 May/Summer 2000 (XXXVIII 3) |
y wife Jeanne and I were very impressed with the March/April issue of the PYM News and what may be considered by some Friends as innovative and perhaps bold steps.
What insight on the part of the Religious Education Concerns Group not to cut out and abandon those young people who surely will but have not yet cut out smoking. In my days at Westtown School some 65 years ago smoking was considered evil and was cause for immediate expulsion. But your tolerance of smoking as a "solitary event" makes sense and is very likely to encourage kids who smoke to give up smoking, but not give up on Quakers and our message.
Printing the capital punishment thoughts of John Yeatman of London Grove Meeting was most interesting indeed. Many of us, I am sure, believe that there are circumstances that indemnify the part of the American system of justice which calls for capital punishment. Perhaps the main trouble is that it takes too long after irreversible proof of guilt.
Let's not forget the thinking of Rufus Jones who characterized Quaker worship as a "spiritual democracy." Each Friend is guided by his or her Inner Light and need not walk lock-step with activists who may wish to ignore the protection of social fabric that John Yeatman refers to.
David W. Shoemaker
Medford Meeting (NJ)
Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM