What does redemption mean to you?

December 6, 2022

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

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

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

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

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).

Quakers and residential boarding schools

November 25, 2022

A nice Friends Jour­nal opin­ion piece from San­dra Boone Mur­phy on rec­on­cil­ing Quak­ers’ past involve­ment with Native Amer­i­can res­i­den­tial schools. Paula Palmer wrote a detailed arti­cle on this in 2016 (and also talked about it in a 2019 Quak­er­S­peak video). It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to me how Friends try­ing to do good so often did things we look back on as horrific. 

Quakers Today podcast launched

November 16, 2022

So the new pod­cast, Quak­ers Today, offi­cial debuted yes­ter­day, with episode one look­ing at Quak­ers and Fic­tion (no coin­ci­dence that this is also the theme of the Novem­ber 2022 Friends Jour­nal). There’s an excerpt from a read­ing from Anne E.G. Nydam’s sto­ry, “The Con­duits” (you can read it here and hear her entire read­ing here) and excerpts from last year’s Cai Quirk Quak­er­S­peak inter­view. The pod­cast also has a call-in voice­mail line (we snagged 317-QUAKERS) so you’ll hear a cou­ple of peo­ple at the end shar­ing lit­er­a­ture that has shaped them.

The pod­cast comes out every month and you can sub­scribe in your favorite pod­cast ser­vice. We’ll have prompts for Decem­ber’s voice­mail line in a few weeks. A big shoutout to Peter­son Toscano, who is not only the online per­son­al­i­ty of the show but the pod­cast wiz­ard who has put it all togeth­er. Thanks too to Quak­er Vol­un­tary Ser­vice, which has jumped in to spon­sor the first season.

The new pod­cast has a video promo!