Should We (How Should We) Grow the Religious Society of Friends?

September 6, 2024

From Johan Mau­r­er, a look at how we should think about growth and out­reach. One part that stood out to me:

There is noth­ing about this oblig­a­tion that requires me to exag­ger­ate Quak­ers’ virtues, or to con­ceal our defects. I cer­tain­ly don’t need to claim that no oth­er faith com­mu­ni­ties are equal­ly trust­wor­thy or equal­ly capa­ble of heal­ing and giv­ing hope.

In my expe­ri­ence, a lot of incom­ing seek­ers real­ly like it when we fess up to our past indis­cre­tions and cur­rent strug­gles. Per­haps they’ve come from some church that was over­ly con­fi­dent and unable to exam­ine its flaws and so like our trans­paren­cy. Nowa­days the influ­encer class all talk about “emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty” and I think part of that is appre­ci­at­ing our­selves for who we real­ly are in a healthy way.

Maybe because I’m think­ing about the upcom­ing Friends Jour­nal issue of “Spir­i­tu­al Opti­mism vs. Spir­i­tu­al Pes­simism” (there’s still ten days to write for it!) but I’m also think­ing about the tone with which we approach out­reach. In some cir­cles there’s a pan­ic that we some­how have to save Quak­erism. That begs the ques­tion of “what is Quakerism”?

Is Quak­erism a way of approach­ing our rela­tion­ship with the liv­ing Christ and shar­ing that good news as we walk cheer­ful­ly over the world? Is it build­ing com­mu­ni­ties that express our com­mit­ment to love of God and love of neigh­bor? If so, then noth­ing is ever going to destroy it. The whole point of the orig­i­nal Quak­er move­ment is that it didn’t need a large infra­struc­ture: no priests or pas­tors, no staff, no tithing. An emp­ty barn and a small room of believ­ers was enough. Here’s my naive side ris­ing up: if we are faith­ful God, will con­tin­ue to give us guid­ance and blessings.

When I dropped in for a day of the FGC Gath­er­ing this sum­mer, I attend­ed a work­shop led by the most excel­lent Chiyo Mori­uchi, titled “Let­ting our Light Shine: Gov­er­nance & Friends.” The work­shop wrote its own epis­tle, which FGC pub­lished on their web­site today with the title “A Call to Action.” Here’s part of its message:

Imme­di­ate action is required to address the fact of declin­ing and aging mem­ber­ship. We have too few peo­ple avail­able to do the “work,” and we are burn­ing out too many of those who are. We feel that address­ing the inad­e­quate com­mu­ni­ca­tion of who Quak­ers are is the most promis­ing path to solve this problem.

This is all true, but it’s true of our insti­tu­tions. It’s true of our infra­struc­ture. The doc­u­ment has two calls to action: the first is for Quak­er insti­tu­tions to do some self-reflection on what makes them Quak­er (sounds good to me!). The sec­ond is for Friends to hire out­side mar­ket­ing firms. I’ve seen big bud­gets poured into mar­ket­ing firms before and sigh at what a pro­pos­al like this would like­ly give us: gener­ic, feel-good copy that irons out all blem­ish­es. Any spir­i­tu­al lan­guage that might be deemed off-putting gets cut.  His­to­ry is dropped except for a few past heroes who are turned into car­toons.1

Decades of reli­gion sur­veys have found that peo­ple aren’t look­ing for bland and gener­ic. A lot of the fastest-growing denom­i­na­tions are opin­ion­at­ed and have high expec­ta­tions of incom­ing mem­bers. The new­com­ers I see walk­ing into my meet­ing seem to be search­ing for some­thing real, some­thing pal­pa­ble, as indeed I myself was when I walked into Abing­ton Meet­ing over three decades ago. We can be our­selves and share our blem­ish­es. We don’t need to put on an act.

