Retro Quaker Vocal Ministry Flowchart

June 16, 2022
“Speaking into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.
“Speak­ing into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.

Peo­ple have been com­ment­ing a lot on this chart Friends Jour­nal shared on social media last week. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the August 1991 issue, what I love most about it is its 1990s-era flow­chart design. What would it be today — some punchy info­graph­ic per­haps? We dove into the archives because this mon­th’s issue is all about Quak­er vocal min­istry and at least two of the fea­ture arti­cles men­tion these kinds of charts.

From Paul Buck­ley:

There is a fre­quent­ly repro­duced dia­gram that graph­i­cal­ly guides poten­tial speak­ers through a series of ques­tions they are to con­sid­er when they feel an urge to rise and speak. These exam­ine whether a poten­tial mes­sage is divine­ly inspired; whether it is intend­ed for the speak­er alone or for oth­ers present; and whether this is the right time and place to deliv­er it. These resources are all use­ful, but they only address one half of the act of vocal min­istry: one that is, by far, the small­er and per­haps less impor­tant por­tion. The oth­er part is the min­istry of lis­ten­ing, and we are all called to be lis­ten­ing ministers.

From Edna Whit­ti­er:

Since the begin­ning of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, writ­ten advices have guid­ed Friends. Year­ly meet­ings’ faith and prac­tice books, Pen­dle Hill pam­phlets on vocal min­istry, and indi­vid­ual month­ly meet­ings’ “Wel­come to Quak­er Wor­ship” hand­outs have guide­lines for speak­ing or not speak­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. In 2019, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence even pub­lished a poster of a cir­cle flow chart with guide­lines for deliv­er­ing a mes­sage dur­ing worship.

Brent Bill has sub­se­quent­ly shared the graph­ic Whit­ti­er men­tions [link was on Twit­ter and is dead] and yes, it is very 2020’s info­graph­i­cal in design!

But I link to the arti­cles because these kinds of when-to-speak kind of charts can always become prob­lem­at­ic. As Bet­sy Caz­den replied on Twit­ter: “The peo­ple who need it least will spend the full hour obsess­ing about the flow-chart and will nev­er speak. The peo­ple who need it most nev­er will.” Just a few weeks ago I was sit­ting on a bench in Crop­well (N.J.) Meet­ing test­ing and retest­ing my moti­va­tions and lead­ings to rise and give min­istry. I gave a final breath to stand up when I heard the “good morn­ing Friends” fol­lowed by the sounds of hands slap­ping on hands in rise-of-meeting hand­shakes. Over the years I have learned not spend my whole hour obsess­ing but had not real­ized this meet­ing’s wor­ship was only 45 minutes!

Fur­ther read­ing: An Expect­ed Mir­a­cle, a 2023 post about the (often unnec­es­sary) pres­sures of Quak­er ministry.


Updating as I find more

Chest­nut Hill Meet­ing in Philadel­phia, Pa., cir­ca 2014.
West­min­ster Meet­ing, in Lon­don, which in turn got it from a 2015 book by Zélie Gross, With a Ten­der Hand.

The new 1808 Batsto Hiking Trail

June 5, 2022

The 1808 Hik­ing Trail from Bat­sto to Crow­ley­town on the Mul­li­ca Riv­er opened today. From a Face­book descrip­tion, it:

fol­lows a road that ran in part between Crow­ley­town – where the But­ton­wood Camp­ground is today – and Bat­sto Vil­lage more than 200 years ago. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail is lined with mas­sive, tow­er­ing Atlantic white cedars in sev­er­al places and cuts through Morde­cai Swamp afford­ing fan­tas­tic views deep into it. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail will pro­vide two new hik­ing loops from the Bat­sto Vis­i­tor Cen­ter: a 1.7 mile loop and a 7 mile loop via the Batona and oth­er con­nect­ing trails includ­ing the new Sand and Water Hik­ing Trail (0.9 miles, orange blazes) also open­ing on June 5.

blank

Don’t believe the mileage: I was expect­ing a 1.7‑mile loop but end­ed up on a 7‑plus-mile out and back hike!

Here’s a thread on the always excel­lent NJPinebar­rens forum on the Morde­cai trail. The swamp was named after Morde­cai Andrews, one of the ear­li­est Quak­ers on the Atlantic side of South Jer­sey, a founder of the sea­port town of Tuck­er­ton in 1699.

Here’s a great arti­cle by Gabe Coia on Morde­cai’s busi­ness empire. He was among the first Eng­lish set­tlers in Lit­tle Egg Har­bor and went about extract­ing the lum­ber resources upriv­er on the Mul­li­ca. There’s some great descrip­tions of thousand-year-old trees the size of 20-story build­ings that were tak­en down by Andrews’s teams. Update: I thought the orig­i­nal roadbed of the trail was built as part of the log­ging enter­prise but Gabe Coia emailed me that the roadbed of the 1808 Trail was built by Bat­sto own­er Jesse Richards (in 1808, sur­prise!) and post­dates Andrews’s lum­ber busi­ness in the area.

Putting a  swamp and felling all of these mas­sive trees would have been a very labor-intensive under­tak­ing. Coia’s arti­cle men­tions Morde­cai’s ties to Bar­ba­dos: “The ships would return with pro­duce, rum, and oth­er goods to replen­ish sup­plies for the com­mu­ni­ty at Lit­tle Egg Har­bor.” The Caribbean island was the first eco­nom­ic break-out star in the British New World and it was the first place where Quak­erism spread like wild­fire out­side of the British Isles. It also boast­ed an econ­o­my built almost entire­ly on mas­sive slave-labor camps, where even indi­vid­ual Quak­ers some­times owned hun­dreds of slaves. Giv­en the well-documented trade, at least some of oth­er goods Morde­cai’s ships were prob­a­bly bring­ing back were kid­napped Africans. This would have been the labor who logged impen­e­tra­ble swamps.

Geneal­o­gy sites back up my sus­pi­cions. I looked Morde­cai Andrews and slaves and found this, about his son-in-law John Math­is, who took over much of his busi­ness:

The vir­gin for­est of the sur­round­ing area pro­vid­ed tim­ber for the ships which sup­port­ed suc­cess­ful fish­ing and trade ven­tures that became the foun­da­tions for Great John’s ambi­tious land acqui­si­tion pro­gram. Math­is schooners, one of which was cap­tained by his son Daniel, engaged in the West Indies trade, swap­ping South Jer­sey lum­ber for pro­duce and oth­er goods that enabled the Math­is farms to pros­per. By the time of the Rev­o­lu­tion he had four farms in oper­a­tion con­tain­ing about 5000 acres, which were worked and cleared by slaves. Was said to be an exten­sive slave hold­er and one of the ear­li­est mer­chant smug­glers. He became one of the largest land hold­ers and one of the wealth­i­est and most dis­tin­guished men of Lit­tle Egg Harbor.

John Math­is’s son (Morde­cai’s grand­son) Mica­jah was dis­owned by Friends for refus­ing to eman­ci­pate the fam­i­ly’s enslaved Africans (he “did not then coin­cide with the rest of his soci­ety” when it final­ly adopt­ed an anti­slav­ery stance in the 1770s). He must have recal­cu­lat­ed his options by the time New Jer­sey start­ed abol­ish­ing slav­ery and repent­ed and man­u­mit­ted every­one in time to be buried in the meet­ing­house ceme­tery, natch.

All-in-all, it’s weird how so many local his­to­ries paint ear­ly set­tlers were like some kind of Ingalls-family sub­sis­tence farm­ers, liv­ing in caves and eking out hard­scrab­ble lives in the wilder­ness. I’m sure there were rough patch­es, and don’t get me wrong: I like my hot show­er in the morn­ing and would­n’t want to swap lifestyles out­side of a few camp­ing week­ends a year. But in many cas­es these fam­i­lies plant­ed them­selves in aban­doned Lenape towns con­nect­ed by well-established Lenape trails with water access to inter­na­tion­al trade, amassed title to hun­dreds of acres of land because plagues and wars had dec­i­mat­ed the locals, exploit­ed non-renewable resources like thousand-year-old forests that were only now acces­si­ble because of enslaved labor brought from 4,000 miles away. (I’ve writ­ten before about how colo­nial Quak­ers made for­tunes out of oth­er’s wars.)

Insert record-scratch sound effect: but back to a pleas­ant ear­ly June after­noon. On today’s trip, the new­ly acces­si­ble path of the trail is beau­ti­ful and a must-visit trip for any nature-lover in South Jersey.

(Post updat­ed var­i­ous times as I dug more into the Andrews/Mathis fam­i­ly tree.)

Ukraine and the dilemmas of pacifism

May 12, 2022

From Johan Maurer

But let’s say you and I have put all our eggs into the Jesus bas­ket. Aban­don­ing non­vi­o­lence is sim­ply not an option. What can we say that is dif­fer­ent from the cal­cu­la­tions of our peace-loving friends and neigh­bors who are cast­ing about for polit­i­cal solu­tions and com­pro­mis­es when evi­dence sug­gests that the aggres­sor is com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ed in what we think of him?

Quaker Spring 2022

May 10, 2022

My friend Peter Blood asked me to get out infor­ma­tion on this year’s Quak­er Spring gath­er­ing, in Pough­keep­sie, N.Y., and online, at the end of June:

Are you famil­iar with Quak­er Spring? It’s an unusu­al gath­er­ing — open-hearted, min­i­mal advance pro­gram­ming. A jour­ney each time we gath­er. It would be won­der­ful if some of you are able & led to join us in per­son but we know it is a long way.  But, of course, it would also be won­der­ful to see some of you via Zoom!
In God’s lov­ing care,
Peter
for the Quak­er Spring Plan­ning Group

More infor­ma­tion at: quak​er​spring​.org/​2​0​2​2​-​g​a​t​h​e​r​ing

Philadelphia YM on pamphlet series archive

April 14, 2022

I’ve already writ­ten about the dig­i­tal repub­li­ca­tion of the clas­sic William Penn Lec­ture series. But Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s post con­tained this great quote from Jim Rose:

Pen­dle Hill had a prac­tice of ask­ing week-long stu­dents to take on a job on Wednes­day after­noon. One week my task was to clean/dust and arrange the books in the Upmeads library and in the process I found, high on an upper shelf, a whole series of dusty pam­phlets called the William Penn Lec­tures. Inac­ces­si­ble? You bet. A few months lat­er I sojourned at Pen­dle Hill while my late wife was tak­ing a week-long course. Dur­ing that week I sat with my com­put­er and scanned the text of those pam­phlets. My intent was to make that body of lit­er­a­ture more acces­si­ble to Quak­ers and oth­ers through­out the world on the inter­net. And recent­ly that goal has been achieved. 

I know Jim well from his time on Friends Jour­nal’s board of trustees and mak­ing Quak­er archives acces­si­ble is a great pas­sion of his. He helped us tremen­dous­ly in get­ting old­er arti­cles indexed. That com­bined with the Haver­ford Col­lege Library’s dig­i­tal­iza­tion of every­thing going back to 1955 means we’re rel­a­tive­ly acces­si­ble.

Speak­ing of archives, it looks like I’ve been remiss shar­ing anoth­er amaz­ing resource: the Salem (NJ) Quar­ter Tape Archive. Start­ing in the late 1970s, peo­ple start­ed tap­ing long inter­views with Friends. They’ve sat gath­er­ing dust until they were pulled out an dig­i­tized. Reg­u­lar read­ers will know I’m a huge fan of Rachel Davis DuBois and her inter­view by Charles Crabbe Thomas (num­ber 13) is absolute gold.

