Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

The Rise of Liberal Quakerism

May 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is nerd­ing deep into Quak­er his­to­ry, specif­i­cal­ly the process in which younger mem­bers of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing start­ed for­mu­lat­ing a new kind of Quak­erism. Here’s his explana­to­ry intro­duc­tion and here is part 2:

Mean­while, mem­ber­ship dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, as meet­ings applied dis­ci­pline increas­ing­ly rig­or­ous­ly for walk­ing dis­or­der­ly in all man­ner of ways. In 1859, a prize of one hun­dred pounds was offered by an anony­mous British Friend for the essay that best explained this decline and that offered the most promis­ing solutions

The process was any­thing but overnight. As I under­stand the his­to­ry it would be anoth­er half cen­tu­ry from the prize to a yearly-meeting-wide shift. I don’t think many Friends in Eng­land appre­ci­ate just how Evan­gel­i­cal their year­ly meet­ing has become in these years; their refusal to rec­og­nize Amer­i­can Hick­sites led to the lat­ter’s shun­ning from the world Quak­er fam­i­ly and meant mod­ernist Quak­er respons­es would evolve on large­ly sep­a­rate paths.

I won­der if British Friend William Pol­lard will make an appear­ance in Steven’s posts. I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed how Philadel­phia Hick­sites took to him despite the for­mal insti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers. [Update: Steven just dropped part three and there’s Pol­lard!]

The Rise of Lib­er­al Quak­erism — Part 2

Lifting up the vocabulary

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is Sell­ing Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two promi­nent Quak­er board­ing schools in the Philadel­phia area, and he talks about the brand­ing chal­lenges of “Quak­er val­ues” which his­toric Quak­er schools so often fall back on when describ­ing their mis­sion. We often describe these with the sim­plis­tic “SPICES” foru­mu­la­tion (Eric Moon wrote about the prob­lems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encour­ages us to expand our language:

We can use any num­ber of descrip­tors that do not sound so haughty and near­sight­ed. I think we should con­tin­u­al­ly lift up some key pieces of vocab­u­lary that real­ly do make the Quak­er way dis­tinc­tive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add oth­ers: “that of God in every per­son”; “the Inner Light”; “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”; “dis­cern­ment”; “sense of the meet­ing”; “right­ly led and right­ly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice with­in”; “way open­ing”; “clerk­ing”; “query”; “wor­ship shar­ing”; “expec­tant wait­ing”; “cen­ter­ing down”; “Quak­er deci­sion mak­ing”; “Quak­er tra­di­tion”; “faith and prac­tice”; “seek­ing clear­ness”; “Quak­er tes­ti­monies”; and of course, “meet­ing for worship.”

Long­time FJ read­ers will remem­ber a much-discussed 2008 arti­cle by Hoopes, “Young Fam­i­lies and Quak­erism: Will the Cen­ter Hold?” It cer­tain spoke to my con­di­tion as a par­ent strug­gling with fam­i­ly life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard real­i­ties fac­ing many Quak­er par­ents of young chil­dren today. They are fre­quent­ly exhaust­ed and fraz­zled from attend­ing to their children’s needs in addi­tion to their own all week long. They des­per­ate­ly need a break from their own chil­dren, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expect­ed — to serve as First-day school teach­ers or child­care providers. Hence, their expe­ri­ence of meet­ing is not one of replen­ish­ment, but of fur­ther depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadel­phia Friends took the 2008 arti­cle to heart.


Selling Quakerism - Friends Journal

Sell­ing Quak­erism — Friends Journal 

The Mis­sion – Mar­ket Ten­sion Inher­ent in Quak­er Values

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminiary on Simon Jenkins article

May 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chalk this one up as anoth­er whisper-down-the-lane. As read­ers will prob­a­bly remem­ber, a few weeks ago, non-Friend Simon Jenk­ins wrote an opin­ion piece in The Guardian about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of British Friends drop­ping God from their Faith and Prac­tice. There were a lot of exag­ger­a­tions in it; the year­ly meet­ing ses­sion was most­ly decid­ing whether it it felt led to start the long process of revis­ing the doc­u­ment of Friends’ belief and prac­tice. Many year­ly meet­ings do this every gen­er­a­tion or so. AFAIK, there was no sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion on what the revi­sions might bring. At the time, I spec­u­lat­ed that “Jenk­ins is chas­ing the head­line to advance his own argu­ment with­out regard to how his state­ment might polar­ize Friends.”

