On Mythology, the Lamb's War, and Friends in the Digital Age
by Kirby Urner
Kirby Urner came to Quakerism by way of mathematics and the conviction that the myths we inhabit shape how we think and act. This essay, posted to soc.religion.quaker from Portland, Oregon in March 2006, proposes "Qv2" — Quakers, Version 2.0. The core argument: following Karen Armstrong's thesis that modernity erred by collapsing mythological truth into literal claims, Friends should not abandon mythology but rehabilitate it — especially James Nayler's Lamb's War, the teaching that Friends are engaged in a genuine spiritual struggle against forces of misanthropy and self-destruction, fought with psychological rather than physical weapons.
Urner was not yet a formal member of North Pacific Yearly Meeting. He considered this an advantage: freedom to pioneer. Few posts in the soc.religion.quaker archive capture the early-internet-era progressive Quaker intellectual sensibility as vividly as this one.
Qv2 means Quakers, Version 2.0 — off the bat controversial as of course Quakerism has gone through any number of morphs and forks, starting from a persecuted minority in England, rising to the tops of bank towers and chocolate companies, and having a hand in the design of USA OS v 1.0 in the form of Pennsylvania, working closely with Native American tribal councils and more.
One reason I put some distance between myself and the more established NPYM Friends over this concept of "membership" is I wanted to have my own Quaker sandbox in which to try out some new concepts. Those feeling leery about my leadings will have an easier time disassociating from my work as, after all, "he's not really a member." I'm free to pioneer, still using touchstones and reality checks such as other Friends provide.
So what's in my sandbox? New mythology, mainly.
I've bought into Karen Armstrong's thesis in Battle for God that a lot of psychic imbalance, in the west especially, stems from trying to stuff all thinking through a literalist pipeline, with all semi-metaphorical verities pushed to the side as "mere kid stuff" of the Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy variety. Thus even latter-day religionists try to perpetuate their dogmas on the plane of literal truth, in some misbegotten battle against science, which is likewise overly mired in what passes for literal on any given day.
I was predisposed to accept Karen's thesis because of my long-standing admiration for Norman O. Brown's Love's Body. He targets what he calls Protestant Literalism as a manifestation of the same imbalance. The rush to literalize everything is an ego project, because metaphorical truths tend to filter up through the cracks, oracle-style, from the darkness of the unconscious — some supra-egoic mind, perhaps closer to God. This threatens the ego, which wants to be taken as "the authority" when it comes to Truth. Deeper truths, coming from some transcendent Full Word or Self, are rightly perceived as undermining by control-freak egos. Such egos need more training in the art of letting go.
So our Men's Retreat was focused on some early Quaker mythology about the Lamb's War. James Nayler was a primary expositor of this dharma, and many Friends became uncomfortable with where he was going in his Quaker sandbox. He ended up in prison, with his tongue bored through, and a giant B for Blasphemer branded on his forehead. He patched it up with George Fox, we're told, but still, Nayler is often held up as an example of what fanaticism will do to a person, and therefore his Lamb's War mythos often gets relegated to mere footnote status among Friends. Not so in Qv2.
Three Invisible Bumper Stickers
This won't be the post wherein I spell out in great detail what I'm up to, but let's start with three "invisible bumper stickers." By "invisible" I mean I don't need to see them published and literally stuck on the bumpers of motor vehicles. Some might do that, but the teachings merely require a "bumper sticker format" — we're talking about sharing memes here.
1. Quakers play Quake.
A reference to a violent first-person videogame wherein a human hero defends humanity against a devil race, alien predators with no use for humans at all. The teaching here is we do not eschew metaphorical violence, because our egos are strong enough to handle it in its proper context. Like Nayler, we're not advocating burning flesh or harming real physical bodies — would only that Nayler's opponents in the debate had agreed to these same rules.
2. Quakers: Unarmed, and Dangerous.
A problem with Quakers of the liberal persuasion, that I have, is they're too easy to write off as namby-pamby, well-meaning folk. Not scary enough. Unlike Masons, liberal Friends have no spooky symbols or secret handshakes to speak of. Part of the Qv2 media campaign will be to tune in some unsettling imagery that's actually somewhat edgy. The point is not to psych people into killing fellow humans — that's what the devil wants us to do — but to counter Satan in a language Satan well understands. Hellish imagery is not entirely out of bounds. We're into using psychology; and inward weapons, by their very nature, have an edge to them.
