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)
The November Quakers Today podcast dropped this week, asking How do you process memories, experiences and feelings? It includes interviews with Rashid Darden and Vicki Winslow and looks at the Quaker influences of Virginia Woolf.
This webpage will dutchify any location’s Google Street View, slimming lanes and adding greenery and bike paths. Yes, this everywhere please. Via Kottke.
I must admit I’m a sucker for a certain kind of Quaker story in which a Friend faithfully follows mysterious promptings that turn out to be life-changing. It might have been an old Bill Taber book where I read about the Quaker minister who one day shouted to stop the carriage while passing a random house because she knew—knew!— that its inhabitants needed spiritual help (reader, they did!). I guess it’s not unlike the uncanny experience of being about to rise to give ministry when the person next to you stands and gives the same message you were about to deliver—whoa! The hair on the back of my neck always stands up to these stories.
This week I was reading the stories of Paul S. Lippencott, Jr., a recorded minister of my own Cropwell Meeting who lived from 1882 to 1968. I’m trying to understand the character of the meeting, and our outgoing clerk has told stories of being a kid and listening to Paul’s sermons back in the 1960s. Someone had gotten an early tape recorder to collect Paul’s tales and published the somewhat rambling account as Answered Prayers, a book I found at Vintage Quaker Books.
The best story is the lead one. As a young man of around 30, Paul was retired in bed reading religious books when he felt a prompt (queue etherial music). “After a short period of prayer it became very clear to me that I should go out and gear up the horse.” Prompts came to him one after another: drive west down the road a couple of miles to the next town, and then: buy non-perishable groceries at the store that was still open. All this was done in faith: “Until that time I had no idea where I was going to take this food,” he writes. Then a final prompt as he remembered “an old colored lady named Margaret Worthington” who “lived in a cabin by herself” a half-mile away. He had never met her but felt led to visit on that dark night. “I pulled up at the little one room cabin where there was a light through the window, and as I went to the door, I heard her voice praying for help and food. I was there under unusual circumstances to answer the fervent prayers of a believing soul.”
Yowsa!
If you want the whole story of the mysterious food run, it’s on the Cropwell website accompanying a talk on the long and entwined relationships between the meeting and local Black families. “Aunt Margaret” had a special talent for having her prayers answered and Paul’s book has more stories about her.
Paul tells other stories about following mysterious prompts. In one, he feels led to take a longer route back to his office after lunch. It’s the Depression and on this different path he runs into an old acquaintance, now out of work and “in very trying condition.” He’s feeling broken and finally admits to Paul that he’s considering taking his own life. They pray together and hope is restored. As Paul writes “There was some reason for me to make that short detour, even on a morning when I was pressed for time. I am thankful that the Lord helped me to be able and alert to listen to that Still, Small Voice.”
This is of course an echo of the parable of the Good Samaratan. People of high standing walked by the injured traveler but it was the lowly Samaratan who listened and heard the prompt and the prayer, stopped their busy life, and aided the traveler. Jesus told the story to illustrate the query “who is my neighbor.” I’m not sure I have the best ear for these kinds of prayers hanging out there but I’d like to try to listen more.
If you’re in South Jersey or Philly and want to hear more Cropwell stories, you’re invited to visit this Sunday to honor our outgoing clerk, Earl Evens. A few years ago Cropwell was down to two attending members and close to being laid down when a small group led by Earl felt a prompt to try to rebuild the community. Earl’s stories of old Cropwell, the way he’s played host to the rebirthed community, and his gentle opinions on Quaker worship have helped set the spiritual DNA of our expanding group (five new members last year and another applied this week). I’m the incoming clerk and omg, these are quite the shoes to fill.
You want some magic? I’d been curious about this five-minute baguette recipe since it made the social media rounds a few weeks ago and have made it twice in the last week. It really is super quick to mix and the results are heavenly: crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Bakery-quality bread from a normal kitchen oven with four ingredients and almost no work.
RIP Tumblr, more or less. Such a battered-about social network, even Automattic couldn’t bring back the magic. I hadn’t know their plans to federate Tumblr with Mastodon were dropped within 48 hours of the first announcement. Via Kottke.
