Yearly Archives ⇒ 2018

Jeff Kisling: Resist not evil today

August 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

When look­ing back to Nazi Ger­many in the 1930s are we so sure God Could not have found a way?

Hen­ry Cad­bury believed the Jew­ish peo­ple should have appealed to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and nation­al con­science. Then those Ger­mans would have stood up for the Jew­ish peo­ple, and pre­vent­ed the Nazis from acquir­ing pow­er. The death camps would not have happened.

Many prob­a­bly think that is naive and could not have worked. But that is what non­vi­o­lence is about, con­nect­ing with those you are hop­ing to change. Lis­ten­ing deeply and being will­ing to change your­self. This is also what faith is about, believ­ing in the pres­ence of God today. Believ­ing that as you lis­ten close­ly you will be guid­ed by the Inner Light. Believ­ing some­how God will find a way.

There’s a fine line between ide­al­is­tic naiveté and real­is­tic sol­i­dar­i­ty. I’m still of the mind that Cad­bury should have har­bored more cyn­i­cism of what was hap­pen­ing as the Nazi Par­ty grew in Ger­many but I can see Jef­f’s point: in 1934, was the future we know inevitable?

https://​kisling​j​eff​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​8​/​1​8​/​r​e​s​i​s​t​-​n​o​t​-​e​v​i​l​-​t​o​d​ay/

Cor­rec­tion: I got my Jeffs mixed up in the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this post. This was writ­ten by Jeff Kisling.

Joshua Brown with straight talk on preventing child abuse

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Joshua Brown, a well-known Friends pas­tor now down in North Carolina:

Most year­ly meet­ings rec­om­mend that every­one who works with young peo­ple should have a back­ground check. Most local meet­ings I have been a part of resist this, say­ing that “But we know that per­son – they have belonged here for years!” Requir­ing a back­ground check feels to some Friends like an inva­sion of pri­va­cy, or that it goes against the open­ness and trust which they val­ue in a Quak­er meeting.

I have per­son­al­ly known of three respect­ed Friends who turned out to be ser­i­al child rapists. Two were pil­lars of their meet­ing. None of the peo­ple in the month­ly meet­ing knew learned about it because of out­side legal action and investigations.

There were times when these indi­vid­u­als were around my chil­dren, though I was near-enough near­by that I’m not wor­ried any­thing hap­pened. Still, one of the cas­es involved rapes in a camper in the perpetrator’s back­yard and I remem­ber my eldest think­ing it looked cool and try­ing the door han­dle. We also had a close call with a Boy Scout leader and respect­ed local his­to­ri­an whose file was pub­lished when an Ore­gon judge ordered the nation­al BSA to release decades of secret pedophile records.

One the affect­ed meet­ings in par­tic­u­lar is near and dear to me heart and have some warm and faith­ful Friends. I know it was a shock and ongo­ing trau­ma for them that this hap­pened in their com­mu­ni­ty. I under­stand that we were all a bit naive about these mat­ters 10 and 20 and 30 years ago. But we’ve all been edu­cat­ed about just how com­mon this is and just how charm­ing pedophiles can be.

Even recent­ly, I’ve had peo­ple assure me their Friends meet­ings are safe and that they don’t need to do back­ground checks. I make a men­tal note to avoid those meet­ings. We are not immune. And we are not mag­i­cal­ly bet­ter about dis­cern­ing this stuff than any oth­er faith community.

Straight talk on pre­vent­ing child abuse

Sam Walton: Putting the protest back in Protestant

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the Peace and Dis­ar­ma­ment Pro­gramme Manger for British Friends comes a plea for us not to be afraid of going back to Quak­er roots and chal­lenge the abuse of power.

Society’s val­ues are so often in oppo­si­tion to God’s pur­pos­es. Slav­ery used to be legal. Love between two peo­ple of the same sex was ille­gal in our life­times. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s cre­ation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrich­ment rather than loy­al­ties lying with the King­dom of Heav­en and work­ing for the enrich­ment of all human­i­ty. When being loy­al to God’s pur­pos­es runs counter to what soci­ety expects it can get pret­ty rough. There may be per­se­cu­tion, though it varies a lot: from tut­ting, telling you off for being veg­e­tar­i­an, being giv­en white feath­ers, right through to impris­on­ment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.

Putting the protest back in Protestant

A New Creation Story

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice piece on Philadel­phia Friend O:

For O., a mem­ber of Cen­tral Philadel­phia Month­ly Meet­ing, car­ry­ing this query for pas­toral min­istry awak­ens joy in her heart. It rais­es impor­tant ques­tions: Are we trans­formed by the pow­er of love, dur­ing our bio­log­i­cal con­cep­tion as human beings? Might our lives be a mea­sure­less love sto­ry about creation?

It’s hard to cap­ture O’s per­son­al­i­ty in ASCII char­ac­ters. She’s been in a few Quak­er­S­peak videos.

A New Cre­ation Sto­ry: Embrac­ing Love

Becoming a Quaker Minister

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I love the gen­tle, delib­er­ate way Stephanie talks in her Quak­er­S­peak videos. In this week’s she talks about Quake ministry:

Join­ing up in that includes mak­ing my par­tic­u­lar gifts and skills avail­able and not need­ing it to be about me or accom­plish­ment, but about seek­ing to real­ly be a part of what God is try­ing to make hap­pen with and through me and oth­ers, and to rejoice in that. 

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​b​e​c​o​m​i​n​g​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​er/

Civility Can Be Dangerous

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the AFSC’s Lucy Dun­can, a look back at Hen­ry Cad­bury’s now-infamous 1934 speech to Amer­i­can rab­bis and a look at the civil­i­ty debate in mod­ern America.

Stand­ing up for peace means stand­ing on the side of the oppressed, not throw­ing them into the lion’s mouth in the name of civil­i­ty. And inter­rupt­ing racist vio­lence takes more than civ­il dis­course: active dis­rup­tion is need­ed in order for racism to be revealed and dis­man­tled. What good is inef­fec­tive paci­fism? My com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence is about sav­ing lives.

I gave my take on Cad­bury’s speech back in June. I was a lit­tle eas­i­er on Cad­bury, most­ly because I think we need to under­stand the Quak­er world­view out of which he was speak­ing. It’s nev­er good to lec­ture the oppressed on their oppres­sion, but the clas­sic Quak­er idea of speak­ing truth to all sides still holds val­ue and is some­thing I think we miss some­times nowadays.


Civility Can Be Dangerous

Civil­i­ty Can Be Dangerous 

In 1934, AFSC co-founder Hen­ry Cad­bury advised Jew­ish rab­bis to be gen­tler on Hitler. Is civil­i­ty a substitute…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

What gifts of the Spirit are we marginalizing?

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Pow­er­ful warn­ings from Adria Gulizia about what hap­pens when a faith com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t exer­cise all of its gifts :

Even worse, when we rou­tine­ly mar­gin­al­ize cer­tain gifts, we begin to see their exer­cise as dys­func­tion­al and their absence as nor­ma­tive, rather than the reverse. When the prophet chal­lenges us with uncom­fort­able truths, rather than using our dis­com­fort as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for reflec­tion and dis­cern­ment, we tell her to tone it down, com­plain that she is “unwel­com­ing” and, if she doesn’t get the mes­sage, we run her off.


Welcoming the Gifts God Sends Us

Wel­com­ing the Gifts God Sends Us 

In order to remain healthy and faith­ful, we must nur­ture all spir­i­tu­al gifts, not just the ones that…

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon