Tag Archives ⇒ philadelphia

Gohn Brothers, broadfalls, & men’s plain dress

July 26, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A few years ago I felt led to take up the ancient Quak­er tes­ti­mo­ny of plain dress­ing. I’ve spo­ken else­where about my moti­va­tions but I want to give a lit­tle prac­ti­cal advice to oth­er men who have heard or even got­ten ahold of the “Gohn Bros.” cat­a­log but don’t know just what to order. I cer­tain­ly am not sanc­tion­ing a uni­form for plain dress, I sim­ply want to give those so inclined an idea of how to start.

Just as back­ground: I’m a thirty-something Philadel­phia native, brought up with­out any for­mal reli­gion in a Philly sub­urb. I first start­ed approach­ing Quak­ers (Friends) back in col­lege. In my ear­ly twen­ties, I start­ed work­ing at a collectively-run paci­fist book pub­lish­ing house and liv­ing in what was then the sort of down­scale hip­ster neigh­bor­hood of West Philadel­phia. In 2002 I attend­ed a week-long work­shop that had some plain dress­ing Friends and felt the nudge to exper­i­ment. I’ve left Philadel­phia to become a res­i­dent of a small farm­ing town in South Jer­sey (what love will do) but I still spend a lot of time in the city and in decid­ed­ly urban set­tings. I don’t aim to be his­tor­i­cal­ly cor­rect with my plain dress and I don’t want to sim­ply “look like an Amish” person.

Gohn Broth­ers is a store in Indi­ana that sells “Amish and Plain Cloth­ing.” It is cur­rent­ly cel­e­brat­ing it’s 100th year in busi­ness. It’s known for it’s sim­ple print cat­a­log, which is updat­ed every few months. It does not have a web­site. You should get a copy of the cat­a­log to get cur­rent cloth­ing and ship­ping prices. It’s address is:

PO Box 1110, 105 S. Main St., Mid­dle­bury IN 46540
Phone: (574) 825‑2400. Toll-free: 800 – 595-0031

When I first start­ed “going plain,” I sim­ply wore reg­u­lar dark pants with sus­penders found at a gener­ic depart­ment store. It was impor­tant to me that I was wear­ing clothes I already had, and I want­ed to be “Sears Plain,” by which I meant I did­n’t want to go to any extremes to find plain cloth­ing. When I first bought a pair of broad­falls (the zip­per­less pants favored by plain men), I did­n’t wear them for months. Slow­ly I start­ed start­ed wear­ing them out and feel­ing more at ease in them. They were made of rugged den­im, wore well and were quite comfortable.
As my pre-plain clothes have worn out, I’ve start­ed replac­ing them with Gohn Brothers-produced broad­falls. They’re just as inex­pen­sive as any cheaply-made jeans from Old Navy but they hold up and are pre­sum­ably made in Indi­ana by seam­stress­es earn­ing a decent wage.

Broad­falls

Gohn Broth­ers offers many dif­fer­ent weights and fab­rics for their broad­fall pants, num­ber­ing them for ease of order­ing. I have bought two pair, both of which I like:

  • #66: 10 oz. sol­id grey den­im, 100% cot­ton: $22.98
  • #92: 100% cot­ton blue jean den­im (11 oz.): $24.98

Coats

Gohn Broth­ers pro­duces a num­ber of coats, also called “over­shirts.” In these pur­chas­es I have tend­ed to be more dis­tinct­ly Quak­er. I have two Coats:

  • #225: 9oz. Poly, cot­ton. $41.98 at the time of this post. I have opt­ed for a few alter­ations: A “reg­u­lar cut” for $3.00, a “standup col­lar” for $2.00, “but­ton holes with met­al but­tons” for $3.00 and a “quilt­ed lin­ing” for $5.00.
  • #125 9 oz. Black drill den­im. Poly/cotton. Unlined Jack­et, black drill. Alter­ations: “standup col­lar” for $2.00. (for this I had the default “snaps” in place of but­tons and the default “full cut”).

