Overview
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
– Micah 6:8
Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Seek to live in affection as true Friends in your Meetings, in your families, in all your dealings with others, and in your relationship with outward society. The power of God is not used to compel us to Truth; therefore, let us renounce for ourselves the power of any person over any other and, compelling no one, seek to lead others to Truth through love. Let us teach by being ourselves teachable.
-extract from the epistles of the Yearly Meeting of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, 1694 and 1695
Anti-racism work is a spiritual endeavor, not just a justice issue. It is more than how we choose to live our lives — it is what God requires of us. What does anti-racism work look like if we’re acting justly and grounded in spirituality? What can we learn from Quaker testimonies and the teachings of Jesus? How are we being called?
If you have five minutes…
Watch this QuakerSpeak video: Dreaming of Wholeness: Quakers and the Future of Racial Healing
We’re saying the direct opposite. We’re in direct opposition to systems that helped to build everything we see around us. That feels deep and radical, and also it feels right in line with what Quakers were doing from the jump.
If you have twenty minutes…
Read one of these articles from Friends Journal
We Think We’re Separate by Robin Mohr, October 2016
No matter how much we would like to pretend that those people, those foreigners, those suffering people, “those people” are not one of us, we know in our hearts, in our minds, in our stories, that we are all one people under God.
God Loves Us All by Phil Lord, March 2017
What the world needs as much as ever is to hear that still, small voice: a voice that asks us not to fear the fearful; that reminds us that the rain falls on the just and the unjust; and that directs our moral obligation away from ourselves and toward the stranger, the poor, the incarcerated prisoner, and the victims of violence and oppression. It is a voice that tells us that any work or sacrifice without love is a waste of time, and that so long as God dwells within each of us, each of us is capable of being transformed. We can hear that voice, and we can respond to the Spirit in others, if we are obedient to the experience of Friends through the ages and to what our testimonies continue to reveal. Our witness will not fail if we do not fail our witness.
If you have an hour…
Read the essay Not Somewhere Else, But Here by Rev. Dr. Rebecca Ann Parker
To recover and become an inhabitant of one’s own life and one’s own society, a different theology is needed. A new theology must begin here, a theology that assists in an internal healing of the fragmented self, that supports a new engagement with the realities of one’s society, and that sanctions a remedial education into the actual history and present realities of one’s country. Theology must direct us, like Eve, to taste the fruit of knowledge and gladly bear the cost of moving beyond the confines of the garden.
Queries for Conversation
In the QuakerSpeak video above, Sterling Duns notes that “As an Afro-futurist, I spend time thinking about the future, and really spending some deep time imagining what it looks like for us all to be free. I think Quaker communities can spend that time and energy doing that.” Take a moment to imagine us all being free. What does that future look like? What is Spirit calling you to do in your individual life to create that reality? How are you called to dismantle white supremacy and work toward justice?