Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

May 16, 2005

For those that might not have noticed, I have an arti­cle in the lat­est issue of the awkwardly-named FGCon­nec­tions: “Wit­ness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings.” Astute Quak­er Ranter read­ers will rec­og­nize it as a re-hashing of “The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” and its relat­ed pieces. Reac­tion has been quite inter­est­ing, with a lot of old­er Friends say­ing they relate to what I’ve said. It’s fun­ny how so many of us feel a sense of iso­la­tion from our own reli­gious institutions!

The Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

By Martin Kelley

What is it like to be a thirty-something Friend these days? Lone­ly and frus­trat­ing. At least half of the com­mit­ted, inter­est­ing and bold twenty-something Friends I knew ten years ago have left Quak­erism. This isn’t nor­mal youth­ful church-hopping and it’s not some char­ac­ter flaw of “Gen­er­a­tion X.” They’ve left because they were sim­ply tired of slam­ming their heads against the wall of an insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism that neglect­ed them and its own future.

I can cer­tain­ly relate. For the last decade, I’ve done ground-breaking work pub­li­ciz­ing non­vi­o­lence online. I’ve been pro­filed in the New York Times and invit­ed on nation­al talk radio shows, but the clerk of the peace com­mit­tee in my achingly-small month­ly meet­ing always for­gets that I have “some web­site” and I’ve nev­er been asked to speak to Friends about my work. I wouldn’t mind being over­looked if I saw oth­ers my age being rec­og­nized, but most of the amaz­ing min­istries I’ve known have been just as invisible.

It’s like this even at the small-scale lev­el. I’ve gone to count­less com­mit­tee meet­ings with ideas, enthu­si­asm and faith­ful­ness, only to real­ize (too late, usu­al­ly) that these are just the qual­i­ties these com­mit­tees don’t want. Through repeat­ed heart­break I’ve final­ly learned that if I feel like I’m crash­ing a par­ty when I try to get involved with some Quak­er cause, then it’s a sign that it’s time to get out of there! I’ve been in so many meet­ing­hous­es where I’ve been the only per­son with­in ten years of my age in either direc­tion that I’m gen­uine­ly star­tled when I’m in a room­ful of twenty- and thirty-somethings.

I recent­ly had lunch with one of the thir­tysome­thing Friends who have left. He had been drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change; he was still very com­mit­ted to both. But after orga­niz­ing actions for years, he con­clud­ed that the Friends in his meet­ing didn’t think the peace tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to a wit­ness that was so bold.

I wrote about this lunch con­ver­sa­tion on my web­site and before long anoth­er old Friend sur­faced. Eight years ago a wit­ness and action con­fer­ence inspired him to help launch a nation­al Quak­er youth vol­un­teer net­work. He put years of his life into this; his state­ments on the prob­lems and promis­es fac­ing Quak­er youth are still right on the mark. But after ear­ly excite­ment his sup­port evap­o­rat­ed and the project even­tu­al­ly fell apart in what he’s described as “a bit­ter and unsuc­cess­ful experience.”

The loss of Quak­er peers has hit close to home for me. When one close Friend learned my wife had left Quak­erism for anoth­er church after eleven years, all he could say was how pleased he was that she had final­ly found her spir­i­tu­al home; oth­ers gave sim­i­lar empty- sound­ing plat­i­tudes. I felt like say­ing to them “No, you dimwits, we’ve dri­ven away yet anoth­er Friend!” Each of these three lost Friends remain deeply com­mit­ted to the Spir­it and are now involved in oth­er reli­gious societies.

Young adults haven’t always been as invis­i­ble or unin­volved as they are now. A whole group of the Quak­er lead­ers cur­rent­ly in their fifties and six­ties were giv­en impor­tant jobs at Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions at very ten­der ages (often right out of col­lege). Also, there’s his­tor­i­cal prece­dent for this: George Fox was 24 when he began his pub­lic min­istry; Samuel Bow­nas was 20 when he was roused out of his meet­ing­house slum­ber to begin his remark­able min­istry; even Mar­garet Fell was still in her thir­ties when she was con­vinced. When the first gen­er­a­tion of Friends drew togeth­er a group of their most impor­tant elders and min­is­ters to address one of their many crises, the aver­age age of the gath­er­ing was 35. Younger Friends haven’t always been ghet­toized into Young

Audlt Friends only dorms, pro­grams, work­shops or committees.

There is hope. Some have start­ed notic­ing that young Friends who go into lead­er­ship train­ing pro­grams often dis­ap­pear soon after­wards. The pow­ers that be at Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence have final­ly start­ed talk­ing about “youth min­istry.” (Wel­come!). A great peo­ple might pos­si­bly be gath­ered from the emer­gent church move­ment and the inter­net is full of amaz­ing con­ver­sa­tions from new Friends and seek­ers. There are pock­ets in our branch of Quak­erism where old­er Friends have con­tin­ued to men­tor and encour­age mean­ing­ful and inte­grat­ed youth lead­er­ship, and some of my peers have hung on with me. Most hope­ful­ly, there’s a whole new gen­er­a­tion of twenty- some­thing Friends on the scene with strong gifts that could be nur­tured and harnessed.

In the truest real­i­ty, our chrono­log­i­cal ages melt away in the ever-refreshing cur­rents of the Liv­ing Spir­it; we are all as chil­dren to a lov­ing God. Will Friends come togeth­er to remem­ber this before our reli­gious soci­ety los­es anoth­er generation?

Mar­tin Kel­ley is a mem­ber of Atlantic City Month­ly Meet­ing, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. He works for FGC as the web­mas­ter and book­store sec­re­tary. This arti­cle is writ­ten from his experience.

 

 



Youth Ministries 2: What Do Young Friends Want?

April 28, 2005

I was giv­en per­mis­sion to pass along this data from the FGC-sponsored Youth Min­istry Con­sul­ta­tion that took place Third Month. A num­ber of goals and projects had been brain­stormed before­hand. The thirty-or-so par­tic­i­pants at the Con­sul­ta­tion were each giv­en ten stars, which they were asked to put next to the projects they thought should be pur­sued. Every star act­ed as a vote that there was one per­son inter­est­ed in that top­ic. The stars were cod­ed to indi­cate the age range of the vot­er: High-Schooler, Adult Young Friend (18 – 37 years old) and old­er Friends.

One of the “stars” charts at the consultation

Being the infor­ma­tion design geek, I con­vert­ed the resul­tant votes to into qual­i­ties and col­ors and put them into a chart show­ing inter­est lev­el. Projects that received no votes from a par­tic­u­lar age range are labeled “none,” for no inter­est; 2 – 3 stars is “weak” inter­est and so forth, up to “HOT” which are projects which received over 7 stars from an age group.

As an exam­ple, take “devel­op spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.” Sev­en adult young Friends (aged 18 – 37) put a star down for this, indi­cat­ing they thought it was some­thing FGC should pro­mote, hence “strong” (bright red) inter­est from this age group. No Friend over forty used one of their stars to indi­cate inter­est in this work, indi­cat­ing that none of them thought FGC should be pro­mot­ing spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. Here are the results:

High-School
Voters
YAF
Voters
Old­er Adult
Voters

Expecially for Adult Young Friends

Com­mu­ni­ty weak strong weak
Devel­op spirituality none strong none
Out­reach & how to explain our faith none strong weak
Crit­i­cal mass at MM, QM, YM none weak strong
Men­tor­ing by old­er Friends none strong none
Men­tor­ing to younger Friends none strong none
Men­tor­ing to old­er Friends: none strong none
Help with transitions none *HOT* weak
Adver­tis­ing programs none weak none
Sug­ges­tions:
Trav­el­ing Min­istries for AYF none lukew weak
Groups through­out the year for support none lukew weak
Sup­port for AYF groups at the YM levels none weak weak
Data­base to help iso­lat­ed friends none none none
Clearness/discernment process:
For HS to College none lukew none
For work transitions none weak none
For rela­tion­ships none weak none
For par­ent­hood none weak weak
Inter­gen­er­a­tional Spir­i­tu­al Conversations
About Vital Friends Issues none lukew none
Vision of Quak­erism in 50 years none lukew weak
Finan­cial sup­port for AYF weak *HOT* lukew
Retreats for youth workers none none weak
Mate­ri­als specif­i­cal­ly designed for AYF, none none none
Gen­er­al Questions:
How do we han­dle the broad age span? none weak none
How do we tap the ener­gy and pas­sion of this group MMs, YMs & FGC? none lukew strong
How do we meet the needs with­out sep­a­rat­ing AYF from larg­er community? none lukew none
How do we sus­tain com­mu­ni­ty when we only meet once a year? none lukew weak

Especially for High Schoolers

Needs:
Adults who are bet­ter pre­pared to work with them… weak lukew strong
FAP�s that have self confidence none none weak
Help with dis­cern­ment process around college none none none
Help with disc: C‑O none none weak
Help with dis­cern­ment around life choices none none weak
Dis­cern­ment ques­tions: #3, #4, & #5: none weak strong
Build­ing community weak weak weak
Net­work­ing weak none none
Bible study, RE curriculum none none weak
Train­ing how one per­son can have impact none none none
Train­ing on how to devel­op group dialogs weak none weak
Help to get more teens involved weak none lukew
Pro­gram­ming help none none none
Lead­er­ship Development weak weak weak
Sug­ges­tions:
Youth newslet­ter lukew weak none
Email forum lukew weak none
Email data base none weak none
Event b’ween Young Quakes and Gathering weak none none
Youth exchange weak none none
Pro­grams to facil­i­tate rites of passage weak none none

Things Younger Friends want­ed more than Old­er Friends:
In order by AYF popularity:

  • MENTORSHIP: The AYFs real­ly want cross-generational men­tor­ing rela­tion­ships. When the ques­tions were first posed, there only “men­tor­ing by old­er Friends” and “men­tor­ing to younger Friends.” Check the math and you’ll see that’s the same ques­tion (who­ev­er put the ques­tions togeth­er for­got that the Quak­er under­stand­ing of elder­ship is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a func­tion of age, hmm). I grabbed a pen­cil and added “men­tor­ing to old­er Friends” and it was instant­ly pop­u­lar. Even though the men­tor­ship issue was spread over three ques­tions, AYF’s vot­ed “strong­ly” for each of them, show­ing ter­rif­ic pop­u­lar sup­port. Almost no over-40 Friend vot­ed for this. This is not some­thing that can be forced onto dis­in­ter­est­ed old­er Friends, which means I think we young-in’s are going to have to rely on one anoth­er for mentorship.
  • SUPPORT FOR AYF CONFERNCES: Younger Friends want to spend more time togeth­er. Note should be made that the vot­ers were Friends attend­ing a con­fer­ence and that we were a select­ed and self-selected group who pre­sum­ably like to attend con­fer­ences. Still, this is popular.
  • TALKING ABOUT OUR FAITH: It’s sad that only two old­er Friends thought explain­ing the faith was worth­while. At the same time it’s encour­ag­ing that 13 AYFs want­ed this. It’s very clear that younger Friends aren’t as afraid of talk­ing about seri­ous faith issues as the Baby Boomers (it’s nice to see some of my essays confirmed!).

Things Old­er Friends want­ed more than Younger Friends:

  • TAPPING THE YOUTH: There was what I thought was a semi-obnoxious ques­tion about how to “tap the ener­gy and pas­sion” of younger Friends. This is very close to the all-too-common gen­er­a­tional mind­set that sees “val­ues young peo­ple as a resource” (as a ad in heavy-rotation at NPR pro­claims). We are not a resource for extrac­tion. Young peo­ple are too often seen mere­ly as a source of cheap labor for projects ini­ti­at­ed, designed and run by old­er Friends; they are want­ed as pas­sive audi­ence mem­bers for old­er Friends’ pon­tif­i­cat­ing lec­tures; they are end­less­ly pro­claimed a far-off “future” of Friends rather than the very much here-and-now present of Friends.While old­er Friends at the con­sul­ta­tion felt strong­ly that young peo­ple should be tapped, Adult Young Friends had luke­warm inter­est in being tapped and high school Friends showed no inter­est what­so­ev­er. While not all old­er Friends think of young Friends as “resources,” it’s a common-enough theme that we need to flag it as a part of the gen­er­a­tional gap. I sus­pect that pow­er issues will sur­face when Quak­er insti­tu­tions try to pull togeth­er projects that “tap” youth: twenty-something Friends are going to want more involve­ment in the design and oper­a­tion of these projects than old­er Friends will be will­ing to give.Similarly, old­er Friends seem to be more inter­est­ed that younger Friends attain “crit­i­cal mass” at Quak­er insti­tu­tions like month­ly, quar­ter­ly and year­ly meet­ings. The phras­ing of the ques­tion is a lit­tle ambigu­ous and I see two like­ly expla­na­tions. One is that younger Friends don’t feel they need crit­i­cal mass to be involved in Quak­er insti­tu­tions and want inte­grat­ed inter­gen­er­a­tional par­tic­i­pa­tion rather than “AYF ghet­tos.” The oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty (the scari­er one) is that younger Friends sim­ply aren’t as com­mit­ted to Quak­er insti­tu­tions. I sus­pect the gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in respons­es are the result of both these fac­tors, plus oth­ers perhaps.

Things no one par­tic­u­lar­ly cared about:

  • No one wants mate­ri­als specif­i­cal­ly designed for AYF. No one wants adver­tis­ing pro­grams. No one wants a data­base to help iso­lat­ed Friends.
  • An AYF trav­el­ing min­istries was luke­warm, 4 YAF stars, 3 over-40. This sur­pris­es me.
  • Any oth­er pat­terns that should be lift­ed up?

Dis­claimer
I should note that this was not a sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey. Though the orga­niz­ers of the Con­sul­ta­tion tried hard and the par­tic­i­pants were sur­pris­ing­ly diverse for an col­lec­tion like this, they weren’t rep­re­sen­ta­tive. There were only four high school par­tic­i­pants and I did­n’t adjust their votes: “luke­warm” sup­port from them should real­ly be relabled “strong” support.

While this is a small sam­ple size, this is one of the few recent sur­veys of it type in FGC Quak­erism and it bears close study. It con­firms a lot of what I’ve been say­ing all these years (yea!, I’m not crazy) and echoes what I hear a lot of high school and twenty-something Friends talk­ing about. Take it for what its worth!


Relat­ed:

We Quakers should be cooler than the Sweat Lodge

July 5, 2004

I have just come back from a “Meet­ing for Lis­ten­ing for Sweat Lodge Con­cerns,” described as “an oppor­tu­ni­ty for per­sons to express their feel­ings in a wor­ship­ful man­ner about the can­cel­la­tion of the FGC Gath­er­ing sweat lodge work­shop this year.” Non-Quakers read­ing this blog might be sur­prised to hear that Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence holds sweat lodges, but it has and they’ve been increas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial. This year’s work­shop was can­celled after FGC received a very strong­ly word­ed com­plaint from the Wampanoag Native Amer­i­can tribe. Today’s meet­ing intend­ed to lis­ten to the feel­ings and con­cerns of all FGC Friends involved and was clerked by the very-able Arthur Larrabee. There was pow­er­ful min­istry, some pre­dictable “min­istry” and one stun­ning mes­sage from a white Friend who dis­missed the very exis­tance of racism in the world (it’s just a illu­sion, the peo­ple respon­si­ble for it are those who per­ceive it).

I’ve had my own run-in’s with the sweat lodge, most unfor­get­tably when I was the co-planning clerk of the 2002 Adult Young Friends pro­gram at FGC (a few of us thought it was inap­pro­pri­ate to trans­fer a por­tion of the rather small AYF bud­get to the sweat lodge work­shop, a request made with the argu­ment that so many high-school and twenty-something Friends were attend­ing it). But I find myself increas­ing­ly uncon­cerned about the lodge. It’s clear to me now that it part of anoth­er tra­di­tion than I am. It is not the kind of Quak­er I am. The ques­tion remain­ing is whether an orga­ni­za­tion that will spon­sor it is a dif­fer­ent tradition.

How did Lib­er­al Friends get to the place where most our our younger mem­bers con­sid­er the sweat lodge cer­e­mo­ny to be the high point of their Quak­er expe­ri­ence? The sweat lodge has giv­en a gen­er­a­tion of younger Friends an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mune with the divine in a way that their meet­ings do not. It has giv­en them men­tor­ship and lead­er­ship expe­ri­ences which they do not receive from the old­er Friends estab­lish­ment. It has giv­en them a sense of iden­ti­ty and pur­pose which they don’t get from their meet­ing “com­mu­ni­ty.”

I don’t care about ban­ning the work­shop. That does­n’t address the real prob­lems. I want to get to the point where younger Friends look at the sweat and won­der why they’d want to spend a week with some  white Quak­er guy who won­ders aloud in pub­lic whether he’s “a Quak­er or an Indi­an” (could we have a third choice?). I’ve always thought this was just rather embar­rass­ing.  I want the sweat lodge to with­er away in recog­ni­tion of it’s inher­ent ridicu­lous­ness. I want younger Friends to get a taste of the divine love and char­i­ty that Friends have found for 350 years. We’re sim­ply cool­er than the sweat lodge.

* * * *

And what real­ly is the sweat lodge all about? I don’t real­ly buy the cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion cri­tique (the offi­cial par­ty line for can­cel­ing it argues that it’s racist). Read founder George Price’s Friends Jour­nal arti­cle on the sweat lodge and you’ll see that he’s part of a long-standing tra­di­tion. For two hun­dred years, Native Amer­i­cans have been used as myth­ic cov­er for thin­ly dis­guised European-American philoso­phies. The Boston pro­test­ers who staged the famous tea par­ty all dressed up as Indi­ans, play­ing out an emerg­ing mythol­o­gy of the Amer­i­can rebels as spir­i­tu­al heirs to Indi­ans (long dri­ven out of the Boston area by that time). In 1826, James Fen­i­more Coop­er turned that myth into one of the first pieces of clas­sic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture with a sto­ry about the “Last” of the Mohi­cans. At the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the new boy scout move­ment claimed that their fit­ness and social­iza­tion sys­tem was real­ly a re-application of Native Amer­i­can train­ing and ini­ti­a­tion rites. Quak­ers got into the game too: the South Jer­sey and Bucks Coun­ty sum­mer camps they found­ed in the nineteen-teens were full of Native Amer­i­can motifs, with cab­ins and lakes named after dif­fer­ent tribes and the chil­dren encour­aged to play along.

Set in this con­text, George Price is clear­ly just the lat­est white guy to claim that only the spir­it of pur­er Native Amer­i­cans will save us from our Old World Euro­pean stodgi­ness. Yes, it’s appro­pri­a­tion I guess, but it’s so trans­par­ent and clas­si­cal­ly Amer­i­can that our favorite song “Yan­kee Doo­dle” is a British wartime send-up of the impulse. We’ve been stick­ing feath­ers in our caps since forever.

In the Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, it’s clear the Quak­er sweat lodge owes more to the Euro­pean psy­chother­a­py of Karl Jung than Chief Ock­an­ick­on. It’s all about “lim­i­nal­i­ty” and ini­ti­a­tion into myth­ic arche­types, fea­tur­ing cribbed lan­guage from Vic­tor Turn­er, the anthro­pol­o­gist who was very pop­u­lar cir­ca 1974. Price is clear but nev­er explic­it about his work: his sweat lodge is Jun­gian psy­chol­o­gy over­laid onto the out­ward form of a Native Amer­i­can sweat­lodge. In ret­ro­spect it’s no sur­prise that a birthright Philadel­phia Friend in a tired year­ly meet­ing would try to com­bine trendy Euro­pean pop psy­chol­o­gy with Quak­er sum­mer camp them­ing. What is a sur­prise (or should be a sur­prise) is that Friends would spon­sor and pub­lish arti­cles about a “Quak­er Sweat Lodges” with­out chal­leng­ing the author to spell out the Quak­er con­tri­bu­tion to a pro­grammed rit­u­al con­duct­ed in a con­se­crat­ed teepee steeplehouse.

(Push the influ­ences a lit­tle more, and you’ll find that Vic­tor Turn­er’s anthro­po­log­i­cal find­ings among obscure African tribes arguably owes as much to his Catholi­cism than it does the facts on the ground. More than one Quak­er wit has com­pared the sweat lodge to Catholic mass; well: Turn­er’s your miss­ing philo­soph­i­cal link.)

* * * *

Yes­ter­day I had some good con­ver­sa­tion about gen­er­a­tional issues in Quak­erism. I’m cer­tain­ly not the only thirty-something that feels invis­i­ble in the bull­doz­er of baby boomer assump­tions about our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. I’m also not the only one get­ting to the point where we’re just going to be Quak­er despite the Quak­er insti­tu­tions and cul­ture. I think the ques­tion we’re all grap­pling with now is how we relate to the insti­tu­tions that ignore us and dis­miss our cries of alarm for what we Friends have become.