Mark 9:33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”  ³⁴ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.  ³⁵ He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  ³⁶ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,  ³⁷ “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” 

Mark 9:38   John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”  ³⁹ But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.  ⁴⁰ Whoever is not against us is for us.  ⁴¹ For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. 

The Gospel of Mark

When I started my work at Guilford in 2015, as the Director of the Friends Center – sort of like the “Chaplain of the University” role you would see at other schools, with other responsibilities attached – there were a number of the things that became apparent very quickly to me about the school and its relationship to the Quaker tradition and the Quaker culture’s perspective around outsiders (see Birthright Culture and Convincement Culture).

What I noticed and what was regularly reported to me could be summed up in a phrase that was used very regularly around campus by both Quakers and non-Quakers alike:

> “Quakers don’t do…”

“Quakers don’t do…” and then you fill in the blank. It’s a little phrase that got used as a kind of trump card in conversation that someone could throw down and stop the conversation, shut down a process, or restrict whatever behavior they were opposed to.

This is what Richard Rohr calls bogus religion:

And by being more heroic than you are, they might think. Often they do not love God or others in such heroic ‘obedience,’ they are merely seeking moral high ground for themselves and the social esteem that comes with it (See Luke 18:11-12)…Most bogus religion, in my opinion, is highly sacrificial in one or another visible way, but not loving at all. Yet it fools most people.

-Richard Rohr

Friends, this is exactly what “Quaker exceptionalism” looks and sounds like.

It is highly sacrificial, highly visible, sounds good at the time but not loving or welcoming at all. And, as Rohr says, it fools most people. It is much easier to buy into rigid boundaries and identities than it is to enter into relationship, an act requiring something far more complicated, less defined.

Besides fooling people, it is also very damaging.

From the conversations I have had with colleagues here and on other campuses , I know I wasn’t the only one seeing things like this. I have heard others describe being shut down by what they described as, no joking intended, “A Quaker Mafia.”

I have heard others refer to the “Quaker values” of as being used as a “sword and a shield,” a sword to attack others wise, and a shield to protect and justify ones own actions.

Bogus religion of any kind, Quaker or not, is often used as a cover for bullying.

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Q: Why is this kind of bogus religion harmful for Quakers?

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One of the harmful parts of this is that it puts you in a policing and protective stance which is both defensive and rooted in a scarcity mindset.

We’ve seen a version of this recently with Quaker yearly meetings breaking a part.

What were we breaking apart around?

• The inclusion of new people, outsiders – in this instance, folks in the LGBTQ perspective.
• How to deal with this inclusion – some wanted a highly protective and defensive stance, others, like First Friends, took what I believe to be a stance of sharing, openness, and abundance.

Instead of policing and protecting the boundaries the way bogus religion leads us to, we must focus on building up and remaining committee to our center, Jesus who is our present to guide and lead this community.

Jesus, Movement Builder

In Mark 9, we see the disciples wrestling with a similar questions of exceptionalism and supremacy.

Then they came to Capernaum; and when Jesus was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.

Mark 9:33-34

Jesus, who was himself a poor Palestinian born, Jewish person born under imperial occupation, was going around organizing other poor people, teaching them that God’s reign here on earth includes and prioritizes them, performing free healthcare clinics, healing people with no co-pay, feeding and eating with all the people who according the religious elitists and politicians of the time “don’t do” things right, or worse, aren’t valued enough as people to even be counted worth the consideration.

But now the disciples, getting a little taste of a good thing, want to figure out how to monopolize on it.

So they start by arguing about who is the greatest among them.

Now before we write them off as silly, or foolish, I always find it helpful to first try our best to practice empathy with the people in these stories.

These are folks were also mostly poor, uneducated, victims of the Roman Empire and it’s oppressive regime that occupied their land. As fishermen from Galilee and the surrounding area, they likely understood the feeling of being outsiders in many different ways.

And now they find themselves on the inside of a good thing. A growing movement. They’ve tasted of getting something right and all that comes with the feelings of being in a community you love and that loves you back.

If I think about this in this way, I can begin to empathize with the argument more.

As someone who has found myself on the outside of various social and Christian groups growing up, when I found the Quaker tradition, its beliefs and practices, and was welcomed in, I felt like I’d found my people.

It would be very easy to begin to want to turn and protect that. Hoard it. Not let it change from that thing we first loved.

It is important to note that the disciples, just like us, want to know who is in and who is out. And they want to keep that category of “in” as small as possible, lest it lose that luster and appeal.

It’s no fun to know a secret if everyone else around you knows it as well.

In contrast to what we want, Jesus calls for something very different: a genuinely different, alternative social order where those who “want to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

We should hear in this the call to the cross, a self-giving mode of non-violence that seeks the good of the world even when it doesn’t serve or prioritize our own interests.

