Radical Quaker Benjamin Lay

October 10, 2024

I don’t share every new Quak­er­S­peak video (you can sub­scribe on the web­site or direct­ly on its YouTube chan­nel). But this new one on Quak­er rabble-rouser and abo­li­tion­ist Ben­jamin Lay is par­tic­u­lar­ly well-done. Its base is an inter­view with Mar­cus Redik­er, the his­to­ri­an who has done more than any­one to pop­u­lar­ize the seventeenth-century Friend. But it also splices in cool ani­ma­tions and inter­views with some mod­ern Friends. It came out real­ly well. Con­grats to Christo­pher Cuthrell.

And Who Are Our Friends?

October 4, 2024

The Octo­ber Friends Jour­nal is out. A lit­tle teas­er from my open­ing col­umn:

Are we all just bad Quak­ers? I don’t think so. I had so many con­ver­sa­tions with Friends over the years in which they judged them­selves against semi-mythical “real Quak­ers.” I sus­pect we often find our great­est Quak­er authen­tic­i­ty in the messi­ness that fol­lows faith­ful­ness. Some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing Friends in the past, fig­ures such as Ben­jamin Lay and Pub­lic Uni­ver­sal Friend, were so far ahead of their time that they couldn’t fit into the Quak­er main­stream of their day.

The Good Samar­i­tan who stopped to help a wound­ed trav­el­er was prob­a­bly made late for what­ev­er appoint­ment he was rush­ing to. He might have lost busi­ness with his detour; he cer­tain­ly lost mon­ey on the sup­plies he used to treat the wounds and on the mon­ey he gave the innkeep­er. But he was clear-sighted enough to know that the inward com­mand­ment to help his neigh­bor was more impor­tant than any of these world­ly concerns.

Making the Quaker World Accessible

October 3, 2024

I’m excit­ed to see that The Quak­er World is final­ly avail­able as a paper­back at a more afford­able $50. Pub­lished in 2022, this is a rich tome put togeth­er by my friends (and fre­quent Friends Jour­nal col­lab­o­ra­tors) Wess Daniels and Rhi­an­non Grant. Clock­ing in at over 500 pages, there are a lot of great con­trib­u­tors. I’ve been excit­ed about it even though I’ve not been able to read it — the hard­cov­er was $250. Ear­li­er this year I whined about the exor­bi­tant cost of the new Quak­er his­to­ries and am glad that some com­bi­na­tion of prod­ding and eco­nom­ic forces has made this one more acces­si­ble. You can read Windy Cool­er’s FJ review of The Quak­er World and order it from the pub­lish­er.

Seen

October 3, 2024

The Friends meet­ing in San­ta Rosa has appar­ent­ly been let­ting unhoused peo­ple use its park­ing lot overnight as part of a “Safe Hous­ing Pro­gram.” Appar­ent­ly that’s end­ing, at least tem­porar­i­ly, and you might not be sur­prised at why: the meet­ing’s insur­ance com­pa­ny has threat­ened to can­cel cov­er­age if the meet­ing does­n’t stop. What a crock of horse poop but then I assume I’m preach­ing to the choir. All reports are that Cal­i­for­nia has some of the worst hous­ing short­ages around and while long-term solu­tions are need­ed, peo­ple right here right now need a place to park a car and get some sleep. An update is that some “Good Samar­i­tans” are putting some of new­ly (re)displaced peo­ple up; yes, that’s what neigh­bor­li­ness is. Also, kudos where due: it was a plea­sure work­ing with Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s insur­ance com­pa­ny and its var­i­ous sub­con­trac­tors this sum­mer in get­ting help for Crop­well Meet­ing’s porch roof, which had a big chunk tak­en out (we assume by some FedEx or Ama­zon deliv­ery van). 

