The Warning Signs

When I talk about election violence in the United States, people sometimes ask the question, “What are you worried about, exactly? What do you think is going to happen?” This is not something that’s predictable. Even full-time, professional peacebuilders who specialize in election violence prevention do not have the ability to make accurate predictions about the nature or severity of future election violence. 

But there are some reliable warning signs, a set of conditions that—in retrospective analysis of elections with and without violence in various countries—tend to indicate that election violence more or less likely. As a reminder, “election violence” is a technical term in the peacebuilding field. It means physical violence, severe psychological violence (such as repeated threats), or destruction of property of monetary or symbolic value that is either motivated by or intended to influence an election cycle.

I want to talk to you about the three most common warning signs: what they are, how we recognize them, why they matter, and what types of actions or changes might mitigate them.

Common warning sign #1: a recent history of election violence. The more recent and more severe the country’s history of election violence, the more likely it is that election violence will occur again in the near future. We know the United States has experienced election violence to varying degrees in connection with the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, and we are already experiencing it in connection with the 2024 election cycle. The strongest current example is repeated and severe threats being made to election officials. 

In all cases of election violence, the biggest concern is a cascade effect: one incident leads to another, which makes ripples, and we wind up with a situation that is wildly out of control. This is part of why a recent history of election violence makes more election violence more likely in the near future. The myth of redemptive violence is strong. Many people believe that the only potentially effective response to violence is equal violence in the opposite direction. Another reason that recent history is predictive is humans’ capacity for adjusting our views on what is “normal.” Because we aren’t able, psychologically, to live in a state of extraordinary alarm long-term, we tend to adjust our internal baseline. The more election violence we have, the more people begin to feel that a certain amount of election violence is normal and possibly even acceptable.

In the 1660 Declaration to the King, Friends declared that “wars and fightings proceed from the lusts of men.” Generally speaking, people are violent when they want something and believe that violence is their best of chance of getting it. For that reason, election violence prevention strategies emphasize making nonviolent political expression an easier choice than violence. Through peace messaging, civic and voter education, voter consultations, and youth programming, election violence prevention highlights and encourages alternatives to violent action.

Common warning sign #2: politicians’ use of blame-based rhetoric. This one is complex but crucial. Blame-based rhetoric is the expression of ideas in a way that that encourages fear and anger about something without offering any solution. The contrasting expression of ideas is problem-solution rhetoric.

I’ll give two examples—first conservative, then liberal.

If I am a conservative politician using blame-based rhetoric, I might say something like this: “Democrats want to throw open our borders and leave us vulnerable to terrorists and criminals.” When I say this, I encourage my conservative listeners to fear and abhor Democrats, terrorists, lawbreakers, and immigrants.

If I am the same conservative politician using problem-solution rhetoric, I might say something like this instead: “We have a real problem with national security. I suggest stronger background checks during immigration and visa processes, plus modifications to our asylum laws.” Now I’m suggesting a potential way forward.

If I am a liberal politician using blame-based rhetoric, I might say something like this: “Republicans, especially religious conservatives, hate women and want to force everyone to abide by their own outdated religious ideals.” When I say this, I encourage my liberal listeners to fear and abhor Republicans, Christians, and people with what some might call old-fashioned moral frameworks. 

If I am the same liberal politician using problem-solution rhetoric, I might say something like this instead: “It is very important that we preserve a woman’s right to choose. I suggest we pass federal legislation to prevent states from restricting abortion access.” Again, this is a potential way forward.

Unfortunately, politicians and candidates have discovered that blame-based rhetoric is effective for winning campaigns. Frightened, angry people are very likely to vote for the person who most agrees with their own perspective. That feels relatively safe. Problem-solution rhetoric, on the other hand, leave the politician open to criticism. Suppose that someone disagrees with their solution and therefore doesn’t vote for them?

It’s not good when any of us use blame-based rhetoric, but it’s especially destructive when politicians do it. The implied lesson is (1) the “other” is extremely threatening and (2) the only possible solution is to defeat or utterly destroy the opposition. People who are sufficiently frightened and angry and who do not believe that the election process provides any hope become more likely to participate in violence.

To prevent election violence, we can disrupt this pattern in two ways. 

First, we can recognize, interrupt, and dismantle politicians’ use of blame-based rhetoric. If we want to push back on politicians themselves, we can listen for it and send emails or messages to their offices. “I notice that __________ said ___________ in yesterday’s speech, and I want to point out that this is a very dangerous way to talk about the issue. I also find it unsatisfying as a voter; what is _________’s suggested solution?”

But it can also be helpful to interrupt the patterns with our fellow listeners. “Did you notice that ___________ is blaming _________ for that problem but didn’t actually offer a solution? I’m not so sure that’s helpful. What do you think the solution might be?”

Second, we can refuse to fear people that we don’t know. We can ask ourselves, “What category of people is _____________ trying to make me fear? Do I have a personal relationship with anyone who fits into that category? Do they really meet that stereotype?” And if we don’t know anyone in that category, we can reach out and start building personal relationships. This is also an early step in creating resilient communities, which is a major part of election violence prevention. More on that another day.

Quakers know experientially that the Holy Spirit is capable of speaking through everyone. That doesn’t mean that people aren’t capable of choosing to do evil. Of course they are. But no one is worth dismissing or hating on the basis of category without a personal relationship, as 1 Corinthians 12 reminds us.

Common warning sign #3: people doubting the government’s legitimacy. More than 60% of Republicans do not believe that President Biden was legitimately elected. Around 70% of Democrats believe the Supreme Court is partisan rather than impartial. (This is not quite the same thing as believing the Supreme Court is illegitimate, but I could not find data on that specific question.)

Whether our government is or isn’t legitimate is enormously important, but it’s also worth noting here that the problem when we’re talking about election violence isn’t whether the government is legitimate but whether the people doubt that it is. People who don’t believe that their country’s election process results in legitimately elected candidates are much more likely to engage in election violence because they don’t have faith in the nonviolent process.

To prevent election violence, we have to make sure that elections are fair and are perceived as fair, which means working on both election administration and election monitoring. The Braver Angels Trustworthy Elections group has just released a report that I find extremely compelling. The content is good; the process used to produce it is better.

Generally speaking, in the United States, liberals believe that our elections have an access problem while conservatives believe that our elections have a security problem. These problems are often viewed as mutually exclusive—that is, we can’t improve access without reducing security and vice versa. 

The Braver Angels Trustworthy Elections group wondered whether this was true. Over the course of several years, they gathered many half-conservative, half-liberal groups to talk about their concerns about elections. Each workshop group wrote and approved lists of statements and recommendations that had to approved word-for-word unanimously. Then, the total list of statements and recommendations was synthesized into the report and recommendations just released. The group that did this synthesizing work was also half-liberal, half-conservative, and they had to both unanimously approve the report and base everything in the report on data from the completed workshops.

Sunday evening, I attended an online conversation in which four members of the synthesis group talked about their experiences producing this report. They said several things that were really striking.

Deep listening seemed to be key at every step. I had to consider the possibility that anybody could be bringing something true and important.

This report was not about compromise. It was about understanding the sense of the whole group. Sometimes I could see that something needed to happen even though I didn’t agree with it because of how important it was to the other people. I discovered I could affirm the necessity of certain recommendations even though I would never have come up with them myself.

I learned to trust the rest of the group. If I truly believed that something was absolutely wrong, the rest of the group wouldn’t pressure me into it.