Building A Movement of and by the Poor

Jesus, as a poor teacher and leader is a movement builder, building a coalition of poor people’s, it is safe to call it an early poor people’s campaign, gathering up the discarded and “insignificant ones” of empire. Demonstrating that God’s reign and movement always starts at the bottom, centering “the little ones.”

This is a movement and a community where children who represented the very bottom of power and money are not just welcomed but become a kind of model for praxis – our community will be in relationship and solidarity with those are the very bottom of our social structures and that model will become our structure.

If this is the model that best fits Jesus’ vision, how does that challenge and shape not only our relationship to outsiders but our vision of what it means to be church? What it means for us to join this movement?

A movement centering the “The little ones” is not a movement that will be driven to supremacy or exceptionalism because that is what drives the religion of empire ruled by “the powerful ones.”

In contrast, the movement Jesus is building is one rooted in nonviolence and uprooting domination in all its forms.

“The way of the cross is not only the via negativia of resistance to political oppression, but also the positive experimentation of a genuinely new way of social organization, called by Mark’s Jesus the vocation of “servant hood.” So deeply has the practice of domination infected human relationship that it must be eradicated from the roots…” – Ched Myers

This form of movement building can be very dissatisfying for those of us who want to exist within communities supreme, who desire to be right, or special, and who are okay with whatever means necessary to maintain those supremacist stances.

There is one last thing, I want to say about Jesus’ movement building that goes beyond centering the “little ones.”

Even as Jesus is making about who is the greatest, disciple John, is still quite dissatisfied:

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 Whoever is not against us is for us.

Mark 9:38-40

Again, John’s perspective is not far from our own when we refuse to support or join with others because they’re not in our camp or when we let points of difference become the focus of disagreement rather than an aspect of our relating to one another.

John wants to know: “How can there be people out there who are not in our club, doing good work, when we are the ones who are right?”

The subtle message: I thought we were special, I though we were the ones who held the keys to the kingdom?

You can see how this feeling can very easily become fuel for supremacies of every kind?

Jesus’ movement is radically different:

“Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Jesus

It is the practice, not the name that matters.

Or as one theologian puts it:

The task is not to reproduce literally what Jesus said and did – I have never ever seen an olive garden or a fig tree – but to repeat the love with which he said and did them, on the bet that those are the practices in which he would recognize himself today.

John Caputo

Conclusion

In these verses from Mark, Jesus reframes the boundaries around his theory of movement building – rooted in these two things:

• Solidarity, inclusion, and communal covenant with those at the bottom of the “social and economic order” (Myers 261)
• Powerful practices that redeem others, resist the powers, and show justice and mercy are all working in the same direction. “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

While John is worried about those with competing power, Jesus is welcoming all those who do the works of mercy and justice.

John is entertaining “holier than thou” delusions, but Jesus points out how his followers will often find themselves on the receiving end of compassion.

John wants a movement that has a protective stance towards its brand, its copyright, Jesus wants to build a participatory movement where the center is more important than the boundaries.

In other words, for Jesus, the disciples have no corner on the ministry of healing and liberation, and therefore should without prejudice work alongside those whose practice is redemptive.”

Whether we are working for cultural change in a workplace, in a faith community, or looking to join larger movements in Greensboro and beyond, we Friends need to get very serious about the ways in which we still believe Quaker exceptionalism and the places where our theories of movement building no longer align with the practice and witness of Jesus.

Jesus welcomes all those who do the works of mercy and justice. All those who are focused on doing the practice, not “the right name” (Ched Myers).

Can Friends do the same?

Queries

• Why is this kind of bogus religion harmful for Quakers? How does it hinder us today?
• What would it look like for all of us at First Friends to examine those sneaky places of supremacy?

Here is an Email I wrote today to the support team at hey.com.

I sent this and post it here because I have been a very outspoke supporter of this company, paid for their books and products, have their stickers on my computers, moved teams on to their platforms, etc. It feels only right to be honest about this part of it and how I feel about what has happened.

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I am writing to notify Basecamp and Hey that I am in the midst of planning to leave Hey as a customer due to the policy changes recently announced by David and Jason.

🗞️ Read “Breaking Camp on the Verge” for further context.

I have supported Basecamp for a long time (as a customer and a fan), and Hey from day one because I believed in what I understood the company to be about and the way the application was built to work differently from other companies.

Yes, I like the products but it was more that Basecamp presented itself as an alternative company to the standard capitalist logic that runs tech companies anywhere that inspired me. I believed that this was a company truly trying to offer a different path in the world. The recent policy changes point to either a) that this was never the case and there were underlying beliefs that I do not want to be aligned with or b) that the company is now headed in a new direction that undercuts what I find most compelling about it.

