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 fishy story:
This isn’t your ordinary fish story, though it is incredible. Nevertheless, there’s a lesson about reality being taught here, a lesson to be confirmed by experience alone. For the experience goes well beyond that which we have learned is possible in nature, just like the story itself.
http://www.quakerquaker.org/xn/detail/2360685:BlogPost:161406
From the new clerk of New York Yearly Meeting:
If all the world interacted on the basis of consensus, the world would be a far better place. But if all the world functioned on the basis of sense of the meeting, as Friends do, the world would be a very different place altogether. Everyone would have full responsibility to find the best way forward for everyone.
http://www.nyym.org/content/what-is-clerking-consciousness
Steven Davison urges us to rethink annover-reliance on committees:
This dynamic tends to quench the spirit behind new leadings. All of our testimonies, and continuing revelation in general, start out as new — that is, prophetic; that is, Spirit-led — concerns and leadings. They deserve Spirit-led attention and eldership, not a bucket of cold water.
http://www.nyym.org/content/spirit-led-structures-quaker-meetings
These are numbers of Friends in Canada and the United States (including Alaska, which was tallied separately prior to statehood) compiled from Friends World Committee for Consultation. I dug up these numbers from three sources:
Friends in the U.S. and Canada:
Friends in Americas (North, Middle South):
You could write a book about what these numbers do and don’t mean. The most glaring omission is that they don’t show the geographic or theological shifts that took place over time. Midwestern Friends have taken a disproportionate hit, for example, and many Philadelphia-area meetings are much smaller than they were a century ago, while independent meetings in the West and/or adjacent to colleges grew like wildflowers mid-century.
My hot take on this is that the reunification work of the early 20th century gave Quakers a solid identity and coherent structure. Howard Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years from 1952 is a remarkably confident document. In many areas, Friends became a socially-progressive, participatory religious movement that was attractive to people tired of more creedal formulations; mixed-religious parents came looking for First-day school community for their children. Quakers’ social justice work was very visible and attracted a number of new people during the antiwar 1960s1 and the alternative community groundswell of the 1970s. These various newcomers offset the decline of what we might call “ethnic” Friends in rural meetings through this period.
That magic balance of Quaker culture matching the zeitgeist of religious seekers disappeared somewhere back in the 1980s. We aren’t on forefront of any current spiritual trends. While there are bright spots and exceptions 2, we’ve largely struggled with retaining newcomers in recent years. We’re losing our elders more quickly than we’re bringing in new people, hence the forty percent drop since the high water of 1987. The small 2017 uptick might be a good sign3 or it may be a statistical phantom.4 I’ll be curious to see what the next census brings.
2023 Update: I seem to have mixed up some numbers in my original 2018 post and have corrected them above.
From QuakerSpeak and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a look at what attracts newcomers to Friends:
I very much like for example the determination that says somebody believes in peace and has the guts to say in a time of war, “No, I can’t fight. I can’t do that.” I think that takes a lot.
I think it had a lot to do with the people. There wasn’t really that hierarchy, where there was someone talking down to us, but we could really share ideas and we could all learn from each other, and I really appreciated those ideals.
http://quakerspeak.com/what-attracts-newcomers-to-quaker-meeting/
Here’s a piece we’ve published in the current Friends Journal, written by a seventh-grader from the Friends School in Newtown, Pa. We regularly publish middle- and high-schoolers in our annual Student Voices Project but this is a general feature we published because it’s interesting and fresh and intriguing. Here’s what I wrote about it in my opening column in the magazine:
In Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident, Newtown Friends School seventh-grader Ankita Achanta shows how the Quaker values she’s been taught in classes could have defused a nationally publicized racial incident in a Philadelphia Starbucks. It’s sometimes easy to be skeptical of the Quaker identity of Friends schools, but Achanta reflects back the powerful impact of our collective witness in these institutions.
In Ankita Achanta’s reckoning, Quaker values like integrity are basic universal values of decency. By claiming them, Friends could (and often do) easily fall into the trap of Quaker exceptionalism, but in Achanta’s piece, I see them as something we put special emphasis into. Early Friends didn’t expect to found a denomination; Fox went across the land assuming everyone could be a Friend of the Truth, of Christ, of the Light. The leading influence of the Inward Light is available to all and we can expect to see inspiring incidents of it in action everywhere — even in viral Twitter videos.
Achanta also gave a new-to-me neologism:
As a seventh-grade student attending a Friends school, I have been taught Quaker values. Although I am a Hindu and not formally a Quaker, Quaker values are well aligned with my own religious principles. I am committed to living by them and consider myself a “Quindu.”
Famously overlooked for a Nobel, the Quaker scientist has won an award that she will put toward diversifying future researchers:
She’s being given the award for her “fundamental contributions to the discovery of pulsars, and a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community,” according to a statement from the prize board. Bell Burnell told the BBC she plans to give all of her prize money to women, ethnic minorities and refugee students aiming to become physics researchers.
You can read more about Bell Burnell on her Quakers in the World page.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/09/07/jocelyn-bell-burnells-1967-nobel-pulsars-breakthrough-prize-science/1220936002/
Tip of the hat to Doug Bennett for the suggestion and links.
A new video from Quaker historian Gwyn:
Connecting with nature is about more than just exercise or tranquility. As Quaker author Doug Gwyn shares, even in the 17th century, Quakers were concerned about our disconnection with the natural world and what it would mean for the future.
http://quakerspeak.com/what-does-quakerism-teach-about-connecting-to-nature/
Friends Journal