Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

Quaker reflections on simplicity

June 30, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Eileen Kinch:

As fol­low­ers of Christ, we have been com­mand­ed to seek first the King­dom of God. Sim­plic­i­ty is set­ting aside any­thing that gets in the way of seek­ing the King­dom. The Book of Dis­ci­pline of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing states: ‘The call … is to aban­don those things that clut­ter [our lives] and to press toward the goal unham­pered. This is true simplicity.’

Five things Friday roundup: Quaker reflections on simplicity | Anabaptist World
Five things Fri­day roundup: Quak­er reflec­tions on sim­plic­i­ty | Anabap­tist World 

Men­non­ites and Friends (Quak­ers) are dif­fer­ent groups with dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al and the­o­log­i­cal his­to­ries. Yet these groups have some…

Anabaptist World Anabap­tist World 

As the pho­to cred­it states, this was one of my pic­tures – way back from the 2009 Con­ser­v­a­tive Gath­er­ing at the Lam­peter Meet­ing­house near Lan­cast­er, Pa.

Functional theology

May 26, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Johan’s book group is read­ing an old lec­ture by Jones, The Nature and Func­tions of the Light in the Thought of George Fox and he reflects on the approach:

Can­by exem­pli­fies a typ­i­cal Quak­er approach to the­ol­o­gy: it’s often func­tion­al. He does­n’t spend time defin­ing “light,” he finds the dis­tinc­tion between “nat­ur­al light” and the Light of Christ unhelp­ful; he does­n’t cling to or gen­er­ate doc­trines. Instead, he describes how the Light of Christ actu­al­ly seems to work in our lives.

Source

I appre­ci­ate Johan’s dis­tinc­tion of func­tion­al the­ol­o­gy here. Every so often my wife will ask me what I think about some spe­cif­ic point of doc­trine, say the nature of Christ. As a Catholic, ana­lyt­i­cal thinker, and reli­gion nerd, this is the kind of thing she nat­u­ral­ly pon­ders, but I rarely give her a very sat­is­fac­to­ry response. I often know the “right” answer accord­ing to tra­di­tion­al ortho­dox Chris­t­ian creeds and I’m always curi­ous what oth­ers make of ques­tions like these, but what I myself believe is shaped and large­ly bound­ed by my own expe­ri­ences of Christ work­ing in my life. I’m adding Jones’s arti­cle to my read­ing list.

The Friendly Mennonite

May 8, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Nathan Per­rin: “When my Quak­er friends heard I was going to Chicagoland to min­is­ter at Lom­bard (Illi­nois) Men­non­ite Church, they asked sev­er­al ques­tions. One ques­tion that they asked was whether or not I renounced Quak­erism by tak­ing this call­ing. The brief, less com­plex answer is: No.”

The friendly Mennonite | Mennonite Church USA
The friend­ly Men­non­ite | Men­non­ite Church USA 

This blog post is part of the “I choose to be Men­non­ite because …” series. See the call…

Mennonite Church USA Men­non­ite Church USA 

Testimonies and scandals

May 5, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Bri­an Dray­ton: “An essen­tial fact to med­i­tate upon is that regard­less of what we say, the way we act, the way we are, is “our tes­ti­mo­ny to the whole world.” In that con­nec­tion, what are we show­ing, and what can we show, about what we believe about the foun­da­tions of our activities?”

Testimony and scandal
Tes­ti­mo­ny and scandal 

Dear Friend: The con­cern under which I write leads me to con­sid­er two words, tes­ti­mo­ny and scan­dal, and…

Amor vincat Amor vincat 

Yes, you could type Quaker queries into the ChatGPT typing monkey or you could, you know, support Friends Journal

April 19, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Via Macken­zie Mor­gan on a Mastodon thread, a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, “Inside the secret list of web­sites that make AI like Chat­G­PT sound smart.” The best part is that it lets you type in URLs to see just how much data the chat­bot is pulling from par­tic­u­lar websites. 

Of course, I had to start look­ing at my niche of Quak­er web­sites. Yes, behind my laid-back demeanor I can be qui­et­ly com­pet­i­tive, so I ranked them. The count is “tokens,” which the arti­cle describes as “small bits of text used to process dis­or­ga­nized infor­ma­tion — typ­i­cal­ly a word or phrase.” This is a Google AI chat­bot but pre­sum­ably all of these bots are scrap­ing the same open web­site data.

  • friend​sjour​nal​.org 1.44m
  • quak​erquak​er​.org 620k
  • afsc​.org 300k
  • qhpress​.org 290k
  • west​ern​friend​.org 230k
  • nyym​.org 210k
  • afriend​lylet​ter​.com 160k
  • pym​.org 150k
  • fcnl​.org 140k
  • quak​ersinthe​world​.org 140k
  • quak​er​pod​cast​.org 130k
  • quak​er​.org​.uk 130k
  • fgc​quak​er​.org 120k
  • Quak​er​.org 110k
  • Quak​er​s​peak​.com 100k
  • quak​er​cloud​.org 58k
  • friend​scoun​cil​.org 39k
  • quak​er​in​fo​.com 32k
  • quak​er​in​fo​.org 22k
  • the​friend​.org 29k
  • fwcc​.world 12k
  • fwc​camer​i​c​as​.org 5.8k

There’s been a flur­ry of blog posts by Quak­ers typ­ing things into Chat­G­PT. See Mark Pratt-Russum’s “A Quak­er Pas­tor Asks Chat­G­BT to Write a Ser­mon” or Chuck Fager’s “Chat­bot Names Top Quak­er Issues; Makes Blog Obso­lete?”

If the Chat­G­PT results sound like a rehashed Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, as Chuck implies, well they most­ly are: with Friends Jour­nal and Quak­erQuak­er (huh!) account­ing for as much of Chat­G­P­T’s con­tent as the next dozen-ranked sites put togeth­er. (Am I miss­ing any content-rich Quak­er site?)

So yes, you could type queries into a chat­bot that has no idea what it’s think­ing. Or you could, you know, sup­port the Quak­er media that Google, Microsoft, Ama­zon, Face­book, etc., are train­ing their bots on. Real Quak­er writ­ing by real Quak­ers who write. I’ve long thought big tech is the biggest threat to Quak­er media but now they’ve start­ed com­pet­ing against us with our own words. It’s real­ly quite nuts. 

Chang­ing hats to wear mine as senior edi­tor of Friends Jour­nal. The rea­son our web­site seems to rule the roost of AI content-scraping is that we don’t have a pay­wall. Gen­er­ous donors, most­ly every­day read­ers, allow us to make all of our arti­cles and Quak­er­S­peak videos and Quak​er​.org explain­ers free to read. Yes, chat­bots are “read­ing” it, but so too are iso­lat­ed seek­ers look­ing for a faith path and spir­i­tu­al answers and stum­bling on Friends Jour­nal. Think about becom­ing an FJ sus­tain­ing mem­ber and at least join the free email list from the box on the home­page. I’m a bit sur­prised and hum­bled that Quak­erQuak­er is so high up; a dona­tion there could help jump­start my 2023 res­o­lu­tion to relaunch it with mod­ern tech. 

Think about it: a donate to Friends Jour­nal and Quak­erQuak­er will help ensure qual­i­ty chat­bot answers for gen­er­a­tions to come!

Apparently our weddings are now deemed glamorous

March 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

 

Silent Weddings: The Simple, Unconventional Tradition That Could Be Right For You - Glam
Silent Wed­dings: The Sim­ple, Uncon­ven­tion­al Tra­di­tion That Could Be Right For You — Glam 

Silent wed­dings have been tak­ing place since the 18th cen­tu­ry among the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Here’s what…

Glam Glam 

This line is one of my favorites: “Accord­ing to the His­to­ry Chan­nel, an Eng­lish Dis­senter called George Fox estab­lished the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, or the Quak­er Move­ment, in Eng­land in the 1800s.” I’m not sure what’s worse: admit­ting you’re sourc­ing your work from the His­to­ry Chan­nel or get­ting the date wrong by a cou­ple of cen­turies (Quak­erism is con­sid­ered to have start­ed in 1652).

But in real­i­ty, I’m not sure you need to click through to the arti­cle unless you want to see just how bad it’s got­ten on some of these SEO-chasing con­tent farms. I’m pret­ty sure this was large­ly writ­ten by AI. The ZeroG­PT detec­tor picked up some sen­tences; I checked oth­er arti­cles writ­ten under the same bylines and ZeroG­PT lights up whole paragraphs.

How is blockchain like Quakerism?

March 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Filed in the “whaaa?” depart­ment: I find this more curi­ous and sur­pris­ing than enlight­en­ing but the author is a bone fide Friend who argues that the evo­lu­tion of the inter­net is anal­o­gous to a Quak­er mod­el of organization.

Predicting Web3 Using Analogies From Religious History
Pre­dict­ing Web3 Using Analo­gies From Reli­gious History 

The next ver­sion of the web embraces blockchain, smart con­tracts, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Col­lec­tive­ly known as Web3, it is…

Forbes Forbes