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Quaker Ranter Reader

February 25, 2005
· Martin Kelley

A recent email cor­re­spon­dence con­firmed that all of our won­der­ful web­sites aren’t always reach­ing the peo­ple who should be hear­ing this mes­sage. Self pub­lish­ing a book is almost as easy as start­ing a blog so why not put togeth­er a book­let of a web­site’s essays? You can order the first edi­tion of the “Quak­er Ranter Reader”:http://www.cafepress.com/Quakerranter.18423631 for $12.00 through Cafe­press (a few dol­lars of each sale comes back to me to sup­port the web­site). The Read­er is also avail­able from “Quaker­books of FGC”:http://www.Quakerbooks.org/get/11 – 99-01749 – 3.

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FGC Gathering Workshop

January 29, 2005
· Martin Kelley

This fall Zachary Moon and I put togeth­er a work­shop pro­pos­al for the 2005 Gath­er­ing, which has been approved: “Strangers to the Covenant” is the title and here’s the short description:

This is for young Friends who want to break into the pow­er of Quak­erism: it’s the stuff you did­n’t get in First Day School. We’ll con­nect with his­tor­i­cal Quak­ers whose pow­er­ful min­istry came in their teens and twen­ties and we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order togeth­er to build a move­ment that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quak­er his­to­ry to reclaim the pow­er of our tra­di­tion, to explore the liv­ing pow­er of the tes­ti­monies and our wit­ness in the world.

This was very much an “as way opens” process. At the 2004 Gath­er­ing I felt sad that there weren’t more work­shops that I’d like to attend. And obvi­ous­ly I have a long-standing con­cern to sup­port younger Friends. But I was­n’t sure if I had the skills to han­dle this. One piece of dis­cern­ment was lead­ing the Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing: I knew I would have most of the ses­sions under my belt by the time the work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line came around and I hoped I’d have a feel whether I actu­al­ly like lead­ing workshops!

The Med­ford expe­ri­ence was sur­pris­ing­ly good, even on weeks where I could have been bet­ter pre­pared. I learned a lot and gained con­fi­dence in “teach­ing” Quak­erism to Med­ford’s class of very weighty, expe­ri­enced Friends.

Still, the Gath­er­ing work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line was loom­ing and I had no spe­cif­ic top­ic in mind. Julie, my wife, was get­ting a lit­tle sus­pi­cious whether the work­shop would hap­pen or not. I knew that the most impor­tant thing was attract­ing the right mix of eager, curi­ous par­tic­i­pants and that for me the top­ic was almost sec­ondary. Still: a focus and top­ic is impor­tant, yes.

The week before the dead­line, I attend­ed the FGC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee meet­ing in New Wind­sor, Mary­land, as a staff­per­son. In a lunchtime dis­cus­sion I learned that my friend Zachary Moon was also con­sid­er­ing lead­ing his first work­shop. As soon as we sat down and start­ed talk­ing it seemed like the obvi­ous thing to do. The dis­cern­ment to co-lead this took two a half sec­onds or so, but of course this quick process was built on the thought, prayer and dis­cern­ment both of us had already been giv­ing the mat­ter. I’ve found that when I’ve laid the ground­work for a deci­sion, things can often move supris­ing­ly quickly.

The work­shop has devel­oped dif­fer­ent­ly than I sus­pect­ed. The most sig­ni­cant piece is its age lim­i­ta­tion: it’s for high school and adult young Friends only, mean­ing it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion is lim­it­ed to 15 to 35 years olds. I’ve always been a lit­tle wor­ried about con­struct­ing youth ghet­tos but I think it will work in this case. I apol­o­gize in advance to those Quak­er Ranter read­ers who might like to take it but can’t because of age (I’m too old myself, after all!). There will be many oth­er chances to spend time at Gath­er­ing and Zachary and I are only a part of a shift that’s been hap­pen­ing at the FGC Gath­er­ing over the last few years.

