I remember a friend once telling me if you do something once, it’s a weird thing you do. Do it again, it’s a trend. Do it three times and it’s a tradition everyone expects you to repeat till the end of time. This is Friends Journal’s third November fiction issue in a row. I guess this is a thing we do now.
It’s not immediately obvious that we should be in this game. Quakers have had testimonies against reading made-up stories. They’re a waste of time. We’re “Friends of the Truth” after all, a concept taken quite literally and sometimes to extremes by early Quakers. Colonial Pennsylvania Quakers half-heartedly conducted a witch trial (popular legend has it that after a defendant admitted to flying on broomsticks, William Penn dismissed the case with the argument that he knew “no law whatever against it.”). A century later, abolitionist traveling minister John Woolman tried to shut down a magic show in his home town of Mount Holly, N.J., for encouraging superstitions.
But sometimes fiction reveals deeper truths that simple reporting can’t touch. Good storytelling can produce powerful parables, simple stories that stay with us and guide us. And with a touch of magic, it can hint at the mysteries of worship.
The first featured short story is Annalee Flower Horne’s Refuse All Their Colors, an alternative history of 1777 Valley Forge in which the Friends living in the area have a little extra skillset. Once you’ve read it you can watch my interview with Annalee, which I found particularly fascinating. Annalee has made a deep dive into the historical record of the Friends community in Valley Forge and is quite confident that the only made-up part of the story is the fantasy elements and the immediate dialogue.
Annalee Flower Horne discusses their new short story “Refuse All Their Colors,” set in 1777 during the Revolutionary War. The story explores Quakers’ perspectives on magic through the lens of alternate history.
Craig Barnett breaking down the supposed dichotomy between activist and mystical Friends: “There is no standard template for a ‘good Quaker’ or a moral or spiritual person. Each of us has to discover our own gifts and our own contribution to the world’s needs, according to the inward guidance that is available to us.”
Jesus and individualism is the topic of latest sermon from Micah Bales. “But the good news is not that we are all free to be individuals… The gospel is that we are drawn into an organic community of disciples, of children of God.”
Johan Maurer weighs the cost of travel. In-person gatherings can be life changing but can we find alternatives that don’t create so much carbon?
In a recent Reddit thread, an ex-Catholic interested in Friends asked whether the QuakerSpeak video “9 Core Quaker Beliefs” was representative of Friends. Longtime Philadelphia Friends might recognize that title as part of Arthur Larrabee’s longtime work to compile some agreed-upon list of Quaker beliefs that we can use in outreach and messaging.
But to someone without context, he’s just some schmoe on YouTube.
Quakerism is well-known for being creedless. It’s easy to argue that it’s anything you want it to be. Plenty of people are drawn more to our community than to the historic beliefs of Friends. At one point, not that long ago even, one could point to Robert Barclay’s Apology as a theological statement accepted by most Friends. No longer. Unprogrammed Friends have largely given up even on the elders who once tried to maintain orthodoxy (sometimes overly so and often to ill effect). Nowadays “What do Quakers Believe?” easily morphs into “What Do I Believe?”
In the Liberal U.S. Quaker world it used to be that you could legitimize some hitherto outsider belief by starting a website, presenting it as a workshop at a few successive FGC Gatherings, and getting an article published in Friends Journal. Nowadays a popular YouTuber like Jessica Kellgren-Fozard will get much more reach than any institutional outlet: her 2018 video Oh God… Let’s Talk About My Religion has gotten 530k views and 3,885 comments. Is she the most learned representative of Quakerism? A recorded minister in her yearly meeting? Did she vet her views with her meeting before posting the video, as Friends used to have to vet books pre-publication? No, no, and no, but she’s done a lot to get us out there in front of seekers and is, de facto, a recognized authority on Friends to hundreds of thousands of people.
Art Larrabee, of the QuakerSpeak video (currently at 241k views for those keeping score), is an interesting counterpoint. He’s held a variety of leadership positions among Philadelphia Friends and has been a sought-after workshop leader. Art started his list of core beliefs while he was the chief executive of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In this role, he was often called on to be a spokesperson for Liberal Friends. He has written about the background of this list:
Several years ago, way opened for me to share with PYM’s Advisory Committee a life-long frustration that I could not articulate the core beliefs of our faith community with any confidence that what I might say would be shared by others. At the time, I was feeling let down by my faith community and that our failure to name collectively held, core beliefs contributed to a loss of energy among us. I also felt that the absence of a statement of core beliefs inhibited our ability to easily and effectively communicate to others about our Quaker faith. In my professional life before becoming General Secretary, I sometimes found myself wanting to invite friends in law and business to come to meeting for worship but I could never quite figure out what I could say with any confidence when asked, “What do Quakers believe?” What was I inviting them to? Yes, I could try to say what I believed, but I could not tell them what we believed as a community. I wanted something I could hand to those I thought might be interested and say, “This is what’s at the core of our faith. There is more to Quakerism than this, but this is a place to begin.”
