Tag Archives ⇒ decade

Earlham College seeks to roll back expense budget by a decade after president’s resignation

August 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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​.insid​e​high​ered​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​8​/​0​1​/​e​a​r​l​h​a​m​-​c​o​l​l​e​g​e​-​s​e​e​k​s​-​r​o​l​l​-​b​a​c​k​-​e​x​p​e​n​s​e​-​b​u​d​g​e​t​-​d​e​c​a​d​e​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​s​-​r​e​s​i​g​n​a​t​i​o​n​#​.​W​2​I​x​c​z​v​6​v​J​c​.​f​a​c​e​b​ook

Christian revival among liberal Friends

August 15, 2007
· Martin Kelley

There’s an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion in the com­ments from my last post about “Con­ver­gent Friends and Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tives” and one of the more inter­est­ing comes from a com­menter named Diane. My reply to her got longer and longer and filled with more and more links till it makes more sense to make it its own post. First, Diane’s question:

I don’t know if I’m “con­ver­gent,” (prob­a­bly not) but I have been involved with the emerg­ing church for sev­er­al years and with Quak­erism for a decade. I also am aware of the house church move­ment, but my expe­ri­ence of it is that is is very tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed to Quak­erism. I real­ly, real­ly hope and pray that Chris­t­ian revival is com­ing to lib­er­al Friends, but per­son­al­ly I have not seen that phe­nom­e­nom. Where do you see it most? Do you see it more as com­mit­ment to Christ or as more peo­ple being Christ curi­ous, to use Robin’s phrase?

As I wrote recent­ly I think con­ver­gence is more of a trend than an iden­ti­ty and I’m not sure whether it makes sense to fuss about who’s con­ver­gent or not. As with any ques­tion involv­ing lib­er­al Friends, whether there’s “Chris­t­ian revival” going on depends on what what you mean by the term. I think more lib­er­al Friends have become com­fort­able label­ing them­selves as Christ curi­ous; it has become more accept­able to iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian than it was a decade or two ago; a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of younger Friends are very recep­tive to Chris­t­ian mes­sages, the Bible and tra­di­tion­al Quak­er tes­ti­monies than they were.

These are indi­vid­ual respons­es, how­ev­er. Turn­ing to col­lec­tive Quak­er bod­ies there are few if any beliefs or prac­tices left that lib­er­al Friends would­n’t allow under the Quak­er ban­ner if they came wrapped in Quak­erese from a well-connected Friend; the social tes­ti­monies stand in as the uni­fy­ing agent; it’s still con­sid­ered an argu­ment stop­per to say that any prof­fered def­i­n­i­tion would exclude someone.

I’d argue that lib­er­al Quak­erism is becom­ing ever more lib­er­al (and less dis­tinc­tive­ly Quak­er) at the same time that many of those in influ­ence are becom­ing more Chris­t­ian. It’s a very pro­scribed Chris­tian­i­ty: cod­ed, ten­ta­tive and most of all indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. It’s okay for a lib­er­al Friend to believe what­ev­er they want to believe as long as they don’t believe too much. Whether the qui­et influ­ence of the ris­ing gen­er­a­tion of conservative-friendly lead­er­ship is enough to hold a Quak­er cen­ter in the cen­trifuge that is lib­er­al Quak­erism is the $60,000 ques­tion. I think the lead­er­ship has an inflat­ed sense of its own influ­ence but I’m watch­ing the exper­i­ment. I wish it well but I’m skep­ti­cal and wor­ry that it’s built on sand.

Some of the Christ-curious lib­er­al Friends are form­ing small wor­ship groups and some of these are seek­ing out recog­ni­tion from Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies. It’s an aching­ly small move­ment but it shows a desire to be cor­po­rate­ly Quak­er and not just indi­vid­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly Quak­er. With the inter­net tra­di­tion­al Quak­er view­points are only a Google search away; sites like Bill Samuel’s “Quakerinfo.com”:www.quakerinfo.com and blogs like Mar­shall Massey’s are break­ing down stereo­types and doing a lot of invalu­able edu­cat­ing (and I could name a lot more). It’s pos­si­ble to imag­ine all this cook­ing down to a third wave of tra­di­tion­al­ist renew­al. Ohio Year­ly Meeting-led ini­tia­tives like the Chris­t­ian Friends Con­fer­ence and All Con­ser­v­a­tive Gath­er­ings are steps in the right direc­tion but any real change is going to have to pull togeth­er mul­ti­ple trends, one of which might or might not be Convergence.

Our role in this future is not to be strate­gists play­ing Quak­er pol­i­tics but ser­vants ready to lay down our iden­ti­ties and pre­con­cep­tions to fol­low the prompt­ings of the Inward Christ into what­ev­er ter­ri­to­ry we’re called to:

From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his dis­ci­ples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suf­fer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, say­ing, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his dis­ci­ples, If any man will come after me, let him deny him­self, and take up his cross, and fol­low me. Matthew 16:21 – 28.

Hey who am I to decide anything

April 9, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Over on Non­the­ist Friends web­site, there’s an arti­cle look­ing back at ten years of FGC Gath­er­ing work­shops on their con­cern. There was also a post some­where on the blo­gos­phere (sor­ry I don’t remem­ber where) by a Pagan Friend excit­ed that this year’s Gath­er­ing would have a work­shop focused on their concerns.

It’s kind of inter­est­ing to look at the process by which new the­olo­gies are being added into Lib­er­al Quak­erism at an ever-increasing rate.

  • Mem­ber­ship of indi­vid­u­als in meet­ings. There are hun­dreds of meet­ings in lib­er­al Quak­erism that range all over the the­o­log­i­cal map. Add to that the wide­spread agree­ment that the­o­log­i­cal uni­ty with the meet­ing is not required and just about any­one believ­ing any­thing could be admit­ted some­where (or “grand­fa­thered in” as a birthright member).
  • A work­shop at the Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Gath­er­ing and espe­cial­ly a reg­u­lar work­shop at suc­ces­sive Gath­er­ings. Yet as the very informed com­ments on a post a few years ago showed, the­ol­o­gy is not some­thing the plan­ning work­shop com­mit­tee is allowed to look at and at least one pro­po­nent of a new the­ol­o­gy has got­ten them­selves on the decid­ing com­mit­tee. The Gath­er­ing is essen­tial­ly built on the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al Chau­taqua mod­el and FGC is per­fect­ly hap­py to spon­sor work­shops that are in appar­ent con­flict with its own mis­sion statement.
  • An arti­cle pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal. When the the Quak­er Sweat Lodge was strug­gling to claim legit­i­ma­cy it all but changed its name to the “Quak­er Sweat Lodge as fea­tured in the Feb­ru­ary 2002 Friends Jour­nal.” It’s a good mag­a­zine’s job to pub­lish arti­cles that make peo­ple think and a smart mag­a­zine will know that arti­cles that pro­voke a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy is good for cir­cu­la­tion. I very much doubt the edi­to­r­i­al team at the Jour­nal con­sid­ers its agree­ment to pub­lish to be an inoc­u­la­tion against critique.
  • A web­site and list­serv. Fif­teen dol­lars at GoDad​dy​.com and you’ve got the web address of your dreams. Yahoo Group is free.

There are prob­a­bly oth­er mech­a­nisms of legit­i­ma­cy. My point is not to give com­pre­hen­sive guide­lines to would-be cam­paign­ers. I sim­ply want to note that none of the actors in these deci­sions is con­scious­ly think­ing “hey, I think I’ll expand the def­i­n­i­tion of lib­er­al Quak­er the­ol­o­gy today.” In fact I expect they’re most­ly pass­ing the buck, think­ing “hey, who am I to decide any­thing like that.”

None of these decision-making process­es are meant to serve as tools to dis­miss oppo­si­tion. The orga­ni­za­tions involved are not hand­ing out Impri­maturs and would be quite hor­ri­fied if they real­ized their agree­ments were being seen that way. Amy Clark, a com­menter on my last post, on this sum­mer’s reunion and camp for the once-young mem­bers of Young Friends North Amer­i­ca, had a very inter­est­ing comment:

I agree that YFNA has become FGC: those pre­vi­ous­ly involved in YFNA have tak­en lead­er­ship with FGC … with both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive results. Well … now we have a chance to look at the lega­cy we are cre­at­ing: do we like it?

I have the feel­ing that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of lib­er­al Quak­er lead­er­ship does­n’t quite believe it’s lead­ing lib­er­al Quak­erism. By “lead­er­ship” I don’t mean the small skim of the pro­fes­sion­al Quak­er bureau­cra­cy (whose mem­bers can get _too_ self-inflated on the lead­er­ship issue) but the com­mit­tees, clerks and vol­un­teers that get most of the work done from the local to nation­al lev­els. We are the inher­i­tors of a proud and some­times fool­ish tra­di­tion and our actions are shap­ing its future but I don’t think we real­ly know that. I have no clever solu­tion to the issues I’ve out­lined here but I think becom­ing con­scious that we’re cre­at­ing our own lega­cy is an impor­tant first step.

Unpopular Baby Names: Avoiding the Jacobs, Emilys and Madisons

February 20, 2005
· Martin Kelley

My wife has now fin­ished the first trimester of her preg­nan­cy so we can let peo­ple know that our lit­tle Theo’s going to be a big broth­er this fall. That means it’s time to think of baby names.

Fallen Baby Names List
Name Rank:
1900		 Rank:
2003		 Drop Name Rank:
1900		 Rank:
2003		 Drop
1 Her­bert 32 962 930 1 Edna 17 986 969
2 Her­man 45 974 929 2 Louise 24 977 953
3 Floyd 50 964 914 3 Beat­rice 44 982 938
4 J 35 920 885 4 Bertha 26 963 937
5 Fred 19 876 857 5 Gladys 15 945 930
6 Earl 27 882 855 6 Lucille 49 954 905
7 Clarence 18 717 699 7 Dorothy 7 846 839
8 Howard 30 721 691 8 Hazel 20 681 661
9 Alfred 33 683 650 9 Edith 25 683 658
10 Ralph 23 660 637 10 Frances 16 580 564
11 Elmer 36 654 618 11 Irene 21 581 560
12 Harold 15 595 580 12 Marie 8 496 488
13 Ernest 26 599 573 13 Martha 31 487 456
14 Eugene 49 578 529 14 Alice 10 426 416
15 Leonard 48 571 523 15 Helen 2 389 387
16 Har­ry 13 517 504 16 Ruth 5 350 345
17 Fran­cis 37 509 472 17 Rose 14 358 344
18 Willie 28 454 426 18 Annie 28 339 311
19 Roy 24 433 409 19 Clara 23 295 272
20 Wal­ter 11 356 345 20 Esther 30 297 267
21 Arthur 14 353 339 21 Josephine 33 260 227
22 Carl 20 357 337 22 Eva 39 215 176
23 Lawrence 34 344 310 23 Ruby 42 197 155
24 Albert 16 311 295 24 Mar­garet 3 130 127
25 Joe 38 321 283 25 Cather­ine 19 106 87
26 Theodore 42 313 271 26 Lau­ra 50 122 72
27 Louis 21 278 257 27 Mary 1 61 60
28 Leo 44 288 244 28 Eve­lyn 34 89 55
29 Frank 8 228 220 29 Anna 4 21 17
30 Ray­mond 22 188 166 30 Eliz­a­beth 6 9 3
31 George 4 137 133 31 Mil­dred 9 n/a 0
32 Edward 9 128 119 32 Flo­rence 11 n/a 0
33 Paul 17 124 107 33 Ethel 12 n/a 0
34 Hen­ry 10 116 106 34 Lil­lian 13 n/a 0
35 Peter 46 148 102 35 Gertrude 22 n/a 0
36 Ken­neth 47 109 62 36 Mabel 27 n/a 0
37 Richard 25 86 61 37 Bessie 32 n/a 0
38 Charles 6 59 53 38 Elsie 35 n/a 0
39 Robert 7 35 28 39 Pearl 36 n/a 0
40 Thomas 12 36 24 40 Agnes 37 n/a 0
41 John 1 17 16 41 Thel­ma 38 n/a 0
42 James 3 18 15 42 Myr­tle 40 n/a 0
43 William 2 11 9 43 Ida 41 n/a 0
44 Jack 41 46 5 44 Min­nie 43 n/a 0
45 Joseph 5 6 1 45 Vio­la 47 n/a 0
46 Samuel 31 23 -8 46 Nel­lie 48 n/a 0
47 David 29 14 -15 47 Grace 18 13 -5
48 Antho­ny 43 10 -33 48 Julia 45 33 -12
49 Andrew 40 5 -35 49 Emma 29 2 -27
50 Michael 39 2 -37 50 Sarah 46 12 -34

Most new par­ents want to give their child unique names and want to steer clear of the most over-used names. Yet if you tell your friends you’re nam­ing your boy Jacob or Joshua, they’ll all cheer you on. If your lit­tle girl goes by Emi­ly, Emma or Madi­son, they’ll think that’s dar­ling. Yet those are the top three boy and girl names for 2003.

They are tens of thou­sands of kids get­ting these top names every year. All of the kids with these names are going to be get­ting nick­names to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them from one anoth­er: just hope your lit­tle angel isn’t the one that gets tagged “The Ugly Emi­ly” or “The Stu­pid Joshua” by their third grade classmates!

There are def­i­nite trends in names. Cer­tain names tend to sound fresh and dar­ing even when they’re overused and trite. The only way to train your ear away from such trends is to method­i­cal­ly study the data (the New York Times had a fas­in­cat­ing arti­cle on all this when we were pon­der­ing Theo’s name, Where Have All the Lisas Gone?).

For­tu­nate­ly the U.S. Social Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion pro­vides a list of the most pop­u­lar baby names by year, going back to the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Using this, my wife and I were able to choose “Theodore” for our first child’s name; born in 2003, he name is the 313th most pop­u­lar boy’s name and drop­ping. Yet it’s a known name and there have been great twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry folks who have answered to it (e.g., Dr. Suess, Theodore Geisel).

How is a par­ent to choose? One recent after­noon I cut and past­ed the top fifty boy and girl names of the first decade of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. I looked up their cur­rent sta­tus (the 2003 data) to see what move­ment has occured in their place­ment. The old names are still known but some have fall­en far out of use. Her­bert, for exam­ple, was the 32nd most pop­u­lar boy’s name in the first decade of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, but now ranks a dis­mal 930! If you want a name every­one knows but no one is giv­ing their kid, Her­bert’s your choice for boy’s and Edna’s your choice for girls.

Now these fall­en names prob­a­bly sound awk­ward. But that’s the point: they run counter to the trends. I’ll admit that some deserve their reduced sta­tus; I can­not imag­ine sad­dling a lit­tle girl with “Edna.” But in the list are some gems which have been undu­ly demot­ed by the trend-setters.

We’ve been very hap­py with “Theodore,” the 26th most fall­en name of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. He’s offi­cial­ly named after his great-great uncle. The social secu­ri­ty date­base assured us that the name was safe from trendiness.

So what will the new baby be named? Check in soon!! The due date is the end of August.

Update: drum­roll please.… Our new son’s name is Fran­cis! And fur­ther follow-up brought us Gre­go­ry and Lau­ra. We’re offi­cial­ly out of the baby-making game now but if we were look­ing for more, Walt and Dorothy would be our next picks of classic-but-uncommon names.