And final­ly, some opti­mism: Quak­er mar­ket­ing is doing great. Seri­ous­ly. We’re more vis­i­ble and acces­si­ble than we’ve been in our entire his­to­ry. Friends Jour­nal is a part of that, with the mag­a­zine free with­out pay­wall and the Quak­er­s­peak inter­view series, Quak­ers Today pod­cast, and Quak​er​.org por­tal. But we’re just a piece of what’s hap­pen­ing. My friend Jon Watts’s Thee Quak­er pod­cast and the Dai­ly Quak­er email is super-visible. The Quak­ers sub-reddit and Dis­cord serv­er are very active. The slick Friends Library makes his­toric Quak­er writ­ings acces­si­ble by web, app, and audio (and the old-school Project Guten­berg, Chris­t­ian Clas­sics Ethe­r­i­al Library, Quak­er Her­itage Press are still around). It’s easy to find local meet­ings (FGC and FWCC have good resources, plus Google Maps does a great job). Any curi­ous per­son want­i­ng to know about Quak­ers can get up to speed in weeks. I know because I see these peo­ple walk­ing into my own Crop­well Meeting.

So I don’t think our insti­tu­tions nec­es­sar­i­ly need new mar­ket­ing so much as new vision­ing. What kinds of sup­port is need­ed for the new seek­ers and for local meet­ings? I think in some ways we need to step back and see with new eyes. What is it we want to market?

 

A Quaker retirement community in the pandemic

April 20, 2020

A few weeks ago, Friends Jour­nal’s poet­ry edi­tor, Nan­cy Thomas, includ­ed a sweet sto­ry at the end of an email coor­di­nat­ing the May selections:

My hus­band, Hal, stepped out of our apart­ment and into the hall just before 4:00 p.m. on a Sun­day after­noon. He began walk­ing down the hall, play­ing on his har­mon­i­ca a zip­py ver­sion of “When the Saints Go March­ing In.” Peo­ple had been wait­ing. Doors opened, and our neigh­bors stood in their door­ways — well over the des­ig­nat­ed six-feet apart — and began wav­ing and greet­ing one anoth­er. This con­sti­tut­ed our “call to wor­ship,” and the begin­ning of a new pattern. 

I thought it was so nice that I asked her to expand it. The result is a nice snap­shot of how a Quaker-affiliated retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty in New­berg, Ore­gon, is adapt­ing to life under COVID-19 restrictions.

William Penn on community

March 21, 2019

I some­times like to high­light the com­ments that peo­ple leave here on the blog. A few days ago, Carl Abbott replied to a link to a Steven Davi­son post on com­mu­ni­ty as a tes­ti­mo­ny. He wrote:

William Pen­n’s intro­duc­tion to George Fox’s Jour­nal (1691) speaks to some­thing very like community:

“Besides these gen­er­al doc­trines, as the larg­er branch­es, there sprang forth sev­er­al par­tic­u­lar doc­trines, that did exem­pli­fy and far­ther explain the truth and effi­ca­cy of the gen­er­al doc­trine before observed, in their lives and exam­ples: as,

Com­mu­nion and lov­ing one anoth­er. This is anot­ed mark in the mouth of all sorts of peo­ple con­cern­ing them: They will meet, they will help and stick one to anoth­er. Whence it is com­mon to hear some say: Look how the Quak­ers love and take care of one anoth­er. Oth­ers, less mod­er­ate, will say: The Quak­ers live none but them­selves: and if lov­ing one anoth­er. and hav­ing an inti­mate com­mu­nion in reli­gion, and con­stant care to meet to wor­ship God, and help one anoth­er, be any mark of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty, they had it, blessed be the Lord in ample manner.” 

This cer­tain­ly sounds like com­mu­ni­ty to me.

When testimonies come drifting in

March 16, 2019

Steven Davi­son asked what the tes­ti­mo­ny of com­mu­ni­ty even meant or whether it was spelt out any­where. No one could answer but no ine want­ed to omit it.

I sus­pect a process may be at work sim­i­lar to the one that has made “that of God in every­one” the puta­tive foun­da­tion of all our tes­ti­monies: an unself­con­scious thought-drift in a cul­ture increas­ing­ly impa­tient with intellectual/theological rig­or, or even atten­tion of any seri­ous kind, not to men­tion care for the tes­ti­mo­ny of integri­ty. These ideas arise some­how, some­where, and then get picked up and dis­sem­i­nat­ed because they sound nice, they meet some need, and they don’t demand much. They appar­ent­ly don’t require dis­cern­ment, anyway. 

