Reading the Qur’an as a Quaker

April 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Earl­ham col­lege pro­fe­sor and Quak­er author Michael Birkel decid­ed to reach across reli­gious divides by sim­ply talk­ing to his neigh­bors, a project which came to span the Unit­ed States: Read­ing the Qur’an as a Quaker

What is it like to read some­one else’s scrip­ture? I think it’s quite pos­si­ble that it can change you in ways that I can’t pre­dict for any read­er, except to say that it will make your life richer.

In addi­tion to the Quak­er­S­peak video there’s also a book of Birkel’s project, Qu’ran in Con­ver­sa­tion.

Ask Me Anything: How easy is it to become a Quaker?

April 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I have an Ask Me Any­thing request from read­er Ruby M:

Hel­lo! I’m study­ing The Friends Church for aca­d­e­m­ic pur­pos­es and I’d love to hear from some­one with first­hand expe­ri­ence. How easy is it to become a quak­er? Do you ever feel peo­ple treat you dif­fer­ent­ly because you’re a quak­er? Do you think there should be more rep­re­sen­ta­tion of quak­ers in the media? Thank you so much for your time. I’m very eager to hear back from you!

Since my expe­ri­ence is just one data point, I hope oth­ers will use the com­ment sec­tion below to add their stories.

I found becom­ing a Quak­er to be some­thing of a spi­ral process. I first walked into a Friends meet­ing­house at the age of 20 and only slow­ly took on an iden­ti­ty as a Friend. At each step of the process, I learned more clear­ly what that might mean and have strived to grow into deep­er faith­ful­ness. I didn’t for­mal­ly apply for mem­ber­ship until a decade or so after I became a reg­u­lar atten­der. This time lag is not unheard of but I don’t think it’s usu­al. It’s more of an insight into my own care­ful­ness and ret­i­cence about join­ing things than it is an indi­ca­tion of any­thing the meet­ings I attend­ed required. When I did final­ly apply for mem­ber­ship I was quite qual­i­fied and want­ed the clear­ness process to be exact­ing: again, this is an insight into my psyche!

Most peo­ple on the street don’t quite know what Quak­ers are so I can’t say I’m always treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. I guess see­ing more Quak­ers in the media would be help­ful, though giv­en our over­all small num­bers I sus­pect even our fleet­ing appear­ances in TV shows and movies are more than we might pro­por­tion­al­ly expect.

I’m inter­est­ed to hear how oth­er Friends would answer Ruby’s question.

 

Update: reader answers by email and commentary

Jes­si­ca F: I’ve want­ed to be a Quak­er since I learned about the Abo­li­tion­ists who helped with the Under­ground Rail­road and prison reform. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the movie Gen­tle Per­sua­sion pre­sent­ed Quak­ers as being against music so I became a Uni­tar­i­an instead. Even­tu­al­ly I learned that wasn’t true for many Quak­ers and I found that all of the val­ues I had devel­oped through the years were also Quak­er val­ues and so becom­ing a Quak­er gave me a sup­port sys­tem and a com­mu­ni­ty of like minds.

Have we abandoned all hope for a viral Quakerism?

April 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So a curi­ous sta­tis­tic: so far no one has sub­mit­ted any arti­cles for the August Friends Jour­nal issue, “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” Is this a sign that we’ve all just giv­en up all hope of Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the world?

Prob­a­bly not: there are many issues for which we only get sub­mis­sions in the last week before dead­line (or the week after dead­line, which is not to be encour­aged). But if you are think­ing of writ­ing, or have been mean­ing to encour­age a friend with vision to send us some­thing, then by all means sit down in front of a keyboard.

Also, the issue after that is non-themed. If you’ve ever had any ques­tions for writ­ing a gen­er­al sub­mis­sion, let me know in the com­ments or direct mes­sage me. I’m writ­ing some­thing about that process this week.


