Craig Bar­nett on the future of Quak­erism in the UK:

There is like­ly to be an even larg­er num­ber of peo­ple whose most reg­u­lar engage­ment with oth­er Quak­ers is online, per­haps sup­ple­ment­ed by retreats, camps or oth­er in-person events. There will almost cer­tain­ly be a broad range of Quak­er activist groups and net­works focussed on par­tic­u­lar con­cerns such as the cli­mate emer­gency, migra­tion and peace. Along­side this, I antic­i­pate a greater diver­si­ty of forms of Quak­er prac­tice, belong­ing and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, with most Friends hav­ing a much loos­er con­nec­tion to area meet­ings and Britain Year­ly Meet­ing as a whole. In oth­er words it looks much more like a move­ment than one mono­lith­ic organisation.

The Future of British Quakerism 

I have just returned from The Future of British Quak­erism con­fer­ence, organ­ised by Quak­ers in Britain and Woodbrooke…

tran​si​tion​quak​er​.blogspot​.com

The Octo­ber Friends Jour­nal is out. A lit­tle teas­er from my open­ing column:

Are we all just bad Quak­ers? I don’t think so. I had so many con­ver­sa­tions with Friends over the years in which they judged them­selves against semi-mythical “real Quak­ers.” I sus­pect we often find our great­est Quak­er authen­tic­i­ty in the messi­ness that fol­lows faith­ful­ness. Some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing Friends in the past, fig­ures such as Ben­jamin Lay and Pub­lic Uni­ver­sal Friend, were so far ahead of their time that they couldn’t fit into the Quak­er main­stream of their day.

The Good Samar­i­tan who stopped to help a wound­ed trav­el­er was prob­a­bly made late for what­ev­er appoint­ment he was rush­ing to. He might have lost busi­ness with his detour; he cer­tain­ly lost mon­ey on the sup­plies he used to treat the wounds and on the mon­ey he gave the innkeep­er. But he was clear-sighted enough to know that the inward com­mand­ment to help his neigh­bor was more impor­tant than any of these world­ly concerns. 

And Who Are Our Friends? 

How can Quak­ers find authen­tic­i­ty in a divid­ed world? Explore the call to love our neigh­bors amid global…

Friends Journal 

Last week I spoke with Friends Jour­nal author Don McCormick. Don’t been a pro­lif­ic writer for us in recent years. We talked of our expe­ri­ences of com­mu­ni­ty among mod­ern Friends, espe­cial­ly in dif­fer­ent types of meet­ings, as well as tech­niques for ori­ent­ing and wel­com­ing new­com­ers to Quak­er meetings.

Rela­tion­ships in Quak­er Meet­ing: Don­ald W McCormick 

A Quak­er author chat. Don McCormick­’s “Rela­tion­ships in the Quak­er Com­mu­ni­ty” appears in the Sep­tem­ber 2024 issue of…

YouTube 

Nan­cy has an arti­cle in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal called “A Love Let­ter to My Meet­ing.” With a title like that, it could be over­ly sap­py but I found it ten­der and deep, a reflec­tion on her chang­ing roles and relationships. 

In the video inter­view we talk about nav­i­gat­ing con­tro­ver­sies – a fight over car­pets in the past and strug­gling with wild­ly diver­gent atti­tudes around COVID poli­cies more recent­ly. I was most inter­est­ed in how she’s changed over the years. How do you go from a new­com­er still try­ing to under­stand Quak­er lin­go to a pil­lar of the meet­ing, the kind of per­son who steps in when some­thing needs to be han­dled. The short answer is that this hap­pens over time. 

A Love Let­ter to My Meet­ing: Nan­cy Bieber Author Chat 

A Quak­er author chat. Nan­cy L. Bieber’s “A Love Let­ter to My Meet­ing” appears in the Sep­tem­ber 2024…

YouTube 

Anoth­er Quaker-related law­suit against immi­gra­tion enforce­ment in hous­es of wor­ship dropped today.

Oth­er coverage:

• Philadel­phia Inquirer
• Sojourn­ers
• Wash­ing­ton Post Opinion

Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Joins over Two Dozen Reli­gious Groups in New Immi­gra­tion Lawsuit 

FGC joined an inter­faith law­suit against the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, CBP, and ICE.

Friends Journal 

From Craig Barnett:

“Most Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties now have no children’s meet­ing, and this has come to seem nor­mal. Many peo­ple who have joined in the last cou­ple of decades have nev­er seen a child in a Meet­ing House, and take it for grant­ed that a Quak­er Meet­ing is only for retired people.”

I don’t know the sit­u­a­tion in the UK where Bar­nett lives but around me in the U.S. the cyn­i­cal answer would be that they’re at soc­cer prac­tice. All of the church­es I know have seen sharply declin­ing Sun­day School class­es in recent decades.

Because nei­ther my wife’s church­es or my Quak­er meet­ings have pro­vid­ed good Sun­day Schools, our fam­i­ly has long jug­gled ser­vices to be able to go else­where to pro­vide our kids with a Sun­day School class and friends. For the past num­ber of years it’s been with a very friend­ly Mora­vian church over in the next town. We’ve been so involved that we think of them as our oth­er church fam­i­ly and many of the mem­bers have become friends. We’ve known them through years, from births to mar­riage break-ups to kids grad­u­at­ing and going off to col­lege. Just ear­li­er this week I took three of our kids to their bowl­ing out­ing. It’s real­ly com­mu­ni­ty and some­thing I don’t see hap­pen­ing in any near­by Friends meeting.

But even at this church, with a strong, long­stand­ing pro­gram going back over 100 years, it’s not hard to notice class­es get­ting just a bit small­er every year and Sun­day School teach­ers get­ting a lit­tle more thinned out. Even the chil­dren of core mem­bers will miss Sun­day morn­ing class­es for weeks at a time because of Sun­day morn­ing sports.

My wife’s new Ortho­dox church has a Sun­day School, which is nice, and a def­i­nite plus. Being even it does­n’t seem to be that large giv­en the size of the congregation.

I’d like to build up a chil­dren’s pro­gram at the small Friends com­mu­ni­ty that we’re rebuild­ing but I must admit to being unsure about what’s real­is­ti­cal­ly even pos­si­ble. This is a phe­nom­e­non far greater than any sin­gle con­gre­ga­tion or denom­i­na­tion. Shout-out to the Chil­dren’s Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive, who is try­ing to address these issues.

Nur­tur­ing the seed 

Young peo­ple need multi-generational community

quak​er​re​new​al​.sub​stack​.com

I had a nice inter­view with Wis­con­sin Friend Kat Grif­fith. She likes, even loves, going door-to-door in her “pur­ple” dis­trict and talk­ing pol­i­tics to strangers. She’s a won­der­ful sto­ry­teller and it was hard not to laugh as she talked about some of these adven­tures (spoil­er: she’s far braver than I am!). In a time of hyper-partisanship, it’s a good reminder to build our lives around curios­i­ty and communication.

The Feb­ru­ary arti­cle we were talk­ing about is “Rhap­sody in Pur­ple.” See also: Show notes for the video inter­view.

My intro­duc­to­ry col­umn in the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal, regard­ing the light­ning fast deci­sion to file a Quak­er law­suit about immigration:

I think Quak­er busi­ness meet­ings have anoth­er pur­pose: they give us prac­tice in deci­sion mak­ing, and we build trust in one anoth­er. When some­thing extra­or­di­nary comes up that has to be dealt with imme­di­ate­ly, we kick into action using the mus­cle mem­o­ry from all of those Sun­day after­noons spent talk­ing about the finances. Because we’re a reli­gious body that has tak­en the time to know one anoth­er, we can antic­i­pate con­cerns and move sur­pris­ing­ly quickly.

Every­thing is mov­ing crazy fast in the polit­i­cal world these days. That’s the plan, of course: to over­whelm us with the speed at which the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is being dis­man­tled. But we are prac­ticed; we too can respond with stead­fast love and solidarity.

A reminder that you can fol­low my link shares much more quick­ly via my Bluesky account. If you’re there you should def­i­nite­ly fol­low my Quak­ers list for every­thing that Friends are talk­ing about.

I also rec­om­mend Jason Kot­tke’s blog, long one of my favorites, who is turn­ing it over to links and cov­er­age about the coup in progress. Mike Mas­nick has been writ­ing impor­tant stuff about the insan­i­ty of Musk’s twenty-something crew tak­ing over and rewrit­ing pay­ment sys­tems across var­i­ous agen­cies (see, for exam­ple, “A 25-Year-Old Is Writ­ing Back­doors Into The Treasury’s $6 Tril­lion Pay­ment Sys­tem. What Could Pos­si­bly Go Wrong?”)

Pre­pared for This 

How do Quak­ers make swift, faith­ful deci­sions in times of cri­sis? Mar­tin Kel­ley explains the role of trust,…

Friends Journal