The process itself changed me. I believe in and affirm what came out of this work, even though it isn’t where I started.

Do you recognize this? I do. It’s really, really good corporate discernment.

If people in this country are going to trust our elections, their concerns will have to be addressed. All of them—which means we have to stop pushing in opposite directions. The report from Braver Angels is a good place to start. 

We also prevent election violence when we serve as poll workers and support election monitoring efforts. Again, it’s about making sure that elections are run fairly and are perceived as being run fairly.

Will you join me in talking more about these things? You can add yourself to a mailing list here.

The Eight Strategies

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. – 1 Corinthians 12:4-6

I wanted to start out right at the beginning by acknowledging a simple truth: not everybody can do everything you’re about to read. We’re not good at everything. And we don’t have infinite time.

So think of the strategies below like a potluck. We’re pretty good at potlucks, right? All of these things are good to do, but that doesn’t mean that anybody has to bring all of the pieces. I invite you to read with a wondering mind: which of these things might I be called to do?

The specific eight strategies detailed below come from decades of research through the United States Institute of Peace—and more specifically, from a book called Electing Peace: Violence Prevention and Impact at the Polls—but I wouldn’t pass them on to you wholesale if they didn’t also vibe with what I’ve heard from practitioners, including Friends who’ve done this work on the ground.

Quick definition reminder: “election violence” is a technical term, meaning physical violence, severe psychological violence, or destruction of property of monetary or symbolic value, either triggered by an election cycle or intended to influence an election cycle. It can occur as early as a year before the election and as late as several months afterward. It’s most likely to happen in countries that (1) have experienced election violence before, (2) have populations that doubt the legitimacy of the government, and (3) are in election cycles in which politicians are explicitly encouraging groups of people to blame one another for their problems.

And here are eight ways in which election violence can be prevented, plus two bonus ideas at the end:

1) Security-sector engagement. Police and military forces can discourage election violence and can stop it after it starts, but only under certain conditions. It’s important that individuals serving in these roles are well-trained. When they’re not, they might escalate violence rather than interrupt it. It also helps a lot if there’s trust built ahead of time between police forces and the citizens in the local area.

How can we act on this? Remember the two most essential pieces: training and trust. In local areas, we can initiate or participate in opportunities for citizens and police officers to meet one another. Some communities invite police officers to community events or schools; in other places, the police force initiates coffee-with-a-cop or drop-in breakfasts. Police can also be encouraged to join community forums (more about those below). We can also advocate, on a local or state level as appropriate, for police training that includes violence de-escalation strategies. Have you been part of such trainings, or do you have direct experience in advocating for them? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

2) Election management and administration. This category includes all the legal and technical tasks, such as determining legal eligibility of candidates, registering voters, running election day itself, counting ballots, and certifying elections. It is important that these tasks are done competently and with integrity. It’s also important that they are perceived as being done competently and with integrity, which is not always the same thing.

How can we act on this? We can take on some roles directly by volunteering as poll workers. We can also advocate for high-quality election management and administration. What’s tricky about that is the fundamental disagreement in the United States about what high-quality election management and administration means. I’m looking forward to a report from Braver Angels, due to be released sometime in December, about a series of red-blue community forums in which the groups developed and approved bipartisan election policies that addressed both security (which the reds felt was important) and access (which the blues felt was important). This feels like a potential way forward in our perception problem: if we can make changes in a way that reassures everyone, we might make some strides on our perception-of-government-legitimacy issues.

3) Preventative diplomacy. If election violence is imminent or already occurring, external forces—essentially, other nations—can pressure individual politicians or governments to take actions that will resolve the instigating factors.

How can we act on this? To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. This is the only one of the eight strategies that requires external intervention, and circumstances would have to be pretty extraordinary for other countries to start putting pressure on the U.S. government. I’m including it here only for the sake of transparency. It’s a strategy that often works…but probably not in our case.

4) Peace messaging. Campaigns encouraging peaceful engagement might include community-wide events, posters, social media ads, conversations with community leaders, and use of local media channels. Messages are most effective when developed locally by people within the community itself, and the earlier they get going, the better.

How can we act on this? Friends can work within their local communities with interfaith religious groups, youth organizations, local newspapers, political parties, schools, universities, athletes and coaches, community organizations, and more to develop messages or slogans about peaceful engagement with the political process. The idea is to encourage people to advocate for political policies without violence or the types of dehumanizing language that often encourage violence. How this is done will vary enormously based on the culture of the local area. The questions to consider are, “Who are the strongest messengers in this local community, most likely to influence the most people? What is the strongest, most persuasive message to send?”

5) Civic and voter education. This includes some obvious things, such as helping people know where and how to vote (or register to vote) and how to register a complaint if they feel their rights are being violated. But it also includes publicizing or introducing channels for positive, peaceful engagement.

How can we act on this? One reason people are violent is because they don’t believe there’s any other way to get their point across. We can alleviate this pressure by providing and publicizing as many alternative channels as possible: training in how to run a peaceful protest, resources for writing letters to (or visiting) political representatives, petitions, voter registration campaigns, and more. We can choose an audience within a local community to work with and publicize, invent, or support the invention of positive channels for political expression.

6) Election monitoring and mapping. Election monitoring and election mapping are two very different strategies that are combined in the literature because they follow a similar logic. Both are ways of paying attention to what’s happening in order to prevent events from escalating in a violent manner. Election monitoring is watching the elections themselves to make sure that everything is being done in accordance with the law. Election mapping means running exit polls (to compare against official tallies) and recording election violence events.

How can we act on this? Supporting election monitoring is easy enough. We can volunteer as election monitors and encourage others to do so as well. Election mapping is trickier. Our media already does quite a lot of exit polling, but not everyone takes that as evidence that the election results are legitimate, nor do we have overwhelming trust in our national media. However, creating a separate citizen polling and mapping system is an enormous project. If you have thoughts about this, I’d love to hear them.

7) Voter consultations. Voters who have access to their elected officials, not in the form of campaign rallies but in the form of interactive town halls or livestreams or radio shows, feel more able to hold their elected officials accountable non-violently.

How can we act on this? We can encourage our elected officials at all levels to hold interactive town halls—explaining, if it’s a helpful argument, that this is an election violence prevention technique. We can also publicize opportunities that already exist and encourage young adults and teens, especially, to attend.

8) Youth programming. Generally speaking, though not always, young people are more likely than middle-aged and older people to engage in election violence. This includes both young adults and teens. Providing local alternatives for young people makes them less vulnerable to being pulled into violence.

How can we act on this? In local communities, we can develop youth forums in which young people have the opportunity to work together non-violently to address their political concerns. They can also be encouraged to take leadership in the promotion of non-violence. Sometimes this will mean developing entirely new groups or projects. Other times, pre-existing groups for youth can serve as a starting place. Young people do not need to be the recipients of programming. They can receive support in developing it themselves.

9) Community forums. This first bonus technique doesn’t get mentioned with the eight strategies because it isn’t so much a “what” as a “how.” All of the strategies are more effective when developed and supported by diverse community groups. If you wanted to set up a local community forum, you might consider inviting a combination of formal community leaders, informal community leaders, and secular and religious community leaders. Research points to school board members, coaches and teachers, clergy, librarians, police, local politicians, and representatives from a cross-section of economic classes, young people, and women as good choices to explicitly include. I’ll be writing more on community forums later, but the basic purpose is to gather folks together who agree on the simple statement, “We don’t want violence.” Then, start brainstorming on how best to meet that goal in your own community.

