Spirit in Action
If the Church Were Christian - Philip Gulley
Philip Gulley is the author of 16 books to date, including the popular fictional series based in Harmony, Indiana. Phil's latest is If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus, and it is a powerful challange to the anti-gay, pro-war, pro-wealth messages of Christians out of step with Jesus.
- Broadcast on:
- 05 Sep 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one with every voice ♪ ♪ With every song we will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song we will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, I'm going to visit with author and Quaker Theologian Philip Gully. Phil does not attempt to dazzle you with multi-syllopic profundity and obscure references, but he attempts to honestly and deeply peer into the possibility of a life of spirit and find out what's helping and hurting in pursuit of that goal. Phil has written 16 books to date among them the tremendously popular series set in the fictional Indiana small town of Harmony. If you haven't read one of the Harmony books, try it, you'll like it. Phil Gully has also written and co-written three books that might be called Theological Tomes. They are very readable, very insightful. The latest is, "If the church were Christian, rediscovering the values of Jesus, and it's another bullseye, helping us sort out the norms of our society from the deep values that our world is so greatly in need of." Today's Spirit in Action interview was recorded in early July at the Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I was there for a week as part of the Friends General Conference National Gathering, where there is always plenty of interesting material for both my spirit in action and song of the soul show. This is the last recording that I have from this year's gathering. It was recorded before a live audience in Bowling Green. Before I talk to Phil Gully, I want to lead you in with a little music from Brian Sergio. The song is, "Follow Me," and it's a good preamble to what Phil has to say. A good religious or spiritual life is, or at least should be, less about what we believe than what we do. We'll talk to Phil Gully after Brian Sergio sings, "Follow Me." I put this preacher from Australia. He read the Bible searching for his dominant means, and he counted 87 times when Jesus said, "Follow Me." When you know that, you got me thinking, "Maybe that's the bottom line of what Christian means." Because I follow Jesus is deeper than I believe, because it don't take much to mentally agree with a set of beliefs written down in some creed. That don't get me wrong. We need to know what we believe, but lately I've been one day, and then we're following Jesus. We're just believing in Christ. 'Cause I can believe and not change a thing. The following will change my whole life. He never said, "Come on college by existence." Well, believe in me, I'm the second person of the Trinity. But 87 times he said, "Come follow Me." Well, if I'm a follower of Jesus, and why have I such a good life insurance risk? Why when I do my giving? Do I still keep so much? Why so much hunger exists? If I follow Jesus, why do I have so many friends about the affluence? So if you are a part of the poor, and if I follow Jesus, why do missiles and guns make me feel more secure, and it don't take much? To mentally ascend to a statement of faith, we can confirm and forget, but following will change our lifestyle if we get it in. We're in more, I've been one dragon, and we're following Jesus. We're just believing in Christ, believing in Christ. I can believe and not change a thing. The following will cost me my life. He never said, "Come on college by existence." Well, believe in me, I'm the second person of the Trinity. But 87 times he said, "Come follow Me." Yes, we need to know what we believe. To follow the Jesus who's real. Oh, God, save us from the Christ we create in our image. You know what I mean? When Jesus who's left to wing, the right wing is weak. The one who baptizes our cherish to the other, geez. The one who always seems to favor our side against all the enemy. I don't need to sound self-righteous. God knows I've got more questions than answers to proclaim, but it's been over 20 years now since Jesus called my name. So forgive me if I'm mistaken. There's something wrong with a lot of churches in America these days, and I think the Spirit's trying to tell us. But there's a question that the churches need to raise. I'm the following Jesus who's just believing in Christ. So we believe and not change a thing. The following will change our whole life. And he never said, "Come on college by existence." Well, believe in me, I'm your first class ticket to eternity. At 87 times he said, "From the family, from the family." Phil, welcome back to Spirit in Action. Good to be back. You've been busy. You've got another book out since I last spoke with you. This one's called If the Church for Christian Rediscovering the Values of Jesus. How much trouble did this get you into with Christians? Well, a lot of good mail, a lot of complimentary mail, and probably an equal amount of mail telling me I'm going to hell, which I already suspected in the first place, so that didn't come as any surprise. I don't think you put a lot of stock by the idea of hell at this point, or maybe not. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but my sense is that you used to believe pretty clearly in a kind of heaven and hell type arrangement, but you've moved to a different place. Or do you even bother thinking of the afterlife? I know the last chapter is something about not worrying so much about the afterlife. Yeah, it's a perspective that I would say has captured my attention less and less as the years pass, primarily because it's just something we don't know about. So I've just concluded that to invest a lot of time and thought and energy into that is really not too critical. And now, the only reason it's important to me is because I've noticed the correlation between how our beliefs about the afterlife often affect how we treat people in this life. So that, for instance, if we believe someone is going to hell or someone is damned or lost or not loved by God, we have given ourselves then moral authority or task of permission to treat them like hell. So in that sense, it's important to me, but not in the sense of sitting around every day and imagining how wonderful it will be if there's a heaven and what it might be like. The first book that you co-authored with Jim Mahaland I had the subtext, why God will save every person. Saved, I think, has changed at this point. I mean, obviously back then, and I don't know what that is now, six years ago or seven years ago that you wrote that book with him. Does Saved have any value for you at this point? Well, it does, but not in the way the word has typically been used. I'd like to kind of reclaim that word. It's clear to me that when you look at the world and look at some people in it, that there is a lostness about them, that is a sense of alienation, a sense of separation from others, and a disparity between who they are and who they were meant to be. And so in that sense, the word still has value. But understanding that word as those who are loved by God, as opposed to those who are not loved by God, no longer has meaning for me. Yeah, I guess it's kind of like if you said you have two teenage sons, I think. And so the one could be saved and the other one is outcast. I suppose that doesn't really work really well as a parent. It's tempting, but it doesn't work. The first two page in here says this book is dedicated to the memory of my maternal grandmother, Norma Quinnett, who first taught me one could be both faithful and loving. She was Catholic, right? Yes, a member of the Roman Catholic Church. My mother's mother and just a tremendous woman, very devout as a faithful Catholic, prayed the rosary three times a day, went to Mass every morning of her life, up until about a week before she died, tremendously committed to the Roman Catholic Church, and one of the most loving persons I ever knew. I don't know if her religion made her that way. I suspect she might have been wonderful, regardless, but she had a way of wearing her faith beautifully in a way that seems rarely done these days. I think she reminds me of my grandmother, who was very similar. I was raised Catholic, as were you mentioned in the book, right? When you start off that you grew up knowing, of course, that you had the one true faith and that certain point along the way, you found that someone else who believed that he had the one true faith happened to be Quaker and he so doubt and led you away from the one true religion onto the other true religion, Quakerism. I don't think you probably find that there's any one religion that's got all the marbles yet. Not yet. I do find some religious expressions seem to me to be more authentic to the values and priorities of Jesus, insofar as we can determine the values and priorities of Jesus, given that all the words in the Bible that were written about him were written by his friends, but you do see religions that you think honor the spirit a bit more, but I wouldn't want to name names. Have you explored, learned much about the Eastern religions? How do those strike you? And I'm asking you this because there's certainly some appeal and certainly to the unprogrammed tradition of Quakerism that I'm part of. As far as Eastern traditions, I've really not and that's just a yawning hole in my education. Though lately, we have a woman of the Baha'i faith in our congregation who is starting to teach me about that expression and I'm finding it very interesting. In fact, when I listen to her talking and we talk about what the Baha'is believe, it makes me think that if there is ever a faith out there that somehow might synthesize what everyone else is trying to do, it might well be the Baha'is. I think they've got something profoundly right from the start. Again, the name of your book, Phil, if the church were Christian, rediscovering the values of Jesus, now I've felt the dichotomy for a number of years. I think it's one of the things that led me to search elsewhere from the Catholicism I was raised in. I saw a lot of people there who were part of the church who were doing all the church things right as that was defined, but it didn't seem to have much connection with Jesus. So when I look at the Bible, I look at the four Gospels and that's where I focus my attention and then I go on to epistles and other things. Those things all seem helpful to me. If I did not read the epistles, I would not have even the beginning of the basis of what we call the Christian church these days. And you talk a little bit about that. Oh, sure. Yeah. And clearly in my writings, it's clear that when you read anything I write any of my theological writings that I do tend to hone in on the Gospels. They just always spoken to me in a way the epistles have not. I've always thought the epistles were Paul and others' attempts to kind of begin to codify a fast-growing movement and give it some basis for a foundation and a structure that was probably needed at the time, I'm sure. But they never spoke to me with the same authenticity and power that the Gospels do. A big question for me is, do you think that the Christian church, as it evolved, would have grown if it hadn't been for what Paul and the others were injecting into the movement? I mean, Jesus may have been an inspirational, wonderful guy, but he may not have known how to build an organization. Paul certainly hears the theology. Here you do this, you do it this way. He's nailing down all those things. I feel personally, like a lot of what he says, deflects from the experience I need to have. The direct following of Jesus says, I think you like to advocate. Do you think that the church could have been what it became if it hadn't been for, I don't know, this detour? Probably not. I remember I was taking a history class years ago in college and the professor commented about Columbus discovering America and people immediately objected. Columbus did not discover America. There were people already here, and he got here, and he responded, and you could tell he'd set this up, by saying Columbus kept it discovered. And I think that's what Paul did, is that you had this very charismatic man, Jesus, with whom others are related in a profound and transformative way. But we've always had people like that. There have always been what people, Marcus Board, calls movement initiators or spirit people. History is full of them. I think several things happened, and Paul was an integral part of that. The Paul came along, was inspired by this man on some level, and had the fortitude and the insight and the ability to translate that mystical experience into an institutional movement. So no, I don't think Christianity would be here without Paul. You know, one of the things that I wrestle with a lot, Phil, is I see people who have had born again experiences, people who have been transformed, clearly on the road to Damascus, something happened to Paul, and he did a 180 degree turn, at least in some respects. Was that transformation important? Is that transformation real? Is it real from God? Is it real from God as we interpret it? I think this is so crucial in terms of building bridges of understanding between us, because again, I try and talk to my brother, fundamentalist Christian, who did transform his life, but he listens to a lot of people on the media, and I'm not saying this program at all. He listens to a lot of people, and very diametrically opposed, and a lot of their values. And yet, I say, well, he had this powerful experience. What is its value? What value should we give to that kind of experience? And does it matter that we Quakers do or don't have gathered experiences in the same way that perhaps George Fox did? Well, I think those kinds of experiences are important, and we've probably all had them. What did Abraham Masochall and Peake experiences? The mystery of that to me is how people can have them, but it doesn't transform every facet of their life. It transforms what they think about certain things, but then other subjects remain unavailable to scrutiny. And I see this a lot in the political realm, where it seems entirely possible that people have some encounter with the divine presence, but then other facets of their life don't reflect that at all. And that may just be the human condition. I don't know, but it seems to be a real issue across the board. As you wrote in the book, if the Church for Christian, you talk about some of the ways things would be different. You talk about what you think would be important. For instance, you say we'd be more interested about love and less interested in issues of sex. Say a little bit more about that. I figure that, if anything, is sure to get you defrocked, so to speak, if we if we Quakers had frocks. Well, yeah, it's clear to me and clear when you read Church history that the Church has had a rather unusual preoccupation with sexual behavior, and that somewhere along the line, one's ability or willingness to live within the sexual codes embraced by the Church, determined then their commitment to the Christian faith and their standing in the Christian faith. So that those who violate the code are considered by many people now to be un-Christian, to not be Christian. And that's always mystified me, given that it didn't seem to be a real priority to Jesus. In fact, just the opposite seemed to be true, that from what I can discern, he almost seemed to go out of his way to embrace people who violated the sexual code of his era and welcomed them. It just seems incongruent to me why that would become a priority for the Church, but it clearly has. And I think destructively so. Well, let's go deeper. So what is it about sex that is such a lightning rod? Why does the Church want to focus on that? Is it something essential to the continuation of the Church? I mean, there must be a reason that that pops up not only in Western religion, I mean you have your own sexual taboos within the Eastern religions of various sorts too. I just spoke about this over at the library when I was giving a book talk there, and a lady came up to me after the conclusion of the program and said, "Why do you think the Church is so afraid of homosexuality?" Because that had been what our discussion had centered around, and that's clearly the prevalent issue today in the Church. And I gave a rather pet answer, fear, but I was thinking about it more a little later, and I think it's different. I don't think it's just fear, I think it's biological. I suspect that the evolutionary impulse within us to further the human race and to reproduce ourselves is so strong, so ever-present that any sexual union seen that doesn't accomplish continuation of the species is seen by us, not consciously. I think this is all very subconscious as a threat, and I think that's at play, that when we talk about sex, we talk on a very real and but subconscious level. It has to do for many people with will we continue as a species, and I think that was a real important issue with Adam and Eve, that