue reading →While preparing for a wedding this coming Saturday I ran across this quote from Barrow Cadbury (a Quaker who was related to and worked in the Cadbury Chocolate factory in Bournville England) on marital advice. I really enjoyed reading it. Barrow Cadbury, after forty years of marriage, wrote in 1933
Continue reading →A long while back a friend of mine wrote on his twitter this remark: There is no pure Christianity, it is all syncretist. And I agree with this point, all Christianity today is influenced to a smaller or larger extent by outside forces. I’m not sure it’s ever
Continue reading →Psalm 52. He and she who has ears to hear let them listen. To the fat cats of American capitalism: Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly? All day long you are plotting destruction. Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of
Continue reading →Introduction Our world is made up of questions and ambiguities. Probably all of you have watched Jeopardy. The unique thing about the game of Jeopardy, besides its suave host Alex Trebek, is that the contestants respond with a question in order to score points. For instance: Here is an answer
Continue reading →Opening Prayer (from the bulletin?) John Woolman is dead. These words may at first appear to be simply an obvious statement, uninteresting and useless. For some, it may be meaningless.Who is John Woolman, anyways? For others, to say that the 17th century Quaker abolitionist is dead understates the obvious
Continue reading →Editorial note: This week we discussed over email the question “What comes to mind for you when you think of plainness (or simplicity)?” We had a ton of responses from people on our church’s email group. All the responses were thoughtful and helpful. Because there was such a great
Continue reading →This is the mission entrusted to the church, a hard mission: to uproot sins from history, to uproot sins from the political order, to uproot sins from the economy, to uproot sins wherever they are. What a hard task! It has to meet conflicts amid so much selfishness, so much
Continue reading →Last fall a few of us (younger) Quaker ministers from the Northwest Yearly Meeting got together to start work on a podcast. After a little deliberation we decided to call it Composting Quakerism (Facebook page), bringing together two of my very favorite things. Compost is rife with theological allusion, and
Continue reading →Just the other day I said to my wife, Emily, “I really like being a dad.” I will tell our oldest daughter L that from time to time as well. I find that there are some events that take place, some moments along the journey of the day that really
Continue reading →Text from my sermon June 13, 2010. This morning we begin our summer long discussion on Quaker testimonies with the testimony of truthfulness, or what has more typically been called the testimony of truth-telling, honesty, integrity, against oath-taking, etc. Irregardless of what we call it, listening to, learning, and living
Continue reading →Here is a really great interview from the Iconoclast this week which looks at the difference between a theology of creation and a theology of empire. The person they interview is Wes Howard-Brook whose commentary on John “Becoming Children of God” is really good (from what I’ve read so
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