Selling Quakerism to The Kids

November 23, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A few weeks ago I got a bulk email from a promi­nent sixty-something Friend, who wrote that a pro­grammed New Age prac­tice pop­u­lar in our branch of Quak­erism over the last few years has been a “cru­cial spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence for a great many of the best of our young adult Friends to whom [Lib­er­al Friends] must look for its future” and that they rep­re­sent­ed the “ris­ing gen­er­a­tion of ded­i­cat­ed young adult Friends.” Real­ly? I thought I’d share a sam­pling of emails and posts I’ve got­ten over just the last cou­ple of days.

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Of Theo, threats and selective press quoting

November 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

The Baby Theo blog got a men­tion in today’s Philadel­phia Inquir­er, It’s almost as good as being there, by Kathy Boc­cel­la. They missed out on a huge rat­ings bonan­za by not pick­ing Theo for their pic­tures. Stranger was that two inter­views pro­duced only one off-topic sub­stan­tive line: “Mar­tin Kel­ly [sic] expe­ri­enced the worst of it when some­one threat­ened his infant son on his Baby Theo Web page [via Archive​.org, as it appeared around the time this arti­cle was written].

Above: Theo on learn­ing he was­n’t going to be the fea­tured baby pho­to in the Inquir­er piece… Real pho­to cap­tion: This week­end Julie Theo and I took a mini vaca­tion to the Penn­syl­va­nia coal regions. One of the stops was the beau­ti­ful­ly restored Tamaqua train sta­tion, where Theo’s great great grand­fa­ther, the first Mar­tin John Kel­ley, worked as a Read­ing Rail­road con­duc­tor. We woke the lit­tle guy up from a car nap to see the sta­tion and snap this pic­ture, cru­el par­ents that we are.

The Baby Theo site has been a lot of fun and it’s had great com­ments and emails of sup­port. It’s real­ly a shame that the arti­cle only used it to strike that tired old refrain about the pos­si­ble dan­ger lurk­ing on the internet.

The threat had noth­ing to do with Theo or with the baby blog. I’ve run a promi­nent anti­war web­site (closed, was at non​vi​o​lence​.org) through two wars now, and in the nine years of its exis­tence I’ve amassed quite a col­lec­tion of abu­sive emails. I try not to take them too seri­ous­ly: most come from sol­diers or from the fam­i­lies of solid­ers, peo­ple desparate­ly afraid of the future and sure­ly torn by the acts they’re being asked to com­mit. The inter­net pro­vides the psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance for oth­er­wise good peo­ple to demo­nize the “com­mie Saddam-loving peacenik cow­ard.” You could get mad at a Pres­i­dent that active­ly mis­leads the coun­try into war but it’s eas­i­er to turn your anger on some schmuck who runs an anti­war web­site in his spare time. Send­ing threat­en­ing emails is itself cow­ard­ly and anti-democratic, of course, and as I’ve writ­ten on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, it’s ter­ri­bly inap­pro­pri­ate for “mil­i­tary per­son­nel to use gov­ern­ment com­put­ers to threat­en the free speech” of a dis­sent­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. But it hap­pens. And because it hap­pens and because South Jer­sey has its share of pro-war hot­heads, you won’t see our spe­cif­ic town men­tioned any­where on the site. When I asked the Inquir­er reporter if they could not men­tion our town, she asked why, which led to the threat­en­ing emails, which led to the ques­tion whether Theo specif­i­cal­ly had been threatened.

And yes, there was a retired Lieu­tenant Colonel who sent a par­tic­u­lar­ly creepy set of emails (more on him below). The first email did­n’t men­tion Theo. It was just one of those every­day emails wish­ing that my fam­i­ly would be gang-raped, tor­tured and exe­cut­ed in front of me. I usu­al­ly ignore these but respond­ed to him, upon which I received a sec­ond email explain­ing that he was mak­ing a point with his threat (“You, your orga­ni­za­tion and oth­ers like you rep­re­sent the ‘flab­by soft white under­bel­ly’ of our Nation. This is the tis­sue of an ani­mal that is the tar­get of preda­tors.” Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah). This time he searched the Non​vi​o​lence​.org site more thor­ough­ly and specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned Theo in his what-if sce­nario. This was one email out of the thou­sands I receive every month. It was an inap­pro­pri­ate rhetor­i­cal argu­ment against a political/religious stance I’ve tak­en as a pub­lic wit­ness. It was not a cred­i­ble threat to my son.

