Yearly Archives ⇒ 2018

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​.​h​tml

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​.​h​tml

Quakers minute on the child camps

June 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

San Anto­nio Quak­ers’ minute on child separations

Friends Meet­ing of San Anto­nio finds the pol­i­cy of the present admin­is­tra­tion of sep­a­rat­ing chil­dren from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der to be shame­ful and con­trary to Amer­i­can val­ues. Fur­ther, using the Gospel to claim that “God has ordained” such actions is appalling to us as a peo­ple of faith.

A few years ago Friends Jour­nal ran an arti­cle on the bor­der human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, co-written by one of San Anto­nio’s clerks, so we’ve added this week­end’s state­ment to the arti­cle for context.


Convergence

Convergence 

UPDATE June 2018: “In response to the con­tin­u­ing admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy of sep­a­rat­ing asylum-seeking par­ents from their chil­dren, as…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Mafias and chaos

June 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I like this inter­view on the Ital­ian mafia by Isaac Chotin­er in Slate, “The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been.”

It seems that this per­pet­u­al cyn­i­cism may be the great­est threat of our era. Is the child of irony? The grand­child of gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? Maybe the cause does­n’t mat­ter as much as the effect.

The mob thrives on chaos. It likes chaos. It likes to be the alter­na­tive author­i­ty that you go to because you can’t get any­thing done through the legit­i­mate state. For that very rea­son, I think there’s no doubt that it pro­motes that chaos. It likes civic dis­trust. It likes cyn­i­cism. It can prof­it from that. I think the great tragedy of Italy is that, to a large extent, it’s kind of succeeded.

I think that if we want­ed to con­struct a Quak­er cri­tique of the cur­rent Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment – and the type of cor­po­ra­tized cor­rup­tion we see in Rus­sia and the pet­rostates, it would best start with the polit­i­cal cul­ture that deny basic facts, gaslight cit­i­zens with ever-changing ratio­nales, and cre­at­ing chaos that can let finan­cial huck­sters reap bil­lions. These are not gov­ern­ments based on integri­ty and fair play­ing fields.


The Mafia Is More Powerful Than It’s Ever Been

The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been 

If you think of vio­lent, influ­en­tial orga­nized crime in Italy as a thing of the past, think again.

Slate Magazine Slate Magazine 

Reddit AMA on American Revolutionary-era persecutions

June 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on Red­dit, his­to­ri­an Jason Agli­et­ti hosts an Ask-Me-Anything about eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er his­to­ry in Mary­land. There’s some good dis­cus­sion about the ways the largely-neutral Quak­er pop­u­la­tion was treat­ed in var­i­ous colonies, espe­cial­ly Mary­land, which is Agli­et­ti’s focus.

“The Friends They Loathed” was defend­ed in April 2018 and exam­ined a chap­ter of Mary­land his­to­ry that had nev­er been explored in detail before — the reli­gious per­se­cu­tion against Quak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Despite being a his­to­ri­an of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, I hold no reli­gious beliefs.

[delet­ed by user]
by inQuak­ers

Syncretism and dilution

June 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton looks at the effects of syn­cretism, dilu­tion, and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion on the Quak­er movement.

At first blush, such a process might be cel­e­brat­ed as a process of enrich­ment: Quak­erism ver­sion 1 turns into Quak­erism v2, now new and bet­ter because it has bells or out­ward sacra­ments or what-have-you. But note that this kind of change is not just a mat­ter of sim­ple addi­tion, because ele­ments drawn from var­i­ous oth­er tra­di­tions are them­selves embed­ded deeply in some cul­ture, and so they are clothed round with mean­ings and nuances that are implic­it­ly adopt­ed along with the idea or prac­tice that has been explic­it­ly imported.

Love, judg­ment, and the “inner crit­ic”, pt. 2b: Syn­cretism, dilu­tion, and the draw­backs of cul­tur­al appropriation

Group decision making and moral disengagement in the context of yearly meeting schisms

June 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Group deci­sion mak­ing and moral dis­en­gage­ment in the con­text of year­ly meet­ing schisms

This is an aspect of group dis­cern­ment and con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing rarely dis­cussed among Quak­ers. Like­ly this is because the pre­sump­tion is that in wor­ship­ful busi­ness meet­ings the pre­sump­tion is that deci­sion mak­ing is Spirit-led. It is a noble ide­al and one that I have seen in action. And yet, it is also a dynam­ic that can be sub­ject to abuse and as such ought to prompt some self-examination and pos­si­bly some inten­tion­al safe­guards into meet­ing processes. 

http://​quak​er​lib​er​tar​i​ans​.wee​bly​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​g​r​o​u​p​-​d​e​c​i​s​i​o​n​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​m​o​r​a​l​-​d​i​s​e​n​g​a​g​e​m​e​n​t​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​n​t​e​x​t​-​o​f​-​y​e​a​r​l​y​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​s​c​h​i​sms