[Buddha-l] women & , er, religion

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 21, 2009, at 5:43 PM, Joanna Kirkpatrick wrote:

> I'd also forgotten that Nixon wasn't excomunicated, alas.

It was quite an interesting issue. First of all, Nixon belonged to the  
evangelical wing of Quakers who have church services and paid ordained  
ministers. Evangelical Quakers are, as a rule, more politically  
conservative than the other wing of Quakers, and they tend to be less  
strictly (some would say fanatically) observant of the peace  
testimony. The church to which Nixon belonged had voiced no qualms  
about his political views. It was unprogrammed Quakers (that is, those  
who hold silent meetings without paid ordained ministers) in  
Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love and lovely brothels) who  
tried to put pressure on the Quaker church in Whittier, California (a  
town named after the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier) to "read  
Nixon out of the meeting" (as Quakers quaintly call excommunication).  
 From a Quaker perspective, it is completely outrageous for one  
congregation to interfere in the policies of another, so the  
Philadelphia Quakers were engaged in eyebrow-raising meddling.  
(Philadelphia Quakers have a bit of a reputation for having more  
Quakerly-than-thou attitudes.)

Secondly, American Quakers in the 19th century had the tendency to  
read people out of meeting for all manner of perceived violations of  
Quaker values; people were, for example, read out of meeting for  
owning pianos or violins, being caught singing, consuming alcohol,  
wearing lewd clothing (which meant any dress that did not go all the  
way down to the ground and have sleeves long enough to completely  
cover such genitalia as the wrists), and, of course, joining the army.  
In the 20th century, these excommunications came to be seen as an  
historical embarrassment in most circles of Quakers. When Philadelphia  
was trying to pressure Whittier into dropping Nixon, a woman from  
Philadelphia rose and said "I had hoped that Friends had evolved to  
such a point that they had laid down the lamentable practice of  
excommunicating one another from fellowship." That piece of vocal  
ministry brought the caper to an end, allowing Nixon to remain a  
Quaker as he put several other Quakers on his published list of  
"America's most dangerous enemies" because of their peaceful protests  
against the war in Vietnam.

> Back to the WBO--well,  if no ordination only diikshaa, then in the  
> WBO what kind of
> office is a 'mitra' and how does it differ from being an initiand?

There are no offices at all in the WBO. A mitra is someone who wishes  
to be formally associated with the FWBO (Friends of the WBO). Although  
I really don't want to push the analogy too far, a mitra in the FWBO  
is not unlike a regular attender at a Quaker meeting who has not  
become a member of that meeting. Where the analogy breaks down is that  
whereas anyone who attends any Quaker meeting of worship is welcome to  
speak, and no one is ever disallowed to attend any Quaker meeting  
(even if he or she has been excommunicated), mitras are not allowed to  
attend chapter meetings of dharmachari(ni)s. There is quite a bit more  
secrecy within the WBO than in the Quakers, a fact about the WBO that  
I find quite unhealthy. While I was a mitra, there was a strong  
protest from some dharmacharis when I was made co-leader of a study  
group on the Bodhicaryāvatāra at a retreat; the principle invoked was  
that a mitra is not spiritually qualified to teach a dharmachari, even  
if the mitra has a doctorate in Sanskrit and the subject is a text  
originally written in Sanskrit. The protest did not result in my being  
disallowed to help lead discussions, but it was the sort of protest  
that would probably not have any counterpart in a Quaker contest.

Richard (but not Nixon)