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)

Foodways and Folkways

June 10, 2019
· Martin Kelley

I wrote the intro to the June-July Friends Jour­nal, our issue on “Food Choic­es.” There was a strong inter­est in some cir­cles to have a whole issue advo­cat­ing veg­e­tar­i­an diets. Although I’m sym­pa­thet­ic (I’ve been a veg­an since my ear­ly 20s) I’m aller­gic to claims that all Quak­ers should adopt any par­tic­u­lar prac­tice. It feels too close to Mar­garet Fel­l’s sil­ly poor gospel, a mis­un­der­stand­ing of way Quak­er process medi­ates between indi­vid­ual and group behavior.

Food unites and food divides. It both marks us into tribes and gives us oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach past our soci­etal lim­its. From chick­en bar­be­ques to vegetarian-dominated potlucks, what we put on the table says a lot about our val­ues, and how we wel­come unfa­mil­iar food choic­es is a mea­sure of our hos­pi­tal­i­ty. How do kitchen-table spreads of tofu and chick­pea dips rein­force cer­tain stand-apart cul­tur­al norms? Are Friends who like bar­be­cue ribs less Quak­er? What about meet­ings that still host the annu­al chick­en din­ner or clambake? 


Foodways and Folkways

Food­ways and Folkways 

Among Friends: Our intro­duc­tion to the June-July 2019 issue on Food Choices.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Walt Whitman: A prophet found under your boot-soles

June 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

A brief look at some of the Quak­er influ­ences on Walt Whit­man’s spirituality:

Whit­man absorbed deist prin­ci­ples from his father; he was equal­ly influ­enced by his mother’s Quak­er back­ground. He embraced the Quak­er empha­sis on indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence of the divine — what Friends call the “inner light” — as well as the con­cept of “that of God” exist­ing with­in every per­son. Whitman’s poet­ry reflects Quak­ers’ rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an theology 

https://​www​.churchtimes​.co​.uk/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​1​9​/​3​1​-​m​a​y​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​w​a​l​t​-​w​h​i​t​m​a​n​-​a​-​p​r​o​p​h​e​t​-​f​o​u​n​d​-​u​n​d​e​r​-​y​o​u​r​-​b​o​o​t​-​s​o​les

Twitter thread of the day

May 31, 2019
· Martin Kelley

So this happened:

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So yeah, THAT Lin-Manuel Miran­da. I’m going to have Moana songs in my head all day now. See the line where the sky meets THE sea? It calls ME, And no one KNOOOOOWWS, how far it GOOOEEES. (okay, it sounds bet­ter when my 8yo daugh­ter sings along in the car).

Nicole Cliffe is a for­mer athe­ist turned Chris­t­ian (but AFAIK, not Quak­er (yet)) who told her con­ver­sion sto­ry in Chris­tian­i­ty Today a few years ago. One of her claims to fame is co-founding The Toast, which stop pub­lish­ing in 2016 but still has some­one pay­ing for the web serv­er.

And in case Lin-Manuel swings by, he should know that his­to­ry geek Quak­er hip hop is a thing.

Half forgotten Philadelhpia Quaker cemetery at center of development controversy

May 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

As report­ed in the Philadel­phia Inquirer:

How many skele­tons might remain buried? Pos­si­bly thou­sands, accord­ing to archae­ol­o­gists, but no one knows. His­tor­i­cal maps are unclear on the ceme­ter­ies’ bound­aries, but numer­ous his­to­ries por­tray the grounds as used first by Quak­ers and then by the poor, whose num­bers increased along with the size of the city. 

They quote the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who had heard noth­ing about this. The arti­cle also cites a 1880s arti­cle in Friends Intel­li­gencer, the pre­de­ces­sor to Friends Jour­nal.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​a​r​t​s​/​s​c​h​u​y​l​k​i​l​l​-​y​a​r​d​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​e​m​e​t​e​r​i​e​s​-​p​h​i​l​a​d​e​l​p​h​i​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​b​r​a​n​d​y​w​i​n​e​-​d​r​e​x​e​l​-​2​0​1​9​0​5​0​2​.​h​tml

We don’t worship silence

May 1, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith:

There are a lot of Quak­ers for whom the qual­i­ty of their wor­ship is mea­sured by the qual­i­ty of the silence there­in, to the point that “dis­rup­tions” — whether they come from chil­dren, late­com­ers, folks who are not neu­rotyp­i­cal, or folks who don’t com­port them­selves in the man­ner of the white mid­dle class — are regard­ed as annoy­ances. This is not just a mistake. 

We don’t wor­ship silence

Japan Would Make Akihito Emperor, but She Called Him ‘Jimmy’

April 30, 2019
· Martin Kelley

With the abdi­ca­tion of Japan’s emper­or comes renewed atten­tion on his first post-war teacher: Amer­i­can Friend Eliz­a­beth Gray Vining:

An Amer­i­can teacher taught the young prince he would nev­er be a god. But he just might help heal his country. 


Japan Would Make Akihito Emperor, but She Called Him ‘Jimmy’ (Published 2019)

Japan Would Make Aki­hi­to Emper­or, but She Called Him ‘Jim­my’ (Pub­lished 2019) 

An Amer­i­can teacher taught the young prince he would nev­er be a god. But he just might help…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Jesus the key to my experience

April 22, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Mark Russ:

As a Chris­t­ian Quak­er liv­ing in a post-Christian Quak­er cul­ture, I’m occa­sion­al­ly called upon to explain my Chris­tian­i­ty to my fel­low Quak­ers. I recent­ly did this by say­ing ‘Jesus is the key that unlocks my expe­ri­ence of the world’. I was then asked ‘could you say more about that?’, and I didn’t real­ly have an answer prepared 

Jesus the key to my experience

Welcoming families in meetings

April 18, 2019
· Martin Kelley

An account of one British meet­ing find­ing space for families:

It has been the task of the whole meet­ing not just of one or two; there has been an aware­ness that what they are doing now will need to change and evolve. And there has been a care and nour­ish­ing of us as par­ents too, with our own spir­i­tu­al jour­neys and need for nurture.

I know, from talk­ing to oth­er Quak­er par­ents – and, very sad­ly, from par­ents who would love to explore Quak­erism but who have felt dis­cour­aged or unwel­comed – that we have been par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky. Lucky not because we found a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty with a ready-made chil­dren’s meet­ing, but because we found a meet­ing will­ing and ready to wel­come, to make space, where there was a sense of glad­ness that we were there. 


Welcoming families in meetings

Wel­com­ing fam­i­lies in meetings 

How do we rejoice in the pres­ence of chil­dren in our meet­ings and nur­ture their spir­i­tu­al growth? Alistair…

Quakers Quakers