Sam Walton: Putting the protest back in Protestant

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the Peace and Dis­ar­ma­ment Pro­gramme Manger for British Friends comes a plea for us not to be afraid of going back to Quak­er roots and chal­lenge the abuse of power.

Society’s val­ues are so often in oppo­si­tion to God’s pur­pos­es. Slav­ery used to be legal. Love between two peo­ple of the same sex was ille­gal in our life­times. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s cre­ation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrich­ment rather than loy­al­ties lying with the King­dom of Heav­en and work­ing for the enrich­ment of all human­i­ty. When being loy­al to God’s pur­pos­es runs counter to what soci­ety expects it can get pret­ty rough. There may be per­se­cu­tion, though it varies a lot: from tut­ting, telling you off for being veg­e­tar­i­an, being giv­en white feath­ers, right through to impris­on­ment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.

Putting the protest back in Protestant

A New Creation Story

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice piece on Philadel­phia Friend O:

For O., a mem­ber of Cen­tral Philadel­phia Month­ly Meet­ing, car­ry­ing this query for pas­toral min­istry awak­ens joy in her heart. It rais­es impor­tant ques­tions: Are we trans­formed by the pow­er of love, dur­ing our bio­log­i­cal con­cep­tion as human beings? Might our lives be a mea­sure­less love sto­ry about creation?

It’s hard to cap­ture O’s per­son­al­i­ty in ASCII char­ac­ters. She’s been in a few Quak­er­S­peak videos.

A New Cre­ation Sto­ry: Embrac­ing Love

Becoming a Quaker Minister

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I love the gen­tle, delib­er­ate way Stephanie talks in her Quak­er­S­peak videos. In this week’s she talks about Quake ministry:

Join­ing up in that includes mak­ing my par­tic­u­lar gifts and skills avail­able and not need­ing it to be about me or accom­plish­ment, but about seek­ing to real­ly be a part of what God is try­ing to make hap­pen with and through me and oth­ers, and to rejoice in that. 

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​b​e​c​o​m​i​n​g​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​er/

Civility Can Be Dangerous

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the AFSC’s Lucy Dun­can, a look back at Hen­ry Cad­bury’s now-infamous 1934 speech to Amer­i­can rab­bis and a look at the civil­i­ty debate in mod­ern America.

Stand­ing up for peace means stand­ing on the side of the oppressed, not throw­ing them into the lion’s mouth in the name of civil­i­ty. And inter­rupt­ing racist vio­lence takes more than civ­il dis­course: active dis­rup­tion is need­ed in order for racism to be revealed and dis­man­tled. What good is inef­fec­tive paci­fism? My com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence is about sav­ing lives.

I gave my take on Cad­bury’s speech back in June. I was a lit­tle eas­i­er on Cad­bury, most­ly because I think we need to under­stand the Quak­er world­view out of which he was speak­ing. It’s nev­er good to lec­ture the oppressed on their oppres­sion, but the clas­sic Quak­er idea of speak­ing truth to all sides still holds val­ue and is some­thing I think we miss some­times nowadays.


Civility Can Be Dangerous

Civil­i­ty Can Be Dangerous 

In 1934, AFSC co-founder Hen­ry Cad­bury advised Jew­ish rab­bis to be gen­tler on Hitler. Is civil­i­ty a substitute…
Friends Journal Friends Journal 

What gifts of the Spirit are we marginalizing?

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Pow­er­ful warn­ings from Adria Gulizia about what hap­pens when a faith com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t exer­cise all of its gifts :

Even worse, when we rou­tine­ly mar­gin­al­ize cer­tain gifts, we begin to see their exer­cise as dys­func­tion­al and their absence as nor­ma­tive, rather than the reverse. When the prophet chal­lenges us with uncom­fort­able truths, rather than using our dis­com­fort as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for reflec­tion and dis­cern­ment, we tell her to tone it down, com­plain that she is “unwel­com­ing” and, if she doesn’t get the mes­sage, we run her off.


Welcoming the Gifts God Sends Us

Wel­com­ing the Gifts God Sends Us 

In order to remain healthy and faith­ful, we must nur­ture all spir­i­tu­al gifts, not just the ones that…
In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

Is this what people want?

August 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Don McCormick is back with this week’s Friends Jour­nal fea­ture. His Feb­ru­ary arti­cle, “Can Quak­erism Sur­vive,” sparked all sorts of con­ver­sa­tions and is now at 110 com­ments. Now he’s back with spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tions for Quak­er growth, inspired by megachurch church growth research and models.

When I read this, I asked myself if we Quak­ers are pro­vid­ing the equiv­a­lent of this type of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance. Do new­com­ers and oth­ers see us as meet­ing their spir­i­tu­al needs? If they do, do they see this right away, or does it take a while? To answer these ques­tions, I had to learn more about the “clear path­way” that the Reveal lit­er­a­ture described. Although Quak­erism has great wis­dom in the area of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance, at first it seemed that it was incon­sis­tent with the spir­i­tu­al guid­ance described in the survey.

When I’ve taught Quak­erism 101 class­es, I’ve try to explain the branch­es of Friends — and the schisms — not just as the­o­log­i­cal or cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non but as problem-solving pref­er­ences. What tools do we reach for in cri­sis? Do we go inward and recom­mit our­selves to dis­tinc­tive prac­tices that we’ve been slack­ing off on? Do we start read­ing groups and spir­i­tu­al friend­ship pro­grams to train each mem­ber to car­ry the work? Do we blame our Quak­er odd­i­ties and start using the lan­guage and litur­gi­cal mod­els of the more suc­cess­ful church­es near us? Do we set up com­mit­tees and pro­duce cur­ric­u­la to sup­port local efforts? Do we look to experts and craft nation­wide pro­grams and hire staff and prob­lem solve? I’m not sure these tools need to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, but in prac­tice I see most Quak­er bod­ies tend to reach for only one or two of these tools. And of course, the tools we chose large­ly deter­mine both the prob­lems we solve and the unin­tend­ed ones we create.


What People Really Want from Church and Quaker Meeting

What Peo­ple Real­ly Want from Church and Quak­er Meeting 

Look­ing at suc­cess­ful church growth mod­els for ideas to grow our fellowship.
Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.