One of the good things about attending Worship in Washington, DC, is that I sometimes get to meet well-known Friends. Mary Beth Tinker was in attendance this past First Day. Her late sister is Bonnie Tinker, notable in her own right for being a tireless activist.

I met Bonnie for the first time at Meeting for Worship shortly before the Obama…

For a long while, I’ve been contemplating the notion of Meeting discipline and how it has evolved over time. What form does it take today? Around a century and a half ago, Friends were read out of Meeting for simply daring to marry non-Friends. Punishment had a very different context back then, one that was, it appears,…

The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. If the foot says, "I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand," that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, "I am not part of the body because I am not an eye," would that make it any less a part of the body?

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This post began as an open letter to my Meeting's listserve. I usually write one a week.

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A question has been on my mind recently. How do we best honor the memory of the Quaker martyrs? Many suffered persecution, time in jail, torture, and even death to worship as they wished. Even with greater societal tolerance that arrived with the passage of time, Friends were prohibited from pursuing certain educational…

This essay was written specifically for my Monthly Meeting, following First Day's Worship. The messages shared during Meeting for Worship focused on a particular period of reform, namely AIDS outreach in the early 1980's. My response to those who spoke at length about their level of involvement is that anyone can be a hero in the face of something awful like…

My father was, for all intents and purposes, a religious skeptic. He’d been raised by the unlikeliest of parents, a true believer for a mother, and an agnostic father. The whole of his life, he’d felt pulled in two directions, but he still attended church regularly. This was, after all, small town Alabama in the 1950’s.

In keeping with rural southern colloquialisms, my two sisters and I called my father’s mother “Granny”. Granny Camp was a usually sweet and maternal woman, but she…

My Meeting is facing a sizable deficit in its budget. It has been previously able to rely on endowment money to take care of sizable expenses. However, as has been announced and stressed many times before, we are largely subsisting on dead peoples' contributions. We do not have the ability to rely on regular contributions from current members and consistent…

At the end of last year, a man began arriving every First Day at our Meeting. I noticed him because he kept plain dress. As is true with many houses of worship these days, the preferred style of clothing for most of us is casual. The tall, bearded man I saw downstairs prior to First Hour was clad in white shirt, black pants, and suspenders. He appeared deeply…

After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"

 Jesus replied, "You don't understand now what I am doing, but someday you will." "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my…

Before I write another word, I feel like a disclaimer is in order. I knew many Friends who participated in the Occupy movement, back in its heyday. While I came to eventually lose patience with the movement, even to disagree openly with its stated priorities, I still maintain a respect for those who put their full weight behind the cause. I feel that these heavily committed Friends never left Occupy behind, but that extenuating circumstances beyond anyone's control eventually dissolved the…

It is often said that Friends have short fuses around politics and long fuses around people. Should something highly ideological and politically loaded be mentioned during Meeting for Worship, intense passions have at times led to tense moments. On the other hand, should a member of the Meeting behave inappropriately and in a consistent fashion, they are…

Periodically, I write open letters to my Meeting on its listserve. This particular correspondence was sparked by an article I read in a monthly Quaker periodical. In the beginning, Friends did not celebrate Christmas, believing it to be a tradition foist upon them, and one in contradiction to their beliefs. They faced fines for daring to keep their shops open on Christmas Day. Vandals sometimes broke windows and damaged Quaker-owned businesses. Friends believed that Christmas was a festival…

As I examine the whole of my religious past, I can say without equivocation that I observed one essential constant. Even from a very young age, I recall the active presence of women in positions of leadership and authority. Women have long been a majority in the congregations of the average Christian or historically Christian church, but attaining full gender equality…

I wrote this specifically for my Meeting, but I've recognized it may be applicable beyond that setting.  Apologies in advance for typos. I think I've found and corrected most of them.

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Hello Friends,



Over the past couple of weeks I've been reading the book Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experience. The work is written by Douglas Gwyn and published by Pendle Hill Press. My desire to take on this task was motivated…

Those with nothing to lose will always gravitate to a message that removes hierarchy, in which we are all equal. It is a perspective we say we accept as part of being Americans. But we also seek the security of…

I think I'm a Quaker, but...



I hear some version of this phrase all the time among Young Adult Friends.  Our Meeting had a similar dialogue recently regarding membership.  Some people took a very hard-line stance.  Why wouldn't you want to be a member? …

In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord.  So the gift of speaking in other languages is a sign for unbelievers, not for believers. The gift of speaking what God has revealed is a sign for believers, not for…

In roughly a month from now, we will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It is a date that has been associated in the minds of many with nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and draconian policy decisions. Islamophobia remains a potent force here, but arguably an even…