Tag Archives ⇒ quakers

Gohn Brothers, broadfalls, & men’s plain dress

July 26, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A few years ago I felt led to take up the ancient Quak­er tes­ti­mo­ny of plain dress­ing. I’ve spo­ken else­where about my moti­va­tions but I want to give a lit­tle prac­ti­cal advice to oth­er men who have heard or even got­ten ahold of the “Gohn Bros.” cat­a­log but don’t know just what to order. I cer­tain­ly am not sanc­tion­ing a uni­form for plain dress, I sim­ply want to give those so inclined an idea of how to start.

Just as back­ground: I’m a thirty-something Philadel­phia native, brought up with­out any for­mal reli­gion in a Philly sub­urb. I first start­ed approach­ing Quak­ers (Friends) back in col­lege. In my ear­ly twen­ties, I start­ed work­ing at a collectively-run paci­fist book pub­lish­ing house and liv­ing in what was then the sort of down­scale hip­ster neigh­bor­hood of West Philadel­phia. In 2002 I attend­ed a week-long work­shop that had some plain dress­ing Friends and felt the nudge to exper­i­ment. I’ve left Philadel­phia to become a res­i­dent of a small farm­ing town in South Jer­sey (what love will do) but I still spend a lot of time in the city and in decid­ed­ly urban set­tings. I don’t aim to be his­tor­i­cal­ly cor­rect with my plain dress and I don’t want to sim­ply “look like an Amish” person.

Gohn Broth­ers is a store in Indi­ana that sells “Amish and Plain Cloth­ing.” It is cur­rent­ly cel­e­brat­ing it’s 100th year in busi­ness. It’s known for it’s sim­ple print cat­a­log, which is updat­ed every few months. It does not have a web­site. You should get a copy of the cat­a­log to get cur­rent cloth­ing and ship­ping prices. It’s address is:

PO Box 1110, 105 S. Main St., Mid­dle­bury IN 46540
Phone: (574) 825‑2400. Toll-free: 800 – 595-0031

When I first start­ed “going plain,” I sim­ply wore reg­u­lar dark pants with sus­penders found at a gener­ic depart­ment store. It was impor­tant to me that I was wear­ing clothes I already had, and I want­ed to be “Sears Plain,” by which I meant I did­n’t want to go to any extremes to find plain cloth­ing. When I first bought a pair of broad­falls (the zip­per­less pants favored by plain men), I did­n’t wear them for months. Slow­ly I start­ed start­ed wear­ing them out and feel­ing more at ease in them. They were made of rugged den­im, wore well and were quite comfortable.
As my pre-plain clothes have worn out, I’ve start­ed replac­ing them with Gohn Brothers-produced broad­falls. They’re just as inex­pen­sive as any cheaply-made jeans from Old Navy but they hold up and are pre­sum­ably made in Indi­ana by seam­stress­es earn­ing a decent wage.

Broad­falls

Gohn Broth­ers offers many dif­fer­ent weights and fab­rics for their broad­fall pants, num­ber­ing them for ease of order­ing. I have bought two pair, both of which I like:

  • #66: 10 oz. sol­id grey den­im, 100% cot­ton: $22.98
  • #92: 100% cot­ton blue jean den­im (11 oz.): $24.98

Coats

Gohn Broth­ers pro­duces a num­ber of coats, also called “over­shirts.” In these pur­chas­es I have tend­ed to be more dis­tinct­ly Quak­er. I have two Coats:

  • #225: 9oz. Poly, cot­ton. $41.98 at the time of this post. I have opt­ed for a few alter­ations: A “reg­u­lar cut” for $3.00, a “standup col­lar” for $2.00, “but­ton holes with met­al but­tons” for $3.00 and a “quilt­ed lin­ing” for $5.00.
  • #125 9 oz. Black drill den­im. Poly/cotton. Unlined Jack­et, black drill. Alter­ations: “standup col­lar” for $2.00. (for this I had the default “snaps” in place of but­tons and the default “full cut”).

I’ve pref­ered the spe­cial­ized “reg­u­lar cut” coat over the stan­dard “full cut.” The reg­u­lar cut feels more like the stan­dard suit jack­et that most pro­fes­sion­al men wear to work, while the full cut felt more like a wind-breaker. I also pre­fer the but­tons, as the snaps con­tributed to the wind-breaker feel.

