Quakerism of the Future

October 26, 2018

Johan Mau­r­er lifts up a 1974 pub­li­ca­tion by John Yungblut:

Grant­ed, as a deep stu­dent of Carl Gus­tav Jung and Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin, Yung­blut’s def­i­n­i­tions of those three adjec­tives may not have exact­ly been old-school. This par­tic­u­lar­ly goes for his reflec­tions on the word “evan­gel­i­cal.” But the dynam­ic con­ver­sa­tion among these qual­i­ties — dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions and all — may be vital if Friends are to grow in use­ful­ness to the Body of Christ, and to those who’ve not yet been convinced. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​0​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​i​s​m​-​o​f​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​.​h​tml

Friends on Giving

December 1, 2016

The new issue of Friends Jour­nal is avail­able online. This month looks at Giv­ing and Phil­an­thropy. There’s some good reflec­tions from Friends on why they give to the caus­es and insti­tu­tions they do. There’s also a nice piece from Quak­er fundrais­er Hen­ry Free­man on the “lan­guage of Quak­er val­ues.” If you’re try­ing to unpack what it means to be Quak­er, this on-the-ground per­spec­tive is one way to parse out the real­i­ty of Quak­er testimonies.

Hey who am I to decide anything

April 9, 2007

Over on Non­the­ist Friends web­site, there’s an arti­cle look­ing back at ten years of FGC Gath­er­ing work­shops on their con­cern. There was also a post some­where on the blo­gos­phere (sor­ry I don’t remem­ber where) by a Pagan Friend excit­ed that this year’s Gath­er­ing would have a work­shop focused on their concerns.

It’s kind of inter­est­ing to look at the process by which new the­olo­gies are being added into Lib­er­al Quak­erism at an ever-increasing rate.

  • Mem­ber­ship of indi­vid­u­als in meet­ings. There are hun­dreds of meet­ings in lib­er­al Quak­erism that range all over the the­o­log­i­cal map. Add to that the wide­spread agree­ment that the­o­log­i­cal uni­ty with the meet­ing is not required and just about any­one believ­ing any­thing could be admit­ted some­where (or “grand­fa­thered in” as a birthright member).
  • A work­shop at the Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Gath­er­ing and espe­cial­ly a reg­u­lar work­shop at suc­ces­sive Gath­er­ings. Yet as the very informed com­ments on a post a few years ago showed, the­ol­o­gy is not some­thing the plan­ning work­shop com­mit­tee is allowed to look at and at least one pro­po­nent of a new the­ol­o­gy has got­ten them­selves on the decid­ing com­mit­tee. The Gath­er­ing is essen­tial­ly built on the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al Chau­taqua mod­el and FGC is per­fect­ly hap­py to spon­sor work­shops that are in appar­ent con­flict with its own mis­sion statement.
  • An arti­cle pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal. When the the Quak­er Sweat Lodge was strug­gling to claim legit­i­ma­cy it all but changed its name to the “Quak­er Sweat Lodge as fea­tured in the Feb­ru­ary 2002 Friends Jour­nal.” It’s a good mag­a­zine’s job to pub­lish arti­cles that make peo­ple think and a smart mag­a­zine will know that arti­cles that pro­voke a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy is good for cir­cu­la­tion. I very much doubt the edi­to­r­i­al team at the Jour­nal con­sid­ers its agree­ment to pub­lish to be an inoc­u­la­tion against critique.
  • A web­site and list­serv. Fif­teen dol­lars at GoDad​dy​.com and you’ve got the web address of your dreams. Yahoo Group is free.

There are prob­a­bly oth­er mech­a­nisms of legit­i­ma­cy. My point is not to give com­pre­hen­sive guide­lines to would-be cam­paign­ers. I sim­ply want to note that none of the actors in these deci­sions is con­scious­ly think­ing “hey, I think I’ll expand the def­i­n­i­tion of lib­er­al Quak­er the­ol­o­gy today.” In fact I expect they’re most­ly pass­ing the buck, think­ing “hey, who am I to decide any­thing like that.”

None of these decision-making process­es are meant to serve as tools to dis­miss oppo­si­tion. The orga­ni­za­tions involved are not hand­ing out Impri­maturs and would be quite hor­ri­fied if they real­ized their agree­ments were being seen that way. Amy Clark, a com­menter on my last post, on this sum­mer’s reunion and camp for the once-young mem­bers of Young Friends North Amer­i­ca, had a very inter­est­ing comment:

I agree that YFNA has become FGC: those pre­vi­ous­ly involved in YFNA have tak­en lead­er­ship with FGC … with both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive results. Well … now we have a chance to look at the lega­cy we are cre­at­ing: do we like it?

