Does our continued existence matter?

February 24, 2018

I’m always hap­py when Johan Mau­r­er wades into an online dis­cus­sion, as he can often gives a steady­ing long-term view of pan­ics. He’s jumped in with per­spec­tive on the viral arti­cle of the week, Don McCormick­’s Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? from the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal.

Johan reminds us that alarms about the future of Quak­erism has long been ring­ing and draws on Joshua Brown’s warn­ings about New York Year­ly Meet­ing from 30 years ago! Lest we chalk all this up an inces­sant alarmism, Johan gives some stats about that year­ly meet­ing. Uh-oh:

7,070 (in 1955)
5,124 (in 1985)
3,241 (in 2015)

But Johan goes beyond that to ask some ques­tions that we real­ly need to sit with. For exam­ple, he asks:

Giv­en that we are a micro­scop­ic per­cent­age of the world Chris­t­ian move­ment, do we have an inflat­ed sense of our own impor­tance? Or, to put it more pos­i­tive­ly, could we rest con­tent­ed that our influ­ence on Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship will last beyond our insti­tu­tion­al survival?

This is a must-read blog for any­one any­where on the Quak­er spectrum

Wait, a new Quaker blog, what retroness is this?

February 14, 2018

And just as we’re talk­ing about the con­tin­ued down­ward entropy of blog­ging, here’s a new Quak­er blog. Isaac Smith of Fred­er­ick (Md.) Meet­ing (and Twit­ter) has the first post in a time-limited, “pop-up” blog. He’s call­ing it “The Anar­chy of the Ranters.” I’ll over­look the sim­i­lar­i­ty to this blog’s name in the hope that the peo­ple who have been drop­ping com­ments on mine since 2004 ask­ing about the dif­fer­ence between Quak­ers and Ranters will start both­er­ing him now.

The first post is “Defen­sive­ness as a The­o­log­i­cal Prob­lem for Friends,” a good blog­ging debut.

The ques­tion of who belongs in the church, which has always been of cen­tral impor­tance, is what’s at stake here, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is often being answered in ways that are hurt­ful and alien­at­ing — the oppo­site of what the gospel promises.

Expanding the Quaker writing pool

November 3, 2017

Shhh: there have been a few times late­ly when I wish we had more options when choos­ing arti­cles forFriends Jour­nal issues. Yes yes, we did notice that the fea­ture arti­cle con­trib­u­tors for the Octo­ber issue on “Con­science” were all old­er men and that the top­ics were per­haps a bit too famil­iar for Friends Jour­nal (non­vi­o­lence, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, con­sci­en­tious objec­tion). They were all great arti­cles. And I think clich­es can be impor­tant (see foot­note below) for a pub­li­ca­tion like ours. But yeah.

I had hoped the idea of con­science would leap up to new writ­ers, espe­cial­ly in our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate, and that the arti­cles might serve as a bridge between 1960s Quak­er activism and today. Some­times our themes inspire writ­ers and some­times they don’t.

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly writ­ten Quak­er­ran­ter blog posts about upcom­ing sub­mis­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties but I’d like to make it more offi­cial and post these every month from the Friends Jour­nal web­site. We’re call­ing the fea­ture “From the Editor’s Desk.”

I’d also like you all to share these with peo­ple you think should be writ­ing for us, espe­cial­ly if they’re new writ­ers com­ing from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Diver­si­ties of all kind are always welcome.

I was a Quak­er blog­ger (and thus writer) for many years and I worked for Friends Jour­nal for part of that time but I only once sent in a sub­mis­sion before I became senior edi­tor. Why? Was I wait­ing to be asked? Was I unsure what I might write about? What­ev­er the rea­son, we need to always be find­ing and encour­ag­ing new peo­ple. Some of the most inter­est­ing arti­cles we’ve pub­lished start­ed after one of our fans shared an upcom­ing issue top­ic with some­one who was out­side of our net­work. My goal with these posts is real­ly to encour­age you all to share these in emails and on your Face­book walls so we can keep expand­ing the Quak­er writer universe.

Here’s the first one: a call for writ­ers for the March 2018 issue on Quak­ers and the Holy Land.

