Introduction

Today and tomorrow, I will be posting in two parts the paper that I gave at the New Foundation Fellowship gathering last month near Casper, Wyoming, U.S.A. As readers might surmise from the title, this paper examines the question of where resides the power to counteract and overcome evil. Nowhere are the essential criteria for victory over evil upheld and identified more succinctly than in Jesus's rebuttal of Satan, which occurs in the first 17 verses of the fourth…

Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy…

About a decade ago, I was curious about the reasons for the peace testimony and whether they had changed over time, and so I read a number of statements from different yearly meetings and other corporate bodies of Friends that had been written over the centuries. The list of excerpted reasons follows below.

 This exercise came to mind when I read Jim Wilson's blog post "Why I am not a Progressive Quaker." I share Jim's dislike of the "hyper-individualism which has led to the…

New Foundation Fellowship announces the arrival of our new literature website at Foundationpublicationsnffusa.org. At the site are approximately two dozen items available for purchase: books and pamphlets written and/or edited by NFF workers from Britain, Europe, and the United States. One may also subscribe for one or two years to Foundation Papers, a quarterly periodical. The site is…

The writing that follows was initially intended to be posted on Keith Saylor's comment wall but ended up too long for that, and so it's going up as a blog post instead. Readers  may want to trace down Keith's full comment (I quote only part of it in this post), which also contains  the original statement that prompted his response. Sorry for the round-about way this thread is presented, but I thought that the Benson ideas that I've quoted in this post are highly relevant not only for this…

As I read and re-read Traditional Quaker Christianity, I felt a spirit of humble diligence intent upon conveying the core substance of Quaker understanding, as well as the practices that have thus far assisted its continuation. The original draft of this book was the result of a study of Friends faith and witness by Ohio Yearly Meeting member Michael Hatfield. He gave his work to the yearly meeting "to do with as it saw fit." Small study groups were formed in which his writing…

There is a difference between what Keith offered in his last comment on this post and what you, Jim, have referred to as "formless styles of contemplation." The practice of the latter is an approach, a context or setting, an empty space that is prepared within, with the hope and faith that Christ will come to teach us himself. On the other hand, what Keith was ministering in his last comment was the spirit of Christ, the Substance, the One for whom the setting or context of emptiness is…

“But today we know that Paul’s expectation of God’s imminent kingdom, an expectation which he seems to have shared with Jesus and his disciples, was mistaken. Injustice, horror, and death have not been vanquished; the “new heavens and new earth in which justice dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13) have not appeared. The possibility of faith and hope as Paul understood them is ended for us not by the eschaton but by its failure.”

I disagree with this conclusion, George. If one looks outward at social…

Here's a radio interview with my friend Nancy Bowker, who is a performing singer and a life-long Friend. The interview was aired on February 2nd on Northern Spirit Radio. Nancy speaks of her life with great forthrightness and grace, and intersperses the conversation with some of her music. Both her words and music show strength and beauty. Nancy Bowker radio interview