QuakerQuaker

Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

So What's So Terrifying About Christianity?

What terrifies people most about Christianity? Pope Francis is just winding up his tour of the US and from a Quaker standpoint, his call to US Congress to withdraw from the Arms Bazaar (its main activity) and to focus on helping the people (what a concept!) seems entirely benign. My mom is clucking happily about it, and she's a world famous nuclear abolitionist. So what's the problem?

Catholicism is still smarting from the Galileo episode when the church was caught squarely on the wrong side of history. Christianity became too easy to demonize as anti-science, and what's worse, scientists began withholding discoveries (Descartes) or sharing them with others first! The Vatican could see itself paying a palpable price, and a big one, for its attack on Galileo and his astronomical views. They were losing the Cold War of their day.

Fast forward and the Vatican has built a state of the art observatory in Arizona (VATT) and its staff astronomers are second to none in participating in contemporary scientific conversations. The Vatican had as much input into the decision to demote Pluto from full planethood (or did they bring it back, I heard a rumor?) as anyone. Nor does the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit, make it hard to talk about evolutionary theories of the human being. Science and the Vatican seem more at peace with each other than ever.

Ah, but what about the Protestants, or lets call them the Sunnis of our Western Civ (Catholics being Shia). Or shall we go with Tutsi and Hutu?

Protestants are more like ISIS in wanting a Christian State in the Americas, and what they embrace, in their sectarian core, is their Book of Revelation, a map of the End Times, expected any day now.

Yes, that's what's most terrifying about Christianity: the mostly US-based End Timers who want to see God's Will for our planet in their own lifetimes. For this reason they need those nuke weapons to remain at the ready, as (clearly!) they're to play a role. Protestant End Timers are pro nuke because they expect God to push the button (through His instruments, his servants on Earth).

You'll notice how Liberal Quakers, even those who allow lots of space for the Bible (including Multnomah, with Bible Study every Monday morning, well attended, well led) still manage to avoid the topic of End Times and the Book of Revelation.

If you're shopping around for an End Times church, one that will give you a map to the End of the World, you'll find Quakers of all stripes mostly don't fit that bill. The hallmark of an End Times church is its people are on the lookout for an Anti-Christ. Just talking about Christ is not enough. You'll know you're getting warmer, closer to the radioactive core of Apocalyptic Christianity (the terrifying kind), when you start hearing about the Anti-Christ (and some horsemen).

Like the Catholics, I expect Protestants of this ilk, who alienate their religious peers willy-nilly, by saying we all (or most of us) deserve to die in a fiery all-consuming war -- because we're sinners and God wills it -- will pay a price. I'll be watching the upcoming Parliament of World Religions in Utah to see if there's any religious leader brave enough to take on the whole topic of Religious Terrorism, including of the Christian variety.

However, I'm not going to take the view of Official Washington and say it's OK to bomb religious terrorists, as that tends to be self defeating. On the contrary, I believe in religious tolerance and think small communities should be allowed to experiment with alternative laws and customs within their own sphere -- but we need to discuss limits. I was aghast when Texas took it upon itself to invade that Mormon compound and steal away all the children, what a travesty! So what if this sect practices polyamory in some form -- that's their religious freedom!

As one of the logistics supervisors (an overseer) for the Occupy Portland operation, I was never under the illusion that we could stay put for long. This was not Rajneesh Puram and we were not seeking permission to cremate our dead. The hallmark of a permanent community is it includes taking care of dead bodies. This is not anything terrifying and all religions deal with that aspect of mortal life. Occupy was a social movement, not a religion, but we wanted an opportunity to experiment with building community nevertheless. That's a strong hunger that humans have and we deny it at our peril.

Those practicing End Timer religions should be free to manage clinics, nursing homes, and mortuaries, not just schools. Bombing ISIS, rather than treating it more like a branch of Protestant, is Official Washington's big mistake. I'm hopeful the Eastern Orthodox, more cozy with the Russians, will prove an offsetting force that gives Official Washington an opportunity to rethink its dangerous policies. Don't bomb religious fanatics but don't arm them either. Listen to Pope Francis. Find another way to make money.

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Comment by Forrest Curo on 10th mo. 3, 2015 at 7:55pm: People use power tools to remove their fingers and thumbs. But that's not the way I use them; so I'm not going to run around yelling "Bad saw!"

Comment by Kirby Urner on 10th mo. 3, 2015 at 8:02pm: Nor am I yelling "Bad Bible!" only "some groups are seriously inept with power tools (!) -- including many Christians -- so let's watch out for them!"

