Latest / Follow the Leighder / Quakers, Conscientious Objection, and the Iran War | Wayne Finegar

Transcript

Quakers, Conscientious Objection, and the Iran War | Wayne Finegar · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson. And y'all, I went to Appalachia and I brought back a friend this time, a real friend. And then I mean like as in Quaker friend. I mean as in Wayne Finegar. Welcome to the studio. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Thank you. Well, glad to be here. Glad to be with you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely, folks. ⁓ Quaker House, y'all remember if there's something you'll follow me on social media, I posted about how I went and saw him in person come and speak in Montana. He was representing the Quaker House out of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Wayne himself is from West Virginia and he came to talk about what is going on with our current military and the Quaker House. But before we get too deeply into that, Wayne, talk to us about how you found the Quaker community. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Well, I'm less found than got dragged. ⁓ One minor detail, my mother is from West Virginia. I'm from the Washington, D.C. ⁓ The joke I always make is dad was from New England, mom was from West Virginia, and it's the reverse of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Two great accents that don't go together. Yeah, pock the car, y'all. It's just, no. That's a bad thing. Leigh/@followtheleighder: See, I wrote it and got it backwards. Thank you. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: ⁓ And that is actually how I got here. My dad was almost drafted for the Korean War and in between getting his physical and there determining that a man who started wearing glasses before kindergarten is not somebody that you want in the infantry. He figured out that he wasn't doing that no matter what and was a pacifist and a conscience objector. And lucky for him, he didn't have to fight it because like I said, they decided he was more of a danger to everyone else than of any use. ⁓ But then when my parents were ready to find property in the house that I ended up growing up in, they were looking in the DC area and they found Sandy Spring Friends Meeting. So we started going when I was about five. So I am in the weird position of technically being ⁓ somebody who got convinced to join Quakers, but all I know is Quakers. and that's for the if you have anyone listening watching that actually knows Quakers I talk like a birthright but I'm a convinced friend but that's that's all that special jargon But I grew up in the meeting and then went on to Swarthmore College, law school, did that for a while, jumping forward, worked for Baltimore Yearly Meeting, the regional organization for Quakers in Maryland, Virginia, DC, Central Pennsylvania, and then came to Quaker House in 2022. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, can you tell us a little bit about who the Quakers are? What do they believe? And how long have they been around? Are they new or is that an American history thing? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: ⁓ Not American history originally, English history. ⁓ Quakers are one of the groups that came out of a period of turmoil in English history right around the same time that Germany was getting people like the Mennonites and the Amish and the other Anabaptist groups. ⁓ Asking what Quakers believe, my joke is if you put five Quakers in a room and ask them what they believe, you'll get 10 answers. ⁓ Part of that is that traditionally the Religious Society of Friends is our official name, ⁓ are a non-cretal church. There's no list of things that you have to believe that makes you a Quaker or doesn't. ⁓ And hence the five Quakers, 10 answers problem. The most core answer I could give you that almost all Quakers would get with is that there is, we'll use the most common language, there is that of God in every person. But I could get those same five Quakers and they'll give me 10 arguments about whether to call it God or Spirit or any other name. There is that spark of the divine, if you want to make it sound like Michelangelo's painting in Rome. ⁓ in every person and worship for Quakers for what's called silent worship is basically a process of quiet meditation, trying to commune with that inner spark, that inner light and let it give you direction as to how to move forward with your life. ⁓ The phrase we tend to use for that is discernment and understanding a trying to figure out when what you're knowing what to do is driven by that spirit as opposed to your personality, your emotional state. And yeah, it sounds very woo woo when you try to describe. No, believe me, I have this conversation a lot. It is easier to experience than to describe. But the number of people I know who have gone to their first silent worship and come out going, ⁓ my god, I had no idea, is it's just an experience. That said, I will recognize that there are a substantial number of Quakers, especially out year old's way, who are programmed friends. They ⁓ are much more actively Christian in their theology and in their beliefs. Many, if not all of them, would describe themselves as specifically seeing Jesus as Jesus Christ, their Lord and Savior type language. Many other Quakers wouldn't necessarily self-identify as being Christian per se. I know people who self-identify as being Buddhist and Quaker, or even coming from a Jewish tradition and still being Quaker. ⁓ This podcast isn't about theology, so we will stop there and I will say, I know, but there are a ton of really good Quaker podcasts that will happily give you hours and weeks worth of how to understand the many, many divisions among the society of friends. There are not nearly enough of us to justify how many divisions there are. We're about 400 years old. I skipped that part. So touch that base, at least. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No, it is perfect. It actually, love theology. we got, that's, that's my man. Well, but really what it sounds like, like you have silent worship and you have inner light. It sounds like you are meeting and it's called the Religious Society of Quakers or Religious Society of Friends, ⁓ but it's not church is what I'm hearing. And because it's not asking you to believe in a creed, is there a text or a mythology to, or what does that kind of look like? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: There is no text. Many, probably most Quakers from any of the traditions look to the Bible first. ⁓ Most of the Quakers that I know who practice silent worship will vary from self-identifying as Christian to being much more universalist. And very few in the silent worship tradition that I'm aware of. recognize the Bible as being a perfect text and ⁓ much more of the guide and a source of wisdom and inspiration as opposed to every word is exactly true. There are evangelical friends, there are absolutely Quakers who would scream and say that everything I'm saying is a blasphemy and absolutely it is the perfect word, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ The official founder of the Society of Forensics is man named George Fox. And his writings and those of many other early Quakers, including his wife Margaret Fell, ⁓ are regularly referenced and respected, but they are not worshiped in any way. are given the same power that anyone else who has said really impressive things are given. ⁓ And that's actually one of the, market fell is an important point. One of the most important of our traditions is inequality between the genders. ⁓ Early on during what's called business meetings, so when they were actually making decisions for the community, you had the women had their business meeting and men had their business meeting, but the women were making their own decisions. They weren't just... required to follow whatever the men's meeting said. But again, sexism of the 1800s and 1700s unfortunately included us as well as everyone else. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And I mean, I think about what Quakers, like you talk about equality, you talk about that divine spark. How ⁓ did that play into women's rights or slavery or Native American genocide, particularly back in colonial era? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: ⁓ We tend, our history pretty much qualifies as we were doing what everybody else was doing and then we figured out that maybe there was a better way before everyone else. ⁓ There is a book called The History of Quakers in America for 350 years and in there at one point, I'm not going to get the exact phrasing, but basically he talks about the different movements that friends have been part of. that we have a tendency to start the movement, get it going, and then once everybody else says, ⁓ that's a good idea, they pick up the ball and then we move on to something else. So friends were among the first to ⁓ advocate for emancipation and getting rid of slavery. And by the roughly 1800s, and I'm not gonna get the dates exactly right, most if not every yearly meeting in the country had had basically mandated that anyone who owned slaves either needed to free them or make provision that they would be freed upon that person's death. Whereas in the broader nation that didn't tend to happen for another 20, 30 years further down the road. Similarly with ⁓ gender equality, many of the earliest suffragists in this country ⁓ were people who came out of the Religious Society of Friends, Susan P. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul. I'm not gonna get any of the other names off the top of my head, but there were a bunch of us there. ⁓ And that absolutely comes out of that basic recognition that every person, if every person has the spark of God within them, then every person is just as. has just as much right to respect and honoring as anyone else. Flip side, no one is any better. We regularly got sent to jail in the early days for doing things like refusing to say your honor to judges and my liege or sire to the king. We had a tendency to call the king Charles, to use the current one, for example. Or when I went to law school, my first moot court. experience my first year, they said, you did a good job, except for you have to remember to say your honor. Okay, fine. Yeah. Sorry. That's, that's not the world I grew up in. But yeah. And that that continues to this day. You know, what, you know, many people stereotypes of us, know, they think about, you know, being and that wing and all of that, what was called plain speech. And that was when English had different pronouns depending on the level of respect you're giving somebody. Just as many other languages do. Japanese is an easy example. And theing and vowing was using the same familiar pronouns to every single person no matter who they were. Male, female, king, judge, pauper. And then of course, you know, I'm sorry, go ahead. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That's so. ⁓ is that something that like you carry to this day? Is that a Quaker thing that you that the equality and not using deferred language? Many. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Many. ⁓ If you have a law degree, you do try to occasionally throw in your honor, just to keep yourself from getting thrown into the prison for contempt. But ⁓ it is very, very common that friends will refer to each other ⁓ just as first name, or if for some reason I needed to call somebody, somebody needed to call me by my last name, they might call me Friend Finnegan. But I... The idea of calling somebody Mr. Such and Such is just confuses me. Every time somebody calls me Mr. Finnegar, I say, the last one who liked being called Mr. Finnegar was my grandfather. ⁓ But yeah, and obviously we don't do plain dress anymore, but most friends tend to be kind of boring in their outfits and all of that, that there's more important things to do with your timing. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: But if you happen to feel like you really want to wear bright colors, we're good with that too. I'm going to do a segue that the back of my brain is screaming that I am being incredibly socially inappropriate. But one of the reasons that we were one of the first groups that was so open to everyone on the LGBT spectrum was that same, we don't really care who you are or what you do as long as you're trying to be a good person and follow whatever your inspiration of the divine spark leads you to do. And I feel like I just segued from flashy clothes to gay people. that's not what I'm trying to do at all. My middle child is somewhere in Alaska screaming. said something wrong. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, and thank you for kind of going in the weeds with me and asking, ⁓ hello kitty cat. ⁓ Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Yeah, sorry, they learned during the pandemic that when people are on a camera, he gets attention. Leigh/@followtheleighder: yes, well I have my dog sleeping in the background. don't know if you can see it, so it's non-cretal, no titles and distinctions. That's because of equality. You talked about your embrace of gender, racial, ⁓ and sexuality. When if someone wanted to come to a meeting and like walk me through what they could they might expect. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: for a meeting with silent worship, which is gonna be the vast majority here on the East Coast and most of the rest of the country. You may have to travel a little bit further out West to find one, but you can find a silent worship meeting almost everywhere. ⁓ It really helps if you have talked to somebody at the meeting beforehand, because if you're just coming in cold... and haven't had anybody say the things I'm about to say, it can be a little confusing. But basically, you're going to come in, you're going to sit down, other people may be in the room already. ⁓ If, you know, if as people come in, they may see people that they know and go over and say hi and chatter for a little bit. And then there will come a point where people will just will be sitting and suddenly you'll realize that Everybody has been quiet and hasn't really moved for a little while. And in many meetings at that point, whoever is clerking worship for that day will stand up and say, welcome to the meeting, maybe do a few announcements, ask if there's anyone who has a health concern or a joy, joys and concerns is what it's usually called, that people want to celebrate or. you know, sort of send prayers towards that person. My home meeting does that at the end. Many other meetings do it at the beginning. there's no little standard plan. But you'll be sitting there and there'll be the silent worship and it will stay silent. if somebody feels that they have a message, that they have something that they need to share with everyone. ⁓ They will stand up, they will say it, and then they will sit back down. ⁓ There are frequently entire hours of worship where no one says a thing. Maybe one person will say something, maybe two people will say something, and the second person, almost certainly their message will have nothing to do with what the first person said. Sometimes that message isn't actually for the person who gave the message, that it's really something that somebody else in the room needed to hear. Many Quakers will talk about sitting and realizing that they have a message and having no idea why they have been given to give this message because it has no relevance to what their experience in life is. And they'll stand up and they'll give it and afterwards somebody will come over and say, Thank you, needed, that message was for me, I needed to hear that. ⁓ And then after about an hour or so, probably whoever the officiant from the meeting is will shake hands with the person next to them. Everybody else in the meeting will sort of reach around and shake hands. If they didn't do it at the beginning, they'll do announcements and joys and concerns and ask anybody who's new to introduce themselves. And that's it. I know people who didn't come in prepared and sat for the entire hour waiting for the service to start. And then suddenly everybody shook hands and left and they're like, wait a minute, I missed it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: So for social events and building community, what does that look like for Quakers? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: ⁓ Very much like any other community. ⁓ Here at Fayetteville meeting, which is a much smaller meeting, we regularly do have what's called second hour. So we'll discuss something or ⁓ sometimes we just do sort of games or something to get to know each other better. One that we've done occasionally recently is a thing where people write take two pieces of paper and they write a silly question, and I just got something in my eye, I apologize, they'll say a silly question or something deep and meaningful on two different pieces of paper, we'll fold them up, put them in a little thing, sort of like playing charades, jumble them around and pass it around, somebody will pull it out and read it, and then whoever wants to will answer the silly question or the serious questions. My home meeting in Sandy Springs is very large meeting. We do, you know, there's child, it's called first day school child education during meeting the kids. We have a large graveyard at home. So when it's Easter, they will have died somewhere around 150 to 200 eggs. And then the older kids will hide all of the eggs in the graveyard. And then we let the little kids eat, the little kids first and then the bigger kids go rumping all over the yard finding all of the eggs. Leigh/@followtheleighder: So, okay, but like, the silent worship and then I was just trying to see like, how can people get more involved? Because it's like, the silent, and then I didn't know if there was some sort of book study or Bible, it's not Bible obviously, and there's, ⁓ but. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Well, many times people will do Bible study or in larger meetings especially, there's a tradition called friendly eights where groups of Quakers who sort of live near each other will get, you know, the meeting will coordinate it and put together a group of eight people who sort of live near each other and they'll get together maybe for a potluck at somebody's house once a month to sort of get to know each other better and develop those relationships. So it's very much like any other community where you're trying to build those relationships and the private connections that are the most important. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ You know, and I'm so glad that the Quaker House has survived over the years. And you talk about being a Consciousness Projector because here we are and we are now a week almost into our strikes on Iran. ⁓ And I saw you a few days before that and you were already concerned. ⁓ folks, as mentioned at the beginning, I saw Wayne here in Great Falls, Montana coming to talk about ⁓ how the Quaker House supports military service members. I know we've already, it's a little confusing because when I say, I got an update for the Quakers, they're they're pacifist, what do they know? And it turns out you guys know a lot. So, let's talk about, ⁓ talk to us about how the Quaker House supports military. What does that mean? What does that look like? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Okay, well, and I'm gonna do the really short version, because you've already heard part of this, but we came out of the peace movement in the 60s, like so many other groups, ⁓ unlike so many of the groups that were just opposed to the war in Vietnam or were just opposed to the draft or maybe opposed to both. Because Quakers start with that discernment that meeting each person where they are, and who they are and the assumption that every person needs to find what the right answer for them is. when soldiers came to the Quakers in North Carolina saying, need help here at Fort Bragg, which for anyone who doesn't know is one of the largest ⁓ army military bases in the country. Roughly 55 to 60,000 people in uniform, about the same number of people in civilian roles on base. And then of course, dependents and all of those folks. It's ⁓ now among other things, still then was also the home of Green Berets Special Forces. It is the headquarters for Army Special Forces Command and Joint Special ⁓ Forces Command nationally is headquartered here as well. ⁓ So when those soldiers came to Quakers and said, we need help because we got drafted and we don't want to be in the Army and what can we do? It wasn't a process of saying, well, You know, here are the things you have to do. It was and always is to this day. You say you need help. Let's figure out what you need. What is it that you're having a problem with? How can we help? It is non-directive. It is supporting whatever your situation is without being judgmental, without saying that's the right answer, that's the wrong answer. ⁓ As you've heard me joke, you know, as somebody who's been a Quaker all my life. If we work with some if I work with somebody and at the end of it they decide no actually staying in the army is the right thing a little voice in the back of my head is disappointed absolutely, but that's that's me. That's not That's not my that's not my work with the spirit. That's not my more importantly my work with their spirit if they have found what is right for them, I absolutely honor that that is That is my faith and that's literally also my job so where we started of sitting with soldiers on the couch in the front of the yard of the original Quaker house to where we are now in 2026, we're one of the key elements to a national organization that's called the GI rights hotline that takes that same model and has become a national source. It's an eight seven seven number. It's a website. It's texting, it's social media. It's whatever way somebody who's in the military or their family needs help and support. They can reach out to the hotline. They may end up talking to somebody who works here at Quaker House. They may talk to somebody who works with one of our allied groups, but it's always that same non-directive, what do you need? How can we help you, regardless of what your situation is? And the other half is we have a counseling service here in North Carolina and Virginia where there are people who are actively broken, shall we say, who need therapy and for whatever reason aren't able to obtain it from the military. In fact, my counselor was here earlier today working, she's a social worker working with one of the family member of somebody who was then they were in a domestic violence situation. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That was my day. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: continuing to work through that situation. So we deal with domestic violence, moral injury, PTSD, substance abuse, all the fun things. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, and can you explain a little bit what is the difference between PTSD and moral injury? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Absolutely. ⁓ PTSD is the one everybody's heard of and the one you see in TV shows and all of that. I am simplifying hugely in what I'm about to say and I'm going to say that anyone with psychology degree is going to scream, but it is basically your brain has learned to have a reflexive, uncontrolled reaction to an input. in the exact same way that when the doctor whacks on your knee with a hammer and your leg jumps up, I'll use the sort of stereotypical one, your brain hears a noise and says, we're being shot at and proceeds to do all of the things that it has been taught to do when it thinks you're being shot at. your adrenaline pumps, you have a physical reaction to it. whether or not you're actually being shot at, but it's that reflex. It is completely beyond the conscious control of the person. They get the input, the brain goes to tail. Moral injury is more the conscious adult human being emotive part of it. It is the, have done something or not done something. that so offends my personal moral code that I am incapable of forgiving myself for that action or inaction. You heard me joke that it's to me, it's the only part of psychology that's basically just retreaded religion. Because if you imagine the patient going into the therapist and working to try to get to the point of, please forgive me for I have done this bad thing that offends my moral code. not wildly different than somebody going into the confession booth and saying, forgive me father for I have sinned. I have broken the moral code and I need to find a way to get forgiveness for this. And for both PTSD and moral injury and frequently they come from the same event or same traumatic experience. Until you get help, it can easily destroy your life. The substance abuse, trying to find a way to self-medicate, inability to sleep, destruction of emotional ties, family ties. All of those things are so consistent with both of them. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you for what you provide for service members. ⁓ this past year, has just so many of us have looked at this with horror. And... ⁓ You know, after 9-11, we saw a big surge of people joining the military, particularly like attacks on US soil. People got real passionate and they joined and thinking it was gonna be something short or brief and then it dragged on and our tax dollars, our soldiers, our... And here we are. You know, we just struck Iran. We still haven't heard an official reason for what was doing, for why it was done. We were told very quickly that we should be happy that we, you know, ended the life of a bad leader, but that was a week ago. I don't know what we're still doing there. And then that's abroad, who knows, we've all talked about Cuba and Greenland. And then on the homeland, we've got a paramilitary group. So we've got a lot of security, policing, people feeling a certain type of way about where this country is headed. How has the Quaker house seen it from your side in the past year? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Well, I mean, on one level, I wish I could tell you that we didn't see it coming. But unfortunately, we did. Not just Quaker House, that all of our allies on the hotline and similar groups literally in January last year started talking and trying to figure out what topics, what things were going to come up that we weren't necessarily ready for. And ⁓ the big one that we identified right then was illegal orders. And so spent a lot of the spring putting together what information there is, which sadly there's not a lot, about what does the legal orders mean? What happens if you're, how do you know if you're given an illegal order? What can you do? What are your rights as a member of the military if that happens? And we published that one week before the California National Guard got federalized. So by accident, we managed to time it kind of dead on. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, ⁓ well. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: You know, and you know, everything since then just keeps, know, illegal orders continues to be one of the themes of everything that's happened. And as you were talking about, especially on the domestic front, the hotline started getting tons of calls. ⁓ Many people just saying, I saw this number, are you all real? But a lot of people saying, I'm in the California Guard. This isn't what I joined up for. or I'm in the New Jersey Guard and I'm worried we're next or, know, that, you know, if I'm ordered to go and do these things, what are my options? And again, because it's non-directive, I mean, we absolutely give the information about, yes, if it is a lawful order, you are required to follow the lawful order, but if you're in the Guard and... they're calling you up, know, they're, you know, here are five or 10 different ways that different regulations might give you a way that you could avoid getting sent. Look, you have jury duty or your wife is pregnant or, you know, it's, and we're never, you know, obviously we're never saying why did the military, but you know, we absolutely are going to provide information and options, but the illegal orders just keep coming. I mean, you know, the example that everybody was talking about from last fall of we keep blowing up these boats in the Caribbean and the South Pacific. And that in and of itself is almost certainly a crime. But then the at least one situation we know of where they fired on the people hanging onto the remains of the boat. There is a book called The Rules of War that the military is supposed to follow. Among the different types of people that that book defines is literally a specific class of people called the shipwrecked. And it says among the things you're not allowed to do to people who are shipwrecked is shoot them. And, you know, among the definition of who qualifies as being shipwrecked is people hanging onto the bits of the boat that you just blew up. So, I mean, you know, a lot of the legal orders is messy and confusing, but you're not allowed to do the thing that we put in the book that says this is the thing you're not allowed to do, is about as straightforward as you can get. And again, I mean, you we have laws and we have federal presidential orders that say you're not allowed to kill the leaders of other countries. yet that seems to be what we did a week ago. I think they're going to try to spin it as that was actually an Israeli missile, not a... Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: U.S. missile, but that's a distinction without a difference. But yeah, it's going to keep being this. It's going to be this day after day drip until something just tips it over. I don't know what it is. I keep using Kent State as the example because it's one that everybody knows and understands. I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's not that. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right, right. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Somebody's gonna do something stupid somewhere because human beings that's what we do. That's what scares me. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It is. It does. It does feel like just the energy. You talked about being woo woo earlier and just last Saturday, like something was different. And even my my dog felt like I was like this, we're heading into something and I don't know. I don't know. And really, I just just know who your allies are. Whatever that looks like. Just we need to know who our allies are. And ⁓ You talk about how you've been supporting them, you help them with the paperwork, you're not pressuring them, right? This is all just folks coming to you. ⁓ with, and so for folks who may or may not be familiar with the military, officers can resign or honorably discharge a little bit differently than what enlisted folks can. ⁓ And from what I understand, you're helping the enlisted folks with conscience and objecting. then... ⁓ like officers, don't need Quaker House for Consciousness and Objection, but they do come to you for moral injury. I know everyone's coming to you for moral injury, but are officers using you to leave for Consciousness and Objection, or what does that look like? Okay. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: It has, yeah, absolutely it has happened. ⁓ Officers can resign their commission once they have fulfilled their basic contract, just like enlisted. So you can't go to the point, spend four years, get your engineer's degree and then say, right, I'm out. Well, it's the military. They're going to want their piece of flesh. I'm willing to use that idiom for them. ⁓ Yeah, anyone can claim status as a conscience objector. I mean, it's not easy. The legal definition is an objection to all wars and all forms. So it can't be, yes, I would have served in World War II, but I wouldn't serve in Vietnam. That's not conscience objection. It's, nope. ⁓ You give me a gun and tell me to be in the Army, I'm not doing it. ⁓ And different, in history, different people have, again, very, very much like the individual discernment we keep talking about, different people have found different answers to how to express that conscience objection. Many, many Quakers went to jail during World War II. And many of them had experiments done on them, not wildly different from some of the ones that were done in Germany. Many others. ⁓ shows to do a work service of some type in the United States that didn't involve wearing uniform. ⁓ There is one person in the history of the United States who, as a conscience objector, won the Medal of Honor. Dodds, I just lost his first name, I'll get it in a minute. There's an excellent movie with Andrew Garfield. ⁓ It's a war movie, so you gotta live with that. But... His conscious objection was that he wouldn't carry a weapon, but he was willing to be a medic and to participate in the military as a medic. And he saved many, many people at Iwo Jima doing that. Because it has to be every person's answer, every person's definition, decision as to what being a conscience objector means can be different. We absolutely talk to officers all the time. I mean, there are always more enlisted. And far too many of the people who are enlisted were 17 years old and got talked into joining the military by the incredibly persuasive recruiter of high school when... Their only other choice was to be flipping burgers at McDonald's because there were no good jobs in their town and they barely graduated high school. So yeah, we talked to more of them because that's a different experience. Hopefully, officers had a little bit more education, a little bit more understanding of what it was that they were volunteering for. But every person. every person can have a spiritual crisis, can have that point where they realize, I can't do this thing that I said I could do yesterday. And that's the whole point. I joked that Quaker 202 is the, can trust that your discernment today is what it is. And I probably agree with it in one way or another. But if you change your mind and you have a different discernment tomorrow, I have to still trust that that's what's the right answer for you. Even though I disagree with it. That can be hard stuff. know, that, like, well, yeah, we were good yesterday, but no, not so much today. ⁓ And that happens a lot when we're just past the four-year mark, when the Ukrainian war started. Quaker House got calls and emails from people saying some version of, so I thought I was a pacifist, but... You know, the, thought I was opposed to all wars, but I find myself rooting for the Ukrainians, or I don't feel so bad seeing the dead Russian bodies on TV, or... And, you know, on one level, you could sort of say, well, yeah, I guess you didn't really mean it that much when you thought you felt that way. But the important part was that they were saying... I thought I knew what the answer is, now I need help figuring out what my new answer is. Am I still a conscience objector and opposed to all wars and all forms? Or am I now willing to recognize the possibility of a just war theory or whatever? And that's the joy of this work, though, is we get to have those conversations and help people find what's right for them. So yeah, we get officers that have a real spell. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, well and- kind of what like have you seen an uptick this year in years yeah okay Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Oh yeah, huge. I mentioned when the National Guard got federalized, the GI rights hotline, which is the EZ metric, pre-January 2025, on average 250 calls a month, calls as any type of contact, not actual, just phone calls, were now running closer to 300 to 350. And we were in that week. after the first federalization, we were missing phone calls and people were leaving messages at the rate of one a minute. And I mean, one of the standard rules for phone marketing is when people leave, know, out of 10 people who call, one person will leave a message. So if we were getting a message once a minute, you can sort of do the math to figure out how many people were just reaching out. We weren't set up for that whole of call volume right away. So we spent all week. turning those calls as quickly as we possibly could, of course. And it has tapered back down, but it's still up. It's still a lot more people reaching out and asking the questions that you'd expect. What is an illegal order? Do I have to go when they activate my unit and send it from Mississippi to Louisiana or to Washington, D.C.? Leigh/@followtheleighder: I would imagine, I think that would be hard ⁓ for the guard to watch the past year of being sent into American cities. Well, tell me, so with someone who, actually, I'm looking at my handwriting and it's terrible folks, I'm sorry. ⁓ But that was kind of my question is, Quaker House, I know that you said it's English. It's definitely, I know much about it because of religious history, American colonial history, and women's history through Susan B. Anthony. And I'm not surprised to hear that when, you know, it's really hit the fan now that here's the Quaker House still holding strong, still doing the same thing. And it looks like they have adapted, particularly after Vietnam War. I think that's a huge Christ. ⁓ A huge part of why Christian nationalism went the way it did is because a lot of churches didn't like more theology, militant theology. A lot of them dialed back. They started sending their chaplains into prisons and hospitals instead of military. Southern Baptist and evangelical type fit the vacancies. ⁓ But what's going on now, it seems that there are religious leaders that are calling those shots for all of global humanity right now. Radical religious leaders on whether it's a radical Christian running the DOT, ⁓ Jewish or Islam, it just feels like, okay. How can you, how do you see Quaker House not only continuing to show up for military soldiers looking to leave all of this kind of instability, but what about for communities? What can they learn and how can communities begin to talk about what's going on right now? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Well, that's a really hard answer, of course. Otherwise, wouldn't have asked the question. I think in the end, everything always comes down to one person sitting with one person. And the beauty, the gift of the friend's tradition, the understanding that every person has that spark. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I'm sorry. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: is that no matter who the other person is, you have a way to relate to them. No matter how much you disagree with them, no matter how wrong they are, they still have something that is, if you want to use that type of language, is holy, is blessed, is divine. And after that, it is... your job as a person to find a way to make sure that they understand that you respect that part of them, that you can disagree with them completely and yet you still honor them, you still respect them. Growing up as a Quaker, know, partially it was the late 70s, partially I was 10, but the only message I got about the military was all soldiers bad. And obviously that's wrong. And I was 10. Yeah. As an adult, of course, yeah. Are there bad people in the military? Absolutely. Are most of them bad? No. Do I wildly disagree with many of the things that they choose to do? Yes. But there's still people and they're still basically good people. who have made different decisions for different reasons than my decision. I think what you get with Christian nationalism isn't Christians, isn't religion, it's power. It is just like any other group, organization that has figured out, here are the rhetorical tools that I can use to get power and get more power than I deserve or should have. You know, it's the Bible-something preacher, you know, politician who, know, who others, you know, the bad people so that the people, you know, that everyone will follow them because they're the leader who will go and defeat the bad people. You know, the poem, and I never get the words right. I really do need to memorize them someday about... They came for this group and then they came for that group and then when they came for me there was no one left. I keep joking that it's not supposed to be a checklist and yet we have groups now who clearly are using it as a, well, let's start by the top of the list and work down. It is always power. When you talk to people, when you talk about, you know, rape or power games inside prison systems, inside the military. It isn't homosexuality that's causing those situations. It's power relationships. It's, I have no control over any part of my life, or I feel I have no control over any part of my life. So I am going to find a thing that will make me feel better. make me feel like I belong, like I have some value. And unfortunately, it's too easy for human beings to do that by making somebody else lesser. Whether it's people of color, whether it's people of a different religion, whether it's people of a sexual gender identity or whatever. always is. The only way I can find to make myself feel better is by making myself think that you are lesser. And the only way to defeat that is to not give that person the opportunity to make you lesser. We all learned in elementary school that the way to defeat a bully is to not give them the satisfaction. And it's kind the same thing. If somebody's trying to bully you about religion, just love them regardless of what they're trying to other you as being. And if they don't have anything to make you less than, then they're going to move on. They're not going to win. It's a lot easier to say that than to do it. I am fully aware. But I don't know a better answer to that. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That's I mean. No, I mean that's And thank you because it's just, ⁓ it's a tough time. you you've just shared on how you've gotten an uptick in calls and uptick in ⁓ both enlisted and officers leaving. I know high rank, I know we've seen a lot of high ranks being dismissed. ⁓ That's another concern. And while we're glad to see that there is a strategy and exit path for those who seek to to leave the military, is that shouldn't we be concerned? I mean, that kind of sounds like for someone who knows, to me, I thought immediately of the Wehrmacht forces how and leading into Nazi jet, people started to leave until they couldn't. ⁓ can you you share a little bit on that? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: I don't know. Absolutely. I mean, when I talked in Great Falls, am fairly positive that I commented on that to me, the current leadership of the military is overtly trying to return the military to what they think it once was of an all white, all male, all Christian. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Not the Wehrmacht forces, that's okay. But yeah, mean, do you share those concerns too? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: force. And of course it was never any of those things. The first person who was killed during the American Revolution was a person of color. Now I'm going to get a bunch of letters from people telling me I'm wrong about that, but that's what they told me in elementary school. ⁓ It's people wanting to get power and to keep power by feeling that they are better than everyone else. We just have made the mistake of letting those people get actual power. I said before, I grew up in around DC. I grew up with people whose kids whose parents were military, were State Department, were intelligence community, were any of them hundreds of other agencies. My dad worked for the Social Security Administration. All of those people were good people who wanted to make their world better and had decided that being part of the federal government was the way to make the world If you're going to participate in the government, that's what you should be trying to do. Not trying to make it better for white people, for white men, for white Christian men. You should be trying to make it better for everybody. And very few people find that their life is better when you kill them. Very few people find that their life is better when you fire them and take away all of their benefits and deny them healthcare or... whatever else they need to be able to live their life. I'm not sure that actually gave you an answer, but I'm not sure I have an answer to your question. When I have one, then I'll run for president. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No, it's okay. It's just, it's going. No, well, and what I'm hearing essentially is morale is low and because of it's just nothing about it is grounded in truth. Like in terms of light, like you want to it's Christian, but it's it is certainly not anything that I recognize or they're claiming Christian using Christian symbols, but ⁓ The entire affair, I to have, I mean, as I mentioned, like, over the weekend, military commanders talked about how this is Armageddon and biblically sanctioned, and no one in this administration said, no, it's not. Like, and it's just, it's just a time where folks that maybe wanted to serve the military didn't have any other options and. are now looking like I, and the economy too. And that's the other thing that folks, like the economy is just a tough time and a lot of folks can't leave either because the benefits killed me and whatever. So it's just gonna be messy for next while. And I really wanted to make sure that folks knew about you Sarah. And I just said, sir, we just went through like no title, sorry. But I wanna make sure. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: I use sir and ma'am all the time because to me that is just respectful without any recognition. I mean I call five-year-olds sir so I figure as long as I use it on everybody equally what I get in trouble with is my kids fuss me about is assuming that sir and ma'am is the appropriate form and I haven't figured out what the the non-gendered one is but you know hey you and y'all doesn't work real well those are rude but Leigh/@followtheleighder: Okay. Hey you. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: I want to go back one step and I know we need to end soon, but every hero movie, every Western, the third reel, halfway through the third reel, the hero is at their lowest point. Everything looks darkest. whether it's then you have the scene where Captain Marvel stands back up after she's been hit and knocked down in the baseball game or the... you know, the gunslinger in the Western, you know, returns to town and outdraws the bad guy, whatever it is, there is always hope. There is always going to be tomorrow. And as long as there is a tomorrow, there's always hope that you can find a way to make it better. And that, especially when morale is low, you gotta hang on to the hope. You gotta have faith in the hope. That's what I do. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Wayne, as we wrap up, how can folks who are interested in the Quaker house and learning more, how can they find out more about the community? Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: Okay, we're real hard to find. It's QuakerHouse.org. The hard part for most people is how to spell Quaker. That's Q-U-A-K-E-R or go in your kitchen cabinet and look at the oatmeal box. Okay, that was supposed to get a laugh, but all right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No, no, it's funny. I'm just thinking like that's exactly like, yeah. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: I have told people to do that and they've gone, actually, that's a pretty good idea. I mentioned the hotline. Anyone in uniform, anyone who has a family member in uniform, 877-447-4487, girightshotline.org. I've got the two people who worked for me have been doing this for 25 years. Other people have been doing it for 50 years. These are the pros. There is no one else. I keep checking. We're it. But if you need help with whatever part of your military participation, that's the number. That's why we created it, to have one point, one number, one website to go to. Quaker House, we're here in Fayetteville, but we're everywhere. Anyone, anywhere that needs help. ⁓ Not just about everything we've talked about. helping high school kids figure out what to do about draft registration, anything. Reach out, we're hard not to find. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely, Wayne, you have been such a terrific guest. Thank you so much for educating us and welcoming us into your world. It was really enlightening. Thank you. Wayne Finegar, Quaker House: My pleasure, thank you. This has been fun. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Folks, what did you think? Leave it in the comments. Make sure you like, follow, subscribe, share. You know the drill. Otherwise, this has been another episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Leigh Larson. See ya.