Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

Christian revival among liberal Friends

August 15, 2007
· Martin Kelley

There’s an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion in the com­ments from my last post about “Con­ver­gent Friends and Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tives” and one of the more inter­est­ing comes from a com­menter named Diane. My reply to her got longer and longer and filled with more and more links till it makes more sense to make it its own post. First, Diane’s question:

I don’t know if I’m “con­ver­gent,” (prob­a­bly not) but I have been involved with the emerg­ing church for sev­er­al years and with Quak­erism for a decade. I also am aware of the house church move­ment, but my expe­ri­ence of it is that is is very tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed to Quak­erism. I real­ly, real­ly hope and pray that Chris­t­ian revival is com­ing to lib­er­al Friends, but per­son­al­ly I have not seen that phe­nom­e­nom. Where do you see it most? Do you see it more as com­mit­ment to Christ or as more peo­ple being Christ curi­ous, to use Robin’s phrase?

As I wrote recent­ly I think con­ver­gence is more of a trend than an iden­ti­ty and I’m not sure whether it makes sense to fuss about who’s con­ver­gent or not. As with any ques­tion involv­ing lib­er­al Friends, whether there’s “Chris­t­ian revival” going on depends on what what you mean by the term. I think more lib­er­al Friends have become com­fort­able label­ing them­selves as Christ curi­ous; it has become more accept­able to iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian than it was a decade or two ago; a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of younger Friends are very recep­tive to Chris­t­ian mes­sages, the Bible and tra­di­tion­al Quak­er tes­ti­monies than they were.

These are indi­vid­ual respons­es, how­ev­er. Turn­ing to col­lec­tive Quak­er bod­ies there are few if any beliefs or prac­tices left that lib­er­al Friends would­n’t allow under the Quak­er ban­ner if they came wrapped in Quak­erese from a well-connected Friend; the social tes­ti­monies stand in as the uni­fy­ing agent; it’s still con­sid­ered an argu­ment stop­per to say that any prof­fered def­i­n­i­tion would exclude someone.

I’d argue that lib­er­al Quak­erism is becom­ing ever more lib­er­al (and less dis­tinc­tive­ly Quak­er) at the same time that many of those in influ­ence are becom­ing more Chris­t­ian. It’s a very pro­scribed Chris­tian­i­ty: cod­ed, ten­ta­tive and most of all indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. It’s okay for a lib­er­al Friend to believe what­ev­er they want to believe as long as they don’t believe too much. Whether the qui­et influ­ence of the ris­ing gen­er­a­tion of conservative-friendly lead­er­ship is enough to hold a Quak­er cen­ter in the cen­trifuge that is lib­er­al Quak­erism is the $60,000 ques­tion. I think the lead­er­ship has an inflat­ed sense of its own influ­ence but I’m watch­ing the exper­i­ment. I wish it well but I’m skep­ti­cal and wor­ry that it’s built on sand.

Some of the Christ-curious lib­er­al Friends are form­ing small wor­ship groups and some of these are seek­ing out recog­ni­tion from Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies. It’s an aching­ly small move­ment but it shows a desire to be cor­po­rate­ly Quak­er and not just indi­vid­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly Quak­er. With the inter­net tra­di­tion­al Quak­er view­points are only a Google search away; sites like Bill Samuel’s “Quakerinfo.com”:www.quakerinfo.com and blogs like Mar­shall Massey’s are break­ing down stereo­types and doing a lot of invalu­able edu­cat­ing (and I could name a lot more). It’s pos­si­ble to imag­ine all this cook­ing down to a third wave of tra­di­tion­al­ist renew­al. Ohio Year­ly Meeting-led ini­tia­tives like the Chris­t­ian Friends Con­fer­ence and All Con­ser­v­a­tive Gath­er­ings are steps in the right direc­tion but any real change is going to have to pull togeth­er mul­ti­ple trends, one of which might or might not be Convergence.

Our role in this future is not to be strate­gists play­ing Quak­er pol­i­tics but ser­vants ready to lay down our iden­ti­ties and pre­con­cep­tions to fol­low the prompt­ings of the Inward Christ into what­ev­er ter­ri­to­ry we’re called to:

From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his dis­ci­ples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suf­fer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, say­ing, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his dis­ci­ples, If any man will come after me, let him deny him­self, and take up his cross, and fol­low me. Matthew 16:21 – 28.