Foot­note: Every once in a while we’ll get some arti­cle in and I’ll sigh because I can remem­ber a pre­vi­ous arti­cle that cov­ered the same ground. When I go to look it up I real­ize that the ear­li­er arti­cle was pub­lished fif­teen or more years ago. We have new read­ers every year and it’s okay to cir­cle around to core themes every decade or so. We also need to remem­ber the inter­est­ing peo­ple and inci­dents that hap­pened long enough ago because our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry is always in the process of fad­ing. I’m a peacenik long­time Quak­er so I knew Dan Seeger was the named defen­dant in a major land­mark Supreme Court deci­sion in the 1960s, for exam­ple, but I don’t assume most Friends knew this. It’s still a cool sto­ry. It still inspires. It’s impor­tant to keep the sto­ry alive.

Remembering Christine Greenland

April 6, 2017

Over email, the news that Chris­tine Manville Green­land has passed. In recent times I worked with Chris­tine most­ly through the Tract Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends but I’ve known her for so long I don’t know when I first met her.

When­ev­er she said some­thing it was well worth lis­ten­ing to. On online forums from Soc.religion.quaker to Face­book she was always encour­ag­ing to what Samuel Bow­nas had called “infant min­is­ters.” She had the rare abil­i­ty to slice through thorny Quak­er issues with unex­pect­ed obser­va­tion and wis­dom. She had a long view of recent Quak­er his­to­ry that put things in con­text and she would pull metaphors from her train­ing as a botanist to explain mys­ti­fy­ing behav­iors in our coreligionists.

She also had a wealth of insti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry. There’s incred­i­ble val­ue in this. Friends, like most humans, give a lot of val­ue to the ways we’re doing things right now. It only takes a few years before a process feels time­less and essen­tial. We for­get that things once worked dif­fer­ent­ly or that oth­er Friends have a dif­fer­ent meth­ods. By being involved with Friends in dif­fer­ent areas — Cana­da and Col­orado — Chris­tine brought geo­graph­ic aware­ness and by being involved in Philadel­phia so long she brought a mod­ern his­tor­i­cal aware­ness. That dys­func­tion­al meet­ing everyone’s talk­ing about? She’ll remem­ber that every­one was talk­ing about it thir­ty years ago for anoth­er con­tro­ver­sy and point out the sim­i­lar­i­ties. That doubt you’ll have about a path? Chris­tine will tell you how oth­ers have felt the lead­ing and assure you that it’s genuine.

She did all this with such gen­tle­ness and mod­esty that it’s only now that she’s gone that I’m real­iz­ing the debt I owe her. More than any­thing per­haps, she showed how to live a life as a Friend of integri­ty through the pol­i­tics and foibles of our Reli­gious Society.

I used Google to find pre­cious gems of wis­dom she left on com­ment threads. It’s a long trail. She was active on soc.religion.quaker back in the day, com­ment­ed on most Con­ver­gent Friends blogs and was active on Face­book. She took the time to write many enlight­en­ing and warm com­men­tary. Here is a ran­dom sample.

Com­ment on my post “Vision and Leadership”

Yes­ter­day, I  clerked a small quar­ter­ly meet­ing work­ing group — I’m co-clerk, since it  isn’t my quar­ter… and the oth­er co-clerk is, which works well. We keep ask­ing the ques­tions and see­ing the poten­tials … but when it comes down to being faith­ful (a term I use instead of “account­able”) that needs con­sis­tent test­ing. It is impor­tant to cen­ter in wor­ship, no mat­ter what we are doing.

I had the expe­ri­ence of being chair of a group of biol­o­gists, and found that, even then, I con­duct­ed busi­ness in the same way… one of seek­ing guid­ance from oth­er mem­bers of the group — even though the group of which we were a small part used Robert’s rules of order. I felt our group was too small to make that approach work­able… Occa­sion­al­ly, I for­got I was­n’t among Friends until anoth­er mem­ber of the group (a Unit­ed Church grad­u­ate of Swarth­more Col­lege) remind­ed me… Church of the Brethren folks just grinned and allowed as how they pre­ferred the approach; we were, after all, both friends and biol­o­gists.  For most of us, the work had both a sci­en­tif­ic and a spir­i­tu­al basis.

To Mic­ah Bales’s “Is It Time to Get Rid of Year­ly Meetings?”

I checked in with Friends at our Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing pic­nic yes­ter­day; respons­es were mixed for a vari­ety of rea­sons, some hav­ing to do with resis­tance to chang­ing the ways in which we are Friends, and oth­er respons­es that I can only describe as “insti­tu­tion­al cheer-leading”.

Some of this has to do with expect­ed ten­sions as we grap­ple with mat­ters of both race and class; still oth­er mat­ters have to do with the fact that our struc­tures have changed at least twice in 30 years, as has the out­line of our faith and prac­tice. The ques­tion I have (of myself and oth­ers) is “How do we — indi­vid­u­al­ly and cor­po­rate­ly — show that we tru­ly love one anoth­er as Christ has loved us?” By that, I mean all others.

The most hope­ful exchange was speak­ing with a dear Friend in my for­mer meet­ing who had gone for the first time in decades, and feels strong­ly led to encour­age her meet­ing to assist in work going on at both the quar­ter and year­ly meet­ing lev­el; this will cross bound­aries. I was hope­ful in part because this Friend exudes con­sis­tent love. … and has in the 25 years I’ve known her. Love of God/neighbor are insep­a­ra­ble. She lives that bet­ter than I do.

It seems I have much to learn.

Com­ment on my “What Does it Mean to be a Quak­er?” (on an old site)

I cringe when I hear the word “Quak­erism” or “the Quak­er Way”… I find the two terms inter­change­able — both can lack sub­stance. It seems we have final­ly become the “bureau­crat­ic asso­ci­a­tion of dis­tant acquan­tances” rather than the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Some years ago, an expe­ri­enced Friend wrote that Integri­ty (say­ing what one means, mean­ing what one says) was at the heart of Quak­er Prac­tice — as a testimony.

If we’re just going for PR, that lacks integrity.

The ques­tion — for me — becomes “How can I live as a Friend?”

Com­ment on Eric Moon’s “Cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly Not the Testimonies”

When I first came to Friends, it was the way of life — not the intel­lec­tu­al con­struct — that drew me to meet­ing week after week (a uni­ver­si­ty meet­ing in what lat­er became Inter­moun­tain Year­ly Meet­ing). When I applied for mem­ber­ship, my com­mit­tee of clear­ness ques­tioned more whether I could live into a way of life, into the com­mu­ni­ty of that par­tic­u­lar meet­ing. Friends felt that wrestling with the under­stand­ing of the faith tra­di­tion was a part of my edu­ca­tion. Only after I moved to Philadel­phia did I begin hear­ing of the “pars­ing” of the faith tra­di­tion. It seemed too pat.

Still, the over­lap­ping cat­e­gories are still as use­ful by way of expla­na­tion, but it isn’t the whole story.

As with many mat­ters of faith, for those who pos­sess it, no expla­na­tion is nec­es­sary; for those who do not, no expla­na­tion is pos­si­ble. Howard Brin­ton did his best by way of expla­na­tion, but faith-wrestling is a task we all have.

Com­ment on Ash­ley Wilcox’s The Cost of Trav­el­ing Ministry

My ques­tion about younger Friends serv­ing as trav­el­ing min­is­ters is some­what more seri­ous: Are their meet­ings atten­tive to both the spir­i­tu­al gifts and the needs (cost of trav­el, etc.)as well as the spir­i­tu­al need for sup­port. If not, is the Friend with a con­cern for trav­el, teach­ing, or any oth­er min­istry) hum­ble enough to ask the ques­tions Jon is ask­ing. In my expe­ri­ence (as an old­er adult Friend)there is lit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion among age groups so that gifts of min­istry are ful­ly rec­og­nized… Young Friends are often left to their own devices. It may be that lack of spir­i­tu­al sup­port that is the “last door out.”

For instance, I would not trav­el with­out the full con­sent of my past com­mit­tee of care, all of whom know me well. They have gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed me this year (as well as my co-leader).

What con­cerns me is the ener­gy it takes (spir­i­tu­al and phys­i­cal), and that it most often takes an elder to attend to the mun­dane things — as well as to keep the min­is­ter on track.

She was also always one to think of the kids. Here she is com­ment­ing on Kath­leen Karhnak-Glasby’s “Bring­ing Chil­dren to Wor­ship: Trust­ing God to Take Over from There”

I recall one par­ent of a small meet­ing in Ontario at Cana­di­an Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions try­ing to encour­age his daugh­ter to sit qui­et­ly dur­ing wor­ship… Her very rea­son­able response was “but Dad­dy, I can pray stand­ing on my head!” Her min­istry caused me to reflect on whether I could indeed pray/worship in all cir­cum­stances, and from what­ev­er posi­tion I was in at the time. I still reflect on that…

At anoth­er meet­ing, when Friends noticed the pow­er strug­gles between chil­dren and their par­ents, we asked elder Friends to serve as “adop­tive” grand­par­ents, with whom the chil­dren could sit… That defused the pow­er strug­gles, and mem­bers of meet­ing who had no chil­dren of their own were very help­ful to par­ents in that meeting.

I also recall learn­ing to sink deeply into wor­ship — and hear­ing a younger Friend’s grand­moth­er gig­gle. I looked down and there was the 1 – 2 year old peer­ing up in won­der at why/how I could sit so qui­et­ly when he was busy crawl­ing under the bench­es. it was just fine. He became a part of my prayers that day, and still is a part of them.

And this one has to be the last I’ll share, from a Quak­erQuak­er dis­cus­sion start­ed by Richard B Miller and titled “Elders’ Corner”

Like you, I learned about the role of elders from Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends (in Cana­da and Ohio).  In the con­text of my own meet­ing (and quar­ter), how­ev­er, there are Friends who can and do serve as guides and sound­ing boards — offer­ing cor­rec­tions as may be required.  Ide­al­ly, elders should arise from the month­ly meet­ings, and then be rec­og­nized in larg­er bod­ies of Friends, not nec­es­sar­i­ly being named by a year­ly meet­ing nom­i­nat­ing committee.

I was asked to serve as an elder for Year­ly Meeting/Interim Meet­ing… but because I was also on the nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee, had a “stop” about whether that was right­ly ordered. I con­sult­ed some North Car­oli­na Friends, who agreed with the “stop”.

One dif­fi­cul­ty that you raised is that many of the con­ser­v­a­tive Friends who held that tra­di­tion are no longer avail­able as guides… One effect is that the role elders once played is dimin­ish­ing among con­ser­v­a­tive Friends.

I’m feel­ing pret­ty bro­ken up right now. And I’m feel­ing the weight of this loss. I’ve found myself more and more to be the one giv­ing out advice and giv­ing his­tor­i­cal con­text that new­er Friends might not have. It’s the kind of perch that Chris­tine had. I’m only start­ing to appre­ci­ate that she formed a gen­tle men­tor­ing role for me — and I’m sure for many others.

A few years ago my wife and I lost our remain­ing par­ents (her dad, my mom) and we had the unescapable recog­ni­tion that we were now the old­est gen­er­a­tion. I know there are old­er Friends around still and some have bits of Christine’s wit and wis­dom. But one of our human guides have left us.

The demise of online subcultures?

March 31, 2017

An inter­est­ing pro­file of a niche com­mu­ni­ty affect­ed by the shift of atten­tion from community-led sites to Face­book, “How Face­book – the Wal-Mart of the inter­net – dis­man­tled online sub­cul­tures.”

Over time, these chal­lenges to the BME com­mu­ni­ty became increas­ing­ly prob­lem­at­ic. Mem­bers delet­ed accounts or stopped post­ing. By 2015, the main com­mu­ni­ty forum – which used to have hun­dreds of posts a day – went with­out a sin­gle com­ment for over six months.

Hav­ing pre­dict­ed many of the web’s func­tions and fea­tures, BME failed to antic­i­pate its own demise.

It’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing I’ve seen in my niche world of Quak­ers. I start­ed Quak­erQuak­er as an inde­pen­dent site in part because I didn’t want Google and Face­book and Beliefnet to deter­mine who we are. There’s the obvi­ous prob­lems — Beliefnet hir­ing a pro­gram­mer to make a “What Reli­gion Are You?” test based on a few books picked up the library one afternoon.

But there’s also more sub­tle prob­lems. On Face­book any­one can start or join a group and start talk­ing author­i­ta­tive­ly about Quak­ers with­out actu­al­ly being an active com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber. I can think of a num­ber of online char­ac­ters who had nev­er even vis­it­ing a Friends meet­ing or church.