is with the earliest human beings and their ability to continue and to evolve. However, with the world now faced with the opposite problem, we have too many people. I think we can wean ourselves away from that fear. I don't think that's a legitimate concern any longer. Though the church still uses it, when you hear a Roman Catholic theologian express the Roman Catholics resistance to homosexuality, one of the reasons given is that it cannot end in procreation. So it's obviously still with us. Another one of your chapters deals with reconciliation versus judgment, that the church for more Christian, I guess, if we really were going in that way and followers of Jesus, we would be emphasizing reconciliation over judgment. Does that mean that judgment isn't important? I mean that and obviously it's a comparative here. It doesn't say none of this, but one of the things that certainly is part of fundamentalist religion in general is strong judgments. This is black, this is right, this is in, this is out. Well, here I would differentiate between the differences between discernment and judgment. It seems to me that most forms of judgment have about them a certain finality that ultimately conclude that someone is so wrong or so evil, there is no hope for them. And we hear a lot of that kind of language in the church and in our wider culture. I do think there's a place for discernment, for being able to look and discern whether certain activities are helpful or hurtful and to speak honestly and boldly about that. But I think that's different than judgment, which carries with it not only the reflection on a given activity, but then an assessment of the person doing it, which I think is probably where we get into trouble. So then to combine the two, sex and judgment, Jesus, the woman taken in the adultery, then neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. It's got this clear judgment about do or don't about sex, but it does it without evidently condemnation. Yeah, yeah, although I'll be honest, I would have felt a lot better if he wouldn't have said go and sin no more. I would have liked it a lot more if that story would have ended, which is just saying, "Where's the guy?" But that doesn't happen, you know, and the story comes to it as it does and we have to deal with it, we have to think about it and reflect on it. But yeah, I think his approach at the time was a very radical one, neither do I condemn you, now go and live up, live up to the light. Is he part of the reason I wrestle with this, again, goes back to my brother. I think that one of the reasons he found this religion that works so well for him is he found some parts of him that really he needed help changing, including his alcoholism. He was on his third wife and how many more would he continue to? I mean, he had some real issues, he needed some one to, I think, maybe be judgmental about him to help hold him in place. Judgmental with love, I don't know what it is. So again, the importance of judgment, maybe for you and me, for whatever reason, because judgment doesn't work for us, it's not helpful, but for some people, maybe it really does make a good difference in their life. Oh, I think so. I can't remember which book it was. I think it was the book People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck. He talks about the value of cut and dry moral systems, that there are some people who can only be moral if they're threatened with punishment. And he said, "Thank God for rigid morality, because if some people didn't have it, there'd be no balance to how they behaved." And he said in this sense, he cited two institutions, rigid religion and military, which are both very codified cultures, strict codified cultures, where behavior is spelled out in very specific ways, along with accompanying punishment for violating those codes. And he said, "Thank God for those things, because that's the only thing to keep some people in line." But then he hastened to add, ideally our sense of morality should grow, so that we learn how to care and love and relate to one another for other motives than fear of punishment. It's Christmas time again, and the mall is really weird. Everyone gets stressed out, Christmas shopping every year. I have to stop and wonder, looking at my Christmas list, when Jesus was a kid, would he be doing this? I know he was a baby, but did he ever cry? Did Jesus wet his diapers, or were they always dry? Did he use a bottle, before he used a cup? Did Jesus throw things on the floor for Mary to pick up? Did Mary ever spank him? Does the bible say? Did Jesus scream in holler when things didn't go his way? I know he was a baby, but I wonder what he did when he was about my age, when Jesus was a kid? Did he have birthday parties? I'd like to think he might, but then I have to wonder, well, like could he invite? Were there other kids in bathrobes who played tag the way we do? Was he bummed out when his birthday give said Mary Christmas too? Did Jesus put on sunscreen, or did he wear a floppy hat? Living in a desert, you can sunburn just like that. And he probably hated eating camel milk with mushy peas, or can saviors just get out of eating gross things when they please. And he probably hoped his dad would let him have a BB gun. I mean his father Joseph, you know, not the other one. It's not like it's a war tour, Jesus wouldn't hurt a flea and he'd never point it anyone. He'd be as safe as me. And if his mother found it, she wouldn't make a scene. She'd never hide it in the attic. No, she was not that me. He wanted peace on earth, anger will to kids. I mean he was a kid himself, so I'm sure he really did. We fight wars and we spill oil. We mess up the stands. I bet a kid like Jesus probably wouldn't understand. It's