10) Recognize and interrupt the kinds of language that contribute to an environment that might become violent. Here’s another bonus technique. In the United States, we have the Constitutional right to say almost anything. That doesn’t mean all forms of speech are a good idea. There is a difference between criticizing a position and attacking a person (or a whole group of people). When we ascribe motivations to others, use straw man arguments, or dehumanize people—or when we allow our friends and acquaintances to do these things without interruption—we contribute to a general environment that is less resilient to shocks and more likely to become violent. If you’d like some specific training on how to interrupt these patterns, I recommend the Braver Angels Depolarizing Within course, which is free and which you can complete in under an hour online.

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Okay—take a breath. It’d be very easy to feel overwhelmed at this point. I certainly feel overwhelmed typing all this. So I’d like to invite you back to the potluck. You don’t have to bring everything. We have lots and lots of allies. Many people in this country would agree with the statement, “We don’t want violence,” probably including almost everyone you know.

Is there one thing you’ve read in this entire post that feels like a doable starting point for you personally? Let me know in the comments.

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Expanding the Definition of “We”

When you live in Manhattan, long subway trips are part of your day. I used to ride all over the city, and if you hop an A train in Brooklyn and you’re headed home to Harlem, that can take an hour and a half.

So New Yorkers phase out. A book, a game on an iPad, headphones. Anything to pass the time. One night, I was tuned in to Carrie Newcomer, and I’d relaxed my eyes to the typical non-focus that we use so nobody thinks we’re staring. Only…there was something happening.

I noticed, first, the guy on my left, who was reading the Quran in original Arabic. He was Black, wearing a taqiyah cap, totally focused on his studies. When he turned the page, he flipped it backwards. My backwards. Arabic’s forwards.

Across from me was an Hasidic Jew. His head was tilted up toward the ceiling, and his payos swung gently on each side of his face as he jiggled one knee up and down with the vibrating train.

To my right, another man, I think an Old Order Mennonite, with a beard but no mustache, dark suspenders, and plain black trousers and practical shoes.

At that moment, the track changed on my iPhone and Carrie Newcomer started singing “Room at the Table.” I wept a little.

“There is room at the table for everyone…”

It’s a nice image. It’s also not always true. We sort ourselves into categories for many purposes, and often, that’s the right thing to do. We need groups for social contact, for teamwork, for a feeling of safety. Groups to advocate for a political position. Groups to arrange the Saturday night sock hop. Our social groups are essential when we experience accidents, impoverishment, and illnesses. They’re vitally important when we celebrate, too. 

But some things require a broader network, and one of those is election violence prevention. As a reminder, “election violence” means physical violence, severe psychological violence, and destruction of property of monetary or symbolic value, either triggered by or intended to influence an election cycle. It may be committed by a minority of people, at least at first, but the conditions that make it possible are society-wide.

If we experience election violence, it won’t come from nowhere. It’ll happen because of some specific event—a speech, a riot, an announcement—that serves as a catalyst. But as chemists will tell you, a catalyst doesn’t have an effect if there’s no reaction already prepared. That is, the catalyst can’t set things off when its surroundings are simply not reactive.

In the language of peacemaking, a resilient community or resilient society is one that can absorb shocks—also called catalysts, or triggers—without becoming violent. The most resilient groups are ones with a wide and diverse network of connections. The Methodists know the Buddhists; the baseball team knows the Girl Scouts; the townspeople know the police officers; the factory workers know the university professors; the Republicans know the Democrats. They might disagree with each other—might even dislike each other—but they know each other to be human beings, and they all agree that “we don’t want violence.”

This doesn’t work if we don’t expand the definition of “we.” If we start under the assumption that “we” don’t want violence, but some of “them” do, then we are setting up the conditions for election violence because we’re making space for rumors to flourish. We’re feeding distrust and suspicion and othering. Depending on our choice of language, we might even be dehumanizing. This environment is where election violence comes from.

An enormous majority of people in the United States, regardless of their political affiliation, would agree with the statement, “We don’t want violence.” But sometimes our actions and words create the environment for violence anyway.

Think about what Jesus said in Matthew 5:21-24. “You have heard that it was said to our people long ago, ‘You must not murder anyone. Anyone who murders another will be judged.’ But I tell you, if you are angry with your brother, you will be judged. And if you say bad things to your brother, you will be judged by the Jewish council. And if you call your brother a fool, then you will be in danger of the fire of hell. So when you offer your gift to God at the altar, and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar. Go and make peace with him. Then come and offer your gift.”

In a way, Jesus was talking about the conditions for violence. Most of us are not going to murder anyone over the 2024 election cycle, and we’re not going to scream violent threats at someone or destroy an election site. Jesus, though, calls us to reconciliation over anger. Reconciliation is not the same as agreement. It is defined as “the restoration of friendly relations.” More loosely, we might call it restoring the conditions in which we are a resilient community, resistant to catalysts, unlikely to become violent even following political shocks.

Jesus also differentiates between being angry with our brother (in which case we will be judged) and calling our brother a fool (in which case we will be in danger of the fire of hell). To me, this indicates a difference between two forms of disagreement. 

We might say to someone, “Your political position on this issue baffles and infuriates me.”

Or we might say to someone, “You’re either deliberately evil or else you’re an idiot.” 

Jesus seems to indicate that the second version is worse, and people who study peacebuilding and restoration processes would agree. When we degrade a person, we are ascribing motives to them that may or may not be accurate, and we are creating conditions in which they are likely to fight back. When we criticize a position, we are indicating the possibility of ongoing conversation with the person who holds it. 

We can’t prevent election violence by further widening the fissures between “us” and “them.” Both in election violence prevention, and in peacebuilding efforts more generally, we know that people build stronger networks (thus becoming more resilient communities) when they work together on a common goal. In this case, the common goal is, “We don’t want violence.” By starting there—and by agreeing to expand the definition of “we” to include anybody who agrees with that statement—we are creating conditions from which we can build peace.

This does not mean that we cannot continue to work in opposition on other issues. Two people can have any number of political disagreements and advocate strongly for directly opposing positions but still work together on election violence prevention. That’s because the practices that prevent election violence are legitimately non-partisan—and I’ll be writing about what, specifically, those practices are in my next blog. We can work together on nonviolence and work in opposition on other issues as long as we all understand the difference.

Friends have a long history of acknowledging the innate value of all people and the ability of each participant to bring something of value to the group. We practice this every time we enter discernment together. We have a head start specifically because we have practiced it so often—and so often failed—because trial and error is how we learn. What we must do now is commit to acting as though the truth is true. We must act as if we truly believe that everyone has something to contribute.

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Choosing Hope: Election Violence Prevention

Years ago in western Kenya, I learned over breakfast that two groups of young men had fought over cattle the night before. Three of the men—boys, really, in my mind—had been shot and died. This was part of a long pattern of violence between historically opposing tribes.

My friend Getry, who is Kenyan but not from that area, was also visiting. She said to me, “You are coming to Baragoi.” This was the village closest to the shooting. I asked if I’d be safe. She said I would, because I had no cattle.

