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Life after Death

January 14, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Rhi­an­non Grant on Lib­er­al Quak­ers’ view on the afterlife:

Spend­ing some more time with this idea, includ­ing dur­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I realised that I actu­al­ly have a strong intu­ition against there being any form of life after death. Not only do I not think that any life which may or may not occur after death should affect my actions now (I don’t do things because I want to get into heav­en or gen­er­ate good kar­ma for my next life, and nor do I accept escha­to­log­i­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tion), I active­ly think it’s unlike­ly, even impos­si­ble, that such a thing exists. 

Friends Jour­nal devot­ed an issue to The Art of Dying and the After­life a few years ago, includ­ing an intro­duc­tion I wrote.

Lib­er­al Quak­ers and Life after Death

Hey y’all, let’s start a blog!

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Okay, it’s not specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er – it’s not actu­al­ly at all Quak­er – but I like the think­ing behind Why You Should Start a Blog in 2019 by Ernie Smith in Tedi­um. Long-time read­ers will know I usu­al­ly have at least a post a year in which I blog about blog­ging. This time I’ll let Ernie talk about the ratio­nales and needs for a blog­ging culture:

We could use a lit­tle momen­tum. A decade ago, as I was get­ting start­ed with this, plat­forms like Face­book took advan­tage of our desire for a sim­pler option and used it to silo up our data, lock and key. We lost an excit­ing blo­gos­phere in the midst of all of this — and the first step towards get­ting it back is by real­iz­ing that own­er­ship should be a first class cit­i­zen, whether or not we even­tu­al­ly give away those words, sell them, or keep them close to our chest. A blog that you own, that you pay the host­ing bill for? That’s the first step — a form of expres­sion that should be the future (because after all, how awe­some is it that any­one can own a print­ing press?!?) but some­how became the past.

I haven’t been updat­ing this Quak­er Dai­ly Read as much as I’d like over the last month or so. That’s part­ly the result of an ear­ly Decem­ber vaca­tion and then the chaos of late Decem­ber hol­i­days with the fam­i­ly. I’m sure I’ve missed some great posts that I should have shared but there’s also days when I run through my RSS col­lec­tion (I use Feed­ly to fol­low about a hun­dred or so blogs) and find noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh or inter­est­ing. I’d love to see more of us trad­ing the Face­book dopamine-rush imme­di­a­cy for some more thought­ful writ­ing and conversation.

https://​tedi​um​.co/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​0​1​/​2​0​1​9​-​i​n​d​e​p​e​n​d​e​n​t​-​b​l​o​g​g​i​n​g​-​t​r​e​n​ds/

New eBook “Remixing Faith” Now Available

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Wess Daniels:

I have put this talk togeth­er in ebook form com­plete with lots of pic­tures and illus­tra­tions and for­mat­ting that adds to the read­ing expe­ri­ence. I want­ed to share this with all of you and make it as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, so it is free to down­load. It should work with most modern-day eBook read­ers and apps. If that doesn’t work for you, I have also turned the talk into a down­load­able .PDF.

http://​gath​eringin​light​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​2​0​/​n​e​w​-​e​b​o​o​k​-​r​e​m​i​x​i​n​g​-​f​a​i​t​h​-​n​o​w​-​a​v​a​i​l​a​b​le/

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 

Political queries from an almost-Quaker

November 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Tim­o­thy Tay­lor on rad­i­cal objectivity:

But near what feels like an espe­cial­ly divi­sive elec­tion day, it seems worth pos­ing his insights as a chal­lenge for all of our par­ti­san beliefs. While I am not a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, I attend­ed a col­lege with Quak­er roots and mar­ried a 22nd-generation Quak­er. The Quak­ers have a term called a “query,” which refers to a ques­tion – some­times a chal­leng­ing or point­ed ques­tion– that is meant to be used as a basis for addi­tion­al reflection. 

His list isn’t real­ly in the style of clas­sic Quak­er queries (sur­prise). It’s the mod­ern style of lead­ing ques­tions that get called queries. Too often this form ends up being a rather trans­par­ent attempt to impose a kind of polit­i­cal ortho­doxy but Tay­lor’s ques­tions feel refresh­ing­ly chal­leng­ing and use­ful for what­ev­er side or non-side one takes in pol­i­tics. Hat­tip to Doug Ben­nett for the link.

http://​con​versableecon​o​mist​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​c​l​i​f​f​o​r​d​-​g​e​e​r​t​z​-​a​n​d​-​r​a​d​i​c​a​l​-​o​b​j​e​c​t​i​v​i​t​y​.​h​tml

The Doctrine of Discovery, white guilt, and Friends

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er starts with “it’s com­pli­cat­ed” and goes on from there. A pas­sage I find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is his expla­na­tion of why look­ing at large-scale state-level atroc­i­ties like the steal­ing of native land or the kid­nap­ping of mil­lions of Africans is not just some­thing to be done out of guilt:

Whether you believe in an intel­li­gent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wag­n­er’s ideas) or a more imper­son­al mech­a­nism of demon­ic evil (Wal­ter Wink), we should­n’t pre­tend that such nodes just go away. Their evil per­sists. The basis for apol­o­gy and repen­tance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to con­duct spir­i­tu­al war­fare against the demons of racism and oppres­sion and false wit­ness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can con­duct our future stew­ard­ship — and make our pub­lic invest­ments— in free­dom and mutu­al regard. 

I’m drawn to the old notion of “The Tempter” as a force that leads us to do what’s per­son­al­ly reward­ing rather than moral­ly just. I think it explains a lot of inter­nal strug­gles I’ve faced, even in sim­ple wit­ness­es. As Johan says, these mas­sive injus­tices can’t just be undone but they need to be rec­og­nized for the immen­si­ty of their scale. I’ve also seen this weird way in which pro­gres­sive whites can blithe­ly dis­re­gard Native Amer­i­can per­spec­tives on these issues. Lis­ten­ing more and wait­ing for com­pli­cat­ed answers seems essen­tial in my opinion.

Anoth­er good deep-dive for Friends inter­est­ed in this is Bet­sy Caz­den’s Friends Jour­nal 2006 arti­cle, Quak­er Mon­ey, Old Mon­ey, and White Priv­i­lege. It’s one I turn to every so often to remind myself of some of our monied Quak­er norms. Johan gives a pass to William Penn but I think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that his colo­nial ambi­tions were deeply enmeshed in at least three dif­fer­ent wars and con­ve­nient­ly served the polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions of two empires, the per­fect storm of an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a group of paci­fist idealists.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​i​t​s​.​h​tml

In the New Yorker, an article on atheism leads with a Daniel Seeger’s 1965 Supreme Court case

October 30, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A review of two books on athe­ism starts with the take of Dan Seeger, who’s land­mark Supreme Court case extend­ed the right to con­sci­en­tious objec­tor sta­tus to agnos­tics and atheists:

Daniel Seeger was twenty-one when he wrote to his local draft board to say, “I have con­clud­ed that war, from the prac­ti­cal stand­point, is futile and self-defeating, and from the more impor­tant moral stand­point, it is uneth­i­cal.” Some time lat­er, he received the Unit­ed States Selec­tive Ser­vice System’s Form 150, ask­ing him to detail his objec­tions to mil­i­tary ser­vice. It took him a few days to reply, because he had no answer for the form’s first ques­tion: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” Unsat­is­fied with the two avail­able options — “Yes” and “No” — Seeger final­ly decid­ed to draw and check a third box: “See attached pages.”

Seeger’s vic­to­ry helped mark a turn­ing point for a minor­i­ty that had once been denied so much as the right to tes­ti­fy in court, even in their own defense. Athe­ists, long dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by civ­il author­i­ties and derid­ed by their fellow-citizens, were sud­den­ly eli­gi­ble for some of the exemp­tions and pro­tec­tions that had pre­vi­ous­ly been restrict­ed to believers. 

Daniel Seeger has writ­ten for and been fea­tured in the pages of Friends Jour­nal many times over the ensu­ing decades but last year he wrote a great fea­ture for us about the court case, An AFSC Defense of the Rights of Con­science. A tip of the hat to Car­ol Holmes Alpern for send­ing this New York­er arti­cle way!

https://​www​.newyork​er​.com/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​2​0​1​8​/​1​0​/​2​9​/​w​h​y​-​a​r​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​s​t​i​l​l​-​u​n​c​o​m​f​o​r​t​a​b​l​e​-​w​i​t​h​-​a​t​h​e​ism