Still, pre­cau­tion is in order. I men­tioned this sto­ry to the Inquir­er reporter only to explain why I did­n’t want the town list­ed. When I talked about the blog, I talked about old friends and dis­tant rel­a­tives keep­ing up with us and shar­ing our joys via the web­site. I talked about how the act of putting togeth­er entries helped Julie & I see Theo’s changes. I told Kathy how it was fun that friends who we had met via the inter­net were able to see some­thing beyond the Quak­er essays or polit­i­cal essays. None of that made it through to the arti­cle, which is a shame. A request to not pub­lish our home town became a sen­sa­tion­al­ist cau­tion­ary tale that is now being repeat­ed as a rea­son not to blog. How stupid.

The cau­tion­ary les­son is only applic­a­ble for those who both run a baby blog and a heav­i­ly used polit­i­cal web­site. When your web­site tops 50,000 vis­i­tors a day, you might want to switch to a P.O. Box. End of lesson.

For­tu­nate­ly with the inter­net we don’t have to rely on the fil­ter of a main­stream press reporters. Vis­i­tors from the Inquir­er arti­cle have been look­ing around the site and pre­sum­ably see­ing it’s not all about inter­net dan­gers. Since the Inquir­er arti­cle went up I’ve had twice as many vis­its from Google as I have from Philly​.com. Viva the web!

More:
For those inter­est­ed, the freaky retired Lieu­tenant Colonel is the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of a pri­vate avi­a­tion com­pa­ny based in Flori­da, with con­tracts in three African nations that just hap­pen to be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the U.S. State Depart­ment. Although the com­pa­ny is named after him, his full name has been care­ful­ly excised from his web­site. I don’t sus­pect that he real­ly is retired from U.S.-sponsored mil­i­tary ser­vice, if you know what I mean… Here’s your tax dol­lars at work.

A few news­pa­per web­sites have repub­lished up the Inky arti­cle and two blog­ging news sites have picked up on it:

  • Yet Anoth­er Baby Blog­ging sto­ry uncov­ers dan­ger — but it’s not true ran in Blog​ging​Ba​by​.com: “When some­one threat­ened his son on his Baby Theo Web page, he took the site down; but left up a pic on his home page. Well, that is, accord­ing to the arti­cle, which some­how man­aged to not check its facts (maybe, ummm – go to the link you includ­ed in your arti­cle?) and dis­cov­er that, in fact, Baby Theo’s page is alive and well. We’re glad, Theo’s a cutie.”
  • Baby blog­gers ran in Net­fam­i­lynews. “The $64,000 question(s) is: Is this a shift of think­ing and behav­ior or, basi­cal­ly, a mis­take?.. Mar­tin Kel­ly, whose baby was threat­ened by some­one who vis­it­ed his baby page, would lean toward the mis­take side of the ques­tion.” (No I would­n’t, as I explained to the web­mas­ter later)

Vanity Googling of Causes

October 2, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A poster to an obscure dis­cus­sion board recent­ly described typ­ing a par­tic­u­lar search phrase into Google and find­ing noth­ing but bad infor­ma­tion. Repro­duc­ing the search I deter­mined two things: 1) that my site topped the list and 2) that the results were actu­al­ly quite accu­rate. I’ve been hear­ing an increas­ing num­ber of sto­ries like this. “Cause Googling,” a vari­a­tion on “van­i­ty googling,” is sud­den­ly becom­ing quite pop­u­lar. But the inter­est­ing thing is that these new searchers don’t actu­al­ly seem curi­ous about the results. Has Google become our new proof text?