What Convergence means to Ohio Conservative

August 8, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Robin M’s recent post on a Con­ver­gent Friends def­i­n­i­tion has gar­nered a num­ber of fas­ci­nat­ing com­menters. The lat­est comes from Scott Sav­age, a well-known Con­ser­v­a­tive Friend (author of A Plain Life, pub­lish­er of the defunct Plain Mag­a­zine and light­en­ing rod for a recent cul­ture war skir­mish over homo­sex­u­al­i­ty at Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty). Sav­age’s com­ment on Robin’s blog fol­lows what we could call the “Cranky Con­ser­v­a­tive” tem­plate: gra­tu­itous swipes at Con­ser­v­a­tives in Iowa and North Car­oli­na, whole­sale dis­missal of oth­er Friends, mul­ti­ple affir­ma­tions of Christ, digs at the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, a recita­tion of past fail­ures of cross-branch com­mu­ni­ca­tion, then a shrug that seems to ask why he should stoop to our lev­el for dialogue.

Snore.

What makes my sleepy response espe­cial­ly strange is that except for the homo­sex­u­al­i­ty issue (yay for FLGBTQC!), I’m pret­ty close to Scot­t’s posi­tions. I wor­ry about the lib­er­al­iza­tion of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends, I get cranky about Chris­t­ian Friends who deny Christ in pub­lic, and I think a lot of Friends are miss­ing the boat on some core essen­tials. When I open my copy of Ohio’s 1968 dis­ci­pline and read its state­ment of faith (oops, sor­ry, “Intro­duc­tion”), I nod my head. As far as I’m aware I’m in uni­ty with all of Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tive’s prin­ci­ples of faith and prac­tice and if I signed up for their dis­tance mem­ber­ship I cer­tain­ly would­n’t be the most lib­er­al mem­ber of the year­ly meeting.

I’m actu­al­ly not sure about Scot­t’s year­ly meet­ing mem­ber­ship; I’m sim­ply answer­ing his ques­tion of why he and the oth­er Con­ser­v­a­tives who hold a strong con­cern for “the hedge” (a sep­a­ra­tion of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends from oth­er branch­es) might want to think about Con­ver­gence. Of all the remain­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies, the hedge is arguably strongest in Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing and while parts of this apply to Con­ser­v­a­tives else­where — Iowa, North Car­oli­na and indi­vid­u­als embed­ded in non-Conservative year­ly meet­ings — the snares and oppor­tu­ni­ties are dif­fer­ent for them than they are for Ohioans.

Why Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tive should engage with Convergence:

  • If you have all the answers and don’t mind keep­ing them hid­den under the near­est bushel then Con­ver­gence means nothing.
  • But if you’re inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing Jesus and being a fish­er of men and women by shar­ing the good news… Well, then it’s use­ful to learn that there’s a grow­ing move­ment of Friends from out­side Con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles (how­ev­er defined) who are sens­ing there’s some­thing miss­ing and look­ing to tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism for answers.

Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tives have answers and this Con­ver­gence move­ment is pro­vid­ing a fresh oppor­tu­ni­ty to share them with the apos­tate Friends and with Chris­tians in oth­er denom­i­na­tions seek­ing out a more authen­tic rela­tion­ship with Christ. Engag­ing with Con­ver­gence does­n’t mean Ohio Friends have to change any­thing of their faith or prac­tice and it need­n’t be about “dia­logue”: sim­ply shar­ing the truth as you under­stand it is ministry.

Yes, there are snares involved in any true gospel min­istry; strik­ing the right bal­ance is always dif­fi­cult. As the car­pen­ter said, “nar­row is the way which lead­eth unto life”. We are beset on all sides by road­blocks that threat­en to lead us away from Christ’s lead­er­ship. Ohio Friends will need to be on guard that min­is­ters don’t suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion to water down their the­ol­o­gy for any fleet­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. This is a real dan­ger and it fre­quent­ly occurs but while I could tell eight years of great insid­er sto­ries from the halls of Philadel­phia, is that what we’re here to do?

Let me put my cards on the table: I don’t see much of Ohio effec­tive­ly min­is­ter­ing now. There’s too much of a kind of pride that bor­ders on obnox­ious­ness, that loves end­less­ly recit­ing why Iowa and North Car­oli­na aren’t Con­ser­v­a­tive and why no oth­er Friends are Friends, blah blah blah. It can get tire­some and legal­is­tic. I could point to plen­ty of online forums where it cross­es the line into detrac­tion. Char­i­ty and love are Chris­t­ian qual­i­ties too. Humil­i­ty and a sense of humor are com­pat­i­ble with tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism. How do we find a way to con­tin­ue safe­guard­ing Ohio’s pearls while shar­ing them wide­ly with the world. There are Ohio Friends doing this and while I dif­fer with Scott Sav­age on some social issues I con­sid­er tan­gen­tial (and he prob­a­bly does­n’t), I very much appre­ci­ate his hard work advanc­ing the under­stand­ing of Quak­erism and agree on more than I disagree.

But how do we find a way to be both Con­ser­v­a­tive and Evan­gel­i­cal? To mar­ry Truth with Love? To not only under­stand the truth but to know how, when and where to share it? I think Con­ver­gence can help Ohio think about deliv­ery of Truth and it can help bring seek­ers into the doors. When I rhetor­i­cal­ly asked last month what Con­ver­gent Friends might be con­verg­ing toward, the first answer that popped in my head was Ohio Friends with a sense of humor. I’m not sure it’s the most accu­rate def­i­n­i­tion but it reveals my own sym­pa­thies and I find it tempt­ing to think about what that would look like (hint: krak­en might be involved).

A reminder to every­one that I’ll be at Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive ses­sions in a few weeks to talk more about the oppor­tu­ni­ties for Ohio engage­ment with Con­ver­gence. Come round if you’re in the area.
Also check out Robin’s own response to Scott, up there on her own blog. It’s a mov­ing per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny to the pow­er and joy of cross-Quaker fel­low­ship and the spir­i­tu­al growth that can result.

Convergent Friends, a long definition

July 25, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Robin M posts this week about two Con­ver­gent Events hap­pen­ing in Cal­i­for­nia in the next month or two. And she also tries out a sim­pli­fied def­i­n­i­tion of Con­ver­gent Friends:

peo­ple who are engaged in the renew­al move­ment with­in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, across all the branch­es of Friends.

It sounds good but what does it mean? Specif­i­cal­ly: who isn’t for renew­al, at least on a the­o­ret­i­cal lev­el? There are lots of faith­ful, smart and lov­ing Friends out there advo­cat­ing renew­al who don’t fit my def­i­n­i­tion of Con­ver­gent (which is fine, I don’t think the whole RSoF should be Con­ver­gent, it’s a move­ment in the riv­er, not a dam).

When Robin coined the term at the start of 2006 it seemed to refer to gen­er­al trends in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends and the larg­er Chris­t­ian world, but it was also refer­ring to a spe­cif­ic (online) com­mu­ni­ty that had had a year or two of con­ver­sa­tion to shape itself and mod­el trust and account­abil­i­ty. Most impor­tant­ly we each were going out of our way to engage with Friends from oth­er Quak­er tra­di­tions and were each called on our own cul­tur­al assumptions.
The coined term implied an expe­ri­ence of sort. “Con­ver­gent” explic­it­ly ref­er­ences Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends (“Con-”) and the Emer­gent Church move­ment (“-ver­gent”). It seems to me like one needs to look at those two phe­nom­e­non and their rela­tion to one’s own under­stand­ing and expe­ri­ence of Quak­er life and com­mu­ni­ty before real­ly under­stand­ing what all the fuss has been about. That’s hap­pen­ing lots of places and it is not sim­ply a blog phenomenon.

Nowa­days I’m notic­ing a lot of Friends declar­ing them­selves Con­ver­gent after read­ing a blog post or two or attend­ing a work­shop. It’s becom­ing the term du jour for Friends who want to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from business-as-usual, Quakerism-as-usual. This fits Robin’s sim­pli­fied def­i­n­i­tion. But if that’s all it is and it becomes all-inclusive for inclu­siv­i­ty’s sake, then “Con­ver­gent” will drift away away from the roots of the con­ver­sa­tion that spawned it and turn into anoth­er buzz­word for “lib­er­al Quak­er.” This is start­ing to happen.

The term “Con­ver­gent Friends” is being picked up by Friends out­side the dozen or two blogs that spawned it and mov­ing into the wild – that’s great, but also means it’s def­i­n­i­tion is becom­ing a mov­ing tar­get. Peo­ple are grab­bing onto it to sum up their dreams, visions and frus­tra­tions but we’re almost cer­tain­ly not mean­ing the same thing by it. “Con­ver­gent Friends” implies that we’ve all arrived some­where togeth­er. I’ve often won­dered whether we should­n’t be talk­ing about “Con­verg­ing Friends,” a term that implies a par­al­lel set of move­ments and puts the rather impor­tant ele­phant square on the table: con­verg­ing toward what? What we mean by con­ver­gence depends on our start­ing point. My attempt at a label was the rather clunky conservative-leaning lib­er­al Friend, which is prob­a­bly what most of us in the lib­er­al Quak­er tra­di­tion are mean­ing by “Con­ver­gent.”

I start­ed map­ping out a lib­er­al plan for Con­ver­gent Friends a cou­ple of years before the term was coined and it still sum­ma­rizes many of my hopes and con­cerns. The only thing I might add now is a para­graph about how we’ll have to work both inside and out­side of nor­mal Quak­er chan­nels to effect this change (Johan Mau­r­er recent­ly wrote an inter­est­ing post that includ­ed the won­der­ful descrip­tion of “the love­ly sub­ver­sives who ignore struc­tures and com­mu­ni­cate on a pure­ly per­son­al basis between the camps via blogs, vis­i­ta­tion, and oth­er means” and com­pared us to SCUBA divers (“ScubaQuake​.org” anyone?).

Robin’s inclu­sive def­i­n­i­tion of “renew­al” def­i­nite­ly speaks to some­thing. Infor­mal renew­al net­works are spring­ing up all over North Amer­i­ca. Many branch­es of Friends are involved. There are themes I’m see­ing in lots of these places: a strong youth or next-generation focus; a reliance on the inter­net; a curios­i­ty about “oth­er” Friends tra­di­tions; a desire to get back to roots in the sim­ple min­istry of Jesus. What­ev­er label or labels this new revival might take on is less impor­tant than the Spir­it behind it.

But is every hope for renew­al “Con­ver­gent”? I don’t think so. At the end of the day the path for us is nar­row and is giv­en, not cho­sen. At the end of day — and begin­ning and mid­dle — the work is to fol­low the Holy Spir­it’s guid­ance in “real time.” Def­i­n­i­tions and care­ful­ly select­ed words slough away as mere notions. The newest mes­sage is just the old­est mes­sage repack­aged. Let’s not get too caught up in our own hip verbage, lec­ture invi­ta­tions and glo­ri­ous atten­tion that we for­get that there there is one, even Christ Jesus who can speak to our con­di­tion, that He Him­self has come to teach, and that our mes­sage is to share the good news he’s giv­en us. The Tempter is ready to dis­tract us, to puff us up so we think we are the mes­sage, that we own the mes­sage, or that the mes­sage depends on our flow­ery words deliv­ered from podi­ums. We must stay on guard, hum­bled, low and pray­ing to be kept from the temp­ta­tions that sur­round even the most well-meaning renew­al attempts. It is our faith­ful­ness to the free gospel min­istry that will ulti­mate­ly deter­mine the fate of our work.

A Quaker model for emergence?

June 28, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Robin M over at What Canst Thou Say? has been hang­ing out with emer­gent church folks recent­ly and reports back in a few posts. It’s def­i­nite­ly worth read­ing, as is some of what’s been com­ing out of the last week’s youth gath­er­ing at Bar­nesville (includ­ing Mic­ah Bales report) and the annu­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends gath­er­ing near Lan­cast­er Pa., which I’ve heard bits and pieces about on var­i­ous Face­book pages.

It sound like some­thing’s in the air. I wish I could sit in live in some of these con­ver­sa­tions but just got more dis­ap­point­ing news on the job front so I’ll con­tin­ue to be more-or-less home­bound for the fore­see­able future. Out to pas­ture, that’s me! (I’m say­ing that with a smile on my face, try­ing not to be tooooo whiny!)

Robin’s post has got me think­ing again about emer­gent church issues. My own dab­bling in emer­gent blogs and meet-ups only goes so far before I turn back. I real­ly appre­ci­ate its analy­sis and cri­tique of con­tem­po­rary Chris­tian­i­ty and Amer­i­can cul­ture but I rarely find it artic­u­lat­ing a com­pelling way forward.

I don’t want to mere­ly shoe­horn some appro­pri­at­ed Catholic rit­u­als into wor­ship. And pic­tures of emer­gent events often feel like adults doing vaca­tion bible school. I won­der if it’s the “gestalt” issue again (via Lloyd Lee Wil­son et al), the prob­lem of try­ing to get from here to there in an ad hoc man­ner that gets us to an mish­mash of not quite here and not quite there. I want to find a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty where faith and prac­tice have some deep con­nec­tion. My wife Julie went off to tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism, which cer­tain­ly has the uni­ty of form and faith going for it, while I’m most drawn to Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends. It’s not a tra­di­tion’s age which is the defin­ing fac­tor (Zoroas­tri­an­ism any­one?) so much as its inter­nal log­ic. Con­se­quent­ly I’m not inter­est­ed in a Quak­erism (or Chris­tian­i­ty) that’s mere­ly nos­tal­gic or legal­is­tic about sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry forms but one that’s a liv­ing, breath­ing com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing both in its time and in the eter­ni­ty of God.

