Tag Archives ⇒ number

The rise and fall of Harmonia, Battle Creek’s Spiritualist utopia

January 16, 2019
· Martin Kelley

A nice pro­file on a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty in Michi­gan that went full-in in Spiritualism:

As they came west, a num­ber brought Spir­i­tu­al­ism with them. A lot of lib­er­al Quak­ers were very inter­est­ed in Spir­i­tu­al­ism. Bat­tle Creek had a Quak­er base, they pre­dom­i­nat­ed for a while. They con­vert­ed to Spir­i­tu­al­ism as a body, and Bat­tle Creek became this south­west Michi­gan cen­ter for Spiritualism. 

Quak­era were among many of rhe ear­ly lead­ers of the Spir­i­tu­al­ist move­ment; while it even­tu­al­ly most­ly burned out, a lot of the ideas about author­i­ty and spir­i­tu­al diver­si­ty in turn influ­enced Hick­site Friends.

https://​www​.bat​tle​creeken​quir​er​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​l​i​f​e​/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​1​6​/​r​i​s​e​-​a​n​d​-​f​a​l​l​-​h​a​r​m​o​n​i​a​-​b​a​t​t​l​e​-​c​r​e​e​k​s​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​u​a​l​i​s​t​-​u​t​o​p​i​a​/​2​2​1​4​8​0​9​0​0​2​/​?​f​b​c​l​i​d​=​I​w​A​R​2​v​e​C​N​Z​V​t​I​z​l​q​S​k​a​L​s​1​5​2​y​C​p​0​x​3​v​j​i​J​v​m​i​l​3​T​B​B​b​f​O​k​9​5​P​0​e​G​P​Y​j​K​S​r​mmU

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a num­ber of Black Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tors have shared heart­break­ing sto­ries of not feel­ing wel­come in Quak­er cir­cles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a ques­tion mark to the end of its title — “A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends?” The choice of punc­tu­a­tion hints at a cer­tain weari­ness — are we real­ly still ask­ing this? — along with the sug­ges­tion that maybe many Friends are con­tent enough with the sta­tus quo that they might sim­ply answer “no” to a call for diversity. 


Racially Diverse Society of Friends (January 2019) Archives - Friends Journal

Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends (Jan­u­ary 2019) Archives — Friends Journal 

Jan­u­ary 2019: A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends? Full Issue Access Fea­tures: Are We Ready to Make the…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

2019 FGC Gathering workshops announced

December 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

It’s that time of year: FGC’s announced the work­shop list­ings for its annu­al Gath­er­ing, start­ing at the end of June at Grin­nell Col­lege in Iowa.

There are 48 work­shops to choose from this year, which is about the nor­mal num­ber for recent years. I used Archive​.org to look back and the biggest year I could dig up was 2006, when 73 work­shops were offered. Gath­er­ing atten­dance has dropped since then but I also sus­pect 73 selec­tions were a bit ambi­tious. The cur­rent nor­mal is more suit­ed to the Gath­er­ing size. There are lots of famil­iar work­shop lead­ers. Are there any that stand out for you? Fell free to drop rec­om­men­da­tions (or pro­mote your own work­shop if you’re doing one!) in the com­ment section.

https://​www​.fgc​quak​er​.org/​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​/​g​a​t​h​e​r​i​n​g​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​-​a​n​d​-​e​v​e​n​t​s​/​w​o​r​k​s​h​ops

Why Do Quakers Worship in Silence?

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Catch­ing up with last week’s Quak­er­S­peak, which was a great one with Lloyd Lee Wil­son explain­ing how Quak­er silence is dif­fer­ent from indi­vid­ual meditation:

From the exte­ri­or, there may not appear to be very much dif­fer­ent between a group of indi­vid­u­als doing indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion or indi­vid­ual con­tem­pla­tion in the same room and a group of Quak­er wor­ship­ing togeth­er. But there are a num­ber of things that are, as we expe­ri­ence them, dif­fer­ent. One is that these prac­tices that have as their goal achiev­ing still­ness of mind or per­fect qui­et or single-pointed aware­ness, as a goal, are actu­al­ly quite dif­fer­ent from what we are attempt­ing and achiev­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. For Friends, this point of still­ness is only a way sta­tion, and we pass though that. It is not our goal, but it is how we get to a point of encounter with God.
 
http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​h​y​-​d​o​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​w​o​r​s​h​i​p​-​i​n​-​s​i​l​e​n​ce/

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.

Lifting up the vocabulary

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is Sell­ing Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two promi­nent Quak­er board­ing schools in the Philadel­phia area, and he talks about the brand­ing chal­lenges of “Quak­er val­ues” which his­toric Quak­er schools so often fall back on when describ­ing their mis­sion. We often describe these with the sim­plis­tic “SPICES” foru­mu­la­tion (Eric Moon wrote about the prob­lems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encour­ages us to expand our language:

We can use any num­ber of descrip­tors that do not sound so haughty and near­sight­ed. I think we should con­tin­u­al­ly lift up some key pieces of vocab­u­lary that real­ly do make the Quak­er way dis­tinc­tive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add oth­ers: “that of God in every per­son”; “the Inner Light”; “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”; “dis­cern­ment”; “sense of the meet­ing”; “right­ly led and right­ly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice with­in”; “way open­ing”; “clerk­ing”; “query”; “wor­ship shar­ing”; “expec­tant wait­ing”; “cen­ter­ing down”; “Quak­er deci­sion mak­ing”; “Quak­er tra­di­tion”; “faith and prac­tice”; “seek­ing clear­ness”; “Quak­er tes­ti­monies”; and of course, “meet­ing for worship.”

Long­time FJ read­ers will remem­ber a much-discussed 2008 arti­cle by Hoopes, “Young Fam­i­lies and Quak­erism: Will the Cen­ter Hold?” It cer­tain spoke to my con­di­tion as a par­ent strug­gling with fam­i­ly life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard real­i­ties fac­ing many Quak­er par­ents of young chil­dren today. They are fre­quent­ly exhaust­ed and fraz­zled from attend­ing to their children’s needs in addi­tion to their own all week long. They des­per­ate­ly need a break from their own chil­dren, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expect­ed — to serve as First-day school teach­ers or child­care providers. Hence, their expe­ri­ence of meet­ing is not one of replen­ish­ment, but of fur­ther depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadel­phia Friends took the 2008 arti­cle to heart.


Selling Quakerism - Friends Journal

Sell­ing Quak­erism — Friends Journal 

The Mis­sion – Mar­ket Ten­sion Inher­ent in Quak­er Values

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Barking up the family tree

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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/

Edward Tufte and classical intellectual inquiry

June 27, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Near the begin­ning of Edward Tufte’s Beau­ti­ful Evi­dence, he writes “My books are self-exemplifying: the objects them­selves embody the ideas writ­ten about.” The same could be true of his presentations.

On a recent Tues­day, Friends Jour­nal spon­sored me to attend one of Tufte’s one-day work­shops. He’s most well-known for his beau­ti­ful books on data visu­al­iza­tions but his work­shop touched on a num­ber of fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics. “The world is way too inter­est­ing to have dis­ci­pli­nary bound­aries,” he said at one point as he took us from music to maps to space shut­tles to magi­cians. The range was pur­pose­ful. He was teach­ing us how to think.

I had a front row seat! Pro-tip: sit in front. He wan­ders around dur­ing the ini­tial read­ing time chat­ting with peo­ple near the front. 
All link­ing lines should be anno­tat­ed to show action and rela­tion­ships: “Prop­er nouns don’t even get us out of town.” 
Data and beau­ty: here he shows a his­to­ry of late-20th cen­tu­ry pop music, a chart that remind­ed me of my cur­rent project of lis­ten­ing to “1001 Albums You Must Lis­ten to Before You Die” list. 
There was a table full of beau­ti­ful posters and more books. 
More visuals! 

I esti­mat­ed a crowd of maybe 450. A large per­cent­age were low-level cor­po­rate types (I over­heard one say “I was not expect­ing that he’d bash Pow­er­Point so much”; this slack­er obvi­ous­ly hadn’t even tak­en five min­utes to skim Tufte’s Wikipedia page). There were small­er mix­es of techie, cre­atives, and design pro­fes­sion­als, some of whom were there after fawn­ing over his books for years. Bonus if you go: part of the work­shop reg­is­tra­tion fee is gratis copies of his books!

I have 13 pages of notes. Some high­lights for me:

  • The heart of much of the work­shop was crit­i­cal think­ing. Tufte dis­sect­ed var­i­ous news web­sites to take us through the ways they gave attri­bu­tion and pre­sent­ed data. He also went through stud­ies and gave var­i­ous point­ers to sniff out when ver­i­fy­ing data was being withheld.
  • “Pro­duc­ing a good pre­sen­ta­tion is a moral and eth­i­cal act.” (dit­to for being an good audi­ence mem­ber). There is a form of civic respon­si­bil­i­ty to inquiry.
  • Tufte is a big believ­er in meet­ings that begin with read­ing. The highest-resolution device most of us have is paper. Peo­ple can read 2 – 3 times faster than a pre­sen­ter can talk. By let­ting peo­ple go at their own pace they can tai­lor the pre­sen­ta­tion to their own needs.
  • Data pre­sen­ta­tion: A theme through­out the work­shop was “doc­u­ments not decks,” an empha­sis on flat, web-like pre­sen­ta­tions that allow read­ers to con­trol scrolling. He con­tin­u­al­ly called out “flat sur­faces” and mate­r­i­al that is “adja­cent in space” to give an almost the­o­log­i­cal argu­ment for their supe­ri­or­i­ty over deck-like pre­sen­ta­tions (think Pow­er­Point) that can obscure impor­tant data.
  • He urged us not to pan­der to our audi­ence: Con­sumer sites show that data can be pop­u­lar: the New York Times’s web­site has 450 links; ESPN’s has tables atop tables and yet peo­ple read these sites every day. Why can’t we have the same lev­el of data-rich acces­si­bil­i­ty in our work lives? “Have we sud­den­ly becomes stu­pid just because we’ve comes to work?” He urged the mid-level execs in the audi­ence to demand good pre­sen­ta­tions. We should push back against the low-expectations of their boss­es to ask “Why can’t we live up to ESPN?”
  • Data as beau­ty. From gor­geous maps to graph­i­cal music nota­tion (below), Tufte loves design and data that come togeth­er in beau­ty. It is amazing.

One of my favorite parts of the work­shop was an after­noon digres­sion from strict data that he intro­duced by say­ing, “It’s time for a heart to heart.” It began with a ser­mon­ette on cred­i­bil­i­ty: how to make your­self account­able and just other’s arguments.

Then he talked about how to respond when some­one chal­lenges your work. I could tell there must be a long list of per­son­al sto­ries inform­ing this part of the work­shop – lessons learned, yes, but sure­ly oppor­tu­ni­ties lost too. Tufte told us it was only nat­ur­al to respond in defen­sive­ness and anger and coun­seled us to not be too quick to dis­miss cri­tique. You’ve got to do the hard work to see whether your chal­lenger might be correct.

He remind­ed us that when we’re in a room full of peers, every­one present has been fil­tered and select­ed over the years. You should assume the room will be just as smart as you are. “How dare you think your motives are bet­ter than those of your col­leagues!” he thun­dered at an emo­tion­al crescen­do. He admit­ted that this self-doubt is a hard pos­ture to adopt. He’s polled pub­lic fig­ures he respects and even the thickest-skinned are stung by challenge.

He said he had learned to back off, go slow, and con­tem­plate when he’s chal­lenged. Just when I thought he had found some super-human abil­i­ty to ratio­nal­ly con­sid­er things, he told us it could took him three to five years to real­ly accept the valid­i­ty of dis­sent­ing views.

This was a much-needed ser­mon for me and I nod­ded along along. As some­one who pro­fes­sion­al­ly ampli­fies opin­ion, I’m often in the mid­dle of peo­ple in debate (I’ve been an actor in these con­flicts in the past, though these days I gen­er­al­ly play a role some­where between an agent and medi­a­tor). It’s good to see intel­lec­tu­al debate as a process and to remem­ber that it can take years. “This con­cludes the ther­a­peu­tic por­tion of today’s course”, he con­clud­ed, before going back to visualizations.

He end­ed by show­ing us time­less first-editions of beau­ti­ful sci­en­tif­ic works by Galileo and Euclid. He felt a gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion of being part of an intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion. He was a mas­ter and for this day we in the audi­ence were his appren­tices. “In life we need tools that last for­ev­er and give us clear lever­age in clear thinking.”

 

Update: appar­ent­ly some num­ber of data visu­al­iza­tion peo­ple have dis­liked his work­shops. What I found fas­ci­nat­ing­ly wide-ranging they found ram­bling. Per­haps Tufte has tight­ened his pre­sen­ta­tion or I caught him on a good day. More like­ly, I think they came look­ing for a more tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sion of data visu­al­iza­tion and was sur­prised that Tufte focused so much on crit­i­cal think­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. I have a par­tic­u­lar soft spot for quirky and opin­ion­at­ed peo­ple who don’t fol­low scripts and Tufte’s detours all made a cer­tain sense to me. But then I’m a phi­los­o­phy major turned do-gooder writer/publisher. Your mileage may vary.