QuaCarol: You Don’t Want to Be Ranters Anymore

By QuaC­arol
Some­times I have to lift up com­ments and make them their own posts. Here’s one of QuaC­arol’s reply to “Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts”:/martink/archives/000544.php: “I see this com­mu­ni­ty of blog­gers, reach­ing out to each oth­er and con­nect­ing, when meet­ings (and here I ven­ture to say “all”) are focused on keep­ing their pam­phlet racks filled, rather than post­ing URLs on their bul­letin boards or cre­at­ing a newcomer’s URL handout.”


I see new seek­ers arriv­ing who are try­ing to come to terms with Sep­tem­ber 11. They want more than to be hand­ed a copy of “Friends for 350 Years” and to be told to stick around. Some of us are catch­ing on to that, finally.
I see the 20- and 30-somethings arriv­ing because they have read Wool­man or Fox or Kel­ly and thus already know more than many old­timers. (I say “many.” Not “all.”)
I see this com­mu­ni­ty of blog­gers, reach­ing out to each oth­er and con­nect­ing, when meet­ings (and here I ven­ture to say “all”) are focused on keep­ing their pam­phlet racks filled, rather than post­ing URLs on their bul­letin boards or cre­at­ing a newcomer’s URL handout.
I see you(I’m still a nonblogger)trying to sup­port each oth­er in your search­ing and try­ing to pro­vide for each oth­er the depth and spir­i­tu­al friend­ships that your meet­ings prob­a­bly aren’t providing.
I see a real shift among many Friends who came into the Soci­ety in the 1960s and ear­ly 1970s, the Viet­nam gen­er­a­tion. Many rabid uni­ver­sal­ist Friends who couldn’t stand to hear Christ lan­guage have become more near­ly Christ-centered and are now ques­tion­ing the rigid­i­ty and fun­da­men­tal­ism of the uni­ver­sal­ist Friends. Some of these Friends are in lead­er­ship posi­tions in year­ly meet­ings now.
I see a real inter­est in and hunger for prophet­ic voic­es. I see a renewed inter­est in the Bible. In dress­ing plain as a tes­ti­mo­ny. In dis­cern­ing spir­i­tu­al gifts. These younger-than-the-aging-hippie Friends do not have the hair-trigger revul­sion against lead­er­ship that the 60-somethings do.
Put sim­ply, you don’t want to be Ranters anymore.
These are my rea­sons for hope.


This piece orig­i­nal­ly appeared as a com­ment on “Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts”:/martink/archives/000544.php about a favorite blog­ger’s ques­tion­ing of his Quak­er faith.
*See also:* Liz Opp’s take on this in “Quak­erism, From Gen­er­a­tion to Generation”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/03/Quakerism-from-generation-to.html on the Good Raised Up, Rob’s “What Keeps Us Quaker?”:http://consider-the-lilies.blogspot.com/2005/03/what-keeps-us-Quaker.html on Con­sid­er the Lil­lies and my own “It’s My Lan­guage Now/Thinking About Youth Ministries”:/martink/archives/000555.php

4 thoughts on “QuaCarol: You Don’t Want to Be Ranters Anymore

  1. Mar­tin, I want to tell you how much I appre­ci­ate the gift and min­istry you have in shar­ing oth­er Friends’ posts, so that more of us can have greater access to one anoth­er’s per­spec­tives, con­cerns, and ideas. In this way, I feel as though we are “lift­ing one anoth­er up by a ten­der hand,” to para­phrase Isaac Penington.
    Blessings,
    Liz

  2. This is the prob­lem a small faith com­mu­ni­ty that does­n’t hedge itself well con­stant­ly have to face: that the reli­gious milieu in its congregations/meetings depend on the cul­tur­al melieu of dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions of its members.
    This is less true with larg­er denom­i­na­tions, with much more diverse bod­ies of believ­ers. They are very dif­fi­cult to be hijacked by a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion of Ranters who joined them in flux­es (Just think about whether it is pos­si­ble at all for the Catholic Church to be hijacked by, say, a band of abortion-doctor-shooters.)
    This is also less true with bet­ter hedged faith com­mu­ni­ties. Is it pos­si­ble at all for anti-Vietnam pro­tes­tors to infil­trate the Amish com­mu­ni­ties in Lan­cast­er or the Hut­terites in Saskatchewan?

  3. “… that the reli­gious milieu in its congregations/meetings depend on the cul­tur­al melieu of dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions of its members.”
    Thanks, James, for that very astute com­ment. That gives me a lot to ponder.
    Of course, in our pas­toral meet­ings, the milieu will be defined by the pas­tor. The prob­lem there is that there aren’t enough Quak­er pas­tors now, so Friends’ church­es are call­ing Bap­tists and
    Dis­ci­ples of Christ, among oth­ers, and Quak­erism is get­ting lost as these meet­ings turn into com­mu­ni­ty churches.

  4. And by the way, I don’t want to be a Ranter any more either.
    My use of the word “you” reflects my new­ness to this com­mu­ni­ty, my obser­va­tions as a non-blogging out­sider com­ing in.
    I hope to get over that short­ly. Bear with me.

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