Tag Archives ⇒ friends journal

What is and isn’t Quaker, hunting edition

August 14, 2023
· Martin Kelley

On the face of it, it may be kind of weird for a veg­an like me to like an arti­cle about hunt­ing (much less pub­lish a recipe for squir­rel quiche) but any­one who brings in Thomas Clark­son to talk about Quak­er cul­tur­al val­ues is some­one I’ll lis­ten to.

[Clark­son’s] con­tem­po­raries were blind­ed by tra­di­tion and nev­er stopped to ask, “how far are they allow­able?” amidst con­cerns of human con­duct. Even the phras­ing “how far are they allow­able” sug­gests a lim­it. Per­haps hunt­ing is an allow­able and accept­able way of life up to a cer­tain point: that point being need­less vio­lence and danger.
Allowable Diversions
Allow­able Diversions 

A Friend explores the moral­i­ty of hunting.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

What is a Quaker Book of Faith and Practice?

June 20, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Thomas Hamm is one of the most lit­er­ary Quak­er­S­peak inter­vie­wees — you could prob­a­bly take his raw tran­script and pub­lish it as a Friends Jour­nal arti­cle. But it’s good to have a YouTube-accessible expla­na­tion of one of the only for­mal com­pendi­ums of belief and prac­tices that we creed-adverse Friends pro­duce. It’s also fas­ci­nat­ing to learn how the pur­pose and struc­ture of Faith and Prac­tice has dif­fered over time, geog­ra­phy, and theology.

What do Quak­ers believe? How do we prac­tice our faith? The best place to look for the answers might be in a book of faith and prac­tice. Here’s what they are and how they evolved over time.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​b​o​o​k​-​o​f​-​f​a​i​t​h​-​a​n​d​-​p​r​a​c​t​i​ce/

Half forgotten Philadelhpia Quaker cemetery at center of development controversy

May 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

As report­ed in the Philadel­phia Inquirer:

How many skele­tons might remain buried? Pos­si­bly thou­sands, accord­ing to archae­ol­o­gists, but no one knows. His­tor­i­cal maps are unclear on the ceme­ter­ies’ bound­aries, but numer­ous his­to­ries por­tray the grounds as used first by Quak­ers and then by the poor, whose num­bers increased along with the size of the city. 

They quote the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who had heard noth­ing about this. The arti­cle also cites a 1880s arti­cle in Friends Intel­li­gencer, the pre­de­ces­sor to Friends Jour­nal.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​a​r​t​s​/​s​c​h​u​y​l​k​i​l​l​-​y​a​r​d​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​e​m​e​t​e​r​i​e​s​-​p​h​i​l​a​d​e​l​p​h​i​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​b​r​a​n​d​y​w​i​n​e​-​d​r​e​x​e​l​-​2​0​1​9​0​5​0​2​.​h​tml

George Fox Speaking

April 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

At some point 18 months ago, we at Friends Jour­nal decid­ed that a future issue would revolve around humor. I remem­ber feel­ing a lump in my stom­ach at the time. I’ve learned to stop and poll my moti­va­tions before mak­ing a Quaker-related joke — not to see if it’s fun­ny, but to make sure that at least most Quak­ers might think it’s fun­ny. Well, that humor issue is out and avail­able online. Many of the fea­tures talk about humor but the first fea­ture actu­al­ly aims for humor itself. Don McCormick imag­ines Quak­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ures brought into modern-day cable news pro­gram­ming as they describe some of our rather odd customs.

George gives the cam­era a steely-TV-anchorman-type look and says, “Hel­lo, this is the evening edi­tion of Fox News. George Fox speak­ing. For our first sto­ry, let’s turn to Will ‘the Quill’ Penn at the sports desk.”

“Good evening,” says Will. “Well, it’s half-time over at Sier­ra Friends Center’s out­door bas­ket­ball court, and the Wool­man Wom­bats are bat­tling it out with the Quak­er Oafs. Both teams just com­plet­ed the league’s required work­shops on non­vi­o­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the Alter­na­tives to Vio­lence Project. The score at half-time is zero to zero. We have some footage from the sec­ond quarter.” 


Fox News: George Fox Speaking

Fox News: George Fox Speaking 

Our favorite news anchor goes on loca­tion with Will “The Quill” Penn and an assort­ment of dubi­ous­ly fact-checked…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

What Does the Outside Say?

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Also in Friends Jour­nal’s issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house,” a piece from Brad Stock­er of Mia­mi Meet­ing in Florida:

Most Friends have an under­stand­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al mes­sage that our meet­ing­hous­es express. We under­stand the sim­plic­i­ty of the struc­ture. We under­stand the rea­son there are no steeples or cross­es on the out­side and why we have clear win­dows placed so as to invite the light to enter. We are equal­ly sen­si­tive to inte­ri­or design. While we come into fre­quent, inti­mate con­tact with the meet­ing­house exte­ri­or, and the land it sits on, we may be less aware of the mes­sage they convey. 

There may be a lit­tle whiplash to talk about but­ter­fly gar­dens after the recent arti­cle on Quak­er wor­ship from prison but I like the inten­tion­al­i­ty of Stock­er’s obser­va­tions: we are always mak­ing state­ments with the care (or non-care) of our phys­i­cal space. Miami’s the kind of coastal city where cli­mate change is very much not a the­o­ret­i­cal issue and Stock­er is very involved in his year­ly meet­ing’s earth­care edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives. The meet­ing­house grounds are a place to mod­el good stew­ard­ship; tak­ing the care to have them be invit­ing and qui­et­ly demon­stra­tive of Quak­er val­ues is impor­tant outreach.

Another Quaker(ish) president?

March 4, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Because the Quak­er pres­i­den­tial track record is so dis­tin­guished (Her­bert Hoover, Richard Nixon) maybe it’s time to put anoth­er Quak­er into the Oval Office. John Hick­en­loop­er, for­mer gov­er­nor of Col­orado and raised in the Philly sub­urbs, has thrown his hat into the ring.

Back in 2010 he told the Philadel­phia Inquir­er he and his wife were reg­u­lar meet­ing atten­ders liv­ing “Quak­er val­ues” but when Friends Jour­nal reached out to him a few years ago it sound­ed like he no longer iden­ti­fied as a Friend.


John Hickenlooper Says He Is Running in 2020, Citing a ‘Crisis of Division’ (Published 2019)

John Hick­en­loop­er Says He Is Run­ning in 2020, Cit­ing a ‘Cri­sis of Divi­sion’ (Pub­lished 2019) 

The for­mer Col­orado gov­er­nor joins a crowd­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic field. Even in his home state, there is skep­ti­cism that…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Quakerly competition?

February 13, 2019
· Martin Kelley

A quick update that we at Friends Jour­nal have extend­ed the dead­line for an upcom­ing issue on Friends and com­pe­ti­tion. It’s a real­ly inter­est­ing top­ic and I’d like to see some more arti­cles to choose from. In my “Edi­tor’s Desk” post try­ing to drum up writ­ing inter­est, I dug through the FJ archives to find pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions on the top­ic. I’ll excerpt a few here:

If you look back through Friends Jour­nal archives, you’ll find warn­ings against com­pet­i­tive behav­ior. In 1955 Bess B. Lane of Swarth­more (Pa.) Meet­ing wrote that schools should “Place empha­sis on coop­er­a­tion, shar­ing, rather than on com­pe­ti­tion” and won­dered if “com­pe­ti­tion is being over­stressed in our schools.” In 1972, Christo­pher H. Ander­son, then a senior at Wilm­ing­ton Col­lege, had stronger words. He con­trast­ed his Quak­er edu­ca­tion with pub­lic schools, which he said “breed a social con­for­mi­ty, an intel­lec­tu­al bland­ness and a repug­nant spir­it of competition.”

If you know any­one who is inter­est­ed in the top­ic, please for­ward this along!


Friendly Competition? Writing deadline extended to Feb 25

Friend­ly Com­pe­ti­tion? Writ­ing dead­line extend­ed to Feb 25 

Learn more about writ­ing for our May issue on competition.

Friends Journal Friends Journal