Update on the migration: The site is on the move. I’ve closed the Ning account which has hosted it for something like 15 years and the domain is changing registrars. I have an archive of the old site, which should be available soon (my goal is that old links will automatically bring people to the archived page).
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
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)
What was a time when you rebelled and why?
August 15, 2023
The August Quakers Today podcast dropped Tuesday morning. It’s a nice mix, with an interview with Quaker hunter Timothy Tarkelly, an excerpt from Erin Wilson’s recent QuakerSpeak on LGBTQ inclusion, and an interview with “JollyQuaker” Mark Russ, who’s building great buzz for his new book, Quaker Shaped Christianity (check out the FJ review by William Shetter).
Friends Journal Outreach in the real world
August 15, 2023
A bit of excitement at my meeting, Cropwell in Marlton, N.J.: we’ve got new signs! Not the most exciting news for outsiders but it’s good to have them. I’m especially glad that we finally have them in the less-used southern entrance to the driveway, as it’s where car mapping systems send visitors who type in our formal address. It’s never been well marked and feels like the private driveway of the adjoining house (our old school building).
What is and isn’t Quaker, hunting edition
August 14, 2023
On the face of it, it may be kind of weird for a vegan like me to like an article about hunting (much less publish a recipe for squirrel quiche) but anyone who brings in Thomas Clarkson to talk about Quaker cultural values is someone I’ll listen to.
[Clarkson’s] contemporaries were blinded by tradition and never stopped to ask, “how far are they allowable?” amidst concerns of human conduct. Even the phrasing “how far are they allowable” suggests a limit. Perhaps hunting is an allowable and acceptable way of life up to a certain point: that point being needless violence and danger.
Christopher Sammond on the language of faith
August 8, 2023
“Putting language on the experience of that of God within us, I think, is a risky business,” says Christopher Sammond. “Any language is inadequate, and language that I might use will not speak to somebody else.”
The “loudmouth New York Quaker Jew” who’s a second-gen Hiroshima survivor
August 8, 2023
A surprising twist in this story: Leslie Sussan’s father was a U.S. filmmaker who blamed his fatal illness on the atom bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I like her attitude:
Being Quaker hasn’t made me any less Jewish. Ever since I was a young teen, basically, my attitude toward being Jewish has been that I will never argue with a Jew who says I’m not Jewish and I will never deny to a goy that I’m Jewish.
The FGC Gathering today and tomorrow
August 6, 2023
A nice write-up about the Friends General Conference Gathering in Friends Journal by this year’s coordinator, Liz Dykes. The Gathering has been the week-long “summer camp for Liberal Quakers” for over a century but its trend lines have grown worrisome. Even before COVID, attendance has been steadily dropping. This year Liz reports that only 540 people came, which is a good number considering it was at a West Coast location, far from the mass of U.S. Quakers. But it’s a far cry from the high of the 2001 Gathering’s 1,920 attendees (including me and my then-fiancee, who had met at the previous Gathering).
FGC has been watching the trend lines, of course, and writing up reports. COVID turned everything upside down for a few years. But finally there’s some big changes. Next year’s Gathering will be at Haverford College right outside Philly, which puts it within a local train ride of a whole lot of Quakers. There was a time when proximity alone would have nixed the location, as it might have attracted too many Friends (and compete with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s annual sessions, which have become Gathering-like in recent decades), but times are a’changing. I’m pleasantly surprised that a historically Quaker school like Haverford is host, as I would have thought cost and size would be a problem, but I’m glad for it. Future Gatherings will be every other year, which also seems like a good experiment: being a bit more rare, it can be a treat to go.
I’m glad changes are finally being tried and wish FGC all the best. The Gathering has had an important role in Quaker life — and not just for the meets-cute of future couples.
Spirit-led following is the key to Spirit-led leadership
July 3, 2023
From Steven Dale Davison:
Because leadership is a spiritual practice, its exercise needs spiritual support from the community. To enable good leaders, we need religious education in the faith and practice of listening and ministry. We need to view proactive nurture of vocal ministry as the primary pathway of bringing forth leaders in our meetings. Leadership needs a robust infrastructure for the care of leadings and to support discernment and ministry.
Because we humans are the vehicle for the leadership of the Spirit, and because most of us are not by nature very good at this spirituality, either as leaders or as followers, we have to work at it. We have to learn it, and therefore, we have to teach and model it.
I’ve been feeling as if my own spiritual practice isn’t as centered as I’d like. I want to make more time for spiritual reading, including the Bible, during the week.