I can relate to Kathleen Wooten’s metaphor about searching for the perfect pencil that would make her efficient enough to do everything she wanted (for what it’s worth, Kathleen always seems to be accomplishing a lot regardless of magic tools).
The massive digitalization of old newspapers in recent years has allowed historians to determine the source of the “Underground Railroad” name.
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?
The Black Quaker Project seems to publish its best stuff on its email list (if you visit its homepage you’ll see a form to sign up). This week’s tackles the uncomfortable question, “Why Are There So Few African American Quakers.” They break the answers down into six answers (e.g., “Skepticism of Non-Violence” and “Dissatisfaction with the Quaker Process.”)
Whoa, the part of Indiana Yearly Meeting that retained the name after the 2013 schism is leaving Friends United Meeting. At one point Indiana was the largest yearly meeting in the world, second only to Philadelphia in its influence on American Quakerism but repeated schisms and depopulation of the rural Midwest has hit it hard.
The 2013 split created two bodies: the Evangelicals who retained “Indiana” as their name and the Liberals who became the New Association of Friends. At the time I was pleasantly surprised that both sides remained part of the Friends United Meeting, the international umbrella organization of what you might call churchy Friends. I thought it might be a sign that we had outgrown the kind of nineteenth century attitudes that forced everyone pick sides in splits like these. Apparently not.
Some Evangelical Friends have been dreaming about a “realignment” of FUM since the 1980s, a concept that would split FUM down the middle between Evangelicals and Liberals, pushing everyone to decide between their respective national conferences, Evangelical Friends International and Friends General Conference respectively.1 Somehow FUM’s been able to resist the centrifugal forces and maintain a big tent approach that’s frustrated many2 but somehow held together. What happens to this balance if the center of gravity for FUM American Friends pivots more toward its liberal end?
FUM is an international organization and Africa’s the wild card. The largest population of Friends are there, with most of its yearly meetings affiliated with FUM. Even the decamping Indiana Yearly Meeting wants to find an arrangement with FUM to keep those ties going (met with guffaws in some quarters).
I don’t hear anyone talking about realignment much these days. But in the U.S. context there’s an increasing number of FUM Friends and FGC Friends3 who aren’t so very different anymore. This presumably is Indiana YM’s argument for leaving, but it’s a chicken-or-egg scenario: the result of splits is often that each side shifts to fit the stereotype the other side accused it of being all along. In the meantime there are a lot of Friends with deep family and childhood ties to Indiana Yearly Meeting who are grieving right now.
We struggled with ‘s’s that looked like ‘f’s, ‘y’es that actually were ‘the’s. Capital letters were more art than standard writing, and tired clerks that would write the first few letters of a name and then throw a little letter in the air and figure we would know the rest. We kept a running list of all that we saw in order to keep a consistent practice.
Some of the offenses Dartmouth Friends were disowned for are listed. Some seem quite harmless„ like the brothers who were forced to apologize in 1746 for allowing “fiddling and dancing in their Houses.” Other offenses are shocking in their cruelty, like Friend Abigail Allen, who beat an enslaved African “so unmercyfully” in 1711 that he subsequently died from the wounds. Disownment was not a life sentence: someone could repent and be let back in. Incredibly, only three years later Abigail convinced the meeting that she was sorry for her manslaughter.
The FUM email newsletter referenced elsewhere also has nice photos from memorial services for Eden Grace, a New England Friend who seemed to effortlessly walk between different flavors of Friends, finding commonality and building connections wherever she went. She is very missed.
On QuakerSpeak, a video interview of Nichole Nettleton, who is a coordinator for a support group called Differently Abled Friends and Allies. (I know some folks really don’t like “differently abled” but it’s the name of the group and it’s how Nicole self-identifies in the video.)
There’s currently a pretty interesting Facebook discussion on “measure of light.” Colloquially, I’ve heard this phrase used as a way to reassure us that we don’t all have to have the same abilities. We shouldn’t be jealous of others, who might have other talents in the body of Christ. Our goal is to live up to the light of what we’ve each been given as individuals.
By this Seed, Grace, and Word of God, and Light, wherewith we say every man is enlightened, and hath a measure of it, which strives with them in order to save them, and which may, by the stubbornness and wickedness of man’s will, be quenched, bruised, wounded, pressed down, slain and crucified; we understand not the proper essence and nature of God, precisely taken, which is not divisible into parts and measures, as being a most pure, simple being, void of all composition or division, and therefore can neither be resisted, hurt, wounded, crucified, or slain by all the efforts and strength of men.
He’s pretty clear that the light is indivisible so I don’t see how it could be more or less within any of us or change over time (though certainly our awareness of it can be strengthened as we progress spiritually). And for him, and all early Quakers, the Light was very definitely God working within us. Nowadays it’s more common for Liberal Friends to think of it as a kind of spiritual conscience.
I myself wouldn’t want to get into deciding who has what ability. Maybe talents is a better way of thinking about it. Like, in my humanness I may get jealous that someone gives really good ministry in worship. But maybe that’s not my gift. There are some people I’ve met who are always extremely thoughtful of others. And others who are really good at centering a group down in worship. I have friends who are always great about getting to know everyone in their lives. We can aspire to be better in all these things but there are people who seem more naturally suited to this. So we should try to live up to our measure in our spiritual lives but not feel bad about ourselves if others are able to do certain things effortlessly.
I recently read an opinionated bit of advice that has stuck with me: it was that content creators should focus their attention on only two social networks. It’s felt wise, especially in this odd moment in which Twitter has imploded and we have a proliferation of services hoping to succeed it in it’s role as “town square.” Ten years ago if I had something to share I would post it to both Twitter and Facebook. Now there’s just too many contenders; I’d spend half an hour posting any link.
So what would my two be? This QuakerRanter newsletter/blog should be one. It’s a place to share ideas unfiltered by Silicon Valley algorithms. But the second? Is Facebook still the place where enough people congregate to make it essential despite its many drawbacks? Reddit is still interesting despite some recent controversial moves by its owners.
A third place might be QuakerQuaker. Update: I’ve moved the domain name to a new server, which means there’s actually a “site under construction” notice. The archives will be next.
Quaker Ranter