I got to talk with frequent Friends Journal author John Andrew Gallery this week. His latest article for us explores a gospel model of parenthood. I most appreciated his take that many of the figures in the parables were not necessarily metaphorical fill-ins for God but faithful people already living in the power of the kingdom. I’ll be chewing on his take on the prodigal son’s forgiving father for awhile.
Pendle Hill’s The Seed podcast has a great interview with Adria Gulizia this week. Some good stuff. Here’s a sample: “Petitions and demands is how the world works. That’s how the political system works. That’s not how the religious Society of Friends is supposed to work. And yet, they felt like the stakes are too high to do things the Quaker way. ‘We can’t do it the Quaker way.’ ”
Really great article in The Verge about the cables that route internet traffic across the oceans and the people who keep them in repair. Well written, amazingly illustrated, with gripping personal stories.
Craig Barnett on types and sources of power for Friends, modern and classic.
Modern Quaker culture places a strong emphasis on what Shinran would have called ‘self power’ — political activism, the effort to embody ethical values in our daily lives, and the conscientious performance of social responsibilities.… Perhaps surprisingly, the original Quaker inspiration was strongly focussed on ‘other power’. It was faith in the Inward Guide, rather than their own efforts, that early Friends relied on to guide their lives and to endure suffering and persecution. This Inward Guide, Teacher, Light or Christ was understood as something apart from our own resources: it was the presence and activity of God within each person.
In a surprise to no one, I’m a fan of using the inward power as a guide toward outward action, but of course they’re two sides the same coin. As we find our inward spiritual teacher, our lives begin to conform to right living, which in turn helps us to be more sensitive to spiritual prompts. It’s a virtuous circle that brings us closer to the Spirit and also changes what us moderns call our “lifestyle.”
I started off as a peace advocate in my late teens, spurred into deciding issues of violence and force in part because of family pressure to enlist in the naval academy. As I started to explore communities of peace I kept running into Quakers. I sensed that there was something more to their motivation than just right-politics and it was that spiritual grounding that drew me in. Nowadays I see a lot of Quaker political action that doesn’t use a vocabulary of faith. I trust that the Friends engaged in the work are being guided and strengthened by what Barnett describes as “the other power” but I worry that we lose the moral force of spiritual witness when we don’t articulate the spiritual underpinnings. Are we embarrassed by the weirdness of our spirituality? Do we think it will put off potential supporters? Unpracticed in its articulation?
A great article by Marcelle Martin in this month’s Friends Journal: Quaker Dreams. I love the story of Margaret Fell being prepared for the wild entrance of George Fox by way of a dream. And Robert Pyle’s image-rich dream that led him to abolitionism is truly amazing. I also appreciate Martin’s exploration of more recent Quaker dream work. I interviewed her this week in an FJ Author Chat:
I remember a friend once telling me if you do something once, it’s a weird thing you do. Do it again, it’s a trend. Do it three times and it’s a tradition everyone expects you to repeat till the end of time. This is Friends Journal’s third November fiction issue in a row. I guess this is a thing we do now.
It’s not immediately obvious that we should be in this game. Quakers have had testimonies against reading made-up stories. They’re a waste of time. We’re “Friends of the Truth” after all, a concept taken quite literally and sometimes to extremes by early Quakers. Colonial Pennsylvania Quakers half-heartedly conducted a witch trial (popular legend has it that after a defendant admitted to flying on broomsticks, William Penn dismissed the case with the argument that he knew “no law whatever against it.”). A century later, abolitionist traveling minister John Woolman tried to shut down a magic show in his home town of Mount Holly, N.J., for encouraging superstitions.
But sometimes fiction reveals deeper truths that simple reporting can’t touch. Good storytelling can produce powerful parables, simple stories that stay with us and guide us. And with a touch of magic, it can hint at the mysteries of worship.
The first featured short story is Annalee Flower Horne’s Refuse All Their Colors, an alternative history of 1777 Valley Forge in which the Friends living in the area have a little extra skillset. Once you’ve read it you can watch my interview with Annalee, which I found particularly fascinating. Annalee has made a deep dive into the historical record of the Friends community in Valley Forge and is quite confident that the only made-up part of the story is the fantasy elements and the immediate dialogue.
Annalee Flower Horne discusses their new short story “Refuse All Their Colors,” set in 1777 during the Revolutionary War. The story explores Quakers’ perspectives on magic through the lens of alternate history.
Related to last week’s discussion of a lack of what one ex-Friend calls “punk-rock Quakerism,” there’s always been a small subset of younger Liberal Friends who have wanted to go deeper into Quaker faith and practice. Some joined Friends just for this, having devoured the Journal of George Fox or Penn’s No Cross No Crown or Kelly’s Testament of Devotion before ever stepping into a meetinghouse, while others have slowly evolved as they learned more about Friends. Sometimes they go plain for a spell; most of the time they eventually leave.
In her September Friends Journal article, Young Friends Want What Early Quakers Had, Olivia Chalkley talks about the young Catholic traditionalist scene (aka “the tradddies”):
As a Twitter user, I have a front row seat to the bizarre wave of traditionalist Catholicism that’s sweeping New York’s Dimes Square arts scene and garnering media attention. In my own life, I have numerous friends and acquaintances who were raised with little to no religion and are now starting Bible study groups, attending church regularly, and even taking catechism classes.
What would this look like for Friends? Olivia says it would have progressive values (her 2020 QuakerSpeak interview is A Quaker Take on Liberation Theology). How could we do outreach to young adults who might want a more serious and nerdy Quakerism without alienating spiritual-but-not-religious seekers looking for a spiritually-neutral hour of silence? (See Pareto Curve outreach.) Also the big question: is this just a fever dream for a few of us stuck in a bubble? Is there really an opportunity for something widespread enough to call a movement? Youth-led Quaker movements have happened before: New Swarthmoor, Young Friends North America, and Movement for a New Society all created hip subcultures (albeit without overt spirituality in the latter’s case). On a smaller, decidedly less-hip fashion, networks like New Foundation Fellowship, QuakerSpring, Ohio YM’s outreach efforts, and School of the Spirit all continue to provide opportunities for nerdy Friends wanting to go deep into Quaker spirituality.
I’m a bit skeptical, to be honest, but some things in the wider spiritual culture have been changing the calculus:
As Olivia points out, Generation Z is more unchurched than any in recent memory; some of its members are looking for something more substantial and directive;
The internet continues to make non-mainstream movements ever easier to find and communities easier to organize;
Online worship has made it easier for seekers to “shop around” for a non-local spiritual community that might better “speak to their condition,” to use the Quaker lingo.
These cultural changes aren’t limited to youth, of course. A regular Quaker Ranter reader emailed me a few weeks ago to say that she’s started attending online worship hundreds of miles away after her longtime meeting “become less and less a worshiping community and more and more a collection of nice individuals.” The at-a-distance meeting “it is the spiritual home I had stopped looking for!” I’m kind of curious where these currents are going to be taking Friends of all generations.
Olivia and I talk about much of this in the latest FJ Author Chat.
Twenty years ago this week I wrote one of my most widely shared blog posts, “The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal.”
I was on fire that summer, making connections with a bubbling up, grassroots “emergent church” movement and finding oh-so-many unexpected similarities between these frustrated, authenticity-seeking younger Evangelicals and my super-Liberal East Coast Quaker world. A lot of the problems were clearly generational and I was lapping up new posts by Canadian blogger Jordan Cooper. One day he shared a chart from theologian Robert E. Webber’s new book, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World, that showed the “differences between the moderns (traditional and pragmatic evangelicals) and the postmodern (the younger evangelicals).”
The chart was like a secret decoder ring for me. Webber might have been thinking of more traditional churches, but with a little translation it lot of it sure explained a lot of what I was seeing in Quakerism. Older Friends wanted youth ministry that was a “Church-centred program” while I and my disaffected cohorts wanted “prayer, Bible study, worship, social action.” Older Friends thought of Christianity as a “rational worldview” or a form of “therapy” whereas I longed for a “community of faith.”
Not much happened after I clicked post. Facebook and Twitter weren’t around to promote it. My blog was more-or-less me talking to myself. But over the course of the next few years people found it. They must have been asking similar questions and seeing what Google turned up. The comments have some future Quaker bloggers (was this the first post Chris Mohr found and fan-emailed me about?). Even more remarkable, it includes some very unlikely Evangelical Friends, like the then-youth pastor at First Friends Canton and the then-general secretary of Iowa Yearly Meeting. At the time I was answering the bookstore phone at Friends General Conference, the most Liberal institution bastion of U.S. Quakers. To find common cause across this theological spectrum was quite unusual then (and alas, probably now).
What’s changed after twenty years? Well, after a number of false starts there are programs to train younger Friends and bring them into institutional Quakerism (Quaker Voluntary Service, Pendle Hill’s Continuing Revolution conference, and the 1992-founded Guilford College’s Quaker Studies Program deserve special shoutouts). Blogs and later social media have created forums for disparate Friends to talk together in informal conversations. I’m continually amazed that Friends Journal magazine (of which I’m senior editor) and QuakerSpeak videos can be accessed anywhere without paywall, making our stories widely accessible. But some things haven’t changed. We’ve had rounds of Quaker schisms, especially in Northwest, Indiana, and North Carolina Yearly Meetings.
And how much has changed for individual young adult Friends? The September issue of Friends Journal is devoted to younger Friends and one breakout article is Olivia Chalkley’s “Young Adults Want What Early Friends Had.” Olivia came to Friends as a teen and has had the advantages of the newer youth programs — attending Guilford QLSP and working at a Quaker Voluntary Service fellow — yet so much of her article felt like topics I discussed on Quaker Ranter back before my temples went gray. For example:
We often don’t think about the potential Friends who slip through the cracks because there’s not much to grab hold of: those who don’t know where to turn in the silence, not having a solid foundation in Scripture, Christian ethics and social teachings, or even Quaker history; those who feel alienated by the meetings in which Friends cringe if you talk about Jesus Christ, or even about God; and those who simply can’t figure out if we are Christian or not, due to mixed messaging and lack of conviction among members of their meetings. These obstacles must be recognized and addressed as part of our efforts to present accessible pathways to entry, not only for the young adults hungry for religious community but also for the poor and working classes among which religious belief tends to be high, according to recent Pew studies.
I guess it’s some progress that this article is published by Friends Journal and not sitting barely read on a personal blog. But as I look back at this twenty-year anniversary I find it a little sad we’re still struggling with identity and messaging. Maybe this is a perennial, never-answerable issue for a denomination, especially one as decentralized as ours. Or maybe it’s something we can continue to figure out. Mid-twentieth century Friends were able to work out a modern vision of Quakerism that was powerful enough to reunite and regalvanize a dwindling Quaker movement; what would our vision look like?
On the face of it, it may be kind of weird for a vegan like me to like an article about hunting (much less publish a recipe for squirrel quiche) but anyone who brings in Thomas Clarkson to talk about Quaker cultural values is someone I’ll listen to.
[Clarkson’s] contemporaries were blinded by tradition and never stopped to ask, “how far are they allowable?” amidst concerns of human conduct. Even the phrasing “how far are they allowable” suggests a limit. Perhaps hunting is an allowable and acceptable way of life up to a certain point: that point being needless violence and danger.
Friends Journal 