Tag Archives ⇒ quakerism

Beyond the MacGuffins: Sheeran’s Beyond Majority Rule

December 26, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A review of Michael Sheer­an’s Beyond Major­i­ty Rule. Twen­ty years lat­er, do Friends need to expe­ri­ence the gath­ered condition?

Beyond Major­i­ty Rule has one of the more unique sto­ries in Quak­er writ­ings. Michael Sheer­an is a Jesuit priest who went to sem­i­nary in the years right after the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil. Forged by great changes tak­ing place in the church, he took seri­ous­ly the Coun­cil’s man­date for Roman Catholics to get “in touch with their roots.” He became inter­est­ed in a long-forgotten process of “Com­mu­nal Dis­cern­ment” used by the Jesuit order in when it was found­ed in the mid-sixteenth cen­tu­ry. His search led him to study groups out­side Catholi­cism that had sim­i­lar decision-making struc­tures. The Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends should con­sid­er itself lucky that he found us. His book often explains our ways bet­ter than any­thing we’ve written.

Sheer­an’s advan­tage comes from being an out­sider firm­ly root­ed in his own faith. He’s not afraid to share obser­va­tions and to make com­par­isons. He start­ed his research with a rather for­mal study of Friends, con­duc­ing many inter­views and attend­ing about ten month­ly meet­ings in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. There are sec­tions of the book that are dry expo­si­tions of Quak­er process, sprin­kled by inter­views. There are times where Sheer­an starts say­ing some­thing real­ly insight­ful about ear­ly or con­tem­po­rary Friends, but then backs off to repeat some out­dat­ed Quak­er cliche (he relies a bit too heav­i­ly on the group of mid-century Haverford-based aca­d­e­mics whose his­to­ries often pro­ject­ed their own the­ol­o­gy of mod­ern lib­er­al mys­ti­cism onto the ear­ly Friends). These sec­tions aren’t always very enlight­en­ing – too many Philadel­phia Friends are uncon­scious of their cher­ished myths and their inbed­ded incon­sis­ten­cies. On page 85, he express­es the conun­drum quite eloquently:

If the researcher was to suc­cumb to the all too typ­i­cal canons of social sci­ence, he would prob­a­bly scratch his head a few times atjust this point, note that the ambi­gu­i­ty of Quak­er expres­sion makes accu­rate sta­tis­ti­cal eval­u­a­tion of Quak­er believes almost impos­si­ble with­out invest­ment of untold time and effort, and move on to analy­sis of some less inter­est­ing but more man­age­able object of study.

For­tu­nate­ly for us, Sheer­an does not suc­cumb. The book shines when Sheer­an steps away from the aca­d­e­m­ic role and offers us his sub­jec­tive observations.

There are six pages in Beyond Major­i­ty Rule that com­prise its main con­tri­bu­tion to Quak­erism. Almost every time I’ve heard some­one refer to this book in con­ver­sa­tion, it’s been to share the obser­va­tions of these six pages. Over the years I’ve often casu­al­ly browsed through the book and it’s these six pages that I’ve always stopped to read. The pas­sage is called “Con­flict­ing Myths and Fun­da­men­tal Cleav­ages” and it begins on page 84. Sheer­an begins by relat­ing the obvi­ous observation:

When Friends reflect upon their beliefs, they often focus upon the obvi­ous con­flict between Chris­to­cen­tric and uni­ver­sal­ist approach­es. Peo­ple who feel strong­ly drawn to either camp often see the oth­er posi­tion as a threat to Quak­erism itself.

As a Gen-X’er I’ve often been bored by this debate. It often breaks down into emp­ty lan­guage and the desire to feel self-righteous about one’s beliefs. It’s the MacGuf­fin of con­tem­po­rary lib­er­al Quak­erism. (A MacGuf­fin is a film plot device that dri­ves the action but is in itself nev­er explained and does­n’t real­ly mat­ter: if the spies have to get the secret plans across the bor­der by mid­night, those plans are the MacGuf­fin and the chase the real action.) Today’s debates about Chris­to­cen­trism ver­sus Uni­ver­sal­ism ignore the real issues of faith­less­ness we need to address.

Sheer­an sees the real cleav­age between Friends as those who have­ex­pe­ri­enced the divine and those who haven’t. I’d extend the for­mer just a bit to include those who have faith that the expe­ri­ence of the divine is pos­si­ble. When we sit in wor­ship do we real­ly believe that we might be vis­it­ed by Christ (how­ev­er named, how­ev­er defined)? When we cen­ter our­selves for Meet­ing for Busi­ness do we expect to be guid­ed by the Great Teacher?

Sheer­an found that a num­ber of Friends did­n’t believe in a divine visitation:

Fur­ther ques­tions some­times led to the para­dox­i­cal dis­cov­ery that, for some of these Friends, the expe­ri­ence of being gath­ered even in meet­ing for wor­ship was more of a for­mal rather than an expe­ri­en­tial real­i­ty. For some, the fact that the group had sat qui­ety for twenty-five min­utes was itself iden­ti­fied as being gathered.

There are many clerks that call for a “moment of silence” to begin and end busi­ness – five min­utes of for­mal silence to prove that we’re Quak­ers and maybe to gath­er our argu­ments togeth­er. Meet­ings for busi­ness are con­duct­ed by smart peo­ple with smart ideas and effi­cien­cy is prized. Sit­ting in wor­ship is seen a med­i­ta­tive oasis if not a com­plete waste of time. For these Friends, Quak­erism is a soci­ety of strong lead­er­ship com­bined with intel­lec­tu­al vig­or. Good deci­sions are made using good process. If some Friends choose to describe their own guid­ance as com­ing from “God,” that their indi­vid­ual choice but it is cer­tain­ly not an imper­a­tive for all.

Maybe it’s Sheer­an’s Catholi­cism that makes him aware of these issues. Both Catholics and Friends tra­di­tion­al­ly believe in the real pres­ence of Christ dur­ing wor­ship. When a Friend stands to speak in meet­ing, they do so out of obe­di­ence, to be a mes­sen­ger and ser­vant of the Holy Spir­it. That Friends might speak ‘beyond their Guide’ does not betray the fact that it’s God’s mes­sage we are try­ing to relay. Our under­stand­ing of Christ’s pres­ence is real­ly quite rad­i­cal: “Jesus has come to teach the peo­ple him­self,” as Fox put it, it’s the idea that God will speak to us as He did to the Apos­tles and as He did to the ancient prophets of Israel. The his­to­ry of God being active­ly involved with His peo­ple continues.

Why does this mat­ter? Because as a reli­gious body it is sim­ply our duty to fol­low God and because new­com­ers can tell when we’re fak­ing it. I’ve known self-described athe­ists who get it and who I con­sid­er broth­ers and sis­ters in faith and I’ve known peo­ple who can quote the bible inside and out yet know noth­ing about love (haven’t we all known some of these, even in Quak­erism?). How do we get past the MacGuf­fin debates of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions to dis­till the core of the Quak­er message?

