Tag Archives ⇒ prophet

Ashley Wilcox talk on Quakers and the prophetic tradition

April 12, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From thr Guilfordian:

Wilcox began the dis­cus­sion with a ques­tion of whether or not the Guil­ford com­mu­ni­ty should seek out prophets and prophe­cies. Wilcox sought to relate this ques­tion to the Quak­er tradition.

“This talk is about prophets and prophe­cy,” Wilcox said. “So the first ques­tion is, ‘What does it mean to be a prophet?’ I don’t think Jere­mi­ah would rec­om­mend it.” 

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.guilfordian.com/news/2019/04/12/wilcox-talks-quakerism-and-the-prophetic-tradition/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjk1NzUwOWM3NjZmNTA4MzU6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNGr3hjx9Dxd8r_5amP0l6AQfRXDcg

What gifts of the Spirit are we marginalizing?

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Pow­er­ful warn­ings from Adria Gulizia about what hap­pens when a faith com­mu­ni­ty doesn’t exer­cise all of its gifts :

Even worse, when we rou­tine­ly mar­gin­al­ize cer­tain gifts, we begin to see their exer­cise as dys­func­tion­al and their absence as nor­ma­tive, rather than the reverse. When the prophet chal­lenges us with uncom­fort­able truths, rather than using our dis­com­fort as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for reflec­tion and dis­cern­ment, we tell her to tone it down, com­plain that she is “unwel­com­ing” and, if she doesn’t get the mes­sage, we run her off.


Welcoming the Gifts God Sends Us

Wel­com­ing the Gifts God Sends Us 

In order to remain healthy and faith­ful, we must nur­ture all spir­i­tu­al gifts, not just the ones that…

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

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

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

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

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

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

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Are We More Than Our Demographics?

September 28, 2011
· Martin Kelley

One of the things that is intrigu­ing me late­ly is the nature of Quak­er debate.  There are half a dozen seemingly-perennial polit­i­cal issues around which Friends in my cir­cles have very strong opin­ions (these include abor­tion, nuclear pow­er, and the role of Friends in the trou­bles of Israel/Palestine) . We often jus­ti­fy our posi­tions with appeals to our Quak­er faith, but I won­der how often our opin­ions could be more accu­rate­ly pre­dict­ed by our demo­graph­ic profile?


How many of your polit­i­cal posi­tions and social atti­tudes could be accu­rate­ly guessed by a savvy demog­ra­ph­er who knew your date of birth,  postal code,  edu­ca­tion and fam­i­ly income? I’d guess each of us are far more pre­dictable than we’d like to think.If true,  then what role does our reli­gious life actu­al­ly play?

Reli­gious beliefs are also a demo­graph­ic cat­e­go­ry,  grant­ed, but if they only con­firm posi­tions that could be just as actu­al­ly pre­dict­ed by non-spiritual data, then does­n’t that imply that we’ve sim­ply found (or remained in) a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that con­firms our pre-existing bias­es? Have we cre­at­ed a faith in our own image? And if true, is it real­ly fair to jus­ti­fy our­selves based on appeals to Quak­er values?

The “polit­i­cal” Quak­er writ­ings I’m find­ing most inter­est­ing (because they’re least pre­dictable) are the ones that stop to ask how Quak­er dis­cern­ment fits into the debate. Dis­cern­ment: one could eas­i­ly argue that Quak­er open­ings and tools around it are one of our great­est gifts to human spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.  When we build a wor­ship com­mu­ni­ty based on strict adher­ence to the imme­di­ate prompt­ing of the Holy Spir­it, the first ques­tion becomes fig­ur­ing out what is of-God and what is not.  Is James Nayler, rid­ing Jesus-like into Bris­tol, a prophet or a nut?

When we go deep into the ques­tions,  we may find that the answers are less impor­tant than the care we take to reach them.  Wait­ing for one anoth­er,  hold­ing one anoth­er’s hand in love despite dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, can be more impor­tant than being the right-answer ear­ly adopter. How do you step back from easy answers to the thorny ques­tions? How do you poll your­self and that-of-God in your­self to open your eyes and ears for the poten­tial of surprise?