In Baragoi, we met with three local Friends in a small café over cups of highly sugared chai tea. The conversation, half in English and half in Kiswahili, centered on a single question: how will we bring the young men together to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

It was a different approach from my U.S.-centric perspective. In my social circles, we might have prayed. We might have discussed root causes of violence and might have placed our hope in the next generation. We would not have acted so directly. We would not have brought together the opposing parties. We would not have assumed peace was so immediately possible.

This experience has stayed in my mind. I look now at my own country in 2023, and I remember the faith that Getry demonstrated for me. I think about Kenya and how the election violence in 2007 was, in many ways, a catalyst for Quaker peace work and training there. And I look around me and listen to the news and feel a pull toward election violence prevention here, in the United States in 2024, because I believe we are in danger of experiencing it.

What do you mean by election violence?

Election violence, I am learning, is a specific term with a specific definition. It includes (1) physical violence, (2) severe psychological violence, (3) destruction of property of monetary value, and (4) destruction of property of symbolic value. It’s caused by the politics of the election cycle, or it’s intended to influence the results of an election. It can happen as early as a year before the election or as late as several months after the election.

Property damage is included in the definition not because it is the same as physical violence but because it so swiftly leads to physical violence in many cases. “Severe psychological violence,” in this definition, refers to something beyond name calling or even deeply unpleasant experiences. It is more akin to direct and brutal threats.

Why do you think election violence is likely?

The United States Institute of Peace, which studies election violence, identifies three primary risk factors.

Election violence is more likely if the country has experienced election violence in the recent past. This is true in the United States, although the election violence we’ve experienced here has, so far, been less severe than some other countries’ experiences.

Election violence is more likely if politicians are encouraging one group of people to blame another group of people for their problems. Unfortunately, this is also true in the United States. It happens in multiple ways. Some politicians say Democrats are responsible for Republicans’ problems. Others say Republicans are responsible for Democrats’ problems. Politicians encourage the poor to blame the wealthy and the middle class for their problems…or the middle class to blame the poor and the wealthy for their problems. They encourage racial groups to blame other racial groups. Some politicians encourage Christians to blame non-Christians, and others encourage the secular to blame the religious. And so forth.

Election violence is more likely in “transitional democracies.” The United States is not a transitional democracy, which is defined as a country moving from authoritarianism to a democratic system. However, the reason transitional democracies often experience election violence is because the people lack faith in the legitimacy of the new democracy. 

More than 60% of Republicans do not believe that President Biden was legitimately elected. Around 70% of Democrats believe the Supreme Court is partisan rather than impartial. (This is not quite the same thing as believing the Supreme Court is illegitimate, but I could not find data on that specific question.) On the whole, we seem to have significant doubts about our government’s legitimacy and its ability to govern fairly and in a way that meets our needs. Regardless of whether these doubts are warranted, the fact that so many people share them puts us in danger of election violence.

Aside from these risk factors, I feel concerned about specific triggers and also our general polarized dynamic. A “trigger” is a specific event that might spark violence in an already-unstable society. Any of the following could be triggers: President Biden is declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. President Trump is declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. President Trump wins the Republican presidential primary. President Trump loses the Republican presidential primary. Politicians use escalating conflict in the Middle East as political leverage. President Biden is impeached. President Trump experiences a criminal trial and is convicted. President Trump experiences a criminal trial and is acquitted.

There are other potential triggers, but these are the ones I personally believe to be most dangerous. I could easily be wrong.

Unsubstantiated rumors, dehumanizing speech about the “other,” and a general lack of faith in the political process all create an environment ripe for election violence. People are violent when they don’t see another way forward. Each trigger has the potential to panic us and spark violence. We can only withstand triggers if we have strong, cross-partisan preparation to resist violence. 

Do you really believe it’s possible to prevent election violence?

I do, and the more time I spend learning and praying about it, the more I believe it’s possible. But anyone who is going to do this work will have to start by doing four things:

We must expand the definition of “we.” It’s human nature, in scary times, to pull our loved ones close to us, put up real or metaphorical walls, and shift into a defensive mode. There’s nothing wrong with this as an instinct. It is extremely helpful, for example, if we are being attacked by bears. But we are not being attacked by bears. There are no election violence monsters roaming the country. We are all just people.

Almost no one actually wants violence. There are a few people who do, but they are rare and severely outnumbered. “We don’t want violence” is a unifying statement. We may not agree on the most likely sources of violence, but if we agree we don’t want it, that’s a place to start.

If we define “we” as “people like me” and “them” as “people likely to become violent,” then we can only have a conversation about responding to violence. If we’re willing to work together, though, we can have a conversation about preventing violence. I am learning that election violence prevention best practices always begin by widening the circle and generating solutions together.

We must learn what we don’t know. We don’t have to be experts in election violence prevention, and we don’t have to figure it out through trial and error. The information we need is readily available because people—including Friends—have been doing this work internationally for years. I’ve been speaking with experts and combing through the research. We can learn this stuff, and one of my own next steps is to compile a short list of the best resources that I can share.

We must decline to be hopeless. One of my favorite Biblical passages is Jeremiah 1:4-8. This is the call of the prophet Jeremiah. Like many Biblical prophets, Jeremiah’s first response to God’s call is “I can’t.” Specifically, Jeremiah says, “Alas, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak. I am too young.”

God’s answer is straight to the point. “Do not say ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.”

I think of this as the Madlib verse. It applies to a lot more than being too young. “Do not say ‘I am too _______.’” What other protests might we have? I am too old, too shy, too scared, too busy…

The passage can be read like a kick in the pants, but I interpret it as comforting. God knows who we are before we are called. Our job is to discern God’s leading and then do it. Not everyone who works on the problem of election violence will do the same tasks, but if we each pay attention to the Holy Spirit, we will not be charged with more than we can do.

Hopelessness means I’m off the hook. If the situation is hopeless, I don’t have to do anything. I choose to believe it is not hopeless, and that calls me to action.

We must engage in election violence prevention specifically, without blurring the lines between this and other work.Why does this matter? Because “we don’t want violence” is a unifying statement. The moment we bring other goals into this conversation, we’re pushing out anyone who can’t get on board with those other goals, and that means we can’t do this work effectively. 

We can still work on the other goals. We almost certainly should, but probably not with the exact same group of people. That means we must have the ability to uncouple various goals in our minds. We must be able to say to ourselves and others, “The goal of this specific space and this specific conversation is election violence prevention. Everyone in the room is on board with that goal, and that’s what we’re strategizing about right now.” Only that clarity will make this work as effective as possible.

Why are Friends especially well-suited to do election violence prevention?

Our sisters and brothers have been doing this work internationally, and we can learn from them. In addition, many election violence prevention best practices directly correspond with Quaker faith and practice, which means we have a head start.

We prevent election violence when we tell the full truth. Friends’ commitment to integrity reminds us that it is unhelpful and unfair to oversimplify. It also helps us understand why it’s so important to disagree with someone else’s actualposition rather than what we assume their position to be. Every time we acknowledge complexity and refuse to believe or pass along rumors, we are making election violence less likely.

We prevent election violence when we act on strategies drawn from the wisdom of the whole group. At the center of election violence prevention is the local community forum, in which all people in a certain area come together to talk about preventing violence locally. The most effective strategies are those that a diverse group of neighbors generate together. Friends already know that all people have access to the Inner Christ, so we have practice in listening deeply to others.

We prevent election violence when we pose the question, “How will we live and work together?” Friends do this imperfectly, but we do it again and again each time we commit to corporate discernment. Election violence work involves extending the umbrella to include everyone, then committing to the conversation about that same question in a wider way.

