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)

Quakers on Mastodon

November 25, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Every day brings more news of exis­ten­tial trou­ble at Twit­ter. It’s new over­lord is open­ly engag­ing with White suprema­cists and talk­ing garbage about the ser­vice’s algo­rithm had long had a lib­er­al bias (spoil­er: not true). Banned accounts are being rein­stat­ed and there’s a list cir­cu­lat­ing in rightwing cir­cles of left-leaning accounts they’re try­ing to get banned.

In all this I’ve been switch­ing over to Mastodon, a decen­tral­ized net­work whose struc­ture iso­lates it from the kind of takeover and con­sol­i­da­tion we’re see­ing at Twit­ter. My account there is writ​ing​.exchange/​@​m​a​r​tin. There are dozens of begin­ner’s guides avail­able if you’re think­ing of mak­ing the switch. If you’re look­ing for Quak­ers on the ser­vice, you can check out my following/followers list, which is chock full of them (prob­a­bly about 2/3rds of my list are Quak­er or Quaker-adjacent). Once you set up you should post an intro­duc­to­ry post with hash­tagged inter­ests. I fol­low the quak­er and quak­ers hash­tag and will spot you right away. There is a Quak­ers group as well. Friends Jour­nal also has a new account there, at mastodon​.lol/​@​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​j​o​u​r​nal.

Oth­er places to get your online Quak­er fix include the Quak­ers sub­red­dit and a very chat­ty Dis­cord serv­er (fol­low the link from the sub­red­dit for an invite). Two oth­er ser­vices get­ting buzz are Post (where I’m on the wait­ing list) and Hive (where I have a place­hold­er account at @martinkelley).

Quakers and residential boarding schools

November 25, 2022
· Martin Kelley

A nice Friends Jour­nal opin­ion piece from San­dra Boone Mur­phy on rec­on­cil­ing Quak­ers’ past involve­ment with Native Amer­i­can res­i­den­tial schools. Paula Palmer wrote a detailed arti­cle on this in 2016 (and also talked about it in a 2019 Quak­er­S­peak video). It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to me how Friends try­ing to do good so often did things we look back on as horrific. 

Quakers, Indian Boarding Schools, and Indigenous Justice Today
Quak­ers, Indi­an Board­ing Schools, and Indige­nous Jus­tice Today 

In 1819, the Unit­ed States enact­ed a series of poli­cies that led to the cre­ation of Indi­an boarding…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Quakers Today podcast launched

November 16, 2022
· Martin Kelley

So the new pod­cast, Quak­ers Today, offi­cial debuted yes­ter­day, with episode one look­ing at Quak­ers and Fic­tion (no coin­ci­dence that this is also the theme of the Novem­ber 2022 Friends Jour­nal). There’s an excerpt from a read­ing from Anne E.G. Nydam’s sto­ry, “The Con­duits” (you can read it here and hear her entire read­ing here) and excerpts from last year’s Cai Quirk Quak­er­S­peak inter­view. The pod­cast also has a call-in voice­mail line (we snagged 317-QUAKERS) so you’ll hear a cou­ple of peo­ple at the end shar­ing lit­er­a­ture that has shaped them.

The pod­cast comes out every month and you can sub­scribe in your favorite pod­cast ser­vice. We’ll have prompts for Decem­ber’s voice­mail line in a few weeks. A big shoutout to Peter­son Toscano, who is not only the online per­son­al­i­ty of the show but the pod­cast wiz­ard who has put it all togeth­er. Thanks too to Quak­er Vol­un­tary Ser­vice, which has jumped in to spon­sor the first season.

The new pod­cast has a video promo!

Presenting on the peace testimony

November 9, 2022
· Martin Kelley

blankI wrote up a lit­tle some­thing about this week­end’s pre­sen­ta­tion on the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny that I gave at Crop­well Meet­ing on Sun­day. I think it turned out well. I have no actu­al pic­tures of the event because I was up front lead­ing it. In con­tent it was not unre­lat­ed to my August Friends Jour­nal col­umn, “Wrestling with the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny” but it was a whole heck of a lot tamer, as I was aim­ing it at new-to-Quaker atten­ders who don’t know any­thing about the peace tes­ti­mo­ny oth­er than we have one. Ukraine is a hard prob­lem for them, as it is for many of us long-term activists.

One result of my prep was div­ing deep­er into the Eng­lish Civ­il War (per­haps more accu­rate­ly, wars) than I have pre­vi­ous­ly. As an Amer­i­can, I only dim­ly know that there were one but as I kept dig­ging down I real­ized just how essen­tial it was to both the start of Friends and the draft­ing of the famous Dec­la­ra­tion of 1660 to Charles II. We some­times act as if the recip­i­ent was inci­den­tal, as if the king were sim­ply cc’ed on a minute. But it real­ly was craft­ed for the king’s atten­tion and it was a nonag­gres­sion pact of sorts: Quak­ers would­n’t chal­lenge his author­i­ty or the empire if he just left them alone. It’s quite like­ly a state­ment like this was essen­tial for the Quak­er move­ment to sur­vive the roy­al gov­ern­men­t’s back­lash against the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies but it seems just as clear that the state­ment installed guard rails on the purview of Quak­er polit­i­cal action. There were parts of the empire that war­rant­ed a chal­lenge — slav­ery and colo­nial­ism in par­tic­u­lar — and the 1660 Friends side­stepped those questions.

Any­way, I have a slideshow and a prac­tice run so if any­one wants me to repeat the pre­sen­ta­tion for anoth­er Quak­er group I could eas­i­ly do it.

Quak­er Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny Talk

Quaker Fiction

November 1, 2022
· Martin Kelley

The Novem­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal is online and in the mail and it’s an excit­ing one: our sec­ond annu­al fic­tion issue. Last year’s issue was more nar­row­ly focused on sci-fi and spec­u­la­tive fic­tion but this one cov­ers all gen­res of fiction.

Some of the arti­cles are his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, two look at Quak­er process and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and there’s a semi-futuristic bit of satire. We can real­ly be a cre­ative bunch.


Fiction

Fiction 

Novem­ber 2022

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Friends Journal podcasting is back!

October 25, 2022
· Martin Kelley

It is the sea­son of the pod­cast in Quak­er­land. In the last few weeks I’ve shared Pen­dle Hill’s new pod­cast and the new one from Irish Friends and hint­ed more were on the way.

One of those is a new pod­cast from Friends Jour­nal called Quak­ers Today. Pro­duced by the most excel­lent Peter­son Toscano, it’s a month­ly pod­cast that will fea­ture a mix of Friends Jour­nal arti­cles and Quak­er­S­peak inter­views — and what­ev­er else we put in there. Peter­son­’s been doing pod­casts since for­ev­er ago (he start­ed back when we would describe our infor­mal blog net­works as “the Quak­er Blo­gos­phere” with no hint of irony) and he brings a great ener­gy to the show. It’s fun watch­ing Friends Jour­nal blos­som in this new medium.

Those with long mem­o­ries will remem­ber that Friends Jour­nal had a pod­cast series that ran for three years start­ing in 2013, con­sist­ing of authors read­ing their sto­ries and the audio to our YouTube author chats. It was fun (I loved the poet­ry read­ings like this one), but it nev­er got many lis­ten­ers and we final­ly end­ed it in 2016 to give more focus to our core work.

It’s nice to be back! I’ve heard the first draft of the first issue and Peter­son­’s done a great job with it. You can lis­ten to the pro­mo below and find it wher­ev­er you get your pod­cast fix.

Resources for differently abled Friends

October 25, 2022
· Martin Kelley

In the Octo­ber issue, fre­quent Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tor Carl Blu­men­thal inter­views Nic­hole Net­tle­ton, of New York Year­ly Meet­ing’s Dif­fer­ent Abled Friends and Allies (DAFA). Prob­a­bly my favorite part is when Nic­hole tells the sto­ry of look­ing for sup­port and con­tact­ing DAFA only to real­ize is was­n’t active any­more. Unde­terred, she took mat­ters into her own hands:

Since I saw it as a major need and I had a lot of expe­ri­ence with dis­abil­i­ties, I thought I could help by set­ting up week­ly Zoom meet­ings.… We start­ed about a year ago, and though I don’t know much about facil­i­tat­ing or the tech­nol­o­gy involved, I’m learn­ing as I go. Some­times you just have to start things when the need is there. You can’t be afraid that you don’t know enough or think you’re good enough to lead.

Carl has been work­ing on issues of phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties and men­tal health for decades and he’s been a friend­ly advo­cate to get us to pub­lish more on the sub­ject. Last year he wrote the land­mark Quak­ers and Men­tal Health­care for us. I cer­tain­ly learned a lot about Quak­er involve­ment in the field. This after­noon I inter­viewed Carl for our author chat YouTube series.