Tag Archives ⇒ faith

Quakers minute on the child camps

June 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

San Anto­nio Quak­ers’ minute on child separations

Friends Meet­ing of San Anto­nio finds the pol­i­cy of the present admin­is­tra­tion of sep­a­rat­ing chil­dren from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der to be shame­ful and con­trary to Amer­i­can val­ues. Fur­ther, using the Gospel to claim that “God has ordained” such actions is appalling to us as a peo­ple of faith.

A few years ago Friends Jour­nal ran an arti­cle on the bor­der human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, co-written by one of San Anto­nio’s clerks, so we’ve added this week­end’s state­ment to the arti­cle for context.


Convergence

Convergence 

UPDATE June 2018: “In response to the con­tin­u­ing admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy of sep­a­rat­ing asylum-seeking par­ents from their chil­dren, as…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

British Quakers take long hard look at faith

May 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Britain Year­ly Meet­ing has decid­ed to under­take a once-in-a-generation rewrite of its Faith and Practice

Reg­u­lar revi­sion and being open to new truths is part of who Quak­ers are as a reli­gious soci­ety. Quak­ers com­piled the first of these books of dis­ci­pline in 1738. Since then, each new gen­er­a­tion of Quak­ers has revised the book. A new revi­sion may help it speak to younger Quak­ers and the wider world.

This pos­si­bil­i­ty of this revi­sion was the basis for the inac­cu­rate and overblown click­baity rhetoric last week that Quak­ers were giv­ing up God. Rewrit­ing these books of Faith and Prac­tice is not uncom­mon. But it can be a big fraught. Who decides what is archa­ic? Who decides which parts of our Quak­er expe­ri­ence are core and which are expend­able? Add to this the long­stand­ing Quak­er dis­trust of creedal state­ments and there’s a strong incen­tive to include every­body’s expe­ri­ence. Inclu­sion can be an admirable goal in life and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of course, but for a reli­gious body defin­ing itself it leads to lowest-common-denominationalism.

I’ve found it extreme­ly reward­ing to read old­er copies of Faith and Prac­tice pre­cise­ly because the sometimes-unfamiliar lan­guage opens up a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion that I’ve missed in the rou­tine of con­tem­po­rary life. The 1806 Philadel­phia Book of Dis­ci­pline has chal­lenged me to rec­on­cile its very dif­fer­ent take on Quak­er faith (where are the SPICES?) with my own. My under­stand­ing is that the first copies of Faith and Prac­tice were essen­tial­ly binders of the impor­tant min­utes that had been passed by Friends over the first cen­tu­ry of our exis­tence; these min­utes rep­re­sent­ed bound­aries – on our par­tic­i­pa­tion on war, on our lan­guage of days and times, on our advices against gam­bling and tav­erns. This was a very dif­fer­ent kind of doc­u­ment than our Faith and Prac­tice’s today.

It would be a per­son­al hell for me to sit on one of the rewrit­ing com­mit­tees. I like the mar­gins and fringes of Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty too much. I like peo­ple who have tak­en the time to think through their expe­ri­ences and give words to it – phras­es and ideas which might not fit the stan­dard nomen­cla­ture. I like pub­lish­ing and shar­ing the ideas of peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly agree.

These days more new­com­ers first find Friends through Wikipedia and YouTube and (often phe­nom­e­nal­ly inac­cu­rate) online dis­cus­sions. A few years ago I sat in a ses­sion of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing in which we were dis­cus­sion revis­ing the sec­tion of Faith and Prac­tice that had to do with month­ly meet­ing report­ing. I was a bit sur­prised that the Friends who rose to speak on the pro­posed new pro­ce­dure all admit­ted being unaware of the process in the cur­rent edi­tion. It seems as if Faith and Prac­tice is often a impre­cise snap­shot of Quak­er insti­tu­tion­al life even to those of us who are deeply embedded.


Quakers take long hard look at faith

Quak­ers take long hard look at faith 

Quak­ers in Britain are to rewrite their book of dis­ci­pline that has guid­ed their work and wit­ness across…

Quakers Quakers 

The Quakers are right. We don’t need God

May 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Well-know British jour­nal­ist (tho non-Friend) weighs in on recent head­lines claim­ing British Friends are tak­ing God out of their next edi­tion of Faith and Prac­tice: The Quak­ers are right. We don’t need God

The Quak­ers’ lack of cer­e­mo­ny and litur­gi­cal clut­ter gives them a point from which to view the no man’s land between faith and non-faith that is the “new reli­gios­i­ty”. A dwin­dling 40% of Britons claim to believe in some form of God, while a third say they are atheists

The piece is sure to get every­one’s dan­der up. It feels to me as if Jenk­ins is chas­ing the head­line to advance his own argu­ment with­out regard to how his state­ment might polar­ize Friends. But this is one of the rar­er instances in which it’s worth dig­ging through the com­ments on this one; some are bet­ter than the arti­cle itself.

https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​i​s​f​r​e​e​/​2​0​1​8​/​m​a​y​/​0​4​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​d​r​o​p​p​i​n​g​-​g​o​d​?​C​M​P​=​s​h​a​r​e​_​b​t​n​_fb

Could Quakerism be the radical faith?

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith won­ders whether the title of Chris Ven­ables’s recent piece, “Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?,” is fol­low­ing Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

I’d put the dilem­ma of Quak­erism in the 21st cen­tu­ry this way: It’s not just that our trea­sures are in jars of clay, it’s that no one would even know the trea­sures were there, and it seems like they’re eas­i­er to find else­where. And how do we know that what we have are even treasures?

I gave my own skep­ti­cal take on Ven­ables’s arti­cle yes­ter­day. Smith hits on part of what wor­ries me when he says cur­rent reli­gious dis­en­gage­ment is of a kind to be immune to “bet­ter social media game or a more stream­lined church bureau­cra­cy.” These are the easy, value-free answers insti­tu­tions like to turn to.

I’m think­ing about these issues not only because of this arti­cle but also because Friends Jour­nal is seek­ing sub­mis­sions for thr August issue “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” A few weeks ago I wrote a post that referred back to Quak­er inter­net out­reach 25 years ago.

Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?

Could Quakerism? Yes? Will Quakerism? Ehh…

April 21, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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)?


Could Quakerism be the radical faith that the millennial generation is looking for?

Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for? 

After a year of work­ing with young adult Quak­ers, Chris Ven­ables shares three ways to wel­come in young…

Quakers Quakers 

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!

Convergent Friends as New Jazz Traditionalist

April 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day I men­tioned an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Chad Stephen­son years ago about his theory/metaphor that Con­ver­gent Friends were like New Jazz tra­di­tion­al­ists. His piece had only been pub­lished in the Spir­it Ris­ing anthol­o­gy but Chad saw my post and has gra­cious­ly put it up on his blog!

Through­out Quak­er faith, diver­gence from its roots has brought new­er, mod­ern audi­ences to Quak­ers and pro­gressed with new path­ways while aban­don­ing the shared past com­mon­al­i­ties. Yet as a splin­tered tra­di­tion, Quak­ers have begun to suf­fer each oth­er as dis­tant rel­a­tives do when din­ing dur­ing the hol­i­days; a fail­ing coor­di­na­tion of growth which has led instead to dis­uni­ty and a lack of under­stand­ing and respect for com­mon roots essen­tial to cre­at­ing a mutu­al­ly enhanc­ing ecosys­tem of faith ground­ed in the Light.

Con­ver­gent Friends as New Jazz Traditionalists

Sowing seeds

April 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Mike Far­ley looks at Quak­er sto­ries of East­er and the dif­fi­cul­ties of dis­tract­ing the Holy Spirit:

I am at least as sus­cep­ti­ble as any­one I know to self-deception and wish­ful think­ing, to being untrue to myself and to God, and to look­ing out­side myself, at the exter­nal aspects of thought and prac­tice among peo­ple of faith, try­ing to dis­tract myself from the work of the Spir­it in my heart. But it is less easy to dis­tract the Holy Spir­it, and so I have been called back again and again to these uncom­fort­able, at times down­right dan­ger­ous, places, out in the salt­marsh­es of the heart.

The sow­ing of seeds

Belief, Faith, and “That of God”

April 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Long-time Quak­er blog­ger Mark Wut­ka won­ders if we’ve inad­ver­tent­ly brought back in a doc­tri­nal state­ment with our easy response to the ques­tion of Quak­er belief:

Do Friends today have faith and trust in ‘that of God’ in every per­son? Are we striv­ing to answer ‘that of God’ in oth­ers, and do we have the faith that doing so may even­tu­al­ly bring them away from evil? I ask this because much of the dis­course today seems to ignore this.

“That of God in every­one” is one of those phras­es that many traditional-leaning Friends have found a bit prob­lem­at­ic over the years. Quak­er co-founder George Fox used it, but spar­ing­ly. It does­n’t even appear in his Jour­nal. If you were look­ing for an “ele­va­tor pitch” of his beliefs, I would go with his spir­i­tu­al open­ing that there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to our con­di­tion. The most well-argued (per­haps over-argued) expose of “that of God” as a latter-day Quak­er over­lay came from Lewis Ben­son’s famous essay from 1970, ‘That of God in Every Man” — What Did George Fox Mean by It?

In the sec­ond half of the piece Mark asks whether our belief of that of God leads us to act dif­fer­ent­ly in the polit­i­cal sphere. He strug­gles with this, as do I, and as do pre­sum­ably all of us. I wor­ry par­tic­u­lar­ly about judg­ing the way Friends act; when­ev­er I see some­one share a hard truth, I know I’ll quick­ly see some­one else cri­tique them for being too divi­sive, too “unQuak­er­ly.”

Jesus famous­ly over­turned the mon­ey chang­ers and Ben­jamin Lay spilled pig blood in year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. Maybe the only guide we have is the active Guide. Maybe our order­ly walk­ing will look alter­na­tive­ly meek or divi­sive depend­ing on the cues we’re giv­en. And maybe we’ll be mis­un­der­stood even as we’re being the most faithful.

Mark fin­ish­es:

For now, I am striv­ing to walk in the Light as best I can and man­i­fest the fruit of the Spir­it in my inter­ac­tions with people


Belief, Faith, and "That of God"

Belief, Faith, and “That of God” 

One of the dif­fi­cul­ties I have with the ques­tion “What do Quak­ers believe?” is that it makes an…

earofthesoul.blogspot.com earofthe​soul​.blogspot​.com