Quakers Are Hilarious

That’s the title of a book of jokes by Chuck Fager. While the jokes are all ostensibly about Quakers, many of them are generic. Often the word “Quaker” could easily be replaced by “Baptist,” “Catholic,” or some non-religious identifier. Still, most of the humor does depend upon a specifically Quaker context.

The book is not really “hilarious,” however. The humor is very gentle, usually ironic or satiric. If you want belly laughs, this is not the book for you. In fact, I originally intended to make this a negative review; but, as I re-read the book after initially skimming the material, I found myself rather enjoying it.  

The text is divided into nine chapters as follows:
Meeting for Worship, Business, and Other Friendly Amusement
Quaker History
Commerce, Politics, and Suchlike Worldly Distractions
Inner Faith and Interfaith
Testimonies, Old and New, Real, and Imaginary
Quaker Children, and Other Peculiar People
A Friends’ Miscellany Including Some Verse
Golden Oldies—The Top 30 (Or So) Classic Quaker Chuckles
Quakers, Sex, and Marriage: The Naked Truth?
 
Here are two entries somewhat representative of the humor:
Hast thee heard about the new Twelve-Step group for Friends who talk too   much and too often in Meeting for worship? It’s called On-Anon. And on. And on.
 
(A Wilburite Friend argued) …with a Quaker pastor over the merits of programmed versus unprogrammed worship, but to no avail. When both had talked themselves out, the Wilburite concluded in a tolerant tone, “Well, Friend, I guess we are both trying to worship the Lord—thee in thy way, and I in His.”

The book costs $9.95 in paperback or $4.99 at Amazon’s Kindle bookstore.
The “Look Inside” feature at the link above contains almost 15% of the whole
and should be the deciding factor as to whether one wants to buy the other 85%.  
                             
—Richard Russell