We prevent election violence when we create alternative, productive ways for people to express their opinions and feelings. One historical name for Friends was the “Publishers of Truth.” Collectively, we understand how to speak truth to power, and we know how to do it nonviolently. These are skills that we can teach.

What are you planning to do about election violence, exactly?

We don’t need another institution or initiative. Plenty of those exist already. My intention is to gather people, especially but not only Quakers, who share this concern about election violence prevention in the United States in 2024 and 2025. I hope to facilitate conversations, summarize best practices research, provide trainings with experts, and write and speak and visit with Friends.

I’ll do my best to contextualize all this in our general calling to “live in the virtue of that Life and Power that [takes] away the occasion of all wars.” I’ll also speak from the assumption that God’s direction is knowable to us. As Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

My intention is to welcome anyone into the conversation who agrees with the statement “we don’t want violence” and who is interested in a faith-based, Quaker-influenced framing of the work. 

How can I find out more?

If you’d like to learn more from someone other than me, my top recommendation is the Preventing Election Violence free online course from the United States Institute of Peace Gandhi-King Global Academy.

If you’d like to receive occasional emails from me on this topic, including invitations to Zoom conversations and trainings and recommended resources, you can sign up for those here.

If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive a notification each time I post something new, you can do that by clicking the “subscribe” button here: 

Quaker Institutions and the Covenant Community

In February 2023, I started work on a blog series about Quaker institutions. It was never meant to be a book. It still isn’t a book, but it is book-length.

When you read it as a series of cross-linked blog posts, you can start anywhere and click on specific parts of the text to read more about a particular idea. You can still read it that way on my website, and it won’t be disappearing anytime soon.

But some people like to read sequentially, preferring a print-out they can hold. This PDF is for that group of Friends. The essays are in a more-or-less logical order, but you don’t necessarily have to start at the beginning and read to the end. You could jump around a bit.

No matter how you read these words, I hope they’ll be useful to Friends who are asking questions about our Quaker communities, everything from local meetings to yearly meetings to various Quaker institutions. We’ve received a great deal from the generations who came before us. In these pages, you’ll find my reflections on what we’ve inherited from our spiritual ancestors, including what I think is helpful and what I suspect isn’t. You’ll also find suggestions for experiments we might try. I’m a huge fan of experiments. Trying and failing is how we learn.

Emily

P.S. This is not the book I’ve been writing during my August/September sojourn in Canada. Still working on that – and if all goes as planned, it will be published in a more traditional way, with paper and ink and a cover and everything.

The Manifestation of Quakerism (37/37)

I believe we are a people with a calling, the same calling we’ve always had: to be well-grounded in Quaker theology, confident in our identity but humble in our practice, spiritually transformational, and actively building the Kingdom of God on Earth (and not just inside our meetinghouses). But to support this in 2023, our institutions will need to change.

Plant, combine, simplify, and lay down institutions to meet the changing needs of the covenant community.

Why do Quaker institutions exist at all? To support the covenant community, to make it easier for Friends to discern the will of God and then act on it. Without the institution, we have to figure out all of the logistics every time. We can’t do that long-term. We need communications mechanisms, common practices, and financial channels. We need record-keeping, expertise, and people with the legal authority to sign contracts. And so we need institutions.

The best thing about institutions is that they perpetuate patterns. And the worst thing about institutions is that they perpetuate patterns. The institution is so powerful that if we aren’t conscious of its power we can easily let its systems take over. Without pushback, the institution’s momentum will do this.

What the institution cannot do unaided is adapt. The covenant community changes all the time. It changes because human beings change. It changes, more importantly, because the world changes and because what God calls us to do shifts accordingly. This is when we must decide: do we adjust our institutions to support the new community, or do we adjust God’s call to fit within the institutions? If we do not decide, the institution takes precedence by default.

All of our Quaker institutions exist for a reason. Every local meeting, regional meeting, yearly meeting, umbrella organization, witness organization, school, university, retirement community, and mission…they all began because the covenant community had a need for them. But today, in many cases, the historical reason no longer exists—or if it does still exist, then the original institution may not still serve the purpose it originally did. This is why so many of our meetings and organizations are struggling. We are pouring our energy, our passion, and our money into keeping them open because we believe the institution is the manifestation of Quakerism. It is not. The covenant community is.

So what do we do with these struggling institutions? We listen. When a human being is dying, the last sense to disappear is the sense of hearing. This is also true for Quaker institutions. Even when a meeting nears the end of its life cycle, it is always possible to hear God’s guidance, if we are prepared to listen faithfully.

I believe that many of our meetings and organizations need to be laid down. The society around us tells us that more is better and that endings like these represent a failure, but I do not believe that to be true. When the covenant community is devoting its energy to supporting the institution, instead of vice-versa, we’ve entered a dynamic that is backwards and unhealthy. To lay down an institution does not mean it has not mattered. It means that it has mattered enormously. That institution has supported us until we have reached another place—and now, God has a calling that is new. 

Other meetings and organizations are not ready to be laid down, but they may be operating in ways that are no longer appropriate. They may be overly complex, or too big, or too small. Perhaps we still need the meeting, but not the building. Perhaps we still need the local meeting and yearly meeting, but not the region. Perhaps it’s time for two or more yearly meetings to combine. We’re unlikely to manage such changes if we take them on as a purely practical matter, but if we focus on the covenant community, the institutions will more naturally follow. If we’re coming from a place of “we must change this because we can’t keep the institution going,” then we’re coming from a place of scarcity and we’re also giving the institution primary importance. But if we’re coming from a place of “this change is how we can live into God’s call for our covenant community,” then we’re coming from a place of abundant expectation and giving the community primary importance.

I really believe that God is reshaping the Religious Society of Friends. So many new forms are rising, and so many new Friends are experiencing calls. It is happening so fast that we are having trouble responding to it. This is natural. Humans are notoriously poor at perceiving change, and again, the act of adapting to change means pushing against the momentum of our institutions. But we can do it, if we’re willing to release some spiritual energy—that is, to redirect some of what’s currently being used to feed our old institutions. Simplifying, combining, and laying down is the motion that will make it possible to plant whatever new institutions are needed. This is our path toward resurrection.

What is new will not be the same as what was old. I hope we’ll continue to draw from the wisdom of our ancestors, and there are some truths we’ve found that I don’t believe will change. But no one knows—except perhaps God—what kind of institutions Friends will require to meet our call in the coming years. What I do know is that we must take a serious look at our institutions…and cultivate a willingness to change them or even end them, for the sake of supporting what is more important. When I consider this possibility, what I feel in my heart is a surge of hope.

The Movement (38/39)

I believe we are a people with a calling, the same calling we’ve always had: to be well-grounded in Quaker theology, confident in our identity but humble in our practice, spiritually transformational, and actively building the Kingdom of God on Earth (and not just inside our meetinghouses). But to support this in 2023, our institutions will need to change.

Lean into the movement, for which the institution is the launching pad.

Most Friends I know are deeply concerned about the condition of the world. Some are intensely engaged in peace work, climate justice, human rights advocacy, and much more. We take on these tasks as individual Friends in our paid professions, in our volunteer work, and in our community organizing. We donate to relevant non-profit groups, and we use our social media platforms to encourage other people to engage.

