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)

Civility Can Be Dangerous

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the AFSC’s Lucy Dun­can, a look back at Hen­ry Cad­bury’s now-infamous 1934 speech to Amer­i­can rab­bis and a look at the civil­i­ty debate in mod­ern America.

Stand­ing up for peace means stand­ing on the side of the oppressed, not throw­ing them into the lion’s mouth in the name of civil­i­ty. And inter­rupt­ing racist vio­lence takes more than civ­il dis­course: active dis­rup­tion is need­ed in order for racism to be revealed and dis­man­tled. What good is inef­fec­tive paci­fism? My com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence is about sav­ing lives.

I gave my take on Cad­bury’s speech back in June. I was a lit­tle eas­i­er on Cad­bury, most­ly because I think we need to under­stand the Quak­er world­view out of which he was speak­ing. It’s nev­er good to lec­ture the oppressed on their oppres­sion, but the clas­sic Quak­er idea of speak­ing truth to all sides still holds val­ue and is some­thing I think we miss some­times nowadays.


Civility Can Be Dangerous

Civil­i­ty Can Be Dangerous 

In 1934, AFSC co-founder Hen­ry Cad­bury advised Jew­ish rab­bis to be gen­tler on Hitler. Is civil­i­ty a substitute…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

What gifts of the Spirit are we marginalizing?

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Pow­er­ful warn­ings from Adria Gulizia about what hap­pens when a faith com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t exer­cise all of its gifts :

Even worse, when we rou­tine­ly mar­gin­al­ize cer­tain gifts, we begin to see their exer­cise as dys­func­tion­al and their absence as nor­ma­tive, rather than the reverse. When the prophet chal­lenges us with uncom­fort­able truths, rather than using our dis­com­fort as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for reflec­tion and dis­cern­ment, we tell her to tone it down, com­plain that she is “unwel­com­ing” and, if she doesn’t get the mes­sage, we run her off.


Welcoming the Gifts God Sends Us

Wel­com­ing the Gifts God Sends Us 

In order to remain healthy and faith­ful, we must nur­ture all spir­i­tu­al gifts, not just the ones that…

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

Is this what people want?

August 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Don McCormick is back with this week’s Friends Jour­nal fea­ture. His Feb­ru­ary arti­cle, “Can Quak­erism Sur­vive,” sparked all sorts of con­ver­sa­tions and is now at 110 com­ments. Now he’s back with spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tions for Quak­er growth, inspired by megachurch church growth research and models.

When I read this, I asked myself if we Quak­ers are pro­vid­ing the equiv­a­lent of this type of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance. Do new­com­ers and oth­ers see us as meet­ing their spir­i­tu­al needs? If they do, do they see this right away, or does it take a while? To answer these ques­tions, I had to learn more about the “clear path­way” that the Reveal lit­er­a­ture described. Although Quak­erism has great wis­dom in the area of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance, at first it seemed that it was incon­sis­tent with the spir­i­tu­al guid­ance described in the survey.

When I’ve taught Quak­erism 101 class­es, I’ve try to explain the branch­es of Friends — and the schisms — not just as the­o­log­i­cal or cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non but as problem-solving pref­er­ences. What tools do we reach for in cri­sis? Do we go inward and recom­mit our­selves to dis­tinc­tive prac­tices that we’ve been slack­ing off on? Do we start read­ing groups and spir­i­tu­al friend­ship pro­grams to train each mem­ber to car­ry the work? Do we blame our Quak­er odd­i­ties and start using the lan­guage and litur­gi­cal mod­els of the more suc­cess­ful church­es near us? Do we set up com­mit­tees and pro­duce cur­ric­u­la to sup­port local efforts? Do we look to experts and craft nation­wide pro­grams and hire staff and prob­lem solve? I’m not sure these tools need to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, but in prac­tice I see most Quak­er bod­ies tend to reach for only one or two of these tools. And of course, the tools we chose large­ly deter­mine both the prob­lems we solve and the unin­tend­ed ones we create.


What People Really Want from Church and Quaker Meeting

What Peo­ple Real­ly Want from Church and Quak­er Meeting 

Look­ing at suc­cess­ful church growth mod­els for ideas to grow our fellowship.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

Friends Journal seeking articles on Quakers and Christianity

August 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Decem­ber theme of Friends Jour­nal will look at the juicy top­ic of Friends’ rela­tion­ship with Chris­tian­i­ty. I wrote up an “Edi­tor’s Desk” post about the kinds of arti­cles we might expect. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s a series of ques­tions that has dogged Friends since we did away with cler­gy and start­ed call­ing bap­tism a “sprin­kling,” and it has been an issue of con­tention in every Quak­er schism: Are we Chris­t­ian? Are we real­ly Chris­t­ian? Does it mat­ter if we’re Chris­t­ian? What does it even mean to be Chris­t­ian in the world?

One rea­son we began pub­lish­ing more themed issues begin­ning in 2012 was so we use the top­ics to invite fresh voic­es to write for us. While we’ve long had reg­u­lars who will send us a few arti­cles a year on mis­cel­la­neous top­ics, themes allow us to tempt peo­ple with spe­cif­ic inter­ests and min­istries: rec­on­cil­i­a­tion from war, cli­mate activism, work­place reform, men­tor­ship, ecu­meni­cal rela­tion­ships, the wider fam­i­ly of Friends, etc.

More recent­ly I’ve start­ed these “Edi­tor’s Desk” posts as a way of shar­ing some of the ideas we have around par­tic­u­lar upcom­ing issues. The post also gives us a URL that we can share on social media to drum up sub­mis­sions. I also hope that oth­ers will share the URL via email.

The absolute best way of reach­ing new peo­ple is when some­one we know shares an upcom­ing theme with some­one we don’t know. There are many peo­ple who by chance or incli­na­tion seem to strad­dle Quak­er worlds. They are invalu­able in ampli­fy­ing our calls for sub­mis­sions. Ques­tion: would it help if we start­ed an email list just for writ­ers or for peo­ple who want to be remind­ed of upcom­ing themes so they can share them with Friends?


Writing Opp: Quakers and Christianity

Writ­ing Opp: Quak­ers and Christianity 

It’s a series of ques­tions that has dogged Friends since we did away with cler­gy and start­ed calling…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Apologies…

August 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sor­ry for the strange dou­ble post­ings late­ly, espe­cial­ly of some old­er links. The semi automa­tion that lets me eas­i­ly share arti­cles has start­ed behav­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly glitchy. I’ve adjust­ed some set­tings so that I will check posts man­u­al­ly before they actu­al­ly go up.

Generational strategies for Quaker outreach

August 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Emi­ly Provance:

An under-45 com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, in con­trast, would most­ly involve social media (Face­book, Insta­gram, Twit­ter, pos­si­bly Tum­blr or Pin­ter­est). Arti­cles would be short and would con­tain most­ly con­tent direct­ly rel­e­vant to the read­er — or, if the con­tent were not direct­ly rel­e­vant, it would be single-story nar­ra­tives with an empha­sis on per­son­al impact. Announce­ments would come out through mes­sen­ger apps or text mes­sages, with a strong ele­ment of user con­trol about which announce­ments to receive and which not. Pho­tos and videos would be used frequently.

I’m always a bit wary of gen­er­a­tional deter­min­ism. I think gen­er­a­tional ideas are more like under­ly­ing trends that get more or less trac­tion over time. And Quak­er dig­i­tal out­reach in par­tic­u­lar has been a thing for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry now. But the under­ly­ing mes­sage — that some peo­ple need to be reached dig­i­tal­ly while oth­ers are still best served by print — is a sound one and I’m glad Emi­ly’s bring­ing it up.

But it’s still kind of sad that we still need to make this kind of argu­ment. I remem­ber hav­ing these dis­cus­sions around an FGC out­reach com­mit­tee table fif­teen years ago: sure­ly we’re all on board about the need for dig­i­tal out­reach in 2018?

The 45-Yard Line