Geek alert: I’ve been using the note­tak­ing app Ever­note for 15 years, amass­ing over 18,000 notes. There was such a long peri­od in which the app was going down­hill. The chase for ven­ture cap­i­tal mon­ey led it to try imple­ment­ing all sorts of trendy non­sense; for exam­ple, when Slack explod­ed, the Ever­note peo­ple tried to build a half-assed clone inside their app. It was very depress­ing when an Ital­ian ven­ture cap­i­tal firm bought it and laid off the entire U.S. staff but a very sur­pris­ing thing has hap­pened. They invest­ed in rebuild­ing the back­ground source code (a huge task) and have been imple­ment­ing so many small-but-wonderful fea­tures (real-time col­lab­o­ra­tive edit­ing! col­lapsi­ble sub-menus! task man­age­ment that real­ly works!) that the app is fun to use again. The Verge’s David Pierce inter­viewed Ever­note’s Fed­eri­co Simion­a­to about The Great Ever­note Reboot. I like both these guys and it was a joy lis­ten­ing to them geek out about a favorite app hav­ing a sur­pris­ing renaissance.

Donald W McCormick: Relationships in Quaker Meeting

September 26, 2024

Last week I spoke with Friends Jour­nal author Don McCormick. Don’s been a pro­lif­ic writer for us in recent years. We talked of our expe­ri­ences of com­mu­ni­ty among mod­ern Friends, espe­cial­ly in dif­fer­ent types of meet­ings, as well as tech­niques for ori­ent­ing and wel­com­ing new­com­ers to Quak­er meetings.

Nancy Bieber loves her meeting

September 13, 2024

Nan­cy has an arti­cle in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal called “A Love Let­ter to My Meet­ing.” With a title like that, it could be over­ly sap­py but I found it ten­der and deep, a reflec­tion on her chang­ing roles and relationships.

In the video inter­view we talk about nav­i­gat­ing con­tro­ver­sies—a fight over car­pets in the past and strug­gling with wild­ly diver­gent atti­tudes around COVID poli­cies more recent­ly. I was most inter­est­ed in how she’s changed over the years. How do you go from a new­com­er still try­ing to under­stand Quak­er lin­go to a pil­lar of the meet­ing, the kind of per­son who steps in when some­thing needs to be han­dled (the short answer is that this hap­pens over time).

As an edi­tor I often trim away bullet-point “lis­ti­cles” in arti­cle. They often feel like they’re a rem­nant of the out­line the author used to con­struct the sto­ry. Noth­ing is lost if I select them a delete. But Nan­cy’s list at the end real­ly felt like the mes­sage I think many of us could take to heart when tem­pers run high:

  1. Stick around. It gets bet­ter, and you help make it happen.
  2. Love any­way, and for­give. It’s the only way.
  3. Nur­ture each oth­er ten­der­ly, and lis­ten to each oth­er. We are all car­ri­ers of Truth.
  4. Know that the Spir­it is present and will trans­form us as we are open.

Should We (How Should We) Grow the Religious Society of Friends?

September 6, 2024

From Johan Mau­r­er, a look at how we should think about growth and out­reach. One part that stood out to me:

There is noth­ing about this oblig­a­tion that requires me to exag­ger­ate Quak­ers’ virtues, or to con­ceal our defects. I cer­tain­ly don’t need to claim that no oth­er faith com­mu­ni­ties are equal­ly trust­wor­thy or equal­ly capa­ble of heal­ing and giv­ing hope.

In my expe­ri­ence, a lot of incom­ing seek­ers real­ly like it when we fess up to our past indis­cre­tions and cur­rent strug­gles. Per­haps they’ve come from some church that was over­ly con­fi­dent and unable to exam­ine its flaws and so like our trans­paren­cy. Nowa­days the influ­encer class all talk about “emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty” and I think part of that is appre­ci­at­ing our­selves for who we real­ly are in a healthy way.

Maybe because I’m think­ing about the upcom­ing Friends Jour­nal issue of “Spir­i­tu­al Opti­mism vs. Spir­i­tu­al Pes­simism” (there’s still ten days to write for it!) but I’m also think­ing about the tone with which we approach out­reach. In some cir­cles there’s a pan­ic that we some­how have to save Quak­erism. That begs the ques­tion of “what is Quakerism”?

Is Quak­erism a way of approach­ing our rela­tion­ship with the liv­ing Christ and shar­ing that good news as we walk cheer­ful­ly over the world? Is it build­ing com­mu­ni­ties that express our com­mit­ment to love of God and love of neigh­bor? If so, then noth­ing is ever going to destroy it. The whole point of the orig­i­nal Quak­er move­ment is that it didn’t need a large infra­struc­ture: no priests or pas­tors, no staff, no tithing. An emp­ty barn and a small room of believ­ers was enough. Here’s my naive side ris­ing up: if we are faith­ful God, will con­tin­ue to give us guid­ance and blessings.

When I dropped in for a day of the FGC Gath­er­ing this sum­mer, I attend­ed a work­shop led by the most excel­lent Chiyo Mori­uchi, titled “Let­ting our Light Shine: Gov­er­nance & Friends.” The work­shop wrote its own epis­tle, which FGC pub­lished on their web­site today with the title “A Call to Action.” Here’s part of its message:

Imme­di­ate action is required to address the fact of declin­ing and aging mem­ber­ship. We have too few peo­ple avail­able to do the “work,” and we are burn­ing out too many of those who are. We feel that address­ing the inad­e­quate com­mu­ni­ca­tion of who Quak­ers are is the most promis­ing path to solve this problem.

This is all true, but it’s true of our insti­tu­tions. It’s true of our infra­struc­ture. The doc­u­ment has two calls to action: the first is for Quak­er insti­tu­tions to do some self-reflection on what makes them Quak­er (sounds good to me!). The sec­ond is for Friends to hire out­side mar­ket­ing firms. I’ve seen big bud­gets poured into mar­ket­ing firms before and sigh at what a pro­pos­al like this would like­ly give us: gener­ic, feel-good copy that irons out all blem­ish­es. Any spir­i­tu­al lan­guage that might be deemed off-putting gets cut.  His­to­ry is dropped except for a few past heroes who are turned into car­toons.1

Decades of reli­gion sur­veys have found that peo­ple aren’t look­ing for bland and gener­ic. A lot of the fastest-growing denom­i­na­tions are opin­ion­at­ed and have high expec­ta­tions of incom­ing mem­bers. The new­com­ers I see walk­ing into my meet­ing seem to be search­ing for some­thing real, some­thing pal­pa­ble, as indeed I myself was when I walked into Abing­ton Meet­ing over three decades ago. We can be our­selves and share our blem­ish­es. We don’t need to put on an act.

And final­ly, some opti­mism: Quak­er mar­ket­ing is doing great. Seri­ous­ly. We’re more vis­i­ble and acces­si­ble than we’ve been in our entire his­to­ry. Friends Jour­nal is a part of that, with the mag­a­zine free with­out pay­wall and the Quak­er­s­peak inter­view series, Quak­ers Today pod­cast, and Quak​er​.org por­tal. But we’re just a piece of what’s hap­pen­ing. My friend Jon Watts’s Thee Quak­er pod­cast and the Dai­ly Quak­er email is super-visible. The Quak­ers sub-reddit and Dis­cord serv­er are very active. The slick Friends Library makes his­toric Quak­er writ­ings acces­si­ble by web, app, and audio (and the old-school Project Guten­berg, Chris­t­ian Clas­sics Ethe­r­i­al Library, Quak­er Her­itage Press are still around). It’s easy to find local meet­ings (FGC and FWCC have good resources, plus Google Maps does a great job). Any curi­ous per­son want­i­ng to know about Quak­ers can get up to speed in weeks. I know because I see these peo­ple walk­ing into my own Crop­well Meeting.

So I don’t think our insti­tu­tions nec­es­sar­i­ly need new mar­ket­ing so much as new vision­ing. What kinds of sup­port is need­ed for the new seek­ers and for local meet­ings? I think in some ways we need to step back and see with new eyes. What is it we want to market?