Ben Woods; Liberal Quakerism and the Need for Roots

September 21, 2018

On our rela­tion­ship with Christianity:

In this vein, for ear­ly Friends, ‘being a Chris­t­ian‘, was more than sim­ply assent­ing to the­o­log­i­cal abstracts. To live as a ‘Friend of the Truth’ was to expe­ri­ence direct­ly the claim that God loves the uni­verse per­pet­u­al­ly in Christ. In this respect, ‘Quak­er’ Chris­tian­i­ty is more than a the­o­ry or phi­los­o­phy of things, but a prac­ti­cal rela­tion­ship with a liv­ing per­son. To walk with Jesus of Nazareth meant to live with the same man­tle upon one’s shoul­ders, to teach, to heal, and to restore. 

Reflec­tions on Lib­er­al Quak­erism and the Need for Roots

Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident

September 12, 2018

Here’s a piece we’ve pub­lished in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal, writ­ten by a seventh-grader from the Friends School in New­town, Pa. We reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish middle- and high-schoolers in our annu­al Stu­dent Voic­es Project but this is a gen­er­al fea­ture we pub­lished because it’s inter­est­ing and fresh and intrigu­ing. Here’s what I wrote about it in my open­ing col­umn in the magazine:

In Mak­ing Sense of the Star­bucks Inci­dent, New­town Friends School seventh-grader Anki­ta Achan­ta shows how the Quak­er val­ues she’s been taught in class­es could have defused a nation­al­ly pub­li­cized racial inci­dent in a Philadel­phia Star­bucks. It’s some­times easy to be skep­ti­cal of the Quak­er iden­ti­ty of Friends schools, but Achan­ta reflects back the pow­er­ful impact of our col­lec­tive wit­ness in these institutions. 

In Anki­ta Achan­ta’s reck­on­ing, Quak­er val­ues like integri­ty are basic uni­ver­sal val­ues of decen­cy. By claim­ing them, Friends could (and often do) eas­i­ly fall into the trap of Quak­er excep­tion­al­ism, but in Achan­ta’s piece, I see them as some­thing we put spe­cial empha­sis into. Ear­ly Friends did­n’t expect to found a denom­i­na­tion; Fox went across the land assum­ing every­one could be a Friend of the Truth, of Christ, of the Light. The lead­ing influ­ence of the Inward Light is avail­able to all and we can expect to see inspir­ing inci­dents of it in action every­where — even in viral Twit­ter videos.

Achan­ta also gave a new-to-me neologism:

As a seventh-grade stu­dent attend­ing a Friends school, I have been taught Quak­er val­ues. Although I am a Hin­du and not for­mal­ly a Quak­er, Quak­er val­ues are well aligned with my own reli­gious prin­ci­ples. I am com­mit­ted to liv­ing by them and con­sid­er myself a “Quin­du.”

Quaker Money

July 27, 2018

Here’s a from-the-archives piece I stum­bled again on recent­ly. It’s from New Eng­land his­to­ri­an Bet­sy Caz­den, whose insights on Quak­er cul­ture I adore. She wrote this for Friends Jour­nal in 2006:

How did Friends come to do so well? The stan­dard sto­ry is a vari­ant on the Puri­tan one: Quak­ers became wealthy by work­ing dili­gent­ly; extend­ing their exper­i­men­tal approach to reli­gion to invent new indus­tri­al tech­nolo­gies; trad­ing hon­est­ly (there­by attract­ing cus­tomers); mak­ing pro­duc­tive use of transat­lantic kin­ship net­works; and liv­ing fru­gal­ly, with­out money-drains like drink­ing or gam­bling, there­by free­ing up mon­ey for sav­ings, invest­ment, and phil­an­thropic giv­ing to Quaker-run insti­tu­tions. All of that may be true, but is at best par­tial. The unspo­ken “rest of the sto­ry” has two pieces: land and slaves.

I’m sure I’ve read this arti­cle before (I uncon­scious­ly sum­ma­rized it this past May) but I think it’s an impor­tant dis­cus­sion to rethink every so often.

