Tag Archives ⇒ issue

Profiting on empire

April 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

We think of slav­ery as issue that tore Friends apart as the con­sen­sus on its accept­abil­i­ty shift­ed in our reli­gious soci­ety. A review of a book shows that in the U.K., gun man­u­fac­tur­ing under­went this shift: Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Chal­lenges the Role of War in Industrialization

On its face, the deci­sion by the Soci­ety of Friends to cen­sure a fla­grant arms mer­chant in its ranks may not seem sur­pris­ing. Paci­fist prin­ci­ples were cen­tral to Quak­er ide­ol­o­gy, as was oppo­si­tion to slav­ery. Guns fueled not just war but the slave trade. Yet Mr. Galton’s father, and his father before him — and indeed many oth­er Quak­ers who long dom­i­nat­ed Birmingham’s arms indus­try — had been unapolo­getic gun­mak­ers for 70 years with­out attract­ing rebuke. What had changed in the inter­im, in ways that are deeply inter­re­lat­ed, were soci­ety and the guns themselves.

Today the debate on guns in the U.S. is focused on assault weapons being used by indi­vid­u­als but the Gal­ton debate is more about the role of a Quaker-produced prod­uct in war. Britain of course was an empire, an empire held togeth­er by force of weapons. Some per­cent­age of the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion in Britain was financed by war and its prod­ucts often were employed over­seas in the main­te­nance and exten­sion of the empire (I’m think­ing for exam­ple of trains).

When I first read John Wool­man I was struck by his call­ing slav­ery a prod­uct of war. I usu­al­ly think of it as a human rights and dig­ni­ty issue (and of course it was and Wool­man was par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to the human dimen­sion) but it was also a type of high­ly orga­nized war­fare. See­ing the sys­temic nature of the trade as a whole let Friends bet­ter see the unac­cept­abil­i­ty of slav­ery — and impe­r­i­al weapons manufacturing.


Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Challenges the Role of War in Industrialization (Published 2018)

Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Chal­lenges the Role of War in Indus­tri­al­iza­tion (Pub­lished 2018) 

In her new book, Pro­fes­sor Priya Satia aims to over­turn the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom about the role of guns…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

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 

Authentic anecdotes

March 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I have some­thing of fas­ci­na­tion with the phe­nom­e­non of urban myths and mis­at­trib­uted quo­ta­tions. In the Jan­u­ary Friends Jour­nal I used the open­ing col­umn to track down “Live sim­ply so that oth­ers may sim­ply live,” a phrase that recurred in many of the arti­cles in the issue (the theme was Quak­er Lifestyles). Among Quak­ers, one of the more oft-told tales involves a mad prophet and his fair-haired noble protege…

It was late April on the north­ern moors and the win­ter had been espe­cial­ly harsh. Flow­ers were just start­ing to peek out of the ground as the farm­ers looked test­ed whether the soil was soft enough yet to plow. The noble­man dis­mount­ed his horse and asked the ham­let’s black­smith for directions.

It has been a long jour­ney. His ruf­fled silk shirt was dirty and full of the smells of a dozens of overnight acco­mo­da­tions in pig barns and lean-tos of the Eng­lish Mid­lands. His most-prized pos­ses­sion was spot­less, how­ev­er: the sil­ver sword giv­en him by his father, the admi­ral, last year on his eigh­teenth birth­day. It layed sheathed in its hand-stiched sheath.

The black­smith point­ed the for­eign­er to the path that crossed the dark moors toward the hill­side of Judge Fel­l’s estate. The manor house was the de fac­to head­quar­ters of the new cult that was scan­dal­iz­ing the King­dom, the Chil­dren of the Light. A short ten minute walk and our trav­el­er was face-to-face with the man he had come so far to see.

A long tum­ble of rehersed speach­es came out of the young man’s mouth as George Fox war­i­ly sized him up. The young William Penn want­ed to join the move­ment. Fox knew it would be a coup for the Chil­dren of the Light. Pen­n’s father was one of the wealth­i­est men in Eng­land and the fam­i­ly mon­ey could buy pro­tec­tion, fame, and land in the new colonies.

But Penn was­n’t quite ready. He had that sword. It would be a grave dis­re­spect to his father to leave it or give it away. “Friend George, what can I do?” The wise Fox knew that Penn was led to join. With a lit­tle encour­age­ment, it was a mat­ter of time the new appren­tice adopt­ed their paci­fist prin­ci­ples. Fox cleared his throat and answered: “Wear thy sword as long as thee can, young William.” Before tears could well in each man’s eyes they turned their atten­tion to logis­tics of a preach­ing trip to Lon­don. On their way out a few days lat­er, Penn qui­et­ly slipped back into a black­smith shop and gave away his sword. By the time they left the York­shire, farm­ers were work­ing the spring soil with their new sil­ver plowshares.

It is a beau­ti­ful sto­ry (which I’ve made even more melo­dra­mat­ic, because why not). Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s also fake.

Both George Fox and William Penn left behind dozens of vol­umes of writ­ings and mem­oirs. Their friend­ship was one of the most sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships for each of them. Sure­ly such a foun­da­tion­al sto­ry would have made it to print. Paul Buck­ley tracked down the sto­ry in “Time To Lay Down William Penn’s Sword” in the Decem­ber 2003 Friends Jour­nal.

The sword sto­ry is fake but it is also some­how true. Buck­ley calls it a “authen­tic anec­dote.” Every year Friends Jour­nal gets otherwise-wonderful essays whose nar­ra­tive turns on the sto­ry of William Pen­n’s sword. We can’t run them with­out cor­rec­tion so it falls on me to tell authors that the scene nev­er took place. Occa­sion­al­ly I’m told it does­n’t mat­ter that it’s not true.

What is the deep­er myth inside our beloved tall tales? First: they depend on the celebri­ty sta­tus of their char­ac­ters. If I sub­sti­tut­ed more obscure ear­ly Friends in the sword sto­ry — George White­head ask­ing Solomon Eccles, say — I doubt it would be as com­pelling or get repeat­ed as often.

Fame is an odd draw for modern-day Friends. There’s a baker’s-dozen of famous-enough Friends upon which we graft these sorts of sto­ries — John Wool­man, Lucre­tia Mott, Elias Hicks, Joseph John Gur­ney and his sis­ter Eliz­a­beth Fry. Chang­ing celebri­ty Quak­er’ sto­ries began ear­ly: edi­tors chopped out the embar­ras­ing bits of recently-departed Friends’ jour­nals. Dreams would get snipped out. George Fox’s accounts of mirac­u­lous heal­ings dis­ap­pear with his first edi­tor, pre­sum­ably wor­ried they would sound too wild

It’s prob­a­bly no coin­ci­dence that the Penn/Fox sto­ry dates back to the moment when Amer­i­can Friends split. The denom­i­na­tion’s ori­gin sto­ry was frac­tur­ing. Paul Buck­ley thinks the sword sto­ry pre­fig­ured the tol­er­ance and for­bear­ance of the Hick­site Friends. Philadelphia-area Friends healed that par­tic­u­lar wound almost three-quarters of a cen­tu­ry ago. What does it say about us today that this tale is still so pop­u­lar? Relat­ed read­ing, I tracked down anoth­er authen­tic anec­dote in 2016, “Bring peo­ple to Christ / Leave them there.”

On the State of Religious Discourse at Haverford

March 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This one only tan­gen­tial­ly skims Friends but it’s an inter­est­ing case. A inde­pen­dent stu­dent web­site at the historically-Quaker Haver­ford Col­lege decid­ed not to do a spe­cial issue on reli­gion and one stu­dent penned an arti­cle about why he dis­agrees: On the State of Reli­gious Dis­course at Haverford

Haver­ford is not immune to this plague: we too rel­e­gate reli­gious knowl­edge to a dimen­sion of the per­son­al. Con­sid­er­ing the reli­gious his­to­ry and Quak­er roots of our insti­tu­tion, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling. Haver­ford sells itself as a Quak­er insti­tu­tion, and there is a sense in which this is true, as there are cer­tain tra­di­tions at Haver­ford (speak­ing out of silence, quo­rum, con­fronta­tion, etc.), and yet the school split from orga­nized Quak­erism long ago, and one need only look at the last year to under­stand that we make deci­sions as an insti­tu­tion that are quite sep­a­ra­ble from any pro­mot­ed quak­er values.

Haver­ford’s offi­cial state­ment on its Quak­er iden­ti­ty is a rather strained two sen­tences, but in recent years it’s devel­oped a Quak­er Affairs pro­gram, which is cur­rent­ly led by the awe­some Wal­ter Sul­li­van. The pro­gram’s Friend in Res­i­dence pro­gram has brought in some great Quak­er thinkers on campus.

More on this top­ic soon as Friends Journal’s May issue will ask “What Are Quak­er Val­ues Any­way?” (Some of my pre­lim­i­nary thought are here).

A Friend’s journey to BDS

March 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s Friends Jour­nal fea­ture is a piece by Lau­ren Brown­lee, who’s writ­ten many book reviews for us, but only one fea­ture before this (“One Drop in the Wave of Lib­er­a­tion” about the new African Amer­i­can his­to­ry muse­um in D.C.). This time she talks about one of the more con­tentious issues of our day, the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Israel and Pales­tine, but does it very much in a Quak­er context.

What make it Quak­er? Well, she shares her per­son­al sto­ry of weigh­ing the sides on the issue, going from one view­point to anoth­er until she finds one that she can own. The process of dis­cern­ment is care­ful and not lin­ear. It lis­tens to par­ti­sans with­out itself becom­ing par­ti­san. As I write in my open­ing col­umn, “Her answer may not be your answer, but we hope her mod­el of dis­cern­ment is use­ful to read­ers.” She writes:

My great­est fear is hurt­ing peo­ple, and my new friend had made it clear that the worst con­se­quence of BDS is not inef­fi­ca­cy; it is caus­ing more pain to a peo­ple who have already great­ly suf­fered. I did have the oppor­tu­ni­ty ear­ly in the gath­er­ing to voice these obsta­cles to ful­ly embrac­ing the BDS Move­ment, and in fact, we all shared con­cerns that we had heard about advo­cat­ing for the movement


A Loving Quaker Journey to BDS - Friends Journal

A Lov­ing Quak­er Jour­ney to BDS — Friends Journal 

A Friend strug­gles to find a posi­tion on the Boy­cott, Divest­ments, and Sanc­tions Movement.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The not-so-ancient Quaker clearness committee

February 28, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I could prob­a­bly start a col­umn of Quak­er pet peeve of the day. I espe­cial­ly get bent out of shape with mis­re­mem­bered his­to­ry. One peeve is the myth that Quak­er clear­ness com­mit­tees are ancient. These com­mit­tees are typ­i­cal­ly con­vened for Friends who are fac­ing a major life deci­sion, like mar­riage or a career. Park­er Palmer is one of the most well-known prac­ti­tion­ers of this and gives the best description:

For peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced this dilem­ma, I want to describe a method invent­ed by the Quak­ers, a method that pro­tects indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty and integri­ty while draw­ing on the wis­dom of oth­er peo­ple. It is called a “Clear­ness Com­mit­tee.” If that name sounds like it is from the six­ties, it is — the 1660’s!

While it’s true that you can see ref­er­ences to “being clear” in writ­ings by George Fox and William Penn around issues of ear­ly Quak­er mar­riages, what they’re describ­ing is not a spir­i­tu­al process but a check­list item. By law you could only get mar­ried in Eng­land under the aus­pi­cious of the Church of Eng­land. Quak­ers were one of the groups rebelling against that. This meant they had to per­form some of the func­tions typ­i­cal­ly han­dled by cler­gy – and nowa­days by the state. One check­list item: make sure nei­ther per­son in the cou­ple is already mar­ried or has chil­dren. That’s pri­mar­i­ly what they meant they asked whether a cou­ple was cleared for mar­riage (Mark Wut­ka has found a great ref­er­ence in Samuel Bow­nas that implies that the prac­tice also includ­ed check­ing with the bride and groom’s parents).

One rea­son I can be so obnox­ious­ly defin­i­tive about my opin­ions is because I have the Friends Jour­nal archives on my lap­top. I can do an instant key­word search for “clear­ness com­mit­tee” on every issue from 1955 to 2018. The phrase does­n’t appear in any issue until 1969. That arti­cle is by Jen­nifer Haines and Deb­o­rah Haines. Here it is, the debut of the con­cept of the Quak­er clear­ness committee:

We were chal­lenged repeat­ed­ly to test our lives against our beliefs. We labored long over con­cerns raised by our belief in the way of peace. We agreed to urge that each Month­ly Meet­ing, through a clear­ness com­mit­tee or oth­er com­mit­tees, take the respon­si­bil­i­ty for work­ing through with Friends the ten­sions raised in their lives by the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny. To this com­mit­tee could be brought prob­lems cre­at­ed by draft or employ­ment in insti­tu­tions impli­cat­ed with the mil­i­tary and the ques­tion of whether appli­cants for mem­ber­ship who find them­selves in oppo­si­tion to the peace tes­ti­mo­ny should be accepted.

The con­text sug­gests it was an out­growth of the new prac­tice of wor­ship shar­ing. I did do a deep dive on that a few years ago in a piece that was also based on Friends Jour­nal archives. Deb­o­rah Haines con­tin­ued to be very involved in Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence and I worked with her when I was FGC’s Advance­ment and Out­reach coor­di­na­tor and she the com­mit­tee clerk.

In the ear­ly 1970s the ref­er­ences to clear­ness com­mit­tees con­tin­ued to focus on dis­cern­ment of anti­war activ­i­ties. With­in a few years it was extend­ed to prepa­ra­tion for mar­riages. A notice from 1982 gives a good sum­ma­ry of its uses then:

Meet­ings for clear­ness, for friends unfa­mil­iar with the term, are com­posed of peo­ple who meet by request with per­sons seek­ing clar­i­ty in an impor­tant life deci­sion — mar­riage, sep­a­ra­tion, divorce, adop­tion, res­o­lu­tion of fam­i­ly dif­fer­ences, a job change, etc.

Notably absent in this list is the process for new mem­ber appli­ca­tions. The first use of the term for this process in the FJ archives came in 1989! Why did it take twen­ty years for the con­cept to be applied here?

Why does it mat­ter that this isn’t an ancient prac­tice? A few things: one is that is nice to acknowl­edge that our tra­di­tion is a liv­ing, breath­ing one and that it can and does evolve. The clear­ness com­mit­tee is a great inno­va­tion. Decou­pling it from ancient Quak­erism also makes it more eas­i­ly adapt­able for non-Quaker contexts.

Wor­ship shar­ing came out of the long­time work of Rachel Davis DuBois. I would argue that she is one of the most impor­tant Quak­ers of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. What, you haven’t heard of her? Exact­ly: most of the most influ­en­tial Friends that came out of the Hick­site tra­di­tion in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry did­n’t devel­op the cult of per­son­al­i­ties you see with Ortho­dox Friends like Rufus Jones and Howard Brin­ton. It’s a shame, because DuBois prob­a­bly has more influ­ence in our day-to-day Quak­er prac­tice than either of them.

Oth­er links: This has turned into an awe­some thread on Face­book (it’s pub­lic so jump in!). There was also a good dis­cus­sion on wor­ship shar­ing on Quak­erQuak­er a few years ago: When did Quak­ers start wor­ship shar­ing? Back in 2003, Deb­o­rah Haines wrote about Rachel Davis DuBois for FGCon­nec­tions, the awe­some mag­a­zine that Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz used to pro­duce for FGC. I post­ed it online then, which is why I remem­ber it; Archive​.org saved it, which is why I can link to it.

Caveats: Yes there were Quak­er process­es before this. On Face­book Bill Samuel quotes the 1806 Faith and Prac­tice on the mem­ber­ship process and argues it’s describ­ing a clear­ness com­mit­tee. I’d be very sur­prised if the 1812 process had any­where near the same tone as the modern-day clear­ness or even shared much in the way of the philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­ning. I decid­ed to pop over to Thomas Clark­son’s 1806 A Por­trait of Quak­erism (dis­cussed here) to see how he described the mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion process. I often find him use­ful, as he avoids Quak­er ter­mi­nol­o­gy and our some­what unhelp­ful way of under­stat­ing things back then to give a use­ful snap­shot of con­di­tions on the ground. In three vol­umes I can’t find him talk­ing about new mem­bers at all. I’m won­der­ing if entry into the Soci­ety of Friends was more the­o­ret­i­cal than actu­al back then, so unusu­al that Clark­son did­n’t even think about.

Expanding the Quaker writing pool

November 3, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Shhh: there have been a few times late­ly when I wish we had more options when choos­ing arti­cles forFriends Jour­nal issues. Yes yes, we did notice that the fea­ture arti­cle con­trib­u­tors for the Octo­ber issue on “Con­science” were all old­er men and that the top­ics were per­haps a bit too famil­iar for Friends Jour­nal (non­vi­o­lence, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, con­sci­en­tious objec­tion). They were all great arti­cles. And I think clich­es can be impor­tant (see foot­note below) for a pub­li­ca­tion like ours. But yeah.

I had hoped the idea of con­science would leap up to new writ­ers, espe­cial­ly in our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate, and that the arti­cles might serve as a bridge between 1960s Quak­er activism and today. Some­times our themes inspire writ­ers and some­times they don’t.

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly writ­ten Quak­er­ran­ter blog posts about upcom­ing sub­mis­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties but I’d like to make it more offi­cial and post these every month from the Friends Jour­nal web­site. We’re call­ing the fea­ture “From the Editor’s Desk.”

I’d also like you all to share these with peo­ple you think should be writ­ing for us, espe­cial­ly if they’re new writ­ers com­ing from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Diver­si­ties of all kind are always welcome.

I was a Quak­er blog­ger (and thus writer) for many years and I worked for Friends Jour­nal for part of that time but I only once sent in a sub­mis­sion before I became senior edi­tor. Why? Was I wait­ing to be asked? Was I unsure what I might write about? What­ev­er the rea­son, we need to always be find­ing and encour­ag­ing new peo­ple. Some of the most inter­est­ing arti­cles we’ve pub­lished start­ed after one of our fans shared an upcom­ing issue top­ic with some­one who was out­side of our net­work. My goal with these posts is real­ly to encour­age you all to share these in emails and on your Face­book walls so we can keep expand­ing the Quak­er writer universe.

Here’s the first one: a call for writ­ers for the March 2018 issue on Quak­ers and the Holy Land.


Writing Opp: Quakers and the Holy Land (closed) - Friends Journal

Writ­ing Opp: Quak­ers and the Holy Land (closed) — Friends Journal 

In March 2018 Friends Jour­nal is pub­lish­ing an issue on reli­gion and pol­i­tics in the Mid­dle East. We…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Foot­note: Every once in a while we’ll get some arti­cle in and I’ll sigh because I can remem­ber a pre­vi­ous arti­cle that cov­ered the same ground. When I go to look it up I real­ize that the ear­li­er arti­cle was pub­lished fif­teen or more years ago. We have new read­ers every year and it’s okay to cir­cle around to core themes every decade or so. We also need to remem­ber the inter­est­ing peo­ple and inci­dents that hap­pened long enough ago because our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry is always in the process of fad­ing. I’m a peacenik long­time Quak­er so I knew Dan Seeger was the named defen­dant in a major land­mark Supreme Court deci­sion in the 1960s, for exam­ple, but I don’t assume most Friends knew this. It’s still a cool sto­ry. It still inspires. It’s impor­tant to keep the sto­ry alive.