Mixing Quakers & Politics

March 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Greg Woods is the pri­ma­ry mover behind this Thurs­day’s live pan­el of Quak­er con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates. He’s writ­ten a new post about it, Quak­ers & Pol­i­tics Do Mix (in the 2018 Midterms)

This year’s elec­tion feel dif­fer­ent than pre­vi­ous years. Peo­ple are ready to do some­thing besides just vot­ing. Many are run­ning for office in record num­bers, for exam­ple: Sci­en­tists and Women.Another pop­u­la­tion that is run­ning in, per­haps, record num­bers in 2018: Quakers!

He’s added a lot of inter­est­ing con­tex­tu­al links to arti­cles about the new types of can­di­dates we’re see­ing in the 2018 election.

To make sure you get the lat­est infor­ma­tion on the live pan­el, sign up for the live web pan­el’s Face­book event. And join us at 3pm ET for our live web pan­el. We’ll also be con­tin­u­ing to update the Friends Jour­nal announce­ment page.

Early Quaker “Yearly meetings”

March 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is look­ing at an ear­ly form of pub­lic Quak­er wor­ship, who’s var­i­ous names (includ­ing “year­ly meet­ings”) have per­haps hid­den them from mod­ern Quak­er con­scious­ness: From the Quak­er tool­box: “Year­ly meet­ings” and related

These meet­ings often includ­ed gath­er­ings of min­is­ters, and of elders (and some­times the two togeth­er), and meet­ings most­ly for Friends. But the pub­lic wor­ship was care­ful­ly pre­pared for — usu­al­ly more than one ses­sion, often over more than one day, with lots of pub­lic­i­ty ahead of time. Tem­po­rary meet­ing places were erect­ed for large crowds (the word “booth” is used, these clear­ly held hun­dreds of people.

Bri­an’s sto­ry reminds me of when I was a tourist in the “1652 Coun­try” where Quak­erism was born. One of the stops is Fir­bank Fell, where George Fox preached to thou­sands. Most his­to­ries call that ser­mon the offi­cial start of the Quak­er movement.

But Fir­bank Fell itself is a des­o­late hill­side miles from any­where. There was a small ancient church there and then noth­ing but graz­ing fields off to the hori­zon. A thou­sand peo­ple in such a remote spot would have the feel of a music fes­ti­val. And that’s kind of what was hap­pen­ing the week the unknown George Fox walked into that part of Eng­land. There was a orga­nized move­ment that held inde­pen­dent reli­gious preach­ing fes­ti­vals. Fox was no doubt very mov­ing and he might have giv­en the seek­ers there a new way of think­ing about their spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion, but the move­ment was already there. I won­der if the gen­er­al meet­ings of pub­lic wor­ship that Dray­ton is track­ing down is an echo of those ear­li­er pub­lic festivals.

One of my Fir­bank Fell photos:

Painting for Worship

March 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I did­n’t know of Adri­an Mar­tinez before I was intro­duced to him in this Quak­er­S­peak video. He seems like quite a char­ac­ter (“art attack!”) but I’m intrigued at how his paint­ings have brought pri­mal Quak­er val­ues into unex­pect­ed spaces like the White House (not the occu­pant you might guess!) and cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. His sto­ry of a very specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er pic­ture being bought for a board­room hints at mes­sages Friends might still have for the world:

The paint­ing I did, Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I just knew was not some­thing that was going to get sold. It was not an eco­nom­ic deci­sion. It was a neces­si­ty to do, nonethe­less. When I did it, I had this big show and it was imme­di­ate­ly pur­chased. First one. And it’s inter­est­ing: where it went went was the board­room of an insur­ance agency. The man that owned the com­pa­ny bought the paint­ing because he said, “The rea­son I need this paint­ing, and I need it in the board­room, is because we need more of that in our business.”

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​p​a​i​n​t​i​n​g​-​f​o​r​-​w​o​r​s​h​ip/

The Art of Persuasion

March 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing high­lights artists, includ­ing Signe Wilkin­son and Ramona Sharples, in The Art of Per­sua­sion:

“I was think­ing about (emo­tion and art) recent­ly as I was going through all my comics, and there is a rhythm that is very slow and qui­et. It’s not very actiony comics that I’m draw­ing … because … a lot of the feel­ings that I am describ­ing are melan­choly, and that plays a role in the way that my comics are presented.”

March 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Now I was come up in spir­it through the flam­ing sword into the par­adise of God. All things were new, and all the cre­ation gave anoth­er smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.

— George Fox, 1648

Only Quakerism?

March 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on the Quak­erQuak­er dis­cus­sions, Ore­gon Friend Kir­by Urn­er won­ders whether we need to think of our Quak­erism less an iden­ti­ty built around mem­ber­ship sta­tus and more as a way of life, No Quak­ers, Only Quak­erism:

I’d be hap­py to see a branch (fork) of Quak­erism which dis­pensed with mem­ber­ship on the grounds that there’s no way to “be” a Friend, only Friend­ly, as a mod­i­fi­er to one’s actions, as fleet­ing as the Now Moment itself. You “are” a Friend now, and again now, but it takes work to “stay in the moment” as such.  It’s a prac­tice.  You don’t get to rest on your lau­rels, as the Romans put it.  It’d be fun to see how that turned out.

 

Is our Quaker Peace Testimony an historical artifact or a living witness to our faith?

March 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Is our Quak­er Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny an his­tor­i­cal arti­fact or a liv­ing wit­ness to our faith?

If we aren’t liv­ing our faith, then the 1660 Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny is sim­ply an his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. Like the old musty books in our Meet­ing library that sit behind glass, most­ly unread. They look impres­sive and make us feel good about our­selves, but if we don’t read them and take the words to heart, they might as well be wall paper.