I hesitated to leave or come to conclusions when I first heard the news because I know I didn’t have all the context and I hoped that more clarity would come. I also didn’t want to jump ship and have staff suffer for the loss of customer base. But the further posts on the web from the leaders of the company only seem to be a further digging in, rather than a willingness to truly be in dialogue, empathetic, and even consider that they may be wrong. Things I assumed they stood for. All of it seems really messed up and a great disappointment. I am sad for the turn of events but far more upset for the staff of the company who have been put through what I am sure has been an extremely toxic time in an already extremely volatile moment in the world.

I felt it was important to write instead of just leaving quickly and quietly. You need to know that this is a choice based on this policy decision, I use and enjoy these apps and have brought many others to your doors for business.

I do not expect or need a response. I plan to migrate out in the coming weeks unless there is a clear change in what is happening at BC (but as I see even staff are leaving, that tells me this is very unlikely). I hope that staff know that there are many of us out here ready to be in solidarity with you if it is called for.

Heart broken, Angry, Disappointed,

Wess Daniels (he/him) ⚭

Watercolor from John Jay Alvaro

Watch it on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/arGhrrsFTxc

The Subversive Seed
This week, we saw the shooting of 8 individuals, 6 were Asian-Americans reminding us again of the ongoing and increased racism Asian-Americans and other communities of color have faced in the last year. 
Maybe unsurprisingly at this point: it was done by a man who was not only a Christian but was by accounts of his pastor “one of the most committed members.” (A thought that I find chilling).

This stream of what David Dark calls “White Supremacist Terror” (see also David Dark’s “Dumpster Fire“) continued in January when we saw Christian Nationalists violently storm the US Capitol. And of course, this year also saw other terrors from the previous president tear gas peaceful protestors for a photo op holding a bible in front of a church, to the horrific killings of George Floyd, Ahmad Arbery, Brianna Taylor, and others.
If that wasn’t enough we have faced massive amounts of deaths due to mismanagement of the COVID pandemic and systems in place not meant to protect our most vulnerable. I suspect by the end of the weekend we will reach 540,000 deaths. 
The pandemic within the pandemic has been devastating poverty, rampant unemployment, and many people fighting for basic survival (but especially among the poor and dispossessed).

[Let’s take a moment of silence in light of all of this]

This year has revealed a lot about us and our society. About whose lives matter and to what extent we will go to spread misinformation in order to protect some at the expense of others. 

This year has taught us a lot about death. Those who with their lips profess life live lives that promote death.

It would be fair to call this past year apocalyptic. What the Biblical authors refer to as an unmasking of the powers. In this way, it has been an unveiling. 
Have you seen it? Have you been watching? In each of these instances, people proudly claiming the name Christian, waving Bibles and crosses in the air, proudly declaring themselves to be pro-life participated in systems of death. Systems of death are made up of policies, practices that allow for and even create death, and false narratives that say — sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly — that it is okay (and sometimes even good) for some to die while others live. 

These systems of death permeate every sphere of our current culture. 

We can call them by their names:

• Systemic racism
• Poverty
• The War Economy and Militarism
• Ecological Devastation
• The Distorted moral narrative of Christian Nationalism

I call these systems of death because the theology underneath each of these says that not only does some life matter less (or not at all) but that these systems actively determine who gets to live and who will die. 

In the face of this, Dorothee Soelle, a feminist biblical scholar, raises a question about what it means to see and respond to these systems as a collective (in her book Mysticism and Resistance).
She says:

What I can do in the context of the rich world is minute and without risk in comparison with the great traditions of resistance. The issue is not to venerate heroes but together to offer resistance, actively and deliberately and in very diverse situations, against becoming habituated to death, something that is one of the spiritual foundations of the culture of the First World. 

To stand within the great traditions of resistance, which I take the Quaker tradition to be a part of, is to stand actively and deliberately against becoming habituated to death – which is the spiritual foundation of the religion of empire. 

That means that we will – no matter the cost – stand in opposition to the 5 interlocking evils I named above. 

Like all systems of oppression, it impacts all, the great and the small, the rich and the poor, those with their backs against the wall, and those whose backs are no longer or have never been pressed. 

To refuse to become habituated, desensitized, to these systems is our act of resistance.
For many, to live each day in the face of these systems is itself a great act of resistance of all.

This is because the work of the religion of empire is to lull us to sleep so that we accept these systems and we not only become habituated to them but participate in them. 
I think it could be easy, after all the death we have seen to want to just move on — to care a little less, to listen less, to throw empathy out, and become numb to the cry of our neighbors. 

To watch the replay over and over again of people dying in hospital beds from lack of healthcare and people gunned down in their homes and on the streets, while bible-carrying terrorists believe they are the righteous and holy ones sanctioned to enact violence on their god’s enemies will either shock us awake or numb us to sleep. 
And then we turn to this little story from Jesus about a grain of wheat, a little seed; I wonder what it is that you hear in light of all of this. 

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

At first glance, it might be easy to read even this in the context of being habituated to death. 

But I want us to pull back a little and see the what Jesus is talking about here is also said in the face of systems of death in his own time. 

To the Roman Empire, Jesus’ own life didn’t matter.  

As a brown-skinned, Palestinian-born poor Jewish person he was born with a target on his back like the rest of his community and he died the way many whose backs are against the wall have died before and since then: state-approved violence. 

Therefore, Jesus’ little grain of wheat is not a justification of those systems of death nor it is a giving up in the face of them, it is instead a subversive seed standing in resistance to all systems that place death as the final word.

Jesus tells shows us the possibility of an alternative imagination that is not marked by death. 

The imagination that shapes the church is to be fundamentally different from the religion of empire. 

For empire, death is all there is. So you accept it and you play by its rules. And if you’re really lucky maybe you will find a way to win at the game. 

But for the people of God – those shaped by this alternative imagination of Jesus: death holds no sway.

This is how we make sense of the lives of the ancestors of the traditions of resistance from Jesus to Mary Dyer to John Brown to Levi Coffin to Oscar Romero, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ruby Sales, and John Lewis and so many more. 
This letting go of imaginations marked by death frees us up to see how resistance and resurrection work:

1. At a cellular level (as old cells die and new ones are born)
2. In the natural world whether it is this grain of wheat or a nurse log found laying the forest, or fireweed growing on the side of a volcanic mountain repairing and preparing the soil for new life
3. On the collective level (when there is death there is the birth of collective action and resistance).

The subversive seed invites us to let go of the fear of death: whether that is in the form of loss of power and wealth, loss of “normalcy” or face, or the death of structures we are used to or benefit us in some way. 

It invites us into an entirely new way of seeing the world, ourselves, and one another.
That subversive seed says that until we allow our hearts and our imaginations to be redeemed by the power of Christ which is resistance and resurrection in the face of death, we will be unable to bear new life. 

The subversive seed invites us to see through death.
To quote Catholic theologian James Alison,

“Jesus is saying something like this: “I am going to my death to make possible for you a model of creative practice which is not governed by death. From now on this is the only commandment that counts: that you should live your lives as a creative overcoming of death, and you are doing this to make possible a similar living out for your friends. The measure in which they *are* your friends is the degree in which, thanks to the perception which they have of *your* creative acting out of a life beyond the rule of death, they come to have their imaginations expanded in the same way, and they too become capable of entering into this creative living out of a life that is not ruled by death.” (Raising Abel, 71). 

If we do not allow the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to subvert the powerful myths of death and power we are inducted into as people of empire if we do not allow the subversive seed to undercut these systems of death in our hearts and in our own communities then we will not be able to imagine, let alone live into that new world we wish to create.

What is on the other side of the death of these systems of death?

What would happen if we let this little grain of wheat, this little subversive seed bomb enter deep into our souls and allow it to plant and spread and bear new fruit of life within?

• What fears would we need to get rid of?
• What shame?
• What commitments would need to change?
• What new solidarities would we join?
• How would our understanding of death, and power, and wealth, shift and be subverted?

Queries for reflection: Where have we become habituated to death? What needs to die so that new life can be born? 

There’s a really great review of my book Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance in this month’s copy of the Western Friend by David Tucker.

After reading resisting empire – or more accurately, while reading it – I found myself delving into the text of Revelation, the literature of apocalypse, and the sociology of its varied interpretation alone, I think Daniels achieved his mission.

[After all that has happened in the recent months with the killing of George Floyd and others] we confronted yet against the humanity-stripping effects of our current cultural and economic structures. At that moment, it was a blessing to have reading Resisting Empire’s reading strategies, conclusions, and rallying cries in my mind.

David Tucker July/August 2020 Western Friend

Hi Friends,

I wanted to let you know that I am launching a new newsletter soon called “Remixing Faith.”

It will pull together writings and research dealing with faith, resistance, cultural change, and collective intelligence. I am doing this to continue to develop my own writing, as well as create a single place where the work I am doing can be shared as broadly as possible. I hope that you’ll not only like it but share it with those who you think would enjoy and benefit from it.

If you are subscribed to this blog, you don’t need to do anything other than keep an eye out for it. I will move everyone over there shortly. But if you want you can get in early by visiting the site here: Remixing Faith.

Thanks for reading and supporting my work,

Wess