Missionary Work Abroad: Iowa Yearly Meeting (FUM)

My summer has, as you know from previous posts, included time in Kenya and Rwanda.  Perhaps because of this, at Indiana Yearly Meeting I found myself more aware of the reports of FUM ministries abroad.  This was even more the case at Iowa Yearly Meeting (FUM) this past weekend.  Perhaps my time in Africa is continuing to echo through my experience and drawing my attention to the international work of Friends.

Iowa Yearly Meeting is a group of programmed meetings in Iowa and Wisconsin.  Iowa YM's worship has an evangelical bent to it (in the choices of music, for example), and I am reminded of the great range of diversity within FUM.  This was underscored by their keynote speaker, Ron Stansell, who is from Evangelical Friends Mission.  Candi Young, who teaches at Belize Friends (Boys) School, spoke about her work there.  John Moru was visiting Iowa YM from the Turkana Friends Mission.  Two Iowa YM members(Nathan and Brianna Martin), home from being missionaries in Cambodia to have a baby, also spoke.



Belize Friends Boys School



Candi Young spoke about her desire to expand Friends (Boys) School in Belize, and her joy at the enthusiam of her students to learn.  (I put "boys" in paraentheses because she showed us pictures of the first girls to attend the school!)  I was reminded again of how much of a difference a little money can make.  USFW donates the money to give each child there a snack: a banana, an orange, and a biscuit.  For most of the children, this is all they will eat each day, and the cost is so small.

John Moru, testing water (FUM website)

John Moru had several opportunities to speak, and was very engaging.  FUM General Secretary Sylvia Graves, who was also visiting Iowa YM, spoke about Turkana Friends Mission being a "Kenyan" mission.  Kenyan Quakers, having been evangelized by missionaries a century ago, are now traveling out to build missions themselves.  Ron Stansell pointed out that FUM is not a white organization anymore, and Quakerism is not a white denomination.  African and South American Quakers will take control of their own institutions, and take responsibility for missions in their area, in an increasing way.  John Moru feels a particular calling to plant churches in Sudan, having been there as a child.  With the majority-Christian southern part of Sudan separating off from the northern part on July 9th, he feels that his way will soon be clear.

 

ESR's registrar, April, presenting a workshop in Kenya



I have been thinking lately about missionary work.  Many Christians do "mission trips" within the US or to other countries, which seem to be a valuable tool for increasing cultural awareness and forming connections on both sides, as well as sometimes getting some practical work done!  Our trip to Kenya and Africa was, in some sense, similar.  The intetion was to develop our awareness of African Friends and to offer some workshops and presentations.  I do, however, wonder about long-term church-planting.  Some point to the great commision given in Matthew 28:19-20 ("Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.")  Some believe that non-Christians will go to hell and conversion is an imperative.  Others see this conversion as colonialism, or unnecessary given strong religion traditions across the world and point more to interfaith dialog. 

I wonder what it would be like to go plant a church in a place with a strong religious culture.  How does a missionary in Cambodia or Thailand view Buddhism?  What would it mean to be a Christian missionary in Saudi Arabia?  Can one be a long-term Christian missionary and respect the validity of other religions?  Can one take a "come and see" attitude (John 1:46), offering what Quakers have available while respecting the existing religious and denominational forces in a particularly area?

Just some thoughts on my mind this morning!  It was lovely to visit with Friends in Iowa YM and I enjoyed worshipping with them very much.

Valerie Hurwitz is Director of Recruitment and Admissions at Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Richmond, Indiana and serves as choir director at West Richmond Friends Meeting.

Photographs from Africa

Our faculty returned from their trip to Africa with many stunning, inspirational, and thought-provoking photographs. We wanted to share a few of them with you today.

If you would like to see more, you can visit our Flickr photo page by clicking here.

Travel Interlude

Dear f/Friends,

From June 16 to July 3rd, the majority of the ESR faculty will be traveling to Kenya and Rwanda.  (I am leaving tomorrow on the 18th.)  Please pray for us, our safe travel, and for illuminating experiences for both us and the people we will be visiting.  We ask all of our Master of Divinity/Master of Ministry students to take cross-cultural trips that allow them to explore theology in a very different context.  We're taking a "dose of our own medicine" (actually, for this trip it's more vaccines . . . lots and lots of vaccines), expanding our own experience of Quakerism, and delving into new cultural contexts!

