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Black History Month! *More Quakers Edition

Black Quaker Paul Cuffe (1759-1817) was a free slave who taught himself mathematics and seafaring skills and amassed considerable wealth. He was active in the abolitionist movement and encouraged education as a way to help slaves gain their freedom. Cuffe also became involved in a movement which supported moving free slaves to Africa.

In mid-September 1810, Cuffe shared with his Quaker meeting that he was being led to establish a trading community in Sierra Leone. It would trade goods instead of humans. He embarked on efforts to establish settlements on Africa’s west coast and to develop trade routes to the area. In 1811 he founded the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone. In December 1815, Cuffe and 38 black settlers sailed for Sierra Leone and landed in February 1816. Later that year, he returned to the United States and sought backing for another voyage. However, his health soon began to decline, and he died the following year.

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Finally, dear Friends, let your whole conduct and conversation be such as becometh the Gospel. Exercise yourselves to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward all persons. Be faithful and steadfast in your allegiance and service to your Lord; continue in His love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace.

Advices of North Carolina Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Conservative)

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IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN im here to demand yall listen to my religious music selections.

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QUEER SEX IS HOLY TOO taken by Aimee Dars Ellis at Chicago Lesbian and Gay Pride, 27 June 1993 · via lgbt_history

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like how the biblical justifications for slavery and rape is now laughable to the mainstream, I pray that the biblical justifications for homophobia become laughable as well.

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‼️⚠️It's time to help🚨

cease-fire🍉

Vetted by gaza-evacuation-fund click here

Hello friends, it's the real and important time to help. The war has ended, but the suffering has not ended. The suffering has actually begun now 💔😭 Everything has become difficult and extremely difficult, but we will not lose hope. I am now in dire need of your help. Now there is hope to leave the sector and start a happy life again, but my transfers on gofundme have stopped for a long time and I have only received about 10 thousand of the total amount 😭💔

So now I am in dire need of your donations and your help again on my new campaign chuffed. Please, I am in dire need of you 🙏❤️

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Not epicene as in effeminate man (though if you are epicene in that way, valid, valid), but epicene as in "There is now no distinction between Jew or Greek, there is now neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you who believe are all one in Christ."

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how can one reconcile personal/religious pacifism with support for palestinian (and similar) resistance? is there any writing about this (maybe from palestinian quakers, i know there is a quaker presence in palestine)

here's a few resources on the quaker presence in palestine i've found, before i get into my personal thoughts on this issue:

quakers in the holy land

quakerspeak video on the palestinian quaker school in ramallah

video on a quaker call to action for israel/palestine

the official website for the ramallah friends meeting

the article deconstructing the dogma of domesticity: quaker education and nationalism in british mandate palestine by enaya hammad othman

the book negotiating palestinian womanhood: encounters between palestinian women and american missionaries, 1880s-1940s by by enaya hammad othman

peace has never been a popular option. peace is hard. peaceful resistance is hard. i also think that one thing to remember is that peaceful resistance is something that comes from a place of privilege, of education, and a basic level of dignity that many people who participate in forms of violent resistance simply are not allowed by their oppressors. palestine is a good example of this. when all other methods of resistance have been refused you, when you are stripped of your statehood, your citizenship, your humanity, and your personhood, what is left besides force? oppressors intentionally force those whom they are oppressing into a place where there is nowhere to go: your choice is to die or go forward, and fight your way through what is enclosing you. liberation is often violent, and i think it is a poor pacifist who doesn't acknowledge that. and perhaps the popular image of pacifism is that one- a condescending pacifism, because when i've questioned why more people don't choose pacifism the response has been "oppressors don't listen to the oppressed," and that's true.

pacifists are also treated as if their pacifism, which is an objection against violence (especially state violence) is itself a form of violence, especially when that objection is against the state. the united states, for instance, has always portrayed pacifism as "violent terrorism." for instance, the plowshares movement, a christian pacifism movement against nuclear armament and later the iraq war, among other things, damaged plans and equipment for missiles in massachusetts and punctured radomes used by the echelon program. numerous charges were laid against activists, including charges to interfere with the national defence of the united states and damage of national security: many of these activists were religious brothers and sisters (iirc all over the age of fifty at the time), and barred from using religion in their defence. or consider tal mitnick, a conscientious objector who has been imprisoned indefinitely for refusing his mandatory service in the idf following october 7. in a military imperialist state his refusal to serve is not seen as freedom of choice but as an act of violence against the state, a rejection of his own identity, because his identity has been bound inextricably and beyond his choice to that of a state that cannot exist without violence.

