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Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts

March 9, 2005
· Martin Kelley

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly thought of Beppe­blog’s  Joe Gua­da as my blog­ging Quak­er dopple­ganger. More than once he’s writ­ten the post I was about to write. And more than one impor­tant arti­cle of mine start­ed as com­men­tary to one of his insight­ful articles.

So I’m wor­ried that he’s writ­ten the first of a mul­ti­part arti­cle ask­ing Is it time to leave Quak­erism. I’m wor­ried not just that Quak­erism would lose a bright Light, etc., etc, but because I know that now I’m going to have to pub­licly mull over the ques­tion that’s a con­stant back­ground hum that I try not to think about.

Update: just to prove my point, my com­ment to Joe’s post was more inter­est­ing that my post point­ing to his post. Here’s the com­ment I just left there:

There was one day in wor­ship a few years ago right around the time when my wife Julie decid­ed to leave Quak­erism when I had this odd vision. I imag­ined us as boul­ders the front edge of a water­fall. Thou­sands of gal­lons of water swept over us every day, erod­ing and scar­ring our sur­face and under­min­ing the frag­ile base we were on. When Boul­der Julie final­ly dis­lodged and fell off the precipice of Quak­erism, I real­ized that one of the rocks that had held me in place was now gone and now there was going to be even more water and pres­sure try­ing to push me off.
I say this because you’ve become one of my blog­ging rocks, some­one who con­firms that I’m not a total nut­case. If you went over the edge I’d have to reassess my sit­u­a­tion and at least take a peek down myself. At the very least I’m going to have to blog about why I’ve stayed so long. I’m sure this is only part one to my com­men­tary on these issues…

Unpopular Baby Names: Avoiding the Jacobs, Emilys and Madisons

February 20, 2005
· Martin Kelley

My wife has now fin­ished the first trimester of her preg­nan­cy so we can let peo­ple know that our lit­tle Theo’s going to be a big broth­er this fall. That means it’s time to think of baby names.

Fallen Baby Names List
Name Rank:
1900		 Rank:
2003		 Drop Name Rank:
1900		 Rank:
2003		 Drop
1 Her­bert 32 962 930 1 Edna 17 986 969
2 Her­man 45 974 929 2 Louise 24 977 953
3 Floyd 50 964 914 3 Beat­rice 44 982 938
4 J 35 920 885 4 Bertha 26 963 937
5 Fred 19 876 857 5 Gladys 15 945 930
6 Earl 27 882 855 6 Lucille 49 954 905
7 Clarence 18 717 699 7 Dorothy 7 846 839
8 Howard 30 721 691 8 Hazel 20 681 661
9 Alfred 33 683 650 9 Edith 25 683 658
10 Ralph 23 660 637 10 Frances 16 580 564
11 Elmer 36 654 618 11 Irene 21 581 560
12 Harold 15 595 580 12 Marie 8 496 488
13 Ernest 26 599 573 13 Martha 31 487 456
14 Eugene 49 578 529 14 Alice 10 426 416
15 Leonard 48 571 523 15 Helen 2 389 387
16 Har­ry 13 517 504 16 Ruth 5 350 345
17 Fran­cis 37 509 472 17 Rose 14 358 344
18 Willie 28 454 426 18 Annie 28 339 311
19 Roy 24 433 409 19 Clara 23 295 272
20 Wal­ter 11 356 345 20 Esther 30 297 267
21 Arthur 14 353 339 21 Josephine 33 260 227
22 Carl 20 357 337 22 Eva 39 215 176
23 Lawrence 34 344 310 23 Ruby 42 197 155
24 Albert 16 311 295 24 Mar­garet 3 130 127
25 Joe 38 321 283 25 Cather­ine 19 106 87
26 Theodore 42 313 271 26 Lau­ra 50 122 72
27 Louis 21 278 257 27 Mary 1 61 60
28 Leo 44 288 244 28 Eve­lyn 34 89 55
29 Frank 8 228 220 29 Anna 4 21 17
30 Ray­mond 22 188 166 30 Eliz­a­beth 6 9 3
31 George 4 137 133 31 Mil­dred 9 n/a 0
32 Edward 9 128 119 32 Flo­rence 11 n/a 0
33 Paul 17 124 107 33 Ethel 12 n/a 0
34 Hen­ry 10 116 106 34 Lil­lian 13 n/a 0
35 Peter 46 148 102 35 Gertrude 22 n/a 0
36 Ken­neth 47 109 62 36 Mabel 27 n/a 0
37 Richard 25 86 61 37 Bessie 32 n/a 0
38 Charles 6 59 53 38 Elsie 35 n/a 0
39 Robert 7 35 28 39 Pearl 36 n/a 0
40 Thomas 12 36 24 40 Agnes 37 n/a 0
41 John 1 17 16 41 Thel­ma 38 n/a 0
42 James 3 18 15 42 Myr­tle 40 n/a 0
43 William 2 11 9 43 Ida 41 n/a 0
44 Jack 41 46 5 44 Min­nie 43 n/a 0
45 Joseph 5 6 1 45 Vio­la 47 n/a 0
46 Samuel 31 23 -8 46 Nel­lie 48 n/a 0
47 David 29 14 -15 47 Grace 18 13 -5
48 Antho­ny 43 10 -33 48 Julia 45 33 -12
49 Andrew 40 5 -35 49 Emma 29 2 -27
50 Michael 39 2 -37 50 Sarah 46 12 -34