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Quakerism 101

August 10, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In Fall 2005 I led a six-week Quak­erism 101 course at Med­ford (NJ) Month­ly Meet­ing. It went very well. Med­ford has a lot of involved, weighty Friends (some of them past year­ly meet­ing clerks!) and I think they appre­ci­at­ed a fresh take on an intro­duc­to­ry course. The core ques­tion: how might we teach Quak­erism today?

This is the pro­pos­al for the course. I start­ed off with a long intro­duc­tion on the his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy of Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion and ped­a­gog­ic accul­tur­a­tion and go on to out­line a dif­fer­ent sort cur­ricu­lum for Quak­erism 101.

I took exten­sive notes of each ses­sion and will try to work that feed­back into a revised cur­ricu­lum that oth­er Meet­ings and Q101 lead­ers could use and adapt. In the mean­time, if you want to know how spe­cif­ic ses­sions and role­splays went, just email me and I’ll send you the unedit­ed notes. If you’re on the Adult Reli­gious Ed. com­mit­tee of a South Jer­sey or Philadel­phia area Meet­ing and want to bring me to teach it again, just let me know.

Thoughts on a Quak­erism 101 Course

Over the last few years, there seems to be a real groundswell of inter­est in Quak­ers try­ing to under­stand who we are and where we came from. There’s a revival of inter­st in look­ing back at our roots, not for his­to­ry or ortho­doxy’s sake, but instead to try­ing to tease out the “Quak­er Trea­sures” that we might want to reclaim. I’ve seen this con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place in all of the branch­es of Friends and it’s very hopeful.

I assume at least some of the par­tic­i­pants of the Quak­erism 101 course will have gone through oth­er intro­duc­to­ry cours­es or will have read the stan­dard texts. It would be fun to give them all some­thing new – luck­i­ly there’s plen­ty to choose from! I also want to expose par­tic­i­pants to the range of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. I’d like par­tic­i­pants to under­stand why the oth­er branch­es call them­selves Friends and to rec­og­nize some of the pec­u­lar­i­ties our branch has uncon­scious­ly adopted.

Ear­ly Friends did­n’t get involved in six-week cours­es. They were too busy climb­ing trees to shout the gospel fur­ther, invit­ing peo­ple to join the great move­ment. Lat­er Qui­etist Friends had strong struc­tures of record­ed min­is­ters and elders which served a ped­a­gog­ic pur­pose for teach­ing Friends. When revival­ism broke out and brought over­whelm­ing­ly large num­bers of new atten­ders to meet­ings, this sys­tem broke down and many meet­ings hired min­is­ters to teach Quak­erism to the new peo­ple. Around the turn of the cen­tu­ry, promi­nent Quak­er edu­ca­tors intro­duced aca­d­e­m­ic mod­els, with cours­es and lec­ture series. Each of these approach­es to reli­gious edu­ca­tion fid­dles with Quak­erism and each has major draw­backs. But these new mod­els were insti­tut­ed because of very real and ongo­ing prob­lems Friends have with trans­mit­ting our faith to our youth and accul­tur­at­ing new seek­ers to our Quak­er way.

The core con­tra­dic­tion of a course series is that the leader is expect­ed to both impart knowl­edge and to invite par­tic­i­pa­tion. In prac­tice, this eas­i­ly leads to sit­u­a­tions where the teacher is either too dom­i­neer­ing _or_ too open to par­tic­i­pa­tion. The lat­ter seems more com­mon: Quak­erism is pre­sent­ed as a least-common-denominator social group­ing, form­less, with mem­ber­ship defined sim­ply by one’s com­fort­a­bil­i­ty in the group (see Brin­ton’s Friends for 300 Years.) One of the main goals of a intro­duc­to­ry course should be to bring new atten­ders into Quak­er cul­ture, prac­tice and ethics. There’s an implic­it assump­tion that there is some­thing called Quak­erism to teach. Part of that job is teas­ing out the reli­gious and cul­tur­al mod­els that new atten­ders are bring­ing with them and to open up the ques­tion as to how they fit or don’t fit in with the “gestalt” of Quak­erism (Grundy, Quak­er Trea­sures and Wilson’s Essays on the Quak­er Vision).