but mitnick is privileged in that he can refuse to serve. and i think that most soldiers who find themselves fighting for a state- i was 5 when 9/11 happened, i remember what it was like growing up during the so-called war on terror- are locked into a very different kind of prison, the prison of ideology, where they believe that their statehood is their identity, and that an attack on the state is an attack on themselves. and that is absolutely- or should be obviously- different from the type of violence perpetrated by groups like hamas: because that is a violence of self-preservation, of fighting one's way out of the corner where you have been forced to stand by your oppressor. all violence is terrible. all violence corrupts inevitably, and part of pacifism is to feel grief at this reality.

pacifism is rendered by violent authorities as terrorism because pacifism is in diametric disagreement with authority. all authority sustains itself through violence. it is not possible to have authority without violence. this may not be for you, but for me pacifism is tied up invariably in my rejection of authority: in recent years i've moved from considering myself an anarchocommunist to calling myself an anarchopacifist, because i do not believe that any authority can be just or do what is morally right.

but i want to make it very clear here: pacifism does not mean holding all oppressed people up the standard of non-violence. a world without violence is a utopia. pacifism that believes any form of violence is wrong, including acting against an oppressor, is not violence: it's merely another authority seeking to maintain a sense of its own supremacy. nonetheless there may be a moral imperative for people who do have the privileges of dignity, personhood, and statehood, and so forth, to participate in peaceful resistance and liberation on behalf of those forced into positions of inhumanity by their oppressors.

the problem is that non-violence is also rendered as violence by authority, because the only language violence authority can comprehend is further violence. the oppressor thinks any movement against them is violence. in the case of palestine, the very existence of palestinians is resistance whether they take up arms against israel or not: that resistance is rendered as terrorism whether an individual palestinian person's existence leads them to violent acts against the state or- in the case of the vast, vast majority of palestinians- to simply live. but being alive is an act of resistance towards the state. all resistance against the state is seen as terrorism. so what is palestinian resistance? is it taking up arms? is it joining hamas? or is it just being palestinian? is it just being indigenous? or kurdish? or a black person in america? or a jew in the third reich?

to understand the relationship between pacifism and resistance, we also have to reframe how and what we understand resistance to be. as long as we understand all resistance the way the state wants us to- as inherently violent- then there is no way to reconcile these things. a criticism i have of a lot of activism among those i consider my peers- among white, educated, middle class north americans- is that their support of resistance is centralized around hero narratives and us vs them thinking. but pacifism cannot really have sides and black and white thinking. pacifism is not something we do for ourselves. peace for one has to mean peace for all. peace of mind does not necessarily mean you've made a morally correct choice. my support of palestinian resistance extends to israeli disarmament, which extends to the disarmament of hamas, which extends to no state having a standing army to aid its nationalistic and imperialistic goals.

so then you might ask: are you are prepared for your existence to also be treated as terror for participating in resistance? and are you prepared to stand back? and are you prepared to not be the hero of this story? are you prepared to be even less than a hero?

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read an anonymous ask somebody (who also isn’t a Quaker) got that, after saying they had a limited knowledge of Quakerism, described Quakers as ascetics. which was really upsetting to me because i am both a Friend and a faggot! these two identities & values are not contradictory to me or many other Quakers, & trying to position them as such is super triggering tbh. so for anyone who is interested in learning about the Quaker value of simplicity & how it very strongly differs from asceticism here’s some more info!

(all of this is about FGC / Liberal Friends, other branches of Quakerism differ in many respects)

so! simplicity is one of six commonly cited core Quaker values (if you’ve researched Quakerism at all you’ve probably seen something about SPICES). Quakerism has no doctrines, & these values are descriptive, not prescriptive: they are things that have been observed to become common priorities for Friends, not requirements for being/becoming a Quaker. this is also just one of many acronyms & combinations for Quaker values.

simplicity is historically associated with plain dress, which is probably what the asker was thinking of as “ascetic.” the spiritual reasons behind plain dress, historically & for modern practitioners, are very different, though – unlike the cultural concept of, say, a repentant Catholic dressing in sackcloth, plain dress isn’t about punishing oneself, & it generally doesn’t involve making oneself uncomfortable. plain dress originated as a way to practice equality & resist classism. think the way optimistic policymakers expect school uniforms to function, except without many of the reasons such intentions fail – namely, expensively made clothes & high-end accessories.