Most new par­ents want to give their child unique names and want to steer clear of the most over-used names. Yet if you tell your friends you’re nam­ing your boy Jacob or Joshua, they’ll all cheer you on. If your lit­tle girl goes by Emi­ly, Emma or Madi­son, they’ll think that’s dar­ling. Yet those are the top three boy and girl names for 2003.

They are tens of thou­sands of kids get­ting these top names every year. All of the kids with these names are going to be get­ting nick­names to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them from one anoth­er: just hope your lit­tle angel isn’t the one that gets tagged “The Ugly Emi­ly” or “The Stu­pid Joshua” by their third grade classmates!

There are def­i­nite trends in names. Cer­tain names tend to sound fresh and dar­ing even when they’re overused and trite. The only way to train your ear away from such trends is to method­i­cal­ly study the data (the New York Times had a fas­in­cat­ing arti­cle on all this when we were pon­der­ing Theo’s name, Where Have All the Lisas Gone?).

For­tu­nate­ly the U.S. Social Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion pro­vides a list of the most pop­u­lar baby names by year, going back to the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Using this, my wife and I were able to choose “Theodore” for our first child’s name; born in 2003, he name is the 313th most pop­u­lar boy’s name and drop­ping. Yet it’s a known name and there have been great twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry folks who have answered to it (e.g., Dr. Suess, Theodore Geisel).

How is a par­ent to choose? One recent after­noon I cut and past­ed the top fifty boy and girl names of the first decade of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. I looked up their cur­rent sta­tus (the 2003 data) to see what move­ment has occured in their place­ment. The old names are still known but some have fall­en far out of use. Her­bert, for exam­ple, was the 32nd most pop­u­lar boy’s name in the first decade of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, but now ranks a dis­mal 930! If you want a name every­one knows but no one is giv­ing their kid, Her­bert’s your choice for boy’s and Edna’s your choice for girls.

Now these fall­en names prob­a­bly sound awk­ward. But that’s the point: they run counter to the trends. I’ll admit that some deserve their reduced sta­tus; I can­not imag­ine sad­dling a lit­tle girl with “Edna.” But in the list are some gems which have been undu­ly demot­ed by the trend-setters.

We’ve been very hap­py with “Theodore,” the 26th most fall­en name of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. He’s offi­cial­ly named after his great-great uncle. The social secu­ri­ty date­base assured us that the name was safe from trendiness.

So what will the new baby be named? Check in soon!! The due date is the end of August.

Update: drum­roll please.… Our new son’s name is Fran­cis! And fur­ther follow-up brought us Gre­go­ry and Lau­ra. We’re offi­cial­ly out of the baby-making game now but if we were look­ing for more, Walt and Dorothy would be our next picks of classic-but-uncommon names.

Arnold: Losing Our Religion

December 31, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Johann Christoph Arnold has an inter­est­ing piece on the inter­sec­tion of peace activism and reli­gion [orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Non​vi​o​lence​.org]. Here’s a taste:

The day before Mar­tin Luther King was mur­dered he said, “Like any­body, I would like to live a long life…But I’m not con­cerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.” We must have this same desire if we are going to sur­vive the fear and vio­lence and mass con­fu­sion of our time. And we should be as unabashed about let­ting peo­ple know that it is our reli­gious faith that moti­vates us, regard­less of the set­ting or the consequences.

Many peace activists are dri­ven by reli­gious moti­va­tions, which is often all that keeps them going through all the hard times and non-appreciation. Yet we often present our­selves to the world in a sec­u­lar way using ratio­nal arguments.

It took me a few years to real­ly admit to myself that Non​vi​o​lence​.org is a min­istry inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed with my Quak­er faith. In the eight years it’s been going, thou­sands of web­sites have sprung up with good inten­tions and hype only to dis­ap­pear into obliv­ion (or the inter­net equiv­a­lent, the line read­ing “Last updat­ed July 7, 1997”). I have a sep­a­rate forum for “Quak­er reli­gious and peace issues” [which lat­er became the gen­er­al Quak­er­Ran­ter blog] In my essay on the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny, I wor­ry that mod­ern reli­gious paci­fists have spent so much effort con­vinc­ing the world that paci­fism makes sense from a strict­ly ratio­nal­ist view­point that we’ve large­ly for­got­ten our own moti­va­tions. Don’t get me wrong: I think paci­fism also makes sense as a prag­mat­ic pol­i­cy; while mil­i­tary solu­tions might be quick­er, paci­fism can bring about the long-term changes that break the cycle of mil­i­tarism. But how can we learn to bal­ance the shar­ing of both our prag­mat­ic and reli­gious motivations?

 

Are Catholics More Quaker?

November 16, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I guess folks might won­der why the son of the Quak­er Ranter is get­ting bap­tized in a Roman Catholic church…

[box]An updat­ed note before I start: I don’t want this to be seen as a cri­tique or put-down of any par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als but to point out what seems to me to be a pret­ty obvi­ous larg­er dynam­ic with­in Quak­erism: our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams have not been doing a very good job at trans­mit­ting our faith to our young peo­ple. One mea­sure of such pro­grams is how many chil­dren we retain as actively-participating adults; by such mea­sures I think we can say Quak­ers are failing.

And, a few per­haps obvi­ous dis­claimers: 1) there are deeply faith­ful peo­ple who grew up in Young Friends pro­grams; 2) there are reli­gious ed instruc­tors who are wor­ried about the mes­sage we’re giv­ing our young peo­ple and fret as I do; 3) there are a lot of mem­bers of the RSoF who just don’t think teach­ing dis­tinct­ly Quak­er faith­ful­ness is impor­tant and would­n’t agree that there’s a problem.

I don’t think it’s use­ful to read this with­out also look­ing to my ear­ly arti­cle, The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which mourns the friends I’ve seen drop out of Quak­erism (many of them “birthright,” i.e., born into Quak­er fam­i­lies), and We’re all Ranters Now, which argues that our soci­ety of seek­ers needs to become a soci­ety of find­ers if we are to be able to artic­u­late a faith to transmit.
[/box]

On June 30, 2000, Julie and I met at a nation­al gath­er­ing of Quak­ers. Four­teen months lat­er we were mar­ried at the Wood­stown Friends Meet­ing­house under the care of the Atlantic City Area Friends Meet­ing. Rough­ly four­teen months lat­er, when the sparkles in our eyes were meet­ing with an approv­ing nod from God and our baby was con­ceived, I was co-clerk of Atlantic City Area Meet­ing and Julie was clerk of its Out­reach Com­mit­tee. Ten months lat­er, our infant son Theo was bap­tized at Mater Eccle­si­ae Roman Catholic Church in Berlin, N.J. It’s Julie’s new church; I myself remain Quak­er, but with­out a Meet­ing I can quite call home. What happened?

I don’t want to try to speak for Julie and why she left Friends to return to the faith she was brought up in. But I do have to tes­ti­fy that the rev­er­ence, spir­it and authen­tic­i­ty of the wor­ship at Mater Eccle­si­ae is deep­er than that in most Friends Meet­ing­hous­es. It’s a church with a lot of mem­bers who seem to believe in the real pres­ence of Christ. A dis­claimer that Mater Eccle­si­ae is unusu­al, one of the few church­es in the coun­try that uses the tra­di­tion­al Tri­den­tine Mass or Roman Rite, and that it attracts ardent fol­low­ers who have self-selected them­selves, in that they’re not going to their local parish church. I don’t think it’s the Catholi­cism alone that draws Julie – I think the pur­pose­ful­ness of the wor­shipers is a large piece. Despite all the dis­trac­tions (chants, Latin, rote con­fes­sions of faith: I’m speak­ing as a Friend), the wor­ship there is unusu­al­ly gath­ered. But more: there’s a ground­ed­ness to the faith. In a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion the priest explained to me the ways he thought Quak­erism was wrong. I was­n’t offend­ed – quite the con­trary, I loved it! It was so refresh­ing to meet some­one who believed what he believed, (Hey, if I did­n’t believe in the degen­er­a­tion of the Roman Catholic Church or the emp­ty pro­fes­sions of hireling priests, I might join him. I also feel com­fort­able pre­dict­ing that he would wel­come my joust­ing here.)

What I can talk about is my mis­giv­ings about the prospect of rais­ing up Theo as a Quak­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. The weak­est ele­ment of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is its chil­dren’s reli­gious edu­ca­tion. This is some­thing I’ve seen man­i­fest­ed in two dif­fer­ent kinds of ways: con­tent and results.

Quak­ers have remark­ably few expec­ta­tions of their chil­dren. It’s con­sid­ered remark­able if old­er chil­dren spend a whole ten min­utes in Meet­ing for Wor­ship (I’ve heard adult birthright Friends boast that they’ve nev­er sat through a whole hour of Quak­er wor­ship). Quak­ers are obsessed about lis­ten­ing to what chil­dren have to say, and so nev­er share with them what they believe. I’ve known adults birthright Friends who have nev­er had con­ver­sa­tions with their par­ents about the basis of their faith.

Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often for­go teach­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­er faith and prac­tice for more fad­dish beliefs. The base­ment walls of the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing youth cen­ter is paint­ed over with danc­ing gods, while of the big events of the Young Friends’ annu­al cal­en­dar is a “Quak­er sweat lodge”. A cul­ture of touch and phys­i­cal­i­ty (“cud­dle pud­dles”, back­rubs) is thought charm­ing and immod­est dress is con­sid­ered a sign of rebel­lious indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Quak­er schools pub­lish brochures say­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship is all about “think­ing, with God giv­en lit­tle notice.” When Quak­ers want to have “inter­gen­er­a­tional” wor­ship, they feel they have to pro­gram it with some sort of attention-keeping play­time activ­i­ty (Mater Eccle­si­ae echoes Quak­er tra­di­tion here: “inter­gen­er­a­tional” means chil­dren sit­ting through and par­tic­i­pat­ing in Mass with the adults).

Too many of the peo­ple my age and Julie’s who were brought up at Friends are igno­rant of basic Quak­er beliefs and are unaware of Quak­er tra­di­tions (FUM, EFI, Con­ser­v­a­tives) out­side the easy-going East Coast lib­er­al­ism they were raised in. For them being a Friend is act­ing a cer­tain way, believ­ing a cer­tain brand of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and being part of a cer­tain social group. Too many Young Adult Friends I’ve known over the years are cliquish, irre­li­gious, and have more than their share of issues around inti­ma­cy and sexuality.

Don’t get me wrong: these kids are often real­ly good peo­ple, chil­dren to be proud of, doing great things in the world. Many of them are open-hearted, spiritually-sensitive, and in deeply ground­ed rela­tion­ships. But only a very few are prac­tic­ing Quak­ers. And when I look at the reli­gious edu­ca­tion they get, I can’t say I’m sur­prised. If I were to raise Theo as a Quak­er, I would have to “home school” him away from most of the reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams offered local­ly. When all the kids scram­ble out of wor­ship after ten min­utes I’d have to say “no” and tell him to keep sit­ting – how weird would that be?

Theo has a bet­ter chance of shar­ing the tra­di­tion­al Quak­er val­ues of the pres­ence of Christ, of Holy Obe­di­ence, and of bear­ing the cross by being raised as a Catholic in a tra­di­tion­al­ist church. It’s more like­ly he’ll turn out Quak­er if he’s bap­tised at Mater Eccle­si­ae. Julie and I will be teach­ing him rev­er­ence by exam­ple. I’ll share my Quak­er faith with him. I’m sure he’ll par­tic­i­pate in Quak­er events, but con­scious­ly, selec­tive­ly, guard­ed­ly (in the old Quak­er sense).

If Friends believe they have a faith worth holdling, they should also believe they have a faith worth pass­ing on. Do we?

Related Reading

  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”
  • I touch on these issues from the oth­er side in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which is about the twenty- and thirty-something Friends that have drift­ed away

The Lost Quaker Generation

September 30, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The oth­er day I had lunch with an old friend of mine, a thirty-something Quak­er very involved in nation-wide paci­fist orga­niz­ing. I had lost touch with him after he entered a fed­er­al jail for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Plow­shares action but he’s been out for a few years and is now liv­ing in Philly.

We talked about a lot of stuff over lunch, some of it just move­ment gos­sip. But we also talked about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. He has left the Soci­ety of Friends and has become re-involved in his par­ents’ reli­gious tra­di­tions. It did­n’t sound like this deci­sion had to do with any new reli­gious rev­e­la­tion that involved a shift of the­ol­o­gy. He sim­ply became frus­trat­ed at the lack of Quak­er seriousness.

It’s a dif­fer­ent kind of frus­tra­tion than the one I feel but I won­der if it’s not all con­nect­ed. He was drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change. It was this com­bi­na­tion that has helped pow­er his social action wit­ness over the years. It would seem like his seri­ous, faith­ful work would be just what Friends would like to see in their thirty-something mem­bers but alas, it’s not so. He did­n’t feel sup­port­ed in his Plow­shares action by his Meeting.

He con­clud­ed that the Friends in his Meet­ing did­n’t think the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to be so bold. He said two of his Quak­er heroes were John Wool­man and Mary Dyer but real­ized that the pas­sion of wit­ness that drove them was­n’t appre­ci­at­ed by today’s peace and social con­cerns com­mit­tees. The rad­i­cal mys­ti­cism that is sup­posed to dri­ve Friends’ prac­tice and actions have been replaced by a bland­ness that felt threat­ened by some­one who could choose to spend years in jail for his witness.

I can relate to his dis­ap­point­ment. I wor­ry about what kinds of actions are being done in the name of the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny, which has lost most of its his­toric mean­ing and pow­er among con­tem­po­rary Friends. It’s invoked most often now by sec­u­lar­ized, safe com­mit­tees that use a ratio­nal­ist approach to their decision-making, meant to appeal to oth­ers (includ­ing non-Friends) based sole­ly on the mer­its of the argu­ments. NPR activism, you might say. Reli­gion isn’t brought up, except in the rather weak for­mu­la­tions that Friends are “a com­mu­ni­ty of faith” or believe there is “that of God in every­one” (what­ev­er these phras­es mean). That we are led to act based on instruc­tions from the Holy Spir­it direct­ly is too off the deep end for many Friends, yet the peace tes­ti­mo­ny is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tes­ti­mo­ny to our faith in God’s pow­er over human­i­ty, our sur­ren­der to the will of Christ enter­ing our hearts with instruc­tions which demand our obedience.

But back to my friend, the ex-Friend. I feel like he’s just anoth­er eroded-away grain of sand in the delta of Quak­er decline. He’s yet anoth­er Friend that Quak­erism can’t afford to loose, but which Quak­erism has lost. No one’s mourn­ing the fact that he’s lost, no one has bare­ly noticed. Know­ing Friends, the few that have noticed have prob­a­bly not spent any time reach­ing out to him to ask why or see if things could change and they prob­a­bly defend their inac­tion with self-congratulatory pap about how Friends don’t pros­e­ly­tize and look how lib­er­al we are that we say noth­ing when Friends leave.

God!, this is ter­ri­ble. I know of DOZENS of friends in my gen­er­a­tion who have drift­ed away from or deci­sive­ly left the Soci­ety of Friends because it was­n’t ful­fill­ing its promise or its hype. No one in lead­er­ship posi­tions in Quak­erism is talk­ing about this lost gen­er­a­tion. I know of very few thirty-something Friends who are involved nowa­days and very very few of them are the kind of pas­sion­ate, mys­ti­cal, obedient-to-the-Spirit ser­vants that Quak­erism needs to bring some life back into it. A whole gen­er­a­tion is lost – my fel­low thirty-somethings – and now I see the pas­sion­ate twenty-somethings I know start­ing to leave. Yet this exo­dus is one-by-one and goes large­ly unre­marked and unno­ticed (but then I’ve already post­ed about this: It will be in decline our entire lives).

 

Update 10/2005

I feel like I should add an adden­dum to all this. As I’ve spo­ken with more Friends of all gen­er­a­tions, I’ve noticed that the atten­tion to younger Friends is cycli­cal. There’s a thirty-year cycle of snub­bing younger Friends (by which I mean Friends under 40). Back in the 1970s, all twenty-year-old with a pulse could get recog­ni­tion and sup­port from Quak­er meet­ings; I know a lot of Friends of that gen­er­a­tion who were giv­en tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties despite lit­tle expe­ri­ence. A decade lat­er the doors had start­ed to close but a hard-working faith­ful Friend in their ear­ly twen­ties could still be rec­og­nized. By the time my gen­er­a­tion came along, you could be a whirl­wind of great ideas and ener­gy and still be shut out of all oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

The good news is that I think things are start­ing to change. There’s still a long way to go but a thaw is upon us. In some ways this is inevitable: much of the cur­rent lead­er­ship of Quak­er insti­tu­tions is retir­ing. Even more, I think they’re start­ing to real­ize it. There are prob­lems, most notably tokenism — almost all of the younger Friends being lift­ed up now are the chil­dren of promi­nent “com­mit­tee Friends.” The biggest prob­lem is that a few dozen years of lax reli­gious edu­ca­tion and “roll your own Quak­erism” means that many of the mem­bers of the younger gen­er­a­tion can’t even be con­sid­ered spir­i­tu­al Quak­ers. Our meet­ing­hous­es are seen as a place to meet oth­er cool, pro­gres­sive young hip­sters, while spir­i­tu­al­i­ty is sought from oth­er sources. We’re going to be spend­ing decades untan­gling all this and we’re not going to have the sea­soned Friends of my gen­er­a­tion to help bridge the gaps.

Relat­ed Reading

  • After my friend Chris post­ed below I wrote a follow-up essay, Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­ers Style.
  • Many old­er Friends hope that a resur­gence of the peace move­ment might come along and bring younger Friends in. In Peace and Twenty-Somethings I look at the gen­er­a­tional strains in the peace movement.
  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”

 

It will be there in decline our entire lives

August 1, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A lot of the gen­er­a­tional prob­lems I see affect­ing Quak­erism are not unique to us. The val­ues of the Six­ties gen­er­a­tion have become the the new oppres­sive ortho­doxy. In Quak­erism, our “free­dom from” (the past, Chris­tian­i­ty, the tes­ti­monies under­stood as the reflec­tions of faith) has become near­ly com­plete, which means it’s become bor­ing, and sti­fling. There’s a refusal to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for mat­ters of faith and so all truth is judged by how it affects one’s own indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al­i­ty (we’re all Ranters now, hence my web­site’s name). Where Friends once talked about the death of the rebel­lious self-will and the bear­ing the cross, we now end­less­ly share self-absorbed sto­ries of our “spir­i­tu­al jour­neys” (does it real­ly mat­ter, has­n’t Christ got­ten us all here now and isn’t that the point?), while we toss out pseudo-religious feel-good buzz­words like “nur­ture” and “com­mu­ni­ty” like they’re par­ty favors.

I often feel like I’m talk­ing to a brick wall when I talk about these issues (can’t we just all be nur­tur­ing with­out being told to, sim­ply because it’s the right way to be?). For­tu­nate­ly, there are some fas­ci­nat­ing sites from thirty-somethings also see­ing through the gen­er­a­tional cri­sis affect Chris­tians. Right now I’m read­ing Pas­toral Soft­ness, a post from Jor­dan Coop­er, a pas­tor in a com­mu­ni­ty church in Saskatchewan, and this para­graph just hits me so hard:

The mod­ern church is not going to lis­ten to us, it won’t affirm us, or give us any of its resources there is no point any­more in let­ting it get to us. It will be there in decline our entire lives and will prob­a­bly go down fight­ing and wast­ing a lot of lives and mon­ey but to let that define us spir­i­tu­al­ly will be an even big­ger loss. We can’t blame it for being what it is and if we are going to have a long term future in serv­ing God, we need to stop look­ing at our envi­ron­ment and instead in our hearts.

Seri­ous stuff, indeed, and I sus­pect some Friends would elder me for even repeat­ing it. But its real­ly the same mes­sage that Christ gave a young man 350 years ago:

When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy con­di­tion”; and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my con­di­tion, name­ly, that I might give Him all the glo­ry. (Jour­nal of George Fox)

Every­one knows the first part but it’s the last sen­tence that’s been speak­ing to me for at least the last year. Does Christ make the insi­tu­tions fail us just so He can direct our gaze to the true Source? And isn’t this what Quak­er sim­plic­i­ty is all about: keep­ing our minds as undis­tract­ed as pos­si­ble so we can see the real deal?

Coop­er did an inter­view with Robert Web­ber, an author I know noth­ing about but who’s appar­ent­ly writ­ten a few books deal­ing with the new gen­er­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. I some­times stum­ble across peo­ple and won­der if there’s not some kin­dred cul­ture out there that’s just out of reach because it’s sup­pos­ed­ly on some oth­er side of an the­o­log­i­cal rift. Any­way, Web­ber says:

The prag­mat­ic church­es have become insti­tu­tion­al­ized — with some excep­tions. They respond­ed to the six­ties and sev­en­ties, cre­at­ed a culture-driven church and don’t get that the world has changed again. Prag­mat­ics, being fixed, have lit­tle room for those who are shaped by the post­mod­ern revolution.

A lot of these evan­gel­i­cals are reach­ing for some­thing that looks very much like ear­ly Quak­erism (which self-consciously reached toward ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty). I’d like to think that Friends have some­thing to offer these seek­ers and that there could be a dynam­ic re-emergence of Quak­erism. But to be hon­est, most Quak­ers I know don’t have any­thing to offer these wea­ried seek­ers except more of the same hashed out insti­tu­tion­al­ism, with dif­fer­ent fla­vored top­pings (dif­fer­ences of social stands, e.g., paci­fism, atti­tudes towards gays). I know John Pun­shon­’s been talk­ing a lot about Quak­ers’ pos­si­ble inter­sec­tion with a larg­er renewed evan­ge­lism but I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read Rea­sons for Hopeyet. I’ll do that soon.

Update:
Com­par­i­son chart of tra­di­tion­al, prag­mat­ic, and younger evan­gel­i­cals from Robert Web­ber by way of Jor­dan Coop­er. Very interesting.

More Online Reading:
Lead­ing Dying Churches
Jor­dan Cooper
The Ooze
“Indieal­lies” Meet­up to con­nect with local read­ers of these sites

The Bean Defense

July 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Read­ers might remem­ber the field day I had a few weeks ago when US occu­py­ing forces announced they had uncov­ered a cache of beans. They claimed Sad­dam Hus­sein had stock­piled a few hun­dred bags of cas­tor beans to use to make a bio­log­i­cal agent called ricin. In my postUS: Iraqis Planned Oper­a­tion Fart and Stink I point­ed out that the sup­posed weapons worked on the well-documented prin­ci­ple that beans can pro­duce gas and indi­ges­tion – ricin just works espe­cial­ly well and con­cen­trates the effect enough to kill some­one in a par­tic­u­lar­ly messy way.

What I did­n’t do was Google ricin and Iraq. Today I did and found this fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle that I missed at the time. U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Col­in Pow­ell claimed an Iraq/ricin con­nec­tion before the House Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions Com­mit­tee back in ear­ly February:

“The ricin that is bounc­ing around Europe now orig­i­nat­ed in Iraq — not in the part of Iraq that is under Sad­dam Hus­sein’s con­trol, but his secu­ri­ty forces know all about it,” Pow­ell said.

Euro­pean intel­li­gence sources quick­ly dis­cred­it­ed this claim, point­ing out that it was obvi­ous the Euro­pean ricin was home-made and not Iraqi. The French were “stunned” that Pow­ell would make such a obviously-wrong state­ment, and the British flat­ly stat­ed they were “clear” that that ricin found in Lon­don was­n’t pro­duced in Iraq.

Here we have anoth­er instance of a senior US offi­cial claim­ing an easily-disprovable claim of Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion, just weeks after the now-infamous Niger/Iraq forgery appeared in the Pres­i­den­t’s State of the Union address. Pow­ell and oth­ers in the U.S. have trot­ted out the ricin threat repeat­ed­ly yet it’s hard to make a weapon out of the stuff. It’s real­ly only ever been used for a ridicu­lous James Bond-like assas­i­na­tion in 1991, when a Bul­gar­i­an agent is sup­posed to have killed a dis­si­dent in Lon­don using a ricin-filled pel­let fired from an umbrel­la tip (one is remind­ed of Austin Pow­er’s Dr. Evil: “I’m going to place him in an eas­i­ly escapable sit­u­a­tion involv­ing an over­ly elab­o­rate and exot­ic death”). As one site points out The cur­rent wis­dom among bio­log­i­cal defense experts is that ricin is more like­ly to be used as a tool in assas­si­na­tions than as a weapon of mass destruction.

There is a clear pat­tern of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion delib­er­ate­ly mis-interpreting Iraqi threats to make the case for war. These are pur­pose­ful decep­tions with only the thinnest escape clause to wig­gle through when the lies are exposed. Col­in Pow­ell isn’t stu­pid enough to make this kind of repeat­ed mis­take and a year of dis­proven ricin alerts is a mark against the Admin­is­tra­tion’s integrity.