Not all Friends will agree with Sheer­an’s point of cleav­age. None oth­er than the acclaimed Haver­for­dian Dou­glas V Steere wrote the intro­duc­tion to Beyond Major­i­ty Rule and he used it to dis­miss the core six pages as “mod­est but not espe­cial­ly con­vinc­ing” (page x). The unstat­ed con­di­tion behind the great Quak­er reuni­fi­ca­tions of the mid-twentieth cen­tu­ry was a taboo against talk­ing about what we believe as a peo­ple. Quak­erism became an indi­vid­ual mys­ti­cism cou­pled with a world-focused social activism – to talk about the area in between was to threat­en the new unity.

Times have changed and gen­er­a­tions have shift­ed. It is this very in-between-ness that first attract­ed me to Friends. As a nascent peace activist, I met Friends whose deep faith allowed them to keep going past the despair of the world. I did­n’t come to Friends to learn how to pray or how to be a lefty activist (most Quak­er activists now are too self-absorbed to be real­ly effec­tive). What I want to know is how Friends relate to one anoth­er and to God in order to tran­scend them­selves. How do we work togeth­er to dis­cern our divine lead­ings? How do we come togeth­er to be a faith­ful peo­ple of the Spirit?

I find I’m not alone in my inter­est in Sheer­an’s six pages. The fifty-somethings I know in lead­er­ship posi­tions in Quak­erism also seem more ten­der to Sheer­an’s obser­va­tions than Dou­glas Steere was. Twenty-five years after sub­mit­ting his dis­ser­ta­tion, Friends are per­haps ready to be con­vinced by our Friend, Michael J. Sheeran.

Post­script: Michael J Sheer­an con­tin­ues to be an inter­est­ing and active fig­ure. He con­tin­ues to write about gov­er­nance issues in the Catholic Church and serves as pres­i­dent of Reg­is Uni­ver­si­ty in Denver.

Signs of Hope

November 26, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I think I some­times appear more pes­simistic than I real­ly am. Here are some of this week’s rea­sons for hope.
* Being in touch with Jorj & Sue and Barb and Tobi because of these writ­ings (could the “Lost Generation”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000147.php be mud­dling towards a new coalesence?)
* A small flur­ry of recent talks and pam­phlets about redis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism: Mar­ty Grundy’s 2002 lec­ture _Quaker Trea­sure: Dis­cov­er­ing The Basis For Uni­ty Among Friends_, Paul Lacey’s _The Author­i­ty Of Our Meet­ings Is The Pow­er Of God_ , and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s “Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”:http://www.ncymc.org/journal/ncymcjournal3.pdf (PDF)
* Tony P. say­ing he was griev­ed that Julie has left the Soci­ety of Friends and car­ing enough to talk to her. Thank you.
* A fly­er I saw this week­end, writ­ten by PYM Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion staff. It was a list of what they thought they should be doing and it was real­ly pret­ty good (why don’t they’d print this in _PYM News_ , it’s much bet­ter than their boil­er­plate entries this issue). Even more I hope the work does take a move in that direction.
* Thomas Ham­m’s The Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca, which just came in yes­ter­day. It’s per­haps a lit­tle too intro­duc­to­ry but we need a good intro­duc­tion and Ham­m’s the one to write it. His book on Ortho­dox Friends, Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism is amaz­ing­ly well researched and essen­tial read­ing for any involved Friend who wants to under­stand who we are. He’s work­ing on a com­pan­ion his­to­ry on the Hick­sites, which is very much needed.

Are Catholics More Quaker?

November 16, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I guess folks might won­der why the son of the Quak­er Ranter is get­ting bap­tized in a Roman Catholic church…

[box]An updat­ed note before I start: I don’t want this to be seen as a cri­tique or put-down of any par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als but to point out what seems to me to be a pret­ty obvi­ous larg­er dynam­ic with­in Quak­erism: our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams have not been doing a very good job at trans­mit­ting our faith to our young peo­ple. One mea­sure of such pro­grams is how many chil­dren we retain as actively-participating adults; by such mea­sures I think we can say Quak­ers are failing.

And, a few per­haps obvi­ous dis­claimers: 1) there are deeply faith­ful peo­ple who grew up in Young Friends pro­grams; 2) there are reli­gious ed instruc­tors who are wor­ried about the mes­sage we’re giv­ing our young peo­ple and fret as I do; 3) there are a lot of mem­bers of the RSoF who just don’t think teach­ing dis­tinct­ly Quak­er faith­ful­ness is impor­tant and would­n’t agree that there’s a problem.

I don’t think it’s use­ful to read this with­out also look­ing to my ear­ly arti­cle, The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which mourns the friends I’ve seen drop out of Quak­erism (many of them “birthright,” i.e., born into Quak­er fam­i­lies), and We’re all Ranters Now, which argues that our soci­ety of seek­ers needs to become a soci­ety of find­ers if we are to be able to artic­u­late a faith to transmit.
[/box]

On June 30, 2000, Julie and I met at a nation­al gath­er­ing of Quak­ers. Four­teen months lat­er we were mar­ried at the Wood­stown Friends Meet­ing­house under the care of the Atlantic City Area Friends Meet­ing. Rough­ly four­teen months lat­er, when the sparkles in our eyes were meet­ing with an approv­ing nod from God and our baby was con­ceived, I was co-clerk of Atlantic City Area Meet­ing and Julie was clerk of its Out­reach Com­mit­tee. Ten months lat­er, our infant son Theo was bap­tized at Mater Eccle­si­ae Roman Catholic Church in Berlin, N.J. It’s Julie’s new church; I myself remain Quak­er, but with­out a Meet­ing I can quite call home. What happened?

I don’t want to try to speak for Julie and why she left Friends to return to the faith she was brought up in. But I do have to tes­ti­fy that the rev­er­ence, spir­it and authen­tic­i­ty of the wor­ship at Mater Eccle­si­ae is deep­er than that in most Friends Meet­ing­hous­es. It’s a church with a lot of mem­bers who seem to believe in the real pres­ence of Christ. A dis­claimer that Mater Eccle­si­ae is unusu­al, one of the few church­es in the coun­try that uses the tra­di­tion­al Tri­den­tine Mass or Roman Rite, and that it attracts ardent fol­low­ers who have self-selected them­selves, in that they’re not going to their local parish church. I don’t think it’s the Catholi­cism alone that draws Julie – I think the pur­pose­ful­ness of the wor­shipers is a large piece. Despite all the dis­trac­tions (chants, Latin, rote con­fes­sions of faith: I’m speak­ing as a Friend), the wor­ship there is unusu­al­ly gath­ered. But more: there’s a ground­ed­ness to the faith. In a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion the priest explained to me the ways he thought Quak­erism was wrong. I was­n’t offend­ed – quite the con­trary, I loved it! It was so refresh­ing to meet some­one who believed what he believed, (Hey, if I did­n’t believe in the degen­er­a­tion of the Roman Catholic Church or the emp­ty pro­fes­sions of hireling priests, I might join him. I also feel com­fort­able pre­dict­ing that he would wel­come my joust­ing here.)

What I can talk about is my mis­giv­ings about the prospect of rais­ing up Theo as a Quak­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. The weak­est ele­ment of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is its chil­dren’s reli­gious edu­ca­tion. This is some­thing I’ve seen man­i­fest­ed in two dif­fer­ent kinds of ways: con­tent and results.

Quak­ers have remark­ably few expec­ta­tions of their chil­dren. It’s con­sid­ered remark­able if old­er chil­dren spend a whole ten min­utes in Meet­ing for Wor­ship (I’ve heard adult birthright Friends boast that they’ve nev­er sat through a whole hour of Quak­er wor­ship). Quak­ers are obsessed about lis­ten­ing to what chil­dren have to say, and so nev­er share with them what they believe. I’ve known adults birthright Friends who have nev­er had con­ver­sa­tions with their par­ents about the basis of their faith.

Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often for­go teach­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­er faith and prac­tice for more fad­dish beliefs. The base­ment walls of the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing youth cen­ter is paint­ed over with danc­ing gods, while of the big events of the Young Friends’ annu­al cal­en­dar is a “Quak­er sweat lodge”. A cul­ture of touch and phys­i­cal­i­ty (“cud­dle pud­dles”, back­rubs) is thought charm­ing and immod­est dress is con­sid­ered a sign of rebel­lious indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Quak­er schools pub­lish brochures say­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship is all about “think­ing, with God giv­en lit­tle notice.” When Quak­ers want to have “inter­gen­er­a­tional” wor­ship, they feel they have to pro­gram it with some sort of attention-keeping play­time activ­i­ty (Mater Eccle­si­ae echoes Quak­er tra­di­tion here: “inter­gen­er­a­tional” means chil­dren sit­ting through and par­tic­i­pat­ing in Mass with the adults).

Too many of the peo­ple my age and Julie’s who were brought up at Friends are igno­rant of basic Quak­er beliefs and are unaware of Quak­er tra­di­tions (FUM, EFI, Con­ser­v­a­tives) out­side the easy-going East Coast lib­er­al­ism they were raised in. For them being a Friend is act­ing a cer­tain way, believ­ing a cer­tain brand of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and being part of a cer­tain social group. Too many Young Adult Friends I’ve known over the years are cliquish, irre­li­gious, and have more than their share of issues around inti­ma­cy and sexuality.

Don’t get me wrong: these kids are often real­ly good peo­ple, chil­dren to be proud of, doing great things in the world. Many of them are open-hearted, spiritually-sensitive, and in deeply ground­ed rela­tion­ships. But only a very few are prac­tic­ing Quak­ers. And when I look at the reli­gious edu­ca­tion they get, I can’t say I’m sur­prised. If I were to raise Theo as a Quak­er, I would have to “home school” him away from most of the reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams offered local­ly. When all the kids scram­ble out of wor­ship after ten min­utes I’d have to say “no” and tell him to keep sit­ting – how weird would that be?

Theo has a bet­ter chance of shar­ing the tra­di­tion­al Quak­er val­ues of the pres­ence of Christ, of Holy Obe­di­ence, and of bear­ing the cross by being raised as a Catholic in a tra­di­tion­al­ist church. It’s more like­ly he’ll turn out Quak­er if he’s bap­tised at Mater Eccle­si­ae. Julie and I will be teach­ing him rev­er­ence by exam­ple. I’ll share my Quak­er faith with him. I’m sure he’ll par­tic­i­pate in Quak­er events, but con­scious­ly, selec­tive­ly, guard­ed­ly (in the old Quak­er sense).

If Friends believe they have a faith worth holdling, they should also believe they have a faith worth pass­ing on. Do we?

Related Reading

  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”
  • I touch on these issues from the oth­er side in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which is about the twenty- and thirty-something Friends that have drift­ed away

The Lost Quaker Generation

September 30, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The oth­er day I had lunch with an old friend of mine, a thirty-something Quak­er very involved in nation-wide paci­fist orga­niz­ing. I had lost touch with him after he entered a fed­er­al jail for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Plow­shares action but he’s been out for a few years and is now liv­ing in Philly.

We talked about a lot of stuff over lunch, some of it just move­ment gos­sip. But we also talked about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. He has left the Soci­ety of Friends and has become re-involved in his par­ents’ reli­gious tra­di­tions. It did­n’t sound like this deci­sion had to do with any new reli­gious rev­e­la­tion that involved a shift of the­ol­o­gy. He sim­ply became frus­trat­ed at the lack of Quak­er seriousness.

It’s a dif­fer­ent kind of frus­tra­tion than the one I feel but I won­der if it’s not all con­nect­ed. He was drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change. It was this com­bi­na­tion that has helped pow­er his social action wit­ness over the years. It would seem like his seri­ous, faith­ful work would be just what Friends would like to see in their thirty-something mem­bers but alas, it’s not so. He did­n’t feel sup­port­ed in his Plow­shares action by his Meeting.

He con­clud­ed that the Friends in his Meet­ing did­n’t think the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to be so bold. He said two of his Quak­er heroes were John Wool­man and Mary Dyer but real­ized that the pas­sion of wit­ness that drove them was­n’t appre­ci­at­ed by today’s peace and social con­cerns com­mit­tees. The rad­i­cal mys­ti­cism that is sup­posed to dri­ve Friends’ prac­tice and actions have been replaced by a bland­ness that felt threat­ened by some­one who could choose to spend years in jail for his witness.

I can relate to his dis­ap­point­ment. I wor­ry about what kinds of actions are being done in the name of the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny, which has lost most of its his­toric mean­ing and pow­er among con­tem­po­rary Friends. It’s invoked most often now by sec­u­lar­ized, safe com­mit­tees that use a ratio­nal­ist approach to their decision-making, meant to appeal to oth­ers (includ­ing non-Friends) based sole­ly on the mer­its of the argu­ments. NPR activism, you might say. Reli­gion isn’t brought up, except in the rather weak for­mu­la­tions that Friends are “a com­mu­ni­ty of faith” or believe there is “that of God in every­one” (what­ev­er these phras­es mean). That we are led to act based on instruc­tions from the Holy Spir­it direct­ly is too off the deep end for many Friends, yet the peace tes­ti­mo­ny is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tes­ti­mo­ny to our faith in God’s pow­er over human­i­ty, our sur­ren­der to the will of Christ enter­ing our hearts with instruc­tions which demand our obedience.

But back to my friend, the ex-Friend. I feel like he’s just anoth­er eroded-away grain of sand in the delta of Quak­er decline. He’s yet anoth­er Friend that Quak­erism can’t afford to loose, but which Quak­erism has lost. No one’s mourn­ing the fact that he’s lost, no one has bare­ly noticed. Know­ing Friends, the few that have noticed have prob­a­bly not spent any time reach­ing out to him to ask why or see if things could change and they prob­a­bly defend their inac­tion with self-congratulatory pap about how Friends don’t pros­e­ly­tize and look how lib­er­al we are that we say noth­ing when Friends leave.

God!, this is ter­ri­ble. I know of DOZENS of friends in my gen­er­a­tion who have drift­ed away from or deci­sive­ly left the Soci­ety of Friends because it was­n’t ful­fill­ing its promise or its hype. No one in lead­er­ship posi­tions in Quak­erism is talk­ing about this lost gen­er­a­tion. I know of very few thirty-something Friends who are involved nowa­days and very very few of them are the kind of pas­sion­ate, mys­ti­cal, obedient-to-the-Spirit ser­vants that Quak­erism needs to bring some life back into it. A whole gen­er­a­tion is lost – my fel­low thirty-somethings – and now I see the pas­sion­ate twenty-somethings I know start­ing to leave. Yet this exo­dus is one-by-one and goes large­ly unre­marked and unno­ticed (but then I’ve already post­ed about this: It will be in decline our entire lives).

 

Update 10/2005

I feel like I should add an adden­dum to all this. As I’ve spo­ken with more Friends of all gen­er­a­tions, I’ve noticed that the atten­tion to younger Friends is cycli­cal. There’s a thirty-year cycle of snub­bing younger Friends (by which I mean Friends under 40). Back in the 1970s, all twenty-year-old with a pulse could get recog­ni­tion and sup­port from Quak­er meet­ings; I know a lot of Friends of that gen­er­a­tion who were giv­en tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties despite lit­tle expe­ri­ence. A decade lat­er the doors had start­ed to close but a hard-working faith­ful Friend in their ear­ly twen­ties could still be rec­og­nized. By the time my gen­er­a­tion came along, you could be a whirl­wind of great ideas and ener­gy and still be shut out of all oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

The good news is that I think things are start­ing to change. There’s still a long way to go but a thaw is upon us. In some ways this is inevitable: much of the cur­rent lead­er­ship of Quak­er insti­tu­tions is retir­ing. Even more, I think they’re start­ing to real­ize it. There are prob­lems, most notably tokenism — almost all of the younger Friends being lift­ed up now are the chil­dren of promi­nent “com­mit­tee Friends.” The biggest prob­lem is that a few dozen years of lax reli­gious edu­ca­tion and “roll your own Quak­erism” means that many of the mem­bers of the younger gen­er­a­tion can’t even be con­sid­ered spir­i­tu­al Quak­ers. Our meet­ing­hous­es are seen as a place to meet oth­er cool, pro­gres­sive young hip­sters, while spir­i­tu­al­i­ty is sought from oth­er sources. We’re going to be spend­ing decades untan­gling all this and we’re not going to have the sea­soned Friends of my gen­er­a­tion to help bridge the gaps.

Relat­ed Reading

  • After my friend Chris post­ed below I wrote a follow-up essay, Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­ers Style.
  • Many old­er Friends hope that a resur­gence of the peace move­ment might come along and bring younger Friends in. In Peace and Twenty-Somethings I look at the gen­er­a­tional strains in the peace movement.
  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”

 

Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal

September 6, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A look at the generational shifts facing Friends.

I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals: Fac­ing the Chal­lenges of the New World, which exam­ines the cul­tur­al and gen­er­a­tional shifts hap­pen­ing with­in the Chris­t­ian Evan­gel­i­cal move­ment. At the bot­tom of this page is a handy chart that out­lines the gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in the­ol­o­gy, eccle­si­as­ti­cal par­a­digm, church poli­ty that he sees. When I first saw it I said “yes!” to almost each cat­e­go­ry, as it clear­ly hits at the gen­er­a­tional forces hit­ting Quakerism.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly many Friends in lead­er­ship posi­tions don’t real­ly under­stand the prob­lems fac­ing Quak­erism. Or: they do, but they don’t under­stand the larg­er shifts behind them and think that they just need to redou­ble their efforts using the old meth­ods and mod­els. The Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion in charge knows the chal­lenge is to reach out to seek­ers in their twen­ties or thir­ties, but they do this by devel­op­ing pro­grams that would have appealed to them when they were that age. The cur­rent crop of out­reach projects and peace ini­tia­tives are all very 1980 in style. There’s no recog­ni­tion that the sec­u­lar peace com­mu­ni­ty that drew seek­ers in twen­ty years ago no longer exists and that today’s seek­ers are look­ing for some­thing deep­er, some­thing more per­son­al and more real.

When younger Friends are includ­ed in the sur­veys and com­mit­tees, they tend to be either the unin­volved chil­dren of impor­tant Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion Quak­ers, or those thirty-something Friends that cul­tur­al­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly fit into the old­er par­a­digms. It’s fine that these two types of Friends are around, but nei­ther group chal­lenges Baby Boomer group-think. Out­spo­ken younger Friends often end up leav­ing the Soci­ety in frus­tra­tion after a few years.

It’s a shame. In my ten years attend­ing a down­town Philadel­phia Friends meet­ing, I eas­i­ly met a hun­dred young seek­ers. They most­ly cycled through, attend­ing for peri­ods rang­ing from a few months to a few years. I would often ask them why they stopped com­ing. Some­times they were just nice and said life was too busy, but of course that’s not a real answer: you make time for the things that are impor­tant and that feed you in some way. But oth­ers told me they found the meet­ing unwel­com­ing, or Friends too self-congratulatory or super­fi­cial, the com­mu­ni­ty more social than spir­i­tu­al. I went back to this meet­ing one First Day after a two year absence and it was depress­ing how it was all the same faces. This is not a knock on this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing, since the same dynam­ics are at work in most of the liberal-leaning meet­ings I’ve attend­ed, both in the FGC and FUM worlds – it’s a gen­er­a­tional cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. I have nev­er found the young Quak­er seek­er com­mu­ni­ty I know is out there, though I’ve glimpsed its indi­vid­ual faces a hun­dred times: always just out of reach, nev­er gelling into a movement.

I’m not sure what the answers are. Luck­i­ly it’s not my job to have answers: I leave that up to Christ and only con­cern myself with being as faith­ful a ser­vant to the Spir­it as I can be (this spirit-led lead­er­ship style is exact­ly one of the gen­er­a­tional shifts Web­ber talks about). I’ve been giv­en a clear mes­sage that my job is to stay with the Soci­ety of Friends, that I might be of use some­day. But there are a few pieces that I think will come out:

A re-examination of our roots, as Christians and as Friends

What babies were thrown out with the bath­wa­ter by turn-of-the-century Friends who embraced mod­ernism and ratio­nal­ism and turned their back on tra­di­tion­al tes­ti­monies? This will require chal­leng­ing some of the sacred myths of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. There are a lot that aren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly Quak­er and we need to start admit­ting to that. I’ve per­son­al­ly tak­en up plain dress and find the old state­ments on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny much deep­er and more mean­ing­ful than con­tem­po­rary ones. I’m a pro­fes­sion­al web­mas­ter and run a promi­nent paci­fist site, so it’s not like I’m stuck in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry; instead, I just think these old tes­ti­monies actu­al­ly speak to our con­di­tion in the twenty-first Century.

A Desire to Grow

Too many Friends are hap­py with their nice cozy meet­ings. The meet­ings serve as fam­i­ly and as a sup­port group, and a real growth would dis­rupt our estab­lished pat­terns. If Quak­erism grew ten­fold over the next twen­ty years we’d have to build meet­ing­hous­es, have extra wor­ship, reor­ga­nize our com­mit­tees. Involved Friends would­n’t know all the oth­er involved Friends in their year­ly meet­ing. With more mem­bers we’d have to become more rig­or­ous and dis­ci­plined in our com­mit­tee meet­ings. Quak­erism would feel dif­fer­ent if it were ten times larg­er: how many of us would just feel uncom­fort­able with that. Many of our Meet­ings are ripe for growth, being in boom­ing sub­urbs or thriv­ing urban cen­ters, but year after year they stay small. Many sim­ply neglect and screw up out­reach or reli­gious edu­ca­tion efforts as a way of keep­ing the meet­ing at its cur­rent size and with its cur­rent character.

A more personally-involved, time-consuming commitment

Reli­gion in Amer­i­ca has become yet anoth­er con­sumer choice, an enter­tain­ment option for Sun­day morn­ing, and this par­a­digm is true with Friends. We com­plain how much time our Quak­er work takes up. We com­plain about clear­ness com­mit­tees or vision­ing groups that might take up a Sat­ur­day after­noon. A more involved Quak­erism would real­ize that the hour on First Day morn­ing is in many ways the least impor­tant time to our Soci­ety. Younger seek­ers are look­ing for con­nec­tions that are deep­er and that will require time. We can’t build a Soci­ety on the cheap. It’s not mon­ey we need to invest, but our hearts and time.

I recent­ly vis­it­ed a Meet­ing that was set­ting up its first adult reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­gram. When it came time to fig­ure out the for­mat, a weighty Friend declared that it could­n’t take place on the first Sun­day of the month because that was when the finance com­mit­tee met; the sec­ond Sun­day was out because of the mem­ber­ship care com­mit­tee; the third was out because of busi­ness meet­ing and so forth. It turned out that reli­gious edu­ca­tion could be squeezed into one 45-minute slot on the fourth Sun­day of every month. Here was a small strug­gling meet­ing in the mid­dle of an sym­pa­thet­ic urban neigh­bor­hood and they could­n’t spare even an hour a month on reli­gious edu­ca­tion or sub­stan­tive out­reach to new mem­bers. Mod­ern Friends should not exist to meet in committees.

A renewal of discipline and oversight

These are taboo words for many mod­ern Friends. But we’ve tak­en open-hearted tol­er­ance so far that we’ve for­got­ten who we are. What does it mean to be a Quak­er? Seek­ers are look­ing for answers. Friends have been able to pro­vide them with answers in the past: both ways to con­duct one­self in the world and ways to reach the divine. Many of us actu­al­ly yearn for more care, atten­tion and over­sight in our reli­gious lives and more con­nec­tion with others.

A confrontation of our ethnic and cultural bigotries

Too much of Quak­er cul­ture is still root­ed in elit­ist wealthy Philadel­phia Main Line “Wasp” cul­ture. For gen­er­a­tions of Friends, the Soci­ety became an eth­nic group you were born into. Too many Friends still care if your name is “Roberts,” “Jones,” “Lip­pen­cott,” “Thomas,” “Brin­ton.” A num­ber of nineteenth-century Quak­er lead­ers tried to make this a reli­gion of fam­i­ly fief­doms. There was a love of the world and an urge for to be respect­ed by the out­side world (the Epis­co­palians would­n’t let you into the coun­try clubs if you wore plain dress or got too excit­ed about religion).

Today we too often con­fuse the cul­ture of those fam­i­lies with Quak­erism. The most obvi­ous exam­ple to me is the oft-repeated phrase: “Friends don’t believe in pros­e­ly­tiz­ing.” Wrong: we start­ed off as great speak­ers of the Truth, gain­ing num­bers in great quan­ti­ties. It was the old Quak­er fam­i­lies who start­ed fret­ting about new blood in the Soci­ety, for they saw birthright mem­ber­ship as more impor­tant than bap­tism by the Holy Spir­it. We’ve got a lot of bag­gage left over from this era, things we need to re-examine, includ­ing: our will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice Truth-telling in the name of polite­ness; an over-developed intel­lec­tu­al­ism that has become snob­bery against those with­out advanced school­ing; our taboo about being too loud or too “eth­nic” in Meeting.

Note that I haven’t specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned racial diver­si­ty. This is a piece of the work we need to do and I’m hap­py that many Friends are work­ing on it. But I think we’ll all agree that it will take more than a few African Amer­i­cans with grad­u­ate degrees to bring true diver­si­ty. The Lib­er­al branch of Friends spends a lot of time con­grat­u­lat­ing itself on being open, tol­er­ant and self-examining and yet as far as I can tell we’re the least ethnically-diverse branch of Amer­i­can Quak­ers (I’m pret­ty sure, any­one with cor­rob­o­ra­tion?). We need to re-examine and chal­lenge the unwrit­ten norms of Quak­er cul­ture that don’t arise from faith. When we have some­thing to offer besides upper-class lib­er­al­ism, we’ll find we can talk to a much wider selec­tion of seekers.

Can we do it?

Can we do these re-examinations with­out rip­ping our Soci­ety apart? I don’t know. I don’t think the age of Quak­er schisms is over, I just think we have a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline and church poli­ty that let us pre­tend the splits aren’t there. We just self-select our­selves into dif­fer­ent sub-groups. I’m not sure if this can con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly. Every week our Meet­ings for Wor­ship bring togeth­er peo­ple of rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent beliefs and non-beliefs. Instead of wor­ship, we have indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion in a group set­ting, where every­one is free to believe what they want to believe. This isn’t Friends’ style and it’s not sat­is­fy­ing to many of us. I know this state­ment may seem like sac­ri­lege to many Friends who val­ue tol­er­ance above all. But I don’t think I’m the only one who would rather wor­ship God than Silence, who longs for a deep­er reli­gious fel­low­ship than that found in most con­tem­po­rary Meet­ings. Quak­erism will change and Mod­ernism isn’t the end of history.

How open will we all be to this process? How hon­est will we get? Where will our Soci­ety end up? We’re not the only reli­gion in Amer­i­ca that is fac­ing these questions.

Tra­di­tion­al
Evangelicals
1950 – 1975

Prag­mat­ic
Evangelicals
1975 – 2000

Younger
Evangelicals
2000-

Theological
Commitment

 Chris­tian­i­ty
as a ratio­nal worldview		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as ther­a­py Answers needs		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as a com­mu­ni­ty of faith.
Ancient/Reformation
Apolo­get­ics
Style 		Evi­den­tial
Foundational		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as meaning-giver
Experiential
Per­son­al Faith		 Embrace
the metanarrative
Embod­ied apologetic
Com­mu­nal faith
Eccle­sial
Par­a­digm 		Con­stan­tin­ian
Church
Civ­il Religion		 Cul­tur­al­ly
sen­si­tive church
Mar­ket Driven		 Mis­sion­al
Church
Counter cultural
Church
Style 		Neigh­bour­hood
churches
Rural		 Megachu­ruch
Suburban
Mar­ket targeted		 Small
Church
Back to cities
Intercultural
Lead­er­ship
Style 		Pas­tor
centred		 Man­age­r­i­al
Model
CEO		 Team
ministry
Priest­hood of all
Youth
Min­istry 		Church-centred
programs		 Out­reach
Programs
Week­end fun retreats		 Prayer,
Bible Study, Wor­ship, Social Action
Edu­ca­tion
 Sun­day
School
Infor­ma­tion centred		 Tar­get
gen­er­a­tional groups and needs		 Inter­gen­er­a­tional
for­ma­tion in community
Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty
 Keep
the rules		 Pros­per­i­ty
and success		 Authen­tic
embodiment
Wor­ship
 Tra­di­tion­al Con­tem­po­rary Con­ver­gence
Art
 Restrained Art
as illustration		 Incar­na­tion­al
embodiment
Evan­ge­lism
 Mass
evangelism		 Seek­er
Service		 Process
evangelism
Activists
 Begin­nings
of evan­gel­i­cal social action		 Need-driving
social action (divorce groups, drug rehab		 Rebuild
cities and neighborhoods

See also:

On Quak­er Ranter:

  • It Will Be There in Decline Our Entire Lives. There’s a gen­er­a­tion of young Chris­tians dis­il­lu­sioned by mod­ern church insti­tu­tion­al­ism who are writ­ing and blog­ging under the “post-modern” “emer­gent church” labels. Do Friends have any­thing to offer these wea­ried seek­ers except more of the same hashed out institutionalism?
  • Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?, my obser­va­tions from the Novem­ber 2003 “Indie Allies” meet-up.
  • Sodium-Free Friends, a post of mine urg­ing Friends to active­ly engage with our tra­di­tion and not just selec­tive­ly edit out a few words which makes Fox sound like a sev­en­teen cen­tu­ry Thich Nhat Hanh. “We poor humans are look­ing for ways to tran­scend the crap­pi­ness of our war- and consumer-obsessed world and Quak­erism has some­thing to say about that.”
  • Peace and Twenty-Somethings: are the Emer­gent Church seek­ers cre­at­ing the kinds of youth-led inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties that the peace move­ment inspired in the 1970s?

Elsewhere:

  • From Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west comes an emer­gent church” church plant­i­ng project called Sim­ple Church­es (since laid down, link is to archive). I love their intro: “As your peruse the links from this site please rec­og­nize that the Truth reflect­ed in essays are often writ­ten with a ‘prophet­ic edge’, that is sharp, non com­pro­mis­ing and some­times rad­i­cal per­spec­tive. We believe Truth can be received with­out ‘curs­ing the dark­ness’ and encour­age you to reflect upon find­ing the ‘can­dle’ to light, per­son­al­ly, as you apply what you hear the Lord speak­ing to you.”
  • The emer­gent church move­ment hit the New York Times in Feb­ru­ary 2004. Here’s a link to the arti­cle and my thoughts about it.
  • “Ortho­dox Twenty-Somethings,” a great arti­cle from TheOoze (now lost to a site redesign of theirs), and my intro to the arti­cle Want to under­stand us?
  • The blog­ger Punkmon­key talks about what a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith would look like and it sounds a lot like what I dream of: “a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith is a liv­ing breath­ing trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ty of faith will­ing to get messy while reach out to, and bring­ing in, those out­side the cur­rent community.”

Resources on Quaker Plain Dress

July 30, 2001
· Martin Kelley

This is a list of testimonies, guides, books and resources on the Christian testimony of plainness, historical and present. It focuses on the traditionalist Quaker understanding of plainness but it’s not restricted to Quaker notions: you’ll find links and discussions to the related concepts of modest dress and simple dress.

If thou wilt be faith­ful in fol­low­ing that inward wit­ness that has been so long plead­ing with thee, thy sins shall all be for­giv­en and I will be with thee and be thy preserver. 
–William Hobbs, quot­ed in Ham­m’s Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism. (p.3)

Back in the sum­mer of 2002 my wife and I became inter­est­ed in Quak­er tra­di­tions of plain dress (here’s some idea of how we look these days). Try­ing to dis­cern the issues for myself, I found very lit­tle on the inter­net, so here’s my page with what­ev­er tes­ti­monies, tips and links I can find. I’m start­ing to col­lect stories:

Literary Plainness

  • Friends accom­plished in the min­istry were often encour­aged to write jour­nals of their lives in their lat­er years. These jour­nals had a dis­tinct func­tion: they were to serve as edu­ca­tion and wit­ness on how to live a prop­er Quak­er life. As such, they also had a dis­tinct lit­er­ary form, and writ­ers almost always gave an account of their con­ver­sion to plain dress. This usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied a pro­found con­vince­ment expe­ri­ence, where­in the writer felt led to cast aside world­ly fash­ions and van­i­ty. Howard Brin­ton wrote about some of the lit­er­ary forms of the clas­sic Quak­er Jour­nals.

Books on Plainness, a short bibliography

  • The Quak­er: A Study in Cos­tume. By Amelia Gum­mere, 1901 (out of print, gen­er­al­ly avail­able used for around $50). As the sub­ti­tle sug­gests, Gum­mere is crit­i­cal of the “cos­tumes” of plain dress­ing Quak­ers. She argued that Friends need­ed to cast aside the musty pecu­liarisms of the past to embrace the com­ing social­ist world of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. Although unsym­pa­the­ic, this is the most-frequently ref­er­enced book on Quak­er plain dress. To get a sense of the turn-of-the-century Quak­er embrace of moder­ni­ty, I rec­om­mend Jer­ry Frost’s excel­lent talk at the 2001 FGC Gath­er­ing, “Three Twentieth-Century Rev­o­lu­tions.”
  • “Why Do They Dress That Way?” By Stephen Scott, Good Books, Inter­course, PA, 1986, 1997, avail­able from Anabap­tist Book­store. A well-written and sym­pa­thet­ic intro­duc­tion to modern-day reli­gious groups that con­tin­ue to wear plain dress.
  • Quak­er Aes­thet­ics. Sub­ti­tled “Reflec­tions on a Quak­er Eth­ic in Amer­i­can Design and Con­sump­tions,” this is a 2003 col­lec­tion of essays put togeth­er by Emma Jones Lap­san­sky and Anne E. Ver­planck. There’s lots of good stuff in here: see Mary Anne Caton’s “The Aes­thet­ics of Absence: Quak­er Wom­en’s Plain Dress in the Delaware Val­ley, 1790 – 1900” which does an excel­lent job cor­rect­ing some of Gum­mere’s stereo­types. Although I’ve only had time to skim this, Caton seems to be argu­ing that Friends’ def­i­n­i­tions of plain­ness were more open to inter­pre­ta­tion that we com­mon­ly assume and that our stereo­types of a Quak­er uni­form are based in part in a way of colo­nial re-enacting that began around the turn of the century.
  • Meet­ing House and Cout­ing House: Tolles’ book has some ref­er­ence to plain­ness on page 126. Have to look into this.

Posts and websites on Plainness

  • Dis­cus­sion thread on Quak­er Plain­ness on QuakerRoots
  • Short His­to­ry of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends: Most plain dress­ing Friends today are part of the Wilburite/Conservative tra­di­tion. This online essay does an excel­lent job show­ing this branch of Friends and is a good coun­ter­point to his­to­ries that down­play the Wilbu­rite influ­ence in con­tem­po­rary Quakerism.
  • A num­ber of the blogs I list in my guide to Quak­er web­sites fre­quent­ly deal with issues of plain dress. See also: Quak­er Jane.
  • Anabap​tists​.Org and Anabap​tist​books​.com. Through­out most of the last 350 years, Friends have been the most vis­i­ble and well-known plain dressers, but today the Amish, Men­non­ites and oth­er Anabap­tists have most faith­ful­ly car­ried on the tra­di­tion. Quak­ers have a lot to learn from these tra­di­tions. These sites are put togeth­er by a Con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite in Ore­gon. His wife makes plain dress­es, for sale through the bookstore. 

Clothing Sources

Online tutorials

  • My own guide to order­ing Quak­er plain men’s clothes from Gohn Broth­ers.

Visioning the Future of Young Adult Friends (1997)

March 21, 1997
· Martin Kelley

This is a vision­ing essay I wrote in March of 1997, for Friends Insti­tute (FI), the Philadelphia-area Young Adult Friends (YAF, rough­ly 18 – 35 year olds) group I was very involved with at the time. I repost it now because many of these same issues con­tin­u­al­ly come up in Quak­er groups. See the bot­tom for the sto­ry on this essay, includ­ing the con­tro­ver­sy it kicked up.

I think the YAF/FI chal­lenges can be rough­ly divid­ed into three cat­e­gories. They are intro­duced in the next para­graph, then elab­o­rat­ed on in turn. They are:

  • *Account­abil­i­ty*. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and group process with­in YAF/FI has nev­er been very good. We can change that, revi­tal­iz­ing the role of Busi­ness Meet­ing as set­ter of the vision and forum for sub­com­mit­tee feed­back and pol­i­cy setting.
  • *Out­reach*. Who Do We Serve? YAF/FI has done no out­reach to newly-convinced Friends and the plan­ning of events has shown an insen­si­tiv­i­ty to the needs of this group.
  • *Activ­i­ties*. We’ve had a lot of con­fer­ences with mediocre pro­grams that have lit­tle spir­i­tu­al or Quak­er focus. We can set year­ly themes as a group in advance, giv­ing Steer­ing Com­mit­tee guid­ance for par­tic­u­lar programs.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

PYM/FI has not been an orga­ni­za­tion with good com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, group process or account­abil­i­ty. Busi­ness meet­ings have been thought of as a nec­es­sary and begrudged task where half the par­tic­i­pants fall asleep.

Busi­ness Meet­ings should have clear, advance agen­da. The YAF clerk should call for agen­da items by email two weeks before the meet­ing (phon­ing promi­nent mem­bers who don’t have access to email), and send out a draft agen­da the week before. Basic agen­da items should include vari­a­tion on the fol­low­ing (my facil­i­ta­tion expe­ri­ence comes from Quaker-inspired but not Quak­er process, so some of these tasks might need to be turned into Quakerese):

  • silent wor­ship;
  • agen­da review;
  • reports from all sub­com­mit­tees (treasurer’s report, steer­ing com­mit­tee report, dis­tri­b­u­tion com­mit­tee report, email/web report);
  • two sub­stan­tive issues;
  • set­ting next date;
  • eval­u­a­tion of meeting;

All reports should be writ­ten (ide­al­ly dis­trib­uted by email before­hand and with a dozen copies at the meet­ing) and should include activ­i­ty, fis­cal activ­i­ty, pol­i­cy ques­tions need­ing busi­ness meet­ing input, approval of future tasks. Every deci­sion should have spe­cif­ic peo­ple as liaisons for follow-up, and part of the next Busi­ness Meet­ing should be review­ing progress on these tasks.

OUTREACH: WHO DO WE SERVE?

I have a very large con­cern that the offi­cial YAF/FI orga­ni­za­tion does not do exten­sive out­reach and that it hasn’t always been sen­si­tive to the needs of all YAFs.

As a con­vinced Friend who first ven­tured forth to a Quak­er Meet­ing at age 20, I spent years look­ing for YAFs and not find­ing them. The only out­reach that YAF/FI does is to grad­u­at­ing Young Friends (the high school pro­gram). Our out­reach to new­ly con­vince Friends has been nonexistent.

Oth­er under­rep­re­sent­ed YAFs: the Cen­tral Phi­la. MM group, thirty-something YAFs, YAFs of col­or, les/bi/gay YAFs (our Pres­i­dent Day’s gath­er­ing con­flicts with the pop­u­lar mid-winter FLGC gath­er­ing, an unfor­tu­nate mes­sage we’re send­ing), YAFs with children.

Some of the out­reach chal­lenges for YAF/FI include:

  • Cliquish­ness. Many plugged-in YAFs know each oth­er from high school days and it can be intim­i­dat­ing to jump into such a group. There’s also a reluc­tance to review assump­tions brought down from the Young Friends (high school) program;
  • The poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion in YAF/FI keeps many dis­en­fran­chised YAFs from hav­ing a forum in which to express their con­cerns and needs. We can reach out to under-represented YAFs and ask them what a age-fellowship could pro­vide them;
  • Single-type events: the week­end gath­er­ings keep away many YAFs with respon­si­bil­i­ty. The tenor of YAF/FI events often keeps away the more mature YAFs. I doubt one type of event could sat­is­fy all types of YAFs. We should be open to sup­port the lead­er­ship of dis­en­fran­chised YAFs by pro­vid­ing them the mon­ey, resources and insti­tu­tion­al sup­port to address their com­mu­ni­ties’ need (keep­ing in mind YAF events should be open to all).

ACTIVITIES

YAF events have had their prob­lems. The­mat­i­cal­ly, they usu­al­ly have not had Quak­er themes, they have not been geared toward spir­i­tu­al growth (usu­al­ly First Day’s Meet­ing for Wor­ship is the only spir­i­tu­al com­po­nent). They have fol­lowed the pat­terns of Young Friends events (3 day gath­er­ings), even though this for­mat excludes many (most?) YAFs.

We could eas­i­ly have more of a mix of events. Some could be the tra­di­tion­al week­end events, some could be day events, like the suc­cess­ful apple-picking expe­di­tion and Swarth­more gath­er­ing a few years ago orga­nized by Friends Center-employed YAFs.

As far as I’ve known, there has nev­er been any Busi­ness Meet­ing brain­storm­ing for themes, and each event has been orga­nized in an ad hoc man­ner by a small group of peo­ple with­out feed­back from the gen­er­al YAF pop­u­la­tion. This is part­ly a result of the need for con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers to have a con­fer­ence planned long in advance.

I pro­pose that we set Year-Long Themes, a process that some groups employ to inter­est­ing effect. In the fall, there could be a Busi­ness Meet­ing to decide the next cal­en­dar year’s theme; Steer­ing Com­mit­tee could then orga­nize all of the pro­gram­mat­ic events around this top­ic. This would give large YAF input into the selec­tion process and also pro­vide an inter­est­ing uni­ty to top­ics. Each top­ic should be broad enough to allow for an inter­est­ing mix of pro­grams and each top­ic should have a spe­cif­ic Quak­er focus. One ped­a­gog­i­cal moti­va­tion behind these events should be to intro­duce and rein­force Friends’ his­to­ry and culture.

Themes that I’d love to see:

  • Spir­i­tu­al and his­tor­i­cal roots of Quak­erism. (Bec­ca Grunko, Mar­garet Hope Bacon, Peg­gy Mor­sheck might be good resource peo­ple). Events could include a look at the fiery birth of Quak­erism and an his­tor­i­cal explo­ration of Friends Insti­tute itself (found­ed in the 1880s, FI played a role in uni­fy­ing the Hicksite/Orthodox schism in PYM and pro­vid­ed key assis­tance to the ear­ly AFSC; Gen­nyfer Dav­en­port is hot on the trail of this history!).
  • Quak­ers in the world. a look at vol­un­teerism, and wit­ness and min­istry. An obvi­ous event would be to par­tic­i­pate in a week- or weekend-long PYM workcamp.
  • Neat Quak­er fig­ures (maybe even neat PYM fig­ures!). Con­fer­ences that look at the his­to­ry of folks like John Wool­man, William Penn, Lucre­tia Mott, per­haps cur­rent fig­ures like the Willoughby’s.
  • Quak­er Lifestyle and the Tes­ti­monies. Egads, we could read Faith and Prac­tice! For those of you who haven’t, it’s real­ly an inter­est­ing book. Not all events should be the­mat­ic, of course. The ear­ly Decem­ber Christ­mas gath­er­ing doesn’t need to be; nei­ther does some of the day long events (i.e., the apple-picking expe­di­tion was a fun theme in itelf!).

This essay writ­ten Third Month 21, 1997 by Mar­tin Kelley

 

The Sto­ry of this essay (writ­ten fall of 2003)

I wrote for Friends Insti­tute, the Philadelphia-area young adult Friends group, back in March of 1997. I was very involved with the group at the time, serv­ing for­mal­ly as trea­sur­er and web­mas­ter and infor­mal­ly as the de-facto out­reach coor­di­na­tor. We had a vision­ing retreat com­ing up in a few months and I wrote this as a strengths / weak­ness­es / oppor­tu­ni­ties piece to get the ideas rolling. I thought we had some work to do around the issues of cliquish­ness, and I also thought we could become more thought­ful and spiritually-focused but I tried to find a sen­si­tive way to talk about this issues.

I got a lot of reac­tions to this essay. Some peo­ple real­ly real­ly loved it, espe­cial­ly those out­side the Philadel­phia insid­ers group: “Thanks for the insight­ful analy­sis! You real­ly did a won­der­ful job of objec­tive­ly explain­ing the frus­tra­tions that some PYM YAF’s (myself includ­ed) have with FI” and “I was so inspired by your essay ‘YAF vision for future’ that we are hop­ing bring it for­ward and cir­cu­late it here in among Aus­tralian YAF.”

But some of the insid­ers felt chal­lenged. One did­n’t even like me talk­ing about cliques: “I think that as a group we have all been aware for some time of the prob­lems plagu­ing Friends Insti­tute… I don’t like the word clique because it makes me think of an exclu­sion­ary snob­bish group of peo­ple that looks down on oth­ers.” (of course this was my point).

As if to prove my analy­sis cor­rect, the insid­ers imme­di­ate­ly start­ed talk­ing amongst them­selves. With­in two weeks of email­ing this essay, both of my for­mal posi­tions in the orga­ni­za­tion were being chal­lenged. One insid­er wrote a request to the year­ly meet­ing to set up a com­pet­ing Friends Insti­tute web­site; oth­ers start­ed won­der­ing aloud whether it prop­er for an atten­der to be Friends Insti­tute trea­sur­er. No one ever ques­tioned my ded­i­ca­tion, hon­esty and good work. I was more active­ly involved in Quak­erism and my meet­ing than most of the birthright mem­bers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in FI, and I was the most con­sci­en­tious trea­sur­er and web­mas­ter the group ever had. My essay had obvi­ous­ly hit a nerve and the wag­ons were cir­cling in against the out­sider threat. Real­iz­ing just how ingrained these issues were and to what extent the insid­ers would go to pro­tect their pow­er, I even­tu­al­ly left Friends Insti­tute to focus again on my month­ly meet­ing’s thriv­ing twenty- and thirty-something scene.

The essay con­tin­ued to have a life of its own. The May 1997 vision­ing retreat focused on noth­ing at all and sub­se­quent busi­ness meet­ings dropped to a hand­ful of peo­ple. But the issues of the high-school focus, cliquish­ness, and unfriend­li­ness to new­com­ers came to the fore­front again a few months lat­er, after some sex­u­al assaults took place in the young adult com­mu­ni­ty. A con­fer­ence on “sex­u­al bound­aries” pro­duced an epis­tle that hit some of the same top­ics as my vision­ing essay:

We iden­ti­fied a num­ber of habits and issues in our young adult com­mu­ni­ty that tend to bring up dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. For exam­ple, some of our sex­u­al bound­aries car­ry over from our expe­ri­ence as high-school aged Young Friends… New­com­ers become “fresh meat” for peo­ple who come to gath­er­ings look­ing to find quick con­nec­tions… Peo­ple get lost espe­cial­ly when we have larg­er gath­er­ings, and we don’t watch out for each other.

Friends Insti­tute drift­ed for a few years. By the sum­mer of 2000, a con­vince Friend became clerk and tried to revive the group. She found my essay and emailed me: “I’ve been look­ing over the FI archives and am impressed by your con­tri­bu­tion. Do you have any advice, sug­ges­tions, or time to become active again in FI?” Sad to say this attempt to revive Friends Insti­tute also had a lot of problems.

I repost this essay here in 2003 part­ly to have a ongo­ing record of my Quak­er writ­ings here on my web­site. But I sus­pect these same issues con­tin­ue in var­i­ous young adult friends groups. Per­haps some­one else can see this essay and be inspired, but a warn­ing that I’ve seen these dynam­ics in many dif­fer­ent young adult friends groups and seri­ous­ly won­der whether reform or revival is impossible.
[/box]