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)

“We tried that back in 1937”

March 22, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er tells the sto­ry of a Friends meet­ing that was able to turn engrained pat­terns and opaque deci­sion­mak­ing around:

I don’t want to exag­ger­ate the ease of the tran­si­tion. I remem­ber an elder­ly Friend who opposed a pro­pos­al to hold busi­ness meet­ings at anoth­er time than the Sun­day school hour. She argued — and I think this is near­ly ver­ba­tim — “We tried that back in 1937 and it did­n’t work.” As much as I want­ed to laugh out loud, I had to acknowl­edge that her entire his­to­ry at the meet­ing exem­pli­fied self­less service. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​3​/​t​r​u​s​t​w​o​r​t​h​y​-​p​a​r​t​-​f​o​u​r​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​e​s​-​c​h​o​i​c​e​s​.​h​tml

William Penn on community

March 21, 2019
· Martin Kelley

I some­times like to high­light the com­ments that peo­ple leave here on the blog. A few days ago, Carl Abbott replied to a link to a Steven Davi­son post on com­mu­ni­ty as a tes­ti­mo­ny. He wrote:

William Pen­n’s intro­duc­tion to George Fox’s Jour­nal (1691) speaks to some­thing very like community:

“Besides these gen­er­al doc­trines, as the larg­er branch­es, there sprang forth sev­er­al par­tic­u­lar doc­trines, that did exem­pli­fy and far­ther explain the truth and effi­ca­cy of the gen­er­al doc­trine before observed, in their lives and exam­ples: as,

Com­mu­nion and lov­ing one anoth­er. This is anot­ed mark in the mouth of all sorts of peo­ple con­cern­ing them: They will meet, they will help and stick one to anoth­er. Whence it is com­mon to hear some say: Look how the Quak­ers love and take care of one anoth­er. Oth­ers, less mod­er­ate, will say: The Quak­ers live none but them­selves: and if lov­ing one anoth­er. and hav­ing an inti­mate com­mu­nion in reli­gion, and con­stant care to meet to wor­ship God, and help one anoth­er, be any mark of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty, they had it, blessed be the Lord in ample manner.” 

This cer­tain­ly sounds like com­mu­ni­ty to me.

When testimonies come drifting in

March 16, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son asked what the tes­ti­mo­ny of com­mu­ni­ty even meant or whether it was spelt out any­where. No one could answer but no ine want­ed to omit it.

I sus­pect a process may be at work sim­i­lar to the one that has made “that of God in every­one” the puta­tive foun­da­tion of all our tes­ti­monies: an unself­con­scious thought-drift in a cul­ture increas­ing­ly impa­tient with intellectual/theological rig­or, or even atten­tion of any seri­ous kind, not to men­tion care for the tes­ti­mo­ny of integri­ty. These ideas arise some­how, some­where, and then get picked up and dis­sem­i­nat­ed because they sound nice, they meet some need, and they don’t demand much. They appar­ent­ly don’t require dis­cern­ment, anyway. 

The “Tes­ti­mo­ny of Community”

Disappointment, frustration, and betrayal

March 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Johan Maurer:

What choic­es do we have? The most obvi­ous and most glib answer is: leave! Escape! In fact, after prayer and con­sul­ta­tion and weigh­ing options, that may end up being the best answer. 

This seems like a very ground­ed look at some of the oft-recurrent dys­func­tions in church­es. Check out the list of prob­lems. I sus­pect thet most seek­ers have run into at least a fee of these in congregations.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​3​/​t​r​u​s​t​w​o​r​t​h​y​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​h​r​e​e​-​c​h​o​i​c​e​s​.​h​tml

The Lamb’s War and dietary non-violence

March 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

On Friend­ly Fire:

I am think­ing of those pre­tend­ing com­pas­sion and love whilst con­sum­ing prod­ucts of cru­el­ty and bru­tal­i­ty. We say with St. Paul: ‘I will eat no flesh whilst the world stands, because I will not hurt my broth­er.’ All crea­tures are our sis­ters and broth­ers, as Saint Fran­cis of Assisi recog­nised cen­turies ago. 

The Lamb’s War and dietary non-violence

QuakerSpeak season 6 is starting

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Six sea­sons of the awe­somest video series about Friends. There’s also a new­ly reen­er­gized pod­cast ver­sion so sub­scribe to that if audio is your favorite medium!

http://quakerspeak.com/welcome-to-quakerspeak-season‑6/?fbclid=IwAR1zbq8SwVPqaPecEEQSAoJrJ7MdSW2htwMxrjq5Xi51UCGMzI9MQt7deDE

A more modern commission

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

As an East Coast unpro­grammed Friend, Quak­er mis­sion work is still a bit exot­ic. We’re used to read­ing of well-meaning nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Friends whose atti­tudes shock us today. But here’s a sto­ry of some Mid­west mis­sion work with the Shawnee in the 1970s and 80s.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus. 

http://​www​.lib​er​al​first​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​o​u​r​-​g​r​e​a​t​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​ion