Sus­penders

Also known as “braces,” all you need are dark broad­falls and sus­penders to real­ly look “plain” to the world. “Tabbed” sus­penders fit over but­tons in your pants, while “clip-on’s” use alli­ga­tor clips to fas­ten onto stan­dard pants. Tabbed look bet­ter but I can’t help think­ing of Michael Dou­glass in “Wall Street”; a lot of ordi­nary anabapist men I see have clip-on’s.

I’ve heard the sto­ry that there’s a good-hearted rib­bing between the Iowa and North Car­oli­na Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers about whether thin or wide sus­penders is more plain. I’ve start­ed to throw my lot in with Iowa and have got­ten the three-quarter inch sus­penders. (Fash­ion­istas will remem­ber that thin sus­penders were pop­u­lar with a cer­tain kind of high school geek in the mid-1980s – think Cameron in Fer­ris Beuler’s Day Off; fair dis­clo­sure requires that I admit that I wore them around Chel­tenham High). Again Gohn Brothers:

  • #550T 3/4″ tab. Black: $7.98
  • #552C 3/4″ clip. Black: $6.98

Hats

While Gohn Broth­ers does hats, I haven’t bought any of theirs. Instead I’ve gone for the Tilley T3 hat. I’m not com­plete hap­py with this, as Tilley’s seem to be asso­ci­at­ed with a cer­tain kind of clue­less trav­el­er, but I’ve noticed that there are a lot of men in my year­ly meet­ing who wear them, I think as an uncon­scious nod toward plain­ness. The Tilley is also friend­lier to bike com­muters: its tie-down strings wrap eas­i­ly around bike han­dle­bars, and it’s very crush­able and washable.

Not a Uniform

Again, let me stress: I am not try­ing to spec­i­fy a mod­ern plain dress uni­form. The only time you should adopt plain dress is when you’re feel­ing active­ly led by it. Some­times that lead­ing is an intu­tion, which is fine, but you need to fol­low it on your own terms. My prac­tice has evolved over time and yours should too. I’ve become more plain since I start­ed this wit­ness sim­ply because I had to replace worn clothes and could­n’t see spend­ing more mon­ey for shod­di­er clothes than I could get at Gohn Broth­ers. You don’t need to get broad­falls to be “plain,” as “plain­ness” is as much a state of mind and an atti­tude toward God and your spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty as it a set of clothes. I think of it now as a spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline, one very fit­ting for our con­sumeris­tic times.

I’d love to hear from oth­ers about their plain dressing.

We Quakers should be cooler than the Sweat Lodge

July 5, 2004
· Martin Kelley

I have just come back from a “Meet­ing for Lis­ten­ing for Sweat Lodge Con­cerns,” described as “an oppor­tu­ni­ty for per­sons to express their feel­ings in a wor­ship­ful man­ner about the can­cel­la­tion of the FGC Gath­er­ing sweat lodge work­shop this year.” Non-Quakers read­ing this blog might be sur­prised to hear that Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence holds sweat lodges, but it has and they’ve been increas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial. This year’s work­shop was can­celled after FGC received a very strong­ly word­ed com­plaint from the Wampanoag Native Amer­i­can tribe. Today’s meet­ing intend­ed to lis­ten to the feel­ings and con­cerns of all FGC Friends involved and was clerked by the very-able Arthur Larrabee. There was pow­er­ful min­istry, some pre­dictable “min­istry” and one stun­ning mes­sage from a white Friend who dis­missed the very exis­tance of racism in the world (it’s just a illu­sion, the peo­ple respon­si­ble for it are those who per­ceive it).

I’ve had my own run-in’s with the sweat lodge, most unfor­get­tably when I was the co-planning clerk of the 2002 Adult Young Friends pro­gram at FGC (a few of us thought it was inap­pro­pri­ate to trans­fer a por­tion of the rather small AYF bud­get to the sweat lodge work­shop, a request made with the argu­ment that so many high-school and twenty-something Friends were attend­ing it). But I find myself increas­ing­ly uncon­cerned about the lodge. It’s clear to me now that it part of anoth­er tra­di­tion than I am. It is not the kind of Quak­er I am. The ques­tion remain­ing is whether an orga­ni­za­tion that will spon­sor it is a dif­fer­ent tradition.