Friends who practice plain dress now often do so as a form of resistance to materialism & overconsumption, and/or as a way of removing distractions from their spiritual goals for their relationships with others + the divine. beyond plain dress, some Friends may practice simplicity in their clothing choices by shopping sustainably / “slow fashion,” making & mending their own clothes, or participating in buy nothing exchanges. in my & many others’ opinion, flashy extravagant drag that’s made in traditional DIY methods is more in line with the Quaker value of simplicity than a thousand dollar designer brand boxy black dress in a modest cut.

the value of simplicity isn’t just about clothing & purchases, though – the Faith & Practice book for my region describes simplicity as working to focus on what you feel you are called to be doing & not acting in ways that are counter to that; not being hypocritical in the ways you dedicate your time & energy. & i’m sure there are a vast number of other interpretations that continue to make space for flamboyance & the deep enjoyment of clothing & other objects in a way that still recognizes one’s position within systems of harm + seeks to minimize harm done to others.

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COMMUNITY OF GOD OH MY GOSH...MY HEART. ELIZABETH WATSON YOU ARE SO SMART. GOD WANTS LESS A PATRIARCHAL WARMONGERING KINGDOM WITH AN ARMY BUT A COMMUNITY OF CHRISTIANS WHO LOVE EACH OTHER AND SHARE A FELLOW BELIEF IN GOD EVEN IF WE DISAGREE WITH EACH OTHER ON (non bigoted in my interpretation: i am not gonna share a community with homophobic and transphobic christians who want to annihilate my trans and queer brethren, sistren, and siblings in god, christ, and the holy spirit and i am NOT sharing a community with "christians" who are not stewards of the earth, who believe in harming others violently or going to war, or intend to dominate others cruelly instead of living in a horizontal pacifistic society) BELIEFS

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this was a difficult part in wisdom's daughters that i'm reading as i'm starting to read it because i had that angry urge to go "PETER DIDN'T DESERT JESUS!" but like...the three times peter betrayed jesus before he died and his insane guilt around it. and i remembered. oh. nobody but one of the john's and the women around him stayed consistently with jesus. the WOMEN were consistently with jesus. women, especially to us fgc quakers, are an important vessel of christ's message and spirituality, and that's why i'm so drawn to quaker interpretations of christianity in the first place, because the marginalized (in gender, in race, in class, in sexuality, in disability), they are CONSISTENTLY centered as a GIFT that god has given and not a defect that god will fix once we are in heaven or an inherent sin against god's creation.

to god, we are all sinners, yes, but none of us are sinning by being alive, by being ourselves.

and that's the beauty of the friends.

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do you have any suggestions for material that approaches theology with marxist thought? i Have gone through liberation/womanist theology stuff but none that so explicitly called itself marxist

you might enjoy critical theory if you're not already familiar. none of these writers are theologians or even theists, but they are strongly influenced by marxism and i find they fill in the gaps of theology where i wish for more marxism. they radically reshaped my theology even as they are highly critical of institutional christianity and i strongly recommend them.

dialectic of enlightenment: critical theory and the messianic light by jacob klapwijick (good introductory primer)

negative dialectics by theodor adorno

"the dogma of christ" by erich fromm

max horkheimer's "theism and theism" and "religion and philosophy"

herbert marcuse's an essay on liberation

everyone i haven't directly linked can be found in this book.

you've mentioned you went through some womanist/liberation theology: the thing with both theologies is that, particularly for catholic theologians writing in the 1980s, there was a real danger to explicit marxism. marxism is atheistic: anyone utilizing marxist rhetoric or calling themselves marxist jeopardized their safety and inclusion, especially during the reagan administration, so liberation theologians like guiterrez were actively either shunned or discouraged from being "too marxist." i won't recommend their work again, but i strongly encourage you to reread them after engaging in some critical theory- my experience of liberation theology was radically changed by doing this, since liberation theology finds its origins in critical theory. additionally, you might be interested in:

the long loneliness by dorothy day

in the vale of tears: on marxism and theology by roland boer

class struggle in the new testament by robert j miles

christian socialism: an informal history by john cort

all things in common: the economic practices of the early christians by roman a. montero

