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)

A wider Quaker fellowship

April 23, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Robin Mohr on the chal­lenges and upsides to vir­tu­al worship:

Peo­ple who have basic inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and Friends who were pre­vi­ous­ly iso­lat­ed for health rea­sons, are now able to par­tic­i­pate in wor­ship. Friends who had moved away are com­ing back to vis­it. Peo­ple who once didn’t have time for wor­ship are show­ing up on Sun­day morn­ings. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it with long-lost friends, or to vis­it Quak­er meet­ings in far­away places, just got much eas­i­er. New peo­ple are find­ing their way to our meet­ings via Face­book and Instagram. 

It’s true for me per­son­al­ly that I’ve been able to be more active in wor­ship than before. My non-Quaker fam­i­ly is also par­tic­i­pat­ing more before, with night­ly prayer meet­ings. It’s not the same as in-person fel­low­ship but it’s not a horse of a dif­fer­ent color.

In the age of social dis­tanc­ing, Quak­ers have quick­ly adapt­ed to online worship

A Quaker retirement community in the pandemic

April 20, 2020
· Martin Kelley

A few weeks ago, Friends Jour­nal’s poet­ry edi­tor, Nan­cy Thomas, includ­ed a sweet sto­ry at the end of an email coor­di­nat­ing the May selections:

My hus­band, Hal, stepped out of our apart­ment and into the hall just before 4:00 p.m. on a Sun­day after­noon. He began walk­ing down the hall, play­ing on his har­mon­i­ca a zip­py ver­sion of “When the Saints Go March­ing In.” Peo­ple had been wait­ing. Doors opened, and our neigh­bors stood in their door­ways — well over the des­ig­nat­ed six-feet apart — and began wav­ing and greet­ing one anoth­er. This con­sti­tut­ed our “call to wor­ship,” and the begin­ning of a new pattern. 

I thought it was so nice that I asked her to expand it. The result is a nice snap­shot of how a Quaker-affiliated retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty in New­berg, Ore­gon, is adapt­ing to life under COVID-19 restrictions.


A Quaker Retirement Community Faces the Pandemic

A Quak­er Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ty Faces the Pandemic 

Cre­ativ­i­ty and ser­vice flow­ers under quarantine.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Emily Provance on QuakerSpeak

April 18, 2020
· Martin Kelley

The first remote­ly record­ed Quak­er­S­peak inter­view of the Coro­n­avirus era is appro­pri­ate­ly giv­en to Emi­ly Provance, a trav­el­ing Quak­er min­is­ter who has been devot­ing her­self to both in-person and online trav­el, with a par­tic­u­lar con­cern for mak­ing our wor­ship­ping com­mu­ni­ties acces­si­ble for all.

As some­one who trav­els in the min­istry, Emi­ly Provance is already used to con­nect­ing with her home meet­ing remote­ly. In this vir­tu­al inter­view, Emi­ly explains how Quak­ers can use online tools to wor­ship togeth­er — and not just in emer­gency circumstances. 

https://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​o​n​l​i​ne/

What can you say?

April 18, 2020
· Martin Kelley

From George Amoss Jr:

In Ulver­ston as else­where, Fox sought to expose the “semi-conscious hypocrisy” of Chris­tians and their min­istry. He implied that they were not “born again” into the nature of God; deprived of the Spir­it, they were able only to repeat and gloss the writ­ings of peo­ple who actu­al­ly had been inspired. 

Con­tin­u­ing Rev­e­la­tion, ‘What Canst Thou Say?’ and Speak­ing One’s Truth

Fight. Battle. Defeat. The language of pandemics

April 10, 2020
· Martin Kelley

New online at Friends Jour­nal, Philip Hard­en on the mil­i­taris­tic ter­mi­nol­o­gy we use for pandemics:

I’m remind­ed of this as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to unfold, and so many in our coun­try turn to words of war­fare to describe their response: Fight. Bat­tle. Defeat. Com­bat. Ene­my. Doc­tors and nurs­es on the front lines. The gov­er­nor of my own state, address­ing an assem­bly of nation­al guard sol­diers acti­vat­ed in response to the pan­dem­ic, urged them to “kick coronavirus’s ass.” Per­haps such lan­guage aris­es eas­i­ly in a high­ly mil­i­ta­rized soci­ety that has waged “war” on every­thing from pover­ty to infla­tion to terror.


Quaker Language in a Pandemic

Quak­er Lan­guage in a Pandemic 

Why use terms of war to describe our response to COVID-19?

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Online conversations with FCNL

April 8, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Friends Coun­cil on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion is start­ing a “Thurs­days with Friends” online series:

a new online con­ver­sa­tion series brought to you dur­ing this peri­od of great dif­fi­cul­ty when we are iso­lat­ed from our loved ones. It is a brief 30-minute com­mu­ni­ty chat on issues that Quak­ers and peo­ple of faith are com­pelled to con­tin­ue to work on, what­ev­er the cir­cum­stances we find our­selves in. 

https://​www​.fcnl​.org/​u​p​d​a​t​e​s​/​t​h​u​r​s​d​a​y​s​-​w​i​t​h​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​2​695

Arthur Berk

April 8, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Var­i­ous Friends are announc­ing that Arthur Berk has passed away. He was an insti­tu­tion unto him­self in Chris­t­ian Quak­er cir­cles. I would often run into him in var­i­ous tra­di­tion­al­ist Quak­er gath­er­ings. I’m sure he thought my latent lib­er­al­ism sus­pect (he was prob­a­bly right!) but he was always ready to talk and share truths and tes­ti­fy to the gospel. He let me record one of these moments at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends Gath­er­ing in Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia back in 2009. I trust that he’s now wrapped in the lov­ing arms of the Holy Spir­it. RIP, Arthur.

Finding a fit among Friends

April 3, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Writ­ten BC (Before Coro­na) this arti­cle by Francine Bro­cious on iso­la­tion among Friends feels almost more rel­e­vant now that we’re all (phys­i­cal­ly) isolated:

I have dis­cov­ered, how­ev­er, that out­side of Sun­day morn­ing meet­ing times and some month­ly social or spir­i­tu­al get-togethers, many Quak­ers lead very full lives. This is a chal­lenge for new­er atten­ders like me.


Wanted: A Network of Soul Connection

Want­ed: A Net­work of Soul Connection 

How do we build faith com­mu­ni­ties where we real­ly know one another?

Friends Journal Friends Journal