But something seems different about this work when it comes to our Quaker institutions. This whole category—which we sometimes name as “witness”—feels restrained. There are some profound examples of local meetings or yearly meetings taking effective action in these areas, but the examples are rare. More often, our local and yearly meetings write and approve minutes. We send letters to representatives. We hold discussion groups about particular concerns. All of these are positive steps, but they aren’t anything like the stories we tell ourselves about our histories, the days when we organized mass movements to intervene in the wider society. 

Some Friends’ groups do take significant witness-related action. But they generally function outside our traditional local-regional-yearly-umbrella discernment relationship structures. I’m talking about groups such as American Friends Service Committee, Friends Peace Teams, Right Sharing of World Resources, and many more. Partly because of this outside-ness, there is sometimes a sense of tension between these institutions and Friends generally. There tends to be a slight suspicion: how Quaker are these organizations, really? Are they truly Friends’ organizations if they aren’t directly subject to the discernment of local-regional-yearly-umbrella meetings?

To get a better grip on all this, I’ve been trying to understand why the Quaker world developed this way, without making judgments about what is good or bad. Why are individual Friends often engaged in witness work that is not perceived as integrated in their Quaker meetings, even though many Friends so engaged would identify their work as a leading of Spirit? Why are the Quaker groups that do the most consistent and impactful witness-type work not directly under the care of Quaker meetings?

I think what’s happened is a series of institutional dominos, which have tumbled over in succession in a period of many decades. The state of witness in the Quaker world today might have developed as an adaptation in response to systemic problems in our institutions. Some of this is conjecture on my part, but I think understanding the story might help us know better what to do next, so I’m going to tell it as best I can.

As I’ve said before, early Friends organized themselves into monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings primarily because it was a system that worked. They knew that they needed corporate discernment, sometimes with larger-than-local groups, but the only way to do that pre-internet was in person, and there was only so far that Friends could reasonably ride a horse. 

So small, medium, and large geographic groups were designated and connected in a web-like fashion. Then, traveling ministers went from one to the next as a sort of circulatory system. In these early days, no one would have imagined separating the concept of “ministry” from the concept of “witness.” All came from the same Source. All was meant to build the Kingdom of God on Earth. There was no notable difference between Friends who traveled in ministry among Quakers and Friends who traveled in ministry among other groups of people. Today, we might roughly categorize these earlier traveling ministers into groups: evangelists, witnesses/activists, and preachers. But many Friends functioned as all three, and they themselves did not perceive a difference.

In time, and for various reasons, we shifted from a model of recording ministers (and elders and overseers) to a committee structure in which Friends were nominated to serve in particular positions. This committee structure, among other things, changed the way in which we give and receive trust to do work on behalf of Friends. Friends who are recorded are given considerable freedom to minister as led. There is accountability, but this accountability comes after the fact, when Friends might intervene because a minister has outrun their Guide. 

But Friends serving on committees are only allowed to do things that their committee descriptions say they may. If they are feeling led to do more, they must bring that leading back to the full group and ask for the discernment of the whole before moving forward. This is often difficult to attain. The discernment procedures may take a long time, and Friends may say no because the proposal is “not how we do things.” Or we may wordsmith the idea endlessly or decline because we fear not having sufficient resources. Sometimes we say no because we believe we must wait for a perfect proposal. 

These dynamics tend to prevent Friends led to witness from being able to take big steps within the context of our committee systems, which is the only way—in most cases—that work among Friends can be “officially” part of our meetings. Therefore, many Friends engage in witness work through other channels, including community organizations and employment. They themselves know they’re acting under spiritual concern, but those around them may not. This also means, in most cases, that such Friends less likely to be financially and spiritually supported by their Quaker communities. Not because the work isn’t deserving of support but because there are few official channels available in our institutions for affirming such work.

Then, on the wider-than-individuals scale, most of our large Quaker witness organizations have been founded externally to our local-regional-yearly-umbrella institutions. Why? Because—as far as I can see—between the limitations of our committee structures and the divisions between many yearly meetings, there hasn’t been much choice. Friends have not been capable of affirming or caring for such institutions within our own structures, so Friends led to start such organizations do so outside those structures.

But then, because the witness organizations are not contained within our formal structures, there are no automatic pathways for funding, spiritual relationship, and and corporate discernment. When Friends ask why a yearly meeting might automatically contribute to, and send representatives to, an umbrella organization (such as Friends World Committee for Consultation or Friends United Meeting) but not a witness organization, this is why. It is not because Friends believe the work of umbrella organizations to be more important than the work of witness organizations. It is because the relationship is fundamentally different. Umbrella organizations are part of our formal institutional relationships centered in corporate discernment, and witness organizations are not.

In other words, as far as I can tell, we first made it nearly impossible to do witness work within our systemic structures, then declined to support it because it wasn’t happening within our systemic structures. 

What a mess.

Is this the way we believe things should be? If not, we’re going to have to take some specific steps to change things, and that’s going to be tricky because they’re the kind of steps that our institutions are specifically designed to discourage.

First, we’ll need to shift our perspectives on leadings and spiritual gifts. As long as formal committees and working groups, which are usually internally focused, are the primary form of service (or ministry) that we recognize, we’ll be holding back Friends whose calls to ministry are externally focused. The work of caring for one another is divine, as is the work of administration within our institutions, but it’s not the only work to which Friends are called and mustn’t be treated as such.

Second, we’ll need to experiment with explicit affirmation for outward facing ministries—for the activists, the witnesses, the advocates, the peacemakers. That might be recording, or travel minutes, or support committees, or some new form altogether. But we must find a reliable pathway by which such Friends can access spiritual and practical support.

And third, we’ll need to take a look at our covenant community and ask ourselves: does it include the externally structured witness organizations? As I’ve said before, there is nothing that can be done through formal paperwork or legal institutional ties that can either establish or sever covenant relationship. Our covenant relationships happen when we give ourselves to God and God, in turn, gives us to a group of people. Does that group of people include those working in the witness organizations? 

If it does, then we need to discern how that covenant relationship calls us into action. That might include engaging in intervisitation with witness organizations, participating in their ministries, signing up for their newsletters, providing financial support, taking the discernment of the witness organizations into prayer as topics for our local and yearly meetings to consider, rejoicing in the success stories of the work of witness organizations, and trusting in Friends’ ability to discern the will of God within those organizations even though their discernment is not formally connected to Friends’ broader corporate discernment systems. In other words, we can assume that we are on the same team and working together despite the absence of formal institutional channels connecting us.

The spiritual practice of worship is not self-contained. It is the beginning, we hope, of spiritual transformation, which develops corporately into testimonies, which are not beliefs but ways by which we live our lives. Witness is an inevitable fruit of faithful listening, and the ways in which we will be called to witness are not predictable or easily contained. The living of testimonies in this world is the Quaker movement of which some Friends speak, and it’s distinct from our institutions—but if we’re deliberate in our practices, those institutions can propel the movement just as effectively as they can hold it back. 

Lean into the movement, for which the institution is the launching pad. In practice, as simply as possible, I think it looks like this:

• Talk about witness as an inevitable fruit of Quaker practice.
• When Friends are called to witness, treat this call as ministry, which means spiritual support and practical assistance.
• Despite the historical separateness (which we can’t go back and change now anyway), treat Friends’ witness organizations as part of our wider covenant relationships.

In other words, lean into the movement that is already happening. If we step up to support those Friends who are already called and responding to that call, I suspect the movement itself will increase.

