Epistle to Friends concerning by r. scot miller
The contemporary Quaker Peace witness is lacking credibility. The commitment to non-violence claimed by some Friends seems to have less to do with loving neighbor or enemy than it does to do with avoiding violence. If the Society of Friends does have intelligible values which can its serve as its peculiar own, we must do more to make legitimate our claim to be a Peace Church. Presently, it is difficult to believe that a majority of those placing themselves somewhere along the spectrum of Friends or Quakerisms are in fact even Christian Pacifists. Even if one half of all non-FGC membership Friends were committed to non-violence and reject military service as an option, the majority would still see militarism as an option as a last resort.
It seems that so-called Progressive Friends have lived in a bubble for so long that we no longer recognize that our peace witness has mostly gone the way of electoral politics and the struggle for power and political control within the context of liberal democracy. I have not given up on non-violence, nor have I given up on a commitment to peace-making in the name of the Christ and/or Friends. But I repeat, our own version of non-violence, a version lacking vision let alone creativity, has little to do with the reality of radical violence or the presence of evil in our eschaton. Is it time, as I claim about the churches of Christendom, for the Religious Society to die?
I am not prepared to answer that question because it is not my decision, or a conversation I participate in in more than a passing way, unless asked specific questions regarding death and resurrection of the soul of institutional religious bodies such as our beloved society. I am however, committed at this time to challenge the very assumptions most Friends, if not many more so-called spiritual-not-religious Quakers, that the Friends version of non-violence is a corrupt contributor to the maintenance of white supremacy. Friends and Quakers, there is blood on our skirts.
The more that I engage the history of Friends and Christian pacifism, the more I identify our contemporary version of non-violence as little more than a skeptical, shallowly judgmental, and anxiety-driven fear of violence - and the potential it may be used against us. On the other hand, I wonder if it is more a question of being asked to sacrifice the time and income, or the fear of physical pain and discomfort of our very souls that comes with radical change, that leads to my experience of our non-violence inadequate to the task of Peace. What is it that presents itself as a latent bond to the action necessary to promote and achieve an end to the targeted murders of black neighbors by policing organizations and radical conservative organizations?
Democracy has not worked in the manner which is claimed, or in which its successes are presented to the populace. Regardless of how much we vote, and exhort others to vote; no matter how many elections are won, there are always excuses to the fact of Buffalo, El Paso, Minneapolis and Grand Rapids. Always excuses. The same Friends who mock Evangelical Christendom’s rather biblically-mistaken hope for the Parousia of the future believe somehow that world peace can be achieved; “perhaps not in my time, but in the days of my grandchildren…”
How convenient it has been for all of us that our grand children will live or will come to be part of our lives while our non-violence trembles at the very fact of violence. In fact, we turn away from murder to the fact of global warming, hoping that our grandchildren will have a climate conducive to a world to live in. Yet that world will continue to be a racist and murder-market regime of those who have no desire but to dominate. Quaker meetings are aging and perhaps dying and our hope is reflected in the prayers and invocations of the light that we send outward at worship. Invocations for healing, comfort in the wake of deaths of loved ones, and for a better world for our children.
There are actions that we must take, even if our meetings are aging and there is no legacy beyond a meeting house that is green in its design, but white in its inhabitance. And then there are those of us who continue to claim non-violence while supporting policing policies and struggling over slogans that fail to pass the muster of a properly considered Niebuhrian Christian Realism. I contend we must give up such privilege in a manner I believe is realized by the 75-year-old Martin Gugino of Buffalo. During the public despair over the death of George Floyd, the policing forces of dominance bulldozed him like the bully of our past, injuring him, and laughing at him in the process. Yes, they will do this to elderly folks who stand in the way of policing policies that suck funding from community health initiatives, education, and community building. How are we risking our privilege to even volunteer our time and bodies in places where violence is a reality?
Gugino humbled himself, and indeed experienced the christ-like humiliation of being dominated by the same forces of institutional race, class, and gender controlling troops that allowed an armed mass murderer with a loaded handgun to walk calmly out of the corpse pile he left behind to tell his tale. Reminiscent of the way the man who killed anti-racism protesters in Kenosha, ushered out of a murder scene by police who could clearly see the rifle in his hands. Remember that an armed white man still lives to be a prison-gang and white supremacist hero while unarmed black men are murdered by the same Buffalo police force for outbursts related to their mental illness. Gugino had no excuses for keeping himself safe or being concerned with how the police might rampage if somehow provoked to crisis management by the message the 75-year-old was compelled to share with them. He took up his cross.
