Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

Unlocking the commons

January 4, 2019
· Martin Kelley

I real­ly like Tim Car­mody and Kot​tke​.org is one of my favorite blogs. This isn’t Quak­er but it feels real­ly rel­e­vant for those of us try­ing to save inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing from being sub­sumed by the Face­book Borg and so main­tain coun­ter­cul­tur­al, non-corporate spaces like Quak­er communities.

This is a pre­dic­tion for 2019 and beyond: The most pow­er­ful and inter­est­ing media mod­el will remain rais­ing mon­ey from mem­bers who don’t just per­mit but insist that the prod­uct be giv­en away for free. The val­ue comes not just what they’re buy­ing, but who they’re buy­ing it from and who gets to enjoy it. 

http://​www​.nie​man​lab​.org/​2​0​1​9​/​0​1​/​u​n​l​o​c​k​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​m​m​o​ns/

A profile of William Penn by Andrew Murphy

January 4, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Mur­phy is a polit­i­cal sci­ence prof in New Jer­sey and has writ­ten a new bio of William Penn. I sus­pect this Aeon post is a bit of spon­sored con­tent to pro­mote the book but it’s still worth a read:

Penn was a man of para­dox­i­cal qual­i­ties. He espoused a rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, insist­ing that some­thing divine resided with­in each indi­vid­ual, yet he owned slaves on his Amer­i­can estate. He praised rep­re­sen­ta­tive insti­tu­tions such as par­lia­ment and the jury sys­tem, but spent years in hid­ing for his loy­al­ty to an abso­lutist king. ‘I am like to be an adopt­ed Amer­i­can,’ he wrote short­ly after arriv­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia in 1682, but spent only four of his remain­ing 36 years there. And he was chron­i­cal­ly inca­pable of man­ag­ing mon­ey, spend­ing eight months in an Eng­lish debtors’ prison in his 60s, even while his colony quick­ly became a com­mer­cial success. 

https://​aeon​.co/​i​d​e​a​s​/​h​e​s​-​n​o​t​-​t​h​e​-​g​u​y​-​o​n​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​o​a​t​s​-​h​e​s​-​m​u​c​h​-​m​o​r​e​-​i​n​t​e​r​e​s​t​ing

In defense of Quaker media

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

I gath­er that the Quak­er Face­book group is going through one of its reg­u­lar debates about iden­ti­ty and tone and mod­er­a­tion. The prob­lem is Face­book. It is the most direct com­peti­tor of Quaker-produced media. Its algo­rithms and mod­er­a­tor tools are not designed for the kind of con­sid­ered, inclu­sive, Spirit-led, and non-reactive dis­course that is Quak­er style at its ide­al (yes, we blow it our­selves con­stant­ly but hope­ful­ly keep striving).

I post­ed there tonight sug­gest­ing that Friends con­sid­er a media diet that includes more Quak­er media — books and mag­a­zines and blogs and videos and in-real-life dis­cus­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties. I wor­ry that if Face­book groups become the most vis­i­ble style of Quak­er dia­logue, then we will have lost some­thing tru­ly precious.

This mes­sage isn’t new to long­time read­ers of Quak­er­Ran­ter. I extolled blog­ging as a hedge against Face­bookjust yes­ter­day and in August I wrote about some of the dia­logue prob­lems inher­ent in the Face­book mod­el.

I’ve been fig­ur­ing out Face­book strate­gies for Quak­er media since it opened up to non-students cir­ca 2006. I appre­ci­ate much of the atten­tion it’s pro­vid­ed over the years. Social media like YouTube has also been a use­ful plat­form for things like the Quak­er­s­peak projectdespite own­er Google’s spot­ty track record. But it’s becom­ing hard to deny that social media has reshaped the style of civ­il dis­course and troll­ish hack­ery, most­ly for the worse. I think it’s real­ly essen­tial that we become more con­scious of the sources of our dai­ly media diet.

Trustworthy Friends

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er has put togeth­er a sur­vey for Friends to talk about set­ting up trust­wor­thy churches:

A lot of Quak­er ener­gy has gone into reas­sur­ing skep­tics and wound­ed refugees that we Friends are not like “those peo­ple,” refer­ring to the zealots, author­i­tar­i­ans, and reli­gious entre­pre­neurs who have some­times giv­en faith a bad name. But what are we affir­ma­tive­ly promis­ing? And how do we increase our capac­i­ty to keep our promis­es and become more trustworthy? 

https://​ino​.to/​d​K​K​V​1T3

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a num­ber of Black Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tors have shared heart­break­ing sto­ries of not feel­ing wel­come in Quak­er cir­cles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a ques­tion mark to the end of its title — “A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends?” The choice of punc­tu­a­tion hints at a cer­tain weari­ness — are we real­ly still ask­ing this? — along with the sug­ges­tion that maybe many Friends are con­tent enough with the sta­tus quo that they might sim­ply answer “no” to a call for diversity. 


Racially Diverse Society of Friends (January 2019) Archives - Friends Journal

Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends (Jan­u­ary 2019) Archives — Friends Journal 

Jan­u­ary 2019: A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends? Full Issue Access Fea­tures: Are We Ready to Make the…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Sin, corruption, temptation and distraction

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Patri­cia Dall­mann on the role of sin:

It is bet­ter to see the sin of the world as uni­form and sin­gle rather than to view its man­i­fes­ta­tions as par­tic­u­lar prop­er­ties belong­ing to spe­cif­ic cor­rupt­ed per­sons. That is to say, in its uni­for­mi­ty, the world’s sin is more like an expanse of mud than it is like sep­a­rate rocks sit­u­at­ed at inter­vals in a field! See­ing sin as a uni­form force helps the intel­lect direct the incen­sive pow­er toward sin itself, and away from par­tic­u­lar offend­ers who have suc­cumbed to and embody demon­ic power. 

I like how she pulls from fourth-century spir­i­tu­al texts but uses them as a way to under­stand our own modern-day psy­cho­log­i­cal respons­es. Mod­ern Friends don’t often explore the dynam­ics of sin and I think we some­times lose out by sim­ply dis­count­ing it. The lan­guage of temp­ta­tion — and the Quak­er inter­pre­ta­tion by ear­ly min­is­ters like Samuel Bow­nas – has helped me under­stand moments when the easy path of acclaim is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the right choice.

Pow­ers of the Soul

Nuturing ministers: Case studies

December 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is start­ing a new series of his­tor­i­cal exam­ples of Quak­ers giv­ing min­is­te­r­i­al advice and training:

As I am work­ing on a revi­sion of my book on the Quak­er min­istry, I am revis­it­ing his­tor­i­cal accounts of times when a min­is­ter was giv­en guid­ance (elder­ing, over­sight, nur­ture, dis­ci­pline). As part of that work, I will from time to time post “case stud­ies” on this blog. 

Nutur­ing min­is­ters: Case stud­ies, Intro

Humor in Religion

December 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m a lit­tle ner­vous solic­it­ing Quak­er humor but it’s become part of my job descrip­tion… Friends Jour­nal is devot­ing a whole issue to “Humor in Reli­gion” next April. The writ­ing dead­line is Jan­u­ary 7. A fright­ful­ly seri­ous list of things we’re look­ing for is below.


Writing Opp: Humor in Religion (due Jan 7)

Writ­ing Opp: Humor in Reli­gion (due Jan 7) 

Mag­a­zine ISO legit fun­ny Quak­er joke, apply here.

Friends Journal Friends Journal