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A Space for Doubt

December 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Fea­tures on Friends Jour­nal this week, Jeff Rasley’s arti­cle on “stealth wor­shipers” and reli­gious doubt in the pro­fes­sion­al clergy:

Because I went to sem­i­nary, I came to know quite a few Chris­t­ian min­is­ters. As an attor­ney, I rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al church­es and Chris­t­ian min­is­ters in legal mat­ters. Sev­er­al min­is­ters of Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions and two Catholic priests came clean with me about their per­son­al beliefs. I dis­cov­ered that when they were not “on,” many pas­tors would admit to the same doubts about the dog­mas and super­sti­tions of their church­es as I had about mine. 

Decem­ber’s issue is on Chris­tian­i­ty and there are opin­ions on var­i­ous sides of the issue but Rasley’s piece gets right to a core strength of Lib­er­al Quak­erism: its abil­i­ty to so eas­i­ly invite and engage with those unsure of their beliefs. Because of fam­i­ly, I get to a lot of non-Quaker ser­vices a lot and won­der how many of the peo­ple around me aren’t fol­low­ing their church’s teach­ings on var­i­ous issues. One way of order­ing Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions is to see if they pre­fer a tidy and pure but small con­gre­ga­tion or a messy big tent come-as-you-are congregation.

It seems like Quak­ers are tak­ing some­thing of a dif­fer­ent path: come but fol­low your own integri­ty and engage in the way that hon­ors what­ev­er lev­el of truth has been giv­en you. It’s a pret­ty pow­er­ful stance, though of course it gives us our own spe­cial set of headaches when it comes time to speak­ing in a col­lec­tive voice.


A Space for Doubt

A Space for Doubt 

When reli­gious ser­vices are stripped of doc­tri­nal claims, doubters and skep­tics can par­tic­i­pate with greater integrity.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Kristallnacht, Kindertransport, and help for refugees

November 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Quak­er refugee work cir­ca 1933:

The reports gath­ered from the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Ger­many by Quak­ers were of influ­ence when Quak­ers accom­pa­nied the Jew­ish del­e­ga­tion who went to see Home Sec­re­tary Sir Samuel Hoare to plead the case for allow­ing immi­gra­tion of chil­dren into Britain with­out the usu­al visa restric­tions. They swayed the gov­ern­ment and this planned immi­gra­tion of Ger­man and Aus­tri­an Jew­ish chil­dren became known as the Kinder­trans­port. Around 10,000 chil­dren were evac­u­at­ed from Ger­many and Aus­tria to Britain between 1938 and 1939. 

What I find most fas­ci­nat­ing is the detail that the Friends library in Lon­don does­nt have a lot of records of this work. It was so much in line with oth­er refugee assis­tance Friends were doing in Europe that they evi­dent­ly con­sid­ered it just anoth­er day on the job, so to speak. I shared a piece on the relat­ed Quak­er­speisun­gen a few days ago.

Kristall­nacht, Kinder­trans­port, and help for refugees

Mike Shell reviews book reviews

November 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Okay, it’s not quite so ref­er­en­tial: Mike’s lift­ing up three books in Sep­tem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal book columns that “help ‘white’ read­ers go deep­er into self-awareness about the hid­den dynam­ics of racism.” He also tells a lit­tle of his own sto­ry of color-blindness.

When my “white” friends said I couldn’t bring my “black” best friend to their lunch table, I shrugged and sat with him at a “black” table. On the minus side, when some­one in the school park­ing lot shout­ed nig­ger lover, and my friend want­ed to fight, I just told him I didn’t mind the insult. That was prob­a­bly my first seri­ous­ly hurt­ful act of “white color-blindness.” It took me decades to real­ize, to my shame, that it was he who was being insult­ed, not me. 

https://​uni​ver​sal​ist​friends​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​t​h​r​e​e​-​b​o​o​k​s​-​f​o​r​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​p​e​o​ple

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

Being God’s Hands

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A sweet inter­view this week over on Quak­er­S­peak, an inter­view with Carter Nash:

I believe that peo­ple will respond to love, because I believe peo­ple respond to God. And if God is love, that is what peo­ple will respond to, is love. I think that’s the key to a lot of things and to a lot of prob­lems in the world, because if we tru­ly believe in God and we tru­ly believe that God is love as we were taught, and we act on that – and I believe that we are God’s hands here – then every­thing we do needs to be root­ed in love.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​b​e​i​n​g​-​g​o​d​s​-​h​a​n​ds/

What Attracts Newcomers to Quaker Meeting?

September 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Quak­er­S­peak and Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, a look at what attracts new­com­ers to Friends:

I very much like for exam­ple the deter­mi­na­tion that says some­body believes in peace and has the guts to say in a time of war, “No, I can’t fight. I can’t do that.” I think that takes a lot.

I think it had a lot to do with the peo­ple. There wasn’t real­ly that hier­ar­chy, where there was some­one talk­ing down to us, but we could real­ly share ideas and we could all learn from each oth­er, and I real­ly appre­ci­at­ed those ideals. 

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

Facebook superposters and the loss of our own narrative

August 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

In the NYTimes, a fas­ci­nat­ing piece on fil­ter bub­bles and the abil­i­ty of Face­book “super­posters” to dom­i­nate feeds, dis­tort real­i­ty, and pro­mote para­noia and violence.

Super­posters tend to be “more opin­ion­at­ed, more extreme, more engaged, more every­thing,” said Andrew Guess, a Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty social sci­en­tist. When more casu­al users open Face­book, often what they see is a world shaped by super­posters like Mr. Wasser­man. Their exag­ger­at­ed world­views play well on the algo­rithm, allow­ing them to col­lec­tive­ly — and often unknow­ing­ly — dom­i­nate news­feeds. “That’s some­thing spe­cial about Face­book,” Dr. Paluck said. “If you end up get­ting a lot of time on the feed, you are influ­en­tial. It’s a dif­fer­ence with real life.”

A great many general-interest Face­book groups that I see are dom­i­nat­ed by troll­ish peo­ple whose vis­i­bil­i­ty relies on how provoca­tive they can get with­out being banned. This is true in many Quaker-focused groups. Face­book pri­or­i­tizes engage­ment and noth­ing seems to get our fin­gers mad­ly tap­ping more than provo­ca­tion by some­one half-informed.

For­mal mem­ber­ship in a Quak­er meet­ing is a con­sid­ered process; for many Quak­er groups, pub­lic min­istry is also a delib­er­at­ed process, with clear­ness com­mit­tees, anchor com­mit­tees, etc. On Face­book, mem­ber­ship con­sists of click­ing a like but­ton; pub­lic min­istry, aka vis­i­bil­i­ty, is a mat­ter of hav­ing a lot of time to post com­ments. Pub­lic groups with min­i­mal mod­er­a­tion which run on Face­book’s engagement-inducing algo­rithms are the pub­lic face of Friends these days, far more vis­i­ble than any pub­li­ca­tion or rec­og­nized Quak­er body’s Face­book pres­ence. I writ­ten before of my long-term wor­ry that with the rise of social media gate­keep­ing sites, we’re not the ones writ­ing our sto­ry anymore.

I don’t have any answers. But the NYTimes piece helped give me some use­ful ways of think­ing about these phenomena.


Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests (Published 2018)

Face­book Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Ger­many, New Research Sug­gests (Pub­lished 2018) 

Towns where peo­ple use Face­book more also had more attacks on refugees, build­ing on sus­pi­cions that the platform…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Sam Walton: Putting the protest back in Protestant

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the Peace and Dis­ar­ma­ment Pro­gramme Manger for British Friends comes a plea for us not to be afraid of going back to Quak­er roots and chal­lenge the abuse of power.

Society’s val­ues are so often in oppo­si­tion to God’s pur­pos­es. Slav­ery used to be legal. Love between two peo­ple of the same sex was ille­gal in our life­times. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s cre­ation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrich­ment rather than loy­al­ties lying with the King­dom of Heav­en and work­ing for the enrich­ment of all human­i­ty. When being loy­al to God’s pur­pos­es runs counter to what soci­ety expects it can get pret­ty rough. There may be per­se­cu­tion, though it varies a lot: from tut­ting, telling you off for being veg­e­tar­i­an, being giv­en white feath­ers, right through to impris­on­ment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.

Putting the protest back in Protestant