I’ve pref­ered the spe­cial­ized “reg­u­lar cut” coat over the stan­dard “full cut.” The reg­u­lar cut feels more like the stan­dard suit jack­et that most pro­fes­sion­al men wear to work, while the full cut felt more like a wind-breaker. I also pre­fer the but­tons, as the snaps con­tributed to the wind-breaker feel.

Sus­penders

Also known as “braces,” all you need are dark broad­falls and sus­penders to real­ly look “plain” to the world. “Tabbed” sus­penders fit over but­tons in your pants, while “clip-on’s” use alli­ga­tor clips to fas­ten onto stan­dard pants. Tabbed look bet­ter but I can’t help think­ing of Michael Dou­glass in “Wall Street”; a lot of ordi­nary anabapist men I see have clip-on’s.

I’ve heard the sto­ry that there’s a good-hearted rib­bing between the Iowa and North Car­oli­na Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers about whether thin or wide sus­penders is more plain. I’ve start­ed to throw my lot in with Iowa and have got­ten the three-quarter inch sus­penders. (Fash­ion­istas will remem­ber that thin sus­penders were pop­u­lar with a cer­tain kind of high school geek in the mid-1980s – think Cameron in Fer­ris Beuler’s Day Off; fair dis­clo­sure requires that I admit that I wore them around Chel­tenham High). Again Gohn Brothers:

  • #550T 3/4″ tab. Black: $7.98
  • #552C 3/4″ clip. Black: $6.98

Hats

While Gohn Broth­ers does hats, I haven’t bought any of theirs. Instead I’ve gone for the Tilley T3 hat. I’m not com­plete hap­py with this, as Tilley’s seem to be asso­ci­at­ed with a cer­tain kind of clue­less trav­el­er, but I’ve noticed that there are a lot of men in my year­ly meet­ing who wear them, I think as an uncon­scious nod toward plain­ness. The Tilley is also friend­lier to bike com­muters: its tie-down strings wrap eas­i­ly around bike han­dle­bars, and it’s very crush­able and washable.

Not a Uniform

Again, let me stress: I am not try­ing to spec­i­fy a mod­ern plain dress uni­form. The only time you should adopt plain dress is when you’re feel­ing active­ly led by it. Some­times that lead­ing is an intu­tion, which is fine, but you need to fol­low it on your own terms. My prac­tice has evolved over time and yours should too. I’ve become more plain since I start­ed this wit­ness sim­ply because I had to replace worn clothes and could­n’t see spend­ing more mon­ey for shod­di­er clothes than I could get at Gohn Broth­ers. You don’t need to get broad­falls to be “plain,” as “plain­ness” is as much a state of mind and an atti­tude toward God and your spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty as it a set of clothes. I think of it now as a spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline, one very fit­ting for our con­sumeris­tic times.

I’d love to hear from oth­ers about their plain dressing.

The Passion of Uncomfortable Orthodoxies: Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”

February 24, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Mel Gib­son’s movie _The Pas­sion of Christ_ is a chal­lenge for many mod­ern Quak­ers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suf­fer­ing of the ear­ly Friends have been dumbed-down to feel-good clich­es. Can the debate on this movie help us return to that uncom­fort­able place where we can acknowl­edge the com­plex­i­ties of being fer­vent­ly reli­gious in a world haunt­ed by past sins and still in need of con­vic­tion and comfort?

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

What makes a Quaker meeting house?

December 5, 2003
· Martin Kelley
An Atlantic County Methodist Episcopal Meetinghouse. Picture from NJChurschape
An Atlantic Coun­ty Methodist Epis­co­pal Meet­ing­house. Pic­ture from NJChurschape

One of my favorite sites is the amaz­ing NJChurch​scape​.com—that’s New Jer­sey Church­scapes, put togeth­er large­ly through the efforts of Frank L. Greenagel. It’s a true labor of love, a cat­a­loging of church and meet­ing archi­tec­ture in New Jer­sey. It has beau­ti­ful pho­tos, great sto­ries, read­able essays on archi­tec­ture. In a state where every­thing below Cher­ry Hill often gets ignored, South Jer­sey gets good cov­er­age and there’s a lot from the old Quak­er colony of West Jer­sey. This mon­th’s fea­ture is on the meet­ing­house, a build­ing of endear­ing sim­plic­i­ty and it rais­es a lot of ques­tions for me of how we relate to our church buildings.