The “Tes­ti­mo­ny of Community”

Why are Kenya’s Quakers ‘noisy’?

March 5, 2019

From the BBC of all places:

While known as a tra­di­tion­al­ly qui­et com­mu­ni­ty with­in Chris­tian­i­ty, in Kenya their gath­er­ings are loud and proud. For some, being ‘noisy’ is the rea­son young peo­ple are still being attract­ed to the Church. 

https://​www​.bbc​.co​.uk/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​m​e​s​/​p​0​7​2​k​cm0

Keeping cradle Quakers

February 8, 2019

Rhi­an­non Grant asks: what’s the oppo­site of a Rumspringa?

So my ques­tions for Quak­ers are: How do you ensure that adults are trust­ed to be adults even if they are under 30? How do you make sure that peo­ple are giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties to take respon­si­bil­i­ty with­out feel­ing that they must per­form espe­cial­ly well because they are rep­re­sent­ing a whole demographic? 

Here in the U.S., the trick to get­ting on nation­al com­mit­tees while young (at least when I was try­ing it in my 20s) was hav­ing a well-known mom. As some­one who kept knock­ing and kept get­ting turned away it blew me away when I heard Quaker-famous off­spring com­plain how they were always being asked to serve on com­mit­tees. But then I real­ized it was the same tok­eniz­ing phe­nom­e­non, just in reverse.

So our work isn’t just look­ing around a room and tick­ing off demo­graph­ic box­es, but real­ly dig­ging deep­er and see­ing if we’re rep­re­sen­ta­tive of multi-dimensional diver­si­ties. And if we’re not, the prob­lem isn’t just that we aren’t diverse (diver­si­ty is a fine val­ue in and of itself but ulti­mate­ly just a crude tool) but that we have unex­am­ined cul­tur­al prac­tices and selec­tion sys­tems that are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly turn­ing away peo­ple from com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion and service.

Keep­ing cra­dle Quak­ers by mak­ing room to lean in?

Polarization

January 31, 2019

Lynn Fitz-Hugh on polar­iza­tion and con­flict with­in a Quak­er meeting:

But also being new to the Meet­ing it was very clear to me that the con­flict like some sort of bull doz­er was push­ing up to the light of day all the dark places, all the dys­func­tion­ing and bro­ken places in the Meet­ing. And it becomes increas­ing­ly clear that there is no way through this con­flict with­out fix­ing all the bro­ken places….which if we fail will leave us shat­tered and if we suc­ceed will make us stronger and vast­ly bet­ter as a community. 

https://​the​friendl​y​seek​er​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​p​o​l​a​r​i​z​a​t​i​o​n​.​h​tml

Top 10 Quakers in fiction

January 9, 2019

Although the title gives poten­tial read­ers the impres­sion that this is yet anoth­er click-bait lis­ti­cle, the arti­cle is by a Quak­er nov­el­ist and starts with nice obser­va­tions about Friends and creativity:

In the light of our high ideals, it can be hard for indi­vid­ual Quak­ers not to feel inad­e­quate. I cer­tain­ly do. We’re exhort­ed to “let our lives speak”, and I often feel like my life doesn’t have much to say. But I am a writer. As a com­mu­ni­ty that lis­tens patient­ly for the truth, Quak­ers pro­vide a unique place for cre­ativ­i­ty. The faith that can sit through hours of Meet­ing – through bore­dom, frus­tra­tion, dis­trac­tion – is the same thing that keeps me going when I’m strug­gling for my next idea. We wor­ship in silence, but we’re wait­ing for words, which some­how gives me faith that, if I wait in front of a blank page for long enough, the right sto­ry will come. 

https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​b​o​o​k​s​/​2​0​1​9​/​j​a​n​/​0​9​/​t​o​p​-​1​0​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​i​n​-​f​i​c​t​i​o​n​?​C​M​P​=​t​w​t​_gu