prophetic encounters: religion and the american radical tradition by dan mckanan

speak truth to power a quaker search for an alternative to violence by bernard rustin

the life and work of camilo torres restrepo, dorothy day, benard rustin, and simone weil

i like this article a lot too

this is a bit all over the place, but it might be helpful for starting off- and again, i encourage you to reconsider liberation theologians, especially gustavo gutierrez, marcella althaus-reid, and james h cone. they are easily the most important thinkers for liberation theology and all of them are driven deeply and intrinsically by marxism even if they don't write explicitly about it. you might also like sallie mcfague: i recommend the body of god: an ecological theology and life abundant: rethinking theology and economy for a planet in peril.

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Remember, Friends - Power is the seat of the devil. He dwells where people use force and authority to injure and to destroy. 

What does he offer Christ in the desert? He offers power - power over earthly dominion. The things he suggests Christ to do - to jump off of a temple to be rescued by angels, to feed himself by turning stone to bread - this is the flexing of power. This is the nature of evil - it lives in the exercise of tyranny especially.

As Christians, we want to see a better world. A world that is just and moral. But we MUST resist, at ALL urges, the temptation to put our faith to power - for that is the worst pollution of the word of God that there is.

How many people refuse to even listen to the message of salvation for that which has been done by government, by power, “in the name of God?” 

How many have deafened themselves to it for that which is done using the faith as a hammer, as a cudgel to assail one’s enemies? 

Our lord lives in our hearts. God reigns only over one kingdom, and that is in heaven. The only way we can “bring the Kingdom of God” is to embody it ourselves - to show the gifts of the Inward Light.

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@danashehab has been fundraising since may and is just over €15,000 away from their goal l. as stated in the screenshot people are starting to believe the rafah crossing will open so it’s important to make sure everyone has the funds in case they are allowed to evacuate.

thee shehab family consists of dana (13), sahar (14), mona (9), malak (5), yehya (1.5), fahed, (38), reem (32), and grandmother mona (60). they have been shadowbanned and deleted a few times. you can also find this family at @monashehab

EDIT AUG 24:

The family has had to raise their goal to cover their extended family’s evacuation fees since they are unable to make a new GFM.

The new goal is €85,000.

[vetted]

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i feel obligated to talk about this bc i am egyptian and one of the central reasons people from gaza have been fundraising is because of egypt's border policy, which is no longer active since the rafah border was destroyed

i know nothing gets people more heated or self-righteous than the idea that they might be getting scammed, and i know the gofundmes here can be overwhelming in your inboxes and i know for many people in the west who want some kind of reliable process this can seem sketchy but palestinian bloggers on here (and palestinians across platforms including on gazafunds.com) don't want you to be scammed any more than you want to be scammed, and they have put in an extraordinary effort to verify information literally in the middle of a warzone

the truth is you all have no idea how difficult this entire process is from top to bottom, tech companies and fintech companies literally hate anything that passes through this area. i'm banned from uber and doordash because i used an egyptian credit card while travelling and it flagged their automated fraud systems and they never reinstated it lol like that's how arbitrary it is. and egypt is one of the better-connected countries in the area.

the entire reason people in gaza are relying on gofundmes is because the barriers to entry and exit are not accidental—they're deliberate! this is literally what being occupied and middle-eastern means. it means you don't have easy access to bank accounts, you don't have easy access to fundraising, you don't have easy access to your own records, and you are automatically mistrusted by the world at large of how thoroughly dehumanized your language and your people have been during a genocide where you are being bombed and living in a tent. this is also part of what it means to be a refugee from the global south or to be a refugee from the global north, where these processes are expedited (as they were for ukrainian refugees, for example) precisely because they are part of the structure of a war.

like just to explain to you guys how difficult it was for me (someone with access to networks across the world) to get money to a friend in gaza, because egypt's also going through an economic crisis and transferring usd here is close to impossible: to get 15k usd (enough to get 3 people out of gaza) to the office in egypt that registers people for evacuation, that family needed

a stable internet connection to communicate with us (they were only able to get in touch briefly every other day)

first-degree relatives in egypt to register for them

people from abroad who could raise the money for them (which they did; they were family friends who knew them)

an egyptian with a usd bank account and a foreigner coming to egypt who could carry usd in cash to divide it among themselves because there is no other way to receive that amount of money here at once

we managed to get the money to their relatives here, they managed to register them, and then the rafah border was destroyed. so now the are just waiting while being bombed and displaced from one area to another. and this is a family who had every connection needed. imagine how it is for people where only one of these links are dropped?

