Tag Archives ⇒ tradition

What does it mean to be a Quaker?

September 2, 2014
· Martin Kelley

Craig Bar­nett tries to define Friends:

“I want to sug­gest that there is a liv­ing tra­di­tion of spir­i­tu­al teach­ing and prac­tice that makes up the Quak­er Way, which is not defined by a par­tic­u­lar social group, behav­iour­al norms, or even val­ues and beliefs.”

As usu­al Craig clear­ly artic­u­lates his premise: that Friends have become some­thing of a content-less, lowest-common-denominator group that fears mak­ing belief state­ments that some of our mem­ber­ship would object to.

I agree with most of his analy­sis, though I would add some pieces. I don’t think one can under­stand what it means to be a Quak­er today with­out look­ing at dif­fer­ent types of def­i­n­i­tions. Belief and prac­tices is one part but so is self-identification (which is not nec­es­sar­i­ly mem­ber­ship). We are who we are but we also aren’t. There’s a deep­er real­i­ty in not being able to sep­a­rate Quak­er phi­los­o­phy from the peo­ple who are Quaker.

In this light, I do wish that Craig had­n’t resort­ed to using the jar­gony “Quak­er Way” ten times in a short piece. For those who haven’t got­ten the memo, lib­er­al Friends are no longer sup­posed to say “Quak­erism” (which implies a tra­di­tion and prac­tice that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the denom­i­na­tor of our mem­ber’s indi­vid­ual the­olo­gies) but instead use the vaguer “Quak­er Way.” In my obser­va­tion, it’s most­ly a bureau­crat­ic pref­er­ence: we want to imply there is sub­stance but don’t want to actu­al­ly name it for fear of start­ing a fight. Con­tent­less lan­guage has become its own art form, one that can suck the air out of robust dis­cus­sions. A truly-vital liv­ing tra­di­tion should be able to speak in dif­fer­ent accents.

Normcore and the new-old Quaker plain

March 18, 2014
· Martin Kelley

In the last few weeks, the fash­ion seg­ment of the Inter­net has gone all a‑buzz over new term “Norm­core.” Nor­mal, every­day, cloth­ing is appar­ent­ly show­ing up in down­town Man­hat­tan — gasp! Like many trendy terms, it’s not real­ly so new: back in the nineties and ear­ly oughts, Gap ruled the retail world with posters show­ing celebri­ties and artists wear­ing t‑shirts and jeans avail­able at the local mall store. “Norm­core” is just the lead­ing edge of the utterly-predicable 20-year fash­ion indus­try pen­du­lum swing.

It also per­haps sig­nals a cul­tur­al shift away from snob­bery and into embrac­ing roots. One of the most pop­u­lar posts on the New York Times’s web­site last year cel­e­brat­ed region­al accents (appar­ent­ly Philadel­phi­ans are allowed to talk like Philadel­phi­ans again).

An ana­logue to this fash­ion trend has been occur­ing among Friends for a lit­tle while now. The “New Plain” dis­cus­sion have revolved around reclaim­ing an atti­tude, not a uniform.

If you read the old Quak­er guide books (called “Books of Dis­ci­pline” then, now more often called “Faith and Prac­tice”), you’ll see that unlike oth­er plain-dressing Amer­i­can groups like the Amish, Quak­ers did­n’t intend their clothes to be a uni­form show­ing group con­for­mi­ty. Instead, plain­ness is framed in terms of inte­ri­or moti­va­tions. Avoid­ing fash­ion trends helped Friends remem­ber that they were all equal before God. It also spoke to our con­tin­u­ing tes­ti­mo­ny of integri­ty, in that Friends were to dress the same way in dif­fer­ent con­texts and so vouch­safe for a sin­gle identity.

When I began feel­ing the tug of a lead­ing toward plain­ness it was for what I began call­ing “Sears Plain,” indi­cat­ing that I wore clothes that I could find in any box store or mall. I devel­oped a low-maintenance approach to fash­ion that freed up my time from shop­ping and the morn­ing dress­ing rit­u­al. Mod­ern plain­ness can lessen the temp­ta­tion to show off in clothes and it can reduce the over­all wardrobe size and thus reduce our impact on the envi­ron­ment and with exploit­ed labor. But all this is noth­ing new and it nev­er real­ly dis­ap­peared. If you looked around a room of mod­ern Quak­ers you’ll often see a trend of sar­to­r­i­al bor­ing­ness; I was sim­ply nam­ing this and putting it in the con­text of our tradition.

image

Over time I found that these moti­va­tions were more preva­lent in the wider cul­ture, espe­cial­ly in the min­i­mal­ist techie scene. Steve Jobs famous­ly sport­ed a uni­form of black turtle­neck, jeans, and New Bal­ance sneak­ers (explained in 2011). In a 2012 pro­file, Barack Oba­ma talked about lim­it­ing his clothes to two col­ors of suits so that he could free up his decision-making ener­gies on more impor­tant issues (I wrote about his fash­ion in “Plain like Barack”).

Non-celebrities also seem inter­est­ed in work­ing out their rela­tion­ship with fash­ion. My arti­cles on mod­ern plain­ness have always been a big draw on my blog. While my fel­low Quak­ers are some­times mild­ly embar­rassed by our his­toric pecu­liar­i­ties, out­siders often eat this stuff up. They’re look­ing for what the techies would call “life hacks” that can help them pri­or­i­tize life essen­tials. If we can com­mu­ni­cate our val­ues in a real way that isn’t propped by appeals to the author­i­ty of tra­di­tion, then we can reach these seekers.

So now that “Norm­core” is appear­ing in places like Huff­in­g­ton Post , the New York Times and fash­ion mag­a­zines, will Friends be able to talk more about it? Do we still have a col­lec­tive wit­ness in regards to the mate­ri­al­ism and ego-centricity of fash­ion marketing?

Invisible Quaker Misfits

October 21, 2008
· Martin Kelley

This week I received an email from a young seek­er in the Philadel­phia area who found my 2005 arti­cle “Wit­ness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings” pub­lished in FGCon­nec­tions. She’s a for­mer youth min­istries leader from a Pen­te­costal tra­di­tion, strong­ly attract­ed to Friends beliefs but not quite fit­ting in with the local meet­ings she’s been try­ing. Some­where she found my arti­cle and asks if I have any insights. 

The 2005 arti­cle was large­ly pes­simistic, focused on the “com­mit­ted, inter­est­ing and bold twenty-something Friends
I knew ten years ago” who had left Friends and blam­ing “an insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism that neglect­ed them and
its own future” but my hope para­graph was optimistic:

There is hope… A great peo­ple might pos­si­bly be gath­ered from
the emer­gent church move­ment and the inter­net is full of amaz­ing conversations
from new Friends and seek­ers. There are pock­ets in our branch of Quakerism
where old­er Friends have con­tin­ued to men­tor and encour­age mean­ing­ful and
inte­grat­ed youth lead­er­ship, and some of my peers have hung on with me. Most
hope­ful­ly, there’s a whole new gen­er­a­tion of twenty- some­thing Friends
on the scene with strong gifts that could be nur­tured and harnessed. 

Hard to imag­ine that only three years ago I was an iso­lat­ed FGC staffer left to pur­sue out­reach and youth min­istry work on my own time by an insti­tu­tion indif­fer­ent to either pur­suit. Both func­tions have become major staff pro­grams, but I’m no longer involved, which is prob­a­bly just as well, as nei­ther pro­gram has decid­ed to focus on the kind of work I had hoped it might. The more things change the more they stay the same, right? The most inter­est­ing work is still large­ly invisible. 

Some of this work has been tak­en up by the new blog­gers and by some sort of alt-network that seems to be con­geal­ing around all the blogs, Twit­ter net­works, Face­book friend­ships, inter­vis­i­ta­tions and IM chats. Many of us asso­ci­at­ed with Quak​erQuak​er​.org have some sort of reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dence or par­tic­i­pa­tion with the Emerg­ing Church move­ment, we reg­u­lar­ly high­light “amaz­ing con­ver­sa­tions” from new Friends and seek­ers and there’s a lot of inter-generational work going on. We’ve got a name for it in Con­ver­gent Friends, which reflects in part that “we” aren’t just the lib­er­al Friends I imag­ined in 2005, but a wide swath of Friends from all the Quak­er flavors.

