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)

Featured on Friends Journal this week

September 26, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Fin­ish­ing up the Quak­er Arts issue:

Trans­form­ing Weapons into Art. Earl­ham’s peace stud­ies prof Welling Hall decid­ed to actu­al­ly take the para­ble lit­er­al­ly and trans­form swords — and bul­lets and com­bat knives — into some­thing new, in this case, provoca­tive art.

On Being a Quak­er Film­mak­er. Mar­tin Krafft explores that of God in the larger-than-life sub­ject of his upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary film as she strug­gles with ter­mi­nal can­cer: “The more I filmed Rachel, the more I real­ized that I was not just film­ing her health jour­ney. I was film­ing Rachel in her rich, com­pli­cat­ed, at times painful, fullness.”

Unbinding the local

September 23, 2022
· Martin Kelley

It seems as if Friends are in the mid­dle of a big shift, fast-forwarded by Covid lock­downs but part of a larg­er trend.

A few weeks ago at a Quak­er meet­ing, I was giv­en a print­out for a Quak­erism class being spon­sored by anoth­er meet­ing. Noth­ing remark­able, except that the meet­ing is thou­sands of miles away and the work­shop leader thou­sands of miles from the meet­ing. Obvi­ous­ly this is all hap­pen­ing by Zoom. I’m glad to see Friends hun­gry to go deep­er into their faith, but the top­ic is one I’ve taught mul­ti­ple times and could teach in-person at any near­by meeting.

I appre­ci­ate our new Zoom oppor­tu­ni­ties. I have a busy sched­ule and love that I have the chance to attend inter­est­ing work­shops and meet Friends with­out leav­ing my house (to be hon­est, I’ve occa­sion­al­ly run errands to the gro­cery store or a kid drop-off while lis­ten­ing to a live Quak­er talk).

But what hap­pens when our pri­ma­ry Quak­er expe­ri­ence is with peo­ple who aren’t local? It’s increas­ing­ly easy to be an “at large” Friend liv­ing a busy life of dai­ly Quak­er wor­ship and far-flung work­shops all on Zoom. This is great for Friends at a dis­tance from local Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties. But what becomes of our meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties as this trend accel­er­ates? How do our ties to spe­cif­ic neigh­bor­hoods change? And what does it mean if the peo­ple in local meet­ings stop being asked to teach because of the easy acces­si­bil­i­ty of nation­al­ly known teach­ers via Zoom? Will Friends who would have been encour­aged to teach at the local lev­el be rel­e­gat­ed to the role of con­sumer? Will Quak­er lead­er­ship becomes even more con­cen­trat­ed and nation­al — indi­vid­u­als with per­son­al brands and followers?

I sus­pect the inter­est and shifts reflects needs that have been unmet by our cur­rent struc­tures. Maybe our local meet­ings aren’t that nur­tur­ing or will­ing to go deep. Many aren’t set up well for busy par­ents like myself, or for those with lim­it­ed trans­porta­tion. In the U.S. alone mil­lions of peo­ple are nowhere near a Friends congregation. 

Visiting new meetings online

September 23, 2022
· Martin Kelley

A brand new video from Quak­er­S­peak, “What to Expect at a Hybrid Quak­er Meet­ing for Wor­ship,“ con­vinc­ing­ly high­lights the ben­e­fits of online wor­ship. As Robin Mohr says:

One of the things we’ve learned in the last cou­ple of years is that it is eas­i­er to vis­it a new Quak­er meet­ing that’s far away because of the oppor­tu­ni­ties set up through online wor­ship, and we’ve seen a lot of peo­ple go back to vis­it a meet­ing they vis­it­ed before or to be able to vis­it some­place they’ve always heard about but nev­er been to, and that has been a gift to our community. 

Featured on Friends Journal this week.

September 22, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Con­tin­u­ing with Sep­tem­ber’s Quak­er Arts issue:

“Art Is Pray­ing with My Whole Body.” Cai Quirk’s jour­neys as a life­long Quak­er, artist, and gender-diverse per­son are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. Cai sub­mit­ted two arti­cles to us: this text explo­ration of their work and a series of pho­tos titled “Tran­scen­dence.” We liked them so much we decid­ed to pub­lish both (one online and the oth­er both in print and online). Unbe­knownst to me, Cai also sub­mit­ted a poem, which our poet­ry edi­tor chose. When it came time to decide on a cov­er, Cai’s pho­tos stood out more than any of the oth­er selec­tions we test­ed out. I’m pret­ty sure we’ve nev­er had some­one appear in so many forms before.

“It’s Not a Lux­u­ry: Eight Quak­er Artists on the Heal­ing Pow­er of Art.” Johan­na Jack­son spent time with sev­er­al Quak­er artists, ask­ing them about their art and spir­i­tu­al prac­tice dur­ing the pandemic.

Friends Journal hiring a staff writer

August 16, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Want to work with me? Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, the par­ent cor­po­ra­tion of Friends Jour­nal, Quak­er Speak, and Quak​er​.org, is look­ing for our first-ever staff writer 1. We’re look­ing for some­one with jour­nal­is­tic chops who is also famil­iar with the cir­cus that is the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

Friends Jour­nal will con­tin­ue to have arti­cles from every-day Friends shar­ing their min­istry and their view of Quak­er life. But with a staff writer we’ll be able to run more deeply report­ed and top­i­cal sto­ries. We’ve been com­mis­sion­ing these already. For exam­ple, in 2019 Erik Han­son report­ed on how a Quak­er school respond­ed to long-ago accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al abuse. When the coro­n­avirus lock­downs hit we com­mis­sioned a quick-turnaround sto­ry from Katie Bres­lin on how Quak­er meet­ings were respond­ing and anoth­er by Greg Woods on the then-novel con­cept of com­muning online. And for years we’ve con­duct­ed inter­views of inter­est­ing Friends who are either too busy to write or per­haps not nat­ur­al writ­ers. With only two of us in edi­to­r­i­al there have been so many times we have to say no to fab­u­lous inter­view pos­si­bil­i­ty. A staff writer will gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include these voic­es more often.

Here’s an excerpt from the job description:

Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, a non­prof­it Quak­er mag­a­zine and web pub­lish­ing orga­ni­za­tion, seeks a staff writer to join our team. The Staff Writer will work remote­ly, though they may occa­sion­al­ly trav­el to FPC’s Philadel­phia office or oth­er loca­tions as need­ed for all-staff activ­i­ties or to cov­er sto­ries. Trav­el is like­ly to be less than 2 weeks per year. This posi­tion reports to the Senior Editor.

You can check out the jobs page for more. If you know any­one who might qual­i­fy, please please let them know. This real­ly is a remote-friendly position!


Job Opportunities - Friends Journal

Job Oppor­tu­ni­ties — Friends Journal 

Book Review Edi­tor (Vol­un­teer, Remote) Friends Jour­nal is seek­ing a Book Review Edi­tor. This is an unpaid vol­un­teer position,…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The Nearness of God as Spirit

August 7, 2022
· Martin Kelley

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I had a few min­utes before wor­ship at Crop­well Meet­ing this morn­ing and so turned to the book­case — a place you’ll often find me in in-between times at church­es of all sorts. There was a slim, dark vol­ume with no dis­cernible title on the spine, a mys­tery book. I pulled it out and it was a 1935 copy of Philadel­phia Faith and Prac­tice.

On the inside-front cov­er was the name of its orig­i­nal own­er, who had a sur­name famil­iar to any­one who has wan­dered the grave­yard out front. Near the begin­ning was a his­to­ry of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing which abrupt­ly end­ed in the ear­ly 1800s, just before the Great Schism. It’s as if his­to­ry end­ed there. Only the pub­li­ca­tion address let on to those in the know that this was the Ortho­dox Year­ly Meeting.

As I start­ed read­ing pas­sages I was struck by how well writ­ten it is. I don’t know why that should be sur­pris­ing as Philadel­phia Ortho­dox had Friends like Rufus Jones, Thomas Kel­ly, and Howard Brin­ton. I guess I wasn’t expect­ing the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion to be free of stilt­ed nine­teenth cen­tu­ry prose.

Here’s a pas­sage from the begin­ning of its “Wor­ship and Min­istry” sec­tion that spoke to me:

Our con­cep­tion of wor­ship is based on a deep-seated faith that God is Spir­it, as Christ taught at Jacob’s well, and that man, as spir­it, can respond to Him and enter into direct com­mu­nion and fel­low­ship with Him. This faith in the near­ness of God as Spir­it sprang out of a fresh and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of God in the lives of George Fox and the ear­ly Friends. They felt that they found Him as they walked in the fields or as they sat in the qui­et of their meet­ings and they arrived at an unwa­ver­ing cer­tain­ty of the real pres­ence of God in the lives of men, which gave them unusu­al inner strength and spir­i­tu­al power.

I appre­ci­ate that it clear­ly maps out how God and Humana inter­act, tying it with­out much arti­fice to a par­tic­u­lar pas­sage in the gospels. And then it gets real with the image of seek­ers walk­ing the fields look­ing to com­mune with God: such a human depic­tion. I’ll be check­ing out whether I have a copy of this F&P in my home library. It seems we’ll worth a read.

A ran­dom Google search while wait­ing for my fam­i­ly to pick me up from Crop­well turned up this 1922 edi­to­r­i­al in The Friend. This appar­ent­ly is the dis­cus­sion lead­ing up to the new F&P that sur­prised me!

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Mark Russ on vocal ministry

July 7, 2022
· Martin Kelley

On the Wood­brooke web­site, a new piece on vocal min­istry from British Friend Mark Russ. I like the warn­ing that what might look obvi­ous to a new­com­er might not be what they think:

From a non-Quaker per­spec­tive, a group of peo­ple sit­ting in a cir­cle in silence, with any­one able to stand and speak, might look very much like a ther­a­py group. We might then inter­pret the words spo­ken in this group as being main­ly per­son­al and to a large extend pri­vate. We might see the per­son speak­ing as unbur­den­ing them­selves, shar­ing some­thing they’ve per­haps nev­er shared before, and find­ing heal­ing through this shar­ing. These words are treat­ed as some­thing pre­cious, belong­ing to the indi­vid­ual who speaks, and are treat­ed with con­fi­den­tial­i­ty by oth­ers in the group.

For those want­i­ng more, the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal is all about vocal ministry.

Retro Quaker Vocal Ministry Flowchart

June 16, 2022
· Martin Kelley
“Speaking into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.
“Speak­ing into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.

Peo­ple have been com­ment­ing a lot on this chart Friends Jour­nal shared on social media last week. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the August 1991 issue, what I love most about it is its 1990s-era flow­chart design. What would it be today — some punchy info­graph­ic per­haps? We dove into the archives because this mon­th’s issue is all about Quak­er vocal min­istry and at least two of the fea­ture arti­cles men­tion these kinds of charts.

From Paul Buck­ley:

There is a fre­quent­ly repro­duced dia­gram that graph­i­cal­ly guides poten­tial speak­ers through a series of ques­tions they are to con­sid­er when they feel an urge to rise and speak. These exam­ine whether a poten­tial mes­sage is divine­ly inspired; whether it is intend­ed for the speak­er alone or for oth­ers present; and whether this is the right time and place to deliv­er it. These resources are all use­ful, but they only address one half of the act of vocal min­istry: one that is, by far, the small­er and per­haps less impor­tant por­tion. The oth­er part is the min­istry of lis­ten­ing, and we are all called to be lis­ten­ing ministers.

From Edna Whit­ti­er:

Since the begin­ning of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, writ­ten advices have guid­ed Friends. Year­ly meet­ings’ faith and prac­tice books, Pen­dle Hill pam­phlets on vocal min­istry, and indi­vid­ual month­ly meet­ings’ “Wel­come to Quak­er Wor­ship” hand­outs have guide­lines for speak­ing or not speak­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. In 2019, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence even pub­lished a poster of a cir­cle flow chart with guide­lines for deliv­er­ing a mes­sage dur­ing worship.

Brent Bill has sub­se­quent­ly shared the graph­ic Whit­ti­er men­tions [link was on Twit­ter and is dead] and yes, it is very 2020’s info­graph­i­cal in design!

But I link to the arti­cles because these kinds of when-to-speak kind of charts can always become prob­lem­at­ic. As Bet­sy Caz­den replied on Twit­ter: “The peo­ple who need it least will spend the full hour obsess­ing about the flow-chart and will nev­er speak. The peo­ple who need it most nev­er will.” Just a few weeks ago I was sit­ting on a bench in Crop­well (N.J.) Meet­ing test­ing and retest­ing my moti­va­tions and lead­ings to rise and give min­istry. I gave a final breath to stand up when I heard the “good morn­ing Friends” fol­lowed by the sounds of hands slap­ping on hands in rise-of-meeting hand­shakes. Over the years I have learned not spend my whole hour obsess­ing but had not real­ized this meet­ing’s wor­ship was only 45 minutes!

Fur­ther read­ing: An Expect­ed Mir­a­cle, a 2023 post about the (often unnec­es­sary) pres­sures of Quak­er ministry.

Updating as I find more

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Chest­nut Hill Meet­ing in Philadel­phia, Pa., cir­ca 2014.
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West­min­ster Meet­ing, in Lon­don, which in turn got it from a 2015 book by Zélie Gross, With a Ten­der Hand.