Should We (How Should We) Grow the Religious Society of Friends?

September 6, 2024

From Johan Mau­r­er, a look at how we should think about growth and out­reach. One part that stood out to me:

There is noth­ing about this oblig­a­tion that requires me to exag­ger­ate Quak­ers’ virtues, or to con­ceal our defects. I cer­tain­ly don’t need to claim that no oth­er faith com­mu­ni­ties are equal­ly trust­wor­thy or equal­ly capa­ble of heal­ing and giv­ing hope.

In my expe­ri­ence, a lot of incom­ing seek­ers real­ly like it when we fess up to our past indis­cre­tions and cur­rent strug­gles. Per­haps they’ve come from some church that was over­ly con­fi­dent and unable to exam­ine its flaws and so like our trans­paren­cy. Nowa­days the influ­encer class all talk about “emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty” and I think part of that is appre­ci­at­ing our­selves for who we real­ly are in a healthy way.

Maybe because I’m think­ing about the upcom­ing Friends Jour­nal issue of “Spir­i­tu­al Opti­mism vs. Spir­i­tu­al Pes­simism” (there’s still ten days to write for it!) but I’m also think­ing about the tone with which we approach out­reach. In some cir­cles there’s a pan­ic that we some­how have to save Quak­erism. That begs the ques­tion of “what is Quakerism”?

Is Quak­erism a way of approach­ing our rela­tion­ship with the liv­ing Christ and shar­ing that good news as we walk cheer­ful­ly over the world? Is it build­ing com­mu­ni­ties that express our com­mit­ment to love of God and love of neigh­bor? If so, then noth­ing is ever going to destroy it. The whole point of the orig­i­nal Quak­er move­ment is that it didn’t need a large infra­struc­ture: no priests or pas­tors, no staff, no tithing. An emp­ty barn and a small room of believ­ers was enough. Here’s my naive side ris­ing up: if we are faith­ful God, will con­tin­ue to give us guid­ance and blessings.

When I dropped in for a day of the FGC Gath­er­ing this sum­mer, I attend­ed a work­shop led by the most excel­lent Chiyo Mori­uchi, titled “Let­ting our Light Shine: Gov­er­nance & Friends.” The work­shop wrote its own epis­tle, which FGC pub­lished on their web­site today with the title “A Call to Action.” Here’s part of its message:

Imme­di­ate action is required to address the fact of declin­ing and aging mem­ber­ship. We have too few peo­ple avail­able to do the “work,” and we are burn­ing out too many of those who are. We feel that address­ing the inad­e­quate com­mu­ni­ca­tion of who Quak­ers are is the most promis­ing path to solve this problem.

This is all true, but it’s true of our insti­tu­tions. It’s true of our infra­struc­ture. The doc­u­ment has two calls to action: the first is for Quak­er insti­tu­tions to do some self-reflection on what makes them Quak­er (sounds good to me!). The sec­ond is for Friends to hire out­side mar­ket­ing firms. I’ve seen big bud­gets poured into mar­ket­ing firms before and sigh at what a pro­pos­al like this would like­ly give us: gener­ic, feel-good copy that irons out all blem­ish­es. Any spir­i­tu­al lan­guage that might be deemed off-putting gets cut.  His­to­ry is dropped except for a few past heroes who are turned into car­toons.1

Decades of reli­gion sur­veys have found that peo­ple aren’t look­ing for bland and gener­ic. A lot of the fastest-growing denom­i­na­tions are opin­ion­at­ed and have high expec­ta­tions of incom­ing mem­bers. The new­com­ers I see walk­ing into my meet­ing seem to be search­ing for some­thing real, some­thing pal­pa­ble, as indeed I myself was when I walked into Abing­ton Meet­ing over three decades ago. We can be our­selves and share our blem­ish­es. We don’t need to put on an act.

And final­ly, some opti­mism: Quak­er mar­ket­ing is doing great. Seri­ous­ly. We’re more vis­i­ble and acces­si­ble than we’ve been in our entire his­to­ry. Friends Jour­nal is a part of that, with the mag­a­zine free with­out pay­wall and the Quak­er­s­peak inter­view series, Quak­ers Today pod­cast, and Quak​er​.org por­tal. But we’re just a piece of what’s hap­pen­ing. My friend Jon Watts’s Thee Quak­er pod­cast and the Dai­ly Quak­er email is super-visible. The Quak­ers sub-reddit and Dis­cord serv­er are very active. The slick Friends Library makes his­toric Quak­er writ­ings acces­si­ble by web, app, and audio (and the old-school Project Guten­berg, Chris­t­ian Clas­sics Ethe­r­i­al Library, Quak­er Her­itage Press are still around). It’s easy to find local meet­ings (FGC and FWCC have good resources, plus Google Maps does a great job). Any curi­ous per­son want­i­ng to know about Quak­ers can get up to speed in weeks. I know because I see these peo­ple walk­ing into my own Crop­well Meeting.

So I don’t think our insti­tu­tions nec­es­sar­i­ly need new mar­ket­ing so much as new vision­ing. What kinds of sup­port is need­ed for the new seek­ers and for local meet­ings? I think in some ways we need to step back and see with new eyes. What is it we want to market?

 

What is your Quaker meeting’s story?

August 16, 2024

I had a great video inter­view with Mike Huber on gam­ing and fun and com­mu­ni­ty (I even got to bust out nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Books of Dis­ci­pline to high­light past Quak­ers’ dis­trust of “gam­ing and diver­sions”). He has an arti­cle in the cur­rent FJ on Dun­geons & Drag­ons and how his long­time play of it has shaped how he sees his Quak­er communities.

One take­away of our talk was the idea of a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty as a kind of sto­ry­telling place. Do we have sto­ries of who we are? Our they are sto­ries or sto­ries inher­it­ed from pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions? Do we rec­og­nize our sto­ry arcs — the shifts, some­times obvi­ous and some­times grad­ual — that change our character.

Mike point­ed out that pas­tored meet­ings have rather obvi­ous moments to stop and reflect on who we are and what we’re becom­ing, as a change in pas­tors requires an assess­ment as a new call for a pas­tor starts. In unpro­grammed meet­ings, cer­tain­ly gen­er­a­tional changes cre­ates sto­ry arcs, though per­haps not as consciously.

What is you meet­ing or church’s story?

Read the video’s show notes here.

Quakers and Gaming

August 5, 2024

Michael Huber explores a cul­ture clash, but a rather fun one: the sim­i­lar­i­ties between com­mu­ni­ties of Dun­geons & Drag­ons play­ers and Quak­ers. It’s only recent­ly that he’s felt he could talk open­ly about this, but I’m so glad he has, as he’s brought over some D&D con­cepts that I think I might want to try with Friends at my meet­ing some­time soon. I’ve already had real-world con­ver­sa­tions about this article!

New book on Quaker prophetic faith

July 9, 2024
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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.