Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

What Does the Outside Say?

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Also in Friends Jour­nal’s issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house,” a piece from Brad Stock­er of Mia­mi Meet­ing in Florida:

Most Friends have an under­stand­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al mes­sage that our meet­ing­hous­es express. We under­stand the sim­plic­i­ty of the struc­ture. We under­stand the rea­son there are no steeples or cross­es on the out­side and why we have clear win­dows placed so as to invite the light to enter. We are equal­ly sen­si­tive to inte­ri­or design. While we come into fre­quent, inti­mate con­tact with the meet­ing­house exte­ri­or, and the land it sits on, we may be less aware of the mes­sage they convey. 

There may be a lit­tle whiplash to talk about but­ter­fly gar­dens after the recent arti­cle on Quak­er wor­ship from prison but I like the inten­tion­al­i­ty of Stock­er’s obser­va­tions: we are always mak­ing state­ments with the care (or non-care) of our phys­i­cal space. Miami’s the kind of coastal city where cli­mate change is very much not a the­o­ret­i­cal issue and Stock­er is very involved in his year­ly meet­ing’s earth­care edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives. The meet­ing­house grounds are a place to mod­el good stew­ard­ship; tak­ing the care to have them be invit­ing and qui­et­ly demon­stra­tive of Quak­er val­ues is impor­tant outreach.

A bit of racism at Sidwell

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Not cool: some stu­dents at the ritzy DC Quak­er school made up racist user­names in a pro­ject­ed in-school discussion:

School offi­cials say sev­er­al of the student’s user­names were racist toward Asians and Native Amer­i­cans and two of the user­names includ­ed images of swastikas. As soon as the names and images were rec­og­nized the pro­jec­tor was turned off and the pre­sen­ta­tion was ended. 

Not many of the stu­dents at Sid­well are Friends so it’s high­ly unlike­ly that these were Quak­er kids. But it’s nev­er good to hear of behav­ior like this.

http://​www​.fox5dc​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​l​o​c​a​l​-​n​e​w​s​/​r​a​c​i​s​t​-​w​o​r​d​s​-​s​w​a​s​t​i​k​a​s​-​d​i​s​p​l​a​y​e​d​-​a​t​-​s​i​d​w​e​l​l​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​-​p​r​e​s​e​n​t​a​t​ion

Young Friends in UK write a Trans and Non-binary Statement

March 6, 2019
· Martin Kelley

This seems part­ly in response to con­tro­ver­sies around anti-trans fem­i­nists book­ing Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es for talks.

YFGM aims to be a wel­com­ing and acces­si­ble space for peo­ple of all gen­der iden­ti­ties where peo­ple feel includ­ed and oppres­sive behav­iour is not accept­ed. We recog­nise we have fur­ther work to do includ­ing some more imme­di­ate changes, and cre­at­ing space to nur­ture deep­er cul­tur­al changes with­in both YFGM and the wider Soci­ety of Friends. 

http://​yfgm​.quak​er​.org​.uk/​d​o​c​s​/​t​r​a​n​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​o​n​-​b​i​n​a​r​y​-​s​t​a​t​e​m​e​nt/

Another Quaker(ish) president?

March 4, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Because the Quak­er pres­i­den­tial track record is so dis­tin­guished (Her­bert Hoover, Richard Nixon) maybe it’s time to put anoth­er Quak­er into the Oval Office. John Hick­en­loop­er, for­mer gov­er­nor of Col­orado and raised in the Philly sub­urbs, has thrown his hat into the ring.

Back in 2010 he told the Philadel­phia Inquir­er he and his wife were reg­u­lar meet­ing atten­ders liv­ing “Quak­er val­ues” but when Friends Jour­nal reached out to him a few years ago it sound­ed like he no longer iden­ti­fied as a Friend.


John Hickenlooper Says He Is Running in 2020, Citing a ‘Crisis of Division’ (Published 2019)

John Hick­en­loop­er Says He Is Run­ning in 2020, Cit­ing a ‘Cri­sis of Divi­sion’ (Pub­lished 2019) 

The for­mer Col­orado gov­er­nor joins a crowd­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic field. Even in his home state, there is skep­ti­cism that…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Quakerly competition?

