Tag Archives ⇒ one

Quakers minute on the child camps

June 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

San Anto­nio Quak­ers’ minute on child separations

Friends Meet­ing of San Anto­nio finds the pol­i­cy of the present admin­is­tra­tion of sep­a­rat­ing chil­dren from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der to be shame­ful and con­trary to Amer­i­can val­ues. Fur­ther, using the Gospel to claim that “God has ordained” such actions is appalling to us as a peo­ple of faith.

A few years ago Friends Jour­nal ran an arti­cle on the bor­der human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, co-written by one of San Anto­nio’s clerks, so we’ve added this week­end’s state­ment to the arti­cle for context.


Convergence

Convergence 

UPDATE June 2018: “In response to the con­tin­u­ing admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy of sep­a­rat­ing asylum-seeking par­ents from their chil­dren, as…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Group decision making and moral disengagement in the context of yearly meeting schisms

June 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Group deci­sion mak­ing and moral dis­en­gage­ment in the con­text of year­ly meet­ing schisms

This is an aspect of group dis­cern­ment and con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing rarely dis­cussed among Quak­ers. Like­ly this is because the pre­sump­tion is that in wor­ship­ful busi­ness meet­ings the pre­sump­tion is that deci­sion mak­ing is Spirit-led. It is a noble ide­al and one that I have seen in action. And yet, it is also a dynam­ic that can be sub­ject to abuse and as such ought to prompt some self-examination and pos­si­bly some inten­tion­al safe­guards into meet­ing processes. 

http://​quak​er​lib​er​tar​i​ans​.wee​bly​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​g​r​o​u​p​-​d​e​c​i​s​i​o​n​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​m​o​r​a​l​-​d​i​s​e​n​g​a​g​e​m​e​n​t​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​n​t​e​x​t​-​o​f​-​y​e​a​r​l​y​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​s​c​h​i​sms

The Rise of Liberal Quakerism

May 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is nerd­ing deep into Quak­er his­to­ry, specif­i­cal­ly the process in which younger mem­bers of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing start­ed for­mu­lat­ing a new kind of Quak­erism. Here’s his explana­to­ry intro­duc­tion and here is part 2:

Mean­while, mem­ber­ship dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, as meet­ings applied dis­ci­pline increas­ing­ly rig­or­ous­ly for walk­ing dis­or­der­ly in all man­ner of ways. In 1859, a prize of one hun­dred pounds was offered by an anony­mous British Friend for the essay that best explained this decline and that offered the most promis­ing solutions

The process was any­thing but overnight. As I under­stand the his­to­ry it would be anoth­er half cen­tu­ry from the prize to a yearly-meeting-wide shift. I don’t think many Friends in Eng­land appre­ci­ate just how Evan­gel­i­cal their year­ly meet­ing has become in these years; their refusal to rec­og­nize Amer­i­can Hick­sites led to the lat­ter’s shun­ning from the world Quak­er fam­i­ly and meant mod­ernist Quak­er respons­es would evolve on large­ly sep­a­rate paths.

I won­der if British Friend William Pol­lard will make an appear­ance in Steven’s posts. I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed how Philadel­phia Hick­sites took to him despite the for­mal insti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers. [Update: Steven just dropped part three and there’s Pol­lard!]

The Rise of Lib­er­al Quak­erism — Part 2

Hometown Heroes

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Josh Tal­bot is back look­ing at pub­lic recog­ni­tions that imply that patri­o­tism is exclu­sive to mil­i­tary ser­vice:

With­in the last month I became aware of the “Home­town Heroes” pro­gram. Hang­ing from lamp­posts in our down­town, and oth­er down­town dis­tricts in the region, are ban­ners with the pic­tures and names of for­mer mil­i­tary per­son­nel. I was look­ing at one of the ban­ners hang­ing out­side of my bank and I start­ed think­ing to myself. “Why is it always soldiers?

Off the top of my head I can think of plen­ty of oth­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty that are heros from my stand­point. Activists for jus­tice and con­science. Civic-minded gad­flies. Shopown­ers who pro­vide so-called “third places” for for peo­ple to con­grege­gate. Traf­fic engi­neers who push back against corner-cutting in safe­ty issues. The most impor­tant heros are often every­day peo­ple who sim­ply do the right thing when chance puts a dan­ger­ous moral dilem­ma right in their path.

I push back against a sim­ple military-are-heros nar­ra­tives because in times of author­i­tar­i­an­ism the mil­i­tary often become the enforcers. There’s the jin­go­is­tic non­sense you hear that the mil­i­tary is pro­tect­ing our free­dom to protest. No: in most cas­es our lib­er­ty has been pre­served by peo­ple stand­ing up and prac­tic­ing their lib­er­ty despi­tee intim­i­da­tion by author­i­tar­i­an bul­lies and their police forces. I have friends in the mil­i­tary and I respect their choic­es and hon­or their com­mit­ments. I know heros can be found through­out the enlist­ed ranks and in our police forces but so are scoundrels. We need to rec­og­nize home­town hero­ism wher­ev­er it hap­pens and resist the mind­set that it’s exclu­sive to state forces.

https://​quak​er​re​turns​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​h​o​m​e​t​o​w​n​-​h​e​r​o​e​s​.​h​tml

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 

President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminiary on Simon Jenkins article

May 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chalk this one up as anoth­er whisper-down-the-lane. As read­ers will prob­a­bly remem­ber, a few weeks ago, non-Friend Simon Jenk­ins wrote an opin­ion piece in The Guardian about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of British Friends drop­ping God from their Faith and Prac­tice. There were a lot of exag­ger­a­tions in it; the year­ly meet­ing ses­sion was most­ly decid­ing whether it it felt led to start the long process of revis­ing the doc­u­ment of Friends’ belief and prac­tice. Many year­ly meet­ings do this every gen­er­a­tion or so. AFAIK, there was no sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion on what the revi­sions might bring. At the time, I spec­u­lat­ed that “Jenk­ins is chas­ing the head­line to advance his own argu­ment with­out regard to how his state­ment might polar­ize Friends.”

Now we have anoth­er head­line chas­er. The pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary more or less reads Jenk­in­s’s piece aloud on his radio show (hat-tip havedan­son on the Quak­ers sub­red­dit). He light­ly skips over the fact that Jenk­ins isn’t Quak­er and admits to lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence of Quak­er wor­ship. The SBTS pres­i­dent, Albert Mohler, repeat­ed­ly calls the Guardian arti­cle a “news report” even though it is clear­ly labeled as an opin­ion piece. If any pub­lic­i­ty is good pub­lic­i­ty then it’s good that non-Friends like Jenk­ins and now Mohler are talk­ing about the decision-making process of a Quak­er year­ly meet­ing, but this is stu­pid piled on stupid.

From a media per­spec­tive, I get it: Mohler has a dai­ly 24-minute pod­cast to fill. He has interns who scan buzzy news items. They rearrange the text with inter­sti­tials like “he con­tin­ues, and I quote” and “he goes on to say” so that Mohler can spend five min­utes read­ing an arti­cle with­out sound­ing like he’s just read­ing an arti­cle. But seri­ous­ly, how does the pres­i­dent of a major sem­i­nary have such dis­re­gard for any­thing approach­ing aca­d­e­m­ic rig­or? Also: how much regur­gi­tat­ed junk is on the inter­net sim­ply because peo­ple need to fill time? The Quak­er cau­tion about giv­ing min­istry just because you’re paid to give min­istry and it’s time to give min­istry seems apt in this case.

Mon­day, May 14, 2018

Foxy George

May 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Read­er Carl Abbott of Mult­nom­ah Meet­ing in Por­tand, Ore­gon, wrote in with a bit more con­text about the local pub­lic school that’s shed­ding it’s Quak­er mas­cot:

The Franklin High mas­cot  issue was very low pro­file here in Port­land, basi­cal­ly raised and advo­cat­ed by one per­son. Indi­vid­u­als in our meet­ing signed her peti­tion, but the ques­tion did not rise to for­mal con­sid­er­a­tion ( I think also the case with oth­er area meet­ings and church­es). The ques­tion of Native Amer­i­can names used by schools around Ore­gon HAS been a sub­stan­tial and dif­fi­cult pub­lic issue, and I sus­pect that the Port­land School Board was look­ing to avoid a quag­mire. I’m sup­port­ive of the change, although it seemed to me that there have been much more impor­tant things to wor­ry about.

Mean­while, for your enter­tain­ment I dug out this old press release from George Fox Uni­ver­si­ty (whose date I can’t read). I do agree that Bru­in is bet­ter than Foxy George.

Mas­cot press release.pdf

It looks to me like the hand­writ­ing reads Fall 70 to me. Am I going to be the only one to think that Foxy George is pret­ty cre­ative in a charm­ing­ly obvi­ous way?

Photons Don’t Phail

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A few weeks ago I wrote about a New Eng­land Friends meet­ing that was work­ing to share the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by its solar pan­els with its neigh­bors. In response, one of our long­time blog­ging Friends Doug Ben­nett, now of Maine’s Durham Meet­ing and for­mer­ly pres­i­dent of some col­lege some­where, wrote me about lyrics that its for­mer pas­tor Doug Gwyn (this guy) wrote. I love both of these Dougs so of course I’ll share the link with you all, includ­ing this first stan­za of “Pho­tons Don’t Fail Us Now”:

it would be fool­ish to vote on the nature of a photon
as Quak­ers we sim­ply approve
you can argue to the grave it’s a par­ti­cle or wave
we just want to let it hit our roof

“Pho­tons Don’t Fail Us Now,” Song Lyrics by Doug Gwyn