How did Lib­er­al Friends get to the place where most our our younger mem­bers con­sid­er the sweat lodge cer­e­mo­ny to be the high point of their Quak­er expe­ri­ence? The sweat lodge has giv­en a gen­er­a­tion of younger Friends an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mune with the divine in a way that their meet­ings do not. It has giv­en them men­tor­ship and lead­er­ship expe­ri­ences which they do not receive from the old­er Friends estab­lish­ment. It has giv­en them a sense of iden­ti­ty and pur­pose which they don’t get from their meet­ing “com­mu­ni­ty.”

I don’t care about ban­ning the work­shop. That does­n’t address the real prob­lems. I want to get to the point where younger Friends look at the sweat and won­der why they’d want to spend a week with some  white Quak­er guy who won­ders aloud in pub­lic whether he’s “a Quak­er or an Indi­an” (could we have a third choice?). I’ve always thought this was just rather embar­rass­ing.  I want the sweat lodge to with­er away in recog­ni­tion of it’s inher­ent ridicu­lous­ness. I want younger Friends to get a taste of the divine love and char­i­ty that Friends have found for 350 years. We’re sim­ply cool­er than the sweat lodge.

* * * *

And what real­ly is the sweat lodge all about? I don’t real­ly buy the cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion cri­tique (the offi­cial par­ty line for can­cel­ing it argues that it’s racist). Read founder George Price’s Friends Jour­nal arti­cle on the sweat lodge and you’ll see that he’s part of a long-standing tra­di­tion. For two hun­dred years, Native Amer­i­cans have been used as myth­ic cov­er for thin­ly dis­guised European-American philoso­phies. The Boston pro­test­ers who staged the famous tea par­ty all dressed up as Indi­ans, play­ing out an emerg­ing mythol­o­gy of the Amer­i­can rebels as spir­i­tu­al heirs to Indi­ans (long dri­ven out of the Boston area by that time). In 1826, James Fen­i­more Coop­er turned that myth into one of the first pieces of clas­sic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture with a sto­ry about the “Last” of the Mohi­cans. At the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the new boy scout move­ment claimed that their fit­ness and social­iza­tion sys­tem was real­ly a re-application of Native Amer­i­can train­ing and ini­ti­a­tion rites. Quak­ers got into the game too: the South Jer­sey and Bucks Coun­ty sum­mer camps they found­ed in the nineteen-teens were full of Native Amer­i­can motifs, with cab­ins and lakes named after dif­fer­ent tribes and the chil­dren encour­aged to play along.

Set in this con­text, George Price is clear­ly just the lat­est white guy to claim that only the spir­it of pur­er Native Amer­i­cans will save us from our Old World Euro­pean stodgi­ness. Yes, it’s appro­pri­a­tion I guess, but it’s so trans­par­ent and clas­si­cal­ly Amer­i­can that our favorite song “Yan­kee Doo­dle” is a British wartime send-up of the impulse. We’ve been stick­ing feath­ers in our caps since forever.

In the Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, it’s clear the Quak­er sweat lodge owes more to the Euro­pean psy­chother­a­py of Karl Jung than Chief Ock­an­ick­on. It’s all about “lim­i­nal­i­ty” and ini­ti­a­tion into myth­ic arche­types, fea­tur­ing cribbed lan­guage from Vic­tor Turn­er, the anthro­pol­o­gist who was very pop­u­lar cir­ca 1974. Price is clear but nev­er explic­it about his work: his sweat lodge is Jun­gian psy­chol­o­gy over­laid onto the out­ward form of a Native Amer­i­can sweat­lodge. In ret­ro­spect it’s no sur­prise that a birthright Philadel­phia Friend in a tired year­ly meet­ing would try to com­bine trendy Euro­pean pop psy­chol­o­gy with Quak­er sum­mer camp them­ing. What is a sur­prise (or should be a sur­prise) is that Friends would spon­sor and pub­lish arti­cles about a “Quak­er Sweat Lodges” with­out chal­leng­ing the author to spell out the Quak­er con­tri­bu­tion to a pro­grammed rit­u­al con­duct­ed in a con­se­crat­ed teepee steeplehouse.

(Push the influ­ences a lit­tle more, and you’ll find that Vic­tor Turn­er’s anthro­po­log­i­cal find­ings among obscure African tribes arguably owes as much to his Catholi­cism than it does the facts on the ground. More than one Quak­er wit has com­pared the sweat lodge to Catholic mass; well: Turn­er’s your miss­ing philo­soph­i­cal link.)