February 13, 2019
· Martin Kelley

A quick update that we at Friends Jour­nal have extend­ed the dead­line for an upcom­ing issue on Friends and com­pe­ti­tion. It’s a real­ly inter­est­ing top­ic and I’d like to see some more arti­cles to choose from. In my “Edi­tor’s Desk” post try­ing to drum up writ­ing inter­est, I dug through the FJ archives to find pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions on the top­ic. I’ll excerpt a few here:

If you look back through Friends Jour­nal archives, you’ll find warn­ings against com­pet­i­tive behav­ior. In 1955 Bess B. Lane of Swarth­more (Pa.) Meet­ing wrote that schools should “Place empha­sis on coop­er­a­tion, shar­ing, rather than on com­pe­ti­tion” and won­dered if “com­pe­ti­tion is being over­stressed in our schools.” In 1972, Christo­pher H. Ander­son, then a senior at Wilm­ing­ton Col­lege, had stronger words. He con­trast­ed his Quak­er edu­ca­tion with pub­lic schools, which he said “breed a social con­for­mi­ty, an intel­lec­tu­al bland­ness and a repug­nant spir­it of competition.”

If you know any­one who is inter­est­ed in the top­ic, please for­ward this along!


Friendly Competition? Writing deadline extended to Feb 25

Friend­ly Com­pe­ti­tion? Writ­ing dead­line extend­ed to Feb 25 

Learn more about writ­ing for our May issue on competition.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Belonging and difference

February 13, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Gil S on con­ti­nu­ity and change:

Many of us find dif­fi­cul­ty in fac­ing change. The way a meet­ing house is arranged and the way Quak­er faith is expressed have both changed over time. There have always been those who find it dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble to let go of what has gone before. In my local meet­ing I always sit in the same place and acknowl­edge that I find change dif­fi­cult, but in spite of this there are ways in which I have changed. 

I sus­pect part of thr con­text of this is the hopes and fears of British Friends as they embark on a reci­sion of their book of Faith and Prac­tice. An edit­ing group has recent­ly been named.

https://​stum​bling​step​ping​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​b​e​l​o​n​g​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​c​e​.​h​tml

Evangelistic malpractice

February 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er on start­ing fresh in a cor­ner of the Quak­er world:

I was grate­ful that the “who” ques­tion was there — tes­ti­fy­ing that we are not cen­tered on our­selves, duti­ful­ly inven­to­ry­ing our Quak­er mark­ers. For me, evan­ge­lism (pay­ing urgent atten­tion to the “who”) puts all those oth­er tes­ti­monies in per­spec­tive. All those tes­ti­monies are “signs and won­ders,” qual­i­ties of the Light by which we as the Body of Christ par­tic­i­pate in mak­ing Jesus visible. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​t​i​c​-​m​a​l​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​e​.​h​tml

Is Quaker Culture an Obstacle to Faith?

February 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Isaac Smith:

I have tend­ed to describe this shift in under­stand­ing as the moment when Quak­erism “clicked” for me — when it ceased to be just the weird sub­cul­ture I grew up in, and more a mat­ter of con­vic­tion. Prac­tices that I ignored or nev­er quite under­stood, like mak­ing group deci­sions with­out tak­ing a vote, now made sense, because they were borne out of an attempt to make Christ the present teacher in all affairs. 

Isaac’s piece stems in part from the Decem­ber Friends Jour­nal, on Quak­ers and Chris­tian­i­ty. A large per­cent­age of the sub­mis­sions we received for the issue had remark­ably sim­i­lar per­son­al sto­ries: peo­ple had grown up in a restric­tive reli­gious tra­di­tion and come to Lib­er­al Friends because of its open­ness to spir­i­tu­al seek­ing. If any­thing they were hos­tile to Chris­tian­i­ty and dis­tinc­tive Quak­er pecu­liar­i­ties when they joined but over time they slow­ly shift­ed, often after get­ting to know ground­ed elder Friends. Now they qui­et­ly iden­ti­fied as Chris­t­ian Friends.

We could have print­ed a whole issue of (most­ly) con­vinced Lib­er­al Friends who had redis­cov­ered Chris­tian­i­ty. Instead we picked a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple for the print edi­tion and pub­lished the rest as part of our our extend­ed online edi­tion; you can read it all at the online con­tents. Although Isaac’s sto­ry is dif­fer­ent (he grew up as a Friend) it shares a sim­i­lar trajectory.

(Issac also has some ques­tions about Quak­er pub­lish­ing, with a link to a great 2009 blog post from Johan Mau­r­er. I feel I should talk about this issue too but that’ll take a bit more pon­der­ing on my part).

Is Quak­er Cul­ture an Obsta­cle to Faith?