As voting rights are attacked, and civil rights are stolen regularly from African Americans and other persons of color, refugees are continuing to experience caging and exploitation, continuing hunger and thirst under the boot of a rather castrated administration of federal government, Friends continue to vote rather than act in sacrificial ways. We may march as a rather limited if not properly boundaried action, yet we seem to tremble rather than quake. The non-violence of Friends is a non-violence of violence-avoidant fear and anxiety.
Friends, this very version of non-violence is rooted in racism and false beliefs about people of color and the not-even-dare-to-whisper belief among whites that blacks need to be policed, and that the feds need to act against white supremacist radicals. A God of love and beauty, creativity and passion will judge us for our non-violence. John Brown is germinating in fertile soil manured by hand-wringing cries of gun control measures and that we vote for Democrats.
Liberal democracy and capitalism have long been a tool of white supremacy, and we rarely have the courage to admit that the more success toward an egalitarian and equal society develops, the rapid response is murderous. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are just the second to next latent white-supremacists-in-denial waiting to foil your plans.
Furthermore, consider the metaphor if you will: The ovens of capitalism are those Buffalo and El Paso commodity warehouses; capitalist consumer traps where persons of color and the poor and humiliated are eliminated and sacrificed to the fiery Gehenna of white supremacist lies. Walmart and Tops Grocer are only some in a long line of potential marketplace slaughterhouses established by an economy of gentrification and never-ending wealth creation in the name of a god of wealth. A god whose marketplace is the only creativity universally accepted by the Salon of the 21st-Century – the corrupt judge of eurobeauty and human worth.
What has the non-violence of Friends resulted in? How much risk have we assumed for unarmed persons of color? How many schools have we established patrol routines for to protect students by sidetracking armed white men from their intended targets with our own bodies? How much economic privilege will we sacrifice to shut down an economic model built upon slavery and racist contentions regarding those who are capable of progress and those who must be the wheels of progress, driven over if they do not become part of the machine. Friends, our non-violence is a non-violence of talk and fear, with little action that is not safe and predictable in its outcomes regarding our comfort.
I of course expect too much, and no one has asked any of us recently to lay down our lives for them. But voluntary sacrifice on behalf of others does imply that some risk is recognized and accepted as necessary.
As long as white men keep killing persons of color indiscriminately at the places where they must purchase goods to survive, Friends often just avoid shopping at such places, saying they are unjust examples of marketplace exploitation of the poor. How convenient we are never among the targets of those who cannot afford good at prices higher than Walmart or have no transportation to the Meijers that exist among the safe neighborhoods. Remember, driving to a Meijers in Dearborn Heights or Rockford may mean getting pulled over. God forbid a taillight is out on the ’98 Honda of a black man with a hazy smell in his vehicle that gets pulled over after buying burgers and beer for the fourth of seventh month. In the America of Quaker non-violence, a murder might occur on our watch.
But even more, to expect armed government agents, police forces, and public policy backed by the threat of prison to make the world safe for Black folks disregards some important facts. Police and military violence is violence, a coercive Carolignian compounding of the love-of-neighbor and fear-of-enemy ethic Friends should claim. How dare we demand being made safe and stable at the hand of policing institutions who keep us safe with murder - that warehouse the poor and marginalized in neighborhoods where violence is a traumatic normative experience.
Furthermore, versions of Quaker non-violence wring hands over factual details, to the point of saying that the measure of self-defense undertaken by targeted groups is immoral, or indicates a moral vision of the oppressed as something we should not participate in. John Brown is watching you Friends, and he is wringing his hands in the grave. Brown, Tom Joad, and Preacher Casey will be resurrected in the smog of this this racist apocalyptic hope and exact revenge without fear or anxiety, only loathing for those who cry peace, peace, but are remarkable in their ability to keep their own lives unchanged in the midst of such racist violence.
Either we find our new Underground Railroad, our new Hope House, our new Peace Testimony that gives rise to the post 1661 realities of the American system of exploitation, or we wring our hands, regardless of the fact that we can not wash the blood off of them as tens and twenties of our neighbors are gunned down – murdered – by people claiming they are protecting us and some white way of life that we in fact enjoy latently, if not explicitly.
Friends, the time for taking up our cross and eschewing our privilege has passed. But we still have passion to repent if we so dare. Being unarmed and vulnerable in the midst of the violence when that may be our only means of empowering non-violent resistance that will shut down institution racism and commercial exploitation. We must refuse and resist to participate and benefit from the power and control mechanisms of racist institutions. How we do that is a great question. Lets fucking begin to answer it the best we can.
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