Tag Archives ⇒ Early Friends

Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident

September 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Here’s a piece we’ve pub­lished in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal, writ­ten by a seventh-grader from the Friends School in New­town, Pa. We reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish middle- and high-schoolers in our annu­al Stu­dent Voic­es Project but this is a gen­er­al fea­ture we pub­lished because it’s inter­est­ing and fresh and intrigu­ing. Here’s what I wrote about it in my open­ing col­umn in the magazine:

In Mak­ing Sense of the Star­bucks Inci­dent, New­town Friends School seventh-grader Anki­ta Achan­ta shows how the Quak­er val­ues she’s been taught in class­es could have defused a nation­al­ly pub­li­cized racial inci­dent in a Philadel­phia Star­bucks. It’s some­times easy to be skep­ti­cal of the Quak­er iden­ti­ty of Friends schools, but Achan­ta reflects back the pow­er­ful impact of our col­lec­tive wit­ness in these institutions. 

In Anki­ta Achan­ta’s reck­on­ing, Quak­er val­ues like integri­ty are basic uni­ver­sal val­ues of decen­cy. By claim­ing them, Friends could (and often do) eas­i­ly fall into the trap of Quak­er excep­tion­al­ism, but in Achan­ta’s piece, I see them as some­thing we put spe­cial empha­sis into. Ear­ly Friends did­n’t expect to found a denom­i­na­tion; Fox went across the land assum­ing every­one could be a Friend of the Truth, of Christ, of the Light. The lead­ing influ­ence of the Inward Light is avail­able to all and we can expect to see inspir­ing inci­dents of it in action every­where — even in viral Twit­ter videos.

Achan­ta also gave a new-to-me neologism:

As a seventh-grade stu­dent attend­ing a Friends school, I have been taught Quak­er val­ues. Although I am a Hin­du and not for­mal­ly a Quak­er, Quak­er val­ues are well aligned with my own reli­gious prin­ci­ples. I am com­mit­ted to liv­ing by them and con­sid­er myself a “Quin­du.”


Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident

Mak­ing Sense of the Star­bucks Incident 

Quak­er val­ues do not need to be mere the­o­ret­i­cal ideas.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Ask Me Anything: Do Quakers celebrate Easter and if so, how?

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A ques­tion From Jes­si­ca F about Friends and Easter.

On the face of it, this is an easy ques­tion. Ear­ly Friends were loath to rec­og­nize any litur­gi­cal prac­tices and they were lower‑p puri­tan­i­cal about any­thing that smacked of pagan­ism. Famous­ly, they didn’t use the com­mon names of the week or months because many of them referred to non-Christian deities, like Thor and Janus.

They were espe­cial­ly grumpy about any­thing that smacked of latter-day syn­cretism. Many of the church hol­i­days were seen as pagan fes­ti­vals with a super­fi­cial Chris­t­ian over­lay. I’ll be the first to admit they could get kind of obnox­ious this way. Wikipedia explains some of this attitude:

Oth­er Protes­tant groups took a dif­fer­ent atti­tude, with most Anabap­tists, Quak­ers, Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ists and Pres­by­ter­ian Puri­tans regard­ing such fes­ti­vals as an abom­i­na­tion. The Puri­tan rejec­tion of East­er tra­di­tions was (and is) based part­ly upon their inter­pre­ta­tion of 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14 – 16 and part­ly upon a more gen­er­al belief that, if a reli­gious prac­tice or cel­e­bra­tion is not actu­al­ly writ­ten in the Chris­t­ian Bible, then that practice/celebration must be a lat­er devel­op­ment and can­not be con­sid­ered an authen­tic part of Chris­t­ian prac­tice or belief — so at best sim­ply unnec­es­sary, at worst actu­al­ly sinful.

In Latin, East­er is called Pascha, a ref­er­ence to the Jew­ish Passover fes­ti­val. But in Eng­land, Pascha took place in the month the old Eng­lish called Ēostre after a god­dess whose fes­ti­val was cel­e­brat­ed in that month. This made it dou­bly hard for Eng­lish Protes­tant groups that want­ed to cleanse Chris­tian­i­ty of “popish” or “pagan” influ­ences. So for right or wrong, they ignored it like they did the day the world calls Christmas.

Sym­bol­i­cal­ly, Quak­ers love the idea of East­er. One of George Fox’s most key open­ings was that“Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self!” The idea that Jesus rose again and is with us is pret­ty cen­tral to tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs.

These days East­er is large­ly cel­e­brat­ed by Friends stand­ing up on Sun­day to break the silence of wor­ship with nos­tal­gic sto­ries of East­ers in their pre-Quaker youth. Some­times they’ll admit to hav­ing attend­ed a East­er ser­vice at anoth­er church before com­ing to meet­ing that morn­ing. If you’re real­ly lucky, you’ll get min­istry about flow­ers or hats.

Early Friends as reference, not justification

May 23, 2010
· Martin Kelley

My response to the excel­lent Greg Woods’ If I want­ed to live by 1600s stan­dards, I would be Amish. Greg talks about the over-obsession with Ear­ly Friends and the ten­den­cy to use them as ways to accuse oth­ers of un-Quakerism. 

The aca­d­e­m­ic obses­sion with Quak­er his­to­ry is about 100 years old or so. From the begin­ning the rise of “Quak­er his­to­ry” has been tied to the argu­ments of the day. We want to boil “Quak­erism” down to it essen­tials and sep­a­rate out what is core from what was an arti­fact of 17th cen­tu­ry Eng­land. Each branch rais­es up his­to­ri­ans who argue that its church­es’ focus is the essen­tial of those ear­ly Friends.

I con­scious­ly try not to use ear­ly Friends as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But I do use them for ref­er­ence. I think a lot of the prob­lem is we all have stereo­types about them. When I go back and read the old Books of Dis­ci­pline, I find them much more nuanced and interior-focused than we give them cred­it for. 

Greg men­tioned tav­erns, for exam­ple. It’s not that ear­li­er Friends thought every­one could­n’t han­dle their liquor. They saw that some peo­ple could­n’t and that spend­ing a lot of time there tend­ed to affect one’s dis­cern­ment and God-centeredness. They also saw that some peo­ple got real­ly messed up by alco­hol and even­tu­al­ly came to the con­clu­sion that the safest way to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble in the spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty was to stay out. 

The obser­va­tions and log­ic are still valid. I’ve known senior mem­bers of past Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties who have had alco­hol prob­lems but we don’t know how to talk about it because we’ve decid­ed it’s a per­son­al decision. 

What I try to do is not focus on the con­clu­sions of ear­ly Friends but to drop into the con­ver­sa­tions of ear­ly Friends. As I said, the old Books of Dis­ci­pline are sur­pris­ing­ly rel­e­vant. And I love Thomas Clark­son, an Angli­can who explained Quak­er ways in 1700 and talked about the soci­ol­o­gy of it more than Friends them­selves did. It’s a good way of sep­a­rat­ing out rules from knowl­edge. When we ground our­selves that way, we can more read­i­ly decide which of the clas­sic Quak­er tes­ti­monies are still rel­e­vant. That keeps us a liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty tes­ti­fy­ing to the peo­ple of today. For what it’s worth, there’s quite a bit of main­stream inter­est in the stodgy tra­di­tions most of us have cast off as irrelevant.…