* * * *

Yes­ter­day I had some good con­ver­sa­tion about gen­er­a­tional issues in Quak­erism. I’m cer­tain­ly not the only thirty-something that feels invis­i­ble in the bull­doz­er of baby boomer assump­tions about our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. I’m also not the only one get­ting to the point where we’re just going to be Quak­er despite the Quak­er insti­tu­tions and cul­ture. I think the ques­tion we’re all grap­pling with now is how we relate to the insti­tu­tions that ignore us and dis­miss our cries of alarm for what we Friends have become.

Quaker books and self-defeating bargain hunting

May 20, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Got an email in the book­store today from a poten­tial cus­tomer who chose Ama­zon over my employ­er Quaker­books, a niche inde­pen­dent book­store, because of their cheap cheap prices. I got a bit inspired by my reply, includ­ed here.

Sub­ject: book prices

I real­ly want­ed to buy the below book [Why Grace is True], but I checked ama­zon. com. Their prices: new is $16.07, or used from $5.94. Your price is $22.95.

I know how hard it is to be com­pet­i­tive, but I want­ed to let you know that peo­ple do com­par­i­son shop.

Bless­ings, C. 

Dear Friend,

Yes, Ama­zon, Wal­mart and the rest of the glob­al media/distribution jug­ger­naut will always be able to under­price us on the main­stream books.

What we offer is a much wider selec­tion of Quak­er books than any­one else. We don’t just have the more watered-down books aimed at the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion (most­ly with the unsaid premise “what you can learn from those folksy Quak­ers”), but a whole list of books about Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion, Quak­er vision, Quak­er belief, Quak­er his­to­ry and what it means to be a Quak­er today. We don’t just have the Harper­Collins titles, but those from Quak­er pub­lish­ers that Ama­zon’s nev­er heard of. We eas­i­ly beat Ama­zon in selec­tion and we cer­tain­ly match them in speed and cus­tomer service.

We give a more ground­ed con­text to what these books mean to Friends – the reviews on our site’s If Grace is True are writ­ten by Friends for Friends. We try to know our books. When peo­ple call us up we’ll help with their selec­tion. When they’re try­ing to decide, we’ll read the table of con­tents to them. Quak­er pub­lish­ers and book­sellers talk about the “min­istry of the writ­ten word,” which means remem­ber­ing that there’s a pur­pose behind this book­selling. These books aren’t com­modi­ties, they aren’t units, they’re not ISBN num­bers to be packed and shipped. We’d rather not sell a book than sell a book some­one would­n’t val­ue (which is why we’ll include neg­a­tive book descrip­tions & comments).

Pay­ing a few extra dol­lars to sup­port us means your also sup­port­ing the out­reach and Quak­er self-identity our cat­a­log pro­vides for many Friends. Plus you can be assured our employ­ees get liv­ing wages and health care (for which I’m per­son­al­ly thankful).

So yes, cus­tomers can save a few bucks at Ama­zon. Always will be able to. But your pur­chas­ing deci­sions are also deci­sions about who you sup­port and what you val­ue. There’s a price to dis­tinc­tive­ness, whether it’s cul­tur­al, reli­gious, region­al, or culi­nary. By buy­ing from Ama­zon you’re financ­ing a Wall Street-run com­mod­i­ty sell­er that does­n’t give a jot about Quak­erism or even whether grace might be true. If enough Friends choose price over con­tent, then Quak­er book­stores and pub­lish­ers will dis­ap­pear, our only rep­re­sen­ta­tion being main­stream books sold at gener­ic shops. That will cost us a lot more than sev­en bucks.

Well, I hope you enjoy the book. I’m sure Ama­zon appre­ci­ates your patronage.

In friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kelley

Quaker publications meeting (QUIP) in Indiana

April 28, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions, bet­ter known as “QUIP,” is a col­lec­tion of 50 Quak­er pub­lish­ers, book­sellers and authors com­mit­ted to the “min­istry of the writ­ten word.” I often think of QUIP as a sup­port group of sorts for those of us who real­ly believe that pub­lish­ing can make a dif­fer­ence. It’s also one of those places where dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends come togeth­er to work and tell sto­ries. QUIP ses­sions strike a nice bal­ance between work and unstruc­tured time. It has its own nice cul­ture of friend­li­ness and coop­er­a­tion that are the real rea­son many of us go every year.