Making Mistakes (35/37)

I believe we are a people with a calling, the same calling we’ve always had: to be well-grounded in Quaker theology, confident in our identity but humble in our practice, spiritually transformational, and actively building the Kingdom of God on Earth (and not just inside our meetinghouses). But to support this in 2023, our institutions will need to change.

Reject perfectionism and make mistakes.

In some ways, this sounds like such a small thing. I think it’s essential, though, if we are ever going to change.

Suppose we’re designing a new system for approving budgets. That’s not too far-off a thought experiment; many of us are doing this very thing right now. We know that God calls us to listen for a leading. So we do. We enter a process of corporate discernment, in which we expect to hear Spirit’s prompting. A committee brings an initial proposal. One Friend speaks approvingly but has a couple reservations. Another speaks and suggests a minor change. A third likes what the first Friend said but not the second. An hour later—sometimes a day later, or even a week later—we still haven’t found a sense of the meeting. Or perhaps we can approve part one (but not part two), plus most of part three (but not sub-section D), only the proposal falls apart without sub-section D, and three Friends have process questions because who gave the committee permission to even develop this proposal?

I used to really struggle with this. I’d get so annoyed with all the objections. Except, of course, if I was one of the Friends who had objections, in which I was sure that my thing was important. And I’d feel like getting it right was absolutely vital. We’re literally listening for the will of God. What if we screw it up by not trying hard enough?

It was not until a few years ago that I realized God doesn’t usually send us annotated outlines. God’s guidance almost never comes in three parts and multiple, well-organized sub-sections, even if our budgetary processes do require such things. God’s immediate contribution is often as simple as, “Yo, the way you’re doing budgets is unjust and you should check that out.” 

If we were supposed to follow a precise detailed plan, perhaps God would engrave directions in stone. Or maybe God would just download a spreadsheet and get it over with. I have yet to see God doing either of these things.

We worry a lot about sub-section D. I wonder what happens if we decline to worry. I wonder what happens if we try sub-section D as an experiment. Maybe we put the policy in place for a year. Then we reevaluate. It might work great. It also might be barely adequate, but we might discover that barely adequate is sufficient. Or it might be disastrous—in which case we’ve learned stuff. 

I was once in a meeting trying to explain why I find grants so hard to apply for. It’s because my work is so often experimental. “In the course of a year,” I said, “I think about thirty-six possible projects. I’ll try eighteen, and six will flop totally. Of the remaining twelve, eight will be fine, and four will be amazing. But I don’t know which four!” Change is about failing, and you have to fail fast. If you don’t, you don’t have time to fail enough. Because the four major successes have the actual impact, but the other thirty-two ideas are the ones that you learn from. That’s how you find more possibilities for next year.

This way of existing did not come naturally to me. My perfectionist streak is a mile wide. But I’ve learned over time that not aiming to be perfect almost always turns out to have better results.

The Kingdom of God on Earth requires permission to fail. If it didn’t, that would mean that no one ever did anything they weren’t perfectly ready to do. No attempt at justice unless we can do it perfectly. No attempt at peace-making unless we can do it perfectly. No attempt to be generous unless we can do it perfectly. What kind of Kingdom of God is that? 

Perfectionism isn’t a virtue, it’s a temptation. It actively prevents us from trying big things. A commitment to grow is a commitment to learn. That requires a commitment to making mistakes, with all the human messiness that is likely to result.

Reject perfectionism and make mistakes. In Quaker community, I suspect that looks like:

• Asking for the essence of God’s call (the why) rather than expecting explicit instructions (a detailed how).
• Trying some stuff to figure out what works.
• Forgiving ourselves and one another when we (inevitably) mess things up.

This is hard. It’s hard because it requires mutual trust. It’s also hard because we’ve grown so accustomed to being safe, since our corporate discernment process lets us say “no” until we are totally sure about “yes.” But unless we believe God sends detailed outlines, then what we’re doing in that kind of perfectionism discernment is giving ourselves excuses not to be faithful. And I don’t believe God sends detailed outlines. Because God wants us to grow and learn, and we don’t do that by following directions. We do that by having experiences. Sometimes experiences that don’t go well.

Big Things (34/37)

I believe we are a people with a calling, the same calling we’ve always had: to be well-grounded in Quaker theology, confident in our identity but humble in our practice, spiritually transformational, and actively building the Kingdom of God on Earth (and not just inside our meetinghouses). But to support this in 2023, our institutions will need to change.

Reclaim the expectation that God will do big things.

If you haven’t spent four successive business meetings discussing paint colors, you’re either a new Quaker or you’ve been very lucky. Modern Friends tend to go round and round about very small things. Our tendency to create committees and then not trust them means that we spend a lot of time second-guessing. Are we certain that God wants the benches painted sky blue? Or is it possible that God actually prefers azure?

I’m not prepared to assert that things used to be better, exactly. I’m pretty sure Friends have been through multiple historical periods of debating minor details, whether obscure points of theology or what precisely defines an overly ostentatious hat. But we’ve also, sometimes, managed to take part in—even leadership of—fairly significant historical movements, and some Friends still do. Why aren’t we all doing that?

One stumbling block has a lot to do with paint colors. I’m frankly offended by the very idea that the creator of the universe would fret about the color of our benches while families are starving and children are killed as bystanders in war. Which is not to say that we can, or even should, devote our entire lives to the world’s most tragic crises. We humans are not designed for that, and I believe God delights when we are happy. God does care about our individual lives from day to day, even in the face of tragedies elsewhere. God’s probably even on board with our having pretty benches. I just don’t think God calls us to take our time in corporate discernment—which is meant to be about listening to the Holy Spirit’s leadings for our lives—and give it over exclusively to our own (often fairly minor) internal concerns.

God can do great big things through Friends. I think about kindertransport, for example, or women’s suffrage in the United States—not that we managed these alone, but we played a significant part, even disproportionate for our numbers. The world is still in need of such things, and where are we? Friends make a distinction between a concern and a leading, between a problem we recognize prophetically and what, if anything, we might be called to do to address it. I’m not suggesting that we try to do everything or even that we attempt anything we aren’t legitimately called to do. 

What we can do is change our expectations.

If we, as communities, really expect that God will call us into big things, then we will approach our discernment much differently. We’ll be less inclined to fuss about comparatively minor issues. We’ll delegate routine work to individuals or small groups and then trust them to do it, and we’ll spend more time paying attention to what’s happening outside our meetinghouse walls. There’ll be more intervisitation and travel in ministry, more ecumenical and interfaith cooperation, and more focus on clearness committees and teaching about leadings.

We often joke about the slowness of Quaker process, but if we’re honest, it isn’t funny. Proceeding slowly is perfectly appropriate if we’re slow because we’re responding to God’s time, but not if we’re allowing our own preferences, opinions, and egos to inflate the importance of relatively small questions. How often, in a meeting for business about paint colors, do we stop and breathe and ask ourselves whether God is actually prompting us to speak about which shade of blue is best? Perhaps I’m an exception, but that has not been my experience of God. Sometimes it’s okay to just make a quick decision. Doing that is not leaving people out or doing away with Quaker process. It is making space for ourselves to find sense of the meeting about things we feel pretty sure God cares deeply about. 

