Creativity and the Arts

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Hap­py first of the month. The new issue of Friends Jour­nal is up and it’s a great one: Cre­ativ­i­ty and the Arts. This is actu­al­ly the first issue on the arts since the mag­a­zine went to col­or in 2013. Here’s a bit of the intro­duc­to­ry Among Friends col­umn writ­ten by yours tru­ly:

This overt dis­trust of the arts fad­ed away a long time ago. Today, the sheer vol­ume of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends is impres­sive. When we put out a call for this issue, we had far more sub­mis­sions than we could pos­si­bly print. A dozen more artists told us they would love to write some­thing but were too busy cre­at­ing to do so at this time. Faced with a bit of a dilem­ma, we’ve cre­at­ed a sam­pler: each of the arti­cles in these pages rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent facet of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends.

Through­out the diverse dis­ci­plines of visu­al arts, music, writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, community-based art, and per­for­mance art, a com­mon thread harks back to the con­cerns of those ear­li­er Friends: there’s still a con­sci­en­tious­ness around art.

I’ll talk more about indi­vid­ual arti­cles as we fea­ture them but in the mean­time, feel free to leave me your ini­tial thoughts in the com­ments below. Bummed that you did­n’t write any­thing? The issue on Meet­ings and Mon­ey is look­ing for sub­mis­sions.


Page not found - Friends Journal

Page not found — Friends Journal 

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The Rise of Liberal Quakerism

May 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is nerd­ing deep into Quak­er his­to­ry, specif­i­cal­ly the process in which younger mem­bers of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing start­ed for­mu­lat­ing a new kind of Quak­erism. Here’s his explana­to­ry intro­duc­tion and here is part 2:

Mean­while, mem­ber­ship dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, as meet­ings applied dis­ci­pline increas­ing­ly rig­or­ous­ly for walk­ing dis­or­der­ly in all man­ner of ways. In 1859, a prize of one hun­dred pounds was offered by an anony­mous British Friend for the essay that best explained this decline and that offered the most promis­ing solutions

The process was any­thing but overnight. As I under­stand the his­to­ry it would be anoth­er half cen­tu­ry from the prize to a yearly-meeting-wide shift. I don’t think many Friends in Eng­land appre­ci­ate just how Evan­gel­i­cal their year­ly meet­ing has become in these years; their refusal to rec­og­nize Amer­i­can Hick­sites led to the lat­ter’s shun­ning from the world Quak­er fam­i­ly and meant mod­ernist Quak­er respons­es would evolve on large­ly sep­a­rate paths.

I won­der if British Friend William Pol­lard will make an appear­ance in Steven’s posts. I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed how Philadel­phia Hick­sites took to him despite the for­mal insti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers. [Update: Steven just dropped part three and there’s Pol­lard!]

The Rise of Lib­er­al Quak­erism — Part 2

Hometown Heroes

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Josh Tal­bot is back look­ing at pub­lic recog­ni­tions that imply that patri­o­tism is exclu­sive to mil­i­tary ser­vice:

With­in the last month I became aware of the “Home­town Heroes” pro­gram. Hang­ing from lamp­posts in our down­town, and oth­er down­town dis­tricts in the region, are ban­ners with the pic­tures and names of for­mer mil­i­tary per­son­nel. I was look­ing at one of the ban­ners hang­ing out­side of my bank and I start­ed think­ing to myself. “Why is it always soldiers?

Off the top of my head I can think of plen­ty of oth­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty that are heros from my stand­point. Activists for jus­tice and con­science. Civic-minded gad­flies. Shopown­ers who pro­vide so-called “third places” for for peo­ple to con­grege­gate. Traf­fic engi­neers who push back against corner-cutting in safe­ty issues. The most impor­tant heros are often every­day peo­ple who sim­ply do the right thing when chance puts a dan­ger­ous moral dilem­ma right in their path.

I push back against a sim­ple military-are-heros nar­ra­tives because in times of author­i­tar­i­an­ism the mil­i­tary often become the enforcers. There’s the jin­go­is­tic non­sense you hear that the mil­i­tary is pro­tect­ing our free­dom to protest. No: in most cas­es our lib­er­ty has been pre­served by peo­ple stand­ing up and prac­tic­ing their lib­er­ty despi­tee intim­i­da­tion by author­i­tar­i­an bul­lies and their police forces. I have friends in the mil­i­tary and I respect their choic­es and hon­or their com­mit­ments. I know heros can be found through­out the enlist­ed ranks and in our police forces but so are scoundrels. We need to rec­og­nize home­town hero­ism wher­ev­er it hap­pens and resist the mind­set that it’s exclu­sive to state forces.

https://​quak​er​re​turns​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​h​o​m​e​t​o​w​n​-​h​e​r​o​e​s​.​h​tml

Lifting up the vocabulary

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is Sell­ing Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two promi­nent Quak­er board­ing schools in the Philadel­phia area, and he talks about the brand­ing chal­lenges of “Quak­er val­ues” which his­toric Quak­er schools so often fall back on when describ­ing their mis­sion. We often describe these with the sim­plis­tic “SPICES” foru­mu­la­tion (Eric Moon wrote about the prob­lems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encour­ages us to expand our language:

We can use any num­ber of descrip­tors that do not sound so haughty and near­sight­ed. I think we should con­tin­u­al­ly lift up some key pieces of vocab­u­lary that real­ly do make the Quak­er way dis­tinc­tive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add oth­ers: “that of God in every per­son”; “the Inner Light”; “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”; “dis­cern­ment”; “sense of the meet­ing”; “right­ly led and right­ly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice with­in”; “way open­ing”; “clerk­ing”; “query”; “wor­ship shar­ing”; “expec­tant wait­ing”; “cen­ter­ing down”; “Quak­er deci­sion mak­ing”; “Quak­er tra­di­tion”; “faith and prac­tice”; “seek­ing clear­ness”; “Quak­er tes­ti­monies”; and of course, “meet­ing for worship.”

Long­time FJ read­ers will remem­ber a much-discussed 2008 arti­cle by Hoopes, “Young Fam­i­lies and Quak­erism: Will the Cen­ter Hold?” It cer­tain spoke to my con­di­tion as a par­ent strug­gling with fam­i­ly life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard real­i­ties fac­ing many Quak­er par­ents of young chil­dren today. They are fre­quent­ly exhaust­ed and fraz­zled from attend­ing to their children’s needs in addi­tion to their own all week long. They des­per­ate­ly need a break from their own chil­dren, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expect­ed — to serve as First-day school teach­ers or child­care providers. Hence, their expe­ri­ence of meet­ing is not one of replen­ish­ment, but of fur­ther depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadel­phia Friends took the 2008 arti­cle to heart.


Selling Quakerism - Friends Journal

Sell­ing Quak­erism — Friends Journal 

The Mis­sion – Mar­ket Ten­sion Inher­ent in Quak­er Values

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Skeletons (not even) in the closet

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is a bit a gru­some sto­ry, though not as shock­ing at it should be. Louellen White, a researcher look­ing for bur­ial records of Native Amer­i­can chil­dren stum­bled on a Native Amer­i­can skull just sit­ting in a dis­play case of a old Philadel­phia meeting.

As White searched for grave­yard ledgers in the library — crammed with stuffed birds, cloth­ing, shells and books — she came upon the skull. Her legs wob­bled. And her stom­ach dropped. Arsenault-Cote offered advice and reas­sur­ance. “You’re out there look­ing for them, and now they’re show­ing them­selves to you,” she told White. “He’s been wait­ing a long time.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, Philadel­phia Quak­ers were “incon­sis­tent friends” to Indi­ans, engaged in the same col­o­niz­ing projects as oth­er faiths while see­ing them­selves as unique­ly able to edu­cate natives.

Incon­sis­tent is an apt word. Paula Palmer has been trac­ing the his­to­ry of Quak­er Indi­an Board­ing Schools: high-minded enter­pris­es that often for­ca­bly stripped her­itage from their pupils in ways that were as cul­tur­al­ly impe­r­i­al as they were unaware.

Byber­ry Meet­ing dates to the 1690s and the meet­ing­house grounds are full of abo­li­tion­ist his­to­ry. The skull was appar­ent­ly dug up in the mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry as part of a near­by canal project and is thought to have come to the meet­ing­house as part of a col­lec­tion from a shut­tered his­tor­i­cal soci­ety. Its pres­ence on the shelf rep­re­sents the atti­tudes of Friends many decades ago who thought noth­ing of plac­ing a Lenape skull in a case. There’s also the sad sub­text that the meet­ing library is said to be so unused that most of the meet­ing’s con­tem­po­rary mem­bers had no idea it was there. It’s a shame that it took an out­side researcher to notice the skele­tons in our dis­play case.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​4​8​3​0​7​2​5​7​1​.​h​tml

Our unease with evil

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is back, with a look at Quak­ers’ unease with evil

If there is some­thing divine or at least quasi-divine about the human, then where does human evil fit in? How could the two coex­ist? I sus­pect that this cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance explains part of our our unease with evil.

Evil

President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminiary on Simon Jenkins article

May 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chalk this one up as anoth­er whisper-down-the-lane. As read­ers will prob­a­bly remem­ber, a few weeks ago, non-Friend Simon Jenk­ins wrote an opin­ion piece in The Guardian about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of British Friends drop­ping God from their Faith and Prac­tice. There were a lot of exag­ger­a­tions in it; the year­ly meet­ing ses­sion was most­ly decid­ing whether it it felt led to start the long process of revis­ing the doc­u­ment of Friends’ belief and prac­tice. Many year­ly meet­ings do this every gen­er­a­tion or so. AFAIK, there was no sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion on what the revi­sions might bring. At the time, I spec­u­lat­ed that “Jenk­ins is chas­ing the head­line to advance his own argu­ment with­out regard to how his state­ment might polar­ize Friends.”

Now we have anoth­er head­line chas­er. The pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary more or less reads Jenk­in­s’s piece aloud on his radio show (hat-tip havedan­son on the Quak­ers sub­red­dit). He light­ly skips over the fact that Jenk­ins isn’t Quak­er and admits to lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence of Quak­er wor­ship. The SBTS pres­i­dent, Albert Mohler, repeat­ed­ly calls the Guardian arti­cle a “news report” even though it is clear­ly labeled as an opin­ion piece. If any pub­lic­i­ty is good pub­lic­i­ty then it’s good that non-Friends like Jenk­ins and now Mohler are talk­ing about the decision-making process of a Quak­er year­ly meet­ing, but this is stu­pid piled on stupid.

From a media per­spec­tive, I get it: Mohler has a dai­ly 24-minute pod­cast to fill. He has interns who scan buzzy news items. They rearrange the text with inter­sti­tials like “he con­tin­ues, and I quote” and “he goes on to say” so that Mohler can spend five min­utes read­ing an arti­cle with­out sound­ing like he’s just read­ing an arti­cle. But seri­ous­ly, how does the pres­i­dent of a major sem­i­nary have such dis­re­gard for any­thing approach­ing aca­d­e­m­ic rig­or? Also: how much regur­gi­tat­ed junk is on the inter­net sim­ply because peo­ple need to fill time? The Quak­er cau­tion about giv­ing min­istry just because you’re paid to give min­istry and it’s time to give min­istry seems apt in this case.

Mon­day, May 14, 2018