Quaker Ranter Reader

A recent email cor­re­spon­dence con­firmed that all of our won­der­ful web­sites aren’t always reach­ing the peo­ple who should be hear­ing this mes­sage. Self pub­lish­ing a book is almost as easy as start­ing a blog so why not put togeth­er a book­let of a web­site’s essays? You can order the first edi­tion of the “Quak­er Ranter Reader”:http://www.cafepress.com/Quakerranter.18423631 for $12.00 through Cafe­press (a few dol­lars of each sale comes back to me to sup­port the web­site). The Read­er is also avail­able from “Quaker­books of FGC”:http://www.Quakerbooks.org/get/11 – 99-01749 – 3.


h3. Table of Contents:

Intro­duc­tion to this Collection
*I: Quak­erism Today*
“We’re All Ranters Now”:/Quaker/ranters.php
“Con­ser­v­a­tive Lib­er­al Quakers”:/martink/archives/000401.php
“Sodi­um Free Friends”:/martink/archives/000300.php
“Elder­ship and Under-Running One’s Guide”:/martink/archives/000520.php
*II: Gen­er­a­tional Turmoil*
“The Lost Quak­er Generation”:/000096.php
“Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­ers Style”:/martink/archives/000266.php
“It Will Be There in Decline Our Entire Lives”:/martink/archives/000086.php
“Are Catholics More Quaker?”:/martink/archives/000111.php
“Peace and Twenty-Something’s”:/martink/archives/000100.php
*III Our Tes­ti­monies and Witness*
“Quak­er Testimonies”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000450.php
“Quak­er Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny: Liv­ing in the Pow­er, Reclaim­ing the Source”:/Quaker/peace_testimony.php
“Tes­ti­monies for Twentieth-First Cen­tu­ry: A Tes­ti­mo­ny Against Community”:/martink/archives/000264.php
“My Exper­i­ments with Plainness”:martink/archives/000080.php
*IV The Future*
“Emer­gent Church Movement”:/Quaker/emerging_church.php
“How Insid­ers and Seek­ers Use the Quak­er Net”:/martink/archives/000333.php
“Vision­ing the Future of Young Adult Friends”:/martink/archives/000079.php
A Youth Min­istries Pro­pos­al (rede­vel­oped into the “Quak­er Ranter Vision”:/Quaker/vision.php essay)

12 thoughts on “Quaker Ranter Reader

  1. I’ve pon­dered the idea of greater flu­id­i­ty between books and the WWW. Years ago, the book Shop­ping for Faith by Richard Cimi­no and Don Lat­tin came with a CD-ROM that includ­ed Web hyper­links — my first intro­duc­tion to the idea of link­ing print and the Web. Ger­ard Kel­ly’s book Retro­fu­ture linked up with Cafe-net (now bless​.org​.uk), and http://​www​.msain​fo​.org links up with Tom Sine’s books. No rea­son the flow should­n’t go in both directions

  2. I’m con­fused, Mar­tin. Do you mean that you’re thinki­ing of self-publishing some of your posts as essays; or a com­pi­la­tion of sev­er­al blog­gers in a self-published book; or both???
    I’ve often thought that some of the posts I’ve read on your blog, as well as oth­ers, would make for a good occa­sion­al arti­cle in some­thing like Friends Journal.
    Maybe some­one could write up an arti­cle on Quak­er blogs for FJ or Quak­er Life?

  3. Hi Joe: sor­ry for the con­fu­sion. I think it reflects my con­cern that I not rush things. Being an old book type­set­ter I’ve actu­al­ly put togeth­er a dozen arti­cles from my web­site into a PDF that could be turned into a book, a “Quak­er Ranter Read­er.” It’s avail­able (the­o­ret­i­cal­ly) from a print-on-demand ser­vice and for an hour or so I had a link to it from this post.
    But: do I want to have these arti­cles in print? Is this a strong lead­ing? And is is okay to do it with arti­cles that haven’t been re-edited and re-written? I would want them in print so I could get them out to some powers-that-be that don’t use the inter­net, but is that 1) van­i­ty or 2) my being too impa­tient that insti­tu­tion­al aware­ness is hap­pen­ing too slowly?
    In relat­ed mat­ters, I do have a pro­pos­al to a Quak­er fund­ing group for a sort of web/journal hybrid that would pull togeth­er the writ­ing of a lot of Friends. Who knows if and where that might go.

  4. Some­times the only way to test a lead­ing is to do the thing and see whether it is fruit­ful. I, for one, would like to see what you have compiled.

  5. What a coin­ci­dence. I just spoke with the edi­tor of Friends Jour­nal three weeks ago about whether any­one had pro­posed an arti­cle on Quak­er blogs and if she’d be inter­est­ed in print­ing one. The answers were no and yes.
    I’ve been toy­ing with writ­ing it myself, but have been hes­i­tant because I’m new to the area and Quak­er Ranter seems to be Blog Cen­tral of Quak­er­dom and would­n’t want to trod on plans you may have, Martin.
    Also, I won­dered about any unspo­ken assump­tions hosts or con­trib­u­tors may have about the pri­va­cy of posts (espe­cial­ly comments).
    Is this some­thing to pur­sue? Any caveats?

  6. Mar­tin, I’m heart­ened to read of some of the sea­son­ing and dis­cern­ment you are engaged in around the Quak­er Ranter Read­er. It still may be that you are, in fact, led to pub­lish this text. It is clear (to me, any­way) you have a gift for artic­u­lat­ing things that require a fair amount of thought and dis­cus­sion, and I also appre­ci­ate the gift you have in weav­ing a unique com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er (Quak­er blog­gers, i.e.).
    I have won­dered what the clear­ness com­mit­tees for Friends like Patri­cia Lor­ing or Mar­ty Grundy have been like, as they’ve writ­ten or edit­ed books and pam­phlets over time. Have you been in touch with them or any oth­er Quak­er author to learn a bit about their expe­ri­ence with clear­ness com­mit­tees for writing/publishing? …I would­n’t be sur­prised, giv­en your connections!
    Keep us post­ed about your con­tin­ued dis­cern­ment… And I affirm that I’ll do the same!
    Blessings,
    Liz

  7. *Hi Isabel:* You all have had seen or had access to just about every­thing as every­thing but the intro and the final arti­cle are online.
    Hi Paul: I haven’t had any plans to write about the Quak­er blo­goso­phere for _Friends Journal_. Despite talk of a book, my strat­e­gy so far has been to just remain qui­et­ly put­ter­ing away on my site, ignor­ing offi­cial Quak­er­dom except for low­ly staff posi­tions. Since one of those posi­tions was as the Web Man­ag­er of the _Journal_, I can sneak a peak over at the vis­i­tors logs and report that the Quak­er Ranter received 1700 more vis­i­tors in Feb­ru­ary than Friend​sJour​nal​.org did (maybe you should do an arti­cle on print pub­li­ca­tions for my web­site?). I don’t own any­thing so if you want to do an arti­cle you don’t need my per­mis­sion. I think it’s a great idea. I’d be hap­py to be inter­viewed and of course I already let you know about my “favorite Quak­er blogs”:http://​www​.non​vi​o​lence​.org/​q​u​a​k​e​r​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​_​p​l​a​c​e​s​.​php
    ***
    Hi Liz: As I explained pri­vate­ly to you, I’ve been think­ing about what a print­ed col­lec­tion of blog posts would look like for awhile but the imme­di­ate impe­tus Fri­day was an alarmed email I received. I pan­icked in doubt over the dis­cern­ment abil­i­ty of an orga­ni­za­tion I respect. But faith­ful­ness demands that I not act out of pan­ic and that I allow an orga­ni­za­tion to stum­ble: change and aware­ness with hap­pen on the Spir­it’s time­line and until then it’s my job to sim­ply be obe­di­ent, even if that requires suf­fer­ing disappointment.

  8. I don’t have any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant or deep to say, but I feel moved to offer thee my love and sup­port in thy min­istry, what­ev­er papery or non-papery form it may take. And if it takes a papery form I will make sure my lit­er­a­ture table has sev­er­al copies.
    Amanda
    ps. on a com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed note, I’d love to see new pic­tures of the The­ol­ing. I’m in a par­tic­u­lar­ly baby-fixated mood because my mom’s 12th is ever-increasingly on the way. (God help us)

  9. I’ve added the link back in for those brave enough to want to try order­ing this. It seems sil­ly not to have it avail­able to the reg­u­lar read­ers who might want to see it.

  10. Hi Mar­tin,
    I’m not sure my thoughts on this issue are well thought out, but some­thing has been stir­ring around in mind for some time about the col­lec­tion of voic­es in the blo­gos­phere and whether there is a case to be made for some oth­er venue to lift them up. It feels vain to sug­gest such a thing, and giv­en that I’m not over­ly famil­iar with what’s new­ly avail­able in Quak­er print today (i.e. books, antholo­gies, peri­od­i­cals, etc.), it’s unclear whether a new book or alter­na­tive pub­li­ca­tion is nec­es­sary. Per­haps though. What I have to come to enjoy most about our blogs is their per­spec­tive from the Quak­er fringe, if you will. The flow seems to be increas­ing across old bound­aries (year­ly meet­ings, geog­ra­phy, lib­er­al vs. con­ser­v­a­tive, etc.) and I feel a very small but sub­tle sense of being gathered.
    Any­how, that’s what I have to share today.

  11. Hi Rob,
    Oh yes, there’s enough out there that it might be inter­est­ing to com­pile it togeth­er. I always think I should keep track of the extra­or­di­nary posts I see. I actu­al­ly can’t think of any Quak­er pub­lish­er that would put it out though. It might not have an audi­ence and it would threat­en to cross the insti­tu­tion­al lines we all con­tin­ue to hold too dear. This is def­i­nite­ly an idea to hold onto, though I’m not clear just where it might lead…

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