Anoth­er Quaker-related law­suit against immi­gra­tion enforce­ment in hous­es of wor­ship dropped today. 

Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Joins over Two Dozen Reli­gious Groups in New Immi­gra­tion Lawsuit 

FGC joined an inter­faith law­suit against the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, CBP, and ICE.

Friends Journal 

From Craig Barnett:

“Most Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties now have no children’s meet­ing, and this has come to seem nor­mal. Many peo­ple who have joined in the last cou­ple of decades have nev­er seen a child in a Meet­ing House, and take it for grant­ed that a Quak­er Meet­ing is only for retired people.”

I don’t know the sit­u­a­tion in the UK where Bar­nett lives but around me in the U.S. the cyn­i­cal answer would be that they’re at soc­cer prac­tice. All of the church­es I know have seen sharply declin­ing Sun­day School class­es in recent decades. 

Because nei­ther my wife’s church­es or my Quak­er meet­ings have pro­vid­ed good Sun­day Schools, our fam­i­ly has long jug­gled ser­vices to be able to go else­where to pro­vide our kids with a Sun­day School class and friends. For the past num­ber of years it’s been with a very friend­ly Mora­vian church over in the next town. We’ve been so involved that we think of them as our oth­er church fam­i­ly and many of the mem­bers have become friends. We’ve known them through years, from births to mar­riage break-ups to kids grad­u­at­ing and going off to col­lege. Just ear­li­er this week I took three of our kids to their bowl­ing out­ing. It’s real­ly com­mu­ni­ty and some­thing I don’t see hap­pen­ing in any near­by Friends meeting. 

But even at this church, with a strong, long­stand­ing pro­gram going back over 100 years, it’s not hard to notice class­es get­ting just a bit small­er every year and Sun­day school teach­ers get­ting a lit­tle more thinned out. Even the chil­dren of core mem­bers will miss Sun­day morn­ing class­es for weeks at a time because of Sun­day morn­ing sports. 

My wife’s new Ortho­dox church has a Sun­day school, which is nice, but it does­n’t seem to be that large. I’m glad the kids have it though.

I’d like to build up a chil­dren’s pro­gram at the small Friends meet­ing that we’re rebuild­ing but I must admit to being unsure about what’s real­is­ti­cal­ly even pos­si­ble. This is a prob­lem far greater

Nur­tur­ing the seed 

Young peo­ple need multi-generational community

quak​er​re​new​al​.sub​stack​.com

I had a nice inter­view with Wis­con­sin Friend Kat Grif­fith. She likes, even loves, going door-to-door in her “pur­ple” dis­trict and talk­ing pol­i­tics to strangers. She’s a won­der­ful sto­ry­teller too and it was hard not to laugh as she talked about some of these adven­tures (spoil­er: she’s braver than I am!). In a time of hyper-partisanship, it’s a good reminder to build our lives around curios­i­ty and communication. 

Kat Grif­fith: Build­ing Rela­tion­ships Across Pol­i­tics — Friends Journal 

Kat Grif­fith’s arti­cle, “Rhap­sody in Pur­ple,” appears in the Febu­rary 2025 issue of Friends Journal.

Friends Journal 

I wrote up a pre­sen­ta­tion that Sarah Clarke and Bo Mén­dez gave about their work with the Quak­er Unit­ed Nations Office.

Quak­ers Learn about Work at the Unit­ed Nations — Crop­well Quakers 

On Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 26, a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Crop­well Friends Meet­ing­house in Marl­ton, N.J., attract­ed near­ly two dozen…

Crop­well Quakers 

“I think Quak­er busi­ness meet­ings have anoth­er pur­pose: they give us prac­tice in deci­sion mak­ing, and we build trust in one anoth­er. When some­thing extra­or­di­nary comes up that has to be dealt with imme­di­ate­ly, we kick into action using the mus­cle mem­o­ry from all of those Sun­day after­noons spent talk­ing about the finances. Because we’re a reli­gious body that has tak­en the time to know one anoth­er, we can antic­i­pate con­cerns and move sur­pris­ing­ly quickly.”

Pre­pared for This 

How do Quak­ers make swift, faith­ful deci­sions in times of cri­sis? Mar­tin Kel­ley explains the role of trust,…

Friends Journal 

Philadelphia-area Friend Tom Gates has start­ed a blog. Tom’s a very ground­ed and thought­ful Friend and I’m glad to know we’ll be see­ing more of his writings.

Quak­ers and the End of Scape­goat­ing | Tom Gates | Substack 

Part explo­ration of Rene Girard’s ground­break­ing ‘mimet­ic the­o­ry,’ part Bible com­men­tary, and part dia­logue with ear­ly and contemporary…

tgates​.sub​stack​.com

Obvi­ous­ly the biggest Quak­er news this week is a num­ber of Quak­er bod­ies (includ­ing my own Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing) suing the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty over pol­i­cy changes that allow immi­gra­tion agents to go into house of wor­ship. The suit is being wide­ly report­ed in main­stream media.

Quak­ers Sue DHS over Immi­gra­tion Enforce­ment and Reli­gious Free­dom [Updat­ed] — Friends Journal 

Friends’ his­toric expe­ri­ence of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion moti­vat­ed mod­ern Quak­ers to join the lawsuit.

Friends Journal