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)
From JP Lund:
The Wilmington Yearly Meeting that emerges will be smaller. It will still be diverse, including a range of views on same gender marriage and Biblical authority. It will consist of meetings that have chosen Christian fellowship over dogma, the Gospel of Love over the letter of the law.
From Inside Higher Ed:
Worries mount that the college has strayed too far from its liberal arts core. Suspicions run high that college leaders reached recent important decisions without regard for one of the key governance principles rooted in its Quaker identity: consensus.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/01/earlham-college-seeks-roll-back-expense-budget-decade-after-presidents-resignation#.W2Ixczv6vJc.facebook
If we are converging on history and practice, we are missing the point. If we are depending on institutions to create a new society or usher in the Kingdom, then we are deceived. These will not bring the radically egalitarian and Spirit-filled communities that God fostered among early Friends.
Not a surprise: Wilmington Yearly Meeting (western Ohio and Tennessee) is splintering along familiar lines:
The separations stem from a disagreement over whether same-sex weddings are to be permitted in member churches, or as they are often called in the Quaker tradition, meetings. The churches leaving WYM regard same-sex marriage as against the will of God.
It looks like many of the more Evangelical churches are the ones pulling out of the yearly meeting. The lines of controversy are similar to recent separations in Indiana and North Carolina Yearly Meetings. The big-tent center of Midwestern FUM Friends seems to be pretty permanently fractured.
https://www.wnewsj.com/news/78939/several-churches-leave-wilmington-yearly-meeting-over-same-sex-marriage
Mackenzie Morgan reminds us that some kinds of hospitality begin in our church bathrooms:
Now imagine a parent with a screaming baby suddenly realizing they forgot the diaper bag at home. Imagine it’s their first time at your meeting. Many people are self-conscious about their baby crying, especially with unprogrammed worship.
Steven Davison looks at a proposal to record members at the yearly meeting level:
without meaningful pastoral care, regular worship, spiritual nurture, and a fellowship that goes deeper than just three annual meetings could provide, what does “membership” mean? All that’s left is Quaker identity and a sense of belonging to the unique spiritual community that is New York Yearly Meeting. To me, that’s a half-baked Quaker life.
High Profiles magazine has published a nice interview with Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker academic, author, and activist. It’s not all about his Quakerism but then it’s nice to see someone using it as a just a piece of their identity. I love seeing our roots laid out in the same sentence as a critique of the Murdoch press, etc.
The North is the part of England to which the radicals retreated under Norman violence, and I suspect that’s part of why the more radical side of England comes out there. Quakerism developed mainly in the north and west of England and I suspect that nonconformity comes out of that radical spirit – which needs to be rekindled, not in ways manipulated by the Murdoch press or the Conservative Party or Ukip but much more in the way that William Blake understood, of connecting with the spirit of the land.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that we ran a nice piece by McIntosh in the February issue of Friends Journal. He talked about Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk with Quaker roots. Again, our spirituality in context.
A cynic might file this under “hope springs eternal”:
A phrase that keeps coming to mind is “a new Quakerism,” and oddly enough, I’ve been hearing other Friends unknowingly echo this phrase back to me. It seems to me that many Friends, even those who consider themselves “convinced,” are hungry for more than what the Society has to offer.
Of course it’s part of our tradition that it needs to be forever reborn. You can’t recycle sermons or use the prop of your university learning as a crutch. We are never to know what might happen when worship starts, since the idea is that it’s directly led in the moment by Christ. It’s also a part of our tradition that forms are forever calcifying and that we need to remember why we’re here and who’s brought us together. Glad to see the work continue.