Yearly Archives ⇒ 2018

Redefining rude

October 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Mol­ly Shee­han, one of a small “gray wave” of Quak­ers who ran for Con­gress this year (she lost her pri­ma­ry bid):

When the mar­gin­al­ized cry out for com­pas­sion, they are not cen­sor­ing any­body. They are fight­ing for their very right to exist. Non­vi­o­lent dis­obe­di­ence and rewrit­ing the rules of civil­i­ty is for these groups. It is our job, espe­cial­ly as white peo­ple, or those with more soci­etal pow­er and time to protest, to ampli­fy the voic­es of the most marginalized.

https://​mil​len​ni​alpol​i​tics​.co/​r​e​d​e​f​i​n​e​-​r​u​d​e​-​e​m​b​r​a​c​e​-​d​i​s​r​u​p​t​i​ve/

The end of religious liberty?

October 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Is it time to give up var­i­ous paci­fist calls for reli­gious lib­er­ty giv­en the way the con­cept has been coopt­ed by those try­ing to insti­tu­tion­al­ize discrimination?

At a time when the things that bind us togeth­er as a soci­ety are so frag­ile, I’m wary of efforts that smack of iso­lat­ing one­self from the sins of the world, rather than build­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty in hopes that, God will­ing, those sins might be overcome.

The dead end of reli­gious liberty

Ministers, elders, and overseers

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son, a list­ing of three types of offices in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er meetings:

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Quak­er meet­ings rec­og­nized and nur­tured indi­vid­u­als who had spir­i­tu­al gifts as min­is­ters, elders, or over­seers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their ser­vice extend­ed over the entire congregation. 

Many Friends have dropped the term “over­seers” in recent years, out of con­cern for how the word is so asso­ci­at­ed with slav­ery. As I under­stand it, ear­ly Friends’ use of the word came from its use as an Eng­lish trans­la­tion for Episko­pos in the New Tes­ta­ment. They con­sid­ered them­selves to be re-establishing ear­ly Chris­t­ian mod­els. For exam­ple, Acts 20:28:

Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood. 

Bible trans­la­tions that were geared toward a Catholic audi­ence tend­ed to stick to Latinized words and went with “bish­op” over “over­seer.” Quak­ers wor­ried about the con­no­ta­tion of the word could pro­pose that we just start nam­ing bish­ops. It’s not as nut­ty as it might seem, as there are anabap­tist church­es who use the term to talk about roles with­in indi­vid­ual church­es. Of course, some­times name changes also mask changes in the­ol­o­gy and I noticed that some of the more lib­er­al Quak­er meet­ings dropped “over­seer” with a speed which they are not oth­er­wise known for. Friends today are a lot more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic than Friends were when our insti­tu­tions were set up — there are many good rea­sons for this in our his­to­ries. But I do hope we’re con­tin­u­ing to find ade­quate ways to notice and care for our members.
 

We need all three – and more

Why Do Quakers Worship in Silence?

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Catch­ing up with last week’s Quak­er­S­peak, which was a great one with Lloyd Lee Wil­son explain­ing how Quak­er silence is dif­fer­ent from indi­vid­ual meditation:

From the exte­ri­or, there may not appear to be very much dif­fer­ent between a group of indi­vid­u­als doing indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion or indi­vid­ual con­tem­pla­tion in the same room and a group of Quak­er wor­ship­ing togeth­er. But there are a num­ber of things that are, as we expe­ri­ence them, dif­fer­ent. One is that these prac­tices that have as their goal achiev­ing still­ness of mind or per­fect qui­et or single-pointed aware­ness, as a goal, are actu­al­ly quite dif­fer­ent from what we are attempt­ing and achiev­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. For Friends, this point of still­ness is only a way sta­tion, and we pass though that. It is not our goal, but it is how we get to a point of encounter with God.
 
http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​h​y​-​d​o​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​w​o​r​s​h​i​p​-​i​n​-​s​i​l​e​n​ce/

Somberly dressed men astride horses

October 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Colonial-era Quak­ers weren’t all saints when it came to oppos­ing slav­ery but there are some moments we afford to look back to with a smidge of pride. In 1783, a del­e­ga­tion from Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing walked into the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress to make good on all that “cre­at­ed equal” language.

Prince­ton vil­lagers and mem­bers of the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress beheld the arrival of an unusu­al del­e­ga­tion of somber­ly dressed men astride hors­es. They had come from Philadel­phia to raise an issue that the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress did not wish to address: the plight of half a mil­lion Amer­i­can res­i­dents — one-fifth of the peo­ple — who had been lis­ten­ing to mem­o­rable words about inalien­able rights and how Amer­i­ca would ush­er in a new age of free­dom and jus­tice, but who were con­demned along with their chil­dren to life­long slav­ery. The four men car­ried a parch­ment titled “The Address of the Peo­ple Called Quakers.” 

The author, Gary Nash, has a book out about Wal­ter Mif­flin, one of the four, which Friends Jour­nal reviewed this April.

As I recall, the transat­lantic slave trade went into over­drive in the new­ly inde­pen­dent Unit­ed States. If the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress has lis­tened, the com­plex­ion and char­ac­ter and his­to­ry of the U.S. would be far different.
 
https://​paw​.prince​ton​.edu/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​m​o​m​e​n​t​-​n​a​s​s​a​u​-​h​all

“Two Faces of Liberty,” by Lilith Quinlan

October 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Quak­er Uni­ver­sal­ist Fel­low­ship has reprint­ed a 1984 Friends Jour­nal arti­cle by Lil­lith Quin­lan that sounds way too con­tem­po­rary despite the three and a half decades:

While school chil­dren in New Eng­land are sell­ing can­dy to rebuild the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, we have a large and quite dif­fer­ent project going on here in Louisiana: the “alien deten­tion cen­ter” in Oak­dale. This $17.1 mil­lion facil­i­ty with a pro­ject­ed bud­get of $6-$7 mil­lion per year will be able to imprison 1,000 “aliens” ini­tial­ly, then 2,000.

It has been described by Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice (INS) offi­cials as a longterm hold­ing facil­i­ty and is the first such prison admin­is­tered joint­ly by the unholy alliance of the Bureau of Pris­ons and the INS. A new cen­ter is also being built in Alexan­dria to train 1,000 peo­ple for the bor­der patrol, dou­bling the present capacity.

https://​uni​ver​sal​ist​friends​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​l​i​b​e​r​t​y​-​q​u​i​n​lan

Self-reinforcing Cycles

September 28, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Gregg Koskela, the lead pas­tor of New­berg (Ore.) Friends Church until last year, has a heart-felt piece about learn­ing how to lis­ten to abuse stories:

For us who’ve walked this road (our­selves or with oth­ers), it all fits with the world we now live in, the one where our eyes have been opened and our hearts are filled at times with despair. This is the world where abuse hap­pens, where per­pe­tra­tors so often get away with it, where it’s so hard to risk reveal­ing it, where we see with crys­tal clar­i­ty that if you do dis­close, the ques­tions and doubts and the char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion will overwhelm. 

https://​greg​gkoskela​.org/​2​0​1​8​/​0​9​/​2​7​/​s​e​l​f​-​r​e​i​n​f​o​r​c​i​n​g​-​c​y​c​l​es/

Ben Woods; Liberal Quakerism and the Need for Roots

September 21, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On our rela­tion­ship with Christianity:

In this vein, for ear­ly Friends, ‘being a Chris­t­ian‘, was more than sim­ply assent­ing to the­o­log­i­cal abstracts. To live as a ‘Friend of the Truth’ was to expe­ri­ence direct­ly the claim that God loves the uni­verse per­pet­u­al­ly in Christ. In this respect, ‘Quak­er’ Chris­tian­i­ty is more than a the­o­ry or phi­los­o­phy of things, but a prac­ti­cal rela­tion­ship with a liv­ing per­son. To walk with Jesus of Nazareth meant to live with the same man­tle upon one’s shoul­ders, to teach, to heal, and to restore. 

Reflec­tions on Lib­er­al Quak­erism and the Need for Roots