When I was in the fourth grade, one of my best friends was a boy named Joe Bryant, whose family rented a farmhouse southwest of Danville on Mackey Road. He moved to our town at the start of the school year, and we became friends the first week of school. His family only lived in Danville for one year, then his father took a new job out of state, and they moved away. At least, that’s how I remember it. It was a long time ago.
What I do remember is the first time I became aware of Joe. It was the first day of fourth grade and Mrs. Conley asked us to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and Joe didn’t, which I thought odd. Mrs. Conley didn’t say anything, she just smiled at Joe, while the rest of us pledged our allegiance. I loved Mrs. Conley. At recess, some of the boys started picking on Joe, calling him a communist for not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. It didn’t appear to bother him. I had heard about communists, but had never met one in person, so was fascinated with Joe. I’d heard my father say the communists were from Russia, so I asked Joe where he had lived before moving to Danville, and he said Greencastle, which threw me off. I asked him why he didn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance and he said his parents wouldn’t let him, that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, a group I was familiar with because they had visited our home to ask us if we wanted to live forever with Jesus in paradise, which I wanted to, though my parents seemed curiously uninterested.
Joe and I became friends, and he told me all about Jehovah Witnesses and I told him everything I knew about Catholicism, which wasn’t much, mostly that you could do anything you wanted so long as you went to confession every Saturday night, which to me was the best deal going in religion. Looking back, I think that’s when I first became interested in theology, talking with Joe. Up until then, I had been thinking of being a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, but instead became enthralled with theology, which eventually led to a career in the lucrative field of Quaker ministry.
I eventually went to college, studied theology, and wrote my thesis about Jerry Falwell and the rise of the Moral Majority. Ever the optimist, I predicted Americans were far too wise to be taken in by religious hucksters, that they would never amass enough political power to control the government. I remember using the phrases, “a flash in the pan” and “one-hit wonder,” when writing about Falwell. Looking back, I downplayed Falwell’s potential because I didn’t want him to succeed. Too often we dismiss the likelihood of those things we don’t want to happen. “Oh, that’ll never happen, we tell ourselves.” When I was dating Joan, I overheard Joan’s mother say to Joan’s sister, “Don’t worry. She’ll never marry him.” Boy, I showed her.
But I digress.
We’ve been talking about the things early Friends got right. I want to end this series by talking about the early Friends refusal to tie their religion to a particular nation. We were more like Joe Bryant than we were like Jerry Falwell. When it was common to yoke religious movements to specific nations—Lutheranism to Germany, Roman Catholicism to Italy, the Anglican church to England, Calvinism to Switzerland, various Orthodox churches attached to various countries—Quakers were careful never to link our movement to any one nation, king, or government. The world was our home, and not just one part of it. We pledged our allegiance to God, not to a government.
This had its advantages and disadvantages. Lacking the support and protection of governmental powers, we were subject to persecution in almost every country we inhabited. On the plus side, since we felt no obligation to remain in favor with any king or party, we were consequently free to follow the dictates of our conscience. In her book To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee wrote, “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
When religion is married to nationalism, we will forever raise a moistened finger to the air to see which direction the wind is blowing. Our faith will live or die at the whim of the king or a president or party, remaining in their good graces only as long as we bend the knee and tug the forelock.
The king’s claim on us is both incremental and insidious. It starts by asking for our commitment to a noble ideal, something to which we can readily give our assent, some virtuous principle we can naturally and easily affirm. Perhaps our pledge of allegiance to a nation and land we love. What could possibly be wrong with that? But have you noticed how often that affirmation of allegiance leads inexorably to calls of exclusion and violence, to love our nation more than other nations, our people more than other people, our freedoms at the expense of another’s freedom, how it leads inexorably, inevitably, to them and us. Before long, intoxicated with privilege, we commit the evils we deplore.
Here is the gospel truth, as true as true can be–that when the prominent aspects of any culture unite and marry, they form a nexus of power that assumes divine authority, that must be obeyed, that can only be questioned at the risk of scorn. Thus, when patriotism is joined to religion to form a political movement, that movement will assume an oversized and abusive role in society. It will cry for war, it will protect the privilege of the powerful, it will safeguard the status quo, eroding our conscience until our “no” is a faint whisper. Thus, did the early Friend, Edward Burrough, write, “We are not for Names, nor Men, nor Titles of Government, nor are we for this Party, nor against the other, but we are for Justice and Mercy, and Truth and Peace, and true Freedom, that these may be exalted in our Nation.”
For his refusal to tip the hat, Burroughs was imprisoned at London’s Newgate Prison, where he died at the age of 29. My friend Joe, ten years old, was ridiculed and bullied, but never wavered. Every morning, he would just sit at his desk, being scorned. I tell you, there are times even today, at the age of 63, when I am still a slave to the good opinion of people I don’t even admire. Going along to get along. This is what Christian Nationalism eventually requires of us, our unquestioning obedience, our turning a blind eye to the evils we deplore.
There’s a man in our town who loudly proclaims to be a Christian, though he belongs to no church. He accosted me the other day to ask who I was voting for, and I smiled sweetly and told him it was none of his business, that the Supreme Court had not yet outlawed our freedom of conscience. But this man made it his business and accused me of being a baby killer. Now you know I love babies, and you know also that I would never forbid a woman the freedom to make her own health care decisions, difficult as those decisions might be. But this man, in the manner of bullies everywhere, presumed to tell me he spoke not only for the Imponderable God of the Infinite Universe, but for real Americans. But, Friends, the one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. The start of our moral life begins when we say No!to that which merits our no, and Yes ! to that which deserves our whole and hearty yes.
I never imagined so many Americans would not only forfeit their own freedoms, but deny others theirs, even though the stream of oppression runs deep in our history. But I dismissed the possibility because I didn’t want to believe it could happen again. I wanted to believe we had outgrown such mean and narrow impulses. But here we are. And we are here, because to many Americans have forgotten that “we are not for Names, nor Men, nor Titles of Government, nor are we for this Party, nor against the other, but we are for Justice and Mercy, and Truth and Peace, and true Freedom, that these may be exalted in our Nation.”
When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher was Mrs. Conley. But now I know she was not my only teacher. I was also taught courage by Joe Bryant, who sat when others stood, who even at that tender age knew that the one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.