Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

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 

A small break

December 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

My apolo­gies for the radio silence on this so-called dai­ly site. A fam­i­ly vaca­tion took my atten­tion away from most things Quak­er and get­ting caught up on back work is keep­ing it away a few days. I should be up to speed by the weekend.

Dur­ing that time the domain reg­is­tra­tion for Quak­erQuak­er turned due. I must have missed the del­uge of email that its domain reg­is­trar usu­al­ly sends. I’ve paid the domain bill for anoth­er two years and it should be back up for everyone.

This Couple Had a “Kitten Hour” at Their Wedding

November 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This sto­ry needs no clever introduction:

“We want­ed our guests to have some­thing to do as they arrived [while] we took pic­tures with our fam­i­lies, so we planned a kit­ten hour,” Colleen told POPSUGAR. “We did a cock­tail hour with cock­tails named after our cats for the recep­tion, but the Quak­er meet­ing house we used for the cer­e­mo­ny does­n’t allow alco­hol on premis­es. I want­ed a wed­ding fal­con, but Iz vetoed that, and so we com­pro­mised on kittens.” 

https://​www​.pop​sug​ar​.com/​m​o​m​s​/​C​o​u​p​l​e​-​H​a​s​-​K​i​t​t​e​n​-​H​o​u​r​-​W​e​d​d​i​n​g​-​4​5​4​9​8​1​5​1​/​amp

The gray wave that wasn’t

November 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Back in March, Friends Jour­nal and the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion co-hosted an online dis­cus­sion with six Quak­er can­di­dates for con­gres­sion­al seats. The idea and coor­di­na­tion came from the awe­some Greg Woods. I went to see just how high the 2018 “gray wave” had crested.

Spoil­ers: no wave. Four of the can­di­dates didn’t make it out of the pri­maries and a fifth was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in a long-shot can­di­da­cy. The one can­di­date to win major-party pri­ma­ry was the awe­some Shaw­na Roberts1 of Bar­nesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, peo­ple I know and it was a lot of fun to fol­low her cam­paign. Her twit­ter feed has been a hoot:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Shaw­na only got about 30 per­cent of the vote yes­ter­day. This elec­tion was not kind to Democ­rats in rur­al dis­tricts like south­east Ohio’s 6 and she was run­ning against an incum­bent. From my van­tage point 30 per­cent seems pret­ty good, though as my sev­enth grade math teacher used to intone in his weary bari­tone, close only counts in horse­shoes and hand grenades. 2 Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Wash­ing­ton win had me hop­ing against the odds. I’d love to see her con­tin­ue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updat­ed Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics page. For any­one won­der­ing about Quak­er politi­cians, Paul Buck­ley had a nice overview of our com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to vot­ing a few years ago.


2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

2018 Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Web Pan­el (Updat­ed Nov 2018) 

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Political queries from an almost-Quaker

November 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Tim­o­thy Tay­lor on rad­i­cal objectivity:

But near what feels like an espe­cial­ly divi­sive elec­tion day, it seems worth pos­ing his insights as a chal­lenge for all of our par­ti­san beliefs. While I am not a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, I attend­ed a col­lege with Quak­er roots and mar­ried a 22nd-generation Quak­er. The Quak­ers have a term called a “query,” which refers to a ques­tion – some­times a chal­leng­ing or point­ed ques­tion– that is meant to be used as a basis for addi­tion­al reflection. 

His list isn’t real­ly in the style of clas­sic Quak­er queries (sur­prise). It’s the mod­ern style of lead­ing ques­tions that get called queries. Too often this form ends up being a rather trans­par­ent attempt to impose a kind of polit­i­cal ortho­doxy but Tay­lor’s ques­tions feel refresh­ing­ly chal­leng­ing and use­ful for what­ev­er side or non-side one takes in pol­i­tics. Hat­tip to Doug Ben­nett for the link.

http://​con​versableecon​o​mist​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​c​l​i​f​f​o​r​d​-​g​e​e​r​t​z​-​a​n​d​-​r​a​d​i​c​a​l​-​o​b​j​e​c​t​i​v​i​t​y​.​h​tml