Tag Archives ⇒ quakers

We’re All Ranters Now: On Liberal Friends and Becoming a Society of Finders

November 18, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It’s time to explain why I call this site “The Quak­er Ranter” and to talk about my home, the lib­er­al branch of Quak­ers. Non-Quakers can be for­giv­en for think­ing that I mean this to be a place where I, Mar­tin Kel­ley, “rant,” i.e., where I “utter or express with extrav­a­gance.” That may be the result (smile), but it’s not what I mean and it’s not the real pur­pose behind this site.

Friends and Ranters

The Ranters were fellow-travelers to the Friends in the reli­gious tur­moil of seventeenth-century Eng­land. The coun­try­side was cov­ered with preach­ers and lay peo­ple run­ning around Eng­land seek­ing to revive prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty. George Fox was one, declar­ing that “Christ has come to teach his peo­ple him­self” and that hireling cler­gy were dis­tort­ing God’s mes­sage. The move­ment that coa­lesced around him as “The Friends of Truth” or “The Quak­ers” would take its orders direct­ly from the Spir­it of Christ.

This worked fine for a few years. But before long a lead­ing Quak­er rode into the town of Bris­tol in imi­ta­tion of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Not a good idea. The author­i­ties con­vict­ed him of heresy and George Fox dis­tanced him­self from his old friend. Soon after­wards, a quasi-Quaker col­lec­tion of reli­gious rad­i­cals plot­ted an over­throw of the gov­ern­ment. That also did­n’t go down very well with the author­i­ties, and Fox quick­ly dis­avowed vio­lence in a state­ment that became the basis of our peace tes­ti­mo­ny. Clear­ly the Friends of the Truth need­ed to fig­ure out mech­a­nisms for decid­ing what mes­sages were tru­ly of God and who could speak for the Friends movement.

The cen­tral ques­tion was one of author­i­ty. Those Friends rec­og­nized as hav­ing the gift for spir­i­tu­al dis­cern­ment were put in charge of a sys­tem of dis­ci­pline over way­ward Friends. Friends devised a method for deter­min­ing the valid­i­ty of indi­vid­ual lead­ings and con­cerns. This sys­tem rest­ed on an assump­tion that Truth is immutable, and that any errors come from our own will­ful­ness in dis­obey­ing the mes­sage. New lead­ings were first weighed against the tra­di­tion of Friends and their pre­de­ces­sors the Israelites (as brought down to us through the Bible).

Ranters often looked and sound­ed like Quak­ers but were opposed to any impo­si­tion of group author­i­ty. They were a move­ment of indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al seek­ers. Ranters thought that God spoke direct­ly to indi­vid­u­als and they put no lim­its on what the Spir­it might instruct us. Tra­di­tion had no role, insti­tu­tions were for disbelievers.

Mean­while Quak­ers set up Quar­ter­ly and Year­ly Meet­ings to insti­tu­tion­al­ize the sys­tem of elders and dis­ci­pline. This worked for awhile, but it should­n’t be too sur­pris­ing that this human insti­tu­tion even­tu­al­ly broke down. World­li­ness and wealth sep­a­rat­ed the elders from their less well-to-do brethren and new spir­i­tu­al move­ments swept through Quak­er ranks. Divi­sions arose over the eter­nal ques­tion of how to pass along a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of con­vince­ment in a Soci­ety grown com­fort­able. By the ear­ly 1800s, Philadel­phia elders had became a kind of aris­toc­ra­cy based on birthright and in 1827 they dis­owned two-thirds of their own year­ly meet­ing. The dis­owned major­i­ty nat­u­ral­ly devel­oped a dis­trust of author­i­ty, while the aris­to­crat­ic minor­i­ty even­tu­al­ly real­ized there was no one left to elder.

Over the next cen­tu­ry and a half, suc­ces­sive waves of pop­u­lar reli­gious move­ments washed over Friends. Revival­ism, Deism, Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Pro­gres­sive Uni­tar­i­an­ism all left their mark on Friends in the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry. Mod­ern lib­er­al Protes­tantism, Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, New Ageism, and sixties-style rad­i­cal­ism trans­formed the Twen­ti­eth. Each fad lift­ed up a piece of Quak­ers’ orig­i­nal mes­sage but invari­ably added its own incon­gru­ous ele­ments into wor­ship. The Soci­ety grew ever more fractured.

Faced with ever-greater the­o­log­i­cal dis­uni­ty, Friends sim­ply gave up. In the 1950s, the two Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ings reunit­ed. It was cel­e­brat­ed as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. But they could do so only because the role of Quak­er insti­tu­tions had fun­da­men­tal­ly changed. Our cor­po­rate bod­ies no longer even try to take on the role of dis­cern­ing what it means to be a Friend.

We are all Ranters now

Lib­er­al Quak­ers today tend to see their local Meet­ing­house as a place where every­one can believe what they want to believe. The high­est val­ue is giv­en to tol­er­ance and cor­dial­i­ty. Many peo­ple now join Friends because it’s the reli­gion with­out a reli­gion, i.e., it’s a com­mu­ni­ty with the form of a reli­gion but with­out any the­ol­o­gy or expec­ta­tions. We are a proud to be a com­mu­ni­ty of seek­ers. Our com­mon­al­i­ty is in our form and we’re big on silence and meet­ing process.

Is it any won­der that almost every­one today seems to be a hyphen­at­ed Quak­er? We’ve got Catholic-Quakers, Pagan-Quakers, Jewish-Quakers: if you can hyphen­ate it, there’s a Quak­er inter­est group for you. I’m not talk­ing about Friends nour­ished by anoth­er tra­di­tion: we’ve have his­tor­i­cal­ly been graced and con­tin­ue to be graced by con­verts to Quak­erism whose fresh eyes let us see some­thing new about our­selves. No, I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who prac­tice the out­ward form of Quak­erism but look else­where for the­ol­o­gy and inspi­ra­tion. If being a Friend means lit­tle more than show­ing up at Meet­ing once a week, we should­n’t be sur­prised that peo­ple bring a the­ol­o­gy along to fill up the hour. It’s like bring­ing a news­pa­per along for your train com­mute every morning.

But the appear­ance of tol­er­ance and uni­ty comes at a price: it depends on every­one for­ev­er remain­ing a Seek­er. Any­one who wants to fol­low ear­ly Friends’ expe­ri­ence as “Friends of the Truth” risks becomes a Find­er who threat­ens the nego­ti­at­ed truce of the mod­ern Quak­er meet­ing. If we real­ly are a peo­ple of God, we might have to start act­ing that way. We might all have to pray togeth­er in our silence. We might all have to sub­mit our­selves to God’s will. We might all have to wres­tle with each oth­er to artic­u­late a shared belief sys­tem. If we were Find­ers, we might need to define what is unac­cept­able behav­ior for a Friend, i.e., on what grounds we would con­sid­er dis­own­ing a member.

If we became a reli­gious soci­ety of Find­ers, then we’d need to fig­ure out what it means to be a Quaker-Quaker: some­one who’s the­ol­o­gy and prac­tice is Quak­er. We would need to put down those indi­vid­ual news­pa­pers to become a Peo­ple once more. I’m not say­ing we’d be unit­ed all the time. We’d still have dis­agree­ments. Even more, we would once again need to be vig­i­lant against the re-establishment of repres­sive elder­ships. But it seems obvi­ous to me that Truth lies in the bal­ance between author­i­ty and indi­vid­u­al­ism and that it’s each gen­er­a­tion’s task to restore and main­tain that balance.

* * *
Over the years a num­ber of old­er and wis­er Friends have advised me to live by Friends’ prin­ci­ples and to chal­lenge my Meet­ing to live up to those ideals. But in my year serv­ing as co-clerk of a small South Jer­sey Meet­ing, I learned that almost no one else there believed that our busi­ness meet­ings should be led by the real pres­ence of the liv­ing God. I was stuck try­ing to clerk using a mod­el of cor­po­rate decision-making that I alone held. I would like to think those wis­er Friends have more ground­ed Meet­ings. Per­haps they do. But I fear they just are more suc­cess­ful at kid­ding them­selves that there’s more going on than there is. I agree that the Spir­it is every­where and that Christ is work­ing even we don’t rec­og­nize it. But isn’t it the role of a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate God’s pres­ence in our lives?

Until Friends can find a way to artic­u­late a shared faith, I will remain a Ranter. I don’t want to be. I long for the over­sight of a com­mu­ni­ty unit­ed in a shared search for Truth. But can any of us be Friends if so many of us are Ranters?

More Reading

For those inter­est­ed, “We all Ranters Now” para­phras­es (birthright Friend) Richard Nixon’s famous quote (semi-misattributed) about the lib­er­al econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes.

Bill Samuel has an inter­est­ing piece called “Keep­ing the Faith” that address­es the con­cept of Uni­ty and its wax­ing and wan­ing among Friends over the centuries.

Samuel D. Cald­well gave an inter­est­ing lec­ture back in 1997, Quak­er Cul­ture vs. Quak­er Faith. An excerpt: “Quak­er cul­ture and Quak­er faith are… often direct­ly at odds with one anoth­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing today. Although it orig­i­nal­ly derived from and was con­sis­tent with Quak­er faith, con­tem­po­rary Quak­er cul­ture in this Year­ly Meet­ing has evolved into a bor­ing, peev­ish, repres­sive, pet­ty, humor­less, inept, mar­gin­al, and large­ly irrel­e­vant cult that is gen­er­al­ly repug­nant to ordi­nary peo­ple with healthy psy­ches. If we try to pre­serve our Quak­er cul­ture, instead of fol­low­ing the lead­ings of our Quak­er faith, we will most cer­tain­ly be cast out of the King­dom and die.”

I talk a bit more about these issues in Sodi­um Free Friends, which talks about the way we some­times inten­tion­al­ly mis-understand our past and why it mat­ters to engage with it. Some prag­man­tic Friends defend our vague­ness as a way to increase our num­bers. In The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and the Younger Quak­ers I look at a class of con­tem­po­rary seek­ers who would be recep­tive to a more robust Quak­erism and map out the issues we’d need to look at before we could real­ly wel­come them in.

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

North by Northwest

October 27, 2003
· Martin Kelley

One of the joys of the web is that you can think you’ve seen every­thing and then sud­den­ly stum­ble across some­thing new. This hap­pened to me this morn­ing with “West by Northwest”:westbynorthwest.org, a great web-only pub­li­ca­tion focused on pro­gres­sive issues in the Pacif­ic North­west. Orga­nized as a ecu­meni­cal project by area Quak­ers, it’s a jour­nal of “arts & let­ters, ecol­o­gy, and peace & social jus­tice.” I espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend their “Voic­es of Peace”:http://westbynorthwest.org/artman/publish/peace.shtml selection.

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.
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