I’ve won­dered if Friends have some­thing to give the emer­gent church: a tra­di­tion that’s been emer­gent for three hun­dred years and that’s main­tained more or less reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dence with that 2000 year old emer­gent church. We Friends have made our own mess­es and fall­en down as many times as we’ve soared but there’s a Quak­er vision we have (or almost have) that could point a way for­ward for emer­gent Chris­tians of all stripes. There’s cer­tain­ly a min­istry there, per­haps Robin’s and per­haps not mine, but someone’s.

Else­where:

  • Indi­ana Friend Brent Bill start­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing new blog last week after a rather con­tentious meet­ing on the future of Friends lead­er­ship. Friends in Fel­low­ship is try­ing to map out a vision and mod­el for a pas­toral Friends fel­low­ship that embod­ies Emer­gent Church leader Bri­an McLaren’s idea of a “gen­er­ous ortho­doxy.” Inter­est­ing stuff that echos a lot of the “Con­ver­gent Friends” con­ver­sa­tion (here, here, and here) and mir­rors some of the dynam­ics that have been going on with­in lib­er­al Friends. The Quak­erQuak­er con­ver­sa­tion has thus far been most intense among evan­gel­i­cal and lib­er­al Friends, with mid­dle Amer­i­can “FUM” Friends most­ly sit­ting it out so it’s great to see some con­nec­tions being made there. Read “Friends in Fel­low­ship” back­wards, old­est post to newest and don’t miss the com­ments as Brent is mod­el­ing a real­ly good back and forth process with by answer­ing com­ments with thought­ful posts.
  • Famous­ly unapolo­get­i­cal­ly lib­er­al Friend Chuck Fager has some inter­est­ing cor­re­spon­dence over on A Friend­ly Let­ter about some of the ele­phants in the Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing clos­et. Inter­est­ing and con­tentious both, as one might expect from Chuck. Well worth a read, there’s plen­ty there you won’t find any­where else.
  • Final­ly, have I gushed about how fab­u­lous the new’ish Con​ser​v​a​tive​Friend​.org web­site is? Oh yes, I have, but that’s okay. Vis­it it again anyway.

Upcoming Conservative and blog travels

June 16, 2007
· Martin Kelley

My F/f Thomas T emailed me about the Blog­philadel­phia hap­pen­ing next month in down­town Philly. It sounds like it could be sil­ly and inter­est­ing at the same time so I’ve signed up.

Per­son­al stalk­ers mak­ing sum­mer plans should keep mid-August open. It looks like my blog/IM/Twitter/Facebook bud­dy C Wess Daniels and I are going to add yet anoth­er social media to our reper­toire and actu­al­ly meet face to face as co-presenters for an evening event at Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive. Along with Ohio’s David Male we’ll be bang­ing on that ever-popular “Con­ver­gent Friends” drum. I’m not sure I’ve ever actu­al­ly giv­en my two cents on the term and the phe­nom. I’ll prob­a­bly post about it in the lead up to the August event as a kind of prepa­ra­tion. Any­one with­in road-trip dis­tance of Bar­nesville is invit­ed to come over Fri­day evening the 17th to hear the talk.

And speak­ing of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends, every­one should check out the great newish web­site called The Con­ser­v­a­tive Friend, an unof­fi­cial out­reach ini­tia­tive of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing. It’s sim­ple but attrac­tive, walks that fine line between truth telling and humil­i­ty with grace and has a won­der­ful sense of humor and self-awareness that sneaks up on you as you read through. Now who knew Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tives had a sense of humor? Seri­ous­ly, it’s real­ly nice work.

I’ll be miss­ing the Con­ser­v­a­tive Gath­er­ing of Friends being held in the Lan­cast­er, PA, area next week­end. I’d like to claim that mon­ey and time is keep­ing me from attend­ing but it’s hard to argue that when I drove by its meet­ing site only a few days ago just to look at trains. Well, let’s just say at this moment of life, my spir­it need­ed fam­i­ly time more than Quak­er gath­er­ing time. I hope it goes well; if any Quak­er­Ran­ter read­ers do attend I’d love to hear their impressions.