Real Community

"The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food." — Dean Ornish

Community—from the Old French "comunete"—which can be best translated as "reinforced by its source" or self-reinforcing.

What is more important for the future identity of Quakerism: The manner in which we express “worship/prayer” or the manner in which we live our lives? Can Quakerism survive if we address one aspect and ignore the other? Why is there so much writing on the subject of “Silence and Expectant Waiting” and so very little on the life practices of the Quaker Testimonies?

Why did Quakerism, one of the most popular belief systems in Colonial America, nearly die out? (Wikipedia, that bastion of the politically correct agenda editors and the AstroTurf propagandists (don’t recognize these terms? Click this link and watch) asserts that the American meetings collapsed because of internal battles over participation in the Revolutionary War. Of course, this is specious at best. Quakerism was collapsing in Europe at the same time and their members were not volunteering to fight in the American Revolutionary War). What should we do differently than my ancestors did? What is of value today, and what should be discarded given the advances and discoveries mankind has made in the realms of philosophy, politics, science, and mathematics that was unavailable to George Fox and the early Quakers?

I think “Quakerism” collapsed because Quaker communities collapsed—and I don’t think those communities collapsed because of the War for Independence. Quakerism was its people not its “leaders”. Today we recognize these “leaders” because their words and ideas survived memorialized in writing, and the life and ideas of the common man living and working within the community did not. In short, some words on paper endured. The communities didn't. 

Can we bring about the practical ideas of the Free Quaker precept of “Community” again in our time? Can a philosophy built on several precepts, the famous testimonies, endure in their absence? We are in a pickle here. Practicing Simplicity and Integrity is an individual effort. Practicing Community is not. Community requires the goodwill and cooperation of the people in a web of interconnected interdependence. Such a community must have a commonality of purpose, ethics, and acceptable behavior. No people can survive as a “house divided” (Abraham Lincoln stole this phrase from Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”. Jane Austin lifted the phrase “Pride and Prejudice” from the opening of that work, too. Paine was an English transplant to the colonies (just a little over a year before the revolution) and a Quaker and is widely recognized as the "father" of the American Revolution (while Washington is the "father" of our country). If you like quoting early Quakers who moved the world he is a wealth of material). A community cannot survive the resentment and anger of politics.

Community requires physical proximity. There is no such thing as an “internet community”. Interdependence by necessity means that there will be times when you will be in need and can depend on your neighbor and that your neighbor will be in need and can depend on you. If you are an hour's drive away you are in no position to be of any help.

Community requires a critical mass of people. Getting up to that critical mass will not be easy, and slipping below critical mass courts disaster.

Community also requires a local mindset for work, play, school, gatherings and traditions, and elder care (not only will we die, but many of us will experience the indignities of old age). It then follows that a community must produce babies, raise children, and benefit from productive young adults and productive mature adults. A community will have non-productive elderly people to care for. Like it or not, and Creation does not care what we like, relations by blood and marriage, the type of “marriage” that produces children, will dominate.  I am not going to pull any punches here: A “Quaker Meeting” of aging and childless political activists is not a community. It may give some a fleeting sense of security but in the final analysis, it is an example of failure. I understand that is a painful observation, but we must learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others.

This is not to say that everyone must produce children. There are people who, by their individual nature (i.e. LGBTVQRS), will not produce a practically significant number of children. Such people will get old and frail and will need the offspring of others to care for them in their old age. To be fair and interdependent the childless must make other contributions that are of equal value to the community during their productive years—that is the production, accumulation, and maintenance of capital. To reject this is to accept violence and coercion—the theft of resources from other people’s offspring at the point of a (government) gun (legislature or judges). Quakers do not resort to force, coercion, and violence to achieve personal, moral, or political agendas, and they do not hire other people to do such dirty work for them. Might—even a majority—does not make right. The community must not countenance its destruction from within. It is not a coincidence that collectivism is so highly valued by the childless. We need to help such people understand the realities of the situation, if possible. If not, we must cut ties with those whose voluntary actions are not in our best interest.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand. - Baruch Spinoza

Community means the rejection of outside politics and other distractions. There can be only one political agenda: The wellbeing and continuity of the community, our testimonies, and our way of life—for we are all mortal. If we want our community, our way of life to survive us, then life, and the family, must go on and children must be given life and then formed by their parents and extended family and community into functioning adults. I am not denying the humanity of people who do not wish to produce children. I am pointing out that in the context of Community such people must make compensating and equal contributions to the wellbeing of the community—or they are not part of the community at all. And they most definitely must not be permitted to destroy the wellbeing of those people who are forming the next generation of the community with their political machinations. Feminism, collectivism, and any form of authoritarianism, identity advocacy, or victim construction will be the death of the community. People who wish to have a real and intentional community must make a close and unflinching examination of this. There are no examples of successful intergenerational communities operating under these belief systems. Your Quaker community will not survive them either. Why would you go through the effort to build a real intentional Quaker community and welcome the elements that will destroy it? Families, men and women and their children, will not tolerate extortion of the production of their lives. They will depart and search for more welcoming groups—which is precisely what happened to all of the Quaker communities of my ancestors (my assertion). 

The definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  — Ben Franklin.

This brings us back to: What is it about our Quaker identity that is important to us? Is it “expectant waiting” for an hour each First day? Is it the day-to-day way of life that we are called to action? If that seems to be a personal question with no right or wrong answer then you have already answered the question. Such people will not have Community because they are incapable of Community. Perhaps they cannot overcome their political frame of reference. Perhaps their internalized belief system has hardened to the point where they feel justified in using violence to abscond with other people’s life work at the point of a gun. Perhaps they are incapable of reason. Who knows? A clear sign that something is amiss is their reaction to being called on to give an account of themselves, their actions, and their belief system.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. — Baruch Spinoza

Right now as I write this, most Quakers in the U.S. seem to support the idea that people should be dependent on the government for the things they need: food, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and much else. I think this is absolutely insane. There can be no such thing as our testimony of Community in the absence of community member interdependence. People will not come to rely on each other and make the necessary arrangements to be reliable themselves if they can rely on the government for their needs. We live in some of the most fertile and productive agricultural land in North America. Why are so many of our "regular American" neighbors receiving food assistance from the government? Why don't they grow a garden and milk a cow? Many of our other neighbors are Amish, Mennonite (both old and new order), and other similar but lesser known church groups (let's call them "Plain People") that—in reality—live their day-to-day lives in the Quaker ideal of Community that we hold so dear. They don't use cars or electric, heat their home, cook, and heat domestic hot water with wood, grow most of their own vegetables and fruit, keep and hand milk cows or goats, raise livestock for meat, draw water from a well or rainwater catchment system and completely refuse any form of government "assistance". They will not participate in Social Security or Medicare, neither paying in nor collecting, and they will not purchase insurance of any kind, including health insurance. They don't believe in insurance! They believe (and practice) Community. They rely on themselves and each other. There are sorrows here as there are everywhere, but no one here ever went hungry or homeless over sickness or death in the family. Wrap your mind around that for a moment.

With no cars to get back and forth to medical care and no health insurance shouldn't these people be much sicker and die earlier than the rest of us? That is the line as to why we need health insurance, isn't it? Plain People life expectancy is equal to or greater than other Americans of Western European ancestry and their health span, the time during which they are free from chronic conditions that we think need "treatment", simply blows our average healthspan away. They are fit and thin!!! The striking difference between our "English" and "Plain People" neighbors when we see them side by side at the local hardware store is simply mindboggling. The "English" look unwell, obese, covered in tattoos and self-injury (piercings)—all of this with hardly any family responsibilities and with Big Daddy (government) taking care of them. The Plain Folk have huge family responsibilities and no Big Daddy and they appear to be flourishing, content, and healthy. It was our do-gooder social programs that have reduced the average American to a shadow of the being his ancestors were. Why are we supporting this??!!

At this moment in history, the U.S. dollar enjoys worldwide hegemony as the world’s reserve currency. Because of this hegemony, the largesse of the world’s natural resources as well as (at least a part of) the rent collection of interest on all debt flows into the U.S. (and Europe). This occurs for one reason, and one reason only: The U.S. military and its budget of 50% of world’s military spending and our endless wars (and war crimes). So why do Quakers, with our testimony to Peace, support this?

After all, and in the final analysis, we are supporting it with our rejection and failure in Community. Without the massive U.S. military budget, there would be no U.S. dollar hegemony, and without U.S. dollar hegemony and the ability to print money to pay back debt, there would be no Social Security, no Medicare, no Food Stamps (SNAP program), and no fill-in-the-blank do-gooder social programs. Eventually, perhaps sooner or perhaps later, all of this will simply vanish—and Community will no longer be an option; Community will once again be a human imperative. People will need to make different arrangements for everything we now take for granted, and that will succeed or fail based solely on the attributes of each individual community.

This is where we are as it regards our testimony of Community. We can stop our political haggling and come around to Community or we can continue on the self-destructive path of identity politics, "bearing witness" at protests, and debating the importance and manner in which we come together for all of 45 minutes per week. The Quaker Quietest period is over. Or at least it is here. We must become real and true "activists". The implications for the remaining Free Quaker precepts, or testimonies that I have not covered yet—Peace and Equality—are stark indeed. 

Our mission is to provide a locus for real, viable, self-reinforcing intentional communities (those that produce children and are largely self-reliant) to coalesce around. If any of this offends you I am completely unconcerned. Such people have nothing they are willing to contribute in any event. This is a time to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.  If you would like to know more about how you can make a difference, we need money, volunteers, contributing members, and many other things. Email me at:

Greg at quuchurch dot org.