Our tra­di­tion built up ways of defin­ing our spokes­peo­ple though the prac­tices of record­ed min­is­ters and elders, and of clar­i­fy­ing shared beliefs though doc­u­ments like Faith and Prac­tice. I’ll be the first to argue that this process has pro­duced mixed results. But if it is to be adapt­ed or reformed, I’d like the work to be done by us in a thought­ful, inclu­sive man­ner. Instead, the form of our dis­cus­sions are now invis­i­bly imposed by an out­side algo­rithm that is opti­mized for obses­sive engage­ment and adver­tis­ing deliv­ery. Face­book process is not Quak­er process, yet it is large­ly what we use when we talk about Quak­ers out­side of Sun­day morning.

I think Face­book has helped alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ties form. I’m grate­ful for the pop-up com­mu­ni­ties of inter­est I’m part of. And there are sites with more user gen­er­at­ed con­tent like Wikipedia and Red­dit that hold an inter­est­ing middle-ground and where infor­ma­tion is gen­er­al­ly more accu­rate. But there’s still a crit­i­cal role for self-organized inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions, a niche that I think is con­tin­u­ing to be over­shad­owed in our cur­rent atten­tion ecosystem.

The Quaker Art of Dying?

March 22, 2017
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Hopewell Ceme­tery, Winslow Town­ship N.J. One of the many South Jer­sey Quak­er bur­ial grounds on long-bypassed coun­try roads. The meet­ing­house that was here is long gone.

We’re now cast­ing about for arti­cles for a Friends Jour­nal issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life.” I’m inter­est­ed to see what we’ll get. Every so often some­one will ask me about Quak­er belief in the after­life. I’ve always found it rather remark­able that I don’t have any sat­is­fy­ing canon­i­cal answer to give them. While indi­vid­u­als Friends might have var­i­ous the­o­ries, I don’t see the issue come up all that often in ear­ly Friends theology.

As extreme­ly atten­tive Chris­tians they would have signed off on the idea of eter­nal life through Christ. Since they thought of them­selves as liv­ing in end times, they total­ly emu­lat­ed New Tes­ta­ment mir­a­cles. George Fox him­self brought a man back from the dead in a town off Exit 109 of the Gar­den State Express­way. Strange things afoot at the Cir­cle K!

Fox’s biog­ra­phers quick­ly scaled back the whole mir­a­cle thing. Appar­ent­ly that was an odd­ness too far. The cut-out parts of his biog­ra­phy have been repub­lished but even the repub­lish­ing now appears out of print (nev­er fear: Ama­zon has it used for not too much).

But Friends has folk cus­toms and beliefs too. The deceased body wasn’t undu­ly ven­er­at­ed. They recy­cled grave plots with­out much con­cern. I can think of a cou­ple of his­toric Quak­er bur­ial grounds in Philly that have been repur­posed for activ­i­ties deemed more prac­ti­cal to the liv­ing. The phi­los­o­phy of green bur­ial is catch­ing up with Quak­ers’ prac­tice, a fas­ci­nat­ing coming-around.

It also seems there’s a strong old Quak­er cul­ture of face imped­ing death with equa­nim­i­ty. That makes sense giv­en Friends’ mod­esty around indi­vid­ual achieve­ments. There’s a prac­ti­cal­i­ty that I see in many old­er Friends as they age. I’d be curi­ous to hear from Friends who have had insights on aging as they age and also care­tak­ers and fam­i­lies and hos­pice chap­lains who have accom­pa­nied Friends though death.

Writ­ing sub­mis­sions for our issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life” are due May 8. You can learn about writ­ing for us at:

https://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​s​u​b​m​i​s​s​i​o​ns/

How do Friends approach the end of life? We’re liv­ing longer and dying longer. How do we make deci­sions on end-of-life care for our­selves and our loved ones? Do Quak­ers have insight into what hap­pens after we die? Sub­mis­sions due 5/8/2017.

ps: But of course we’re not just a dead tra­di­tion. There are many heal­ers who have revived ideas of Quak­er heal­ing. We have a high pro­por­tion of main­stream med­ical heal­ers as well as those fol­low­ing more mys­ti­cal heal­ing paths. If that’s of inter­est to you, nev­er fear: Octo­ber 2017 will be an issue on healing!).

Ask Me Anything: Conservative and Liberal Friends?

