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Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

Quakers

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Labor and rest

Have you taken a day of rest and restoration this week? —Evangelical Friends Church Southwest

Sometimes it can be helpful to read one of my cultural traditions from another perspective. I’ve read most about the Sabbath recently from Jewish writers and evangelical Protestant theologians.

But today my devotional brought me this query from Quakers in the southwest region of the United States:

Have you taken a day of rest and restoration this week?” —Evangelical Friends Church Southwest

Why, yes, I said to myself. Yes, I have. And tomorrow I have the hard-won privilege of being able to take another.

On International Worker’s Day six days ago, many around the world commemorated the rights, regulations, and conventions that labor movements have fought for over the last few centuries.

The standard eight-hour work-day—which divides the 24-hour day into equal segments for work, sleep, and free time—is one such regulation. The two-day weekend is another. I’ve valued it most when my jobs have required I work through either Saturday or Sunday.

(Yes, labor at churches is still labor! Ask your nearby minister.)

But evangelical Quakers aren’t asking about regular rest in solidarity with international labor. Nor are they following the Seventh-day Adventist concern for the observance of the Ten Commandments or “moral law” on a specific weekday.

Rather, the Friends’ interest is in living in acknowledgment of God throughout life:

First generation Friends on the other hand did not feel that God was calling them to observe a particular sabbath day – much to the consternation of mainline Protestants. Small wonder after their meeting for worship these Friends would open their businesses and serve their fellow humans with honesty and caring. These Friends were, in other words serving the Lord even though, government officials often arrested the true Christians for ‘breaking the Sabbath.'” —Arthur Berk

“We do not need to long for a particular day,” Berk explains. “He is present always.”

That principle of pervading presence is the community’s historical status quo, but some Friends are experimenting with the rite of disrupting their typical schedules and choosing not to work as normal anyway.

Some, like the Jewish and allied community of the Reboot initiative, choose to unplug from the internet and mobile technologies and recenter with family and friends.

Even when it’s philosophically inconvenient, humans love habit and structure. And sometimes that tendency can help us recover attention, presence, and grounding that our wider culture’s habits make it hard for us to live into every day.

Having access to these benefits shouldn’t be a matter of privilege, and part of seeking a more just world has to mean changing our social cultures so that it no longer is.

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Synchroblog: Coming Back to Prayer

This is a contribution to the 2014 Queer Theology Synchroblog under the theme “Coming and Going.” Other contributions will be compiled on the QT site by October 22.

The article I contributed to last year’s synchroblog on creation was based on Genesis 1:2, and I reference it in this piece.

“I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words… I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!'” —Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias

[Read more…] about Synchroblog: Coming Back to Prayer

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On the People’s Climate March: Conversation No. 1

"On September 21, I'm marching for a sustainable future."
What I’m marching for. via People’s Climate March (2014)

“It’s not just a one-day march. It’s our long-term ability to build a strong climate movement that we need to invest in.” —Ananda  Lee Tan

I’ll be at the People’s Climate March in NYC all day Sunday. Over 1,500 organizations are now registered to participate, and over 800 buses including ours will be heading to downtown NY. The March precedes the 2014 UN Climate Summit by two days.

If you’re not going yourself, but want to watch from home, bookmark the PCM’s website: Democracy Now will be running a live feed through the day.

You can also learn more about the why of the March by browsing the 350.org website or watching the PCM coalition film that I reviewed this week, Disruption.

I won’t be at the March alone.

A Conversation with Toni and John Hudson, Quakers, Retired Teachers, and Climate Activists

Toni Hudson, a retired elementary school teacher, spoke to me two weeks ago. Just a few days beforehand, she’d shared an announcement about the People’s Climate March with other members of her Friends (Quaker) meeting in Sandy Spring, MD. She’ll attend the March in New York City with her two grandsons, riding a bus organized by the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club.

Toni, what happened when you shared about the March at last week’s Friends Meeting?

Toni: I got a few responses from people who appreciated the message, and the clerk put it in our meeting’s newsletter. I just wanted to put it on people’s wavelength and wonder how many more people will go.

How did you first hear about the People’s Climate March? I heard about it through Peterson Toscano, the Quaker performance artist who now specializes in climate change.

Toni: My husband and I, we get a lot of emails from environmental groups. I think I first heard about it from Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW). We’re on the steering committee and QEW decided to sign on to the March as a supporter months ago. If you know Quakers, you know that’s not just a decision that gets made quickly! Well, I heard about it and thought about it, but because it was in New York, I crossed it off my list. I thought it was too far away.

And then when I heard about it again from Bill McKibben’s group 350.org, it caught my attention. Either QEW or Interfaith Power and Light (IPL) said it was going to be really big. It was equated with the March on Washington [1963]. You know how people say “I was there [at the March on Washington]?” They said the People’s Climate March would be a historical moment.

I said I want to be part of that. This is going to be really, really big.

Have you always been concerned about environmental issues?

Toni: Well, I hear about many of these things through my husband, John. He’s a chemist and used to teach environmental science.

But I’ve always had a general concern myself. Back in the 1970s, when Earth Day started and during the gas shortage, I remember only being able to get gas on certain days. We were so close to public transportation, could walk to a bank or a church—it might not be your church of choice!—but these facilities were there around us.

Neighbors of mine had some passive solar in their house back then: they had a cinderblock wall with a glass wall on the outside; the glass let in the light and the blocks absorbed the heat. Jimmy Carter had solar panels on the roof [of the White House]. And the retirement community at Sandy Spring had solar panels as well.

And then things died out for a while. It seemed we had all really cut back on our energy use, and then more and more things went back to how they’d been before.

Where does Quaker EarthCare Witness fit in?

Toni: QEW started 25 years ago; their anniversary celebration was last fall. Originally they’d thought that they’d just be around for 25 years and by that time Quakers would have taken on the principle of “right relationship with the Earth.” It hasn’t worked out that way. As Quakers, we have testimonies about simplicity and equality so there was a thought that we might get another testimony about caring for the Earth. That’s part of what QEW has tried to do.

I think Earthcare has turned into a unifying factor for all Friends, regardless of their affiliation.* The steering committee has representatives from the different Yearly Meetings, including those that are more conservative. One of the newly active and most respected members is a conservative Quaker from Iowa. He is concerned about native plants, and is trying turn family property back into native prairie. He’s also a biology teacher and is very good at communicating. He has such a reverence for the land and God’s creation. I admire that.

* Friends United Meeting and Friends General Conference are two of three international associations for Quakers. Roughly, FUM trends centrist and FGC trends liberal. A third association, Evangelical Friends Church International, supports evangelical Quakers. My local yearly meeting, Baltimore Yearly Meeting, is a joint member of both FUM and FGC.]

Is there any part of your faith that drives the action you take about this issue?

Toni: My faith teaches me that we only have one Earth, and it’s important for us not to mess with the cycle of life. Another teaching is the idea of taking care of the world that we live in. It feels like man’s greed to think that they have the right for everything to go their way and not consider other living things.

Tell me a  little about your grandsons.

Toni: My grandsons are 11 and 16 years old. And we’re actually going with another grandmother and her two grandsons: one of the other members of the Unity with Nature Committee lives in West Virginia and will ride the same bus as us.

It’s so hard for their parents: our children are so busy making a living. So the bulk of the people I know who participate in environmental groups tend to be older, partly because they have the time.

I think there are two kinds of older people: those who say “I’m not gonna be around for the future so I won’t worry about it,” and the others who say “I’m really concerned about the future and what kind of world my children and grandchildren are going to be in.” I’m in that second group.

My grandchildren’s mother really was anxious for them to go on the march: them going was a way for their parents to participate. An 88 year old friend who couldn’t physically go herself has given another rider the money to pay for her trip to New York. So people are participating in as many ways as they can.

What other action have you seen, beyond this March?

Toni: QEW is coordinating the Quaker contingent at the March, but QEW also has NGO status at the UN. So there are Friends who are assigned to go the meetings at the UN Climate Summit, to bring to the UN environmental issues from the Quaker perspective. There are also Quakers trying to get the PNCBank to stop mountain top removal and they’ve been very successful; they do very active things like showing up at board and stockbroker meetings. FCNL (Friends Committee on National Legislation) is another group that works with Congress.

You know the Quakers weren’t “out there” on this issue initially but some are considering it as significant as slavery [The abolition of slavery was a catalyst for some early Quaker social activism.] We can see now that the people who are going to suffer the most from climate change are going to be the people that live close to the water, the vulnerable, the poor.

John: In Montgomery County, MD, the County Council made a resolution about natural gas fracking at Cove Point. A company, Dominion Energy, wants to export the natural gas to India and Japan by piping it across Maryland from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, liquefy it at Cove Point, transport it liquefied across the ocean, and then pipe it to Japan. The concern for residents is that it’s dangerous to live so close to the liquefaction point. Cove Point is like the Chesapeake beach, so residents are close to where the work would be done. And Montgomery County said the state shouldn’t allow the point to be built before an environmental impact study has been done. Howard County (a neighboring county) wouldn’t initiate a resolution to discourage the state from moving ahead.

The US Energy Department has said that it would be better for China to burn coal than use the fracked gas transported from Cove Point because so much methane is lost during the process. The worst emissions come from the natural gas industry. If you want to learn more about this, you should look up peer reviewed science papers from the National Academy of Science.

Toni: I think there’s room for all kinds of people in this movement. I’m not a scientist or an academic; my husband is. He innately has a more technical understanding and I don’t. So what I try to do is bridge that gap for other people. The majority of people, it seems, don’t have a real good understanding of science. For instance, when you pass a bus and it says “Clean natural gas,” John tells me that the gas itself might be clean when it burns, but the process overall is bad for the environment.

But people who know too much can overwhelm [others] with information so I think you still need people who can communicate the message without being overwhelming. I’m glad we’re involved: being a volunteer makes you do things you never thought you could do!

What trends are you noticing now that you’re more engaged?

Toni: For Quakers, the theme next year at the 2015 annual yearly meeting session will be “Right Relationship.” We brought forward a statement for that. Some years ago it felt like people looked at me strangely when I talked about the environment. But this year, I really really noticed that it seemed like something that was on a lot of people’s minds and there was an appreciation for the concern. There are so many different things to worry about and be involved in and it seems like more people are thinking this is something that should take priority.

At Sandy Spring Friends Meeting, the native plant garden is another aspect of this respect for the environment. For earth day, someone spoke about the bees. At Sandy Spring Friends School, they are planning to put in another field of solar panels to help them cover 60% of energy use. One of the staff members works on the garden, which produces some of the food for the school. All of this is part of right relationship.

Do you think it’s too late to turn the ship of over-consumption around? Where do you see hope?

Image via the People's Climate March
Image via the People’s Climate March

Toni: I’m an optimistic person but I don’t want to have my head in the sand. I’ve always had confidence that people can solve these problems. But as I get older I get worried that greed stands in the way, so that’s where the faith community comes in: if you examine your conscience, it may force you to do the right thing.

I hope that people of faith will make the difference.

“This moment will not be just about New York or the United States. Heads of state from around the world will be there, as will the attention of global media. We know that no single meeting or summit will “solve climate change” and in many ways this moment will not even really be about the summit.

“We want this moment to be about us—the people who are standing up in our communities, to organize, to build power, and to shift power to a just, safe, peaceful world.

“To do that, we need to act—together.” —350.org and the People’s Climate March

Many thanks to Toni and John for talking with me. I’ll look forward to seeing Toni, Peterson, and a hundred thousand other people on the streets of New York this Sunday!

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Reader Review 05

Posts tagged “Reader Review” include a few top articles from my weekly reading. Their topics may vary, but their quality and provocation quotient won’t. Enjoy.

Quakers examining core principles: non-violence and a returning Christ

QuakerQuaker: A Hermeneutic of Non-Violence (Randy Oftedahl)

QuakerQuaker is a site that collects posts from Friends (Quakers) from across the internet and allows members to discuss the points they raise. Quakers are well known for their “peace testimony,” a conviction and witness about peace-building and war that has expanded over generations. In this post, Oftedahl asks whether there is or should be a Quaker hermeneutic about non-violence: some kind of meaning and interpretation heuristic that helps Quakers identify and pursue peaceful options not just at the macro-state level but also at the micro-level of the person:

We live in an era when large scale State violence, though still very present, appears to be on wane while interpersonal, communal, and social violence, from the surveillance state to online bullying, is finding new venues in the technological age. A new “democratization of violence” is happening, as culture wars begin to look more and more like real wars. What might the Spirit require of us?

Should this [hermeneutic] include a willingness on the part of each one of us to examine and speak out against ALL forms of violence, in ourselves, in others, in our S/society, in our country, and in our world, whether inter-personal violence or cultural violence, whether in the form of militarism, or racism, or sexism, or classism, or economic exploitation, or religious prejudice, or any other form, whether historical by our ancestors or in ourselves today, whether blatant, or latent, or actively denied?—Randy Oftedahl

Peaceable Kingdom, oil on canvas, 75 x 89.5 cm
“The Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks, 1820

This is a question about how the identity-shaping practice of telling stories about a religious tradition and its historical advocacy might discourage an adherent from working out similar convictions in the present day, centuries removed from the contexts and concerns of their tradition’s founders.

In a sense, this is the classical “religious sustainability” question: how shall we honor our religious heritage while ensuring we’re expressing something of value in our time and passing on something valuable to those who will follow us?

I’m also mulling over a fantastic series on a Quakerly way to view the Second Coming, in terms of anticipation, transformation, and present intimacy: “Christ is come, and is coming—not Christ will come.” British Quaker and teacher Ben Pink Dandelion shared these ideas with the Canadian Yearly Meeting late last summer. The videos run about 5 hours in total.

My intent is to take a few months to revisit the concept of the peaceable kingdom, which I referred to in my talk at Loma Linda last month. I have a couple of books on my study list; if you have recommendations, please let me know.

Why Comparing Your LGBTI Children To Murderers Is Neither Supportive nor Progressive

Believe Out Loud: “If My Son Was A Murderer…” (Johnie J. Guerra)

Heard this one before? A child discloses they aren’t heterosexual. Their parent says “If you were a murderer, or in jail, or an alcoholic prostitute, I would visit you, and I would remember you in prayer, but I would mourn forever. That is what I’ll do with you now and I’ll never condone your choice.”

Nice.

The cutest kitten and puppy ever. (via Tumblr)
The cutest kitten and puppy ever. (via Tumblr)

Some Christian parents feel compelled to make some version of this speech to their LGBTI children—and while I’m sure it’s not an easy speech for the parents to deliver, it’s even more horrific for the children forced to hear and bear it. Johnie Guerra, a hetero Christian, explains in his Believe Out Loud piece why rhetoric like this just doesn’t work—and isn’t a necessary part of keeping the faith. I, too, hope his parents will adjust to his beliefs in time.

As another blogger wrote this week:

“We are complicated beings. Emotionally.  Sexually. Intellectually. Being in love can be complicated, as most of us know.
But supporting love is not complicated…

Love.  Acceptance.  Safety. Affection.  Respect… Giving another human being these things is not going to shred the very fabric of society, or ruin your children.

Your children will benefit from your willingness to get rid of those calluses and be open to more LOVE in the world. They may be one of those tender souls that the anti-gay movement is so viciously attacking.  It may be your vulnerable child you are burning painful scars into with your bigoted remarks and support of anti-gay rhetoric. It might be your child that will sit at the lunch counter and be refused service because of who they are.” —Megan P.

What’s Going on for Public Sphere Religion?

Salon: The dying right: Why Christian fundamentalists are in panic mode (CJ Werleman)
The Atlantic: How religious-freedom laws could come back to haunt the faithful (Jonathan Merritt)

Werleman reviews recent US surveys of religious adherence and whether people stay with childhood faiths over time. The Public Religion Research Institute’s survey, which CJ cites, is worth looking over:

Among its key findings for Millennials: that almost one-third of Millennials who leave their childhood church say they did so because of that church’s anti-LGBT policies. 14% said church anti-LGBT policies were a very important factor in their decision to leave, and 17% said it was somewhat important. On general perception, 70% of Millennials surveyed think religious groups’ anti-LGBT approach alienates people.

Similarly, “Majorities of Americans perceive three religious groups to be unfriendly to LGBT people: the Catholic Church (58%), the Mormon church (53%), and evangelical Christian churches (51%). Perceptions of non-evangelical Protestant churches, African-American churches and the Jewish religion are notably less negative.” As I’ve said many times, these are well-earned reputations; they’re not unfounded perceptions at all.

The Adventist denomination and North American Division both keep wondering what’s going to happen to their Millennial members. As even the GC’s Archives and Research office realizes, we can draw the lines between the church’s anti-LGBT work and my generation’s perceptions of it; what remains to be seen is whether we’ll change anything, or rather dig in and hope that Adventists trained to sustain the church’s current trajectory will carry the denomination into increasingly “pure” irrelevance over the next 25-40 years. Meanwhile those constituencies will also change and I can only hope that the denomination will adapt to them better than it has to its North American membership.

Werleman notes how some Christians affiliated with the right political wing have responded to and stoked these demographic trends: “These ‘religious freedom’ bills did not arrive here overnight,” he says; “they’re three decades in the making.” While Adventism was more hands-off in its public sphere work during the Moral Majority’s rise (1970s-1980s), it has still been affected by the MM/Religious Right’s approach. Even today, the church paper, the Adventist Review continues to promote columns and “analysis” from Albert Mohler (Southern Baptist Convention).

By contrast, Merritt, an evangelical columnist, recently took some hits for questioning the anti-LGBTI “religious freedom” discrimination laws being proposed across the US, in Kansas, Arizona, and Tennessee, for instance. In this column, he asks the question he shared on his website a week or two ago: “If Christians really believe they’re becoming marginalized, why would they disempower marginalized people in the marketplace?”

The thought that has recurred for me ever since this story cycle began was “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” But ethics of reciprocity are, as it turns out, low-hanging ethical fruit: even children know how to trade. Surely religious ethics can call one to something a little less self-centered than “better not persecute if we don’t want to be persecuted”?

Unfortunately this seems to be the beginners’ level we’re at right now.

What intolerance looks like outside the US: inter-religious violence in the Central African Republic

Washington Post: Christian vigilantes wielding machetes have killed scores of Muslims (Sudarsan Raghavan)
NPR: Jewels Lie Beneath The Violence In The Central African Republic (Gregory Warner)

Between these two articles from the Washington Post and NPR, we get a sense of how religion and economics and ethnocentrism and nurtured grudges can produce and maintain cycles of vicious violence, cycles that some religious people struggle to stop or don’t even wish to stop. I’m reminded of the 1990s genocides in Serbia and Rwanda, each fueled and coddled by different kinds of religious adherents.

I’m concerned that our moral outcomes are so mixed. I’m also concerned that contemporary moral arguments seem so tangled up with fiscal concerns rather than more fundamental human values: what we plan to do with minorities is evaluated in terms of legal and institutional policy impacts, not impacts to the human person. It can’t always be about the dollar: people will always matter more.

I’m keeping an eye on updates on the situation in CAR and will share when I see news. It unnerves me that it didn’t merit a mention at the Academy Awards this weekend when the Ukraine and Venezuela did. We have the capacity to attend to all critical issues, and I hope CAR and Uganda don’t get left behind.

[Update re. Uganda: Local civil society workers have published several concrete ways that concerned non-Ugandans can support them now. Hop over to GLAAD and check out their list. Note, too, that they don’t recommend general aid conditionality.]