FGC Joins over Two Dozen Religious Groups in New Immigration Lawsuit

February 11, 2025

Anoth­er Quaker-related law­suit against immi­gra­tion enforce­ment in hous­es of wor­ship dropped today.

Oth­er coverage:

“Where are all the children now?”

February 11, 2025

From Craig Barnett:

“Most Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties now have no children’s meet­ing, and this has come to seem nor­mal. Many peo­ple who have joined in the last cou­ple of decades have nev­er seen a child in a Meet­ing House, and take it for grant­ed that a Quak­er Meet­ing is only for retired people.”

I don’t know the sit­u­a­tion in the UK where Bar­nett lives but around me in the U.S. the cyn­i­cal answer would be that they’re at soc­cer prac­tice. All of the church­es I know have seen sharply declin­ing Sun­day School class­es in recent decades.

Because nei­ther my wife’s church­es or my Quak­er meet­ings have pro­vid­ed good Sun­day Schools, our fam­i­ly has long jug­gled ser­vices to be able to go else­where to pro­vide our kids with a Sun­day School class and friends. For the past num­ber of years it’s been with a very friend­ly Mora­vian church over in the next town. We’ve been so involved that we think of them as our oth­er church fam­i­ly and many of the mem­bers have become friends. We’ve known them through years, from births to mar­riage break-ups to kids grad­u­at­ing and going off to col­lege. Just ear­li­er this week I took three of our kids to their bowl­ing out­ing. It’s real­ly com­mu­ni­ty and some­thing I don’t see hap­pen­ing in any near­by Friends meeting.

But even at this church, with a strong, long­stand­ing pro­gram going back over 100 years, it’s not hard to notice class­es get­ting just a bit small­er every year and Sun­day School teach­ers get­ting a lit­tle more thinned out. Even the chil­dren of core mem­bers will miss Sun­day morn­ing class­es for weeks at a time because of Sun­day morn­ing sports.

My wife’s new Ortho­dox church has a Sun­day School, which is nice, and a def­i­nite plus. Being even it does­n’t seem to be that large giv­en the size of the congregation.

I’d like to build up a chil­dren’s pro­gram at the small Friends com­mu­ni­ty that we’re rebuild­ing but I must admit to being unsure about what’s real­is­ti­cal­ly even pos­si­ble. This is a phe­nom­e­non far greater than any sin­gle con­gre­ga­tion or denom­i­na­tion. Shout-out to the Chil­dren’s Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive, who is try­ing to address these issues.

Building Relationships Across Politics

February 6, 2025

I had a nice inter­view with Wis­con­sin Friend Kat Grif­fith. She likes, even loves, going door-to-door in her “pur­ple” dis­trict and talk­ing pol­i­tics to strangers. She’s a won­der­ful sto­ry­teller and it was hard not to laugh as she talked about some of these adven­tures (spoil­er: she’s far braver than I am!). In a time of hyper-partisanship, it’s a good reminder to build our lives around curios­i­ty and communication.

The Feb­ru­ary arti­cle we were talk­ing about is “Rhap­sody in Pur­ple.” See also: Show notes for the video inter­view.

Preparing for This

February 5, 2025

My intro­duc­to­ry col­umn in the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal, regard­ing the light­ning fast deci­sion to file a Quak­er law­suit about immigration:

I think Quak­er busi­ness meet­ings have anoth­er pur­pose: they give us prac­tice in deci­sion mak­ing, and we build trust in one anoth­er. When some­thing extra­or­di­nary comes up that has to be dealt with imme­di­ate­ly, we kick into action using the mus­cle mem­o­ry from all of those Sun­day after­noons spent talk­ing about the finances. Because we’re a reli­gious body that has tak­en the time to know one anoth­er, we can antic­i­pate con­cerns and move sur­pris­ing­ly quickly.

Every­thing is mov­ing crazy fast in the polit­i­cal world these days. That’s the plan, of course: to over­whelm us with the speed at which the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is being dis­man­tled. But we are prac­ticed; we too can respond with stead­fast love and solidarity.

A reminder that you can fol­low my link shares much more quick­ly via my Bluesky account. If you’re there you should def­i­nite­ly fol­low my Quak­ers list for every­thing that Friends are talk­ing about.

I also rec­om­mend Jason Kot­tke’s blog, long one of my favorites, who is turn­ing it over to links and cov­er­age about the coup in progress. Mike Mas­nick has been writ­ing impor­tant stuff about the insan­i­ty of Musk’s twenty-something crew tak­ing over and rewrit­ing pay­ment sys­tems across var­i­ous agen­cies (see, for exam­ple, “A 25-Year-Old Is Writ­ing Back­doors Into The Treasury’s $6 Tril­lion Pay­ment Sys­tem. What Could Pos­si­bly Go Wrong?”)

New Tom Gates blog: Quakers and the End of Scapegoating

January 29, 2025

Philadelphia-area Friend Tom Gates has start­ed a blog. Tom’s a very ground­ed and thought­ful Friend and I’m glad to know we’ll be see­ing more of his writ­ings. From his intro:

Con­tem­po­rary lib­er­al Friends (Quak­ers), in com­mon with oth­er lib­er­al denom­i­na­tions, have large­ly drift­ed away from the Bible, due in part to its seem­ing sanc­tion of divine vio­lence. Girard, by con­trast, sees the over­com­ing of “sacred vio­lence” as the cen­tral theme of the Bib­li­cal wit­ness, and so can pro­vide the means by which Quak­ers (and oth­ers) might reen­gage with the Scrip­tures. Girard’s claim that the bib­li­cal God has “noth­ing to do with vio­lence” will res­onate with Friends tra­di­tion­al com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence and peace­mak­ing. His insights into “the scape­goat mech­a­nism” can also help us to under­stand the wit­ness of ear­ly Friends, who func­tioned as “the scape­goat caste” in 17th cen­tu­ry England.

Growing Meetings

January 28, 2025

Craig Bar­nett on UK meet­ings that are attract­ing new­com­ers:

New­com­ers need to be made wel­come, includ­ing chil­dren. They need to find peo­ple who enjoy spend­ing time togeth­er, who are open about their spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence, and will­ing to share the rich­es of the Quak­er way with them. They need to expe­ri­ence Quak­er wor­ship that is expec­tant and gath­ered, where peo­ple take the risk of open­ness to the Spir­it that leads to deep and vul­ner­a­ble spo­ken ministry.