The great­est irony behind the Quak­erism 101 class is that its seemingly-neutral edu­ca­tion­al mod­el lulls proud­ly “unpro­grammed” Friends into an obliv­i­ous­ness that they’ve just insti­tut­ed a pro­gram led by a hireling min­is­ter. Argu­ments why Q101 teach­ers should be paid sounds iden­ti­cal to argu­ments why part-time FUM min­is­ters should be paid. A Q101 leader in an unpro­grammed meet­ing might well want to acknowl­edge this con­tra­dic­tion and pray for guid­ance and seek clear­ness about this. (For my Med­ford class, I decid­ed to teach it as paid leader of a class as a way of dis­ci­plin­ing myself to prac­tice of my fel­low Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Friends.)

The stan­dard Quak­erism 101 cur­ricu­lum com­part­men­tal­izes every­thing into neat lit­tle box­es. His­to­ry gets a box, tes­ti­monies get a box, faith and insti­tu­tions get box­es. I want to break out of that. I can rec­om­mend good books on Quak­er his­to­ry and point par­tic­i­pants to good web­sites advo­cat­ing Quak­er tes­ti­monies. But I want to present his­to­ry as cur­rent events and the tes­ti­monies as min­istry. The stan­dard cur­ricu­lum starts with some of the more con­tro­ver­sial mate­r­i­al about the dif­fer­ent braches of Friends and only then goes into wor­ship, the meet­ing life, etc. I want dis­cus­sion of the lat­ter to be informed by the ear­li­er dis­cus­sion of who we are and who we might be. The course will start off more struc­tured, with me as leader and become more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry in the lat­er sections.

Cur­ricu­lum:

What I want to do is have one sol­id overview book and sup­ple­ment it with some of those fas­ci­nat­ing (and coversation-sparking!) pam­phlets. The overview book is Thomas Ham­m’s Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca. Pub­lished last year, it’s the best intro­duc­tion to Quak­erism in at least a gen­er­a­tion. Hamm wrote this as part of a reli­gions of Amer­i­ca series and it’s meant as a gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. His lat­er chap­ters on debates with­in Quak­erism should be easy to adapt for a Q‑101 series.

Ses­sion I: Introductions

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, p. 1), reflec­tions. (maybe start this class 2?)
  • Intro­duc­tions to one another.

Ses­sion II: What Are Our Models

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of First Friends Church of Can­ton, p. 3), reflections.
  • What are our mod­els? Role­play of “What Would X Do?” with a giv­en prob­lem: JC, George Fox, Methodists, Non-denominational bible church, col­lege. Also: the “nat­ur­al break­ing point” mod­el of Quak­er divisions.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Con­vinced Quak­erism” by Ben Pink Dandelion

Ses­sion III: The Schisms

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Wilm­ing­ton Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, p. 5), reflections.
  • Read­ing for this class: Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca chap­ter 3, “Their Sep­a­rate Ways: Amer­i­can Friends Since 1800,” about the branches

Ses­sion IV: Role of our Institutions

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Lake Erie Year­ly Meet­ing, p. 7), reflections.
  • Read­ing for this class: “The Author­i­ty of Our Meet­ings…” by Paul Lacey

Ses­sion V: Con­tro­ver­sies with­in Friends

  • Could pick any 2 – 3 con­tro­ver­sies of Ham­m’s: “Is Quak­erism Chris­t­ian?,” “Lead­er­ship,” “Author­i­ty,” “Sex­u­al­i­ty,” “Iden­ti­ty,” “Uni­ty and Diver­si­ty,” “Growth and Decline.” Ear­ly in the course I could poll the group to get a sense which ones they might want to grap­ple with. The idea is not to be thor­ough cov­er­ing all the top­ics or even all the intri­ca­cies with­in each top­ic. I hope to just see if we can mod­el ways of talk­ing about these with­in Medford.
  • Read­ing for this class: Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca chap­ter 5, “Con­tem­po­rary Quak­er Debates,” p. 120

Ses­sion VI: Role of wor­ship, role of min­istry, role of witnesses.

