Tag Archives ⇒ mean

What does it mean to be a member of a Quaker meeting?

May 2, 2024
· Martin Kelley

Friends Jour­nal’s May issue on “Mem­ber­ship” is out. In my open­ing col­umn I talk about some of the dif­fer­ent types of mem­bers, offi­cial and unofficial:

As the clerk of a small meet­ing, I find myself fre­quent­ly jug­gling these mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories of mem­ber­ship. When we had plumb­ing issues a few months ago, there were lots of emails with a core half-dozen reg­u­lars who I can depend on to help with logis­tics and con­tacts with local con­trac­tors (this group is so con­sis­tent that when I go to send a mes­sage to one, my email pro­gram asks me if I want to include all the others).

When there’s an event com­ing up, the email list expands to include a small group of recent new­com­ers who make it to wor­ship a few times a month. Every so often I look over this list to see if there’s some­one who’s dropped away, and I’ll take a minute to write them a spe­cial email ask­ing how they are and invit­ing them to attend. I would hate for a semi-regular to drop away and think we hadn’t noticed.

There’s also a wide con­stel­la­tion of peo­ple who attend once in a prover­bial blue moon. Some are mem­bers of near­by meet­ings who occa­sion­al­ly hit us up for a change of pace. Oth­ers are local his­to­ry buffs who will come to hear a par­tic­u­lar speak­er but make sure to come ear­ly because they like their once-a-year Quak­er wor­ship. Few of these vis­i­tors will ever become reg­u­lars but they prob­a­bly know some­one who might, and their word-of-mouth rec­om­men­da­tion could help con­nect a new seek­er with our small band.

When it’s time to send out the annu­al fundrais­ing appeal, I’ll reach out to anoth­er, rather spe­cial class of mem­bers, those at a dis­tance, many of whom I’ve nev­er met. They might hail from one of the found­ing fam­i­lies of the meet­ing; per­haps they grew up there them­selves and have fond mem­o­ries. It might be easy to for­get about these mem­bers but that would be a mis­take, as they remind us of the long line of faith­ful ser­vants who have kept this spe­cial com­mu­ni­ty going in the past.

“A Mem­ber­ship That Is Ever Flow­ing”

I even give a shoutout to the red-shouldered hawk fam­i­ly liv­ing in one of our sycamore trees.

Look­ing back in the archives, we’ve been putting out an issue on mem­ber­ship every four years: Mem­ber­ship and the Gen­er­a­tion Gap in 2012, Almost Quak­er in 2016, Mem­ber­ship and Friends in 2020. I’m actu­al­ly sur­prised at the clock­work pre­ci­sion of our issues, but there’s a good rea­son we keep com­ing back to it. The def­i­n­i­tion of who “we” are is an essen­tial part of our self-identification as Friends. Pret­ty much every­thing we do (or fail to do) reflects our implic­it assump­tions about who’s in and who’s out. Many, per­haps most, of the debates that roil Friends have mem­ber­ship as an element.

What does it mean to have a measure of the Light?

August 25, 2023
· Martin Kelley

There’s cur­rent­ly a pret­ty inter­est­ing Face­book dis­cus­sion on “mea­sure of light.” Col­lo­qui­al­ly, I’ve heard this phrase used as a way to reas­sure us that we don’t all have to have the same abil­i­ties. We should­n’t be jeal­ous of oth­ers, who might have oth­er tal­ents in the body of Christ. Our goal is to live up to the light of what we’ve each been giv­en as individuals. 

Read­ing Robert Bar­clay, where much of this lan­guage comes from, I’m not sure he would agree: 

By this Seed, Grace, and Word of God, and Light, where­with we say every man is enlight­ened, and hath a mea­sure of it, which strives with them in order to save them, and which may, by the stub­born­ness and wicked­ness of man’s will, be quenched, bruised, wound­ed, pressed down, slain and cru­ci­fied; we under­stand not the prop­er essence and nature of God, pre­cise­ly tak­en, which is not divis­i­ble into parts and mea­sures, as being a most pure, sim­ple being, void of all com­po­si­tion or divi­sion, and there­fore can nei­ther be resist­ed, hurt, wound­ed, cru­ci­fied, or slain by all the efforts and strength of men.

An Apol­o­gy for the True Chris­t­ian Divin­i­ty. Robert Bar­clay, 1678

He’s pret­ty clear that the light is indi­vis­i­ble so I don’t see how it could be more or less with­in any of us or change over time (though cer­tain­ly our aware­ness of it can be strength­ened as we progress spir­i­tu­al­ly). And for him, and all ear­ly Quak­ers, the Light was very def­i­nite­ly God work­ing with­in us. Nowa­days it’s more com­mon for Lib­er­al Friends to think of it as a kind of spir­i­tu­al conscience.

I myself wouldn’t want to get into decid­ing who has what abil­i­ty. Maybe tal­ents is a bet­ter way of think­ing about it. Like, in my human­ness I may get jeal­ous that some­one gives real­ly good min­istry in wor­ship. But maybe that’s not my gift. There are some peo­ple I’ve met who are always extreme­ly thought­ful of oth­ers. And oth­ers who are real­ly good at cen­ter­ing a group down in wor­ship. I have friends who are always great about get­ting to know every­one in their lives. We can aspire to be bet­ter in all these things but there are peo­ple who seem more nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed to this. So we should try to live up to our mea­sure in our spir­i­tu­al lives but not feel bad about our­selves if oth­ers are able to do cer­tain things effortlessly.

What does redemption mean to you?

December 6, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Episode 2 of the Quak­ers Today pod­cast comes out in a week. The top­ic is “What does redemp­tion mean to you?” Leave a voice­mail with your answer to the ques­tion with your name and the town where you live before mid­night (ET) Sun­day, Dec. 11., and you might get on the podcast! 

The num­ber to call is 317-QUAKERS (+1 out­side U.S.)

Ashley Wilcox talk on Quakers and the prophetic tradition

April 12, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From thr Guilfordian:

Wilcox began the dis­cus­sion with a ques­tion of whether or not the Guil­ford com­mu­ni­ty should seek out prophets and prophe­cies. Wilcox sought to relate this ques­tion to the Quak­er tradition.

“This talk is about prophets and prophe­cy,” Wilcox said. “So the first ques­tion is, ‘What does it mean to be a prophet?’ I don’t think Jere­mi­ah would rec­om­mend it.” 

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.guilfordian.com/news/2019/04/12/wilcox-talks-quakerism-and-the-prophetic-tradition/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjk1NzUwOWM3NjZmNTA4MzU6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNGr3hjx9Dxd8r_5amP0l6AQfRXDcg

What is the Quaker community we’d like to see?

October 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On the Quak­erQuak­er forums, Kir­by Urn­er sets out a vision for a future Quak­er community:

My spec­u­la­tions, there­fore, cen­ter around around what a Quak­er Vil­lage might look like, under­stand­ing “vil­lage” to mean “small com­mu­ni­ty” (hun­dreds or thou­sands, but not mil­lions). How do these peo­ple live? How do they put their Chris­t­ian val­ues into practice?

Let’s say it’s a hun­dred years from now, when all of us are safe­ly dead. Or maybe we’d like to accel­er­ate the timeline?

For me, a hall­mark of Quak­erism is its egal­i­tar­i­an­ism and com­mit­ment to rotat­ing roles. That’s not a fea­ture of every branch I real­ize, and those who decry “out­ward forms” may con­sid­er Over­sight, Prop­er­ty Man­age­ment, Chil­dren’s Pro­gram etc., to be the oppo­site of “prim­i­tive” by def­i­n­i­tion. Per­haps such infra­struc­ture seems too com­pli­cat­ed, too much like every­day life. I real­ize we use our words differently. 

I like the qual­i­fi­ca­tion to imag­ine this 100 years from now. It gives us a bit of time to sort out all of the incon­ve­nient road­blocks of cur­rent apa­thy and resis­tance to change. One of the tech­niques Ama­zon is said to use is to start any new project ideas with a press release as a way to make sure the final prod­uct is focused on actu­al cus­tomer needs. Kir­by’s piece reminds me of this. What would it look like to have a strong vision of the Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties we’d like to live in someday?
http://​www​.quak​erquak​er​.org/​f​o​r​u​m​/​t​o​p​i​c​s​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​p​r​i​m​i​t​i​v​e​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​ity

North American Quaker statistics 1937 – 2017

September 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

These are num­bers of Friends in Cana­da and the Unit­ed States (includ­ing Alas­ka, which was tal­lied sep­a­rate­ly pri­or to state­hood) com­piled from Friends World Com­mit­tee for Con­sul­ta­tion. I dug up these num­bers from three sources:

  • 1937, 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987 from Quak­ers World Wide: A His­to­ry of FWCC by Her­bert Hadley in 1991 (many thanks to FWC­C’s Robin Mohr for a scan of the rel­e­vant chart).
  • 1972, 1992 from Earl­ham School of Reli­gion’s The Present State of Quak­erism, 1995, archived here.
  • 2002 on from FWCC direct­ly. Note: Cur­rent 2017 map.

Friends in the U.S. and Canada:

  • 1937: 114,924
  • 1957: 122,663
  • 1967: 122,780
  • 1972: 121,380
  • 1977: 119,160
  • 1987: 109,732
  • 1992: 101,255
  • 2002: 92,786
  • 2012: 77,660
  • 2017: 81,392

Friends in Amer­i­c­as (North, Mid­dle South):

  • 1937: 122,166
  • 1957: 131,000
  • 1967: 129,200
  • 1977: 132,300
  • 1987: 139,200
  • 2017: 140,065

You could write a book about what these num­bers do and don’t mean. The most glar­ing omis­sion is that they don’t show the geo­graph­ic or the­o­log­i­cal shifts that took place over time. Mid­west­ern Friends have tak­en a dis­pro­por­tion­ate hit, for exam­ple, and many Philadelphia-area meet­ings are much small­er than they were a cen­tu­ry ago, while inde­pen­dent meet­ings in the West and/or adja­cent to col­leges grew like wild­flow­ers mid-century.

My hot take on this is that the reuni­fi­ca­tion work of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry gave Quak­ers a sol­id iden­ti­ty and coher­ent struc­ture. Howard Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years from 1952 is a remark­ably con­fi­dent doc­u­ment. In many areas, Friends became a socially-progressive, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry reli­gious move­ment that was attrac­tive to peo­ple tired of more creedal for­mu­la­tions; mixed-religious par­ents came look­ing for First-day school com­mu­ni­ty for their chil­dren. Quak­ers’ social jus­tice work was very vis­i­ble and attract­ed a num­ber of new peo­ple dur­ing the anti­war 1960s1 and the alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ty groundswell of the 1970s. These var­i­ous new­com­ers off­set the decline of what we might call “eth­nic” Friends in rur­al meet­ings through this period.

That mag­ic bal­ance of Quak­er cul­ture match­ing the zeit­geist of reli­gious seek­ers dis­ap­peared some­where back in the 1980s. We aren’t on fore­front of any cur­rent spir­i­tu­al trends. While there are bright spots and excep­tions 2, we’ve large­ly strug­gled with retain­ing new­com­ers in recent years. We’re los­ing our elders more quick­ly than we’re bring­ing in new peo­ple, hence the forty per­cent drop since the high water of 1987. The small 2017 uptick might be a good sign3 or it may be a sta­tis­ti­cal phan­tom.4 I’ll be curi­ous to see what the next cen­sus brings.

2023 Update: I seem to have mixed up some num­bers in my orig­i­nal 2018 post and have cor­rect­ed them above.

Doug Gwyn on QuakerSpeak: What Does Quakerism Teach About Connecting to Nature?

September 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A new video from Quak­er his­to­ri­an Gwyn:

Con­nect­ing with nature is about more than just exer­cise or tran­quil­i­ty. As Quak­er author Doug Gwyn shares, even in the 17th cen­tu­ry, Quak­ers were con­cerned about our dis­con­nec­tion with the nat­ur­al world and what it would mean for the future.

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

Paul Parker: 5 ways to make Quaker meeting houses work for the future

August 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The record­ing clerk of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing looks at five ways we can keep our wor­ship spaces active and visible:

We can often get very loy­al to our meet­ing places, and I think that’s nat­ur­al. We’ve often had some of our most pro­found per­son­al expe­ri­ences there. They are impor­tant places of com­mu­ni­ty and wor­ship, and they can and do work hard for us. But our loy­al­ty to them does­n’t mean that they’re going to work for every­one, and if they’re not going to become ‘steeple hous­es’, then I think it’s impor­tant that we look at them every now and again and ask our­selves some questions. 

http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/5‑ways-to-make-quaker-meeting-houses-work-for-the-future