3. Quakers: We've Done Our Homework.
Here, we're celebrating the stereotype — with some truth in it — that Quakers have a higher than average ability to hold cerebral jobs, often in education, science, and engineering. There's resonance with the Royal Society, which in today's lingo translates into "think tank" iconography. Qv2 is not without its corporate, button-down, think-tanky ambience. However, part of the mythos is that those corrosive language games so popular in political capital cities are not the only games in town. Friends dispersed around the world, like the other peace churches — Mennonites, Church of the Brethren — are free to engage in diplomacy and outreach without feeling beholden to bureaucracies of any one nation.
A Note on Psychological Warfare
I shared with the men at our retreat my sense that we have plenty to learn from psy warriors in other traditions and walks of life — it relates to the "done our homework" meme.
I shared examples from the work of Ed Lansdale. In one true story, Lansdale is hearing a lot of talk about killing Castro coming from the White House, and proposes staging the Second Coming instead — a laser light show conducted from the deck of some stealth cruiser off Cuba's coast. Castro's invisible army would be struck with shock and awe and retreat to its Catholic roots, forsaking Communism. Of course Lansdale's idea wasn't taken too seriously by the Kennedy brothers.
In the second true story, Lansdale is ushered into JFK's office. The question on the table was whether Lansdale might want to serve his country by taking Diem out. Lansdale said no — which is what got him in such trouble with McNamara in the car back to the Pentagon. McNamara, hissing mad, couldn't imagine how a lower-ranking general like Lansdale could say "no" to a sitting president.
So what's the teaching here? That psychological warfare is sometimes practiced as an alternative to violence by military professionals, not just Quakers. Given how many Quakers have military experience — our group had several veterans, as well as conscientious objectors — it makes sense that we'd explore some commonalities, even as we differ on so many fronts. The Pentagon is willing to go for its literal guns if the more inward approach falters, whereas Quakers revamp and try yet another inward approach, perhaps dying in the process.
The Lamb's War
The old idea, effectively encoded in Milton's Paradise Lost, is that the devils — being fallen angels — are consumed with jealousy over God's new fascination with humans, pathetic, ignorant ape-like bipeds on planet earth clearly unworthy of God's love and affection. Whereas Jesus provided proof positive of our worthiness, lingering misanthropy — self-hatred on the part of humans — remains an important tool in the devil's toolkit.
If we wipe ourselves out, in one way or another, it'll be because we inwardly fear and loathe ourselves that much. We'll have been overcome by those who would delight in our failure, in bringing a whimpering end to the human scenario aboard Spaceship Earth. These projected fallen angels fight with inward psy-weapons that are deadly: hubris, vanity, self-hatred. But so are ours effective — our birthright as humans.
Per my virtual Quakerism — Qv2 — and per many allied mythologies, our job is to prove worthy of God's love and to glorify God, to show that our design is indeed miraculous and intelligent, well adapted to our planetary context. Yes, it's been an uphill battle, gaining these higher levels of intelligence, age by age, civilization by civilization, very costly. But after lo these many millions of years, we're not about to give up all of a sudden, right when we're starting to really get a handle on God's laws — our science is finally becoming strong enough, even equal to the tasks at hand, such as feeding the hungry and providing shelter to all.
We aim to be stars, true celebrities, against the backdrop of eternity — friends of the angels, not rivals. And we're able to love them more because we no longer feel so threatened by their awesomely superior intelligence. In the end, we aim to win even the devils over — understanding that, in the meantime, they prefer to fight us, just to see what we're made of.
True, we're not at the top of the totem pole on the scale of intelligent life forms, but we're definitely a planet-savvy species to be reckoned with, handiwork of high worth. And we plan to stick around for millennia to come.
And now, Qv2.
Colophon
Posted by Kirby Urner ([email protected]), Portland, Oregon, to soc.religion.quaker, 13 March 2006. A proposal for a reimagined Quaker mythology for the digital age — rehabilitating James Nayler's Lamb's War and refusing the choice between literal religiosity and abandoned myth.
References: Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (2000); Norman O. Brown, Love's Body (1966); Edward Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars (1972); Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team (1973).
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
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