Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

Emily Provance: An Application of Cultural Theory

August 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Inter­est­ing appli­ca­tion of busi­ness the­o­ry to dif­fer­ent types of Quak­er cultures:

Did you iden­ti­fy the cul­ture type of your Quak­er faith com­mu­ni­ty — more specif­i­cal­ly, the por­tion of that com­mu­ni­ty where you spend the most time? It’s pos­si­ble that yours might be a pret­ty even tie between two cul­ture types, but it’s less help­ful if you say “we’re not real­ly any of these.” Iden­ti­fy one or two that seem rel­e­vant and work with it for a few min­utes here. Nobody’s look­ing over your shoulder. 

I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by her place­ment of the chil­dren’s pro­gram cul­ture out­side of the ones she assigns her meet­ing. I’ve met teens who grew up embed­ded in Quak­er youth cul­ture who are sur­prised when they hit adult­hood and real­ize that they don’t con­nect with any of the adult activ­i­ties. Back in the day I was part of Young Adult Friends pro­grams that were part­ly attempts to con­tin­ue that Young Friends cul­ture in place in a twenty-something con­text. Acknowl­edg­ing that there are some­times fun­da­men­tal cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences at work seems like a good start. Also, don’t miss Emi­ly’s piece in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal, The Grief and the Promised Land.

Nav­i­gat­ing Dif­fer­ences: An Appli­ca­tion of Cul­tur­al Theory

Isaac Smith: Good soil

August 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

An obser­va­tion on the soil of God’s work — us:

For many of us, our predica­ment today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw clos­er to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many oblig­a­tions, so many dis­trac­tions. We can be led astray, some­times with­out even know­ing it. The founder of our move­ment, George Fox, once said that “what­ev­er ye are addict­ed to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trou­ble you, then he gets advan­tage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addict­ed to many things: not just, say, alco­hol or gam­bling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves. 

Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow our­selves to be instru­ments of peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempt­ing in those times to get defen­sive or look toward oth­ers. I’ve found the old Quak­er take on “The Tempter” to be per­son­al­ly very use­ful. I’ve learned to ques­tion and go inward when­ev­er I feel too much pride in some­thing or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work. 

Good soil

Creeds and stories

August 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith was going to write some­thing about creeds:

I had been kick­ing around writ­ing some­thing on the uses and abus­es of creeds in the Quak­er tra­di­tion, but then I dis­cov­ered that Ben Wood had writ­ten a fair­ly defin­i­tive ver­sion of that essay already. So read that instead.

Ben’s 2016 piece on Quak­ers and creeds is def­i­nite­ly worth a read. I checked my records and I must have missed it at the time, so I’ll share it now. He goes deep into the kinds of creeds that Penn and Bar­clay gave in their writ­ings but also what the ear­li­er Chris­t­ian creed-makers were com­ing from. He also comes to today. Here’s a taste:

we can­not be creed-makers before we are story-preservers and story-tellers. We can­not hope to resolve dif­fer­ences unless and until we dig down into our own Quak­er sto­ry; unless we come to terms with its pow­er and impli­ca­tions. At least part of our sense of spir­i­tu­al malaise is a ret­i­cence to engage with the depth of the Quak­er tale. Part­ly that ret­i­cence is about a lack of teach­ing min­istry among Friends. We haven’t giv­en each oth­er the tools to become skill­ful read­ers of our own nar­ra­tive. We have assumed that peo­ple can just ‘pick this stuff up’ through a mys­te­ri­ous process of osmo­sis. This has led to a frag­men­ta­tion of under­stand­ing about the mean­ing and impli­ca­tions of Quak­er grammar.

In my world, talk of creeds has sprung up recent­ly fol­low­ing the Quak­er­S­peak video of Arthur Larrabee’s nine core prin­ci­ples of unpro­grammed Friends. His prin­ci­ples seem fair­ly descrip­tive of main­stream Lib­er­al Friends to me, but pre­dictably enough the video’s com­ments have peo­ple wor­ried about any for­mu­la­tion: “Espous­ing core beliefs — no mat­ter how well inten­tioned — risks intro­duc­ing a creed.” One of my pet the­o­ries is that the mid-century truce over the­ol­o­gy talk that helped Quak­er branch­es reunite (at least on the U.S. East Coast) has stopped working.

Quak­ers and Creeds

Joshua Brown with straight talk on preventing child abuse

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Joshua Brown, a well-known Friends pas­tor now down in North Carolina:

Most year­ly meet­ings rec­om­mend that every­one who works with young peo­ple should have a back­ground check. Most local meet­ings I have been a part of resist this, say­ing that “But we know that per­son – they have belonged here for years!” Requir­ing a back­ground check feels to some Friends like an inva­sion of pri­va­cy, or that it goes against the open­ness and trust which they val­ue in a Quak­er meeting.

I have per­son­al­ly known of three respect­ed Friends who turned out to be ser­i­al child rapists. Two were pil­lars of their meet­ing. None of the peo­ple in the month­ly meet­ing knew learned about it because of out­side legal action and investigations.

There were times when these indi­vid­u­als were around my chil­dren, though I was near-enough near­by that I’m not wor­ried any­thing hap­pened. Still, one of the cas­es involved rapes in a camper in the perpetrator’s back­yard and I remem­ber my eldest think­ing it looked cool and try­ing the door han­dle. We also had a close call with a Boy Scout leader and respect­ed local his­to­ri­an whose file was pub­lished when an Ore­gon judge ordered the nation­al BSA to release decades of secret pedophile records.

One the affect­ed meet­ings in par­tic­u­lar is near and dear to me heart and have some warm and faith­ful Friends. I know it was a shock and ongo­ing trau­ma for them that this hap­pened in their com­mu­ni­ty. I under­stand that we were all a bit naive about these mat­ters 10 and 20 and 30 years ago. But we’ve all been edu­cat­ed about just how com­mon this is and just how charm­ing pedophiles can be.

Even recent­ly, I’ve had peo­ple assure me their Friends meet­ings are safe and that they don’t need to do back­ground checks. I make a men­tal note to avoid those meet­ings. We are not immune. And we are not mag­i­cal­ly bet­ter about dis­cern­ing this stuff than any oth­er faith community.

Straight talk on pre­vent­ing child abuse

Sam Walton: Putting the protest back in Protestant

August 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the Peace and Dis­ar­ma­ment Pro­gramme Manger for British Friends comes a plea for us not to be afraid of going back to Quak­er roots and chal­lenge the abuse of power.

Society’s val­ues are so often in oppo­si­tion to God’s pur­pos­es. Slav­ery used to be legal. Love between two peo­ple of the same sex was ille­gal in our life­times. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s cre­ation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrich­ment rather than loy­al­ties lying with the King­dom of Heav­en and work­ing for the enrich­ment of all human­i­ty. When being loy­al to God’s pur­pos­es runs counter to what soci­ety expects it can get pret­ty rough. There may be per­se­cu­tion, though it varies a lot: from tut­ting, telling you off for being veg­e­tar­i­an, being giv­en white feath­ers, right through to impris­on­ment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.

Putting the protest back in Protestant

Civility Can Be Dangerous

August 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From the AFSC’s Lucy Dun­can, a look back at Hen­ry Cad­bury’s now-infamous 1934 speech to Amer­i­can rab­bis and a look at the civil­i­ty debate in mod­ern America.

Stand­ing up for peace means stand­ing on the side of the oppressed, not throw­ing them into the lion’s mouth in the name of civil­i­ty. And inter­rupt­ing racist vio­lence takes more than civ­il dis­course: active dis­rup­tion is need­ed in order for racism to be revealed and dis­man­tled. What good is inef­fec­tive paci­fism? My com­mit­ment to non­vi­o­lence is about sav­ing lives.

I gave my take on Cad­bury’s speech back in June. I was a lit­tle eas­i­er on Cad­bury, most­ly because I think we need to under­stand the Quak­er world­view out of which he was speak­ing. It’s nev­er good to lec­ture the oppressed on their oppres­sion, but the clas­sic Quak­er idea of speak­ing truth to all sides still holds val­ue and is some­thing I think we miss some­times nowadays.


Civility Can Be Dangerous

Civil­i­ty Can Be Dangerous 

In 1934, AFSC co-founder Hen­ry Cad­bury advised Jew­ish rab­bis to be gen­tler on Hitler. Is civil­i­ty a substitute…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

Friends Journal seeking articles on Quakers and Christianity

August 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Decem­ber theme of Friends Jour­nal will look at the juicy top­ic of Friends’ rela­tion­ship with Chris­tian­i­ty. I wrote up an “Edi­tor’s Desk” post about the kinds of arti­cles we might expect. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s a series of ques­tions that has dogged Friends since we did away with cler­gy and start­ed call­ing bap­tism a “sprin­kling,” and it has been an issue of con­tention in every Quak­er schism: Are we Chris­t­ian? Are we real­ly Chris­t­ian? Does it mat­ter if we’re Chris­t­ian? What does it even mean to be Chris­t­ian in the world?

One rea­son we began pub­lish­ing more themed issues begin­ning in 2012 was so we use the top­ics to invite fresh voic­es to write for us. While we’ve long had reg­u­lars who will send us a few arti­cles a year on mis­cel­la­neous top­ics, themes allow us to tempt peo­ple with spe­cif­ic inter­ests and min­istries: rec­on­cil­i­a­tion from war, cli­mate activism, work­place reform, men­tor­ship, ecu­meni­cal rela­tion­ships, the wider fam­i­ly of Friends, etc.

More recent­ly I’ve start­ed these “Edi­tor’s Desk” posts as a way of shar­ing some of the ideas we have around par­tic­u­lar upcom­ing issues. The post also gives us a URL that we can share on social media to drum up sub­mis­sions. I also hope that oth­ers will share the URL via email.

The absolute best way of reach­ing new peo­ple is when some­one we know shares an upcom­ing theme with some­one we don’t know. There are many peo­ple who by chance or incli­na­tion seem to strad­dle Quak­er worlds. They are invalu­able in ampli­fy­ing our calls for sub­mis­sions. Ques­tion: would it help if we start­ed an email list just for writ­ers or for peo­ple who want to be remind­ed of upcom­ing themes so they can share them with Friends?


Writing Opp: Quakers and Christianity

Writ­ing Opp: Quak­ers and Christianity 

It’s a series of ques­tions that has dogged Friends since we did away with cler­gy and start­ed calling…

Friends Journal Friends Journal