Quakers Uniting in Publications annual meeting in Richmond Indiana 2004.
Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions annu­al meet­ing in Rich­mond Indi­ana 2004.
The theme of the 2004 annu­al ses­sion was “New Ways to Reach Our Mar­kets in a Chang­ing World” and our guest pre­sen­ters were pub­li­cists Doug and Kate Ban­dos of KSB Pro­mo­tions: http://​www​.ksbpro​mo​tions​.com
The Evans House, built 1855: Gur­neyite high style back in the day… It’s now the home of the Quak­er Hill Con­fer­ence Cen­ter, where we met. The Gur­neyites evolved into Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and I had some good con­ver­sa­tions with Friends about some of the vision­ing FUM is doing. Pret­ty inter­est­ing stuff, like many Friends they too are try­ing to fig­ure out how to wres­tle more ful­ly with Quak­er tradition. 
Our hosts were the staff of “Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. The FUM cam­pus in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, is very pret­ty in April, with flow­ers and the crabap­ple trees 
Even pret­tier is the refor­ested trail down to the White­wa­ter Riv­er Falls. 
We wouldn’t be Quak­ers if we didn’t have lots of meet­ings. Left: QUIP clerks Lucy Dun­can, Bar­bara Mays, Eliz­a­beth Cave. 
Philip Arnold from the Quak­er Book­shop in Lon­don, Ann Rap­er of North Car­olina YM (FUM) pub­li­ca­tions com­mit­tee and Liz Yeats, a for­mer FGC employ­ee and long­time QUIP stal­wart (Ann and Liz are also both board mem­bers of “Friends Journal). 
QUIP meet­ings are real­ly all about the con­ver­sa­tions in between ses­sions. Bar­bara Mays of Friends Unit­ed Press talks with the new FUM web­mas­ter Cur­tis Her­mann (who lat­er showed me the secret FUM cof­fee sup­ply and chat­ted about col­lar­less shirt vendors). 
Mar­jorie Ewbank holds up QUIP’s “Quak­er Tapestry”:http://www.Quaker-tapestry.co.uk pan­el, which should be fin­ished by the end of the century. 
Oblig­a­tory pic­ture of Simon, some­times referred to as the “QUIP baby“since his par­ents met at an annu­al QUIP meeting. 
A field trip to the Levi Cof­fin house in Foun­tain City. Run entire­ly by very ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers, it’s the only home still stand­ing of Levi and Catharine Cof­fin, Friends who helped thou­sands of escaped slaves get to Cana­da through the Under­ground Railroad. 
How many cam­eras does it take to make a group shot? That’s Trish Carn (the UK’s Quak­er Month­ly), Antho­ny Manousos (West­ern US’s Friends Bul­letin) and our very gra­cious photo-taker (who I think might be Ann’s son?). 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing char­ac­ter par excel­lence. Sal­ly spent part of the week­end chal­leng­ing me about my plain dress­ing — okay, polite­ly ask­ing me a ques­tion and then fol­low­ing up my answer with her opin­ions. Sal­ly also brought along a par­o­dy she once put togeth­er, a fly­er for an orga­ni­za­tion called some­thing like “The Soci­ety of Sen­ti­men­tal Friends” for all those who want to be Quak­er because their great great grand­par­ents were Quak­er and they like antiques like old musty meetinghouses. 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (2)
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (3)
Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz in front of the falls. I think Friends Gen­eral Con­fer­ence should put in a nature trail near our office too (I vote for bull­doz­ing the “Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Center”). 

The Passion of Uncomfortable Orthodoxies: Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”

February 24, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Mel Gib­son’s movie _The Pas­sion of Christ_ is a chal­lenge for many mod­ern Quak­ers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suf­fer­ing of the ear­ly Friends have been dumbed-down to feel-good clich­es. Can the debate on this movie help us return to that uncom­fort­able place where we can acknowl­edge the com­plex­i­ties of being fer­vent­ly reli­gious in a world haunt­ed by past sins and still in need of con­vic­tion and comfort?

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Testimonies for twentieth-first century: a Testimony Against “Community”

February 1, 2004
· Martin Kelley

I pro­pose a lit­tle amend­ment to the mod­ern Quak­er tes­ti­monies. I think it’s time for a mora­to­ri­um of the word “com­mu­ni­ty” and the phras­es “faith com­mu­ni­ty” and “com­mu­ni­ty of faith.” Through overuse, we Friends have stretched this phrase past its elas­tic­i­ty point and it’s snapped. It’s become a mean­ing­less, abstract term used to dis­guise the fact that we’ve become afraid to artic­u­late a shared faith. A recent year­ly meet­ing newslet­ter used the word “com­mu­ni­ty” 27 times but the word “God” only sev­en: what does it mean when a reli­gious body stops talk­ing about God?

The “tes­ti­mo­ny of com­mu­ni­ty” recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed its fifti­eth anniver­sary. It was the cen­ter­piece of the new-and-improved tes­ti­monies Howard Brin­ton unveiled back in the 1950s in his Friends for 300 Years (as far as I know no one ele­vat­ed it to a tes­ti­mo­ny before him). Born into a well-known Quak­er fam­i­ly, he mar­ried into an even more well-known fam­i­ly. From the cra­dle Howard and his wife Anna were Quak­er aris­toc­ra­cy. As they trav­eled the geo­graph­ic and the­o­log­i­cal spec­trum of Friends, their pedi­gree earned them wel­come and recog­ni­tion every­where they went. Per­haps not sur­pris­ing­ly, Howard grew up to think that the only impor­tant cri­te­ria for mem­ber­ship in a Quak­er meet­ing is one’s com­fort lev­el with the oth­er mem­bers. “The test of mem­ber­ship is not a par­tic­u­lar kind of reli­gious expe­ri­ence, nor accep­tance of any par­tic­u­lar reli­gious, social or eco­nom­ic creed,” but instead one’s “com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with the meet­ing com­mu­ni­ty.” ( Friends for 300 Years page 127).

So what is “com­pat­i­bil­i­ty”? It often boils down to being the right “kind” of Quak­er, with the right sort of behav­ior and val­ues. At most Quak­er meet­ings, it means being exceed­ing­ly polite, white, upper-middle class, polit­i­cal­ly lib­er­al, well-educated, qui­et in con­ver­sa­tion, and devoid of strong opin­ions about any­thing involv­ing the meet­ing. Quak­ers are a homoge­nous bunch and it’s not coin­ci­dence: for many of us, it’s become a place to find peo­ple who think like us.

But the desire to fit in cre­ates its own inse­cu­ri­ty issues. I was in a small “break­out” group at a meet­ing retreat a few years ago where six of us shared our feel­ings about the meet­ing. Most of these Friends had been mem­bers for years, yet every sin­gle one of them con­fid­ed that they did­n’t think they real­ly belonged. They were too loud, too col­or­ful, too eth­nic, maybe sim­ply too too for Friends. They all judged them­selves against some image of the ide­al Quak­er – per­haps the ghost of Howard Brin­ton. We rein our­selves in, stop our­selves from say­ing too much.

This phe­nom­e­non has almost com­plete­ly end­ed the sort of prophet­ic min­istry once com­mon to Friends, where­by a min­is­ter would chal­lenge Friends to renew their faith and clean up their act. Today, as one per­son recent­ly wrote, mod­ern Quak­ers often act as if avoid­ance of con­tro­ver­sy is at the cen­ter of our reli­gion. That makes sense if “com­pat­i­bil­i­ty” is our test for mem­ber­ship and “com­mu­ni­ty” our only stat­ed goal. While Friends love to claim the great eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry min­is­ter John Wool­man, he would most like­ly get a cold shoul­der in most Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es today. His reli­gious moti­va­tion and lan­guage, cou­pled with his some­times eccen­tric pub­lic wit­ness and his overt call to reli­gious reform would make him very incom­pat­i­ble indeed. Some­times we need to name the ways we aren’t fol­low­ing the Light: for Friends, Christ is not just com­forter, but judger and con­dem­n­er as well. Heavy stuff, per­haps, but nec­es­sary. And near-impossible when a com­fy and non-challenging com­mu­ni­ty is our pri­ma­ry mission.

Don’t get me wrong. I like com­mu­ni­ty. I like much of the non-religious cul­ture of Friends: the potlucks, the do-it-yourself approach to music and learn­ing, our curi­ousi­ty about oth­er reli­gious tra­di­tions. And I like the open­ness and tol­er­ance that is the hall­mark of mod­ern lib­er­al­ism in gen­er­al and lib­er­al Quak­erism in par­tic­u­lar. I’m glad we’re Queer friend­ly and glad we don’t get off on tan­gents like who mar­ries who (the far big­ger issue is the sor­ry state of our meet­ings’ over­sight of mar­riages, but that’s for anoth­er time). And for all my rib­bing of Howard Brin­ton, I agree with him that we should be care­ful of the­o­log­i­cal lit­mus tests for mem­ber­ship. I under­stand where he was com­ing from. All that said, com­mu­ni­ty for its own sake can’t be the glue that holds a reli­gious body together.

So my Tes­ti­mo­ny Against “Com­mu­ni­ty” is not a rejec­tion of the idea of com­mu­ni­ty, but rather a call to put it into con­text. “Com­mu­ni­ty” is not the goal of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Obe­di­ence to God is. We build our insti­tu­tions to help us gath­er as a great peo­ple who togeth­er can dis­cern the will of God and fol­low it through what­ev­er hard­ships the world throws our way.

Plen­ty of peo­ple know this. Last week I asked the author of one of the arti­cles in the year­ly meet­ing newslet­ter why he had used “com­mu­ni­ty” twice but “God” not at all. He said he per­son­al­ly sub­sti­tutes “body of Christ” every­time he writes or reads “com­mu­ni­ty.” That’s fine, but how are we going to pass on Quak­er faith if we’re always using lowest-common-denominator language?

We’re such a lit­er­ate peo­ple but we go sur­pris­ing­ly mute when we’re asked to share our reli­gious under­stand­ings. We need to stop being afraid to talk with one anoth­er, hon­est­ly and with the lan­guage we use. I’ve seen Friends go out of their way to use lan­guage from oth­er tra­di­tions, espe­cial­ly Catholic or Bud­dhist, to state a basic Quak­er val­ue. I fear that we’ve dumb­ed down our own tra­di­tion so much that we’ve for­got­ten that it has the robust­ness to speak to our twenty-first cen­tu­ry conditions.

 

Relat­ed Essays

I talk about what a bold Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty of faith might look like and why we need one in my essay on the “Emer­gent Church Move­ment” I talk about our fear of meet­ing uni­ty in “We’re all Ranters Now.”

Passing the Faith, Planet of the Quakers Style

January 21, 2004
· Martin Kelley

blankThere’s that famous scene in the 1968 movie “Plan­et of the Apes” when our astro­naut pro­tag­o­nist Charl­ton Hes­ton real­izes that the space­ship that brought him to the land where apes rule did­n’t trav­el in space but in time. He’s escap­ing the pri­mate theoc­ra­cy, head­ing north along the coast, when he rounds a cor­ner to see the charred ruin remains of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty lying in the sand. He falls to his knees and screams out “YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!” He real­izes that it was his own peo­ple who had destroyed every­thing they loved with their inat­ten­tion and pettiness.

Yes­ter­day my old friend Chris Park­er post­ed a com­ment to “The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” essay where he won­dered if “the Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty has lost its vital­i­ty” (scroll down to third entry). I first met Chris at a 1997 con­fer­ence in Burling­ton NJ for “Quak­er Vol­un­teer Ser­vice, Train­ing, & Wit­ness.” I had been excit­ed by the prospect of a group of peo­ple deep­en­ing and explor­ing the roots of Quak­er wit­ness and was­n’t dis­ap­point­ed with the con­ver­sa­tions and new friend­ships. Chris had a recent MDiv from the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion and was work­ing at the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee; he left the con­fer­ence pas­sion­ate about help­ing to cre­ate some­thing new. While work­ing with AFSC, he start­ed pulling togeth­er a nation­al Quak­er net­work of vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties. This was a min­istry, pure and sim­ple, from one of the more active, vision­ary, and hard­work­ing twenty-something Friends I’ve known. But frus­tra­tions mount­ed and sup­port evap­o­rat­ed. As I remem­ber even his month­ly meet­ing could­n’t uni­fy around sup­port­ing this min­istry. The project even­tu­al­ly fell apart as our email cor­re­spon­dence grew sketchy.

A month or so ago I got an email from Chris with his new address, a yoga retreat cen­ter in New Eng­land. I respond­ed back with per­son­al news but also with regrets that Quak­erism had appar­ent­ly lost him. Part of his com­ments from yesterday:

Well, I’m one of these thir­ty some­things that has drift­ed away. I’m sure each of us has our own sto­ry. I did try to help orga­nize, but that turned out to be a bit­ter and unsuc­cess­ful expe­ri­ence. A long sto­ry for anoth­er time. But the spir­it flows in many direc­tions and if the Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty has lost it’s vital­i­ty or does­n’t work for some peo­ple, there are oth­er places there. Hold­ing on too tight­ly to Quak­erism is to hold on to a human creation.

I am now liv­ing and work­ing at Kri­palu yoga cen­ter, a place that many call a spir­i­tu­al home. We have 60,000 peo­ple on our mail­ing list, of whom about 68% have come here as a guest. There are about 30,000 unpro­grammed Quakers.

He’s right of course: Kri­palu undoubt­ed­ly touch­es more spir­i­tu­al lives than unpro­grammed Quak­erism. But the real les­son is that Kri­palu knows what a gem they have in Chris: they’ve giv­en him the kind of respon­si­bil­i­ties and encour­age­ment that Quak­ers didn’t.

Chris was one of those involved Friends I had hoped to grow old with. I had imag­ined us run­ning into each oth­er in half a dozen com­mit­tees over the next fifty years. We could have gone on back­pack­ing trips togeth­er, invit­ed each oth­er to our kids’ wed­dings, had catch-up lunch­es at Quak­er con­fer­ences, con­soled each oth­er through grief, thought about how to “trans­mit our faith” to the next gen­er­a­tion of Friends. Chris Park­er was worth more to Quak­erism than any num­ber of out­reach ini­tia­tives or peace net­works. Chris was the real deal: a com­mit­ted, impas­sioned Friend. And now he’s one of Quak­eris­m’s scarred and rust­ed stat­ues, trib­utes to what could have been.

He put his sto­ry up on a web­site way back when. I’m just going to exten­sive­ly quote it here:

I feel an urgency about this project because it has come to me that Quak­ers are about to be need­ed by the larg­er cul­ture. Under­neath the ills we face as a nation is a spir­i­tu­al prob­lem of vio­lence and dom­i­nance over oth­er peo­ple and life. Friends have a tra­di­tion that presents an alter­na­tive. The essen­tial gem of Quak­erism is the knowl­edge that each per­son is part of the divine, that we need to treat every­body as equal and sacred. While I am com­fort­able with more wit­ness than Friends usu­al­ly muster, I do believe that faith is more eas­i­ly caught than taught. Ser­vice has been an expe­ri­ence where many are exposed to Quak­ers, with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inspire and bring transformations.

But the Soci­ety of Friends is not in great shape. Friends are unfo­cused and tired. Often young adult Friends are miss­ing. I have lis­tened jeal­ous­ly to an ear-lier gen­er­a­tion tell how AFSC work­camps formed them and taught them how to be lead­ers. While Quak­erism is very good for seek­ers, my gen­er­a­tion seems to need an expe­ri­ence giv­en to them, which is a dif­fer­ent ener­gy. My friends from Brethren Vol­un­teer Ser­vice were inspired and equipped for a life of com­mit­ment they prob­a­bly would­n’t have oth­er­wise choosen.

My inspi­ra­tions have assem­bled slow­ly over the last six years. I went to Earl­ham School of Reli­gion to pre­pare to be of ser­vice. There I was inspired by friends who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in Breth­ern Vol­un­teer Ser­vice. At the same time I worked as Assis­tant Direc­tor of a peer coun­sel­ing pro­gram where I watched the teens blos­som and trans­form when trust­ed with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help oth­ers and have a real impact.

Can Quak­erism sur­vive if we can’t keep Friends like this?

Quakers & Anabaptists

January 14, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Tough ques­tion in the book­store today: a cus­tomer called ask­ing for books about the con­nec­tion between Friends and Anabap­tists. Remark­ably, we could­n’t come up with much of a list. But let’s be inter­ac­tive here, read­ers! What books did I for­get about? And what’s this phe­nom­e­na of deny­ing Quaker/Anabaptist com­mon roots and cross-pollination?

Con­tin­ue read­ing →