Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

Mafias and chaos

June 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I like this inter­view on the Ital­ian mafia by Isaac Chotin­er in Slate, “The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been.”

It seems that this per­pet­u­al cyn­i­cism may be the great­est threat of our era. Is the child of irony? The grand­child of gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? Maybe the cause does­n’t mat­ter as much as the effect.

The mob thrives on chaos. It likes chaos. It likes to be the alter­na­tive author­i­ty that you go to because you can’t get any­thing done through the legit­i­mate state. For that very rea­son, I think there’s no doubt that it pro­motes that chaos. It likes civic dis­trust. It likes cyn­i­cism. It can prof­it from that. I think the great tragedy of Italy is that, to a large extent, it’s kind of succeeded.

I think that if we want­ed to con­struct a Quak­er cri­tique of the cur­rent Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment – and the type of cor­po­ra­tized cor­rup­tion we see in Rus­sia and the pet­rostates, it would best start with the polit­i­cal cul­ture that deny basic facts, gaslight cit­i­zens with ever-changing ratio­nales, and cre­at­ing chaos that can let finan­cial huck­sters reap bil­lions. These are not gov­ern­ments based on integri­ty and fair play­ing fields.


The Mafia Is More Powerful Than It’s Ever Been

The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been 

If you think of vio­lent, influ­en­tial orga­nized crime in Italy as a thing of the past, think again.

Slate Magazine Slate Magazine 

Reddit AMA on American Revolutionary-era persecutions

June 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on Red­dit, his­to­ri­an Jason Agli­et­ti hosts an Ask-Me-Anything about eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er his­to­ry in Mary­land. There’s some good dis­cus­sion about the ways the largely-neutral Quak­er pop­u­la­tion was treat­ed in var­i­ous colonies, espe­cial­ly Mary­land, which is Agli­et­ti’s focus.

“The Friends They Loathed” was defend­ed in April 2018 and exam­ined a chap­ter of Mary­land his­to­ry that had nev­er been explored in detail before — the reli­gious per­se­cu­tion against Quak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Despite being a his­to­ri­an of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, I hold no reli­gious beliefs.

[delet­ed by user]
by inQuak­ers

Legacy or burden?

June 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Lega­cy or burden?

One issue to which I am par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive is how our obses­sion with the past comes across to new­com­ers. Some peo­ple (espe­cial­ly those with Quak­er ances­tors) are excit­ed by our his­to­ry, while oth­er peo­ple are turned off or sim­ply puz­zled by Quak­er jar­gon and Quak­er genealo­gies, which they expe­ri­ence as a seri­ous bar­ri­er to being included.

Lega­cy or burden?

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