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)

Nearly all Friends

October 21, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Speak­ing of FAQs that I hope will attract search engine queries for quite some time, Emi­ly Provance has been on fire with a series she calls “answers for a small‑f friend,” in which she — well, answers a lot of ques­tions peo­ple might have. Many of these are just as use­ful for us large‑F Friends and they’re all worth check­ing out.

This week’s is “Is there any­thing all Quak­ers have in com­mon?” She gets around the sometimes-confoundingly diverse set of opin­ions among Friends by find­ing com­mon­al­i­ties that “near­ly all Friends” would agree with. It’s a good way to proceed.

QuakerSpeak on memorial services

October 21, 2022
· Martin Kelley

The most antic­i­pat­ed new release this Fri­day 1 is a new video from Quak­er­S­peak: What to Expect at a Quak­er Memo­r­i­al Ser­vice.

These ensem­ble Quak­er­S­peaks are like FAQs sent out to the search engines. They’re edu­ca­tion­al to watch when they come out: I sit there imag­in­ing what I would be say­ing if the cam­era was on me. But the real ben­e­fit is months and years from now when non-Quaker who has nev­er walked into a meet­ing­house is faced with hav­ing to attend a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for a beloved neigh­bor, or rel­a­tive, or co-worker. They will nat­u­ral­ly turn to their favorite search engine and find this video on YouTube. Six and half min­utes lat­er they’ll know what they’re get­ting into. Maybe they’ll stick around and click on relat­ed videos like “What to Expect in Quak­er Meet­ing for Wor­ship.”

I’m biased, cer­tain­ly, but I think Friends do wed­dings and funer­als par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Many peo­ple first expe­ri­ence Friends through these ser­vice. I know I always leave know­ing so much more about some­one who I assumed I already knew;; I some­times feel a pang of regret at not hav­ing tak­en the time to dis­cov­er their oth­er inter­ests while they were alive.

What to Expect at a Quak­er Memo­r­i­al Service

Too much politeness?

October 10, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Johan­na Jack­son and I speak about the prob­lems of polite­ness and buried con­flict in Quak­er meet­ings in this week’s FJ author chat. We tried not to get too spe­cif­ic about con­flicts we’ve seen in our own Quak­er expe­ri­ences: what mat­ters is not nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­vid­ual instances (peo­ple can be jerks, this is under­stood) but a pat­tern of not rec­on­cil­ing and heal­ing that many Friends and would-be Friends have observed.

How do we reshape the cul­ture in our meet­ings to allow for more vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and healthy emo­tions and how do we heal from con­flicts that hap­pened years or decades ago but still shape our meet­ings? Johan­na’s arti­cle, Beyond Polite­ness, appears in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal.

Prison ministry, new on QuakerSpeak

October 6, 2022
· Martin Kelley

New, on Quak­er­S­peak: “A Call­ing to Prison Min­istry and Antiracism Work.” Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Rebec­ca Hamilton-Levy inter­views Judy Meik­le, who was ini­tial­ly struck by the phrase that tied the modern-day prison indus­try to slav­ery — “from the plan­ta­tion to the pen­i­ten­tiary” — and start­ed vol­un­teer­ing for prison min­istry at Sing Sing. It was quite the jour­ney, as she had to con­front her own White­ness and White sav­ior complex:

I’d like to name that it’s a strug­gle for me on an ongo­ing basis to wres­tle with my own inter­nal­ized racism and when I hear myself talk­ing like I have today about what my join­ery has been like, I hear myself falling into the trap of excep­tion­al­ism, like some­how I’m the good antiracist — I’m not. I stum­ble all the time, I make mis­takes. So I just want to name that and know that I am on this jour­ney mak­ing mis­takes because I want to do bet­ter, and I hope that with the guid­ance of Spir­it oth­ers will join. There are many peo­ple in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends that are already on board with this work, and it’s just my hope that oth­ers will join.

Judy wrote about her expe­ri­ences for FJ last year in “Get Thee Behind the Walls.”

New Quaker podcast from Pendle Hill

September 30, 2022
· Martin Kelley

The Pen­dle Hill Cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia is launch­ing The Seed, a new pod­cast, with the first episode sched­uled to drop on World Quak­er Day. From their press release:

The podcast’s host, Dwight Dun­ston, is a West Philly-based facil­i­ta­tor, hip-hop artist, edu­ca­tor, and activist who has brought his cre­ativ­i­ty, care, and com­pas­sion to schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, retire­ment homes, fes­ti­vals, and sta­di­ums all over the coun­try and internationally.

In the open­ing episode, Dwight Dun­ston and Pen­dle Hill exec­u­tive direc­tor Fran­cis­co Bur­gos share with the audi­ence their dreams for The Seed. They wel­come lis­ten­ers into the pod­cast as an expan­sion of Pen­dle Hill’s spaces of trans­for­ma­tion, a green­house for nur­tur­ing hope­ful visions of the world that is possible. 

Dwight, also known as Ster­ling Duns, is a great choice for a host. FJ inter­viewed him back in 2015 and he’s also the sub­ject of a Quak­er­S­peak inter­view. Pen­dle Hill is a real cross­roads, bring­ing togeth­er spir­i­tu­al seek­ers and change advo­cates since its ear­li­est days. Their decades-long tra­di­tion of dai­ly wor­ship tran­si­tioned to a hybrid for­mat almost imme­di­ate­ly upon lock­down in 2020 and real­ly gave a lot of peo­ple hope in a hard time. It total­ly makes sense that they build upon their con­nec­tions to start a pod­cast. The pro­mo sounds good; I can’t wait for the launch.

The Quak­er pod­cast ecosys­tem has a been a bit touch and go over the years, with great pod­casts com­ing and going. Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing’s pod­cast is one of the few that’s still going strong (I very much rec­om­mend Hen­ry Jason’s series, “Fun­da­men­tal Beliefs of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends”). I know of two pod­cast series cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion in addi­tion to Pen­dle Hill’s. It’s an excit­ing time for Quak­er audio!