New York Yearly Meeting’s Spark magazine has an issue on the peace testimony. I need to work my way through but Nadine Hoover’s “Peace is Possible,” Joseph Olejak’s “Peace Witness Fatigue,” and Don Badgley’s “Peace Be with You” look good. Let me know in the comments if you recommend others.
Fiction month continues at Friends Journal, and this week we have two gems: Michael Soika gives a harrowing tale of the life of a Eastern European coal-mining family in West Virginia on the brink of ruin (the AFSC cameo is legit). A modern Friend appears in Vicki Winslow’s tender story of a Quaker minister working through grief and getting an unexpected lesson in open doors and ready food.
Also, do you have something to say about Quaker prayer and healing? Submissions are open for the March Friends Journal (due Dec. 18). Please forward this link to anyone who might be interested.
The third annual fiction issue is available on the magazine’s website. From my introduction:
I remember a friend once telling me if you do something once, it’s a weird thing you do. Do it again, it’s a trend. Do it three times and it’s a tradition everyone expects you to repeat till the end of time. This is Friends Journal’s third November fiction issue in a row. I guess this is a thing we do now.
It’s not immediately obvious that we should be in this game. Quakers have had testimonies against reading made-up stories. They’re a waste of time. We’re “Friends of the Truth” after all, a concept taken quite literally and sometimes to extremes by early Quakers. Colonial Pennsylvania Quakers half-heartedly conducted a witch trial (popular legend has it that after a defendant admitted to flying on broomsticks, William Penn dismissed the case with the argument that he knew “no law whatever against it.”). A century later, abolitionist traveling minister John Woolman tried to shut down a magic show in his home town of Mount Holly, N.J., for encouraging superstitions.
But sometimes fiction reveals deeper truths that simple reporting can’t touch. Good storytelling can produce powerful parables, simple stories that stay with us and guide us. And with a touch of magic, it can hint at the mysteries of worship.
From The Truth of Untruth, my introduction to the November 2023 issue.
The first featured short story is Annalee Flower Horne’s Refuse All Their Colors, an alternative history of 1777 Valley Forge in which the Friends living in the area have a little extra skillset. Once you’ve read it you can watch my interview with Annalee, which I found particularly fascinating. Annalee has made a deep dive into the historical record of the Friends community in Valley Forge and is quite confident that the only made-up part of the story is the fantasy elements and the immediate dialogue.
Craig Barnett breaking down the supposed dichotomy between activist and mystical Friends: “There is no standard template for a ‘good Quaker’ or a moral or spiritual person. Each of us has to discover our own gifts and our own contribution to the world’s needs, according to the inward guidance that is available to us.”
Jesus and individualism is the topic of latest sermon from Micah Bales. “But the good news is not that we are all free to be individuals… The gospel is that we are drawn into an organic community of disciples, of children of God.”
Johan Maurer weighs the cost of travel. In-person gatherings can be life changing but can we find alternatives that don’t create so much carbon?
In Friends Journal, staff writer Sharlee DiMenichi reports on Quaker reactions to the Israel Defense Forces – Hamas War. A viewpoint opinion by Steve Chase calls for a ceasefire and outlines work by Jewish and Quaker peace groups.
In a recent Reddit thread, an ex-Catholic interested in Friends asked whether the QuakerSpeak video “9 Core Quaker Beliefs” was representative of Friends. Longtime Philadelphia Friends might recognize that title as part of Arthur Larrabee’s longtime work to compile some agreed-upon list of Quaker beliefs that we can use in outreach and messaging.
But to someone without context, he’s just some schmoe on YouTube.
Quakerism is well-known for being creedless. It’s easy to argue that it’s anything you want it to be. Plenty of people are drawn more to our community than to the historic beliefs of Friends. At one point, not that long ago even, one could point to Robert Barclay’s Apology as a theological statement accepted by most Friends. No longer. Unprogrammed Friends have largely given up even on the elders who once tried to maintain orthodoxy (sometimes overly so and often to ill effect). Nowadays “What do Quakers Believe?” easily morphs into “What Do I Believe?”
In the Liberal U.S. Quaker world it used to be that you could legitimize some hitherto outsider belief by starting a website, presenting it as a workshop at a few successive FGC Gatherings, and getting an article published in Friends Journal. Nowadays a popular YouTuber like Jessica Kellgren-Fozard will get much more reach than any institutional outlet: her 2018 video Oh God… Let’s Talk About My Religion has gotten 530k views and 3,885 comments. Is she the most learned representative of Quakerism? A recorded minister in her yearly meeting? Did she vet her views with her meeting before posting the video, as Friends used to have to vet books pre-publication? No, no, and no, but she’s done a lot to get us out there in front of seekers and is, de facto, a recognized authority on Friends to hundreds of thousands of people.
Art Larrabee, of the QuakerSpeak video (currently at 241k views for those keeping score), is an interesting counterpoint. He’s held a variety of leadership positions among Philadelphia Friends and has been a sought-after workshop leader. Art started his list of core beliefs while he was the chief executive of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In this role, he was often called on to be a spokesperson for Liberal Friends. He has written about the background of this list:
Several years ago, way opened for me to share with PYM’s Advisory Committee a life-long frustration that I could not articulate the core beliefs of our faith community with any confidence that what I might say would be shared by others. At the time, I was feeling let down by my faith community and that our failure to name collectively held, core beliefs contributed to a loss of energy among us. I also felt that the absence of a statement of core beliefs inhibited our ability to easily and effectively communicate to others about our Quaker faith. In my professional life before becoming General Secretary, I sometimes found myself wanting to invite friends in law and business to come to meeting for worship but I could never quite figure out what I could say with any confidence when asked, “What do Quakers believe?” What was I inviting them to? Yes, I could try to say what I believed, but I could not tell them what we believed as a community. I wanted something I could hand to those I thought might be interested and say, “This is what’s at the core of our faith. There is more to Quakerism than this, but this is a place to begin.”
Advisory Committee invited me to try my hand at drafting such a statement and on several occasions they have seen prior versions of what I am presenting today. I have shared earlier versions of this work with two quarterly meetings, three or four monthly meetings, the residents of a retirement community and Interim Meeting. With each presentation, suggestions have been made which have found their way into the document.
The results in a very thoughtful, threshed-out list. It might be the most careful distillation since Howard Brinton dashed out Friends for 300 Years in 1952. And yet: as far as I know, the nine beliefs list was never formally adopted by any Quaker body. Years later, it’s still only a list of what Art Larrabee believes other Friends believe. His authority is the respect he has, which is really not all that different than the source of authority for a popular YouTuber. In some future revision of Faith and Practice both Larrabee and Kellgren-Fozard is sure to be quoted in the extracts section. But even there, their words will be presented as interesting viewpoints, not canonical statements.
It’s a hell of a way to run a religion, perhaps, but it’s a fascinating culture we’ve developed to compensate for our rejection of creeds.
My friend Chris Stern has an article on the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting site about accompanying a younger Friend traveling in ministry: “I had been called to travel in the ministry among Friends as a young man (around Matt’s age) and didn’t know what this meant or how to proceed. Some older friends had encouraged me and traveled with me to help me find my way. Now I could do this for Matt.”
On Friends Journal, If Quakers Were (Also) Witches by Sara Jolena Wolcott, who was also on this month’s Quakers Today podcast) and a series of stories from Mary Linda McKinney on spiritual travels after she felt led to slow down her Quaker activities to “expand my awareness of the Divine.”
My interview with UK Friend Rhiannon Grant for Friends Journal’s October issue on “Ecumenical and Interfaith Friends.” She’s written for us many times before, but for this issue we have Confidence in Complexity: Holding Firm to Multiple Religious Connections. Rhiannon is very much a hyphenated Friend, drawing spiritual insights from her participation in Druid and Buddhist communities. Even those of us who hew closer to traditional Friends’ practice have many other identities and influences — place, family backgrounds, personal friendships and yes, even politics and lifestyle help shape who we are.
I really like the lessons Rhiannon draws about contextualizing our influences and navigating through their contradictions using a very Quakerly process of discernment.