I Am Coming to Uproot and Tear Down

In the spring of 2019, I was at the center of an online Quaker controversy.

This was not the first nor the last time I said something that made a lot of Quakers mad at me, but it was the worst. It was so bad, in fact, that I essentially stopped doing ministry for Friends for more than three years.

(Don’t worry, I was doing plenty of ministry for other denominations during that time. I taught Methodist seminary students, led workshops for Episcopalians, preached for Baptists and Disciples, and wrote an entire book for a Presbyterian press.)

I said in my ministry report, “Quakers broke my heart this year.”

Some context: In the spring of 2019, Guilford College invited me to be the JM Ward Distinguished Quaker Visitor. Each year, the Friends Center at Guilford College invites a Friend to come for several days to speak and teach. I was asked to speak to a class, connect with students and community leaders, lead a workshop, and give a public talk.

I honestly had a blast doing this. I got to hang out with friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, and the Guilford students were bright and had good questions. I laughingly made a #DistinguishedQuakerVisitor hashtag for social media and poked fun at being treated as such a Very Important Person. It was a lot of work, but I was in my element.

The night of my public talk, I stopped by the Guilford Archives, hoping to see a friend who worked there. She was out, but another employee recognized me from my picture. She said, “Oh yeah, you’re the one giving the talk tonight. Chuck Fager was just in here and he was talking about it.”

I walked back to my car and had a panic attack.

I knew—I KNEW—what was coming.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Chuck Fager: he is a Friend who has kept a blog called A Friendly Letter for many years. And Chuck has developed a reputation for writing incredibly mean-spirited posts, particularly about young Quaker women (here is one about Christina Repoley, Betsy Blake, and Faith Kelley, among others).

As soon as I heard Chuck was coming, I knew that I was next.

Unfortunately, I was right.

With the help of my partner, friends, and elder, I managed to pull myself together to give the talk. You can read the text of it here: Quakers and the Prophetic Tradition. I finished up my work and went home, feeling tired but overall happy with how how the time went.

And then Chuck published his blog post about me.

He shared it widely on social media, where it went viral. Over the following week, I heard from over thirty people directly, through emails, calls, texts, and direct messages. Many of these people were supportive, but some demanded that I justify what I had said, wanted to correct me, or told me that I should not be in ministry.

My partner, close friends, and a mentor advised me not to read the post. I wrote a brief response to the many people reaching out to me, saying that I was not planning to read or respond to Chuck’s post and asking them to stop sharing it.

I actually never read the post until this week. At the time, it felt terrible, but now it just seems sad.

I am not here to take down Chuck Fager. His legacy is as an amateur historian who has self-published many books and undermined his own scholarship with ad hominem attacks. Taking apart his argument now just feels unnecessarily cruel.

I will say that Chuck fundamentally misunderstood something I said.

In my talk, I said that far too often, arguments about naming and recording ministry boil down to: “You think you're better than us? Quakers are all equal!”

Chuck misheard me and reported this as me saying to Liberal Friends, “you think you’re better than us.”

Ironically, at the time, my most recent membership had been in a Liberal Friends meeting. I was not there to say anything in particular about Liberal Friends, but rather to call all Friends to a higher level of support for naming and nurturing gifts of ministry.

So why talk about this now, so many years later?

Because it is still bearing poisonous fruit.

Just this past week, I received an email from a young woman in ministry. She has been writing publicly, but is not sure whether to continue. She said,

“It feels strange to be writing again. I'm debating about the vulnerability in writing when living as a public Friend. I've been thinking a lot lately about the Chuck Fager situation that you found yourself in where he wrote about you when you visited Guilford. Because I haven't done much public writing and it just feels -- so weird to do. Every time I feel led to write something or do some sort of public ministry, I remember that guy and his tone, and it makes me question why I want to do public ministry in the first place and whether it is an ego driven decision or even worthwhile. Like why would anyone read what I am writing? I've also been thinking a lot about what is appropriate and when to share for my own health, so who knows."

Honestly, that makes me want to weep.

It is so painful that Chuck took my message about supporting ministry and twisted it into something that—years later—serves as a cautionary tale for young Quaker women who are thinking about doing public ministry.

So I am here to to uproot and tear down. Not Liberal Friends, but this behavior.

It is NOT OKAY for one man to do so much damage to the lives and ministries of young women in the Society of Friends.

And it’s not just him. I could name a handful of other men who seem to find joy in humiliating young Quaker women who dare to speak up.

This is hurting all of us, not just the women at the center. How much ministry have we lost because of these cruel attacks? What might the Religious Society of Friends look like today if young women did not feel afraid to speak up, to try things, to step into their gifts of ministry?

We can’t know the answer to that, but we can do something about it now.

Don’t go after Chuck. It’s not worth it.

What we need to do instead is destroy this kind of behavior at the root.

Pay attention to the things that people are saying—especially men—about young women in ministry. Are these men making fun of their clothing or appearance? Are they twisting the women’s words to get likes and retweets? If they are making a joke, is it at the expense of women?

We are seeing the decline of Friends in the United States, especially Liberal Friends. It is an aging population that is at risk of dying with this generation. If we are going to make it through, we need to support ministry, especially the ministry of young women.

Anything else is unacceptable.