I posted this in the "Christian Quakers" Facebook group, but wonder what the broader perspective of Friends is on this question. It’s a question about what our Witness should be in the 21^st century. This is not an infrequent question, I realize, which is a good thing; to badly paraphrase the philosopher, the unexamined religious life is hardly worth the effort. And I also realize that the RsoF often loves to talk about the Quaker message that Christ has come to teach His people…

In the opening scene of the film classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, shortly after the eerie hum of a theremin sets the stage, a strange visitor from another world, looking very much like a normal human being, walks toward a frightened crowd in a ballpark in Washington D.C.  In his hand he raises a gift, mysterious and foreign, which immediately causes a soldier to fire a shot at the stranger.  As the visitor lay on the ground he says, “it is a gift to the people of…

In 1966 Time magazine published a famous cover story asking “Is God Dead?,” and at the time it may have seemed to many to be a reasonable question.  Membership in mainstream churches had begun its long decline; in some cases, according to Demographia.com, in traditions such as the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational (UCC) churches, membership has dropped by nearly fifty percent in the fifty years since 1960.  In North America, the Catholic Church has seen their numbers grow almost…

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows…

I love the Quaker Way.  Though perhaps love is not the right word - I 'm not sure we should ever "love" a created thing, and for all its depth and beauty, Quakerism is a created thing.  What I mean to say is that in my understanding of Quaker life I have - somehow, someway, to some extent - come to find God.  One day in early September 1987 I had a mystical experience.  In a state of depression and hopelessness I sat alone in a small woods when suddenly what I can only describe as a Divine…