Emily Provance on QuakerSpeak

April 18, 2020

The first remote­ly record­ed Quak­er­S­peak inter­view of the Coro­n­avirus era is appro­pri­ate­ly giv­en to Emi­ly Provance, a trav­el­ing Quak­er min­is­ter who has been devot­ing her­self to both in-person and online trav­el, with a par­tic­u­lar con­cern for mak­ing our wor­ship­ping com­mu­ni­ties acces­si­ble for all.

As some­one who trav­els in the min­istry, Emi­ly Provance is already used to con­nect­ing with her home meet­ing remote­ly. In this vir­tu­al inter­view, Emi­ly explains how Quak­ers can use online tools to wor­ship togeth­er — and not just in emer­gency circumstances. 

https://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​o​n​l​i​ne/

Could Quakerism? Yes? Will Quakerism? Ehh…

April 21, 2018

Chris Ven­ables spent a year work­ing with Quak­ers in Britain (see update below) and now asks Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?

The nature of reli­gion has changed, with­in Quak­ers we have seen the num­bers of young peo­ple engag­ing in our com­mu­ni­ty fall as the effects of eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty have tak­en hold. And per­haps more impor­tant­ly, because ‘young adults’ have no time for insti­tu­tions that often seem arcane and irrel­e­vant, and which have failed to engage with the real­i­ties of life for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple in our society.

I wish I could share more of his enthu­si­asm. I’m not see­ing any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly game-changing in his arti­cle. Half of it is gener­ic clich­es about mil­len­ni­al pref­er­ence with extrap­o­la­tion that they should align with decon­tex­tu­al­ized Quak­er val­ues. He cites a few hap­pen­ing young adult Quak­er scenes in the UK and a promis­ing Young Quak­ers pod­cast five episodes old; he’s fond of Amer­i­can Emi­ly Provance’s blog. Good stuff to be sure, but you could pick pret­ty much any year in recent mem­o­ry and point to sim­i­lar evi­dence and imag­ine an immi­nent surge. It’s 2018 and we’re still say­ing “hey this could hap­pen!” It could but it has­n’t so why has­n’t it and what can we do about it?

Also in these con­texts “rad­i­cal faith” some­times sounds like buzz­words for non-faith. Is the Quak­er meet­ing­house just a qui­et emp­ty room for par­tic­i­pants to BYOF (bring your own faith)?

Update: Chris chimed in via Twit­ter to add that his piece’s obser­va­tions aren’t just from the year of work­ing with BrYM Friends:

Ah, I’ll take a read of yours too — but those thoughts come from my expe­ri­ence of being around Quak­ers over the last 8 years, inc set­ting up a new young adult group (West­min­ster!), vis­it­ing Qs across Britain, and inter­view­ing many of our com­mu­ni­ty over the last year!