William Penn Lecture Quaker archive now available

April 8, 2022

Speak­ing of Bayard Rustin, the print­ed ver­sion of the 1948 speech that is the sub­ject of Car­los Figueroa’s recent Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is now avail­able as a free e‑book or PDF.

But not just that speech: Pen­dle Hill and Quak­er Heron Press recent­ly fin­ished dig­i­tiz­ing dozens of the William Penn/Seeking Faith­ful­ness lec­tures dat­ing back to 1916. It’s an amaz­ing col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing a who’s-who of twentieth-century Friends and friends-of-Friends.

A warn­ing that the selec­tions reflect the prej­u­dices of the day. As far as I can tell it took until the 1950s until lec­ture orga­niz­ers thought to invite a woman. And of course nam­ing your lec­ture after William Penn is seen as prob­lem­at­ic today giv­en his per­son­al involve­ment in human traf­fick­ing. Back then they could over­look that to claim he endeav­ored “to live out the laws of Christ in every thought, and word, and deed.” In 2016 the revived lec­ture series was renamed.

Bayard Rustin in Friends Journal

April 7, 2022

In the mag­a­zine, Itha­ca College’s Car­los Figueroa looks back at an impor­tant talk Bayard Rustin gave to the young Friends asso­ci­a­tion in Philadel­phia in 1948. It was a piv­otal moment in a life that con­tained so many: Rustin had spent the ear­ly 1940s orga­niz­ing with the Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and was recent­ly released from a prison term for vio­lat­ing the Selec­tive Ser­vice Act. This was his oppor­tu­ni­ty to lay out a paci­fist pol­i­tics for the Cold War era:

Rustin explic­it­ly sought to per­suade oth­ers into con­sid­er­ing civ­il dis­obe­di­ence as a social demo­c­ra­t­ic strat­e­gy for pur­su­ing struc­tur­al and pol­i­cy change. Rustin advo­cat­ed for a human­i­tar­i­an, com­mu­nal, and moral­is­tic approach to change, thus dis­re­gard­ing an individual’s polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, geo­graph­ic loca­tion, or gov­ern­ment system.

Over on YouTube, the newest episode of Quak­er­S­peak inter­views Rustin’s part­ner Wal­ter Nae­gle:

Bayard believed in the one­ness of the human fam­i­ly, in the broth­er­hood and sis­ter­hood of all peo­ple,” Wal­ter says. “He believed in the pow­er of non­vi­o­lence which comes out of that belief in the one­ness of all peo­ple.… He saw every­body as equal in the eyes of the divine.

Rustin’s walk with Friends was rather com­pli­cat­ed and he’s often not been giv­en the recog­ni­tion he deserves.

Johan Maurer on Inner Flashlights

April 1, 2022

I’ve writ­ten many times about the dumb­ing down of Quak­er lan­guage into ever-more-ambiguous terms and like this lat­est blog post from Johan Mau­r­er.

What­ev­er the caus­es, phras­es such as “inner light” and “that of God” became even vaguer than they might have been indi­vid­u­al­ly. Increas­ing­ly, as some Friends meet­ings became gath­er­ings of peo­ple who loved the atmos­phere and found a refuge in the free­dom of Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty, and as the sur­round­ing cul­ture became more hos­tile to claims of faith, the folk­ways of Quak­erism became more impor­tant than the core teach­ings — at least in the London-Philadelphia axis and its offspring.
Let’s face it: that refuge became more impor­tant as cer­tain quar­ters of Chris­tian­i­ty became more obnox­ious and author­i­tar­i­an. It’s unfair to charge that hos­til­i­ty to Chris­tian­i­ty sim­ply became more fash­ion­able. Too often, we Chris­tians did it to our­selves, pro­ject­ing a false cer­tain­ty and a fear­some God instead of the actu­al Gospel. 

He goes on to make the point that the Quak­er avoid­ance of a kind of rigid cer­tain­ty makes our faith inher­ent­ly risky and it’s true, it’s always on the edge of either fly­ing apart from cen­trifu­gal forces or col­laps­ing in on itself in self-regard.