Tag Archives ⇒ faith

New book on Quaker prophetic faith

July 9, 2024
· Martin Kelley

Real­ly excit­ed to see my friend Patri­cia Dall­man­n’s new book is avail­able! It’s called The Light That Is Giv­en. I read a pre-publication PDF ver­sion and was asked by the pub­lish­er to give a blurb. Here’s what I wrote: 

Patri­cia Dall­mann brings a mod­ern prophet­ic voice to Scrip­ture and ancient Friends’ texts. She care­ful­ly exam­ines the lan­guage of these sto­ries and brings new life to their teach­ings, but this is no exer­cise in mim­ic­ry. Dall­mann shares her own expe­ri­ences and shows us how tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs have guid­ed her. This is an invalu­able resource for those want­i­ng to explore how tra­di­tion­al Friends’ faith and prac­tice can be lived out by spir­i­tu­al seek­ers today.

I see from Ama­zon that Dou­glas Gwyn and Stu­art Mas­ters gave even bet­ter blurbs so I’m in good company! 

It’s a great sum­mer for tra­di­tion­al Quak­er books, with this and Christo­pher Stern’s new mem­oir. I was­n’t able to make his book talk at the FGC Gath­er­ing last week but hope to catch up on it. I did final­ly pick up a copy of 2015’s Tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty to add to my list of books I real­ly real­ly want to read. This week I fin­ished Jean Soder­lund’s Lenape Coun­try: Delaware Val­ley Soci­ety Before William Penn, which dis­tills a lot of the myths of Penn and Quak­ers (she’ll have an arti­cle on some of this in the August issue of FJ!).

Top 10 Quakers in fiction

January 9, 2019
· Martin Kelley

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

Trustworthy Friends

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er has put togeth­er a sur­vey for Friends to talk about set­ting up trust­wor­thy churches:

A lot of Quak­er ener­gy has gone into reas­sur­ing skep­tics and wound­ed refugees that we Friends are not like “those peo­ple,” refer­ring to the zealots, author­i­tar­i­ans, and reli­gious entre­pre­neurs who have some­times giv­en faith a bad name. But what are we affir­ma­tive­ly promis­ing? And how do we increase our capac­i­ty to keep our promis­es and become more trustworthy? 

https://​ino​.to/​d​K​K​V​1T3

UK Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

British Friends become first church in UK to pull invest­ments in com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from the occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine. From record­ing clerk Paul Parker:

As Quak­ers, we seek to live out our faith through every­day actions, includ­ing the choic­es we make about where to put our mon­ey. We believe strong­ly in the pow­er of legit­i­mate, non­vi­o­lent, demo­c­ra­t­ic tools such as moral­ly respon­si­ble invest­ment to realise pos­i­tive change in the world. We want to make sure our mon­ey and ener­gies are instead put into places which sup­port our com­mit­ments to peace, equal­i­ty and justice. 

As you’d might expect, there’s been back­lash. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has con­demned Britain Year­ly Meet­ing’s deci­sion as a “biased and petu­lant act.”.


Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine

Quak­ers will not prof­it from the occu­pa­tion of Palestine 

Quak­ers in Britain has today become the first church in the UK to announce it will not invest…

Quakers Quakers 

The freedom to seek sanctuary

November 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Lucy Dun­can at the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Commitee:

What if, instead of char­ac­ter­iz­ing folks seek­ing home as “threats” or “invaders,” we under­stood them to be our neigh­bors, that our futures are inter­locked and that how they are treat­ed is con­nect­ed to the well-being of us all? What if we under­stood love as not con­strained by bor­ders or walls, but abun­dant, and that car­ing for one anoth­er and those most vio­lat­ed by sys­temic oppres­sion is the path­way toward lib­er­a­tion for us all? What if we, as peo­ple of con­science and faith, greet­ed the migrants at the bor­der as our broth­ers, sis­ters, and kin, opened our homes and com­mu­ni­ties to them, and greet­ed them as resource­ful con­trib­u­tors to fig­ur­ing out the plan­e­tary threats we cur­rent­ly face together? 

https://​www​.afsc​.org/​b​l​o​g​s​/​a​c​t​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​f​a​i​t​h​/​f​r​e​e​d​o​m​-​t​o​-​s​e​e​k​-​s​a​n​c​t​u​a​r​y​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​p​e​r​s​p​e​c​t​i​v​e​-​m​i​g​r​a​n​t​-​c​a​r​a​van

Letter of condolence from Friends General Conference

October 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

FGC’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee is meet­ing this week­end and wrote a let­ter of con­do­lences to Pitts­burgh’s Tree of Life Syn­a­gogue, site of the recent shooting

We are deeply sad­dened by the bru­tal slay­ing and injuries to mem­bers of your com­mu­ni­ty and the law enforce­ment offi­cers who inter­vened in the attack on your con­gre­ga­tion on Saturday.
That this vio­la­tion occurred dur­ing your wor­ship togeth­er is espe­cial­ly dis­tress­ing to us. We stand unit­ed with all peo­ple of faith in pray­ing for every­one affected. 

You can read the full piece on Facebook

Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion is also shar­ing their Prin­ci­ples for Gun Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion back­grounder, a doc­u­ment that I wish was­n’t new­ly rel­e­vant every oth­er week.

Jeff Kisling: Resist not evil today

August 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

When look­ing back to Nazi Ger­many in the 1930s are we so sure God Could not have found a way?

Hen­ry Cad­bury believed the Jew­ish peo­ple should have appealed to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and nation­al con­science. Then those Ger­mans would have stood up for the Jew­ish peo­ple, and pre­vent­ed the Nazis from acquir­ing pow­er. The death camps would not have happened.

Many prob­a­bly think that is naive and could not have worked. But that is what non­vi­o­lence is about, con­nect­ing with those you are hop­ing to change. Lis­ten­ing deeply and being will­ing to change your­self. This is also what faith is about, believ­ing in the pres­ence of God today. Believ­ing that as you lis­ten close­ly you will be guid­ed by the Inner Light. Believ­ing some­how God will find a way.

There’s a fine line between ide­al­is­tic naiveté and real­is­tic sol­i­dar­i­ty. I’m still of the mind that Cad­bury should have har­bored more cyn­i­cism of what was hap­pen­ing as the Nazi Par­ty grew in Ger­many but I can see Jef­f’s point: in 1934, was the future we know inevitable?

https://​kisling​j​eff​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​8​/​1​8​/​r​e​s​i​s​t​-​n​o​t​-​e​v​i​l​-​t​o​d​ay/

Cor­rec­tion: I got my Jeffs mixed up in the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this post. This was writ­ten by Jeff Kisling.