New book on Quaker prophetic faith

July 9, 2024

Real­ly excit­ed to see my friend Patri­cia Dall­man­n’s new book is avail­able! It’s called The Light That Is Giv­en. I read a pre-publication PDF ver­sion and was asked by the pub­lish­er to give a blurb. Here’s what I wrote: 

Patri­cia Dall­mann brings a mod­ern prophet­ic voice to Scrip­ture and ancient Friends’ texts. She care­ful­ly exam­ines the lan­guage of these sto­ries and brings new life to their teach­ings, but this is no exer­cise in mim­ic­ry. Dall­mann shares her own expe­ri­ences and shows us how tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs have guid­ed her. This is an invalu­able resource for those want­i­ng to explore how tra­di­tion­al Friends’ faith and prac­tice can be lived out by spir­i­tu­al seek­ers today.

I see from Ama­zon that Dou­glas Gwyn and Stu­art Mas­ters gave even bet­ter blurbs so I’m in good company! 

It’s a great sum­mer for tra­di­tion­al Quak­er books, with this and Christo­pher Stern’s new mem­oir. I was­n’t able to make his book talk at the FGC Gath­er­ing last week but hope to catch up on it. I did final­ly pick up a copy of 2015’s Tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty to add to my list of books I real­ly real­ly want to read. This week I fin­ished Jean Soder­lund’s Lenape Coun­try: Delaware Val­ley Soci­ety Before William Penn, which dis­tills a lot of the myths of Penn and Quak­ers (she’ll have an arti­cle on some of this in the August issue of FJ!).

Supping with the Spirit

June 11, 2024

I talked this week with Bar­bara Birch, who has a great arti­cle, The True Last Sum­mer, in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal on George Fox’s view that the final last sup­per was the spir­i­tu­al one found in Rev­e­la­tion 3:20.

As I admit in the author chat inter­view, this is one of my favorite passages:

Lis­ten! I am stand­ing at the door, knock­ing; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me… Let any­one who has an ear lis­ten to what the Spir­it is say­ing to the churches.”

Bar­bara’s using a mod­ern trans­la­tion. I must admit to being fond of the more archa­ic KJV’s “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” What­ev­er the trans­la­tion, I find it a source of com­fort to know that the Heal­er, the Guide, the Christ Spir­it is right there want­i­ng to break bread with us. We are the lost sheep and He is out look­ing for us.

I think we mod­erns some­times believe that the Spir­it’s pres­ence is our midst is a rare occur­rence. We’re a skep­ti­cal peo­ple, ratio­nal and learned. We lock up poten­tial min­istry in sus­pi­cion and apply so many tests to our dis­cern­ment that we some­times fail to act at all. But what if com­mu­nion is just a qui­et knock away? What if the Com­forter is always near? A near­by pas­sage in Rev­e­la­tion says “because you are luke­warm and nei­ther cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” and likens spir­i­tu­al gifts to a refin­er’s fire. “I reprove and dis­ci­pline those whom I love.”

On a warm day last year I was vis­it­ing the very love­ly Barnegat Meet­ing. I had been mulling this pas­sage the week before so laughed inward­ly with delight when I sat down and real­ized the promi­nence of doors on both sides open to the warm weath­er. I almost laughed out loud when a near­by wood­peck­er start­ed its rhyth­mic knock-knock-knock.

Back to Jesus

June 5, 2024

Kevin-Douglas Olive, in Friend­ly Bible Study and Jesus my Friend, talks rec­on­cil­ing with the sto­ry of Jesus because of a meet­ing Bible study:

So who is this Jesus? The Jesus I know is the one who asks his fol­low­ers “Who do you say that I am?” The Jesus I am try­ing to fol­low is the one who tells me to DO what he says and I am his friend (hence the name of Quak­ers — Friends). He is the rad­i­cal rab­bi or prophet who turned con­ven­tion upside down and on whose teach­ings a new world reli­gion was formed (for bet­ter or worse). Through Jesus’ life and death, gone is the need for sac­ri­fice — it’s been done. Gone is the need to appease God, Jesus’ life and death does that. These ancient Jew­ish and pagan notions of god(s) and our rela­tion­ship to the Divine were made obso­lete. If we enter into the Life of Jesus, there will be cer­tain fruits of the spir­it which will man­i­fest through our walk in the Light.

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Vis­it­ing Kevin-Douglas in Bal­ti­more in 2010.

I’m old enough to remem­ber K‑D as the prankster­ish young adult Chris­t­ian Friend delight­ing in con­found­ing the Lib­er­al Quakes at the FGC Gath­er­ing and then lat­er, in 2008, as some­one try­ing to start some sort of Con­ver­gent Friends pres­ence in Bal­ti­more. I’m glad he’s been con­tin­u­ing to fol­low the light and that the Bible study has been ben­e­fi­cial. If you want more, there’s a 2017 Quak­er­S­peak inter­view, How I Became a Quak­er.

It’s also good hear in this post that Bal­ti­more’s Home­wood Meet­ing is attract­ing lots of new peo­ple under 40. I’ve been notic­ing that at my (tiny) meet­ing (a few weeks ago a few of the old­er Friends were off trav­el­ing and I looked around and real­ized the medi­an age was some­thing like 28). I’m hear­ing sim­i­lar sto­ries else­where. All anec­dotes but I’m start­ing to won­der if Quak­erism is hav­ing a bit of a moment.

Quakers’ War Problem

June 1, 2024

A lot of modern-day Quak­ers like to think that Quak­ers have in all places and all times been clear­ly against all wars (see this recent Red­dit thread for evi­dence). JW at Places to Go blog tells some of the sto­ries that go against this myth.