We don't want to spread the outward violence now do we.

In the push comes to shove of world religion politics (ala Parliament of World Religions) we Liberal Friends might cozy up to an avowedly anti-nuke Iranian sufi sect before we got as close with ____ (some Christian sect).

In spelling all this out, I'm hoping to help future readers interpret future actions. There's some logical consistency to it. Quakers have more nuke abolitionists per capita, including of the "immediatist" variety, than your average Protestant group I'd hazard.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 10th mo. 3, 2015 at 10:26pm: I really don't know what "your average Protestant group" looks like anymore; it may well have more to do with the geographical location than with the official theology of a denomination, as seems to be the case with the Lutherans around here.

Think about Friends Meetings! How much of what a local Meeting believes and practices has to do with George Fox (whom many contemporary LiberalFriendists privately consider "bonkers", as one Weighty Friend I know put it) -- and how much has to do with the region, the neighborhood, and the socioeconomic location of its members?

Some folks will mug you with a Bible, some with a Koran, and some with the works of Hume! You're looking in the wrong contexts for your political causation! Think about vocational and financial and emotional need and greed, because that's where you get people hellbent to find themselves something really dangerous to play with, or turn any person or book or cause they touch into something toxic...

Comment by Kirby Urner on 10th mo. 4, 2015 at 10:25am: Right, geography has a lot to do with it; I think in terms of zip codes a lot. Even though most of the world isn't grided by zip codes per se, I imagine that it is, all hexagons and 12 pentagons if I want to make it look like a computer game (which I do), with zip coded cells even in the oceans.

Quakers have been a story, a saga, an epic. I like this "cartoony" caricature of Fox / Quakerism, I'm guessing many QuakerQuaker readers have seen it already: https://youtu.be/PhsvqbCIaAs (kinda goofy and the Fox is kinda kooky -- but in a good way).

The Quaker Story contains many twists and turns, one of the main ones in recent times being their testimony against slavery as an institution, plus less stridency or certainty about fighting the Indians ("") or even "converting them" -- whereas I think the ambient culture pretty much took and still takes for granted the Anglo-Euro "we conquered them" line. Abolition of Slavery. Abolition of Nuke Weapons -- I see continuity, a segue.

Fast forward and we have today an ambient North American media culture that takes its being "a superpower" for granted, and this just maybe has something to do with having more nuclear weapons than everyone else? Does being a superpower mean "they" need to do what "we" say? Did God choose "us" to be the rulers then? Some resort to the Bible here, to build their case for divine privilege, same as in Civil War days when the Bible was used to explain why some are slaves (the doctrine of "races" goes here).

You can hear it in the pronouns: "our nuclear weapons", "we used them in Japan" -- said by people with zero access to any such weapons, and/or not even born in the 1940s. I study English pronoun usage patterns quite a bit, sweeping for bugs. I listen for how people use their "we" (all those Venn Diagrams). The ambient media culture says "Iran should not have a nuclear weapon" whereas of course "we" should have them. The Manifest Destiny / Doctrine of Discovery subtext being "because we're the good guys etc." i.e. "our God says its OK with Him, we're His Chosen" (really?).

Another thing you'll hear is "the closest the world ever came to nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis." Forgetting: WW2 was a nuclear war with two cities vaporized, also forgetting the Marshall Islands, Bikini, ways of life ended, cancer rates still off the charts. The Marshall Islands is suing the USG and other nuclear nations (France, Russia...), not for damages but to move along with non-proliferation treaty and its promises of scaling back (its in the treaty to do that).

A US base (fort) is still there in those nuked islands, treating the "Indians" ("Marshallese") as slave-servants. [1] The Army is still a way to gain social mobility if you start out poor with few options. Move to Guam or Okinawa and find yourself much higher on the social ladder. The US tries to solve its poverty problem (inequity) by means of its military in large degree. That's important to realize. It's built into the fabric. Should the AFSC have its own bases? What about social mobility for COs?

But what is the meaning of "Cold War" in the first place? Cold is the opposite of Hot. A hot war is a thermonuclear war, or a war of fire and bombs. Hot war uses outward weapons. Cold war is apparently more psychological, less outward.

Isn't that a step in the right direction then? Sounds like AVP (alternatives to violence program). Isn't Cold more Quaker in flavor, more inward, than Hot? The colder the better I should think. Ice cold. Cryogenic. Bumper sticker: The Lamb's War is Supercool.

And true, in political discourse, Liberals and Cold Warriors were oft lumped in the same camp, but where were the Quakers then? What happened to them in the Nuclear Age?

They got caught up on "both sides" in the early days by studying the "military-industrial complex" with an eye to ending it with AFSC, but sounding to more conservative ears like what Lyndon LaRouche -- of Orthodox Quaker heritage -- calls "Communist" (or "radicals" at the very least).

In other words, Quakers became polarized like the ambient media culture, but if you study the slavery days, they were polarized then too. Nothing new, for Quakers to polarize, so I build that in to my mental model.

Anyway, a lot of fascinating anthropology here. I studied a lot of this at Princeton, e.g. through Woodrow Wilson school, but after leaving academia in that sense, I latched on to Bucky Fuller a lot more. He's "accused" of being a Cold Warrior in some chapters but in light of my interpretation above, so am I, the colder the better.

Inward weapons are psychological and may be abused just as certainly as chain saws (to make everyone get hooked on cigarettes for example). But they should not for this reason be abandoned, leaving it to others to do all the spin doctoring -- any more than the Book of Revelation should be abandoned (a potential goldmine of useful imagery).

Quakers should be up to getting really good at propaganda, er, PR. I pressed that idea with AFSC as well: don't just watch television, learn to make it. PR and IT: two areas in which I expect Quakers to excel, thanks to their heritage.

[1] http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andre-Vltchek/2619/article.html (random travelogue)

Comment by Forrest Curo on 10th mo. 4, 2015 at 11:16am: So are you still thinking you could "Help stomp out violence by stomping out Christianity [verbally]."

By the way, the thing about weapons, inward or outward: The end you think is safe... isn't.

Comment by Kirby Urner on 10th mo. 4, 2015 at 11:21am: I see the quote marks but no citation. You attribute that view to me apparently. You'll do me the courtesy of a direct quote next time? Give me an URL? Who said anything about safe? For the record I am not into verbally stomping out Christianity. What I have said though, is: "The best religions are yet to come."

Comment by Forrest Curo on 10th mo. 4, 2015 at 11:31am: So improve Christianity? We were supposed to be Jewish, but didn't quite get it right. (I'm not sure even the Jews think they've got Judaism right, yet. Work in progress.)

If I've misrepresented the thrust of your conversation so far, it would be better to clarify that than to worry whether I was quoting you, quoting someone else, or merely setting off a popular opinion (popular among Quakers as well) which you so far seemed to have been expressing.

Anyway, gotta boog for Meeting now! Peas & Goodstuff!

Comment by Kirby Urner on 10th mo. 4, 2015 at 11:33am: In fact in my opening Blog (essay), I go out of my way to devote a few zip codes even unto those End Timers, such as the Subgenius (I can say "we" around them too, not just among Friends):

"Those practicing End Timer religions should be free to manage clinics, nursing homes, and mortuaries, not just schools."

Indeed. Even Rajneesh Puram might've worked had they not been such psychos at the admin level. There's lots of room for experiments. I'm not one to clamp down unnecessarily. Liberals are not into "stomping out". You may have me confused with a missionary?

Comment by James C Schultz on 10th mo. 4, 2015 at 2:43pm: Great rant Kirby. Would have loved to have heard it rather than read it but I'll settle for reading it. I have a great bumper sticker that says "no love equals no peace". If people don't know you love them, they are not going to trust you, and though we don't seem to believe it, you can't buy love. We can't buy it with money and we can't buy it with the blood of American soldiers, unfortunately our politicians don't care so long as it's not their money or there relatives. Quakers as a group have lost their way because they don't believe in the power of prayer. When faced with a question of what they would do to stop ISIS they don't have an answer because they don't believe God can actually help them or at least direct them. One of our simplistic Christian sayings is that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. The God that guided King Jehosaphat is the same God who waits to guide anyone who seeks Him. Being a Liberal Quaker doesn't have to equate to not believing in a living God. Without a hub to draw strength from a wheel will fail. The reason Christianity is held in poor regard is that too many of its leaders are more interested in personal gain than in hearing from God and God's true prophets that walk this earth are more interested in their relationship with God than being acknowledged as a Prophet. Many people who meet Jesus are sucked into the commercialized religious world and like the seed that gets choked by the cares of this world never grow to bear the fruit of a righteous life. Sorry I guess I caught your "rant bug". :)

Comment by Olivia on 10th mo. 4, 2015 at 4:19pm: Thank you, James.

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