Yearly Archives ⇒ 2018

Gathered vs focused Meeting part 2

February 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith is back adding some nuance to his pars­ing of the dif­fer­ences between Quak­er wor­ship experiences:

If you’re swept up in a net, you’re off bal­ance; you don’t have the same cer­tain­ty about your­self and your sur­round­ings as you did before. Part of what it means to be gath­ered is that uncer­tain­ty, that trust in some­thing even if you don’t ful­ly under­stand it.

https://theanarchyoftheranters.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/the-difference-between-a-gathered-meeting-and-a-focused-meeting‑2/

Breath of the Ancestors

February 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

When I think of Friends in Africa, I gen­er­al­ly pic­ture the large East African year­ly meet­ings in Kenya and Ugan­da which trace their begin­nings to three evan­gel­i­cal Friends who arrived in Kenya in 1902 and set up a mis­sion in Kaimosi.

In this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal Paul Rick­etts pro­files a small­er Quak­er out­post on the Atlantic coast in Ghana. A group of Amer­i­cans trav­eled there last year as a del­e­ga­tion of the Fel­low­ship of Friends of African Descent.

Ghana was also the depar­ture point of mil­lions of enslaved Africans head­ed toward death and mis­ery in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. Paul takes us to infa­mous Elmi­na Cas­tle, where the ships were loaded with chained human car­go. I always enjoy sto­ries of Quak­er inter­vis­i­ta­tion but this one is espe­cial­ly poignant.


Breath of the Ancestors - Friends Journal

Breath of the Ances­tors — Friends Journal 

The Fel­low­ship of Friends of African Descent trav­els to Ghana’s Hill House Meeting.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Living by the Sword

February 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Blog­ger Mark Wut­ka looks at guns and mass shoot­ings in light of the gospels’ warn­ings about “liv­ing by the sword.”

What are oth­er things that we might hold in a fear­ful death grip that are spir­i­tu­al­ly killing us? Are there peo­ple, insti­tu­tions, ideas, phys­i­cal objects that we must have? Are there things that inter­rupt our love of God or of our neighbors?

The new traveling ministries

February 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Quak­ers are a bit infa­mous for our opaque acronyms but FWC­C’s is worth remem­ber­ing. The Friends World Com­mit­tee for Con­sul­ta­tion bridges togeth­er Friends across the­o­log­i­cal and geo­graph­ic distances.

Tonight I got to hear a pre­sen­ta­tion on the trav­el­ing min­istry corps host­ed by FWC­C’s Sec­tion of the Amer­i­c­as. I was phys­i­cal­ly in the audi­ence but you can watch too via the mag­ic of Pen­dle Hill con­fer­ence cen­ter’s livestream:

For more bite-sized videos, you can check out the minis­eries they spon­sored with Quak­er­S­peak.

Can Quakerism Survive?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Some­times I’m remiss at actu­al­ly shar­ing arti­cles I’ve worked on as part of my duties as Friends Jour­nal’s edi­tor. It’s espe­cial­ly iron­ic this week giv­en that one of the most talked-about recent Quak­er arti­cles comes from the Feb­ru­ary FJ issue.

Don McCormick­’s piece has a bold title: Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? He talks about thr decline that many Friends geoups have been expe­rien­ing and won­ders who it is that might have. vision for twenty-first cen­tu­ry Friends.

The arti­cle has gar­nered over eighty com­ments. The range and depth of that con­ver­sa­tion has been hum­bling as as edi­tor. But this is a good cross-section of visions of Quak­erism. An excerpt from McCormick:

Over the past 40 years, I have been part of and seen orga­ni­za­tions that had high ideals and did good work but were focused on inter­nal dynam­ics and paid lit­tle atten­tion to threats to their exis­tence. As a result, they went under. I wor­ry that our year­ly, quar­ter­ly, and month­ly meet­ings will also.

“Quakerism has ruined me for other faith experiences”

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Great tweet­storm by life­long Friend Susan­na Williams on why she left Quak­ers and why she remains so attached to Quakers:

Quak­erism has ruined me for oth­er faith experiences- I was empow­ered from an ear­ly age to have a direct & per­son­al rela­tion­ship with God, to give vocal min­istry (as I first did when I was 12), to dive into silent worship.

Where are the new Quak­er meet­ing plants? Where are the din­ner wor­ship groups? Where is the con­nec­tion with the Spir­it? Where is the space for Friends to encounter and share authen­tic faith journeys?

This reminds me of some of the themes I wrote about in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion (turn­ing fif­teen this year) and 2013’s Quak­erism Left Me by Bet­sy Blake. Should the kind of Friends com­mu­ni­ty Susan­na’s look­ing for real­ly be all that rare? Click on the link to read the 10-part story.


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Does our continued existence matter?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m always hap­py when Johan Mau­r­er wades into an online dis­cus­sion, as he can often gives a steady­ing long-term view of pan­ics. He’s jumped in with per­spec­tive on the viral arti­cle of the week, Don McCormick­’s Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? from the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal.

Johan reminds us that alarms about the future of Quak­erism has long been ring­ing and draws on Joshua Brown’s warn­ings about New York Year­ly Meet­ing from 30 years ago! Lest we chalk all this up an inces­sant alarmism, Johan gives some stats about that year­ly meet­ing. Uh-oh:

7,070 (in 1955)
5,124 (in 1985)
3,241 (in 2015)

But Johan goes beyond that to ask some ques­tions that we real­ly need to sit with. For exam­ple, he asks:

Giv­en that we are a micro­scop­ic per­cent­age of the world Chris­t­ian move­ment, do we have an inflat­ed sense of our own impor­tance? Or, to put it more pos­i­tive­ly, could we rest con­tent­ed that our influ­ence on Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship will last beyond our insti­tu­tion­al survival?

This is a must-read blog for any­one any­where on the Quak­er spectrum

The Quaker movement: decline and persistence
The Quak­er move­ment: decline and persistence 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er dis­ci­ple­ship. Recur­ring themes: Rus­sia, peace, evan­ge­lism, blues.

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