I have the feel­ing that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of lib­er­al Quak­er lead­er­ship does­n’t quite believe it’s lead­ing lib­er­al Quak­erism. By “lead­er­ship” I don’t mean the small skim of the pro­fes­sion­al Quak­er bureau­cra­cy (whose mem­bers can get _too_ self-inflated on the lead­er­ship issue) but the com­mit­tees, clerks and vol­un­teers that get most of the work done from the local to nation­al lev­els. We are the inher­i­tors of a proud and some­times fool­ish tra­di­tion and our actions are shap­ing its future but I don’t think we real­ly know that. I have no clever solu­tion to the issues I’ve out­lined here but I think becom­ing con­scious that we’re cre­at­ing our own lega­cy is an impor­tant first step.

Friendship even when cutting edges don’t overlap

March 8, 2007

C Wess Daniels has a good “post fol­low­ing up the Quak­er Her­itage Day events”:http://gatheringinlight.com/2007/03/08/learning-a-new-language-while-building-a-house-reflections-on-quaker-heritage-day/ last week­end in Berke­ley. The fea­tured speak­er was Bri­an Dray­ton, a New Eng­land Friend in the lib­er­al unpro­grammed tra­di­tion who’s been doing a lot of good work around reclaim­ing traditionally-minded Quak­er min­istry (at least that’s how _I’d_ pigeon-hole him from afar, I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly met him!).

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Of Floods and Prophets

October 11, 2005

The tragedies were reflec­tions not on the pow­er of nature but on the pow­er of our human dis­re­gard for one another. 
blankWhen the ram­parts of New Orleans burst and flood­ed its streets and homes, I was at a hos­pi­tal prepar­ing to wel­come a child. As my part­ner and I cel­e­brat­ed new life we saw images of peo­ple trapped in attics, heard tales of loved ones swept away as they sought to pro­tect their chil­dren. We watched oth­er new par­ents and their vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren caught with­out food, water or ser­vices in a city sud­den­ly unable to operate.
The tragedies show our human dis­re­gard. The trapped were almost all African Amer­i­can. They were almost all poor. Sto­ries on the news – shot-at heli­copters, mass vio­lence in the Con­ven­tion cen­ter – reflect­ed Amer­i­ca’s racist imag­i­na­tion more than real­i­ty. The lev­ees failed because our polit­i­cal lead­ers ignored the rec­om­men­da­tions of gov­ern­ment engi­neers and sci­en­tists and slashed spend­ing on storm pro­tec­tion. Even the hur­ri­cane itself was super­charged by a cen­tu­ry of burn­ing fos­sil fuels, our dis­re­gard for nature and our stonewalling over the real­i­ty of glob­al warming.
A favorite image of paci­fists comes from a line in the Book of Isa­iah, that part in that talks about beat­ing the swords into plow­shares. But sur­round­ing pas­sages have been echo­ing in my ears late­ly. Like this one:
bq. Bring no more vain obla­tions; incense is an abom­i­na­tion unto me; the new moons and sab­baths, the call­ing of assem­blies, I can­not away with; it is iniq­ui­ty, even the solemn meet­ing. Your new moons and your appoint­ed feasts my soul hat­est; they are a trou­ble unto me; I am weary to bear them.… Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings before mine eyes; cease to do evil. Learn to do well; seek judge­ment, relieve the oppressed, judge the father­less, please for the wid­ow. Isa­iah 1:13 – 17.
The right­eous indi­ga­tion that fol­lowed the images from New Orleans is fad­ing. Life is return­ing to nor­mal in Wash­ing­ton DC and the high costs of recov­ery (and the con­tin­u­ing costs of Bush’s wars) will be shift­ed to the poor. We can­not stay silent to the vain obla­tions of our gov­ern­ment. It is time to do well and pro­tect the poor. It is time to relieve the oppressed and demand jus­tice for the human deci­sions that led to bro­ken levees.
This isn’t all finger-pointing: we each need to seek a self-judgement about our Amer­i­can lifestyles that have fuelled glob­al warm­ing with its con­sumeris­tic dis­re­gard for con­se­quences. We need to depend upon each oth­er more, seek a com­mu­ni­ty deep­er and more inter­laced than that offered by Wal­mart and McDon­alds. We are all part of one anoth­er, part of the earth and brethren to our human fam­i­ly. We need to gath­er togeth­er as a peo­ple who know that gov­ern­ment and con­sumerism alone can nev­er address our soci­ety’s deep­est needs and that vain obla­tions alone will do noth­ing to put away the evil of our doings. We need to get angry and sing a song of change. We need more Isaiahs.