  • Focus­ing on Worship/Ministry (Witness)/MM Author­i­ty (Elders). If the cal­en­dar allows for eight ses­sions, this could eas­i­ly be split apart or giv­en two weeks.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Quak­er Trea­sures” by Mar­ty Pax­ton Grundy, which ties togeth­er Gospel Order, Min­istries and the Testimonies.

Ses­sion VII: What kind of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty do we want Med­ford MM to be?

  • This should be par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, inter­ac­tive. There should be some go-around sort of exer­cise to open up our visions of an ide­al reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty and what we think Med­ford Meet­ing might be like in 5, 10, 25 years.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Build­ing the Life of the Meet­ing” by Bill & Fran Taber (1994, $4). I’ve heard there’s some­thing recent from John Pun­shon which might work better.
  • Also: some­thing from the emer­gent church move­ment to point to a great peo­ple that might be gath­ered. Per­haps essays from Jor­dan Coop­er & some­one at Cir­cle of Hope/Phila.

Books Used:

  • “Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca” is Thomas Ham­m’s excel­lent new intro­duc­tion to Friends is a bit pricey ($40) but is adapt­ing well to a Q101 course.
  • “Con­vinced Quak­erism” by Ben Pink Dan­de­lion mix­es tra­di­tion­al Quak­er under­stad­ings of con­vince­ment with Ben’s per­son­al sto­ry and it sparked a good, widerang­ing dis­cus­sion. $4.
  • “Quak­er Trea­sures” by Mar­ty Grundy. $4
  • “The Author­i­ty of Our Meet­ings…” by Paul Lacey. $4
  • “Build­ing the Life of the Meet­ing” by Bill and Fran Taber. $4

Con­sid­ered Using:

  • “Why Friends are Friends” by Jack Will­cuts. $9.95. I like this book and think that much of it could be used for a Q101 in a liberal-branch Friends Meet­ing. Chap­ters: “The Won­der of Wor­ship,” “Sacred Spir­i­tu­al Sacra­ments,” “Called to Min­istry,” “Let­ting Peace Pre­vail,” “Get­ting the Sense of the Meet­ing,” “On Being Pow­er­ful” – I find the mid­dle chap­ters are the more interesting/Quaker ones).
  • Silence and Wit­ness by Michael Birkel. I haven’t read through this yet, but in skim­ming the chap­ters it looks like Birkel shys away from chal­leng­ing the Quak­er sta­tus quo. With­in that con­straint, how­ev­er, it looks like a good intro­duc­tion to Quak­erism. $16.
  • “Quak­er Cul­ture vs. Quak­er Faith” by Samuel Caldwell.
  • The Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Quak­erism 101 cur­ricu­lum. It’s not as bad as it could be but it’s too heavy on his­to­ry and tes­ti­monies and too focused on the Jones/Brinton view of Quak­erism which I think has played itself out. I’ve seen Q101 facil­i­ta­tors read direct­ly out of the cur­ricu­lum to the glazed eyes of the par­tic­i­pants. I want­ed some­thing fresh­er and less course-like.

Souping up the Firefox Browser: My Tips and Tricks

June 17, 2004
· Martin Kelley

It’s ‘Tech Thurs­day’ here at Quak­er Ranter. I try not to get over­ly excit­ed by soft­ware and I attempt to stay neu­tral in the var­i­ous sil­ly tech wars con­stant­ly rag­ing (the old Mac vs Win­dows being the grand­dad­dy of them all). But the newest ver­sion of the Fire­fox brows­er is so much supe­ri­or to Inter­net Explor­er that I have to sing its prais­es and talk about how to soup it up with cool features.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →