Stephen G. Cary Memorial Lecture 2024: Light Within and Light Without ~ The Personal and Political in the Formation of a Palestinian-American Quaker Identity

Quakerism thrives as a practice that accentuates the individual spiritual experience and the communal life of the monthly meeting. Ongoing revelation, the Light within all, personal integrity, communal worship, and consensus decision-making are hallmarks of this tradition. As a lifelong Quaker, Steve Tamari’s spiritual formation developed along these lines in a Quaker household and in a Quaker school.

As a Palestinian-American and as a historian, history and politics have been just as formative for him. American sociologist C. Wright Mills put it this way: “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” Beyond the individual and the life of the meeting are worlds that have been devastated by transformations of the 20th and 21st centuries including capitalism, European colonialism, and American imperialism. The trauma of Palestinian dispossession – a product of these global developments – has weighed upon Steve’s family for a century. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza in October 2023, that weight has been unbearable.

This talk examines intersections and contradictions within a faith tradition that strives to balance individual spiritual experience with political activism at a time when this country, including Quaker communities, is divided on how to respond to Israel’s war on Palestinians.

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Leader

Steve Tamari is Emeritus Professor of Middle East and Islamic History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. His parents met at Pendle Hill where he was born, and which remained the family’s stateside address for over three decades of living overseas. Four years of living, studying, and working at Scattergood Friends School in West Branch, Iowa shaped him as a Quaker more than any of the many Quaker meetings, schools, and service organizations he has attended or been involved with over the years.

The Stephen G. Cary Memorial Lecture was endowed by Norval and Ann Reece and established in 2004 in concert with Pendle Hill’s publication of Steve Cary’s memoir, The Intrepid Quaker: One Man’s Quest for Peace.