Fifth-day commentaries, published every Thursday (mostly)
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“Sermon on the Plain” Jesus Mafa series, Cameroon [François Vidil], Vanderbilt University. Source . Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. [ Matthew 5:11-12 ] You shall not give false testimony…
(left) Urakami Cathedral cross, Nagasaki, on display at Wilmington College's Hiroshima-Nagasaki Memorial Collection until 2019 (my photo); (right) graphic from Wilmington College's Peace Resource Center ( source ). Last week's post considered some of the political and spiritual difficulties World War II posed for Quaker colleges in the USA. Among the specifics of that story was the welcome that…
This article by Friends House Moscow staff member Sergei Grushko originally appeared on the Web site quakers.ru . Translated and reposted here by permission. "I feel bound to recommend that policy which will enable us to do positive good rather than merely to refrain from evil." — John Nason, wartime president of Swarthmore College. Soldiers and students sit on the steps of Swarthmore's Parrish…
We talk about democracy and Christianity—and we try out a new firebomb. We talk about peace and we move thousands more men and weapons into Vietnam. This country has gone mad. But I will not go mad with it. I will not pay for organized murder. — Joan Baez (April 1965, source .) Related posts: The tax covenant The tax covenant: idealism and reality In my last post on the tax covenant ("Idealism and…
Sources: Poetry and Passion , Barclay Press (2026); The Power of the Lord , Friends United Meeting (1989; cover is from the epub version, 2023). In August 2022, our old friends Ben and Jody Richmond visited Judy and me in Maine. Ben brought with him several pages of an exciting project: a sampling of George Fox 's epistles that he was in the process of laying out in verse form. Two years later, a…
St. Matthew, the tax collector. Source . I remember Walter Mondale's acceptance speech as the Democratic party candidate to challenge U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the 1984 general election—particularly these lines: By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two‑thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will…
Thirteen years ago I wrote a post on " Quaker culture ." I had just read a novel whose Jewish and Catholic characters were described with lavish details from their Jewish and Catholic religious cultures—rituals, architecture, thought patterns, built up, elaborated, and passed on from generation to generation over many centuries. I wondered if our Quaker religious cultures aren't a bit thin by…
Tatiana Blokhina, Autumn in Bolkhov . Elektrostal Artists exhibition, 2012. There is nothing new about imagining the world as a village. But today that image really struck me. It came as I saw the photos and videos coming from Venezuela, with earthquake survivors' faces filling the frames with their personal accounts of disaster. That story on my news feed was followed immediately by the U.S.…
Source . The occupation of the USA by Donald Trump and his movement has now continued for 514 days and twelve hours. Whether by design or impulse, he and his Project 2025 allies seem to find new ways nearly every day to enrich themselves at our nation's expense, subvert our laws, ignore our courts, divert our taxes, weaken our international reputation, betray former allies, insult former…
Source . And our meanest Christians tend to piously and publicly worship Jesus as their King, because that’s considerably easier than following his inconvenient teachings. —John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds . Last week I looked at a specific debate ... True or false? ... Christians…