he has Christmas shoppers trying hard to close our eyes. The homeless people sleeping near expenses that we buy. I might be wrong, but I might get too so I might be right. If we ask that kid Jesus is all this stuff all right, can we buy Christmas spirit? If we spend lots of dough, well I think that kid Jesus would just say no. Christmas isn't about shopping, it's about the way we care. It's thinking what would that kid Jesus do if he was here. So if some kid you know, messes up something they did. Remember Jesus was a human too, when he was a kid. Acting like a kid at Christmas should not be a sin. Remember when we do it, probably acting just like him. So this Christmas let's just be nice to each other, don't you see? When Jesus was a kid, he was a love like you and me. When Jesus was a kid, he needed love like you and me. That was a song by Peter Alsop. When Jesus was a kid, sung I believe by his daughter Willow on the topic more or less of today's spirit in action. If you just tuned in, this is Northern Spirit Radio. I'm your host Mark Helpsmeet for this program called Spirit in Action. Our website is northernspiritradio.org. We're not calm, we're not commercial. Our guest today is Philip Gully, he's the author of a number of books, the award-winning series on Harmony, Wonderful Town in Indiana, which is where he kind of lives. A number of wonderful books including some serious theological reflections that he co-authored along with Jim Mulholland. His latest book was, he did it on his own without Jim's help and I'm very proud of Phil for being able to do that. Jim was rather involved with other things, so Phil wrote on his own, "If the church were Christian, rediscovering the values of Jesus." He's with us here today. We're at the Friends General Conference gathering. We're in Bowling Green, Ohio at this point and our temperature outside is miserable. I wish I were back in Wisconsin with Phil still though. He's a great person to know. Great storyteller amongst other things. So these sidelines into, I guess, theology. When you were writing fiction theoretically, you were still doing theology. Weren't you? Isn't it all theology for you? Yeah, it kind of is. I guess the fictional series was kind of a sneaky way to introduce progressive theology to people who would be fooled by the small town setting. Mostly it didn't work as a way of communicating progressive theology because people just read it the way they wanted to. I think that's the fun of fiction that you can do that. It speaks on several different levels, but nevertheless, it was a fun experience and enjoyed writing those books. You put out a regular podcast. You were moving toward the point. I want to talk a little bit about the Friends Meeting that you're pastoring. You were moving towards recording and putting those out. I've seen them in printed form on your website, PhilipGully.org. You told me when I last spoke to you on spirit and action that they were going to be remodeling, rebuilding, building a new building or something. They're going to be putting in sound recording. Did those miserly Quakers not come up with the money for it? The technology is there. We have that in place to do. I've just resisted it because I fear it will change how we worship and because the printed form that I put on the website is, in that sense, rather sterile. When I speak to my congregation, I use their names and I make allusions to our history together and our life together that would seem to me almost to be a violation of privacy if I were to release those. I have too much fun doing it to stop. They seem to respond to it well. I think for now, we're just going to continue with the printed page. Well, if it's okay with you, Phil, I would like to explore a little bit of what's happened with you. In the course of serving as pastor, you've continued your own spiritual growth, which we would hope that a pastor would do, of course. At one point, that led you to a place where you were really questioning your beliefs at the very most fundamental levels. Do I believe in God? What do I believe in anything? You're still pastor at that point. They made this trip with you and for some reason, they didn't kick you out and that shows a lot of wisdom, I think, at work there. I understand right now, they're on the edge of problems with the yearly meeting with the regional group of Quakers. What's that about? Where's that going? What are the kind of issues? Is there a resolution possible? I'm just trying to get a grip on how the spirit's working there. Well, it is true that my theology has undergone an evolution. I wanted it to and it needed to, and I've always thought that that should be the point of our spiritual life anyway. The main issue of concern is my Christology and my suspicion that Jesus, as a monotheistic first century Israelite, would not have been comfortable with the idea of his own divinity. Though that was a claim the church eventually made of him, I'm not at all persuaded that that is a claim he would have made for himself and that in those moments in the gospels, when we see Jesus making that claim, it seems pretty clear now that those were products not so much out of the mouth of Jesus, so much as the early church putting those words in his mouth at a later date, as their understanding of who he was evolved and changed after his death happens all the time in the Bible. But because we don't know our biblical history and how the Bible was formed, we just assume that if it's in the Bible, it has to be true and that if Jesus says I and the Father are one, that he also is divine. And so when you question that, people get upset, and I knew that would happen. I think the reason my own congregation is stuck with me is that I've always been honest about it and I've never purported to say something I didn't believe and I always felt free to say what I did believe and they have always felt free to say they didn't agree, but no one involved in this have ever considered that that should be grounds for dismissal, that the priority for the Quaker experience was not assent to a doctrine about Jesus, but that the priority for the Quaker experience was to be radically honest and truthful about where we were. So if the meeting where you serve as pastor is able to make that journey with you, respect you in your journey, does that mean they're kicked out? If you get kicked out, I mean, I, you know, is it the whole thing down the tube? I don't know. One never knows what Quakers will do. I haven't heard that talk. The talk I have heard had to do with confining the punishment to me and not to the meeting. There may be practical reasons for that. We're a fairly large meeting, so our assessment to the Yearland meeting is significant, though that assessment is no longer being paid, so we might start here and talk about that. And that response troubles me, but I'm one voice among many in my meeting and I understand their frustration and their reasons for doing what they did. You've told me enough about the Quaker meeting that you passed or that I get the idea it's atypical of a number of friends United meeting type churches. You mentioned just earlier in this interview, the woman who's Baha'i who has been updating some of your education about that. One of the previous interviews we had, you mentioned a Jewish couple, I think, they were having a Brits for their child, and so here you've got Baha'i, you've got you, do you have any Quakers in your congregation? Lots of Quakers, but we're becoming outpaced by the atheists. We have several atheists who've joined us in the past couple of years who want community and they have found that we're not going to drag them down front and twist their arm until they believe something and so gravitated our way. And of course I find that enormously challenging and I enjoy that. I enjoy knowing them and being in community with them. But yes, we do have quite a few Quakers that are. And I would suggest that what's happening at our meeting might be unusual now, but I would say at one time it certainly wasn't among F.U.M. friends. When I listened to my elders talk about the F.U.M. of past days that there was a wonderful appreciation for other traditions and that if you moved to town and you were a little different and your religious home wasn't represented in that community, you could always be welcome among friends. And so I would like to think that we've just continued the valuable tradition that the friends offered. Just to be clear, I really think it's valuable for us to understand how other religious people do. We so often react from stereotypes of very limited knowledge. How do you function as a Quaker meeting? This congregation, how does it run? Yeah, you're kind of this pastoral appendage of some sort. I'm not sure. Say what your role is and how do they work? Do they sit there for an hour? Are they singing? Who's leading? Is it you all the time in front? No, it's not me all the time. I have a co-pastor and it's not her all the time either. We incorporate while most of our worship on those Sundays, I would find a semi-programmed. We have Sundays when we just have programmed meeting silent worship in the traditional manner of friends. My power there is very limited and that was intentional. The first meeting I pastored, I was or the second meeting, I was fired pretty quickly from my first meeting three weeks. Yeah, that looked good on the old resume. My second meeting, I jumped in and did everything and everything revolved around me. After 10 years, I crashed and when I left the meeting crashed, and it took a very gifted leader to come in there two years later and bring a sense of health to that meeting. In fact, it was Jim Mulhollum. When I returned to mystery after taking off a year, I vowed that I would no longer make the functioning of the monthly meeting dependent on me. My role there is a limited one, but it seems to me to be very healthy. After 12 years, I'm not tired and I feel a lot of energy for the future. There are different kinds of congregations. They're very old. They've been there since 1826. It's never really been about the pastor in which I appreciate. I think you're going to have a tradition of pastoral ministry. I think Fairfield meeting has found the right balance. One of the things that I've been asked as a Quaker is, so if you don't have beliefs and creeds in the way that most churches do, what makes a Quaker, a Quaker? What makes someone part of your group that's part of your group? And you've already talked about this diversity, including atheists and everything there. What is being that part of a group imply? And are you growing? You mentioned already you're one of the larger meetings, part of your association there, French and I meeting that you're part of. Is what you're doing, reaching people vitally? Well, that's always the hope. I guess I'd be the wrong one to ask. I know that when people visit our meeting, they usually return. When we ask why, they say it's because I felt the presence of God here. I don't know how we do that. I truly don't know how, but I know what they mean because I've sent it to there. That's a mystery to me, but I'm glad people feel that. So you said that's because I felt the presence of God here. Those atheists you're talking about? It seems to me that the atheists in our meeting and the agnostics say that they feel very loved and accepted and the meeting is wonderfully gifted in that regard. Always has been. Always had a reputation for being just a very loving, deeply loving meeting. If you had asked me why, I think it's because of our rural heritage. Most of the members, there were farmers who learned from an early age that, you know, to help your neighbor. And though we only have one farmer left in the meeting now, I think that ethos continued that we have to help one another and get to help one another and that it's imperative that we do so. The way that plays out in a practical way, well, I'll give you an example. After Katrina hit, a woman stood up and was in tears because her ex-husband had lost his home in Katrina, had remarried and had three children with his second wife and they were headed to Indianapolis because she was the only one they knew. They were from Pakistan. She said, "I don't know where I'm going to put these people." She lived in a small apartment. And at the conclusion of meeting, she was swamped by people offering their homes. And in fact, we were able to put the family in one of the members' homes who, you know, all their children was gone and they said, "Come, let us, let them be with us." And other members lined up jobs and food and clothing and that's just the way that community is. They're very caring. It'd be interesting to find out how churches get that way. There's just, there's not a self-absorbed bone in their body. They're just very loving people. Are you accepting immigrants into your town? From those of us in Wisconsin who don't have the same idyllic situation? Well, the town I live in is not where my meeting is. In fact, the Quaker meeting in my town was the one that led the charge to have my recording rescinded. It's kind of bothering me because they're the people who know me best and they discerned I wasn't fit for ministry. So what's that say about me? But our meeting is certainly open. We have a pretty racially diverse meeting. Mixed marriages, we're starting to have some Chinese families. The fastest growing segment, minority segment in our area is Spanish and we've not made inroads into that. We have people who are fluent in Spanish and were ready, but they're not showing out. They get invited. I'm wondering why that is and I'm wondering if it's not theological, that the Hispanic traditions among friends tend to be more evangelical than our meeting. And I don't know, but I wonder sometimes if that's the reason. You know, I could keep you here all day, although I think you probably have other appointments, including you're going to be speaking from the stage tonight. One of the things that I learned about just two weeks ago, I was interviewing Carrie Newcomer for my Song of the Soul program and she mentioned that she does collaborations with you and also with Parker Palmer and others. I still haven't found out what she and you do together on stage. She's a singer. She also is a writer. Obviously you have a writer, do you get up and give sermons or what? I read stories and tell stories. A lot of our work evolved around a book I had written that came out last year called I hated the title of the book, but an author doesn't always get a choice in titles. The book was called I Love You Miss Huddleston after my sixth grade teacher, who was the first teacher I ever had who when she wrote on the chalkboard, the little underneath part of her arm didn't jiggle, which she wrote. She was just a beautiful woman. I was in the sixth grade and she was just lovely and I fell in love with her and so the book is about growing up in this small town where I still live, where I can't seem to escape from and all my family lives there. So the book is about that. I tell stories about this town and about growing up in it. Then Carrie writes songs about it and it's so fun because she's such a gifted writer. So we're doing several shows together here in the next month or so, one in Indianapolis and then one up at Chautauqua. Of course, if you do something like that, you put it on some website, you put it on PhilipGully.org or something or how are we going to find out when you're going to be speaking? Well, you can always go to PhilipGully.org and click on the events button and that list where I am and Carrie has a similar page, but we don't record them ever. I don't know why. Maybe that luddite within all Quakers. I don't know. Well, I thought it would be appropriate if I looked for the final nail that you could put in your coffin that we'd hand out to the people who are looking to revoke your ministerial credits here. But I'm actually looking for the philosophical response behind it. Are you a Christian? That term is becoming less important to me given the wide variety of responses and definitions that the term now holds. I would say that the priorities of Jesus are becoming more important to me, but whether or not I'm identified as a Christian is not important to me. One of the things you mentioned in the book is that there are some 39,000 Christian denominations out there. Can't you just start one more called PhilipGully Christianity? Oh, let's spare that. Let's spare the world from that. Yeah, isn't that something? Apparently, oh, it's a seminary out east every year does a survey of American denominations. Last count, 39,000 Christian denominations. So that's why it's less important to me to be called a Christian, because as it currently stands there, at least 39,000 definitions of what it means to be Christian. Absolutely, absolutely. You've got some other writing projects. I don't think you ever are without writing for long. What are you writing in your lonely writer's garret? It's a book I just finished. It'll be out I believe next July by HarperCollins. It's tentatively titled "The Next Christianity, a Faith We Can Live With." The outline of the book came to me when I was sorting through some old papers from seminary, and I came across my master's thesis and read it. And it was a systematic theology, everything you know about God or think you know about God, and you write it down, and then you're interviewed, and the professors line up and beat you up. And I read it, and it was incomprehensible. It was clearly written for professors. And I just got the thinking of how many books I've read in my life that were incomprehensible, that you couldn't understand unless you had a degree in theology. And how terrible that is, that we're not writing books that people can understand and read. And so I decided to write another systematic theology that people could read without having a degree in theology or religious studies. And as I wrote it, it occurred to me that my theology had really shifted. And so that is certainly reflected in the book, but it's been a fun experience. And just because they're near dear to my heart, are there any more harmony books coming, or have you just reached such a great state of harmony that there's no more material? In the back of my mind, when the Harmony series came out, I knew it was going to be five full-length books and two novellas. I had that mapped out. And I ended the last book with a woman minister named Christo Riley, who pitches in when Sam is gone. And the congregation falls in love with their Sam takes a sabbatical. He comes back. He's ready to come back to work. And they tell him, "What's your hurry? Take a little more time off." Because they fall in love with his woman who came in to work in his absence. And so she's a delightful character and one that really intrigues me. And I've always thought it would be interesting to see if I could write a fictional series whose main character was a woman, especially a woman minister. 60 percent of people in seminary narrow women. And it's clear that the church is going to have to make room for them. And that for most churches in order to do that, they're going to have to change their theology. So I'm just sitting here watching. It's going to be very interesting to see how this happens. And I would love to write a fictional series about that. So I may do that. But the book, the next Christianity is going to be, I think, book number 17. And that's been in 14 years. And I think I'm going to take a nap first. My plans for the next year are to relax a bit. Sounds very wise. It's not a wisdom that most of us find. I guess that the testimony on simplicity requires a little bit about resolving what your goal is right now. I do want to take a little poll from the audience after he's had his sending his son off sabbatical. How many of you want to be reading that series with the female protagonists there? Not hands, noise. This is radio. I was speaking at Illinois Early Meeting two weeks ago. And I had forgotten that among silent friends, they don't clap. They wave their hands in the air. And so Paul Buckley, I believe it was, said, let us express our appreciation to Phil. And I had my head down and didn't look up and I couldn't hear anything. And so I thought, oh boy, this speech was dreadful. No one is responding. I just kept my head down. And then some sweet ladies said, you need to look. And I looked and I saw this. And it felt much better. See, we program friends, we hoot and clap during worship. Well, it's a delight being with you again this time in person. Thanks so much for joining me for Spirit and Action Pill. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate being with you. We'll close off this Spirit and Action interview with Phil Gully with a song by David Rovex confronting the same kinds of questions that Phil has faced in his books. In this case, concerning an all-too-common Christian approval of war, this is David Rovex, who would Jesus follow? I've seen you in the markets, I've seen you in the streets, and at your political conventions. Talking of your crusade, talking of your nation, and other things too terrible to mention. And you proclaim your Christianity, you proclaim your love of God, you talk of apple pie in mine. I've just got one question. Can I want an answer? Tell me, who would Jesus follow? May Jesus would bomb the Syrians, because they're not Jews like him. Maybe Jesus would bomb the Afghans on some kind of vengeful whim. Maybe Jesus would drive an M1 tank, and he would shoot Saddam. Who would Jesus bomb? Yes, I've seen you on the TV, and on the battleships, I've seen you in the house on the hill. And I heard you talking about making the world safer, and about all the men you have to kill. And you speak so blibly about your civilization, and how you have the moral higher ground. While halfway around the world, your explosive smashed the buildings. You could only hear the sound. But maybe Jesus would sell landmines and turn on his electric chair. Maybe Jesus would show no compassion for his enemies in the lands way over there. Maybe Jesus would have flown the planes that killed the kids in Vietnam. Who would Jesus bomb? Yes, I hear you shout with confidence as you praise the Lord, and you talk about this God, you know so well. You talk of Armageddon, and your final victory, when all the evil forces go to hell. Well, you best hope you've chosen wisely on the right side of the Lord, and when you die, your conscience it is clear. You best hope your atom bombs are better than the sword, at the time when you're reckoning is here. 'Cause I don't think Jesus would send gunships in the Bethlehem, or chance to raise the towns of chimeries. I don't think Jesus would lend money to dictators, or try those as you bees. I don't think Jesus would ever have dropped a single ounce of knee-paw. Who would Jesus bomb? Who would Jesus bomb? The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.