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)

Where do we hear God’s voice?

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Angel­i­ca Brown on min­istry from unex­pect­ed sources:

I think about the peo­ple I’ve cared about who have need­ed to talk to them­selves and make nois­es. Who need to pace and say things we don’t under­stand. Spir­it is mov­ing through them, in this incar­na­tion­al way. Remind­ing them they still have bod­ies that can make nois­es, that they still can breath words into being. 

http://​www​.meet​ing​house​.xyz/​e​v​e​r​y​t​h​i​n​g​/​2​0​1​8​/​1​2​/​3​1​/​w​h​e​r​e​-​d​o​-​w​e​-​h​e​a​r​-​g​o​d​s​-​v​o​ice

Trustworthy Friends

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er has put togeth­er a sur­vey for Friends to talk about set­ting up trust­wor­thy churches:

A lot of Quak­er ener­gy has gone into reas­sur­ing skep­tics and wound­ed refugees that we Friends are not like “those peo­ple,” refer­ring to the zealots, author­i­tar­i­ans, and reli­gious entre­pre­neurs who have some­times giv­en faith a bad name. But what are we affir­ma­tive­ly promis­ing? And how do we increase our capac­i­ty to keep our promis­es and become more trustworthy? 

https://​ino​.to/​d​K​K​V​1T3

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a num­ber of Black Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tors have shared heart­break­ing sto­ries of not feel­ing wel­come in Quak­er cir­cles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a ques­tion mark to the end of its title — “A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends?” The choice of punc­tu­a­tion hints at a cer­tain weari­ness — are we real­ly still ask­ing this? — along with the sug­ges­tion that maybe many Friends are con­tent enough with the sta­tus quo that they might sim­ply answer “no” to a call for diversity. 


Racially Diverse Society of Friends (January 2019) Archives - Friends Journal

Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends (Jan­u­ary 2019) Archives — Friends Journal 

Jan­u­ary 2019: A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends? Full Issue Access Fea­tures: Are We Ready to Make the…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Sin, corruption, temptation and distraction

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Patri­cia Dall­mann on the role of sin:

It is bet­ter to see the sin of the world as uni­form and sin­gle rather than to view its man­i­fes­ta­tions as par­tic­u­lar prop­er­ties belong­ing to spe­cif­ic cor­rupt­ed per­sons. That is to say, in its uni­for­mi­ty, the world’s sin is more like an expanse of mud than it is like sep­a­rate rocks sit­u­at­ed at inter­vals in a field! See­ing sin as a uni­form force helps the intel­lect direct the incen­sive pow­er toward sin itself, and away from par­tic­u­lar offend­ers who have suc­cumbed to and embody demon­ic power. 

I like how she pulls from fourth-century spir­i­tu­al texts but uses them as a way to under­stand our own modern-day psy­cho­log­i­cal respons­es. Mod­ern Friends don’t often explore the dynam­ics of sin and I think we some­times lose out by sim­ply dis­count­ing it. The lan­guage of temp­ta­tion — and the Quak­er inter­pre­ta­tion by ear­ly min­is­ters like Samuel Bow­nas – has helped me under­stand moments when the easy path of acclaim is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the right choice.

Pow­ers of the Soul

Hey y’all, let’s start a blog!

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Okay, it’s not specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er – it’s not actu­al­ly at all Quak­er – but I like the think­ing behind Why You Should Start a Blog in 2019 by Ernie Smith in Tedi­um. Long-time read­ers will know I usu­al­ly have at least a post a year in which I blog about blog­ging. This time I’ll let Ernie talk about the ratio­nales and needs for a blog­ging culture:

We could use a lit­tle momen­tum. A decade ago, as I was get­ting start­ed with this, plat­forms like Face­book took advan­tage of our desire for a sim­pler option and used it to silo up our data, lock and key. We lost an excit­ing blo­gos­phere in the midst of all of this — and the first step towards get­ting it back is by real­iz­ing that own­er­ship should be a first class cit­i­zen, whether or not we even­tu­al­ly give away those words, sell them, or keep them close to our chest. A blog that you own, that you pay the host­ing bill for? That’s the first step — a form of expres­sion that should be the future (because after all, how awe­some is it that any­one can own a print­ing press?!?) but some­how became the past.

I haven’t been updat­ing this Quak­er Dai­ly Read as much as I’d like over the last month or so. That’s part­ly the result of an ear­ly Decem­ber vaca­tion and then the chaos of late Decem­ber hol­i­days with the fam­i­ly. I’m sure I’ve missed some great posts that I should have shared but there’s also days when I run through my RSS col­lec­tion (I use Feed­ly to fol­low about a hun­dred or so blogs) and find noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh or inter­est­ing. I’d love to see more of us trad­ing the Face­book dopamine-rush imme­di­a­cy for some more thought­ful writ­ing and conversation.

https://​tedi​um​.co/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​0​1​/​2​0​1​9​-​i​n​d​e​p​e​n​d​e​n​t​-​b​l​o​g​g​i​n​g​-​t​r​e​n​ds/

Nuturing ministers: Case studies

December 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is start­ing a new series of his­tor­i­cal exam­ples of Quak­ers giv­ing min­is­te­r­i­al advice and training:

As I am work­ing on a revi­sion of my book on the Quak­er min­istry, I am revis­it­ing his­tor­i­cal accounts of times when a min­is­ter was giv­en guid­ance (elder­ing, over­sight, nur­ture, dis­ci­pline). As part of that work, I will from time to time post “case stud­ies” on this blog. 

Nutur­ing min­is­ters: Case stud­ies, Intro

Humor in Religion

December 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m a lit­tle ner­vous solic­it­ing Quak­er humor but it’s become part of my job descrip­tion… Friends Jour­nal is devot­ing a whole issue to “Humor in Reli­gion” next April. The writ­ing dead­line is Jan­u­ary 7. A fright­ful­ly seri­ous list of things we’re look­ing for is below.


Writing Opp: Humor in Religion (due Jan 7)

Writ­ing Opp: Humor in Reli­gion (due Jan 7) 

Mag­a­zine ISO legit fun­ny Quak­er joke, apply here.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

2019 FGC Gathering workshops announced

December 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

It’s that time of year: FGC’s announced the work­shop list­ings for its annu­al Gath­er­ing, start­ing at the end of June at Grin­nell Col­lege in Iowa.

There are 48 work­shops to choose from this year, which is about the nor­mal num­ber for recent years. I used Archive​.org to look back and the biggest year I could dig up was 2006, when 73 work­shops were offered. Gath­er­ing atten­dance has dropped since then but I also sus­pect 73 selec­tions were a bit ambi­tious. The cur­rent nor­mal is more suit­ed to the Gath­er­ing size. There are lots of famil­iar work­shop lead­ers. Are there any that stand out for you? Fell free to drop rec­om­men­da­tions (or pro­mote your own work­shop if you’re doing one!) in the com­ment section.

https://​www​.fgc​quak​er​.org/​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​/​g​a​t​h​e​r​i​n​g​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​-​a​n​d​-​e​v​e​n​t​s​/​w​o​r​k​s​h​ops