Writing Opp: Going Viral with Quakerism (due 5/14) - Friends Journal

Writ­ing Opp: Going Viral with Quak­erism (due 5/14) — Friends Journal 

What’s the Quak­er mes­sage for today? How do we com­mu­ni­cate it and how do we share it? What…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Eternities

April 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sam Barnett-Cormack brings a grammarian’s eye to our use of the old Quak­er phrase, “The Things Which Are Eternal”:

To know one anoth­er in that which is eter­nal is to share our grace, our Light, our spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence. It goes beyond the sort of know­ing that might come from social activ­i­ties and ice­break­ers; indeed, it is of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter… For it comes down to this – to know one anoth­er in that which is eter­nal is to know the Divine, and to know the Divine is to know one anoth­er in this way; they are two sides of one coin, and we can only pro­mote one by also pro­mot­ing the other.

https://​quakeropen​ings​.blogspot​.co​.uk/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​w​h​a​t​-​a​r​e​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​w​h​i​c​h​-​a​r​e​-​e​t​e​r​n​a​l​.​h​tml

The open (Quaker) web

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chris Hardie’s semi-viral man­i­festo cham­pi­oning the open inter­net isn’t about Quak­erism per se, but Chris is a Friend (and one time web host to every­thing Quak­er with­in a hun­dred miles of Rich­mond, Ind.). Since the rise of cor­po­rate gate-keeping web­sites and then social media, I’ve wor­ried that they rep­re­sent some of the largest and least vis­i­ble threats to the Quak­er movement.

I use it all as a tool, for sure. But there are many ways in which we’re increas­ing­ly defined by cor­po­ra­tions with no Quak­ers and no inter­est in us except for what­ev­er engage­ment num­bers they can gen­er­ate. Look at the non­sense at many of the open Quak­er Face­book groups as an obvi­ous exam­ple. Peo­ple with lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge and rel­a­tive­ly fringe ideas can eas­i­ly dom­i­nate dis­cus­sion just by post­ing with a fre­quen­cy that involved or care­ful Friends couldn’t match. Face­book doesn’t care if it’s a zoo as long as peo­ple come back to read the lat­est out­ra­geous com­ment thread. Just because the top­ic is Quak­er doesn’t mean the dis­course real­ly holds well to our val­ues, his­tor­i­cal or modern.

Add to this that Google and Face­book could make any of our Quaker-owned web­sites near­ly invis­i­ble with a tweak of algo­rithms (this is not hypo­thet­i­cal: Face­book has dinged most pub­lish­er Pages over the years).

The open web has a lot of plus­es. I’m glad to see a Friend among its promi­nent cham­pi­ons and I’d like to see Quak­er read­ers seek­ing it out more (most eas­i­ly by stray­ing of Face­book and sub­scrib­ing to blogs’ email lists). From Hardie:

Of course, there is an alter­na­tive to Face­book and oth­er walled gar­dens: the open web. The alter­na­tive is the ver­sion of the Inter­net where you own your con­tent and activ­i­ty, have min­i­mal depen­dence on third par­ty busi­ness mod­els, can dis­cov­er new things out­side of what for-profit algo­rithms show you, and where tools and ser­vices inter­act to enhance each oth­er’s offer­ings, instead of to stamp each oth­er out of existence.

https://​chrishardie​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​r​e​b​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​-​o​p​e​n​-​w​e​b​/​a​m​p​/​?​_​_​t​w​i​t​t​e​r​_​i​m​p​r​e​s​s​i​o​n​=​t​rue

Developing a healing ministry

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’ve enjoyed John Jere­mi­ah Edminster’s com­ments over the years, which is one rea­son I was hap­pen to get the sub­mis­sion that became The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift. It starts with the sto­ry of hav­ing a gift of min­istry rec­og­nized but what I like even more is that he talks about his jour­ney explor­ing and devel­op­ing it. What’s sur­pris­ing is that is he’s far from a purist:

we went to week­end train­ing work­shops; we read the writ­ings of Chris­t­ian heal­ers; shaman­ic heal­ers; and prac­ti­tion­ers of Rei­ki, tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine, Ayurve­da, and home­opa­thy. I longed to be able to inspect people’s ether­ic and astral bod­ies, their chakras and mar­mas, with a diagnostician’s eye. So long as it involved no stray­ing from Christ, I aspired to know how to mobi­lize heal­ing virtues in plant spir­its, min­er­als, col­ors, and sounds, and how to rec­og­nize “holy” places.

