Category Archives ⇒ Quaker

As the blog name implies, I am a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as Quak­ers. Many of my blog posts deal with issues of our soci­ety and its inter­ac­tions with the larg­er world. I gen­er­al­ly only include my own posts in this list. I share many many Quak­er links in my Links Blog cat­e­go­ry and on Quak­erQuak­er.

Impor­tant Posts:
The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion (2003)
Peace and Twenty-Somethings (2003)
We’re All Ranters Now (2003)
Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­er Style (2004)
Quak­er Tes­ti­monies (2004)
Hey, Who Am I To Decide Any­thing? (2007)
The Biggest Most Vibran­ty Most Out­reachi­est Pro­gram Ever (2010)
Get­ting a Horse to Drink (on Philadel­phia YM) (2010)
Tell Them All This But Don’t Expect Them to Lis­ten (2010)

Links

September 5, 2023
· Martin Kelley

The Black Quak­er Project seems to pub­lish its best stuff on its email list (if you vis­it its home­page you’ll see a form to sign up). This week’s tack­les the uncom­fort­able ques­tion, “Why Are There So Few African Amer­i­can Quak­ers.” They break the answers down into six answers (e.g., “Skep­ti­cism of Non-Violence” and “Dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Quak­er Process.”)

Fea­tured in Friends Jour­nal, Annie Bing­ham’s Sea­son­al Quak­erism on their life grow­ing up as a Friend and an arti­cle on Quak­er con­flict res­o­lu­tion in K – 12 Schools by staff writer Sharlee DiMenichi.

Indiana and slo-mo realignment

August 31, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Whoa, the part of Indi­ana Year­ly Meet­ing that retained the name after the 2013 schism is leav­ing Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. At one point Indi­ana was the largest year­ly meet­ing in the world, sec­ond only to Philadel­phia in its influ­ence on Amer­i­can Quak­erism but repeat­ed schisms and depop­u­la­tion of the rur­al Mid­west has hit it hard. 

The 2013 split cre­at­ed two bod­ies: the Evan­gel­i­cals who retained “Indi­ana” as their name and the Lib­er­als who became the New Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends. At the time I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised that both sides remained part of the Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing, the inter­na­tion­al umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion of what you might call churchy Friends. I thought it might be a sign that we had out­grown the kind of nine­teenth cen­tu­ry atti­tudes that forced every­one pick sides in splits like these. Appar­ent­ly not. 

Some Evan­gel­i­cal Friends have been dream­ing about a “realign­ment” of FUM since the 1980s, a con­cept that would split FUM down the mid­dle between Evan­gel­i­cals and Lib­er­als, push­ing every­one to decide between their respec­tive nation­al con­fer­ences, Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Inter­na­tion­al and Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence respec­tive­ly.1 Some­how FUM’s been able to resist the cen­trifu­gal forces and main­tain a big tent approach that’s frus­trat­ed many2 but some­how held togeth­er. What hap­pens to this bal­ance if the cen­ter of grav­i­ty for FUM Amer­i­can Friends piv­ots more toward its lib­er­al end?

FUM is an inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion and Africa’s the wild card. The largest pop­u­la­tion of Friends are there, with most of its year­ly meet­ings affil­i­at­ed with FUM. Even the decamp­ing Indi­ana Year­ly Meet­ing wants to find an arrange­ment with FUM to keep those ties going (met with guf­faws in some quarters). 

I don’t hear any­one talk­ing about realign­ment much these days. But in the U.S. con­text there’s an increas­ing num­ber of FUM Friends and FGC Friends3 who aren’t so very dif­fer­ent any­more. This pre­sum­ably is Indi­ana YM’s argu­ment for leav­ing, but it’s a chicken-or-egg sce­nario: the result of splits is often that each side shifts to fit the stereo­type the oth­er side accused it of being all along. In the mean­time there are a lot of Friends with deep fam­i­ly and child­hood ties to Indi­ana Year­ly Meet­ing who are griev­ing right now. 

Digitized Massachusetts records a glimpse into the past

August 29, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Quite a task: a group led by his­to­ri­an Thomas Hamm has dig­i­tized old records of Dart­mouth (Mass.) Meet­ing. Vol­un­teer Andrea Mar­covi­ci gives us a taste of just how involved this process could be:

We strug­gled with ‘s’s that looked like ‘f’s, ‘y’es that actu­al­ly were ‘the’s. Cap­i­tal let­ters were more art than stan­dard writ­ing, and tired clerks that would write the first few let­ters of a name and then throw a lit­tle let­ter in the air and fig­ure we would know the rest.  We kept a run­ning list of all that we saw in order to keep a con­sis­tent practice.

Some of the offens­es Dart­mouth Friends were dis­owned for are list­ed. Some seem quite harm­less„ like the broth­ers who were forced to apol­o­gize in 1746 for allow­ing “fid­dling and danc­ing in their Hous­es.” Oth­er offens­es are shock­ing in their cru­el­ty, like Friend Abi­gail Allen, who beat an enslaved African “so unmer­cy­ful­ly” in 1711 that he sub­se­quent­ly died from the wounds. Dis­own­ment was not a life sen­tence: some­one could repent and be let back in. Incred­i­bly, only three years lat­er Abi­gail con­vinced the meet­ing that she was sor­ry for her manslaughter.

Four years and 6,000 hand­writ­ten pages lat­er, a peek into Quak­er history

Links

August 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

The FUM email newslet­ter ref­er­enced else­where also has nice pho­tos from memo­r­i­al ser­vices for Eden Grace, a New Eng­land Friend who seemed to effort­less­ly walk between dif­fer­ent fla­vors of Friends, find­ing com­mon­al­i­ty and build­ing con­nec­tions wher­ev­er she went. She is very missed.

In the Philadel­phia Inquir­er, an arti­cle on slave own­ing by Philadel­phia Quak­ers, with sources includ­ing Friends Jour­nal. There’s lot of great links through­out, I’m still mak­ing my way through them. 

On Quak­er­S­peak, a video inter­view of Nic­hole Net­tle­ton, who is a coor­di­na­tor for a sup­port group called Dif­fer­ent­ly Abled Friends and Allies. (I know some folks real­ly don’t like “dif­fer­ent­ly abled” but it’s the name of the group and it’s how Nicole self-identifies in the video.)

And a fas­ci­nat­ing non-Quaker rabbit-hole: a delight­ful­ly obses­sive search for the pur­pose of a seem­ing­ly pur­pose­less pedes­tri­an bridge in Min­neso­ta.

What does it mean to have a measure of the Light?

August 25, 2023
· Martin Kelley

There’s cur­rent­ly a pret­ty inter­est­ing Face­book dis­cus­sion on “mea­sure of light.” Col­lo­qui­al­ly, I’ve heard this phrase used as a way to reas­sure us that we don’t all have to have the same abil­i­ties. We should­n’t be jeal­ous of oth­ers, who might have oth­er tal­ents in the body of Christ. Our goal is to live up to the light of what we’ve each been giv­en as individuals. 

Read­ing Robert Bar­clay, where much of this lan­guage comes from, I’m not sure he would agree: 

By this Seed, Grace, and Word of God, and Light, where­with we say every man is enlight­ened, and hath a mea­sure of it, which strives with them in order to save them, and which may, by the stub­born­ness and wicked­ness of man’s will, be quenched, bruised, wound­ed, pressed down, slain and cru­ci­fied; we under­stand not the prop­er essence and nature of God, pre­cise­ly tak­en, which is not divis­i­ble into parts and mea­sures, as being a most pure, sim­ple being, void of all com­po­si­tion or divi­sion, and there­fore can nei­ther be resist­ed, hurt, wound­ed, cru­ci­fied, or slain by all the efforts and strength of men.

An Apol­o­gy for the True Chris­t­ian Divin­i­ty. Robert Bar­clay, 1678

He’s pret­ty clear that the light is indi­vis­i­ble so I don’t see how it could be more or less with­in any of us or change over time (though cer­tain­ly our aware­ness of it can be strength­ened as we progress spir­i­tu­al­ly). And for him, and all ear­ly Quak­ers, the Light was very def­i­nite­ly God work­ing with­in us. Nowa­days it’s more com­mon for Lib­er­al Friends to think of it as a kind of spir­i­tu­al conscience.

I myself wouldn’t want to get into decid­ing who has what abil­i­ty. Maybe tal­ents is a bet­ter way of think­ing about it. Like, in my human­ness I may get jeal­ous that some­one gives real­ly good min­istry in wor­ship. But maybe that’s not my gift. There are some peo­ple I’ve met who are always extreme­ly thought­ful of oth­ers. And oth­ers who are real­ly good at cen­ter­ing a group down in wor­ship. I have friends who are always great about get­ting to know every­one in their lives. We can aspire to be bet­ter in all these things but there are peo­ple who seem more nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed to this. So we should try to live up to our mea­sure in our spir­i­tu­al lives but not feel bad about our­selves if oth­ers are able to do cer­tain things effortlessly.

Two social networks?

August 24, 2023
· Martin Kelley

I recent­ly read an opin­ion­at­ed bit of advice that has stuck with me: it was that con­tent cre­ators should focus their atten­tion on only two social net­works. It’s felt wise, espe­cial­ly in this odd moment in which Twit­ter has implod­ed and we have a pro­lif­er­a­tion of ser­vices hop­ing to suc­ceed it in it’s role as “town square.” Ten years ago if I had some­thing to share I would post it to both Twit­ter and Face­book. Now there’s just too many con­tenders; I’d spend half an hour post­ing any link.

So what would my two be? This Quak­er­Ran­ter newsletter/blog should be one. It’s a place to share ideas unfil­tered by Sil­i­con Val­ley algo­rithms.  But the sec­ond? Is Face­book still the place where enough peo­ple con­gre­gate to make it essen­tial despite its many draw­backs? Red­dit is still inter­est­ing despite some recent con­tro­ver­sial moves by its owners. 

A third place might be Quak­erQuak­er. Update: I’ve moved the domain name to a new serv­er, which means there’s actu­al­ly a “site under con­struc­tion” notice. The archives will be next. 

Links

August 19, 2023
· Martin Kelley

This is a nice bit of ecu­meni­cal fel­low­ship: the first syn­a­gogue in York, Eng­land, since a pogrom 800 years ago meets at the Friends meet­ing­house. (Also as some­one who lives in the North­east U.S., it seems incred­i­ble a city the size of York wouldn’t have mul­ti­ple syn­a­gogues and that events 800 years ago still shape the city’s reli­gious life.)

Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing has post­ed a use­ful list of reli­gious edu­ca­tion resources for meet­ings plan­ning their fall programs. 

I’m usu­al­ly aller­gic to any­thing that tries to tidy up Quak­er faith and prac­tice into the SPICES mnemon­ic but I real­ly like my friend Gene Hill­man’s look at their ori­gins in bib­li­cal and ear­ly Quak­er faith.

From Kathy Hersh, Quak­ers in DeLand, Flori­da, gave away 500 books as a response to the culling of Black-history books from local libraries. 

Is the AI hype cycle start­ing to come down? Cer­tain­ly it’s a bit pre­ma­ture to write any­thing off, but these aren’t good num­bers for AI fanboys.

Friends Jour­nal is start­ing to look for arti­cles for our Jan­u­ary issue on For­give­ness.

The Quaker yet to be convinced

August 17, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Rashid Darden’s new Quak­er­S­peak inter­views is real­ly great. He says a lot of things I’ve been say­ing over the years but with more elo­quence and concision. 

The Quak­er faith is not a coun­try club. It’s not a lega­cy soci­ety. The most impor­tant Quak­er is the friend who is yet to be con­vinced. My per­son­al min­istry is one that is so con­vinced that Quak­erism is one of the best pos­si­ble paths to take that it would be wrong for me to keep qui­et about it. 

I remem­ber the first time I real­ized my out­reach work had to be more con­cerned about poten­tial Quak­ers than actu­al ones. It changes the cal­cu­lus on a lot of deci­sions and can be a bit dan­ger­ous if the cur­rent ones don’t think any­thing needs to change. 

Grow­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty of Friends – Embrac­ing Diver­si­ty in Quakerism