A few weeks ago I got a bulk email from a prominent sixty-something Friend, who wrote that a programmed New Age practice popular in our branch of Quakerism over the last few years has been a “crucial spiritual experience for a great many of the best of our young adult Friends to whom [Liberal Friends] must look for its future” and that they represented the “rising generation of dedicated young adult Friends.” Really? I thought I’d share a sampling of emails and posts I’ve gotten over just the last couple of days.
Amanda, a twenty year old New York City Friend with a powerful gift of ministry, wrote about “how teens are forming their own worship groups and young adults are starting a mid-week worship at Fifteenth Street Meeting”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000418.php#c4638
bq. We are going to organize a young friend’s meeting for Weds nights, with older seasoned friends attending and being open for questions afterwards… A visiting friend from another meeting said that they had just discovered that that the teenagers in her meeting were not attending the First Day meeting but were quietly arranging and holding their own meetings — and she was shocked at how “hardcore” and faithful they were. “I think we are too ‘tame’ for them.” she said. Another young friend, also in his early twenties, who was in attendence and myself acknowledged that we too have a desire for something deeper, and for the traditions and fire of the first Friends. Amanda wrote “Buying my Personality in a Store”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000438.php
James Chang, a convinced Friend who attends college in Philadelphia, found the Quaker Ranter site and wrote about it on a young adult discussion board, saying:
bq. we have degenerated into a timid company of refined people who are too nice to tell the world that it is covered by a sea of darkness (as opposed to those valiant men and women who would strip themselves and walk naked in markets, telling the astonished crowds how they must repent and turn to their Inward Teacher.) Anyhow, I have to confess that I became a Friend because George Fox has truly spoken to my conditions in his Journal… Are we turning our backs at these just and good people? Are we going to become dry trees like the “professors” and priests in white surplice and black cassock next door to my Meeting and wither away? James has a great blog called “Just Curious”:http://curiouspenn.blogspot.com/
A thirty-something seeker in New York State sent me a private email:
bq. I want to thank you for your articles on the BLOG Quaker Ranter. I am an Ordained Deacon in the Episcopal (Anglican) church. Before my ordination, part of my spiritual journey included attendance at a number of Friends meetings. I still consider myself a “Closet Friend” and have struggled with a formal return to Quakerism. Part of my reluctance to return to the fold was the pervasive PC, liberalism of most Friends meeting… After reading some of the articles on your BLOG, I now have hope.
And finally, two comments left on the site from the developer of the programmed ritual that I was told represents the future of Quakerism. He apparently discovered Google this week and “called me a racist with small ideas”:/martink/archives/000396.php#c4649. I respect him for having put together one of the few youth ministries programs in liberal Quakerism, though I don’t think we need to abandon unprogrammed worship to keep the kids’ attention or that his workshop is an appropriate form of Quaker religious education.
Who exactly is the rising generation? Why are all the younger Friends I hear from really excited by ideas of Quaker renewal but so many older Friends making excuses why the kids need a carnival show to pay attention? Why are we so shocked that twenty-something Friends are “hardcore and faithful” and interested in getting deep with their Quakerism? I get new emails from excited, committed new twenty Friends every week – newly convinced Friends who I can tell you are a core part of the real rising generation and our real hope for the future. So why are they so invisible?
Sometimes the daughters and sons of Quakers want spiritual experiences that Quakerism can’t offer them. That’s okay. We can give them a kiss on the cheek, wish them well and keep the front door unlocked for them to come back and visit. But why can’t we see that the many of the “best of our young adult Friends” are strangers come to our front door because of the powerful Light pouring out through the windows of our faith. These seekers are ascending the front stoop because of who we are and what we believe and how we practice our love for one another. They come to us wanting to learn our ways. The spiritual experience they seek is the power of the living Spirit, that same Spirit that taught Fox, Fell, Barclay, Fry, Penn, Mott, Jones, Kelly, Brinton and thousands of Friends, Christians and humans throughout time.
The age of the apostles is now. Christ has risen and speaks to our hearts. It is up to us to be fishers of souls, open to the new brothers and sisters of the Spirit. We can speak the experience of 350 years of Quaker testimony, a future that is built from the rock of the past. The Great People are still waiting to be gathered. Will we turn them away because we can only see the yawns of our sons and daughters? And wouldn’t some of those same sons and daughters be brought back into the fold in if they heard about and experienced the power we’ve known?
I think one of the first steps to healing our Quaker practice and moving on to something more powerful and fulfilling and true is to try not to make this just another “us vs. them” situation. The older generations have that of God in them as powerfully as the most firey and hardcore young Friends — I think it’s our responsibility to appeal to that.
I know they are as hungry as we are — I see the worry and strain on the faces of the several dozen over-fifties in our meeting when they discuss the fractiousness and smallness and tale-bearing that they see growing, and the weird New York Times or Chicken Soup for the Soul ministry we receive over and over which seems to have nothing to do with the Light.
Even if they go on eldering a more prophetic or (gasp) Christian ministry in meeting, and even if they do it in a crusty way, are we going to let that stifle us? I think it does both “us” and “them” a terrible disservice. If an “over 50” approaches us in a less that Friendly manner, the burden is on us to lovingly and joyfully respond with the Truth that we’ve seen. It may be my youthful idealisim, but it seems to me that the old Friends might find themselves relieved and refreshed, (once they’re finished being startled and annoyed,) to find fresh, loving young shoulders waiting to receive the responsibility of the lives of their Meetings.
Hi Amanda,
I don’t think that Martin was making this out as an “us-them” thing. I spent about eleven years among liberal Quakers in various parts of the country (predominantly in South Jersey) and can attest to the fact that there ARE some SERIOUS generational problems that are alive and well. It is my opinion that just because someone points out ageist bigotry, this does not mean that they WANT to draw a line in the sand. I think often it means the line has already been drawn. Again, this is my experience and my opinion – you may have your own. It is also my opinion that as younger people (I’m 28) we have so often been told by older generations – particularly the Boomers – that we should make nice and stop being “divisive”. In my case, whether I was angry or not, I was not infrequently perceived as such, and among liberal Friends anger is practically synonymous with violence. (Julie rolls her eyes.) My sense of things is that often the various “make nice” directives to younger, less powerful Friends come packaged in passive-aggressive ways and we must carefully unwrap these “packages” in order to find out what’s really going on. Usually there’s a tremendous fear of conflict (read: don’t rock the boat – our “community” is too delicate and cannot withstand too much questioning), among other things. So, in the light of my own experience of condescending comments, I will not say to you, “You just wait – you’ll see what I mean when you’re a little older.” (Snicker snicker.) Yuck. But I will thank you for your advice to be patient and loving, and advise you to be careful whose “eldering” you choose to take to heart.
Hi Amanda, thanks for the advice, you’re right of course that it shouldn’t be us vs. them. I do worry that I’ve been disappointed so many times that I’ll grow too cynical to see when the situation might have changed. I’ve met plenty of Friends who are busy raising the rallying call of decades-old debates, so busy fighting old wars that they’ve failed to notice the issue has been more or less resolved.
But I also sometimes feel like Charlie Brown. You know how Lucy always holds the football for him to kick and then always pulls it away at the last moment? Good old Chuck knows it will happen again but he lets himself be conjoled into trusting one more time. And one more time he goes flying through the air to crash on his back.
I spend quite a bit of energy trying to convince institutional Quakers that people like you exist. Even presented with physical evidence many Quaker leaders continue to softpedal Quakerism and sell youth ministry short. I’ll be glad when I see an authentic sharing of responsibility across generational lines. Maybe things are starting to shift. But I haven’t seen substantial changes yet. And I can’t stop worrying when we’ll next go hurtling through the air.
Hi guys -
I didn’t mean that I thought Martin was making an us-them statement at all. I’m sorry if I came across that way! I meant to re-affirm a truth that I know all three of us have at heart,becuase I know how quickly devisiveness can spring up, and I know from personal experience how easily I can allow my (justified!) frustrations about “the other generation” cloud an important issue. The very fact that older friends can be so touchy and so quick to sniff out the least bit of resentment and dismiss it as anger and divisiveness leads me to believe that we need to be very strict in examining ourselves for pride and about responding with what may seem like an absurd amount of understanding, tolerance and compassion.
I see that older Quakers have a terrible fear of conflict- what makes them so afraid? I feel as if the some of the answers to these problem might lie in discovering the roots of those fears and finding way to lay them to rest. The other answers lie in being fearless in our challenges of convention. If they’ve already drawn the line in the sand, then we need to keep rubbing it out.
I know that I haven’t even begun the struggle — and that you two, and others, have been butting your head against the walls for years. I feel profoundly driven to take advantage of the fact that I’m not discouraged — yet — mostly because I know it is bound to happen eventually.
I know the changes may be slow and hard won — and I want to thank you both for all that I know you’ve done for the cause of a true and vital Quaker faith.
If I tend to speechify a bit, it is more directed at these teens and early-twenty somethings that I hear everyone mourning, and not at people like Martin at all. If we really so unsatisfied, then we need to take some responsibility to change it and not just grumble. Martin has done this — soldiering on, writing his websites, teaching, inspiring who-knows how many people like myself to at least begin to THINK about these issues. Julie has begun that yahoo group for people of faith looking to rediscover some of the joys of simplicity and plainness and who-knows what other services in the name of faith. The question is, what am I going to do? What are the rest of us going to do?
I’m not sure yet, but I know it’s got to be done with love and tenderness, along with stubborness and fire. In my brief experience, it seems that Quakers have the potential to unite these two opposites in a truly remarkable way.
And Martin — Thee is a good man, Charlie Brown.
Something that really jumped out at me (and not in a pleasant way) in the piece you quoted, Martin, was the notion that “a great many” of our future leaders are to be found among the small slice of young Quakers who are able to travel regularly to FGC gatherings and who choose to attend sweat lodges while there. There’s a provinciality about those assumptions that pinches me. I’d like to think that poor or geographically distant or otherwise occupied young people who may already be weighty Friends might have a chance of rising to service in our Society without that particular experience. I’d like to think that we don’t yet know who will be raised up to lead us, and that the Spirit may descend unexpectedly on someone(s) who will amaze us all…
Melynda
Hi Melynda: East Coast Quakers provincial? Huh. Surely you jest?!?
(Yes, that’s an ironic “huh,” Friends.)
That small slice of visibility is often even smaller than the geography would indicate. Most younger Friends who I see lifted up for leadership are the children of involved Friends. On one governing committee I know of, just about all the under-35 representatives have a parent on the board. This cultural nepotism isn’t limited to just one or two organizations and it’s not just an old Quaker family kind of thing. Picking someone’s kid is easy, they come with premade credentials. It’s tied up with our contemporary unease at even naming ministries. I’ve talked about a lot of this over at my “Emergent Church”:/quaker/emerging_church.php piece, where I look at what we need to work on to be really to welcome the great people still to be gathered.
I’m an “older Quaker” who has no fear of conflict.
While there are many roads to God, remember that George Fox read the Bible, not the Gita; and that it isn’t George Fox who “speaks to your condition,” it is God who does that.
So you may enjoy your sweat lodges and eastern mysticism and the joyful hubris of youth that will lead us all to a rebirth and yadda yadda yadda, and I will not be the one to call down another Friend’s concern be it too “liberal” or too “conservative” — that would be improper…
But what I have witnessed is that people amongst the Friends who move out of the Christian gestalt don’t last. We would love to have them last, but they burn out because they don’t share the same foundings that Quakerism is based on.
To say that you are looking for “that of God in everyone,” it helps to actually believe in God.
And I have no fear of stating it. Consider this minority voice merely “speaking truth to power” then. Smiles to you.
Rock on, RW.
I’m glad to have found this article, as well as the comment-stream. I grew up in Vermont, attending Meeting until about age nine, and now I’m living in Portland, Oregon, and attending with the mystics and the hippies (grinning). Here’s a twenty-six – year – old who is getting involved in the life of the Meeting and feeling welcome in the process. It helps, perhaps, that I understand that there is no authority but God to tell me not to.
I think that a key part of any “lack of ministry” in any group is the fundamental human timidity on the subject of which Nelson Mandela quoted Marianne Williamson (“Our Deepest Fear”). But I’m not going to talk about the non-existence of something that seems to me to exist.
Here in Portland, those of us who are between the ages of 18 and 35, those of us who still feel young — and the significant others of that whole group — have been getting together during social hour each week, having monthly potlucks, and talking about how we might be of service to the Meeting. There has been particular interest in serving the next batch of up-and-coming Friends, those in their teenage years, as they discover adulthood. Maybe this is us becoming the elders.
It is heartening to know that we are not alone in doing so, and that there are Friends like you out there growing elder with me. I’m be curious to hear more about what, in particular, other young(ish) Friends are doing to age themselves well.