Plain Dress – Some Reflections

April 7, 2004

A guest piece by Melynda Huskey

I’ve been much afflict­ed on the sub­ject of plain dress for the last sev­er­al months, thanks to Thomas Clark­son. Clark­son, a British Abo­li­tion­ist and close, even fond, observ­er of Friends, wrote a three-volume dis­qui­si­tion on Quak­er tes­ti­monies, cul­ture, and behav­ior (in 1811, if my mem­o­ry serves me). There’s a lot in Clark­son to think about, but his sec­tion on Quak­er garb was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to me. Not because I intend to take up a green apron any time soon (did you know that was a badge of Quak­er wom­an­hood for near­ly two cen­turies?), but because he pro­vides what a present-day anthro­pol­o­gist would describe as a func­tion­al­ist analy­sis of the mean­ing of plain dress: it served as a badge of mem­ber­ship, keep­ing its wear­ers pecu­liar and in vis­i­ble com­mu­nion with one anoth­er, while com­mu­ni­cat­ing a core val­ue of the tradition.

When I was a kid, I yearned for plain dress like the kids in Oba­di­ah’s fam­i­ly wore. I loved the idea of a Quak­er uni­form and could­n’t imag­ine why we did­n’t still have one. When­ev­er I asked my mom about it, she would patient­ly explain that an out­ward con­for­mi­ty in plain dress called atten­tion to itself as much as any world­ly out­fit did, and that Quak­ers should dress as plain­ly as was suit­able and pos­si­ble to their work in the world. It made sense, but I was still sorry.

And now, at near­ly 40, after 35 years of bal­anc­ing my con­vic­tions and my world, I’m still han­ker­ing after a tru­ly dis­tinc­tive and Quak­er­ly plain­ness. What isn’t any clear­er to me is what that might look like now.
After all, what are the options? Accord­ing to my part­ner, the dis­tinc­tive ele­ments of con­tem­po­rary Quak­er garb are high-water pants for Friends over 40 and grimy hands and feet for Friends under 40. This obvi­ous­ly jaun­diced view aside, there does­n’t seem to be much to dis­tin­guish Friends from, say, Methodists, Uni­tar­i­ans, or mem­bers of the local food co-op. A lit­tle den­im, a lit­tle kha­ki, some suede sport mocs, some san­dals and funky socks, batik and chunky jew­el­ry. It’s not obvi­ous­ly world­ly, but it’s not set apart, either. There is no tes­ti­mo­ny in our cur­rent dress.

On the oth­er hand, any­thing too vis­i­bly a cos­tume obvi­ous­ly isn’t right; I can’t appro­pri­ate the Men­non­ite dress-and-prayer-cap, for exam­ple. And my heart ris­es up against the whole range of “mod­est” cloth­ing present­ly avail­able – flo­ral prairie dress­es and pinafores, sailor dress­es, den­im jumpers, and head cov­er­ings – all with nurs­ing aper­tures and mater­ni­ty inserts, and mar­ket­ed by com­pa­nies with ter­ri­fy­ing names like “Dad­dy’s Lit­tle Princess,” “King’s Daugh­ters,” and “Lilies of the Field.” No Prairie Madon­na drag for me. No messy, time-consuming, attention-requiring long hair; no end­less sup­ply of tights and nylons and slips; no cold legs in the win­ter snow and ice. No squeez­ing myself into a gen­der ide­ol­o­gy which was for­eign to Friends from the very beginning.

It seems to me that con­tem­po­rary plain dress ought to be dis­tinc­tive with­out being the­atri­cal; it should be prac­ti­cal and self-effacing. It should be pro­duced under non-exploitive con­di­tions. It should be the same every day, with­out vari­a­tion intro­duced for the sake of vari­a­tion, and suit­able for every occa­sion It should be tidy and well-kept – Quak­ers were once known for the scrupu­lous neat­ness of their attire and their homes. And it should com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly that we are called and set apart.

But what gar­ments they might be that would accom­plish that, I can­not say. I’m stymied. Friends, share your light.


*Note from Mar­tin Kel­ley:* I’m start­ing to col­lect sto­ries from oth­er Friends and fellow-religious on issues like plain dress, the tes­ti­monies and faith renew­al. This is part of that project.