25 years

December 14, 2022
· Martin Kelley

How did I miss that last month was the 25th anniver­sary of my first blog­ging effort? Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront had a half-dozen posts a week and was tied to an email newslet­ter that went out every Fri­day (that’s pret­ty much the same for­mat as Quak­er Ranter in 2022!). This was before Dreamweaver, Blog­ger, Mov­able Type, Word­Press, etc. The word weblog was a few weeks from being coined. 

I put this all togeth­er using an absolute­ly ridicu­lous Microsoft Word macro that I had adapt­ed. I’d write a post in Word then hit a but­ton. A long string of search and replaces would start to run. For exam­ple, one search would look for bold­est text and put “<b>” and “</b>” around it. After half a minute or so it’d spit out an HTML file to my desk­top. I’d open an FTP pro­gram and upload the file to the serv­er. If I had an edit to make I’d have to go through the macro all over again. I was teach­ing myself HTML as I went along and it’s amaz­ing any of it dis­played properly. 

Still, it’s remark­able that while so much of back end has changed and changed again over the decades, the final for­mat is instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as a blog. The Quak­er Ranter archives now list over 1,300 articles.

The Early Blogging Days
The Ear­ly Blog­ging Days 

I start­ed Non​vi​o​lence​.org in late 1995 as a place to pub­li­cize the work of the US peace movement…

Quaker Ranter Quak­er Ranter 

Making a fetish of silence?

December 12, 2022
· Martin Kelley

It’s not unusu­al to hear silent (Lib­er­al, unpro­grammed) Friends state rather assured­ly that our wor­ship is the tra­di­tion­al Quak­er for­mat. In their view, Friends who called their build­ings church­es and have hired min­is­ters are inno­va­tors who have lost some­thing impor­tant that the first Friends had.

Only it’s not exact­ly true. Mic­ah Bales answers a friend’s ques­tion about the dif­fer­ence in min­istry between pro­grammed and unpro­grammed Friends in his blog last week. As he points out, ear­ly Friends would typ­i­cal­ly min­is­ter for 20 to 90 min­utes. The semi-official birthing moment for Friends was a three-hour ser­mon by George Fox to 1000 seek­ers. They weren’t there to hear just him (he had just arrived in the area and was­n’t well known) but a whole gag­gle of preach­ers. I imag­ine it as a days-long Lol­la­palooza fes­ti­val with Fox elec­tri­fy­ing the crowd from the sec­ond stage. Silence was­n’t the goal. 

I don’t know a Lib­er­al Friends meet­ing any­where that would be com­fort­able with some­one min­is­ter­ing for 20 min­utes, much less three hours. As the Quak­er move­ment set­tled in, the ser­mons took on a dis­tinct form — explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian and bib­li­cal — and they were gen­er­al­ly giv­en by only by spe­cif­ic peo­ple rec­og­nized in the ministry.

Today, typ­i­cal­ly, any­one at all can stand in min­istry at a Lib­er­al Friends meet­ing. Two to five min­utes is the norm for a “mes­sage.” The top­ic cer­tain­ly can be Chris­t­ian but in many meet­ings that’s the excep­tion. At a Friends church, mean­while, the ser­mons are giv­en by spe­cif­ic peo­ple, will have Chris­t­ian con­tent, and will go on for an extend­ed peri­od of time. In those respects, the for­mat is clos­er to ear­ly Quak­er wor­ship. And this should­n’t be a sur­prise: they were respond­ing to changes in min­istry and expec­ta­tions just as we Lib­er­al Friends have done.

Mic­ah also talks about prepa­ra­tion and describes the idea of “rad­i­cal­ly extem­po­ra­ne­ous preach­ing” among Lib­er­al Friends as a kind of “fetish.” He might have a point. I love the sto­ry about a min­is­ter who would­n’t have a clue about what he was going to say until he rose to his feet1. For him, the obe­di­ence to Christ was to trust that words would come if he were only to faith­ful­ly stand up. It’s such a cool sto­ry, but that’s not how my min­istry has ever come.

About six months ago we had a total­ly silent wor­ship at the meet­ing I’ve been attend­ing. It was nice but at the end the clerk rose, affirmed it was nice, but then said wor­ship should always have min­istry. It’s struck me as true and the state­ment has stuck with me. 