Some of this reminds me of the won­der­ful work of the eighteen-century Friend Samuel Bow­nas, whose book A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Nec­es­sary to a Gospel Min­is­ter is full of very use­ful advice on min­istry and warn­ings about pit­falls — roman­tic attach­ments, undue politicization.


The Cost of a Healing Gift - Friends Journal

The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift — Friends Journal 

The dis­cov­ery of a gift for heal­ing is only the first step in a process of learn­ing and…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Could Quakerism be the radical faith?

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith won­ders whether the title of Chris Ven­ables’s recent piece, “Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?,” is fol­low­ing Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

I’d put the dilem­ma of Quak­erism in the 21st cen­tu­ry this way: It’s not just that our trea­sures are in jars of clay, it’s that no one would even know the trea­sures were there, and it seems like they’re eas­i­er to find else­where. And how do we know that what we have are even treasures?

I gave my own skep­ti­cal take on Ven­ables’s arti­cle yes­ter­day. Smith hits on part of what wor­ries me when he says cur­rent reli­gious dis­en­gage­ment is of a kind to be immune to “bet­ter social media game or a more stream­lined church bureau­cra­cy.” These are the easy, value-free answers insti­tu­tions like to turn to.

I’m think­ing about these issues not only because of this arti­cle but also because Friends Jour­nal is seek­ing sub­mis­sions for thr August issue “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” A few weeks ago I wrote a post that referred back to Quak­er inter­net out­reach 25 years ago.

Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?

Could Quakerism? Yes? Will Quakerism? Ehh…

April 21, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chris Ven­ables spent a year work­ing with Quak­ers in Britain (see update below) and now asks Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?

The nature of reli­gion has changed, with­in Quak­ers we have seen the num­bers of young peo­ple engag­ing in our com­mu­ni­ty fall as the effects of eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty have tak­en hold. And per­haps more impor­tant­ly, because ‘young adults’ have no time for insti­tu­tions that often seem arcane and irrel­e­vant, and which have failed to engage with the real­i­ties of life for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple in our society.

I wish I could share more of his enthu­si­asm. I’m not see­ing any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly game-changing in his arti­cle. Half of it is gener­ic clich­es about mil­len­ni­al pref­er­ence with extrap­o­la­tion that they should align with decon­tex­tu­al­ized Quak­er val­ues. He cites a few hap­pen­ing young adult Quak­er scenes in the UK and a promis­ing Young Quak­ers pod­cast five episodes old; he’s fond of Amer­i­can Emi­ly Provance’s blog. Good stuff to be sure, but you could pick pret­ty much any year in recent mem­o­ry and point to sim­i­lar evi­dence and imag­ine an immi­nent surge. It’s 2018 and we’re still say­ing “hey this could hap­pen!” It could but it has­n’t so why has­n’t it and what can we do about it?

Also in these con­texts “rad­i­cal faith” some­times sounds like buzz­words for non-faith. Is the Quak­er meet­ing­house just a qui­et emp­ty room for par­tic­i­pants to BYOF (bring your own faith)?


Could Quakerism be the radical faith that the millennial generation is looking for?

Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for? 

After a year of work­ing with young adult Quak­ers, Chris Ven­ables shares three ways to wel­come in young…

Quakers Quakers 

Update: Chris chimed in via Twit­ter to add that his piece’s obser­va­tions aren’t just from the year of work­ing with BrYM Friends:

Ah, I’ll take a read of yours too — but those thoughts come from my expe­ri­ence of being around Quak­ers over the last 8 years, inc set­ting up a new young adult group (West­min­ster!), vis­it­ing Qs across Britain, and inter­view­ing many of our com­mu­ni­ty over the last year!