Advisory Committee invited me to try my hand at drafting such a statement and on several occasions they have seen prior versions of what I am presenting today. I have shared earlier versions of this work with two quarterly meetings, three or four monthly meetings, the residents of a retirement community and Interim Meeting. With each presentation, suggestions have been made which have found their way into the document.
The results in a very thoughtful, threshed-out list. It might be the most careful distillation since Howard Brinton dashed out Friends for 300 Years in 1952. And yet: as far as I know, the nine beliefs list was never formally adopted by any Quaker body. Years later, it’s still only a list of what Art Larrabee believes other Friends believe. His authority is the respect he has, which is really not all that different than the source of authority for a popular YouTuber. In some future revision of Faith and Practice both Larrabee and Kellgren-Fozard is sure to be quoted in the extracts section. But even there, their words will be presented as interesting viewpoints, not canonical statements.
It’s a hell of a way to run a religion, perhaps, but it’s a fascinating culture we’ve developed to compensate for our rejection of creeds.
My interview with UK Friend Rhiannon Grant for Friends Journal’s October issue on “Ecumenical and Interfaith Friends.” She’s written for us many times before, but for this issue we have Confidence in Complexity: Holding Firm to Multiple Religious Connections. Rhiannon is very much a hyphenated Friend, drawing spiritual insights from her participation in Druid and Buddhist communities. Even those of us who hew closer to traditional Friends’ practice have many other identities and influences — place, family backgrounds, personal friendships and yes, even politics and lifestyle help shape who we are.
I really like the lessons Rhiannon draws about contextualizing our influences and navigating through their contradictions using a very Quakerly process of discernment.
On Friends Journal, Anita Hemphill McCormick writes about the Three Nephites, a Mormon folkloric tradition of helpers who appear out of nowhere to do good deeds, then disappear. As she grew up she realized she was starting to fill this role herself.
But I am a Quaker and “weighty Friend” is one of those delightful Quaker terms that’s fun to say, although the exact meaning slips and slides around a bit. I ask myself, is this remnant from early Quakerism still meaningful? Helpful? And what does it mean in reference to me?
I love the old traditions, even the archaic words. Some of them carry an ambiance of holiness, order, and, yes, Quaker culture. Some still manage to be useful, even after all these years. Maybe “weighty Friend” is one of them?
I like the visual metaphor of slipping and sliding. I think it’s apt when using terms denoting a kind of spiritual authority in Quaker circles. The authority is ultimately coming from the Holy Spirit and the Inward Light. But it’s useful to acknowledge that some people have developed their spiritual sensitivity over a long-enough period that their opinion carries a little extra weight.
You’re in potential trouble as soon as you name it though: humans seem to have an instinct to rely on social designations like these and begin to rely too much on the opinions of certain people over everyone else. Pretty soon there’s a new class of insider Friends and struggles over who gets to define that class. You get 200 years of schisms and the exodus of generations of deeply spiritual people who don’t want to battle over the crumbs of power. But Nancy includes humor in the mix, which I think is wise and perhaps a bit of an antidote to spiritual selfishness.
I think one of the greatest gifts weighty Friends can provide is to give simple words of encouragement. Years ago I taught a six-week Quakerism 101 class at Medford (N.J.) Meeting. Most of its members come from a nearby Quaker retirement community and it is full of weighty and seasoned Friends — euphemisms aside, I was literally half the age of all but a few workshop attenders. After one session, Margery Larrabee came up to me. Even in a meeting of seasoned Friends, she stood out, having written pamphlets on Quaker eldership and being intimately involved with the Liberal Quaker re-embrace of traveling ministries in the 1990s. Feeling self-conscious, I started nervously apologizing, saying I shouldn’t be out there in front, that I should be taking a class from her. She smiled sweetly and said “oh no, you’re right where you are supposed to be.” Just a few words, but I instantly felt at ease. This wasn’t coffee-hour small talk anymore, but a confirmation that I was on the right path with my teaching ministry, given by someone who’s authority came from a lifetime of faithful service to the Spirit.
Andy Stanton-Henry’s “All the Way Back to George Fox” looks at the legacy of John Wimber, a rock musician turned Quaker pastor turned charismatic church founder. Yes, that’s a lot of turns. Yes, it’s quite a story.
One of the impulses that drove Wimber’s ministry was a desire to “do the stuff” he read about in the Bible, not just talk and sing about it. This is not so very different from early Friends. Founder George Fox brought people back to life, his miracles edited out of most accounts until Henry Cadbury collected them back together in the 1940s. James Nayler, another Quaker co-founder, developed a full-on messiah complex, eventually re-enacting Jesus’s Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem. Wimber’s wife talked about their reaction when they finally got around to reading Fox’s Journal:
Reading it later, we wondered what our contemporaries were so upset about! A movement of the Spirit happened in our group — for which generations of Quakers had prayed for years, but had no idea how it would look when it came — and when it did happen, it didn’t really fit with Quaker theology at that time.
Wimber’s ministries got too enthusiastic for even California Evangelical Friends and he left to co-found the Vineyard Churches. In our author chat, Andy and I discuss some of the lessons we might learn from these relatively modern-day seekers wanting to “do the stuff.”