I’ve heard it said that Friends make all decisions together, even simple ones, as a way of showing care for the community. This may be our intent, but I don’t think the practice suits that purpose very well. This idea ignores the people who leave our community because they feel we’re wasting time. It also directly prevents us from having time and energy to step into bigger things, which inhibits spiritual growth for everyone.

Reclaim the expectation that God will do big things. Our expectations directly influence our behavior, which is why they matter so much. To broaden our expectations, we can:

• Tell the stories of times when God has called our community to do something big, especially if there are living Friends in the meeting who remember these things. A good friend of mine once told me, “We don’t usually experience a call to something we’ve never heard of and can’t imagine.” And this is true. We need examples.
• Talk together about what you wish you had more time and energy for as a meeting. Remembering that a concern is not the same as a leading (and that no group of Friends will be called to fix everything), find ways to make more space for deep listening on big questions.
• Experiment with ways of delegating routine decisions to individuals or small groups. Expect this to feel hard. It will require more trust and less control than we’re accustomed to. Check in with each other to see how it feels.

My yearly meeting’s Faith and Practice has a number of different terms for unprogrammed worship. My favorite is “expectant worship.” Whether programmed or unprogrammed, worship is different when we enter it prepared for God to do something big. By changing what we look for, I believe we can change what we find. 

Practical Care and Eldership (33/37)

I believe we are a people with a calling, the same calling we’ve always had: to be well-grounded in Quaker theology, confident in our identity but humble in our practice, spiritually transformational, and actively building the Kingdom of God on Earth (and not just inside our meetinghouses). But to support this in 2023, our institutions will need to change.

Strengthen the functions of practical care and eldership as necessary foundations for healing and transformation.

I know from experience that God can heal and transform. When we are hurting, God can bring us through it, and long practice of spiritual disciplines often leads to spiritual transformation as well. I’ve heard it said that coming to a Quaker community can bring us through phases—first safety, then healing, then transformation. And I know this to be true. It roughly describes my own experience.

Some Friends have found it sufficient to show up for worship every Sunday and wait in the presence of the Light, and they have experienced spiritual transformation. But I strongly suspect such Friends are rare. Most of us need one-on-one attention, some form of spiritual accompaniment by human beings over a long period of time.

People who do spiritual accompaniment work might be called elders. That’s what we called them historically. In some places, Quakers today are reclaiming the word “elder” and its original meaning. In other places, Friends use the word to mean something different or don’t include it in their vocabulary at all. In an ideal world, the historical-type elder takes care of the spiritual condition of the group and the individuals within it. Eldering done well is a Spirit-led, two-way conversation with deep listening in which an elder brings a person closer to the fulness of their spiritual potential. It happens in the context of loving relationship and can look like encouragement, comfort, offering questions for reflection, and (when appropriate) holding someone accountable in a loving and respectful manner.

I’ve had extraordinary experiences of being eldered by people who cared about my spiritual growth. These elders had the right gifts to ask good questions and reflect my own statements back to me. They helped me process and make meaning of experiences I’d had, both in worship and in relationships with people. They also supported me in taking baby steps into mysticism, which is not necessarily a function of elders but was important in my case because the ethereal did not come naturally to me.

Strong elders can be an enormous part of spiritual formation and preparation for (and support during) spiritual transformation. But strong, skilled, well-practiced elders are sometimes hard to find. That’s because most branches of Friends have long-since stopped recording elders. As a reminder, the act of recording is the act of writing something down that God has already made true. So in theory, not recording shouldn’t stop us from having elders—but it does. I don’t believe for a minute that God has stopped making elders. But we, as a Society, have stopped looking for them. Because we don’t record them or name them, we don’t make a regular practice of noticing them. And elders, like the rest of us, do not spring forth with gifts fully developed. They need nurture and practice and guidance from more experienced elders. 

How do we recognize an immature elder, one whose gifts might need developing? They’re often observing the dynamics of the group. Some are too quick to articulate these and might come across as bossy, while others are slow to speak, never sharing what they’re seeing. They might be drawn to worship, showing up early or staying late. They might be the people that others tend to go to for advice. They might be prayer warriors or unusually insightful in conversation. They might be much more concerned with the wellbeing of everyone present than they are about whether the project at hand gets done. They’re likely to do a lot of spiritual care for the community whether we affirm them or not—but like all of us, they’ll likely fulfill their potential more quickly if noticed and nurtured.

I’m grateful that many Friends have started paying attention to the role of elders again. But there’s another piece here that is often overlooked, and that’s the role of the overseers.

I won’t use the word “overseers” after this paragraph because of its association with slavery. (Friends’ use of the word had a different definition and became part of the lexicon separately, but that other definition is still sharply present in many Friends’ minds, so we intentionally don’t use the word today.) However, our language has no direct synonym. Like the word “minister” and the word “elder,” the word “overseer” was used to designate the essence of a person (who God had created them to be) rather than a role they were taking on temporarily (a human construct). 

We need a new word for this. I tried to come up with something based on Latin roots, but it sounded silly: videvener, meaning someone who notices and comes. The role I’m talking about is a person who looks after the practical needs of Friends. This person makes sure that everyone in the community has food and clean water and schooling for their children. This person visits those who are imprisoned or sick or, at the very least, coordinates members of the meeting to do so. 

Friends have fallen out of the habit of doing this for one another. Those of us in North America and Europe live in societies where Quakers are no longer oppressed, which means we have the same access to government social services that others do, and with the exception of dropping off casseroles after surgery, we often don’t pay much attention to material needs. I suspect this is preventing the spiritual growth of our community in ways that are difficult for us to see. Despite the stories the world tells about long-suffering faithful people, it’s actually quite difficult to focus on spiritual transformation when you don’t know where your kids’ dinner is coming from. This may be part of why so many meetings are composed of middle- and upper-class people…because we’re ignoring the condition of anyone who’s not. 

When we do provide financial support for community members who are struggling, we do it confidentially. This is a tricky point because asking for financial help often does feel embarrassing—but keeping things confidential also means the need isn’t known, and we as a community never develop the habit of supporting each other’s material needs. What if sharing our excess income were just normal? I know of places in East Africa where Friends often can’t meet the material needs of all their members, even when starvation is eminent. But if money does appear for emergency food, they know exactly which families need it most because they’ve made a habit of being familiar with one another’s condition. What can the rest of us learn from them?

It’s worth noting, I think, that this type of person, simply because of the kinds of things they’d be paying attention to and the relationships they’d have, would also be well-placed to notice problems with addiction or abuse dynamics. Right now, who’s well-positioned for that? What might be different if we had someone?

How would we recognize a person called to this type of caregiving, if we were paying attention and looking for them? I suspect such people are perceptive and organized, capable of speaking calmly and providing help in a way that feels relatively easy to accept. I think they’re probably good with vulnerability and have a sense of the inherent dignity of every person. They’d be strong advocates, patient but steadfast, and extremely consistent, with authentic loving care for the people in the community.

If our meetings and churches are going to be spiritually transformational, we must strengthen the functions of practical care and eldership, because these are the necessary foundations for healing and transformation. We can:

• Look around for the Friends who are demonstrating that they carry the right gifts for spiritual nurture or practical care;
• Affirm these Friends and encourage them to do the work they feel called to do, not expecting them to be perfect right away because they, like everyone, need opportunities to develop their gifts;
• And talk about these roles openly as vital to our communities.

God can do extraordinary things, but we know from experience that God’s miracles usually happen through the faithfulness of human beings. We need to pay attention to upholding those who are called to do such work.