Tag Archives ⇒ FJ

Looking outside the meetinghouse (FJ call for submissions)

November 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Let me give a plug that Friends Jour­nal is look­ing for arti­cles on the top­ic of “Out­side the Meet­ing­house” for the March issue. The dead­line is a lit­tle over a month away. Here’s a lit­tle bit of my write-up for it, as a teaser:

There is a long his­to­ry of Friends preach­ing and wit­ness­ing out­side of the con­fines of the meet­ing­house. George Fox’s Jour­nal is full of uncon­ven­tion­al wor­ship­ing; he had a par­tic­u­lar pen­chant for preach­ing from any bit of high ground he could find, like a tree or rock out­crop­ping. His con­tem­po­rary James Nay­lor is most remem­bered for re-enacting Jesus’s Palm Sun­day entry into Jerusalem by dra­mat­i­cal­ly rid­ing a horse down a main road into Bris­tol. Modern-day Friends con­tin­ue to find uncon­ven­tion­al places to worship… 

Also, I’ve just set up a form to get on the email noti­fi­ca­tion list to get pinged when top­ic write-ups get post­ed. It’s very low-volume, as we only write these once a month. There’s only two sub­scribers. For the time being, I’m just keep­ing the emails in a list and send­ing per­son­al­ized emails.


Writing Opp: Outside the Meetinghouse (due 12/10)

Writ­ing Opp: Out­side the Meet­ing­house (due 12/10)

Infor­ma­tion about our upcom­ing March 2019 issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house.” Fea­ture sub­mis­sions are due Decem­ber 10, 2018.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

Money and the things we really value

July 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I think I’ve already shared that Friends Jour­nal is doing an issue on “Meet­ings and Mon­ey” in the fall. While I’ve heard from some poten­tial authors that they’re writ­ing some­thing, we haven’t actu­al­ly got­ten any­thing in-hand yet. We’re extend­ing the dead­line to Fri­day, 7/20. This is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to write for FJ.

How we spend mon­ey is often a telling indi­ca­tor of what val­ues we real­ly val­ue. Mon­ey is not just a mat­ter of finan­cial state­ments and invest­ment strate­gies. It’s chil­dren pro­gram. It’s local soup kitchens. It’s the town peace fair. It’s the acces­si­ble bath­room or hear­ing aid sys­tem. And how we dis­cuss and dis­cern and fight over mon­ey is often a test of our com­mit­ment to Quak­er values.

Here’s some of the spe­cif­ic issues we’ve brain­stormed for the issue.

Where does our mon­ey come from? A lot of Quak­er wealth is locked up in endow­ments start­ed by “dead Quak­er mon­ey” — wealth bequeathed by Quak­ers of cen­turies past.

Much of our Amer­i­can Quak­er for­tunes trace back to a large land grant giv­en in pay­ment for war debt. For the first cen­tu­ry or so, this wealth was aug­ment­ed by slave labor. Lat­er Quak­er enter­pris­es were aug­ment­ed by cap­i­tal from these ini­tial wealth sources.

In times past, there were well-known Quak­er fam­i­ly busi­ness­es and wealthy Quak­er indus­tri­al­ists. But Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism has changed: fam­i­lies rarely own medium- or large-scale busi­ness­es; they own stocks in firms run by a pro­fes­sion­al man­agers. If the abil­i­ty to run busi­ness­es based on Quak­er val­ues is over, is share­hold­er activism our clos­est analogue?

Many Friends now work in ser­vice fields. Fam­i­ly life has also changed, and the (large­ly female) free labor of one-income house­holds is no longer avail­able to sup­port Quak­er endeav­ors as read­i­ly. How have all of these changes affect­ed the finances of our denom­i­na­tion and the abil­i­ty to live out our val­ues in the workplace?

How do we sup­port our mem­bers? A per­son­al anec­dote: some years ago I unex­pect­ed­ly lost my job. It was touch and go for awhile whether we’d be able to keep up with mort­gage pay­ments; los­ing our house was a real pos­si­bil­i­ty. Mem­bers of a near­by non-Quaker church heard that there was a fam­i­ly in need and a few days lat­er a stranger showed up on our back porch with a dozen bags of gro­ceries and new win­ter coats for each of us. When my Friends meet­ing heard, I was told there was a com­mit­tee that I could apply to that would con­sid­er whether it might help.

Where does the mon­ey go? A activist Friend of mine use to point to the nice fur­nish­ings in our meet­ing­house and chuck­le about how many good things we could fund in the com­mu­ni­ty if we sold some of it off. Has your meet­ing liq­ui­dat­ed any of its prop­er­ty for com­mu­ni­ty service?

When we do find our­selves with extra funds from a bequest or wind­fall, where do we spend it? How do we bal­ance our needs (such as meet­ing­house ren­o­va­tions, schol­ar­ships for Quak­er stu­dents), and when and how do we give it to oth­ers in our community?

What can we let go of? There are a lot of meet­ing­hous­es in more rur­al areas that are most­ly emp­ty these days, even on First Day. Could we ever decide we don’t need all of these spaces? Could we con­sol­i­date? Or could we go fur­ther and sell our prop­er­ties and start meet­ing at a rent­ed space like a fire­hall or library once a week?

Who gets the meet­ing­house after a break-up? In the last few years we’ve seen three major year­ly meet­ings split apart, prompt­ing a whole mess of finan­cial dis­en­tan­gle­ment. What hap­pens to the prop­er­ties and sum­mer camps and endow­ments when this hap­pens? How fierce­ly are we will­ing to fight fel­low Friends over money?

What con­ver­sa­tions aren’t we hav­ing? Where do we invest our cor­po­rate sav­ings? Who decides how we spend mon­ey in our meetings?

Please feel free to share this with any Friend who might have inter­est­ing obser­va­tions about Friends’ atti­tudes toward finances!


Writing Opp: Meetings and Money (due 7/9)

Writ­ing Opp: Meet­ings and Mon­ey (due 7/9)

How do we spend mon­ey on our­selves? What is the role of mon­ey in our meet­ings? How do…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Profile of tech use by British Friends

March 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Irit Pol­lak and Abbey Kos at dotev­ery­one have been doing a series “Dis­patch­es from the Real World,” in which they pro­file “unex­pect­ed changes new tech­nol­o­gy is hav­ing on ser­vices and peo­ple.” This month they look at Friends in Britain.

It’s writ­ten for a tech audi­ence and leans a bit on the dichoto­my between old (“It still looks much the same as it did in 1670”) and mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion but there are some insights that we Friends some­times take too much for granted:

Social media tends towards the shal­low and boast­ful. That’s not an intu­itive fit for the metic­u­lous work of ecu­meni­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, nor for a faith that val­ues authen­tic­i­ty and depth. How­ev­er, Tere­sa and her team know they need to do more — not despite their beliefs, but because of them.

I also appre­ci­ate the com­par­i­son between Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion and prin­ci­ples of decen­tral­iza­tion found in networks.

Just as in tech, decen­tral­i­sa­tion — build­ing a more net­worked approach — is high on Quak­ers’ agen­da. But that jour­ney is per­haps eas­i­er for a faith fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to hier­ar­chy. Now, rather than try to hang onto old mod­els, Quak­ers in Britain are active­ly (and con­tin­u­ous­ly) check­ing their pow­er and privilege.

Friends Jour­nal ran a whole issue on Quak­ers and Social Media back in Novem­ber 2016. One of my favorite FJ tech pieces how­ev­er was in Novem­ber 2015, when we inter­viewed Sue Gar­diner to under­stand why Wiki­me­dia was so inter­est­ing in Quak­er process.

Dispatches from the Real World 03: Quakers in Britain
Dis­patch­es from the Real World 03: Quak­ers in Britain 

Can tech help a qui­et faith find a big­ger voice? And in a world of con­stant con­nec­tion, could…

Medium Medium 

The Quaker Ecosystem

February 23, 2017
· Martin Kelley

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An upcom­ing theme of Friends Jour­nal is one I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in. It’s called “Reimag­in­ing the Quak­er Ecosys­tem” and address­es count­less con­ver­sa­tions I think many of us have had over the years. Here’s the description:

Many of our tra­di­tion­al decision-making struc­tures are under tremen­dous stress these days. There are few nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tees that don’t bemoan the dif­fi­cul­ties find­ing vol­un­teer lead­er­ship. In the face of this, a wave of ques­tion­ing and cre­ativ­i­ty is emerg­ing as Friends rein­vent and regen­er­ate Quak­er struc­tures. Pre­vi­ous­ly unasked ques­tions about pow­er and decision-making mod­els are on the agen­da again.

I think this begs the ques­tion of the whole why and how of our orga­niz­ing as a reli­gious soci­ety. One of the most read posts on my blog in 2003 was a based on a review of a book by Robert E. Web­ber called The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals. Web­ber was talk­ing about main­stream Evan­gel­i­cals, who he divid­ed into three gen­er­a­tional phases,

  • Tra­di­tion­al Evan­gel­i­cals 1950 – 1975
  • Prag­mat­ic Evan­gel­i­cals 1975 – 2000
  • Younger Evan­gel­i­cals 2000-

I was work­ing at Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence back in 2003 and Webber’s descrip­tions felt sur­pris­ing­ly famil­iar despite the very dif­fer­ent con­text of lib­er­al Quakerism.

Take for exam­ple youth min­istry: Web­ber says Prag­mat­ic Evan­gel­i­cals tend to pre­fer “out­reach pro­grams and week­end fun retreats,” which is what the even­tu­al FGC Youth Min­istries Pro­gram most­ly mor­phed into (before going into per­ma­nent hia­tus). Web­ber sug­gests that the Younger Evan­gel­i­cals cohort sought “prayer, Bible study, wor­ship, social action” and sure enough many pro­gres­sive spir­i­tu­al types in Philly left meet­ing­hous­es for the alter­na­tive Cir­cle of Hope church. Quak­erism lost a lot of momen­tum at that time (Bet­sy Blake see also: Bet­sy Blake’s account). It took the cre­ation of a whole new orga­ni­za­tion, Quak­er Vol­un­tary Ser­vice, to get a live­ly and sus­tain­able youth min­istries run­ning (you can read QVS’s Ross Hennesy’s jour­ney from the 2013 FJ to see Webber’s chart come to life).

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think many Quak­er orgs are stuck in a rut try­ing every­thing they can to make the Prag­mat­ic Evan­gel­i­cal mod­el work. There’s a hope that just one more reor­ga­ni­za­tion will solve their sys­temic longterm prob­lems — new peo­ple will come into com­mit­tee ser­vice, meet­ing­hous­es will start fill­ing, etc. But the more we try to hold onto the old frame­work, the more cre­ative ener­gy dis­si­pates and Friends get lost or leave.

My per­son­al hunch is that struc­ture (almost) doesn’t mat­ter. What we need is a shift in atten­tion. How can we back up and ask the big ques­tions: Why are we here? What is our prophet­ic role and how do we encour­age and sup­port that in our mem­bers? How do we care for our church com­mu­ni­ty and still reach beyond the meet­ing­house walls to serve as heal­ers in the world?

A few years ago I dropped in on part of my year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. In one room, mostly-older mem­bers were revis­ing some arcane sub­sec­tion of Faith and Prac­tice while across the hall mostly-younger mem­bers were express­ing heart­break about a badly-decided pol­i­cy on trans youth. The dis­con­nect between the spir­it in the rooms was beyond obvious.

I think we need to be able to stop and give atten­tion to direct lead­ings of need­ed min­istry. I often return to the Good Samar­i­tan sto­ry. In my mind’s eye the Levite is the Friend who can’t stop because they’re late for a com­mit­tee meet­ing. If we could fig­ure out a way to get more Friends to piv­ot into Good Samar­i­tan mode, I sus­pect we’d find new life in our reli­gious soci­ety. Peren­ni­al ques­tions would transform.

Signs of new life are abun­dant but uneven­ly dis­trib­uted. How do you imag­ine the ecosys­tem in 10, 20, or 50 years? Sub­mis­sion due date 3/6 offi­cial­ly though we may have a chance to review lat­er pieces.


Write For Friends Journal - Submit Writing For Quaker Publication

Write For Friends Jour­nal — Sub­mit Writ­ing For Quak­er Publication 

Friends Jour­nal is an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine serv­ing the entire Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We wel­come arti­cles, poet­ry, art,…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Colorful Quakers

June 18, 2013
· Martin Kelley

Hold onto your broad­brim hat! After 58 years of black and white, COLOR is on the way to Friends Jour­nal start­ing in AUGUST 2013. To announce it, FJ’s first Vine video:

This was what we were work­ing on last week, when I tweet­ed out ask­ing how many Quak­ers does it take to shoot a seven-second video!

How many Quakes?
The impromp­tu FJ video team: yours tru­ly, Gabe, Gail, and Sara.

As you might all expect, I’m real­ly hap­py with the move. Col­or won’t add very much to the over­all bud­get just 1.5 per­cent!) but it should help us reach new read­ers. I’m also hop­ing it will give lapsed read­ers a rea­son to open the mag­a­zine again and see what we’ve been doing the last few years. Sub­scrip­tions start at a very rea­son­able $25. If you sign up before July 8, you’ll get August’s very first col­or issue!