Twenty years ago this week I wrote one of my most widely shared blog posts, “The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal.”
I was on fire that summer, making connections with a bubbling up, grassroots “emergent church” movement and finding oh-so-many unexpected similarities between these frustrated, authenticity-seeking younger Evangelicals and my super-Liberal East Coast Quaker world. A lot of the problems were clearly generational and I was lapping up new posts by Canadian blogger Jordan Cooper. One day he shared a chart from theologian Robert E. Webber’s new book, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World, that showed the “differences between the moderns (traditional and pragmatic evangelicals) and the postmodern (the younger evangelicals).”
The chart was like a secret decoder ring for me. Webber might have been thinking of more traditional churches, but with a little translation it lot of it sure explained a lot of what I was seeing in Quakerism. Older Friends wanted youth ministry that was a “Church-centred program” while I and my disaffected cohorts wanted “prayer, Bible study, worship, social action.” Older Friends thought of Christianity as a “rational worldview” or a form of “therapy” whereas I longed for a “community of faith.”
Not much happened after I clicked post. Facebook and Twitter weren’t around to promote it. My blog was more-or-less me talking to myself. But over the course of the next few years people found it. They must have been asking similar questions and seeing what Google turned up. The comments have some future Quaker bloggers (was this the first post Chris Mohr found and fan-emailed me about?). Even more remarkable, it includes some very unlikely Evangelical Friends, like the then-youth pastor at First Friends Canton and the then-general secretary of Iowa Yearly Meeting. At the time I was answering the bookstore phone at Friends General Conference, the most Liberal institution bastion of U.S. Quakers. To find common cause across this theological spectrum was quite unusual then (and alas, probably now).
What’s changed after twenty years? Well, after a number of false starts there are programs to train younger Friends and bring them into institutional Quakerism (Quaker Voluntary Service, Pendle Hill’s Continuing Revolution conference, and the 1992-founded Guilford College’s Quaker Studies Program deserve special shoutouts). Blogs and later social media have created forums for disparate Friends to talk together in informal conversations. I’m continually amazed that Friends Journal magazine (of which I’m senior editor) and QuakerSpeak videos can be accessed anywhere without paywall, making our stories widely accessible. But some things haven’t changed. We’ve had rounds of Quaker schisms, especially in Northwest, Indiana, and North Carolina Yearly Meetings.
And how much has changed for individual young adult Friends? The September issue of Friends Journal is devoted to younger Friends and one breakout article is Olivia Chalkley’s “Young Adults Want What Early Friends Had.” Olivia came to Friends as a teen and has had the advantages of the newer youth programs — attending Guilford QLSP and working at a Quaker Voluntary Service fellow — yet so much of her article felt like topics I discussed on Quaker Ranter back before my temples went gray. For example:
We often don’t think about the potential Friends who slip through the cracks because there’s not much to grab hold of: those who don’t know where to turn in the silence, not having a solid foundation in Scripture, Christian ethics and social teachings, or even Quaker history; those who feel alienated by the meetings in which Friends cringe if you talk about Jesus Christ, or even about God; and those who simply can’t figure out if we are Christian or not, due to mixed messaging and lack of conviction among members of their meetings. These obstacles must be recognized and addressed as part of our efforts to present accessible pathways to entry, not only for the young adults hungry for religious community but also for the poor and working classes among which religious belief tends to be high, according to recent Pew studies.
I guess it’s some progress that this article is published by Friends Journal and not sitting barely read on a personal blog. But as I look back at this twenty-year anniversary I find it a little sad we’re still struggling with identity and messaging. Maybe this is a perennial, never-answerable issue for a denomination, especially one as decentralized as ours. Or maybe it’s something we can continue to figure out. Mid-twentieth century Friends were able to work out a modern vision of Quakerism that was powerful enough to reunite and regalvanize a dwindling Quaker movement; what would our vision look like?
Quaker Ranter
The last 20 yers have shown how “polarized” Friends have been and continue to be. It does seem that there is some growth “between the cracks” so to speak, but even there, some frustration is apparent on the part of the younger generation leaders. I can only speak for myself, but frustration with dealing with “authority” (Biblical, Theological, Yearly Meeting(Denominational structure), etc.) conflicts has led to some resignation and withdrawal from any “Activism,” written or otherwise, on my part. There are areas of hope, but these seem few and far between while the entrenchment of several sides counteract apparent progress.