Re: Re there is no such thing as Quakerism

In article <ppv5h190skuclftknoddad8fdghebkig8m@xxxxxxx>,
Marshall Massey <mmassey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Ian Davis wrote,
>
>>3ijd: American Quakers tend to promote more conservative, more
>>3 : christ centric positions, and as a consequence tend to
>>3 : rebel against the merit I see in the Quaker movement
>>3 : being as diverse as possible, precisely because they wish
>>3 : to see the Quaker movement as Christ centric as possible.
>
>I responded,
>
>>2 mm: This is flatly not true of the 30% of U.S. Friends who are
>>2 : in Hicksite and Beanite meetings. It is not even true of
>>2 : many U.S. Friends in FUM and in Conservative meetings.
>
>Ian then wrote,
>
>> ijd: Yes but the word "tend" is not a blanket statement to be
>> : applied against one and all. If 30% do not fit the
>> : description then they buck the trend, rather than set it,
>> : for they are in the minority.
>
>No, they do not buck the trend, any more than Canadian Friends buck
>the trend. They are a separate community of Friends, just as Canadian
>Friends are a separate community of Friends, and each community of
>Friends has its own separate trends.
>
> When you lump all U.S. Friends in one bucket,

The same old tired accusation. The word tend does not imply "all". Men tend
to be heterosexual. That is not the same as saying all men are heterosexual.
Do I lump all men in one bucket when I say that they tend to be heterosexual.
If I as a heterosexual observe that women tend to be more sympathetic to me
than men, is that lumping all men into one bucket, or all women into a single
bucket, or implying that men and women must be kept apart in different
buckets.

I grow so very weary of this constant slur, achieved only through blatant
distortion of all that I know myself to be. This slur is imposed upon me over
all my repeated objections, perhaps for no better reason than that I have
repeatedly objected to it. Do people here really think that if a lie is
repeated often enough it will become truth in the minds of those who read it.
Give a dog a bad name and he will keep it comes to mind but are Quakers called
to give dogs bad names and then ensure they keep them. I am not "the dog" that
you and others would wish to paint me here Marshall.

I have said to Dennis only recently that it is a lie to constantly accuse me
of lumping one and all into a single basket, and an attempt to stereotype me.
I also said to Dennis that I considered it a small minority of Americans who
would constantly use this ploy to accuse any who are not Americans of
attacking all Americans when they say something perceived to be negative
about some. I do not think you would speak thus of my words if I was an
American. Therefore I conclude a certain racism/xenophobia here in presuming
that because I am not American but Canadian and English, that I do not grasp
that Americans are divisible. I've lived more than half my life within 100
miles of your border, and I've spent a lifetime travelling in the US. I have
seen every State but North Dakota and Oregon, yet have never visited York in
England, even though I was born and raised in London England. Why do you
presume that I see Americans from such a distance that I cannot but consider
them all of the same stripe without distinguishing characteristics.

How can you parry:

"Yes but the word "tend" is not a blanket statement to be applied against one
and all"

with

"When you lump all U.S. Friends in one bucket"


>here, you ignore the fact that evangelical Friends and liberal Friends
>are so separated that most of them hardly speak with each other.

You talk in non sequiturs to draw such conclusions from my earlier words.
Would I be ignoring the fact that the US was occupying Iraq if I were to
say that American Quakers tend to oppose war. How exactly am I supposed
to relate a general comment about the tendency of American's and of America
to be more overtly christian than Canada or Britain, with the inference
that this must mean that "I ignore the fact that evangelical Friends and
liberal Friends are so separated that most hardly speak with each other."

>Canadian Friends and U.S. liberal Friends are much more involved with
>each other than U.S. liberal Friends and U.S. evangelical Friends are
>with each other. More's the pity, but so it is.
>

I personally count all Quakers Quaker. I've been as pleased to see Joe post
here as an American evangelical Friend, as any other. It was not I who
hounded Jeff Slane off this newsgroup, one who had been Quaker only a couple
of weeks, for his conduct here. It was not I who in conveying his actions
on this forum to the clerk of his meeting, caused him to withdraw his
membership in the RSofF. You rob me of the right to say that it is
very much a pity that Quakers tend to argue with Quaker, if the word
"tend" is now it seems to mean "one and all" as "gay" is now to mean
"homosexual".


>
>
>>3ijd: There is a huge range of positions within the Quaker
>>3 : movement, almost to the extent that if one needed an
>>3 : example of any particular attitude one could dredge it up
>>3 : from somewhere within the Quaker movement.
>
>>2 mm: Not true at all. For example, you cannot dredge up a
>>2 : defense for deliberate disregard of the need for
>>2 : truthfulness, or callousness toward the sufferings of
>>2 : others, or blithe sexual immorality, no matter where you
>>2 : look in the Friends community. There is a bedrock of
>>2 : commitment to goodness of all kinds that all Friends
>>2 : congregations share, no matter what their disagreements
>>2 : may be on the fine details of interpretation.
>
>> ijd: Yes of course -- but "almost to the extent" is not the
>> : same as saying "to the extent". I think you reading my
>> : words as "to the extent" in claiming them not true at all.
>> : For your examples are extreme ones which I thought my
>> : "almost" would be understood to discount.
>
>They are hardly extreme, since they are daily issues in human lives.
>

Then perhaps I am wrong and you will find some even within the Quaker
community who hold them. Consider the case of "deliberate disregard
for the need for truthfulness" that you cite as not to be found in
the Quaker community, and which I specifically early in this post
suggested both you and Dennis practice in claiming that I speak of
all when I use words like "tend".


> Disregard for the facts happens right here on s.r.q, among people
>whose home Quaker communities (of whatever stripe) would never approve
>of such behavior. Likewise, deliberate deception, as in using a false
>name to conceal one's true identity. Both of these are examples of
>deliberate disregard of the need for truthfulness, and both of these
>are manifestly common here. So they are not extreme examples, they
>are basic.

You know Marshall, you seem to have returned with a bigger chip on your
shoulder than I percieved you to have had when you left. Much as you claim
it to be otherwise, if your intent in returning was not to continue a war
that you earlier decided to withdraw from, your shots here are quite
remarkable in all being aimed precisely where another is coincidentally
standing.

Have a care in your words for I think it very questionable if the use
of a pseudo name in this instance constitutes deliberate deception. It is
deliberate deception for one to post under a pseudonym, with the intent of
deceiving by having done so, as Jeff is accused of having done so recently.
But in Engineer's case there was no initial deception. Upon his return here
he made it clear to all that knew him by his real name that he would in future
be posting as Engineer. It is precisely because he made no attempt to deceive
here that you and others have spent all the years since using his real name
at every opportunity over his strenuous objections. If Engineer wished
to deceive he could in a mere moment walk away from the handle he gave
himself and assume any other. Second time around if he wished to deceive
I am sure that you, Thomas, Fred et. al. would be ghosts at his shoulder
reminding him in no uncertain terms never again to convey who he really
was when assuming a handle intended to distance his words from his underlying
identity. You should observe Marshall that Engineer has never done that.
In all the years that you and others have been hounding him on this issue
he has not once to my knowledge practiced the deception that you accuse
him of, even though you and others have given him every cause to. You might
argue that he deceives not you, but some or all of those who know him only
as Engineer. How does he deceive them? To those who know him only as
Engineer that is who he is. How does that deceive? By what guile does this
pseudonym of his ensnare another?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=deceive&db=*

I have always posted under my actual name, but within newsgroups mine is the
exception, not the rule. I have posted on newsgroups where I have known
posters try to seek out the true identity of other posters precisely because
they would if they could cause these other posters harm, and the greater the
harm the better the gift they'd count the knowing of anothers identity to be.
You Marshall count this an issue of honesty, integrity, and do not see it
as having anything to do with having due regard for the safety of others.
I however see it as having little to do with the issue of either honesty
or integrity, and much to do with having due regard for the safety of
anothers. If another tells me that my actions constituted a threat
to them I'd go out of my way to rectify that situation for I would not
be a danger to another. Am I to be more Quakerly in having a regard for
the safety and well being of others here than some Quakers.