Enough Quak­ers had qualms about paci­fism in the face of these two great evils that Meet­ings wres­tled with both mem­bers who chose to serve and fight against them, and the ortho­doxy enshrined against fight­ing. What I found most heart warm­ing was the Meet­ings who wel­comed back their vet­er­ans with love and under­stand­ing and for­give­ness. What I found dis­ap­point­ing was those Meet­ings which stripped those vet­er­ans of membership.

I myself am very much a paci­fist. I have faith that the spir­it of Christ will always pro­vide a third way between vio­lence and sur­ren­der. Is this trust war­rant­ed? Backed by polit­i­cal sci­ence or his­to­ry? Prob­a­bly not. My faith is the faith of a child, which my reli­gious tra­di­tion tells me is a mill­stone I should be ready to carry.

But I’m also a human who watch­es hor­rors hap­pen­ing all over the globe. I don’t pre­tend to know any secret prayer that will stop Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine, much less the indis­crim­i­nate ter­ror of Hamas or the mass slaugh­ter being car­ried out by the Israeli Defense Forces. I can share my faith in the Prince of Peace with my fel­low humans but I can’t insist that they not strug­gle with it.

The mod­ern his­to­ry of the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny was shaped in part by the need for mem­bers of the his­toric peace church­es to pass the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for U.S. con­sci­en­tious objec­tion laws dur­ing the World Wars (though if I’m not mis­tak­en Friends helped draft those qual­i­fi­ca­tions). For CO sta­tus one needs to have a sin­cere reli­gious beliefs against all wars, con­text notwith­stand­ing. I was trained as a CO coun­selor many many years ago and this was an impor­tant point to get across (some of this strict­ness has changed over the years and I’m no expert in cur­rent reg­u­la­tions). Puri­ty is a hard stan­dard in the real world when our con­sciences are pricked by the injus­tice we see.

I’ve writ­ten about the peace tes­ti­mo­ny many times, of course, most recent­ly for Friends Jour­nal (“Wrestling with the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny”) and on this blog (“Pre­sent­ing on the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny”).

Matt Rosen: Quaker Membership and Convincement

May 23, 2024

Also inter­viewed this month: Matt Rosen, whose dis­tinc­tions between mem­ber­ship and con­vince­ment seem spot-on to our con­di­tion today. Matt’s also part of a group of British young adults plan­ning a very ground­ed con­fer­ence. The Friend pro­filed the orga­niz­ers recent­ly.

Steven Dale Davison: Challenges and Gifts in Quaker Meetings

May 23, 2024

Steven was *that guy* when he joined Friends, com­bat­ive and judgy about oth­er people’s min­istry. In ret­ro­spect, he wish­es his meeting’s clear­ness com­mit­tee had laid down the line when he joined. Even after talk­ing with him I’m a lit­tle skep­ti­cal and hope they saw some­thing in his ini­tial arro­gance that was ready to be over­turned by Quak­er experience.

What does it mean to be a member of a Quaker meeting?

May 2, 2024

Friends Jour­nal’s May issue on “Mem­ber­ship” is out. In my open­ing col­umn I talk about some of the dif­fer­ent types of mem­bers, offi­cial and unofficial:

As the clerk of a small meet­ing, I find myself fre­quent­ly jug­gling these mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories of mem­ber­ship. When we had plumb­ing issues a few months ago, there were lots of emails with a core half-dozen reg­u­lars who I can depend on to help with logis­tics and con­tacts with local con­trac­tors (this group is so con­sis­tent that when I go to send a mes­sage to one, my email pro­gram asks me if I want to include all the others).

When there’s an event com­ing up, the email list expands to include a small group of recent new­com­ers who make it to wor­ship a few times a month. Every so often I look over this list to see if there’s some­one who’s dropped away, and I’ll take a minute to write them a spe­cial email ask­ing how they are and invit­ing them to attend. I would hate for a semi-regular to drop away and think we hadn’t noticed.

There’s also a wide con­stel­la­tion of peo­ple who attend once in a prover­bial blue moon. Some are mem­bers of near­by meet­ings who occa­sion­al­ly hit us up for a change of pace. Oth­ers are local his­to­ry buffs who will come to hear a par­tic­u­lar speak­er but make sure to come ear­ly because they like their once-a-year Quak­er wor­ship. Few of these vis­i­tors will ever become reg­u­lars but they prob­a­bly know some­one who might, and their word-of-mouth rec­om­men­da­tion could help con­nect a new seek­er with our small band.

When it’s time to send out the annu­al fundrais­ing appeal, I’ll reach out to anoth­er, rather spe­cial class of mem­bers, those at a dis­tance, many of whom I’ve nev­er met. They might hail from one of the found­ing fam­i­lies of the meet­ing; per­haps they grew up there them­selves and have fond mem­o­ries. It might be easy to for­get about these mem­bers but that would be a mis­take, as they remind us of the long line of faith­ful ser­vants who have kept this spe­cial com­mu­ni­ty going in the past.

A Mem­ber­ship That Is Ever Flow­ing

I even give a shoutout to the red-shouldered hawk fam­i­ly liv­ing in one of our sycamore trees.

Look­ing back in the archives, we’ve been putting out an issue on mem­ber­ship every four years: Mem­ber­ship and the Gen­er­a­tion Gap in 2012, Almost Quak­er in 2016, Mem­ber­ship and Friends in 2020. I’m actu­al­ly sur­prised at the clock­work pre­ci­sion of our issues, but there’s a good rea­son we keep com­ing back to it. The def­i­n­i­tion of who “we” are is an essen­tial part of our self-identification as Friends. Pret­ty much every­thing we do (or fail to do) reflects our implic­it assump­tions about who’s in and who’s out. Many, per­haps most, of the debates that roil Friends have mem­ber­ship as an element.