We modern-day Friends tend to think of the term meet­ing­house as unique­ly ours, but go back in his­to­ry and you’ll find just about every­one using the term to describe the non-showy build­ings they erect­ed for reli­gious ser­vices and town life. Dri­ve around South Jer­sey and you’ll see old Methodist church­es that start­ed out life as meet­ing­hous­es and look sur­pris­ing­ly Quak­er. Greenagel looks at the style and then asks:

At what point does a struc­ture cease being a meet­ing­house and become a church?.. With the ris­ing afflu­ence and increased mobil­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion came a demand for more spe­cial­ized places to meet, as well as more of the basic com­forts and style which hereto­fore were dis­missed as too world­ly, so many church­es added small­er lec­ture rooms, class­rooms for Sun­day school, and oth­er assem­bly rooms dis­tinct from the main auditorium.

By this mea­sure, how many of our beloved East Coast Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es should real­ly just be called “church­es?” In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry the Protes­tant “Sun­day School Move­ment” was picked up by Gur­neyite and Pro­gres­sive Hick­site Friends, with the class­es sim­ply renamed “First Day School” in def­er­ence to Quak­er sen­si­bil­i­ties (I’ve always won­dered if the name switch actu­al­ly fooled any­one, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry). By the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the new mod­ern lib­er­al Friends had picked up the lec­ture for­mat, which like the First Day School move­ment had been adopt­ed from edu­ca­tion­al mod­els via oth­er reli­gious groups. Many of our larg­er month­ly meet­ings have fel­low­ship halls, class­rooms, kitchens, etc. These build­ings have become spe­cial­ized reli­gious wor­ship build­ings and many of them sit emp­ty for most of the week. But not all.

Nowa­days many Quak­er meet­ings with build­ings open them mid-week for use by com­mu­ni­ty groups. Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es host peace groups, bat­tered women hot­lines, yoga class­es, reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in need of a tem­po­rary home and sim­i­lar caus­es. There’s often an ele­ment of good works in the group’s charter.

Per­haps this will­ing­ness to open our build­ings up earns us the right to con­tin­ue using the meet­ing­house name. If so, we should be care­ful to resist the pres­sure of the insur­ance indus­try to close our­selves up in the name of lia­bil­i­ty. One unique­ness to our wor­ship spaces is that they are not con­se­crat­ed and there should be no spe­cial rules for their use. They are over­sized barns and we should cher­ish that. We should remem­ber not to get fetishis­tic about their his­to­ry and we should­n’t tie up our busi­ness meet­ings in end­less dis­cus­sions over the col­or of the new seat cush­ions. When we turn our build­ings over for oth­ers’ use, we should­n’t wor­ry over­ly much if a chair or clock gets damanged or stolen. Friends know that our reli­gion is not our build­ings and that the mea­sure of our spir­it is sim­ply how far we’ll fol­low God, togeth­er as a people.

Related Reading:

  • There’s a very hand­some book about the HABS work on Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es in the greater Philadel­phia area called Silent Wit­ness: Quak­er Meet­ing Hous­es In The Delaware Val­ley, 1695 To The Present. (only $10!).
  • My friend Bob Bar­nett has been putting a lot of great work into a new West Jer­sey website.

We’re All Ranters Now: On Liberal Friends and Becoming a Society of Finders

November 18, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It’s time to explain why I call this site “The Quak­er Ranter” and to talk about my home, the lib­er­al branch of Quak­ers. Non-Quakers can be for­giv­en for think­ing that I mean this to be a place where I, Mar­tin Kel­ley, “rant,” i.e., where I “utter or express with extrav­a­gance.” That may be the result (smile), but it’s not what I mean and it’s not the real pur­pose behind this site.

Friends and Ranters

The Ranters were fellow-travelers to the Friends in the reli­gious tur­moil of seventeenth-century Eng­land. The coun­try­side was cov­ered with preach­ers and lay peo­ple run­ning around Eng­land seek­ing to revive prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty. George Fox was one, declar­ing that “Christ has come to teach his peo­ple him­self” and that hireling cler­gy were dis­tort­ing God’s mes­sage. The move­ment that coa­lesced around him as “The Friends of Truth” or “The Quak­ers” would take its orders direct­ly from the Spir­it of Christ.

This worked fine for a few years. But before long a lead­ing Quak­er rode into the town of Bris­tol in imi­ta­tion of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Not a good idea. The author­i­ties con­vict­ed him of heresy and George Fox dis­tanced him­self from his old friend. Soon after­wards, a quasi-Quaker col­lec­tion of reli­gious rad­i­cals plot­ted an over­throw of the gov­ern­ment. That also did­n’t go down very well with the author­i­ties, and Fox quick­ly dis­avowed vio­lence in a state­ment that became the basis of our peace tes­ti­mo­ny. Clear­ly the Friends of the Truth need­ed to fig­ure out mech­a­nisms for decid­ing what mes­sages were tru­ly of God and who could speak for the Friends movement.

The cen­tral ques­tion was one of author­i­ty. Those Friends rec­og­nized as hav­ing the gift for spir­i­tu­al dis­cern­ment were put in charge of a sys­tem of dis­ci­pline over way­ward Friends. Friends devised a method for deter­min­ing the valid­i­ty of indi­vid­ual lead­ings and con­cerns. This sys­tem rest­ed on an assump­tion that Truth is immutable, and that any errors come from our own will­ful­ness in dis­obey­ing the mes­sage. New lead­ings were first weighed against the tra­di­tion of Friends and their pre­de­ces­sors the Israelites (as brought down to us through the Bible).

Ranters often looked and sound­ed like Quak­ers but were opposed to any impo­si­tion of group author­i­ty. They were a move­ment of indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al seek­ers. Ranters thought that God spoke direct­ly to indi­vid­u­als and they put no lim­its on what the Spir­it might instruct us. Tra­di­tion had no role, insti­tu­tions were for disbelievers.

Mean­while Quak­ers set up Quar­ter­ly and Year­ly Meet­ings to insti­tu­tion­al­ize the sys­tem of elders and dis­ci­pline. This worked for awhile, but it should­n’t be too sur­pris­ing that this human insti­tu­tion even­tu­al­ly broke down. World­li­ness and wealth sep­a­rat­ed the elders from their less well-to-do brethren and new spir­i­tu­al move­ments swept through Quak­er ranks. Divi­sions arose over the eter­nal ques­tion of how to pass along a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of con­vince­ment in a Soci­ety grown com­fort­able. By the ear­ly 1800s, Philadel­phia elders had became a kind of aris­toc­ra­cy based on birthright and in 1827 they dis­owned two-thirds of their own year­ly meet­ing. The dis­owned major­i­ty nat­u­ral­ly devel­oped a dis­trust of author­i­ty, while the aris­to­crat­ic minor­i­ty even­tu­al­ly real­ized there was no one left to elder.

Over the next cen­tu­ry and a half, suc­ces­sive waves of pop­u­lar reli­gious move­ments washed over Friends. Revival­ism, Deism, Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Pro­gres­sive Uni­tar­i­an­ism all left their mark on Friends in the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry. Mod­ern lib­er­al Protes­tantism, Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, New Ageism, and sixties-style rad­i­cal­ism trans­formed the Twen­ti­eth. Each fad lift­ed up a piece of Quak­ers’ orig­i­nal mes­sage but invari­ably added its own incon­gru­ous ele­ments into wor­ship. The Soci­ety grew ever more fractured.

Faced with ever-greater the­o­log­i­cal dis­uni­ty, Friends sim­ply gave up. In the 1950s, the two Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ings reunit­ed. It was cel­e­brat­ed as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. But they could do so only because the role of Quak­er insti­tu­tions had fun­da­men­tal­ly changed. Our cor­po­rate bod­ies no longer even try to take on the role of dis­cern­ing what it means to be a Friend.

We are all Ranters now

Lib­er­al Quak­ers today tend to see their local Meet­ing­house as a place where every­one can believe what they want to believe. The high­est val­ue is giv­en to tol­er­ance and cor­dial­i­ty. Many peo­ple now join Friends because it’s the reli­gion with­out a reli­gion, i.e., it’s a com­mu­ni­ty with the form of a reli­gion but with­out any the­ol­o­gy or expec­ta­tions. We are a proud to be a com­mu­ni­ty of seek­ers. Our com­mon­al­i­ty is in our form and we’re big on silence and meet­ing process.

Is it any won­der that almost every­one today seems to be a hyphen­at­ed Quak­er? We’ve got Catholic-Quakers, Pagan-Quakers, Jewish-Quakers: if you can hyphen­ate it, there’s a Quak­er inter­est group for you. I’m not talk­ing about Friends nour­ished by anoth­er tra­di­tion: we’ve have his­tor­i­cal­ly been graced and con­tin­ue to be graced by con­verts to Quak­erism whose fresh eyes let us see some­thing new about our­selves. No, I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who prac­tice the out­ward form of Quak­erism but look else­where for the­ol­o­gy and inspi­ra­tion. If being a Friend means lit­tle more than show­ing up at Meet­ing once a week, we should­n’t be sur­prised that peo­ple bring a the­ol­o­gy along to fill up the hour. It’s like bring­ing a news­pa­per along for your train com­mute every morning.

But the appear­ance of tol­er­ance and uni­ty comes at a price: it depends on every­one for­ev­er remain­ing a Seek­er. Any­one who wants to fol­low ear­ly Friends’ expe­ri­ence as “Friends of the Truth” risks becomes a Find­er who threat­ens the nego­ti­at­ed truce of the mod­ern Quak­er meet­ing. If we real­ly are a peo­ple of God, we might have to start act­ing that way. We might all have to pray togeth­er in our silence. We might all have to sub­mit our­selves to God’s will. We might all have to wres­tle with each oth­er to artic­u­late a shared belief sys­tem. If we were Find­ers, we might need to define what is unac­cept­able behav­ior for a Friend, i.e., on what grounds we would con­sid­er dis­own­ing a member.

If we became a reli­gious soci­ety of Find­ers, then we’d need to fig­ure out what it means to be a Quaker-Quaker: some­one who’s the­ol­o­gy and prac­tice is Quak­er. We would need to put down those indi­vid­ual news­pa­pers to become a Peo­ple once more. I’m not say­ing we’d be unit­ed all the time. We’d still have dis­agree­ments. Even more, we would once again need to be vig­i­lant against the re-establishment of repres­sive elder­ships. But it seems obvi­ous to me that Truth lies in the bal­ance between author­i­ty and indi­vid­u­al­ism and that it’s each gen­er­a­tion’s task to restore and main­tain that balance.

* * *
Over the years a num­ber of old­er and wis­er Friends have advised me to live by Friends’ prin­ci­ples and to chal­lenge my Meet­ing to live up to those ideals. But in my year serv­ing as co-clerk of a small South Jer­sey Meet­ing, I learned that almost no one else there believed that our busi­ness meet­ings should be led by the real pres­ence of the liv­ing God. I was stuck try­ing to clerk using a mod­el of cor­po­rate decision-making that I alone held. I would like to think those wis­er Friends have more ground­ed Meet­ings. Per­haps they do. But I fear they just are more suc­cess­ful at kid­ding them­selves that there’s more going on than there is. I agree that the Spir­it is every­where and that Christ is work­ing even we don’t rec­og­nize it. But isn’t it the role of a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate God’s pres­ence in our lives?

Until Friends can find a way to artic­u­late a shared faith, I will remain a Ranter. I don’t want to be. I long for the over­sight of a com­mu­ni­ty unit­ed in a shared search for Truth. But can any of us be Friends if so many of us are Ranters?

More Reading

For those inter­est­ed, “We all Ranters Now” para­phras­es (birthright Friend) Richard Nixon’s famous quote (semi-misattributed) about the lib­er­al econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes.

Bill Samuel has an inter­est­ing piece called “Keep­ing the Faith” that address­es the con­cept of Uni­ty and its wax­ing and wan­ing among Friends over the centuries.

Samuel D. Cald­well gave an inter­est­ing lec­ture back in 1997, Quak­er Cul­ture vs. Quak­er Faith. An excerpt: “Quak­er cul­ture and Quak­er faith are… often direct­ly at odds with one anoth­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing today. Although it orig­i­nal­ly derived from and was con­sis­tent with Quak­er faith, con­tem­po­rary Quak­er cul­ture in this Year­ly Meet­ing has evolved into a bor­ing, peev­ish, repres­sive, pet­ty, humor­less, inept, mar­gin­al, and large­ly irrel­e­vant cult that is gen­er­al­ly repug­nant to ordi­nary peo­ple with healthy psy­ches. If we try to pre­serve our Quak­er cul­ture, instead of fol­low­ing the lead­ings of our Quak­er faith, we will most cer­tain­ly be cast out of the King­dom and die.”

I talk a bit more about these issues in Sodi­um Free Friends, which talks about the way we some­times inten­tion­al­ly mis-understand our past and why it mat­ters to engage with it. Some prag­man­tic Friends defend our vague­ness as a way to increase our num­bers. In The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and the Younger Quak­ers I look at a class of con­tem­po­rary seek­ers who would be recep­tive to a more robust Quak­erism and map out the issues we’d need to look at before we could real­ly wel­come them in.

Peace and Twenty-Somethings

October 17, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Over on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’ve post­ed some­thing I orig­i­nal­ly start­ed writ­ing for my per­son­al site: Where is the grass­roots con­tem­po­rary non­vi­o­lence move­ment? It asks why there’s no the kind of young, grass­roots cul­ture around peace like the net­works that I see “else­where on the net.”

The piece speaks for itself but there is one point of con­text and a few obser­va­tions to make. The first is that the grass­roots cul­ture I was think­ing of when I wrote the piece was the “emer­gent church,” “young evan­gel­i­cal” move­ment. Thir­ty years ago the kids I’ve met at “Cir­cle of Hope”, a Philadel­phia “emer­gent church” loose­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Brethren could eas­i­ly have been at a Move­ment for New Soci­ety* train­ing: the cul­ture, the inter­ests, the demo­graph­ics are all strik­ing­ly similar.

(MNS was a nation­al but West Philly-centered net­work of group hous­es, pub­li­ca­tions, and orga­niz­ing that forged the iden­ti­ties of many of the twenty-somethings who par­tic­i­pat­ed; Non​vi​o​lence​.org is arguably a third-generation descen­dant of MNS, via New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers where I worked for six years).

The obser­va­tion for Friends is that retro-organizing like the relatively-new “Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work” [web­site URL long since dropped & picked up by spam­mer] will have a real­ly hard time act­ing as any sort of out­reach project to twenty-somethings (a main goal accord­ing to a talk giv­en my month­ly meet­ing by its direc­tor). The grass­roots peace-centric com­mu­ni­ties that were thriv­ing when the Net­work spon­sors were in their twen­ties don’t exist any­more. Rather pre­dictably, the pho­tographs of the next two dozen speak­ers for the Pen­dle Hill Peace­build­ing Forum series show only one who might be under forty (maybe, and she’s from an exot­ic locale which is why she gets in). I’m glad that a gen­er­a­tion of sixty-something Quak­er activists are guar­an­teed steady employ­ment, but don’t any Quak­er insti­tu­tions think there’s one Amer­i­can activist under forty worth lis­ten­ing to?

I think the best descrip­tion of this phe­nom­e­non comes from the mil­i­tary. They call it “inces­tu­ous ampli­fi­ca­tion” and define it as “a con­di­tion in war­fare where one only lis­tens to those who are already in lock­step agree­ment, rein­forc­ing set beliefs and cre­at­ing a sit­u­a­tion ripe for mis­cal­cu­la­tion.” I sus­pect that peace activists are so wor­ried about their own rel­e­van­cy that they have a hard time rec­og­niz­ing new peers or changed circumstances.

These num­bers and the lack of speak­er diver­si­ty explain why I rarely even both­er with Quak­er peace con­fer­ences any­more. I would­n’t mind being over­looked in my peace min­istry if I saw oth­er activists my age being rec­og­nized. But I can’t take my invis­i­bil­i­ty as feed­back since it’s clear­ly not about me or my work. The homo­gene­ity of the speak­ers lists at most con­fer­ences sends a clear mes­sage that younger peo­ple aren’t want­ed except as pas­sive audi­ence mem­bers clap­ping for the inspir­ing fifty- to seventy-somethings on stage. How much of cur­rent retro peace orga­niz­ing is just self-stroking Boomer fantasy?

The in-group inces­tu­ous­ness has cre­at­ed a gen­er­a­tion gap of rel­e­van­cy. When insti­tu­tions and move­ments become myopic, they become irrel­e­vant to those locked out­side. We have to go else­where to build our identities.

The inter­net is one place to go. From there it’s clear that the insti­tu­tion­al projects don’t have the “buzz,” i.e., the sup­port and excit­ment, that the Gen-X-led projects do. The inter­net alone won’t save us: there’s only so much cul­ture one can build online and computer-mediated dis­cus­sions favor argu­men­ta­tion, ratio­nal­i­ty, and ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ness. But it’s one of the few venues open to out­siders with­out cash or insti­tu­tion­al clout.

But what about the con­tent of a twenty-first cen­tu­ry twenty-something peace movement?

Many of today’s twenty-something Quak­ers were raised up as sec­u­lar peace activists. Our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often de-emphasize con­tro­ver­sial issues of faith and belief to focus on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny as the uni­fy­ing Quak­er val­ue. Going to protests is lit­er­al­ly part of the cur­ricu­lum of many Young Friends pro­grams. Even more of a prob­lem, old­er Friends are often afraid to share their faith plain­ly and ful­ly with younger Friends on a one-on-one basis. The prac­tice of per­son­al and Meeting-based spritu­al men­tor­ship that once trans­mit­ted Friends val­ues between gen­er­a­tions is very under-utilized today.

Almost all of these Friends stop par­tic­i­pat­ing in Quak­erism as they enter their twen­ties, com­ing back only occa­sion­al­ly for reunion-type gath­er­ings. Many of these lapsed Friends are out explor­ing alter­na­tive spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions that more clear­ly artic­u­late a faith that can give mean­ing and pur­pose to social action. I have friends in this lost Quak­er gen­er­a­tion that are going to Bud­dhist tem­ples, prac­tic­ing yoga spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, build­ing sweat lodges and join­ing evan­gel­i­cal or Roman Catholic church­es. Will they real­ly be won back with anoth­er lec­ture series? What would hap­pen if we Friends start­ed artic­u­lat­ing the deep faith roots of our own peace tes­ti­mo­ny? What if we start­ed tes­ti­fy­ing to one anoth­er about that great Pow­er that’s tak­en away occa­sion for war, what if our tes­ti­mo­ny became a wit­ness to our faith?

Why are a lot of the more thought­ful under-40s going to alter­na­tive church­es and what are they hop­ing to find there?

Don’t get me wrong: I hope these new peace ini­tia­tives do well and help to build a thriv­ing twenty-something activist scene again. It’s just that for fif­teen years I’ve seen a suces­sion of projects aimed at twenty-somethings come and go, fail­ing to ignite sus­tain­ing inter­est. I wor­ry that things won’t change until spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tions seri­ous­ly start includ­ing younger peo­ple in the decision-making process from their incep­tion and start rec­og­niz­ing that our focus might be rad­i­cal­ly different.

Post­script
I share some obser­va­tions about the dif­fer­ent way insti­tu­tion­al and out­sider Friends use the inter­net in How Insid­ers and Seek­ers Use the Quak­er Net.

UPDATE: The Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work was laid down in late 2005. The cit­ed rea­son was “bud­getary con­straints,” an emp­ty excuse that side­steps any respon­si­bil­i­ty for exam­in­ing vision, inclu­sion or impli­men­ta­tion. It’s forum is now an adver­tis­ing stage for “free mature porn pics.” It’s very sad and there’s no joy in say­ing “I told you so.”

UPDATE: After twelve years I laid down Non​vi​o​lence​.org and sold the domain. I nev­er received any real sup­port from Friends.

Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?

October 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Obser­va­tions on the first Philadel­phia Indie Allies Meet­up. “Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all ‘post’ some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church communities.”

The infor­mal net­work of younger Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians cen­tered around web­sites like theooze​.com and Jor​dan​Coop​er​.sk​.ca has start­ed spon­sor­ing a month­ly Indie Allies Meet­up of “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers.” Unlike pre­vi­ous months, there were enough peo­ple signed up for the Octo­ber meet­ing in the Philadel­phia area to hold a “meet­up,” so two days ago Julie & I found our­selves in a Cen­ter City piz­za shop with five oth­er “Indie Allies.”

Accord­ing to Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals, I fall pret­ty square­ly into the “Post Lib­er­al” cat­e­go­ry, a la Stan­ley Hauer­was. While it’s always dan­ger­ous label­ing oth­ers, I think at least some of the oth­er par­tic­i­pants would be com­fort­able enough with the “Post Evan­gel­i­cal” label (the one pas­tor among us said that if I read Web­ber’s book I’d know where he’s com­ing from). One par­tic­i­pant was from the Cir­cle church Julie & I attend­ed last First Day.

Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all “post” some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church com­mu­ni­ties. There’s some­thing about build­ing rela­tion­ships that are deep­er, more down-to-earth and real. Per­haps it’s find­ing a way to be less dog­mat­ic at the same time that we’re more dis­ci­plined. For Friends, that means ques­tion­ing the con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al ortho­doxy of liberal-think (get­ting beyond the cliched catch phras­es bor­rowed from lib­er­al Protes­tantism and sixties-style activism) while being less afraid of being pec­u­lar­i­ly Quaker.

The con­ver­sa­tion was real­ly inter­est­ing. After all my Quak­er work, it’s always amaz­ing to find oth­er peo­ple my age who actu­al­ly think hard about faith and who are will­ing to build their life around it. There were times where I think we need­ed to trans­late our­selves and times where we tried to map out shared con­nec­tions (i.e., Richard Fos­ter was the known famous Quak­er, I should read him if only to be able to dis­cuss his rela­tion­ship to Con­ser­v­a­tive and Lib­er­al Friends).

It was real­ly good to get out­side of Quak­erism and to hear the lan­guage and issues of oth­ers. One impor­tant les­son is that some of the strong opin­ions I’ve devel­oped in response to Quak­er cul­ture need to be unlearned. The best exam­ple was social action. As I’ve writ­ten before on the web­site, I think the Friends peace tes­ti­mo­ny has become large­ly sec­u­lar­ized and that social action has become a sub­sti­tute for expressed and lived com­mu­nal faith. Yet my Meet­up cohorts were excit­ed to become involved in social action. Their Evan­gel­i­cal back­ground had dis­missed good works as unnec­es­sary – faith being the be-all – and now they want­ed to get involved in the world. But I very much sus­pect that their good works would be root­ed in faith to a degree that a lot of con­tem­po­rary Quak­er activist projects aren’t. I need to remind myself that social wit­ness (even my own) can be fine if tru­ly spirit-led.

Com­mit­ted reli­gious peo­ple switch­ing church­es often bring with them the bag­gage of their frus­tra­tions with the first church and this unre­solved anger often gets in the way of keep­ing true to God’s call. Even though I’m not leav­ing Quak­erism I have to iden­ti­fy and name my own frus­tra­tions so that they don’t get in the way. Hang­ing out with oth­er “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers” is a way of keep­ing some per­spec­tive, of remem­ber­ing that Post-Liberal is not exact­ly anti-Liberal.

Rec­om­mend­ed I check out: N.T. Wright, at allelon​.net. I just saw him ref­er­enced as a per­son­al friend of some of the Repub­li­can par­ty lead­er­ship in Con­gress, so this should be interesting.