YouTube star Jessica Kellgren-Fozard on her Quakerism

July 20, 2018

Jes­si­ca Kellgren-Fozard is a dis­abled TV pre­sen­ter with 266,000+ fol­low­ers on YouTube. She’s also a life­long Friend from the UK. She’s just released a video in which she talks about her under­stand­ing of Quak­erism. It’s pret­ty good. She occa­sion­al­ly implies that some specif­i­cal­ly British pro­ce­dur­al process is intrin­sic to all Quak­ers but oth­er than that it all rings true, cer­tain­ly to her expe­ri­ence as a UK Friend.

I must admit that the world of YouTube stars is for­eign to me. This is essen­tial­ly a web­cam vlog post but the light­ing and hair and cos­tum­ing is metic­u­lous. Her notes include affil­i­ate links for the dress she’s wear­ing ($89 and yes, they ship inter­na­tion­al­ly), a 8 1/2 minute video tuto­r­i­al about curl­ing you hair in her vin­tage style (it has over 33,000 views). If you fol­low her on Insta­gram and Twit­ter you’ll soon have enough details on  lip­stick and shoe choic­es to be able to ful­ly cos­play her.

But don’t laugh too much, because in between the self pre­sen­ta­tion tips, Kellgren-Fozard tack­les real­ly hard sub­jects – grow­ing up gay in school, liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties – in ways that are approach­able and inti­mate, fun­ny and instruc­tive. And with a quar­ter mil­lion YouTube fol­low­ers, she’s reach­ing peo­ple with a mes­sage of kind­ness and inclu­sion and under­stand­ing that feels pret­ty Quak­er­ly to me. Mar­garet Fell liked her­self a red dress some­times and it’s easy to argue George Fox would be a YouTu­ber today.

Bonus:  Jes­si­ca Kellgren-Fozard will host a live Q&A chat on her Quak­erism this com­ing Mon­day. If I’m cal­cu­lat­ing my time­zones cor­rect­ly, it’ll be noon here on the U.S. East Coast. I plan to tune in.

Making meetings simpler

May 11, 2018

British Friend Helen Drew­ery writes about what might be a uni­ver­sal desire to make Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion­al life simpler

How can we achieve a flex­i­ble sim­plic­i­ty – liv­ing by the essence of the Quak­er approach but not treat­ing old habits as sacro­sanct? Ear­ly Quak­ers saw sim­plic­i­ty as strip­ping out of their lives the super­flu­ous activ­i­ties and things – John Wool­man called them ‘cum­ber’ – so that they could more ful­ly fol­low the lead­ings of the Spirit.

Barking up the family tree

May 10, 2018

There’s a num­ber of com­mon gate­ways for seek­ers to dis­cov­er Quak­ers – activism is a com­mon one (see last week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­view with Lina Blount), as is plain dress (my posts on the top­ic are my most pop­u­lar), as is child­hood expe­ri­ences at Quak­er schools.

But a big gate­way is geneal­o­gy. Over the years I’ve got­ten count­less emails and phone calls from excit­ed new­com­ers who start off the con­ver­sa­tion with details of their fam­i­ly tree (when I used to answer the Quaker­books phone, I would let these folks go for about two min­utes before gen­tly inter­ject­ing “wow that’s fas­ci­nat­ing!, do you wan­na buy a book?!?”)

One fas­ci­nat­ing fac­toid in this week’s Quak­er­S­peak video comes from Thomas Hamm:

If your fam­i­ly arrived in the Unit­ed States before 1860, there’s prob­a­bly a 50 – 50 chance that you have a Quak­er ances­tor somewhere.

Quak­er Meet­ings should­n’t try to be the gath­er­ing spots for prodi­gal fam­i­ly reunions. The ear­ly Quak­ers were strangers to one anoth­er, join­ing togeth­er because of the fire of their con­vic­tions. Ours is a liv­ing, breath­ing, ever evolv­ing spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Still: we are also a group­ing of peo­ple. We look for belonging.

The longer I’m with Friends, the more I think ours is a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that draws strength from the ten­sion of para­dox­es. I have a soft spot for the old Quak­er fam­i­lies. If Jesus brings some of the new peo­ple in through Beliefnet quizzes or Ances​try​.com search results, well, maybe that’s okay.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​-​y​o​u​r​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​a​n​c​e​s​t​ry/

Portland, Oregon high school ditching controversial ‘Quakers’ mascot

May 9, 2018

On the list of reli­gious prob­lems, the use of “Quak­er” by non-Friends is more mys­tery than prob­lem. There’s the multi­na­tion­al giant Quak­er Oats Com­pa­ny of course, peri­od­i­cal­ly mak­ing tone deaf state­ment with its name. Friends of a cer­tain age might remem­ber 1989’s rebrand­ed Pop­eye the Quak­er Man and every eigh­teen months the laugh-out-loud Quak­er Oats threat­ens to sue us sto­ry goes re-viral on Face­book (the page is undat­ed and so always feels new; the inci­dent is at least 15 years old).

There are also var­i­ous schools who brand their sports teams with the Quak­er name. But a Port­land, Ore­gon, news sta­tion says that list is get­ting a bit small­er: Franklin High School ditch­ing con­tro­ver­sial ‘Quak­ers’ mascot

An assis­tant prin­ci­pal and anoth­er teacher told FOX 12 they shift­ed away from brand­ing the school as “Quak­ers” sev­er­al years ago. Sev­er­al stu­dents also said they don’t know much about who Quak­ers are or the reli­gion. Sev­er­al seemed to think Ben­jamin Franklin, who the school is named after, was a Quak­er. Franklin was not a Quak­er. FOX 12 also spoke to Kel­ly McCur­dy, who put three chil­dren through Franklin High. He said he believes the dis­trict is mak­ing a mis­take and eras­ing tra­di­tion. “I think it’s sil­ly, per­son­al­ly,” McCur­dy said. “It’s not racial­ly insensitive.”

It seems that the Fox affil­i­ate went out of its way to find a cranky per­son to deplore a point no one was mak­ing. Of course it’s not racial­ly insen­si­tive. But these appro­pri­at­ed names are always… well, weird. No pub­lic school would call them­selves The Jews or The Mus­lims or The Catholics or any­thing else smelling of reli­gion. It’s a sign of how dis­missed Friends are as a actu­al liv­ing reli­gious move­ment and denom­i­na­tion that our nick­name is con­sid­ered fair game. We must turn to the local news­pa­per to get the real back­ground:

Lisa Zuni­ga told the board that in 2014 she met Mia Pisano, a fel­low Franklin High par­ent who is a mem­ber of the Quak­er faith, and the pair start­ed an effort to change the name. The name, they argued, vio­lat­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. The dis­trict, they said, should nev­er com­man­deer a reli­gious sym­bol or con­no­ta­tion for a mas­cot. Despite inter­est in the name change, Zuni­ga said, par­ents met stiff resis­tance from the dis­trict. It was hard to even get any­one to explain what the process would be to bring about a name change, she said.

https://​www​.ore​gonlive​.com/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​s​f​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​p​o​r​t​l​a​n​d​_​s​c​h​o​o​l​_​b​o​a​r​d​_​f​i​n​d​s​_​q​u​.​h​tml

http://​www​.kptv​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​3​8​1​4​5​8​3​3​/​f​r​a​n​k​l​i​n​-​h​i​g​h​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​d​i​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​n​t​r​o​v​e​r​s​i​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​m​a​s​cot

Is our Quaker Peace Testimony an historical artifact or a living witness to our faith?

March 14, 2018

Is our Quak­er Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny an his­tor­i­cal arti­fact or a liv­ing wit­ness to our faith?

If we aren’t liv­ing our faith, then the 1660 Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny is sim­ply an his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. Like the old musty books in our Meet­ing library that sit behind glass, most­ly unread. They look impres­sive and make us feel good about our­selves, but if we don’t read them and take the words to heart, they might as well be wall paper.