Quaker Spring 2022

May 10, 2022
· Martin Kelley

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
· Martin Kelley

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
· Martin Kelley

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
· Martin Kelley

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
· Martin Kelley

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.

Our inner flashlights
Our inner flashlights 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er dis­ci­ple­ship. Recur­ring themes: Rus­sia, peace, evan­ge­lism, blues.
blog.canyoubelieve.me blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me

The Quaker Peace Testimony and Ukraine

March 31, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Over on Friends Jour­nal, the head of Sid­well Friends School on Quak­ers and paci­fism is get­ting some atten­tion, in part I think because it’s not abso­lutist on pacifism:

Quak­ers are short on dog­ma and long on dis­cern­ment, a process that calls indi­vid­u­als to inter­ro­gate cir­cum­stances, seek truth, and act upon their con­science. Over the cen­turies indi­vid­ual Quak­ers have engaged in war­fare pro­vid­ed they deemed the cause just. Some­where between thir­ty and fifty per­cent of eli­gi­ble U.S. and British Quak­ers fought in World War I, and approx­i­mate­ly three-quarters chose to bear arms in World War II. 

His­to­ry is his­to­ry, of course, and Friends’ atti­tudes have actu­al­ly been more flu­id than our peace tes­ti­mo­ny would let on. The first rejoin­der online comes from Don Bad­g­ley:

So, let us be clear; with­out the direct and present lead­er­ship of the Divine Source, our so-called “tes­ti­monies” crum­ble to dust. Absent that One Source these “tes­ti­monies” are lit­tle more than religio-political pos­tur­ing, relics — and impos­si­ble to jus­ti­fy, espe­cial­ly with­in the con­text of the actu­al evil we see in the world today. Alter­na­tive­ly, when we tes­ti­fy to the whole world about the life-altering Truths that orig­i­nate in our Expe­ri­ence of the Divine Pres­ence, that min­istry is imbued with a vital, even mirac­u­lous power. 

As in most things Quak­er, I find myself intel­lec­tu­al­ly in agree­ment with both of them (we’ve got a com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry). I’m per­son­al­ly quite paci­fist. Even defen­sive wars kill inno­cents and lib­er­a­to­ry good guys have become tyrants over and over again in his­to­ry. But I have to admit I’ve been quite grate­ful to see Ukraini­ans suc­cess­ful­ly hold­ing the Russ­ian army at bay. I think it’s pos­si­ble for paci­fists to be strate­gic and even have an edge of realpoli­tik as we ques­tion war-making, both philo­soph­i­cal­ly and tactically. 

The Peace Testimony and Ukraine
The Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny and Ukraine 

Friends have upheld their com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence for cen­turies but the peace tes­ti­mo­ny urges us to fol­low our…
Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Cesar Chavez Day memories

March 31, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Every year around Cesar Chavez day I look for traces of my involve­ment with him. In the spring of 1987 he came to my col­lege cam­pus to recruit an annu­al mini-army of col­lege interns to work on what­ev­er cam­paign the Unit­ed Farm Work­ers were orga­niz­ing that sum­mer. I was back from a two-week, semi-authorized drop-out for a peace march and was intrigued with its glimpse into alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ties. Now here was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with a liv­ing non­vi­o­lence leg­end: yes please!

Much of the actu­al work turned out to be pret­ty mean­ing­less, I must admit. I did a lot of cold call­ing to church answer­ing machines to tell them about a video we were going to mail out to them (“nar­rat­ed by Mike Far­rell!”). But the con­text of the expe­ri­ence was great: liv­ing in a rent­ed house with oth­er UFW interns in East Brunswick, N.J. (one of whom became a seri­ous rela­tion­ship); work­ing in New York at a revolv­ing num­ber of desks at what­ev­er union would lend us a room; dis­cov­er­ing cheese enchi­ladas via Cesar’s always kind daugh­ter Lin­da; com­mut­ing into pre-gentrification Tribeca lis­ten­ing to some atro­cious 1980s bub­blegum pop sta­tion because that’s what Lin­da’s tween daugh­ters Olivia and Julia liked.

In July, we orga­nized an event back in Philly for Cesar: a protest out­side the A&P stock­hold­er meet­ing pres­sur­ing them to stop sell­ing grapes treat­ed with pes­ti­cides. I did a lot of orga­niz­ing around this: writ­ing first drafts of press releas­es, help­ing to get local labor unions out to the event to boost num­bers. Googling this morn­ing I found the pho­to above, tak­en at the event. That’s Cesar’s son-in-law and my boss Artie Rodriguez behind him to the right. I would have been some­where near­by just out of cam­era reach. The cap­tion reads:

Farm leader Cesar Chavez speaks to a group of sup­port­ers in Philadel­phia 7/9 out­side the hotel where the A&P stock­hold­ers were hold­ing their annu­al meet­ing. Chavez sup­port­ers were demand­ing that the super­mar­ket chain stop sell­ing Cal­i­for­nia grapes that are con­tact­ed with pes­ti­cides that cause cancer. 

It would prob­a­bly stun kids today that before cell phones many of us just did­n’t take pic­tures. Despite work­ing with him for an extend­ed sum­mer, and walk­ing with him in the 1987 March on Wash­ing­ton for Les­bian and Gay Rights, I have no pic­tures of myself with Cesar (I do have a card­board poster I prob­a­bly drew in ten min­utes, which he signed). But I have mem­o­ries of that sum­mer 35 (!) years ago. He was always kind and fun­ny and sur­pris­ing­ly down to earth. His charis­ma brought togeth­er an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of fol­low­ers and I was glad to be one.

Panel talk on Safety in Meetings

March 15, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Updat­ed to reflect the pan­el has hap­pened: On Wednes­day the 23rd there was a Zoom pan­el on the March issue of Friends Jour­nal, “Safe­ty in Meet­ings,” co-sponsored by the mag­a­zine and by Quak­ers in Pas­toral Care and Coun­sel­ing (QPCC).

The March 2022 issue of Friends Jour­nal, Safe­ty in Meet­ings, has brought up impor­tant ques­tions and ideas for Friends con­cerned with pas­toral care and abuse pre­ven­tion. How do we rec­og­nize when the unthink­able hap­pens; how do we heal? How can we be open and wel­com­ing to all peo­ple; do clear bound­aries and com­mu­ni­ty expec­ta­tions con­tribute to that? Is there a Quak­er wit­ness to pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble in our community?

Our pan­elists are QPC­C’s Bruce Heck­man and Friends Jour­nal authors Kody Hersh (Sacred Respon­si­bil­i­ty), Jade Rock­well (Sheep Among Wolves), Melin­da Wen­ner Bradley and Sita Diehl (Friend­ship and Care), joined by facil­i­ta­tors from both Friends Jour­nal and QPCC. 

Big props to FJ’s vol­un­teer co-news edi­tor Windy Cool­er, who’s been orga­niz­ing all this (she also con­duct­ed an inter­view for the issue).

Over forty peo­ple came to the pre­sen­ta­tion. It was quite mov­ing and itself mod­eled a car­ing com­mu­ni­ty. I’m grate­ful to see this issue be get­ting more atten­tion from Friends. It was not record­ed, for pri­va­cy’s sake, but there will be fol­low up.