C Wess Daniels has a good “post following up the Quaker Heritage Day events”:http://gatheringinlight.com/2007/03/08/learning-a-new-language-while-building-a-house-reflections-on-quaker-heritage-day/ last weekend in Berkeley. The featured speaker was Brian Drayton, a New England Friend in the liberal unprogrammed tradition who’s been doing a lot of good work around reclaiming traditionally-minded Quaker ministry (at least that’s how _I’d_ pigeon-hole him from afar, I’ve never actually met him!).
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ christians
It’s witness time
December 2, 2005
Hi QuakerRanter friends: I’ve been busy today covering the Quaker response to the Christian Peacemakers Teams hostages. Two sites with a lot of overlapping content:
- Quaker Blog Watch page focused on the hostages
- “Nonviolence.org statement and list of responses
Both of these feature a mix of mainstream news and Quaker views on the situation. I’ll keep them updated. I’m not the only busy Friend: Chuck Fager and John Stephens have a site called Free the Captives — check it out.
It’s always interesting to see the moments that I explictly identify as a Friend on Nonviolence.org. As I saythere, it seems quite appropriate. We need to explain to the world why a Quaker and three other Christians would needlessly put themselves in such danger. This is witness time, Friends. The real deal. We’re all being tested. This is one of those times for which those endless committee meetings and boilerplate peace statements have prepared us.
It’s time to tell the world that we live in the power that “takes away the occasion for war and overcomes our fear of death” (well, or at least mutes it enough that four brave souls would travel to dangerous lands to witness our faith).
Quaker Emergent Church Planting
May 4, 2004
Over on the Evangelical side of Friends is “Simple Churches”:www.simplechurches.net, a movement of “organic” church planting. It’s a project of Harold and Wendy Behr, recorded by Northwest Yearly Meeting and now working with Evangelical Friends Church Southwest. The core values are ones I could certainly sign off on: Leadership over Location, Ministry over Money, Converts over Christians, Disciples over Decisions, People over Property, Spirit over Self, His Kingdom over Ours. I particularly like their site’s disclaimer:
bq. As your peruse the links from this site please recognize that the Truth reflected in essays are often written with a “prophetic edge”, that is sharp, non compromising and sometimes radical perspective. We believe Truth can be received without “cursing the darkness” and encourage you to reflect upon finding the “candle” to light, personally, as you apply what you hear the Lord speaking to you. In Body life, often the most powerful opponent of the “best” is the “good”.
They’re leading a conference next month in Richmond, Indiana, with members of Friends United Meeting. How tempting is this?
h3. See also:
* “Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal”:/Quaker/emerging_church.php
The Passion of Uncomfortable Orthodoxies: Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”
February 24, 2004
Mel Gibson’s movie _The Passion of Christ_ is a challenge for many modern Quakers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suffering of the early Friends have been dumbed-down to feel-good cliches. Can the debate on this movie help us return to that uncomfortable place where we can acknowledge the complexities of being fervently religious in a world haunted by past sins and still in need of conviction and comfort?