February 22, 2017
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Marl­bor­ough (Pa.) Friends meet­ing­house at dusk. c. 2006.

A few weeks ago, read­er James F. used my “Ask me any­thing!” page to won­der about two types of Friends:

I’ve read a lit­tle and watched var­i­ous videos about the Friends. My ques­tions are , is there a gulf between “con­ser­v­a­tive” friends and lib­er­al? As well as what defines the two gen­er­al­ly? I’m in Mary­land near D.C. Do Quak­ers who define them­selves as essen­tial­ly Chris­t­ian wor­ship with those who don’t iden­ti­fy as such?

Hi James, what a great ques­tion! I think many of us don’t ful­ly appre­ci­ate the con­fu­sion we sow when we casu­al­ly use these terms in our online dis­cus­sions. They can be use­ful rhetor­i­cal short­cuts but some­times I think we give them more weight than they deserve. I wor­ry that Friends some­times come off as more divid­ed along these lines than we real­ly are. Over the years I’ve noticed a cer­tain kind of rigid online seek­er who dis­sects the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions with such con­vic­tion that they’ll refused to even vis­it their near­est meet­ing because it’s not the right type. That’s so tragic.

What the terms don’t mean

The first and most com­mon prob­lem is that peo­ple don’t real­ize we’re using these terms in a specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er con­text. “Lib­er­al” and “Con­ser­v­a­tive” don’t refer to polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies. One can be a Con­ser­v­a­tive Friend and vote for lib­er­al or social­ist politi­cians, for example.

Adding to the com­pli­ca­tions is that these can be impre­cise terms. Quak­er bod­ies them­selves typ­i­cal­ly do not iden­ti­fy as either Lib­er­al or Con­ser­v­a­tive. While local con­gre­ga­tions often have their own unique char­ac­ter­is­tics, cul­ture, and style, noth­ing goes on the sign out front. Our region­al bod­ies, called year­ly meet­ings, are the high­est author­i­ty in Quak­erism but I can’t think of any that does­n’t span some diver­si­ty of theologies.

His­tor­i­cal­ly (and cur­rent­ly) we’ve had the sit­u­a­tion where a year­ly meet­ing will split into two sep­a­rate bod­ies. The caus­es can be com­plex; the­ol­o­gy is a piece, but demo­graph­ics and main­stream cul­tur­al shifts also play a huge role. In cen­turies past (and kind of ridicu­lous­ly, today still), both of the new­ly reor­ga­nized year­ly meet­ings were obsessed with keep­ing the name as a way to claim their legit­i­ma­cy. To tell them apart we’d append awk­ward and incom­plete labels, so in the past we had Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Hick­site) and Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Ortho­dox).

In the Unit­ed States, we have two places where year­ly meet­ings com­pete names and one side’s labelled appendage is “Con­ser­v­a­tive,” giv­ing us Iowa Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive) and North Car­oli­na Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive). Over time, both of these year­ly meet­ings have diver­si­fied to the point where they con­tain out­ward­ly Lib­er­al month­ly meet­ings. The name Con­ser­v­a­tive in the year­ly meet­ing title has become part­ly administrative.

A third year­ly meet­ing is usu­al­ly also includ­ed in the list of Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies. Present-day Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing once com­pet­ed with two oth­er Ohio Year­ly Meet­ings for the name but is the only one using it today. The name “Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive)” is still some­times seen, but it’s unnec­es­sary, not tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, and not used in the year­ly meeting’s for­mal cor­re­spon­dence. (You want to know more? The year­ly meet­ing’s clerk main­tains a web­site that goes amaz­ing­ly deep into the his­to­ry of Ohio Friends).

All that said, these three year­ly meet­ings have more than their share of tra­di­tion­al­ist Chris­t­ian Quak­er mem­bers. Ohio’s gath­er­ings have the high­est per­cent­age of plain dressing- and speaking- Friends around (though even there, they are a minor­i­ty). But oth­er year­ly meet­ings will have indi­vid­ual mem­bers and some­times whole month­ly meet­ings that could be accu­rate­ly described as Con­ser­v­a­tive Quaker.

I might have upset some folks with these obser­va­tions. In all aspects of life you’ll find peo­ple who are very attached to labels. That’s what the com­ment sec­tion is for.

The meanings of the terms

For­mal iden­ti­ties aside, there are good rea­sons we use the con­cept of Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­erism. They denote a gen­er­al approach to the world and a way of incor­po­rat­ing our his­to­ry, our Chris­t­ian her­itage, our under­stand­ing of the role of Christ in our dis­cern­ment, and the for­mat and pace of our group deci­sion making.

But at the same time there’s all sorts of diver­si­ty and per­son­al and local his­to­ries involved. It’s hard to talk about any of this in con­crete terms with­out dis­solv­ing into foot­notes and qual­i­fi­ca­tions and long dis­cours­es about the dif­fer­ences between var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal sub-movements with­in Friends (queue awe­some 16000-word his­to­ry).

Many of us com­fort­ably span both worlds. In writ­ing, I some­times try to escape the weight of the most overused labels by sub­sti­tut­ing more gener­ic terms, like tra­di­tion­al Friends or Christ-centered Friends. These terms also get prob­lem­at­ic if you scratch at them too hard. Reminder: God is the Word and our lan­guage is by def­i­n­i­tion limiting.

If you like the soci­ol­o­gy of such things, Isabel Pen­raeth wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Under­stand­ing Our­selves, Respect­ing the Dif­fer­ences. More recent­ly in FJ a Philadel­phia Friend, John Andrew Gallery, vis­it­ed Ohio Friends and talked about the spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends in Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing Gath­er­ing and Quak­er Spring. Much of the dis­cus­sion around the mod­ern phrase Con­ver­gent Friends and the threads on Quak­erQuak­er has focused on those who span a Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­er worldview.

The dis­tinc­tion between Con­ser­v­a­tives and Lib­er­als can become quite evi­dent when you observe how Friends con­duct a busi­ness meet­ing or how they present them­selves. It’s all too easy to veer into car­i­ca­ture here but Lib­er­al Friends are prone to rein­ven­tions and the use of impre­cise sec­u­lar lan­guage, while­Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends are attached to estab­lished process­es and can be unwel­com­ing to change that might dis­rupt inter­nal unity.

But even these brief obser­va­tions are impre­cise and can mask sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar tal­ents and stum­bling blocks. We all of us are humans, after all. The Inward Christ is always avail­able to instruct and com­fort, just as we are all bro­ken and prone to act impul­sive­ly against that advice.

Worshipping?

Final­ly, pret­ty much all Friends will wor­ship with any­one. Most local con­gre­ga­tions have their own dis­tinct fla­vor. There are some in which the min­istry is large­ly Chris­t­ian, with a Quaker-infused expla­na­tion of a para­ble or gospel, while there are oth­ers where you’ll rarely hear Christ men­tioned. You should try out dif­fer­ent meet­ings and see which ones feed your soul. Be ready to find nur­tu­rance in unex­pect­ed places. God may instruct us to serve any­where with no notice, as he did the Good Samar­i­tan. Christ isn’t bound by any of our sil­ly words.

Thanks to James for the question!

Do you have a ques­tion on anoth­er Quak­er top­ic? Check out the Ask Me Any­thing! page.

Quaker news editor needed

January 3, 2017

Here at Friends Jour­nal, we’re very lucky to have some very com­mit­ted vol­un­teers. Karie Firooz­mand and Eileen Red­den sends books out to dozens of vol­un­teer read­ers and pull the results togeth­er into our month­ly books col­umn. Rose­mary Zim­mer­man reads through all the poet­ry that comes in, care­ful­ly select­ing pieces to appear in the mag­a­zine. Mary Julia Street reworks the birth notices and obit­u­ar­ies that come in to include more inter­est­ing details than you get in most news­pa­per listings.

Last year we won the “Best in Class” award from the Asso­ci­at­ed Church Press. We’re proud, of course, but I was pleas­ant­ly. Com­pared to most denom­i­na­tion­al mag­a­zines, Friends Jour­nal is crazi­ly under­staffed. For­give the pugilis­tic metaphor, but these vol­un­teer edi­tors are a big rea­son we punch above our weight. Cut­ting through cul­tur­al sta­t­ic and the man­u­fac­tured busy­ness of mod­ern life and reach seek­ers is a never-ending chal­lenge. Think about whether you might be led to work with us on this

The extend­ed dead­line is Jan­u­ary 16th. MLK Day. Learn more at: