Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Quaker historic ocean of zen calm silence

April 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Young Quak­er Pod­cast in the UK recent­ly had an episode in which they had a mic run through 30 min­utes of silent wor­ship. I must admit I kind of laughed at the John Cage’­ness of it. But it’s gen­er­at­ed quite a bit of buzz. The Guardian declared it an ocean of calm, NPR thinks silence is gold­en. Not to be out­done, the BBC breath­less­ly announced that the pod­cast makes his­to­ry for record­ing Quak­er wor­ship (nev­er mind peo­ple have been wor­ship­ping via Skype and oth­er online media for many years now).

I love the inten­tion­al­i­ty of a room­ful of peo­ple agree­ing to set­tle into silence togeth­er as much as the next Friend, but I’m tempt­ed to won­der whether the cov­er­age would have quite so effu­sive if some­one had inter­rupt­ed part of the pod­cast’s silence to give a mes­sage. From daf­fodil min­istry to top-of-the-hour news­cast updates to dis­qui­si­tions on the gospel, pret­ty much any­thing would have popped the silence’s “moment of Zen,” to use NPR’s head-scratching description.

The best part of it all so far, in my opin­ion, is that one of the pod­cast­ers, host Jes­si­ca Hubbard-Bailey, got a chance to use the buzz to write her sto­ry of being a Quak­er for i (an online spin-off of the Inde­pen­dent): Life is tough for young peo­ple, but being a Quak­er has giv­en me hope.

When a friend came to me last year and sug­gest­ed the Young Quak­er Pod­cast record a silent Meet­ing for Wor­ship I was intrigued. But giv­en that most peo­ple are not quite so enam­oured with silence as Quak­ers, I couldn’t have antic­i­pat­ed the inter­est and response that followed.

https://​inews​.co​.uk/​i​n​e​w​s​-​l​i​f​e​s​t​y​l​e​/​w​o​m​e​n​/​l​i​f​e​-​i​s​-​t​o​u​g​h​-​f​o​r​-​y​o​u​n​g​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​b​u​t​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​h​a​s​-​g​i​v​e​n​-​m​e​-​h​o​pe/

Convergent Friends as New Jazz Traditionalist

April 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day I men­tioned an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Chad Stephen­son years ago about his theory/metaphor that Con­ver­gent Friends were like New Jazz tra­di­tion­al­ists. His piece had only been pub­lished in the Spir­it Ris­ing anthol­o­gy but Chad saw my post and has gra­cious­ly put it up on his blog!

Through­out Quak­er faith, diver­gence from its roots has brought new­er, mod­ern audi­ences to Quak­ers and pro­gressed with new path­ways while aban­don­ing the shared past com­mon­al­i­ties. Yet as a splin­tered tra­di­tion, Quak­ers have begun to suf­fer each oth­er as dis­tant rel­a­tives do when din­ing dur­ing the hol­i­days; a fail­ing coor­di­na­tion of growth which has led instead to dis­uni­ty and a lack of under­stand­ing and respect for com­mon roots essen­tial to cre­at­ing a mutu­al­ly enhanc­ing ecosys­tem of faith ground­ed in the Light.

Con­ver­gent Friends as New Jazz Traditionalists

What might Love do?

April 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Kath­leen Wooten looks at the heart­break­ing immi­gra­tion sto­ries tak­ing place all around us and asks the clas­sic Quak­er ques­tion, what might Love do?

I’m not quite sure how we got here, in this “Chris­t­ian” nation of ours. Christ says to wel­come the stranger. These folks are not even strangers to many of us – they are woven into the fab­ric of our shared com­mu­ni­ties, their fam­i­lies, their work and ser­vice in the world, and their blessings.

Has Christ come to teach his people himself?

April 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er looks at one of our most-used George Fox quotes and won­ders whether we’re using it authen­ti­cal­ly: Has Christ come to teach his peo­ple himself?

I want us to use our dear­est clich­es hon­est­ly, but if they some­times seem weak­ened by overuse, the solu­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to dis­card them. Maybe we can redis­cov­er their provoca­tive con­tent and test whether the promise with­in is already being ful­filled or could once again be ful­filled in our time.

I appre­ci­ate that Johan also asks if we’re hoard­ing this insight and claim­ing it as par­tic­u­lar­ly Quak­er. One of my per­son­al tests for adopt­ing Quak­er pecu­liar­i­ties of prac­tice or belief is whether I could argue that they should be adopt­ed by oth­er Chris­tians (or even oth­er peo­ple of faith in gen­er­al) as uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples. An atti­tude of plain­ness not based on social pres­sures or uni­forms is one I think would bring humil­i­ty and insight to any fol­low­er of Christ, for example.

That Christ has risen and is here and is ready to guide us direct­ly seems to be an obvi­ous truth – the heart of the res­ur­rec­tion and of Pen­te­cost and the apos­tles’ church plants. That some church­es insert peo­ple in between is a poten­tial dis­trac­tion but even they would, I hope, keep in mind that Christ is there with them in their steeple hous­es and in their lives.

The only oth­er take-away I have from this uni­ver­sal­i­ty test is that it cen­ters the Inward Christ and risen Jesus and not our human insti­tu­tions. This was the obvi­ous point in the 1650s as Quak­ers broke up reli­gious meet­ings and I think it still holds true. Our libraries and meet­ing­hous­es and mis­sion state­ments and staff flow­charts don’t mean any­thing if they get in the way of the pur­pose of our soci­ety, which is sim­ply to help one anoth­er set­tle down, rec­og­nize that Inward Christ, and learn the cor­po­rate skills dis­cern­ment so we can be Friends (of Jesus). The invi­ta­tion to knock on Jesus’s door is extend­ed to all, not just those of us call­ing our­selves Quaker.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​h​a​s​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​-​c​o​m​e​-​t​o​-​t​e​a​c​h​-​h​i​s​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​.​h​tml

Quaker Jazz

April 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­views musi­cian Colton Weath­er­ston. I love the way he relates the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion of jazz musi­cians to Quak­er worship:

Espe­cial­ly artists and musi­cians, we often don’t have the same point of view or even the same back­ground. Each of us will bring a lot of bag­gage into the meet­ing of the musi­cians and we have to build trust with each oth­er and peo­ple need to feel free to express their ideas as a soloist with­out feel­ing told by the leader how exact­ly to play — we have to work it out as an ensem­ble. And I think that’s very true with meet­ings also.

Those with long mem­o­ries might remem­ber that I inter­viewed Chad Stephen­son after he made a com­par­i­son between new jazz tra­di­tion­al­ists and Con­ver­gent Friends at the 2009 Ben Lomond con­fer­ence (I believe he wrote an expand­ed ver­sion for the Spir­it Ris­ing Quak­er anthol­o­gy but I can’t find a link).

Does this need to be said?

April 11, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A great piece from newish Quak­er blog­ger Josh Tal­bot on the per­son­al strug­gle to fol­low the peace tes­ti­mo­ny: Not Falling Into the Fire of My Own Ire.

Los­ing your­self to anger is pos­si­ble even with anger focused against injus­tice and cru­el­ty. You can become so focused on the tar­get of your rage. That you do not notice when you have lost sight of your goals and are only in it for the fight. Even fol­low­ing the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny of Non-Violence we need to rec­og­nize when we are no longer being Non-Aggressive.

Like many con­vinced Friends, I came to the soci­ety through activism. I had met plen­ty of peo­ple who let right­eous anger serve as cov­er for more vis­cer­al hatred. One eye-opening protest in the 90s was in a rur­al part of Penn­syl­va­nia. When one of the locals screamed the cliche of the era — “Go get a job!” — a pro­tes­tor shout­ed back, “I’ve got a job and I make more than you.” It was true even as it was cru­el and irrel­e­vant and braggy.

I did­n’t see this kind of behav­ior as much with the Friends I saw at var­i­ous protests, which is large­ly why I start­ed grav­i­tat­ing toward them when­ev­er pos­si­ble. I could see that there was some­thing in the Quak­er cul­ture and val­ue sys­tem that was able to nav­i­gate between right­eous and per­son­al anger and draw the line in dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. I love Josh’s descrip­tion of the “Craig Fer­gu­son” method:

I ask myself. “Does this need to be said?” “Does this need to be said by me?” “Does this need to be said by me right now?” Doing this cuts down on moments of spon­ta­neous anger.

This could also describe the Quak­er dis­cern­ment method for min­istry. Maybe there’s some­thing to the care we take (or at least aim for) in that process that gives us a lit­tle more self-discipline in the heat of protest or that helps us sort through thorny eth­i­cal issues that run through our own community.

https://​quak​er​re​turns​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​n​o​t​-​f​a​l​l​i​n​g​-​i​n​t​o​-​f​i​r​e​-​o​f​-​m​y​-​o​w​n​-​i​r​e​.​h​tml

Profiting on empire

April 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

We think of slav­ery as issue that tore Friends apart as the con­sen­sus on its accept­abil­i­ty shift­ed in our reli­gious soci­ety. A review of a book shows that in the U.K., gun man­u­fac­tur­ing under­went this shift: Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Chal­lenges the Role of War in Industrialization

On its face, the deci­sion by the Soci­ety of Friends to cen­sure a fla­grant arms mer­chant in its ranks may not seem sur­pris­ing. Paci­fist prin­ci­ples were cen­tral to Quak­er ide­ol­o­gy, as was oppo­si­tion to slav­ery. Guns fueled not just war but the slave trade. Yet Mr. Galton’s father, and his father before him — and indeed many oth­er Quak­ers who long dom­i­nat­ed Birmingham’s arms indus­try — had been unapolo­getic gun­mak­ers for 70 years with­out attract­ing rebuke. What had changed in the inter­im, in ways that are deeply inter­re­lat­ed, were soci­ety and the guns themselves.

Today the debate on guns in the U.S. is focused on assault weapons being used by indi­vid­u­als but the Gal­ton debate is more about the role of a Quaker-produced prod­uct in war. Britain of course was an empire, an empire held togeth­er by force of weapons. Some per­cent­age of the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion in Britain was financed by war and its prod­ucts often were employed over­seas in the main­te­nance and exten­sion of the empire (I’m think­ing for exam­ple of trains).

When I first read John Wool­man I was struck by his call­ing slav­ery a prod­uct of war. I usu­al­ly think of it as a human rights and dig­ni­ty issue (and of course it was and Wool­man was par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to the human dimen­sion) but it was also a type of high­ly orga­nized war­fare. See­ing the sys­temic nature of the trade as a whole let Friends bet­ter see the unac­cept­abil­i­ty of slav­ery — and impe­r­i­al weapons manufacturing.


Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Challenges the Role of War in Industrialization (Published 2018)

Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Chal­lenges the Role of War in Indus­tri­al­iza­tion (Pub­lished 2018) 

In her new book, Pro­fes­sor Priya Satia aims to over­turn the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom about the role of guns…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com