As you might have noticed, our blog posting has slowed down somewhat as the semester has ended here and this trip will continue that trend.  You'll hear from some of our alumni and current students on Yearly Meeting annual sessions while we're gone.  When we return we will be sure to share our thoughts and impressions from this trip.

Peace,
Valerie Hurwitz

Sharing the Good News in Spain

I became a Quaker just a few months ago, though I have been a Christian for many years. I am an affiliate member of Rockingham Monthly Meeting, which is part of Ohio Yearly Meeting. I deliberately chose to become a Conservative Quaker because I was certain that I wanted to belong to a distinctively Christian Quaker community. I did not want to have to avoid words such as Jesus, Christ, God, salvation, and so forth, when speaking to Friends. The choice to walk the Conservative path has its consequences, no doubt, and I am fully aware of the difficulties involved in this decision. As a Spaniard, these difficulties are related to the particularities of my country. Spain is a very complex society, due in part to its ancient, rich and multi-cultural history, as well as its present political and social situation.

There are very few Quakers in Spain. Since being a Christian means, in part at least, to be a witness for Christ, I have decided to share my Christian, and in particular my Quaker, faith with my fellow countrymen and countrywomen. I think that, just as both Christ and the Quakers' way of relating to Him have benefited me and improved my life, they can also benefit and improve the lives of many people.

Most of the Spanish people consider themselves to be Catholic, although they are not always practitioners, as people here put it. Catholicism has a very rich tradition and usually their adherents feel quite happy to belong to its ranks. The Catholic Church has a singular feature that distinguishes it from other Christian Churches, namely, its belief in its uniqueness, in the sense that nobody outside of its fold can attain salvation (of course, many Catholic people have relaxed this rigid belief and have adopted a more open standpoint). I think this rigid belief makes unlikely for many Catholics to leave their Church. Of course, they do not have to abandon their church if they find a relationship with Christ there. However, I do hope to extend the possibility of another Christian way to those who want or need it, as I myself was in need before I encountered the Quaker path. I never felt comfortable inside the Catholic Church for a variety of reasons, and, although I belonged to an Evangelical church for a short time many years ago, I did not feel comfortable there, either.

In Quakerism, I have found my spiritual home, the place I have longed for all my life. And if this has been the case for me, I think it could be also the case for others. In this context, the effort to spread Quakerism in my country makes complete sense.

Besides the deeply rooted sense of being Catholic that most people have in Spain, there are also political and social factors, as I said before. Spain experienced a cruel civil war in the 1930s, and this war has left a mark on our national consciousness that has endured for the last sixty years. The war and its aftereffects have convinced many of my people to embrace a secular worldview; for many others, it has meant a total rejection of religion and, in particular, of Christianity.

Our project to create a Quaker Christian worship group in Seville, Spain, has emerged in this complex context. While I believe that Liberal Quakerism could certainly be successful in Spain, and in Europe in general, I am concerned that Europe presently suffers from an excess of liberalism. I have the strong conviction that Europe, and Spain in particular, needs a new evangelization, a return to its Christian foundations and values. Of course, many people could say that Europe does not need, in this post-modern age, a Christian way of thinking, worldview that revives old concepts such as God, salvation, heaven, and so forth. However, I am convinced that Europe does need Christian values such as compassion, friendship, care of the poor, love, and many others.

Conservative Quakerism has two clearly distinguishable, but inter-related, layers: One is its adherence to the Christian worldview: acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior and an embrace of the biblical narrative. The other layer consists of our testimony of integrity, simplicity, equality, peace, and so forth. It is quite probable that many in my country, and in Europe in general, might feel a strong attraction to these testimonies, but not to the Christian foundation of Quakerism.

To share our Quaker vision in a European country could be a real challenge. Does make sense to create worship groups where people are more interested in pacifism than in Christ, if they have any interest in Christ at all? I think that we Conservative Quakers must be honest: we must make it clear that Christ is the cornerstone and that everything else comes from Him. Is it not Christ who frees? Does not He bring peace and salvation?

In this secular age is more necessary than ever to hear afresh the good news of the gospel. You, North Americans, and we, Europeans, share a common heritage. Liberating Christian principles lie at the base of our western civilization. We have a profound and rich Christian heritage. Do not we have the right and even the duty to preserve it?