Marshall, I too in a time almost now before time had my quarrel with
Engineer. I too left, and I too returned. But there I think the parallels
end, for I could neither forgive, forget, or return, until I had made my
peace with the one whom had offended me. And catch-22 that it then was,
and would have remained to this day had things been otherwise, I could
not make peace with another -- my only salvation lay in the hope that
the other might out of the goodness of their heart instead make peace with
me. Wage this war as long as you are able Marshall, and then put it aside,
for this war serves no good but wars. In kindness I say wars do not
become those that wear them; instead that which is good within us becomes
consumed by war till only ill will remains. That is why war is such a very
great evil.

> We see scandals of whole churches that deliberately manipulate
>the truth to their own advantage, all the time -- churches on both
>left and right that do so in the realm of politics in order to advance
>their political agendas, or, like the Roman Catholic Church, churches
>that conceal the truth about their clergy's wrongful deeds in the
>sexual realm. Individual Friends often distort truth similarly, but
>my personal observation is that when they do so, they generally do so
>without consciously realizing it -- e.g., in the realm of politics,
>Friends on the right wing doing so in a rightward direction, Friends
>on the left wing in a leftward direction. And both left- and right-
>wing Quaker communities seem (as far as I can tell) to share a
>conviction that such unconscious distortions of truth are neither
>desirable nor approved by God, and that they need to keep working on
>themselves to rise above such errors.
>

If whole churchs can be corrupted what saves the RSofF from such corruption.
It seems to me you argue very much against your own cause in either saying
that the RSofF is not like other churches, or in saying that it is. For
if you say it is not like other churches are you not making the very type
of statement of "all" that you accuse me of making, and if you say that
it is like other churches, then the vices of other churches might also
be found within the RSofF, all arguments to the contrary not withstanding.
The answer here lies in seeing that things are not always fully white or
fully black, but that truth stand where it does, rather than where we would
choose to place it.

> As for callousness toward the sufferings of others, you yourself
>have been very much engaged in pointing out how common this is among
>North Americans vis-a-vis places like Serbia and Bosnia and Iraq.

All peoples have a propensity to wage war, and all peoples have the ability
to know the waging of war wrong.. If there is a tragedy here it is that too
often the propensity to want to wage war preceeds the propensity to know that
the waging of such wars is counter productive. I'd have people learn from
past mistakes, but it seems they never will so each new war is not recognised
as being ill-advised until long after it has begun.

>Many churches will excuse such callousness in the name of patriotism,
>but I know of no Quaker community, of any flavor that will do so *as a
>community*.
>

When the war against Iraq began I was asked on this newsgroup by a Quaker --
"surely you cannot be on their side". I have search far and wide for records
of what was written on this newsgroup circa March 2003 without success, since
I think how Quakers act when war is upon them a better testament to how they
really feel about war, than any that they might otherwise claim. I have
known you Marshall to be as constant in your positions as I have been, but
the concern remains and will always remain in my mind that Quakers here
said more about opposing war when war was not upon them, than when it was.
A secondary concern has been that as with the general trend in the US to
count American dead but not Iraqi dead, so to has it seemed to me the trend
of Quakers on this forum to focus on American dead, even though it would
appear that Iraqi deaths far exceed American deaths at least to date.

> And then there is the war testimony, which unites us.
>

I'd have said it divided Quakers. For there was no united voice that I heard
at the start of the latest war. You were there with me back then Marshall..
did you really see that united voice that I did not in what was then written
here. Is silence and absence of some who have since returned to be counted
unity. Had I subscribed to a Mennonite forum I would have be quite suprised
to find such a mixed response to war -- for Mennonites seem Mennonite first
before all else.. I was rightly or wrongly left with the impression that
for some American Quakers, it was not clear which trumped which -- being a
Quaker, or being an American.

> Questions involving this sort of basic moral discipline come up
>almost daily in our lives as Friends. They are a huge daily
>commonality we share. And they distinguish us markedly from most
>other sorts of Christians. Why, just yesterday this issue came up in
>a conversation between myself and three of my coworkers at my
>workplace. Those three, all whom would describe themselves as
>Christians, united in telling me that orthodoxy is extremely important
>to one's salvation, and that my emphasis on simply doing right, e.g.
>not engaging in violence against a violent opponent or sidestepping an
>inconvenient truth, is secondary. I then mentioned the Sermon on the
>Mount, in which Christ called his followers not to orthodoxy but to
>doing right, and their reaction was that what Christ asked was too
>hard --
>

Yes, which is why I'd die a Quaker sooner than live a christian.

> To dismiss this basic moral discipline, that practicing Friends
>of all flavors share and that other sorts of Christians much too often
>neglect or dismiss as "too hard", as "extreme", seems to me rather
>like pretending that the underwater part of the iceberg doesn't exist.
>

Yes, but you have rather made a soapbox of my original words here the better
to have a platform to stand on. I have not done the things that you suggest.
You respond to my post but it is not I who has dismissed this basic moral
discipline, that practicing Friends of all flavour share.

You have made of my observation that Quakers hold very diverse positions
a platform from which I find myself berated for ignoring all that Quakers
are while being told that I believe much of them which I do not.

>
>
>>3ijd: The irony here is that Marshal who forcefully argues that
>>3 : being a Quaker involves putting the sense of the meetings
>>3 : front and center, has upon occasion described
>>3 : circumstances where he went against the sense of his
>>3 : meeting because his conscience would not let him support
>>3 : the position of his meeting, (a wonderful story by the
>>3 : way)....
>
>>2 mm: It seems to me you are mistaken. The primary occasion to
>>2 : which I believe you refer was the one on which I resigned
>>2 : from the meeting I belonged to because its leaders were
>>2 : engaged in a covert witch-hunt for child molesters, in the
>>2 : course of which those leaders did a number of deeply
>>2 : hurtful things to people they did not like. ...
>>2 :
>>2 : On another occasion, I declined to attend my yearly
>>2 : meeting when it was held in Colorado in defiance of the
>>2 : boycott of Colorado locations called by the gay and
>>2 : lesbian community after the Colorado electorate passed a
>>2 : rather scary anti-gay-and-lesbian amendment to the state
>>2 : constitution. However, there was no "sense of the
>>2 : meeting" that I was contradicting in that case, either.
>>2 : ...
>
>> ijd: No, not at all. I was referring to the story where you
>> : decided to protest something by sitting in a field or
>> : whatever, and your meetings thought your protest
>> : ill-advised but you did so anyway. The story was told by
>> : you long ago and sadly perhaps no longer recoverable. I
>> : admired you for having the courage of your convictions and
>> : for having also the courage to protest that which you saw
>> : as wrong.
>
>It wasn't in a field, it was on the side of a highway, and it was the
>event referred to in the second of my two paragraphs above. The issue
>was the anti-gay-and-lesbian amendment to the Colorado state
>constitution, and the consequent boycott of meetings in Colorado
>locations requested by gay and lesbian organizations. My *meeting*
>did not think my honoring of the boycott (it was not a "protest", but
>simply an honoring of the concerns of my suffering fellow human
>beings) was ill-advised, because my *meeting* was never given the
>opportunity to seek discernment on the matter *as a meeting*, where
>they could be led as a meeting by Christ. So there was no "sense of
>the meeting" for me to contradict. The *individual members* of my
>meeting thought my honoring of the boycott ill-advised, but they did
>so without waiting upon the Lord to be guided in the matter, so their
>individual opinions, no matter how widely shared, did not add up to
>what Friends mean by a "sense of the meeting".
>

Thanks for the clarification. However it still seems to me an instance
where I perceive you to have been in the right and those individual
members you speak of to think you in the wrong. Had they waited upon
the Lord to be guided in this matter, and have remained unmoved would
it have been evidence that you were wrong, or simply evidence to support
your claim that they could not have waited upon the Lord since they were
still unmoved. This sense you give me of what it really means to wait on
the Lord seems a self serving one, for the act of the waiting seems to
be determined by the conclusions arrived at. How given the serious of
the issue before you could you not have been collectively lead to
collectively have practiced that discipline which is central to the
RSofF.

Ian
.

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