network, authority and the case of John Woolman
Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 06:22AM When we question the practicality and intelligence of networked authority it would be good to consider the case of John Woolman and the Quaker community. Woolman challenged the Friends to hold in tension and consider prayerfully the validity of slavery in the late 1700's. It resulted in a document sent to congress in 1790 calling for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Considering our nation didn't resolve the issue until after the bloody civil war ought to case us pause. What if the networked center had been the 'authority' of the community rather than a more governmental system. Could it be that thousands of lives could have been saved and people set free much earlier than our current history attests to?
Writer Parker Palmer makes an astute observation about the patience and trust of the Quaker community in response to John Woolman's charge that the "current participation of the community in slavery" was outside of God's heart is amazing. I think after 19 years in one community as pastor I had hoped for something similar. It disappoints me that it couldn't be. I question myself often about how it went down. Should I have challenged more? In an attempt to finish well did I acquiesce my leadership? How could this have been different. Not regrets so much as a need to understand so that I react "better" in the future.
"The thing that strikes me that I'd really like to underscore about the story of John Woolman is how remarkable it was that his community held the tension with him. Here's a fellow challenging the community at its very core. We know what happens in most religious communities today when something like that comes up. That person either gets shouted down or thrown out.
Here's a community that said, "We can't see our way
to agree with you, but we do not doubt your integrity.
We will support you and your family as long as
it takes for you to live out your leading, for you to
take those twenty years to try and persuade us of the
evil of our ways." That's an extraordinary thing for
a community to do."
Is it possible that this authority could actually when given its due 'work'?
Reader Comments