You, North Americans, still retain a sound dose of enthusiasm. We, in Europe, have lost a great part of it. We feel a bit tired. Many centuries have gone by and we are already a bit old. We invite you to inspire us and to give us new strength. Together we can offer our devastated world the good news that Christ is really present among us.

Luis Pizarro was born in Mérida, an ancient city founded by the Roman Empire in 25 BC and located in southwestern Spain. He has lived in Seville for many years, where he serves as Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Seville. He has a passion for black and white photography. He is an affiliate member of Rockingham Monthly Meeting, Ohio Yearly Meeting. In his efforts to be a witness for Christ he publishes Cuaquero.org, an outreach site for Quakers in Spain.

Experiencing An ESR Cross-cultural Trip to Israel/Palestine

During the first two weeks of January, 2011, I traveled with three students for a cross-cultural trip to Israel/Palestine. Rachel is an MA student at ESR working on her thesis (Her blog is Walking Cheerfully Over the Earth). Sara is an ESR Access M.Div. student. Glenn is a Connections student at Bethany Theological Seminary working toward an M.Div. We had a great time together traveling to various locations within Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We spoke with Jews, Christians, and Muslims. We met both with Israelis and Palestinians. For several nights we stayed with families in Beit Sahour and experienced daily life in Palestine.We also had meetings with high ranking officials such as Xavier Abu Eid (Communication Advisor for the PLO Negotiations Team), and also Mark Regev (Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel). It was an incredible two weeks planned out for us by the Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies, thanks to the efforts of George Rishmawi and Michel Awad. We had good guides leading us, the main one being Mohammad Barakat, an exceptional guide, delightful person, and someone who knows all the best restaurants (whose owners always had some connection to East Jerusalem where Mohammad lives).
The Palestinian Christians we met talked with us about the recent Kairos Palestine document, an ecumenical statement calling for Christians to recognize the oppression of the Palestinians and call them to solidarity and action for justice in Palestine. The list of religious organizations and institutions we visited is long: the Jerusalem Interchurch Center, Wi'am (Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center), Bethlehem Bible College, Bethlehem University, Friends International Center in Ramallah. We toured other places like the Ramallah Friends School, the Mossawa Center in Haifa, the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee, theApplied Research Institute in Bethlehem, the Al Kamandjati music center in Ramallah, the Jenin Creative Cultural Center, etc.

Early in our trip we talked with Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights. My initial impression was that this handsome, Harvard-trained, Zionist American Jew with Israeli citizenship could play the role of Jesus on the silver screen. I came to think of him more as an Apostle Paul to the Palestinians, someone known to be on the front lines when Palestinian homes are being demolished in Jerusalem or at the Friday demonstration in the village of Bil'in, suffering at the hands of his fellow-Jews on behalf of others.
 
Not all our conversations were easy ones. On the day we were to visit Hebron, we started out with some humor about the Palestinian equivalent to southerner jokes in the US. It seems that Palestinians tell stories about Hebronites, and we heard a funny example. In fact, while walking through the marketplace, we were witnesses to a couple of guys trying to pull a camel backward into the back of a Renault hatchback. What was difficult is that our day was bookended by visits with people who represented extremes. Not radical extremists, but close enough. To begin the day we met with Ardi Geldman in his pleasant home in the settlement of Efrat. We were uneasy to begin with but we were made more uneasy by his approach to us, putting us on the defensive as though we were among the bigoted people who think Jews have horns. We did want to hear his story and learn of his motivations for settling his family there. He had both religious and economic reasons for wanting to leave the States and live in Israel. The only thing that seemed to matter to him, however, was the justification that God gave the land to the Hebrew people and the Torah was their possession. His pessimism about the possibilities for peace were matched by our visit at the end of the day with Khalid Amayreh, a Muslim journalist living in the Palestinian village of Dura. He was a kind and gentle man who welcomed us into his home office. He used strong language to denounce the Israeli occupation, but eloquently discussed political and social issues. He did not advocate violence. He didpredict that there would not be a peaceful resolution but only major conflict within the next five years.
 
