Welcome back, everyone. It’s been a while. These days, I have become an “Easter and Christmas only” attender of Daily Kos. After stepping aside from active, day-to-day politics—I’ve been focusing more on my own Quaker faith, diving deeply into theology, while still seeking to observe the intersections in current culture. Yesterday’s awful SCOTUS decision has brought me back. I’m going to try to draw a parallel here. My original audience was directed at other Friends, and as a result I’ve sought to translate the Quakerese in this post so that all may understand.
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Many of us have learned about George Fox, the founder of the faith, the autodidact, whose command of Scripture was supreme. We have marveled at his ability to quote whole passages from memory and to make numerous religious allusions to bolster the Quaker cause. He was indeed a remarkable person, but upon further examination, he wasn't much different from many people of his age.
Learned men of his time had an understanding of Scripture and the Bible that we cannot even begin to conceptualize today. Even those of us who identify as Christian Friends cannot grasp what it once was like a little less than 400 years ago. Religion really, really mattered back then—maybe people were still hypocritical about observance, but the facade of piety was never challenged. This is what deeply concerns me today about this high court decision. Morality cannot be legislated. Americans have tried that once before.
It was called Prohibition, it was flaunted by all, entirely impotent by means of even simple enforcement, and, above all, it failed miserably. Fortunately, a much more sober nation repealed it, eventually, though it took nearly thirteen long years and the passage of a Constitutional Amendment.
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When this country’s founders decided to form their own government, they recoiled in shock from all the ways that religion, particularly evident in the Empire of which they were citizens of a profitable set of colonies--was used to persecute other people. They were students of history and people of the Enlightenment. The numerous religious wars of the 16th and 17th Centuries left a profound distaste in the minds (and mouths) of many generations who followed.
What they thought to themselves went a little like this: "Look at all the terrible ways religion has caused division and destruction! Why would we ever want to form a theocracy ourselves? Let's seriously question the limits of Divine Authority." Spoken like a true Deist.
The Enlightenment was itself an overcorrection, despite its lofty aims, but then again humans do a remarkable job with overcorrection.
But when I think about the Cromwellian Protectorate of 17th Century England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland—the time period in which the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) were formed and codified (in opposition to many English Puritans), I see what happens when a bunch of purist, highly legalistic, fundamentalist Christians get into power. It’s not good.
Once you start believing you are part of the Elect, and that your status in Heaven is preordained by God, then others who are not in your tribe can be safely ignored. They’re not Christians and they clearly aren’t going to have any afterlife of their own. Why bother?
No need to be racist, either. Theoretically, race is meaningless under those parameters. If you feel no need to win souls because everything’s preordained already, you won’t feel any compulsion to educate and convert enslaved people—the justification many made to support the peculiar institution. Maybe it’s a soft form of racism.
The ways our British forefathers and foremothers responded, a century or more before us were different. We see remnants of that perspective today. It’s a big reason why the so-called cancel culture dominant in this country right now is not in similar force in the UK. We are a product of Empire, just as much as Britain once was. The pattern continues in similar forms, over the generations.
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"Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!"- Matthew 23:24