Tag Archives ⇒ part

Peterson Toscano is a reluctant minister

July 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s fea­tured arti­cle over at Friends Jour­nal is Peter­son Toscano’s “A Reluc­tant Min­is­ter.”

Satire and irony, espe­cial­ly when it is sub­tle, done in char­ac­ter, or relies on tone can be mis­un­der­stood when tak­en lit­er­al­ly. Friends can get so caught up in the words that we miss the point. It is nev­er fun explain­ing a joke to a Friend, but even that inter­ac­tion is part of the work of pre­sent­ing per­for­mance art for Quak­ers. We are com­mit­ted to fair­ness and love. Com­e­dy can be used to hurt oth­ers or to make light of seri­ous issues. Unpack­ing a joke can lead to rich dis­cus­sion. I seek to use com­e­dy to shed light on impor­tant issues. Still, some Friends pre­fer the straight­for­ward mes­sage over the com­ic performance. 

I real­ly appre­ci­ate the care and hon­esty that Peter­son has put into defin­ing his work. It would be so easy for him to label his per­for­mance art as min­istry and wear it as a cloak of respectabil­i­ty. Much of his work does indeed act as min­istry and he uses a clear­ness com­mit­tee as a Quak­er dis­cern­ment tool. But he wants to keep a space open for what you might call artis­tic con­fu­sion and so describes him­self as a “the­atri­cal per­for­mance activist.”

When the pen­du­lum began trend toward re-embracing the ideas of min­istry with­in Lib­er­al Quak­erism some years back, many forms of pub­lic work start­ed being labeled min­istry. It might be a sign of the incom­plete­ness of our follow-through that few of the peo­ple com­ing for­ward with min­istries felt com­fort­able call­ing them­selves min­is­ters. I like the idea of keep­ing middle-ground spaces that we don’t try to arti­fi­cial­ly kludge into clas­sic Quak­er models. 


A Reluctant Minister

A Reluc­tant Minister 

Reflec­tions on per­for­mance art among Friends.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Red Hens, resistance, and love

June 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er weighs in on the civility-in-politics ques­tions hap­pen­ing now. He makes use­ful dis­tinc­tions between mass behav­ior and spon­ta­neous protest and then lays out the sit­u­a­tion for those of us who fol­low the Prince of Peace.

I’m con­vinced that the USA is in a kind of dan­ger that is new to most of us. But even if our worst fears turn out to be exag­ger­at­ed, the scale of pain and despair among some (and wicked glee among oth­ers) is some­thing that demands a prophet­ic and pas­toral response from all who claim to rep­re­sent Good News.

Also check out his list of eight options for respond­ing to the cur­rent polit­i­cal crisis.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​w​o​-​r​e​d​-​h​e​n​s​.​h​tml

Meeting as Covenant Community

June 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son, writ­ing in his blog, Through the Flam­ing Sword:

The pur­pose of a covenant com­mu­ni­ty is to pro­vide a home for this trans­form­ing work. That means that join­ing a meet­ing that is a covenant com­mu­ni­ty invites rad­i­cal engage­ment with our spir­i­tu­al lives on the part of our fel­low mem­bers, who are to be the vehi­cles for God’s trans­form­ing work.

Meet­ing as Covenant Community

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

Skeletons (not even) in the closet

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is a bit a gru­some sto­ry, though not as shock­ing at it should be. Louellen White, a researcher look­ing for bur­ial records of Native Amer­i­can chil­dren stum­bled on a Native Amer­i­can skull just sit­ting in a dis­play case of a old Philadel­phia meeting.

As White searched for grave­yard ledgers in the library — crammed with stuffed birds, cloth­ing, shells and books — she came upon the skull. Her legs wob­bled. And her stom­ach dropped. Arsenault-Cote offered advice and reas­sur­ance. “You’re out there look­ing for them, and now they’re show­ing them­selves to you,” she told White. “He’s been wait­ing a long time.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, Philadel­phia Quak­ers were “incon­sis­tent friends” to Indi­ans, engaged in the same col­o­niz­ing projects as oth­er faiths while see­ing them­selves as unique­ly able to edu­cate natives.

Incon­sis­tent is an apt word. Paula Palmer has been trac­ing the his­to­ry of Quak­er Indi­an Board­ing Schools: high-minded enter­pris­es that often for­ca­bly stripped her­itage from their pupils in ways that were as cul­tur­al­ly impe­r­i­al as they were unaware.

Byber­ry Meet­ing dates to the 1690s and the meet­ing­house grounds are full of abo­li­tion­ist his­to­ry. The skull was appar­ent­ly dug up in the mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry as part of a near­by canal project and is thought to have come to the meet­ing­house as part of a col­lec­tion from a shut­tered his­tor­i­cal soci­ety. Its pres­ence on the shelf rep­re­sents the atti­tudes of Friends many decades ago who thought noth­ing of plac­ing a Lenape skull in a case. There’s also the sad sub­text that the meet­ing library is said to be so unused that most of the meet­ing’s con­tem­po­rary mem­bers had no idea it was there. It’s a shame that it took an out­side researcher to notice the skele­tons in our dis­play case.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​4​8​3​0​7​2​5​7​1​.​h​tml

Our unease with evil

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is back, with a look at Quak­ers’ unease with evil

If there is some­thing divine or at least quasi-divine about the human, then where does human evil fit in? How could the two coex­ist? I sus­pect that this cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance explains part of our our unease with evil.

Evil

British Quakers take long hard look at faith

May 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Britain Year­ly Meet­ing has decid­ed to under­take a once-in-a-generation rewrite of its Faith and Practice

Reg­u­lar revi­sion and being open to new truths is part of who Quak­ers are as a reli­gious soci­ety. Quak­ers com­piled the first of these books of dis­ci­pline in 1738. Since then, each new gen­er­a­tion of Quak­ers has revised the book. A new revi­sion may help it speak to younger Quak­ers and the wider world.

This pos­si­bil­i­ty of this revi­sion was the basis for the inac­cu­rate and overblown click­baity rhetoric last week that Quak­ers were giv­ing up God. Rewrit­ing these books of Faith and Prac­tice is not uncom­mon. But it can be a big fraught. Who decides what is archa­ic? Who decides which parts of our Quak­er expe­ri­ence are core and which are expend­able? Add to this the long­stand­ing Quak­er dis­trust of creedal state­ments and there’s a strong incen­tive to include every­body’s expe­ri­ence. Inclu­sion can be an admirable goal in life and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of course, but for a reli­gious body defin­ing itself it leads to lowest-common-denominationalism.

I’ve found it extreme­ly reward­ing to read old­er copies of Faith and Prac­tice pre­cise­ly because the sometimes-unfamiliar lan­guage opens up a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion that I’ve missed in the rou­tine of con­tem­po­rary life. The 1806 Philadel­phia Book of Dis­ci­pline has chal­lenged me to rec­on­cile its very dif­fer­ent take on Quak­er faith (where are the SPICES?) with my own. My under­stand­ing is that the first copies of Faith and Prac­tice were essen­tial­ly binders of the impor­tant min­utes that had been passed by Friends over the first cen­tu­ry of our exis­tence; these min­utes rep­re­sent­ed bound­aries – on our par­tic­i­pa­tion on war, on our lan­guage of days and times, on our advices against gam­bling and tav­erns. This was a very dif­fer­ent kind of doc­u­ment than our Faith and Prac­tice’s today.

It would be a per­son­al hell for me to sit on one of the rewrit­ing com­mit­tees. I like the mar­gins and fringes of Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty too much. I like peo­ple who have tak­en the time to think through their expe­ri­ences and give words to it – phras­es and ideas which might not fit the stan­dard nomen­cla­ture. I like pub­lish­ing and shar­ing the ideas of peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly agree.

These days more new­com­ers first find Friends through Wikipedia and YouTube and (often phe­nom­e­nal­ly inac­cu­rate) online dis­cus­sions. A few years ago I sat in a ses­sion of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing in which we were dis­cus­sion revis­ing the sec­tion of Faith and Prac­tice that had to do with month­ly meet­ing report­ing. I was a bit sur­prised that the Friends who rose to speak on the pro­posed new pro­ce­dure all admit­ted being unaware of the process in the cur­rent edi­tion. It seems as if Faith and Prac­tice is often a impre­cise snap­shot of Quak­er insti­tu­tion­al life even to those of us who are deeply embedded.


Quakers take long hard look at faith

Quak­ers take long hard look at faith 

Quak­ers in Britain are to rewrite their book of dis­ci­pline that has guid­ed their work and wit­ness across…

Quakers Quakers 

Of Quakers and deep democracy – is it time to renew the Quaker Book? | openDemocracy

May 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Of Quak­ers and deep democ­ra­cy – is it time to renew the Quak­er Book? | openDemocracy

Quak­ers have a say­ing, that we ‘hold in the light’ those we are act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with. This week­end we need those move­ments we’re part of to hold us in the light. Only when we are work­ing on our­selves can we work with others. 

https://​www​.open​democ​ra​cy​.net/​u​k​/​t​i​m​-​g​e​e​/​o​f​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​d​e​e​p​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​c​y​-​i​s​-​i​t​-​t​i​m​e​-​t​o​-​r​e​n​e​w​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​b​ook