that's why the work the palestinian bloggers do here to support palestinians in gaza is necessary, because they fill in for people who don't have good language skills, who don't have friends abroad to fundraise or vouch for them, who don't have relatives in egypt who can receive money for them, etc

does this mean every fundraiser is 100% reliable? no. this is why the verification list exists! the things i would be wary of would be if someone sends you a false or phishing link, or if someone who is running the campaign from abroad decides to scam the palestinians they're raising it for and refuse to send the money, both of which i've witnessed personally

but the likelihood of someone faking being from gaza and getting onto the verified list is much smaller because the verification process is rigorous and like i said, palestinians themselves don't want to be promoting scams. but also most of these gofundmes protect your donation, meaning if someone disputes it you get your donation back. they are paranoid to the extent that they will sometimes refuse to pay out people in gaza even after the campaign goal is reached for no reason except that anything from the middle east is generally regarded with suspicion. i've seen paypal also refuse to do the same

as a matter of fact from a tech standpoint it's so, so much easier for someone located in the west to create a fake gofundme/phishing scam than for a palestinian to do so, but by that token it's more difficult for someone in the west to convincingly fake being from gaza. which is why the verification list and other initiatives (like again, gazafunds.com) are so important

i have tried to get gofundmes on gazafunds before and i can promise you their process is rigorous. you might not see a lot of the paperwork behind a specific campaign but i know they don't add campaigns unless they verify their IDs personally or through a network of trusted references. the bloggers on here are a volunteer network working independently, of their own effort, and they are doing their best in what is a genuinely horrible situation. the border is closed now but people in gaza have worked out alternate ways to receive money raised online (again, often via relatives transferring to each other outside gaza or other means) and aid hasn't been coming in for months and those regulating the aid were killed, which means extremely limited supplies and high inflation, so money raised and received now is literally survival money that goes wherever it can, and people are very desperate to raise as much as possible as things get more dire. there is no employment in gaza right now. people have been living off their savings for ten months.

is that simple to convey to some blogger on tumblr donating 5$ to a gofundme? is it simple to understand? no. and that's part of the structure of genocide. you aren't going to be able to venmo someone and get a receipt like you do if you're donating to an org, so volunteers are doing their best to fill in the gaps for that by making sure you know how your money is helping real human beings while relieving the pressure on these humans, in a genocide with limited internet, to constantly post about themselves.

the fact of the matter is that your risk of being scammed by a gofundme from the verified list or gazafunds dot com is extremely low, but the damage of of assuming (and even worse, claiming) these campaigns are a scam is extremely high

if you don't trust a campaign, don't donate to it. if you notice a red flag you feel like the bloggers verifying might have missed, alert them to it. if you notice someone impersonating one of the verified campaigns on here (also common) alert people to it. i often have difficulty identifying which blogs are legitimate because they are deleted and remade so frequently, so i just try to reblog posts from the verified list or promoted by palestinians bloggers as i donate to them.

don't cast doubt on the process if you don't understand it, and don't be cruel about a situation you should pray you never experience—and odds are, if you have a US passport and a US bank account, you never will.

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I would recommend deciding how much from each paycheque (or &c.) you can afford to donate and then just giving a certain fixed amount out of that to every fundraiser you see until you hit your cap for that day. if you wait to be persuaded to donate by a particularly compelling narrative, it just cheapens people into needing to craft compelling narratives about genocide.

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To my friends and loved ones,

My name is Ibrahim Al-Maghni. I am a married father of three: Tulin (8), Tin (6), and Taysir (5). We are currently facing extremely difficult living conditions due to the war in Gaza.😔💔

We have lost our home and jobs and are now living in a shelter without basic necessities. Any donation—$10, $20, or $50—would make a significant difference in helping my family. 🕊️🌹

I set up a donation link a month and a half ago, but support has been limited, and I am feeling hopeless. I truly need your help now. 😔

Thank you for your support. 🫀

Sincerely,

Ibrahim Al-Maghni

$914 / $20,000 raised so far, please share and donate: