Tag Archives ⇒ topic

Quakerly competition?

February 13, 2019
· Martin Kelley

A quick update that we at Friends Jour­nal have extend­ed the dead­line for an upcom­ing issue on Friends and com­pe­ti­tion. It’s a real­ly inter­est­ing top­ic and I’d like to see some more arti­cles to choose from. In my “Edi­tor’s Desk” post try­ing to drum up writ­ing inter­est, I dug through the FJ archives to find pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions on the top­ic. I’ll excerpt a few here:

If you look back through Friends Jour­nal archives, you’ll find warn­ings against com­pet­i­tive behav­ior. In 1955 Bess B. Lane of Swarth­more (Pa.) Meet­ing wrote that schools should “Place empha­sis on coop­er­a­tion, shar­ing, rather than on com­pe­ti­tion” and won­dered if “com­pe­ti­tion is being over­stressed in our schools.” In 1972, Christo­pher H. Ander­son, then a senior at Wilm­ing­ton Col­lege, had stronger words. He con­trast­ed his Quak­er edu­ca­tion with pub­lic schools, which he said “breed a social con­for­mi­ty, an intel­lec­tu­al bland­ness and a repug­nant spir­it of competition.”

If you know any­one who is inter­est­ed in the top­ic, please for­ward this along!


Friendly Competition? Writing deadline extended to Feb 25

Friend­ly Com­pe­ti­tion? Writ­ing dead­line extend­ed to Feb 25 

Learn more about writ­ing for our May issue on competition.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Looking outside the meetinghouse (FJ call for submissions)

November 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Let me give a plug that Friends Jour­nal is look­ing for arti­cles on the top­ic of “Out­side the Meet­ing­house” for the March issue. The dead­line is a lit­tle over a month away. Here’s a lit­tle bit of my write-up for it, as a teaser:

There is a long his­to­ry of Friends preach­ing and wit­ness­ing out­side of the con­fines of the meet­ing­house. George Fox’s Jour­nal is full of uncon­ven­tion­al wor­ship­ing; he had a par­tic­u­lar pen­chant for preach­ing from any bit of high ground he could find, like a tree or rock out­crop­ping. His con­tem­po­rary James Nay­lor is most remem­bered for re-enacting Jesus’s Palm Sun­day entry into Jerusalem by dra­mat­i­cal­ly rid­ing a horse down a main road into Bris­tol. Modern-day Friends con­tin­ue to find uncon­ven­tion­al places to worship… 

Also, I’ve just set up a form to get on the email noti­fi­ca­tion list to get pinged when top­ic write-ups get post­ed. It’s very low-volume, as we only write these once a month. There’s only two sub­scribers. For the time being, I’m just keep­ing the emails in a list and send­ing per­son­al­ized emails.


Writing Opp: Outside the Meetinghouse (due 12/10)

Writ­ing Opp: Out­side the Meet­ing­house (due 12/10)

Infor­ma­tion about our upcom­ing March 2019 issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house.” Fea­ture sub­mis­sions are due Decem­ber 10, 2018.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Upcoming Friends Journal themes

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week we unveiled the next slate of themes for Friends Jour­nal, one which takes us all the way through the end of 2020 (I can’t get over how much fur­ther away this feels than the cal­en­dar says it is). This is the sixth round of themes since we intro­duced the for­mat back in the begin­ning of 2012. We’ve kept the pat­tern the same – nine themed issues a year, with two non-themed issues for more eclec­tic mate­r­i­al we get (

Before 2012, the mix had been flipped for years: two annu­al spe­cial issues, with the rest a catch-all from the incom­ing sub­mis­sion slush pile. I feel that more fre­quent themes have helped us steer clear of the rut of repeat­ing the same arti­cles on a too-frequent basis. We’re also see­ing more arti­cles con­scious­ly writ­ten for us (as opposed to be shopped around to var­i­ous pro­gres­sive pub­li­ca­tions). Most impor­tant­ly from an edi­to­r­i­al per­spec­tive, the process  also forces us to reach out to peo­ple, direct­ly and on social media, to encour­age them to write. One of my never-ending, never- reach­able goals, is to always be encour­ag­ing new voic­es in the mag­a­zine. This is one tool to help get there.

We’ve already start­ed get­ting feed­back from indi­vid­u­als that their favorite cause isn’t cov­ered in this lat­est list. I’m okay with that. We don’t cov­er every­thing every round. Core con­cerns of Friends get cov­ered on a reg­u­lar basis in the non-themed issues. Some authors are also real­ly cre­ative in find­ing a hook to bring their cause into seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed top­ic. Also, I think we’ve cov­ered all of the major top­ics in the last sev­en years — some­times mul­ti­ple times — and those arti­cles are still be read and shared and com­ment­ed on.

Many of these themes come from read­er sug­ges­tions. Oth­ers come from more ran­dom con­ver­sa­tions we have. One of my favorite this time is the issue on Gam­bling. That was inspired one late-January 2018 morn­ing when a new Friend called in to ask us if we had any arti­cles on the top­ic. Appar­ent­ly, she had been chas­tised at meet­ing that week­end for sug­gest­ing there should be a prize for who­ev­er guessed the cor­rect num­ber of valen­tine can­dy hearts in a jar. She want­ed to under­stand the Quak­er tes­ti­monies. Much to my sur­prise there had­n’t been much in recent Friends Jour­nal arti­cles. I ran­dom­ly asked on Face­book whether we had “essen­tial­ly dropped” our tes­ti­mo­ny on gam­bling. The resul­tant Face­book thread quick­ly made it obvi­ous that Friends have an issue-worthy amount of feel­ings on the topic.

Have fun look­ing over the list. If you have sug­ges­tions, let me know (I will write them down and remem­ber). If you want to encour­age peo­ple to write, please please do. Also, send me a mes­sage if you want to get on a month­ly email list in which I pro­mote an upcom­ing writ­ing dead­line. The next com­ing up in for March’s issue, Out­side the Meet­ing­house.


Write For Friends Journal - Submit Writing For Quaker Publication

Write For Friends Jour­nal — Sub­mit Writ­ing For Quak­er Publication 

Friends Jour­nal is an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine serv­ing the entire Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We wel­come arti­cles, poet­ry, art,…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Friends Journal seeking articles on Quakers and Christianity

August 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Decem­ber theme of Friends Jour­nal will look at the juicy top­ic of Friends’ rela­tion­ship with Chris­tian­i­ty. I wrote up an “Edi­tor’s Desk” post about the kinds of arti­cles we might expect. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s a series of ques­tions that has dogged Friends since we did away with cler­gy and start­ed call­ing bap­tism a “sprin­kling,” and it has been an issue of con­tention in every Quak­er schism: Are we Chris­t­ian? Are we real­ly Chris­t­ian? Does it mat­ter if we’re Chris­t­ian? What does it even mean to be Chris­t­ian in the world?

One rea­son we began pub­lish­ing more themed issues begin­ning in 2012 was so we use the top­ics to invite fresh voic­es to write for us. While we’ve long had reg­u­lars who will send us a few arti­cles a year on mis­cel­la­neous top­ics, themes allow us to tempt peo­ple with spe­cif­ic inter­ests and min­istries: rec­on­cil­i­a­tion from war, cli­mate activism, work­place reform, men­tor­ship, ecu­meni­cal rela­tion­ships, the wider fam­i­ly of Friends, etc.

More recent­ly I’ve start­ed these “Edi­tor’s Desk” posts as a way of shar­ing some of the ideas we have around par­tic­u­lar upcom­ing issues. The post also gives us a URL that we can share on social media to drum up sub­mis­sions. I also hope that oth­ers will share the URL via email.

The absolute best way of reach­ing new peo­ple is when some­one we know shares an upcom­ing theme with some­one we don’t know. There are many peo­ple who by chance or incli­na­tion seem to strad­dle Quak­er worlds. They are invalu­able in ampli­fy­ing our calls for sub­mis­sions. Ques­tion: would it help if we start­ed an email list just for writ­ers or for peo­ple who want to be remind­ed of upcom­ing themes so they can share them with Friends?


Writing Opp: Quakers and Christianity

Writ­ing Opp: Quak­ers and Christianity 

It’s a series of ques­tions that has dogged Friends since we did away with cler­gy and start­ed calling…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Barking up the family tree

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

There’s a num­ber of com­mon gate­ways for seek­ers to dis­cov­er Quak­ers – activism is a com­mon one (see last week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­view with Lina Blount), as is plain dress (my posts on the top­ic are my most pop­u­lar), as is child­hood expe­ri­ences at Quak­er schools.

But a big gate­way is geneal­o­gy. Over the years I’ve got­ten count­less emails and phone calls from excit­ed new­com­ers who start off the con­ver­sa­tion with details of their fam­i­ly tree (when I used to answer the Quaker­books phone, I would let these folks go for about two min­utes before gen­tly inter­ject­ing “wow that’s fas­ci­nat­ing!, do you wan­na buy a book?!?”)

One fas­ci­nat­ing fac­toid in this week’s Quak­er­S­peak video comes from Thomas Hamm:

If your fam­i­ly arrived in the Unit­ed States before 1860, there’s prob­a­bly a 50 – 50 chance that you have a Quak­er ances­tor somewhere.

Quak­er Meet­ings should­n’t try to be the gath­er­ing spots for prodi­gal fam­i­ly reunions. The ear­ly Quak­ers were strangers to one anoth­er, join­ing togeth­er because of the fire of their con­vic­tions. Ours is a liv­ing, breath­ing, ever evolv­ing spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Still: we are also a group­ing of peo­ple. We look for belonging.

The longer I’m with Friends, the more I think ours is a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that draws strength from the ten­sion of para­dox­es. I have a soft spot for the old Quak­er fam­i­lies. If Jesus brings some of the new peo­ple in through Beliefnet quizzes or Ances​try​.com search results, well, maybe that’s okay.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​-​y​o​u​r​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​a​n​c​e​s​t​ry/

The open (Quaker) web

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chris Hardie’s semi-viral man­i­festo cham­pi­oning the open inter­net isn’t about Quak­erism per se, but Chris is a Friend (and one time web host to every­thing Quak­er with­in a hun­dred miles of Rich­mond, Ind.). Since the rise of cor­po­rate gate-keeping web­sites and then social media, I’ve wor­ried that they rep­re­sent some of the largest and least vis­i­ble threats to the Quak­er movement.

I use it all as a tool, for sure. But there are many ways in which we’re increas­ing­ly defined by cor­po­ra­tions with no Quak­ers and no inter­est in us except for what­ev­er engage­ment num­bers they can gen­er­ate. Look at the non­sense at many of the open Quak­er Face­book groups as an obvi­ous exam­ple. Peo­ple with lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge and rel­a­tive­ly fringe ideas can eas­i­ly dom­i­nate dis­cus­sion just by post­ing with a fre­quen­cy that involved or care­ful Friends couldn’t match. Face­book doesn’t care if it’s a zoo as long as peo­ple come back to read the lat­est out­ra­geous com­ment thread. Just because the top­ic is Quak­er doesn’t mean the dis­course real­ly holds well to our val­ues, his­tor­i­cal or modern.

Add to this that Google and Face­book could make any of our Quaker-owned web­sites near­ly invis­i­ble with a tweak of algo­rithms (this is not hypo­thet­i­cal: Face­book has dinged most pub­lish­er Pages over the years).

The open web has a lot of plus­es. I’m glad to see a Friend among its promi­nent cham­pi­ons and I’d like to see Quak­er read­ers seek­ing it out more (most eas­i­ly by stray­ing of Face­book and sub­scrib­ing to blogs’ email lists). From Hardie:

Of course, there is an alter­na­tive to Face­book and oth­er walled gar­dens: the open web. The alter­na­tive is the ver­sion of the Inter­net where you own your con­tent and activ­i­ty, have min­i­mal depen­dence on third par­ty busi­ness mod­els, can dis­cov­er new things out­side of what for-profit algo­rithms show you, and where tools and ser­vices inter­act to enhance each oth­er’s offer­ings, instead of to stamp each oth­er out of existence.

https://​chrishardie​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​r​e​b​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​-​o​p​e​n​-​w​e​b​/​a​m​p​/​?​_​_​t​w​i​t​t​e​r​_​i​m​p​r​e​s​s​i​o​n​=​t​rue

Spring and healing

April 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I was just fill­ing out my work log for March and had for­got­ten just how crazy the weath­er here in the U.S. North­east had been, with suc­ces­sive waves of nor’easters dump­ing mas­sive amounts of snow on us. It made for some great kid pic­tures but it added quite a bit of chaos to work schedules.

So it seems kind of amaz­ing there’s an April issue of Friends Jour­nal. But there is and it’s a good one I think: we look at heal­ing. The cov­er of new tree leaves back­lit by spring­time sun is sea­son­al but it also reflects the top­ic and our mood after a win­try late winter.


Healing Earth: An Ecologist’s Journey of Innovation and Environmental Stewardship

Heal­ing Earth: An Ecologist’s Jour­ney of Inno­va­tion and Envi­ron­men­tal Stewardship 

By John Todd. North Atlantic Books, 2019. 200 pages. $24.95/paperback; $17.99/eBook.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Quakers and Mental Health

March 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Well this one hits home for me. The new Quak­er­S­peak talks to Ore­gon social work­er Melody George in the top­ic of Quak­ers and Men­tal Health:

I real­ly see men­tal diver­si­ty as a gift to a com­mu­ni­ty, and that the folks that I serve and that I’ve worked with are very resilient. If they tell you their sto­ries about how they’ve got­ten through their trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions and what’s helped them to keep going, faith is a huge part of that. And we have a lot to learn from their strength and resilience.

My fam­i­ly has had very avoid­able and out-of-nowhere con­flicts at two reli­gious spaces — one a Friends meet­ing and the oth­er a Pres­by­ter­ian church — over easy acco­mo­da­tions for my son Fran­cis. It seems like many of the dynam­ics that we’ve seen are not dis­sim­i­lar to those that keep oth­ers out of meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Who are we will­ing to adapt for? Is com­fort and famil­iar­i­ty our main goal?

Melody also wrote for Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Imag­in­ing a Trauma-informed Quak­er Com­mu­ni­ty.