I often have min­istry form­ing in my head in wor­ship but am per­haps over­ly con­scious and keep it to myself. There’s always a bal­anc­ing act of course and some Friends feel free to say what­ev­er when­ev­er they want. But I think I myself have per­haps both over-fetishized an antipa­thy to plan­ning and also set myself an over­ly high bar for speaking.

Ezra Klein on the Quaker Way

December 11, 2022
· Martin Kelley

In a NYTimes opin­ion piece today, Ezra Klein teas­es: “The Quak­er way has a lot to teach us about social media.”

You have to scroll deep into the arti­cle to find the Quak­er con­nec­tion. Spoil­er: it comes from let­ting in silence and let­ting delib­er­a­tion be a slow­er process. He links to a Rex Ambler book on the Quaker​books​.org web­site (yea!) but it’s out of stock and not show­ing up (doh!) [Update: they got the link work­ing first thing Mon­day morn­ing after I gave them the heads-up, huzzah!] 

Klein also talked about Quak­ers in August, in a con­ver­sa­tion with William MacAskill on Effec­tive Altru­ism (a con­cept about which I’m extreme­ly skep­ti­cal), when they talked about Quak­er abo­li­tion­ist Ben­jamin Lay. He obvi­ous­ly has us on the mind. It’d be kind of cool if Klein went beyond talk­ing about Quak­ers to talk­ing with Quak­ers (my DMs are always open).

What does redemption mean to you?

December 6, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Episode 2 of the Quak­ers Today pod­cast comes out in a week. The top­ic is “What does redemp­tion mean to you?” Leave a voice­mail with your answer to the ques­tion with your name and the town where you live before mid­night (ET) Sun­day, Dec. 11., and you might get on the podcast! 

The num­ber to call is 317-QUAKERS (+1 out­side U.S.)

Becoming one in worship

December 1, 2022
· Martin Kelley

An excerpt from my intro­duc­tion to the Decem­ber Friends Jour­nal issue on Atone­ment:

When I first sit down on a meet­ing­house bench on a Sun­day morn­ing, I’m any­thing but focused. My mind is aswirl in fam­i­ly and work to-dos, scenes from books I’ve read or shows I’ve watched, extend­ed fam­i­ly dra­mas, bills, or crises. If I’ve for­got­ten to turn off my phone, a stream of vibra­tions will nag me, each buzz demand­ing my attention.

If I con­scious­ly work to set­tle down — and am lucky or blessed — I can sink into the imper­fect silence and feel at-one with the gath­er­ing wor­ship. The sounds draw me clos­er: the rustling of Friends shift­ing soft­ly in their seats, the crack­ling of the fire­place on cool morn­ings, the wind out­side blow­ing leaves against the porch door. If we’re for­tu­nate, the offered min­istry that morn­ing will speak to our con­di­tions and bring us deep­er still, to the feet of the divine Teacher and Com­forter. We may not get there every week, but when we do, we feel at-one with one anoth­er and with a high­er power.

A shifting effectiveness for people power?

November 30, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Inter­est­ing to see Eri­ca Chenoweth’s recent research ref­er­enced in a NYTimes in an arti­cle by Max Fish­er on protests in Chi­na. Non­vi­o­lence activists (includ­ing many Quak­ers) loved the con­clu­sions of her ini­tial research, which implied that non­vi­o­lent, people-power protests were not just moral­ly supe­ri­or but also prag­mat­i­cal­ly more effec­tive — sug­gest­ing that Gand­hi and King and the pan­theon of peace activists were right all along.

For years, a sting­ing crit­i­cism of non­vi­o­lence strat­e­gy has been that it’s root­ed in com­fort­able elite com­mu­ni­ties and has spent too much time lec­tur­ing resis­tance move­ments that turn to vio­lence. Chenoweth’s hard num­bers and aca­d­e­m­ic rig­or gave us a bit of cov­er: See!, non­vi­o­lence works more often than not! Her more recent research makes that prag­mat­ic argu­ment more complicated. 

Activists have also tried to apply the data to very dif­fer­ent types of social action. Chenoweth’s data was look­ing at regime change – over­throw­ing dic­ta­tors or an occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry. How it does and does­n’t apply to reform move­ments is an open ques­tion (hat tip Macken­z­ian for a great con­vo on this and this link).

The next part of the Times’ arti­cle ref­er­ences Zeynep Tufekci’s the­o­ry that the last decade’s era of social-media protests can cre­ate instant, large-scale chal­lenges to gov­ern­ment pow­er that are dra­mat­ic but essen­tial­ly lead­er­less and don’t come out of strate­gic, long-term vision­ing. These are more like­ly to fiz­zle out. I’m remind­ed of a 2010 blog post of mine, Glad­well and strong tie social media net­works, where I talked about the orga­niz­ing that needs to go on in the back­ground of a social net­work to make it more effective.

While this arti­cle focus­es on Chi­na, the ele­phant for non­vi­o­lence activists today is the war in Ukraine. Peo­ple pow­er was­n’t going to stop Russ­ian tanks head­ed toward Kiev in Feb­ru­ary. The best one could hope for is Ukraini­ans gum­ming up the sys­tem – employ­ing strate­gies like blow­ing up bridges dur­ing the inva­sion and slow-walking Russ­ian orders after­wards. But with­out a mil­i­tary defense, there was almost cer­tain­ly going to be a long (per­haps decades long) peri­od of occu­pa­tion and repres­sion. Activists can still sup­port relief work and con­sci­en­tious objec­tors, etc., but I hon­est­ly don’t know what tools we had to offer in regards to the inva­sion itself.

Friends Journal writing opportunities: Isolated Friends and Food/Farming issues

November 28, 2022
· Martin Kelley

With three weeks to go till dead­line, we’re still look­ing for arti­cles for Friends Jour­nal’s March issue, “Iso­lat­ed Friends and Meet­ings.” There are many would-be Friends that have no phys­i­cal meet­ing or Friends church near­by. There are also small meet­ings and wor­ship groups iso­lat­ed from oth­er meet­ings by hun­dreds of miles. How do we pull iso­lat­ed Friends clos­er into our reli­gious fel­low­ship? Trav­el­ing min­is­ters once linked iso­lat­ed meet­ings and helped knit them into cul­ture of wider Friends. How are we doing that today? What tools and prac­tices do we have to sup­port those at a dis­tance? The dead­line is Dec. 19. Learn more.

Fur­ther off in time­line, there’s a Feb. 20 dead­line for an issue on Farm­ing and Food. Learn more.

Quakers on Mastodon

November 25, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Every day brings more news of exis­ten­tial trou­ble at Twit­ter. It’s new over­lord is open­ly engag­ing with White suprema­cists and talk­ing garbage about the ser­vice’s algo­rithm had long had a lib­er­al bias (spoil­er: not true). Banned accounts are being rein­stat­ed and there’s a list cir­cu­lat­ing in rightwing cir­cles of left-leaning accounts they’re try­ing to get banned.

In all this I’ve been switch­ing over to Mastodon, a decen­tral­ized net­work whose struc­ture iso­lates it from the kind of takeover and con­sol­i­da­tion we’re see­ing at Twit­ter. My account there is writ​ing​.exchange/​@​m​a​r​tin. There are dozens of begin­ner’s guides avail­able if you’re think­ing of mak­ing the switch. If you’re look­ing for Quak­ers on the ser­vice, you can check out my following/followers list, which is chock full of them (prob­a­bly about 2/3rds of my list are Quak­er or Quaker-adjacent). Once you set up you should post an intro­duc­to­ry post with hash­tagged inter­ests. I fol­low the quak­er and quak­ers hash­tag and will spot you right away. There is a Quak­ers group as well. Friends Jour­nal also has a new account there, at mastodon​.lol/​@​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​j​o​u​r​nal.

Oth­er places to get your online Quak­er fix include the Quak­ers sub­red­dit and a very chat­ty Dis­cord serv­er (fol­low the link from the sub­red­dit for an invite). Two oth­er ser­vices get­ting buzz are Post (where I’m on the wait­ing list) and Hive (where I have a place­hold­er account at @martinkelley).