Now we have anoth­er head­line chas­er. The pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary more or less reads Jenk­in­s’s piece aloud on his radio show (hat-tip havedan­son on the Quak­ers sub­red­dit). He light­ly skips over the fact that Jenk­ins isn’t Quak­er and admits to lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence of Quak­er wor­ship. The SBTS pres­i­dent, Albert Mohler, repeat­ed­ly calls the Guardian arti­cle a “news report” even though it is clear­ly labeled as an opin­ion piece. If any pub­lic­i­ty is good pub­lic­i­ty then it’s good that non-Friends like Jenk­ins and now Mohler are talk­ing about the decision-making process of a Quak­er year­ly meet­ing, but this is stu­pid piled on stupid.

From a media per­spec­tive, I get it: Mohler has a dai­ly 24-minute pod­cast to fill. He has interns who scan buzzy news items. They rearrange the text with inter­sti­tials like “he con­tin­ues, and I quote” and “he goes on to say” so that Mohler can spend five min­utes read­ing an arti­cle with­out sound­ing like he’s just read­ing an arti­cle. But seri­ous­ly, how does the pres­i­dent of a major sem­i­nary have such dis­re­gard for any­thing approach­ing aca­d­e­m­ic rig­or? Also: how much regur­gi­tat­ed junk is on the inter­net sim­ply because peo­ple need to fill time? The Quak­er cau­tion about giv­ing min­istry just because you’re paid to give min­istry and it’s time to give min­istry seems apt in this case.

Mon­day, May 14, 2018

Foxy George

May 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Read­er Carl Abbott of Mult­nom­ah Meet­ing in Por­tand, Ore­gon, wrote in with a bit more con­text about the local pub­lic school that’s shed­ding it’s Quak­er mas­cot:

The Franklin High mas­cot  issue was very low pro­file here in Port­land, basi­cal­ly raised and advo­cat­ed by one per­son. Indi­vid­u­als in our meet­ing signed her peti­tion, but the ques­tion did not rise to for­mal con­sid­er­a­tion ( I think also the case with oth­er area meet­ings and church­es). The ques­tion of Native Amer­i­can names used by schools around Ore­gon HAS been a sub­stan­tial and dif­fi­cult pub­lic issue, and I sus­pect that the Port­land School Board was look­ing to avoid a quag­mire. I’m sup­port­ive of the change, although it seemed to me that there have been much more impor­tant things to wor­ry about.

Mean­while, for your enter­tain­ment I dug out this old press release from George Fox Uni­ver­si­ty (whose date I can’t read). I do agree that Bru­in is bet­ter than Foxy George.

Mas­cot press release.pdf

It looks to me like the hand­writ­ing reads Fall 70 to me. Am I going to be the only one to think that Foxy George is pret­ty cre­ative in a charm­ing­ly obvi­ous way?

Words and Wounds: Reflections from Britain Yearly Meeting

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Words and Wounds: Reflec­tions from Britain Year­ly Meeting

I was par­tic­u­lar­ly moved by the pres­ence of our inter­na­tion­al Quak­er vis­i­tors. To trav­el all that way just for our lit­tle gath­er­ing! It struck me that, when we say ‘our diver­si­ty is our strength’, this must include all the ways that Quak­erism is expressed through­out the world. It must even include those expres­sions of Quak­erism that make us uncom­fort­able. For our diver­si­ty to tru­ly be our strength we must pay a price, and that price is the need to have deep and dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions with each oth­er, face to face, about what we hold most dear.

Words and Wounds: Reflec­tions from Britain Year­ly Meeting

Portland, Oregon high school ditching controversial ‘Quakers’ mascot

May 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On the list of reli­gious prob­lems, the use of “Quak­er” by non-Friends is more mys­tery than prob­lem. There’s the multi­na­tion­al giant Quak­er Oats Com­pa­ny of course, peri­od­i­cal­ly mak­ing tone deaf state­ment with its name. Friends of a cer­tain age might remem­ber 1989’s rebrand­ed Pop­eye the Quak­er Man and every eigh­teen months the laugh-out-loud Quak­er Oats threat­ens to sue us sto­ry goes re-viral on Face­book (the page is undat­ed and so always feels new; the inci­dent is at least 15 years old).

There are also var­i­ous schools who brand their sports teams with the Quak­er name. But a Port­land, Ore­gon, news sta­tion says that list is get­ting a bit small­er: Franklin High School ditch­ing con­tro­ver­sial ‘Quak­ers’ mascot

An assis­tant prin­ci­pal and anoth­er teacher told FOX 12 they shift­ed away from brand­ing the school as “Quak­ers” sev­er­al years ago. Sev­er­al stu­dents also said they don’t know much about who Quak­ers are or the reli­gion. Sev­er­al seemed to think Ben­jamin Franklin, who the school is named after, was a Quak­er. Franklin was not a Quak­er. FOX 12 also spoke to Kel­ly McCur­dy, who put three chil­dren through Franklin High. He said he believes the dis­trict is mak­ing a mis­take and eras­ing tra­di­tion. “I think it’s sil­ly, per­son­al­ly,” McCur­dy said. “It’s not racial­ly insensitive.”

It seems that the Fox affil­i­ate went out of its way to find a cranky per­son to deplore a point no one was mak­ing. Of course it’s not racial­ly insen­si­tive. But these appro­pri­at­ed names are always… well, weird. No pub­lic school would call them­selves The Jews or The Mus­lims or The Catholics or any­thing else smelling of reli­gion. It’s a sign of how dis­missed Friends are as a actu­al liv­ing reli­gious move­ment and denom­i­na­tion that our nick­name is con­sid­ered fair game. We must turn to the local news­pa­per to get the real back­ground:

Lisa Zuni­ga told the board that in 2014 she met Mia Pisano, a fel­low Franklin High par­ent who is a mem­ber of the Quak­er faith, and the pair start­ed an effort to change the name. The name, they argued, vio­lat­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. The dis­trict, they said, should nev­er com­man­deer a reli­gious sym­bol or con­no­ta­tion for a mas­cot. Despite inter­est in the name change, Zuni­ga said, par­ents met stiff resis­tance from the dis­trict. It was hard to even get any­one to explain what the process would be to bring about a name change, she said.

https://​www​.ore​gonlive​.com/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​s​f​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​p​o​r​t​l​a​n​d​_​s​c​h​o​o​l​_​b​o​a​r​d​_​f​i​n​d​s​_​q​u​.​h​tml

http://​www​.kptv​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​3​8​1​4​5​8​3​3​/​f​r​a​n​k​l​i​n​-​h​i​g​h​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​d​i​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​n​t​r​o​v​e​r​s​i​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​m​a​s​cot

Quaker Abolitionist Benjamin Lay Remembered

May 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing has pub­lished a piece on the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of dis­owned sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er rab­bler­ouser Ben­jamin Lay

On Sat­ur­day, April 21, 2018, Abing­ton Month­ly Meet­ing unveiled a bur­ial stone for Sarah & Ben­jamin Lay. The event which fea­tured open­ing remarks by author Mar­cus Redik­er and local res­i­dent and Quak­er Avis Wan­da McClin­ton was fol­lowed by a gath­er­ing in the meet­ing­house in the man­ner of a Friends Memo­r­i­al Meeting.

Abing­ton was the first Friends meet­ing I ever vis­it­ed and I’ve loved the sto­ry of Lay since the time I first stum­bled on it (even as a kid I was enough of a local his­to­ry nerd that I might have read of Lay’s antics before I ever met a Quak­er). I’m per­son­al­ly so hap­py to see him get this wider recog­ni­tion. The PYM piece is all-text but much of the grave mark­er cer­e­mo­ny has been post­ed to YouTube.

https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​3​e​-​4​_​Y​Z​x​eQk