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)

Why Do Quakers Worship in Silence?

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Catch­ing up with last week’s Quak­er­S­peak, which was a great one with Lloyd Lee Wil­son explain­ing how Quak­er silence is dif­fer­ent from indi­vid­ual meditation:

From the exte­ri­or, there may not appear to be very much dif­fer­ent between a group of indi­vid­u­als doing indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion or indi­vid­ual con­tem­pla­tion in the same room and a group of Quak­er wor­ship­ing togeth­er. But there are a num­ber of things that are, as we expe­ri­ence them, dif­fer­ent. One is that these prac­tices that have as their goal achiev­ing still­ness of mind or per­fect qui­et or single-pointed aware­ness, as a goal, are actu­al­ly quite dif­fer­ent from what we are attempt­ing and achiev­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. For Friends, this point of still­ness is only a way sta­tion, and we pass though that. It is not our goal, but it is how we get to a point of encounter with God.
 
http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​h​y​-​d​o​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​w​o​r​s​h​i​p​-​i​n​-​s​i​l​e​n​ce/

Somberly dressed men astride horses

October 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Colonial-era Quak­ers weren’t all saints when it came to oppos­ing slav­ery but there are some moments we afford to look back to with a smidge of pride. In 1783, a del­e­ga­tion from Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing walked into the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress to make good on all that “cre­at­ed equal” language.

Prince­ton vil­lagers and mem­bers of the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress beheld the arrival of an unusu­al del­e­ga­tion of somber­ly dressed men astride hors­es. They had come from Philadel­phia to raise an issue that the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress did not wish to address: the plight of half a mil­lion Amer­i­can res­i­dents — one-fifth of the peo­ple — who had been lis­ten­ing to mem­o­rable words about inalien­able rights and how Amer­i­ca would ush­er in a new age of free­dom and jus­tice, but who were con­demned along with their chil­dren to life­long slav­ery. The four men car­ried a parch­ment titled “The Address of the Peo­ple Called Quakers.” 

The author, Gary Nash, has a book out about Wal­ter Mif­flin, one of the four, which Friends Jour­nal reviewed this April.

As I recall, the transat­lantic slave trade went into over­drive in the new­ly inde­pen­dent Unit­ed States. If the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress has lis­tened, the com­plex­ion and char­ac­ter and his­to­ry of the U.S. would be far different.
 
https://​paw​.prince​ton​.edu/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​m​o​m​e​n​t​-​n​a​s​s​a​u​-​h​all

“Two Faces of Liberty,” by Lilith Quinlan

October 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Quak­er Uni­ver­sal­ist Fel­low­ship has reprint­ed a 1984 Friends Jour­nal arti­cle by Lil­lith Quin­lan that sounds way too con­tem­po­rary despite the three and a half decades:

While school chil­dren in New Eng­land are sell­ing can­dy to rebuild the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, we have a large and quite dif­fer­ent project going on here in Louisiana: the “alien deten­tion cen­ter” in Oak­dale. This $17.1 mil­lion facil­i­ty with a pro­ject­ed bud­get of $6-$7 mil­lion per year will be able to imprison 1,000 “aliens” ini­tial­ly, then 2,000.

It has been described by Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice (INS) offi­cials as a longterm hold­ing facil­i­ty and is the first such prison admin­is­tered joint­ly by the unholy alliance of the Bureau of Pris­ons and the INS. A new cen­ter is also being built in Alexan­dria to train 1,000 peo­ple for the bor­der patrol, dou­bling the present capacity.

https://​uni​ver​sal​ist​friends​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​l​i​b​e​r​t​y​-​q​u​i​n​lan

Self-reinforcing Cycles

September 28, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Gregg Koskela, the lead pas­tor of New­berg (Ore.) Friends Church until last year, has a heart-felt piece about learn­ing how to lis­ten to abuse stories:

For us who’ve walked this road (our­selves or with oth­ers), it all fits with the world we now live in, the one where our eyes have been opened and our hearts are filled at times with despair. This is the world where abuse hap­pens, where per­pe­tra­tors so often get away with it, where it’s so hard to risk reveal­ing it, where we see with crys­tal clar­i­ty that if you do dis­close, the ques­tions and doubts and the char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion will overwhelm. 

https://​greg​gkoskela​.org/​2​0​1​8​/​0​9​/​2​7​/​s​e​l​f​-​r​e​i​n​f​o​r​c​i​n​g​-​c​y​c​l​es/

Ben Woods; Liberal Quakerism and the Need for Roots

September 21, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On our rela­tion­ship with Christianity:

In this vein, for ear­ly Friends, ‘being a Chris­t­ian‘, was more than sim­ply assent­ing to the­o­log­i­cal abstracts. To live as a ‘Friend of the Truth’ was to expe­ri­ence direct­ly the claim that God loves the uni­verse per­pet­u­al­ly in Christ. In this respect, ‘Quak­er’ Chris­tian­i­ty is more than a the­o­ry or phi­los­o­phy of things, but a prac­ti­cal rela­tion­ship with a liv­ing per­son. To walk with Jesus of Nazareth meant to live with the same man­tle upon one’s shoul­ders, to teach, to heal, and to restore. 

Reflec­tions on Lib­er­al Quak­erism and the Need for Roots

Friendly Fire: The Making of a Charismatic Quaker

September 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A look at the Vine­yard Move­men­t’s Quak­er roots:

When it comes to Spirit-attentive wor­ship and min­istry, the Vine­yard man­i­fests Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in a way that is faith­ful to the Evan­gel­i­cal tra­di­tion, but tru­ly mys­ti­cal, and of course deeply Quak­er. They live out a Quak­erism many of today’s Amer­i­can Quak­ers, both Lib­er­al and Ortho­dox, would find laugh­able, back­wards. George Fox, on the oth­er hand, may get it.

The Mak­ing of a Charis­mat­ic Quaker

Steven Davison: Prophecy and Continuing Revelation

September 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Where does new min­istry come from?

It is through prophe­cy, through con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion, that the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends moves for­ward into God’s next work for us. And we very often get our first inkling of that new truth from someone’s vocal min­istry, in a meet­ing for wor­ship, or a meet­ing for wor­ship with atten­tion to the life of the meet­ing, or in a con­sul­ta­tion or Tri­en­ni­al or world gath­er­ing or FGC Gathering,

The Impor­tance of Vocal Min­istry: Prophe­cy and Con­tin­u­ing Revelation

Regina Baird Haag on the sharing of vocal ministry

September 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Study turns to some­thing more spon­ta­neous after a failed com­put­er save:

Since that Sun­day wor­ship, I have found myself more inclined and respon­sive to lead­ings to share vocal min­istry out of Silence. While I still pre­pare dili­gent­ly when occa­sions to plan to preach arise, meld­ing schol­ar­ship, dai­ly life, and spir­it over time, I am more sen­si­tive and respon­sive to those inner lead­ings and the Spir­it, from which ALL vocal and non-verbal min­istry are born and enlivened.

http://​www​.nyym​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​m​y​-​e​x​p​e​r​i​e​n​c​e​-​s​h​a​r​i​n​g​-​v​o​c​a​l​-​m​i​n​i​s​try