There were many cities we visited in Palestine. It seems like in each one we walked through their markets, ate at a sandwich shop (falafel, shawarma, the bread, and the salads – oh, the salads!), and talked with someone at a center for civic and cultural development. The cities of Hebron in the south and Jenin in the north were the most tragic. We got the best taste of the Palestinian struggle by visiting Bil'in at the conclusion of the Friday demonstration at the barrier wall. There was a special call for protest in the wake of the previous week's incident of Jawaher Abu Rahma dying as a result of tear gas inhalation (see the report by IMEMC). Our guide brought us to the village just after 1:00 pm after the Israelis opened the main roads again. On the outskirts of town we began to smell the effect of the Israeli Defense Forces' retaliation against the demonstrators. It became worse when we stood by the side of the road, watching the marchers returning, dripping with the sewer water with which they had been hosed. We slowly walked closer to observe the action in the distant valley. The people lined the dirt road with their signs and flags. Like a Fourth of July celebration gone wrong, tear gas canisters were being lobbed into the air to fall among the crowd. A truck carrying a large tank with brown liquid suddenly surges forward and a water cannon sprays the fleeing people. As we began to walk back to the van with the marchers, the wind shifted. My eyes began to water and my throat burned as the dissipated tear gas came our way. It took ten minutes or more before I could see clearly and swallow normally again. There were many others who suffered worse as they made their way home to clean themselves. Among the people we met there was Mustafa Barghouti and Mairead Corrigan Maguire (I'm not sure if it was her). We heard that Rabbi Ascherman had been there. The man we were supposed to talk with afterwards, Eyad Burnat, the leader of the Popular Committee in Bil'in, had been taken away by ambulance. Even though he had been treated by the EMTs with oxygen and an IV, he called us to meet him in his living room. After he showered and we were welcomed with gracious hospitality, he sat with us and talked about the protests in Bil'in.
 
There were some beautiful moments as well. Listening to the Muslim call to prayer throughout the day in various places gave us a holy sense of God's presence among the Palestinian people. But we shared that as well with Jews in a synagogue service the Friday evening after our experience in Bil'in. The churches, synagogues, the Jerusalem western wall, the Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim, the mosques wherever we traveled were all testimony to the many people who seek God in the Holy Land. There were other places as well. After visiting Jericho we headed out into the desert hills until we came to a place where we could look out over the vast landscape beyond an immense cavern as we watched the sunset. In the evening, when we stayed in a beautiful guest house in Nazareth, I watched the sun setting over the city with the dome of the Church of the Annunciation only a few blocks away. As beautiful as a postcard was the scene from the side of Carmel Mountain overlooking the Baha'i gardens, the view of the city of Haifa stretching from side to side before us, and the blue waters of the Mediterranean serving as the background with the coast of Lebanon in the distance. The most emotional I felt was calling my wife on my cell phone while riding in a "Jesus boat" on the Sea of Galilee. From the earliest years of our relationship she has heard me talk of my desire to travel to the Holy Land. The beauty of that experience, however, was tarnished by the politics of flying the American flag next to the Israeli flag while playing our national anthem. (I think that was even worse than the series of evangelistic sermons – "can I hear a hallelujah?" – we heard from the guide at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem.)

For me there was a theme running throughout my travels. On the first flight of my journey I encountered a scene in which a passenger was telling a soldier, "Thanks for your service." During the next two weeks I met numerous people who have dedicated their lives to being in dangerous situations for the goal of bringing justice and peace to oppressed people. I was reminded of the saying I've heard from well-meaning Americans, "If you don't back our troops, why don't you get in front of them?" I visited some frontlines of conflict and witnessed people sacrificing their lives for others. As you may know, the member of our group, Rachel, lives with the experience of her Quaker meeting's youth leader, Tom Fox, having been executed in Iraq by his captors in 2006 while working with Christian Peacemaker Teams. She plans to be a part of a CPT delegation to Iraq in April, 2011. At the end of my journey, having been scrutinized by Israeli customs officials at the airport in Tel Aviv and a similar intrusiveness in Amsterdam (full body scan) before the international flight to the US, I was told by the US customs official in the Minneapolis airport after a brief conversation, "Welcome back." I appreciated that and it hit me at an emotional level. Our group went to Israel/Palestine to learn about another multi-cultural context but not to be activists or even to debate with people. It still felt good to be welcomed back to my country. For others who return from traveling to the frontlines of conflict for the work of advocacy and participation in non-violent resistance to injustice, I wish for them not only to hear, "Welcome back," but also, "Thank you for your service."
 
Tim Seid is Associate Dean and Assistant Professor of New Testament Studies at Earlham School of Religion. He has served pastorates in Quaker meetings in New England Yearly Meeting and Indiana Yearly Meeting.