But we end up with a prob­lem that’s become the cen­tral one for me and a lot of oth­ers: what can we tell a new seek­er who should be able to find a home in real-world Friends but does­n’t fit? I could point this week’s cor­re­spon­dent to meet­ings and church­es hun­dreds of miles from her house, or encour­age her to start a blog, or com­pile a list of work­shops or gath­er­ings she might attend. But none of these are real­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry answers. 

Else­where:

Gath­er­ing in Light Wess sent an email around last night about a book review done by his PhD advi­sor Ryan Bol­ger that talks about tribe-style lead­er­ship and a new kind of church iden­ti­ty that uses the instant com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools of the inter­net to forge a com­mu­ni­ty that’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to local­i­ty. Bol­ger’s and his research part­ner report that they see “emerg­ing ini­tia­tives with­in tra­di­tion­al church­es as the next
hori­zon for the spread of emerg­ing church prac­tices in the Unit­ed States.” More links from Wess’ arti­cle on emerg­ing church­es and denom­i­na­tions.

For other uses, see Light (disambiguation)

March 21, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Even though my last post was a five minute quick­ie, it gen­er­at­ed a num­ber of com­ments. One ques­tion that came up was how aware indi­vid­ual Friends are about the spe­cif­ic Quak­er mean­ings of some of the com­mon Eng­lish words we use — “Light,” “Spir­it,” etc.(dis­am­bigua­tion in Wiki-speak). Mar­shall Massey expressed sad­ness that the terms were used uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly and I sug­gest­ed that some Friends know­ing­ly con­fuse the gener­ic and spe­cif­ic mean­ings. Mar­shall replied that if this were so it might be a cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence based on geography.

If it’s a cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence, I sus­pect it’s less geo­graph­ic than func­tion­al. I was speak­ing of the class of pro­fes­sion­al Friends (heavy in my parts) who pur­pose­ful­ly obscure their lan­guage. We’re very good at talk­ing in a way that sounds Quak­er to those who do know our spe­cif­ic lan­guage but that sounds gener­i­cal­ly spir­i­tu­al to those who don’t. Some­times this obscu­ran­tism is used by peo­ple who are repelled by tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism but want to advance their ideas in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, but more often (and more dan­ger­ous­ly) it’s used by Friends who know and love what we are but are loathe to say any­thing that might sound controversial.

I’ve told the sto­ry before of a Friend and friend who said that every­time he uses the word com­mu­ni­ty he’s mean­ing the body of Christ. New­com­ers hear­ing him and read­ing his arti­cles could be for­giv­en for think­ing that com­mu­ni­ty is our reason-for-being, indeed: what we wor­ship. The prob­lem is that ten years lat­er, they’ll have signed up and built up an iden­ti­ty as a Friend and will get all offend­ed when some­one sug­gests that this com­mu­ni­ty they know and love is real­ly the body of Christ.

Lib­er­al Friends in the pub­lic eye need to be more hon­est in their con­ver­sa­tion about the Bib­li­cal and Chris­t­ian roots of our reli­gious fel­low­ship. That will scare off poten­tial mem­bers who have been scarred by the acts of those who have false­ly claimed Christ. I’m sor­ry about that and we need to be as gen­tle and hum­ble about this as we can. But hope­ful­ly they’ll see the fruits of the true spir­it in our open­ness, our warmth and our giv­ing and will real­ize that Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship is not about tel­e­van­ge­lists and Pres­i­den­tial hyp­ocrites. Maybe they’ll even­tu­al­ly join or maybe not, but if they do at least they won’t be sur­prised by our iden­ti­ty. Before some­one com­ments back, I’m not say­ing that Chris­tian­i­ty needs to be a test for indi­vid­ual mem­ber­ship but new mem­bers should know that every­thing from our name (“Friends of Christ”) on down are root­ed in that tra­di­tion and that that for­mal mem­ber­ship does not include veto pow­er over our pub­lic identity.

There is room out there for spiritual-but-not-religious com­mu­ni­ties that aren’t built around a col­lec­tive wor­ship of God, don’t wor­ry about any par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion and focus their ener­gies and group iden­ti­ty on lib­er­al social caus­es. But I guess part of what I won­der is why this does­n’t col­lect under the UUA ban­ner, whose Prin­ci­ples and Pur­pos­es state­ment is already much more syn­cretis­tic and post-religious than even the most lib­er­al year­ly meet­ing. Evolv­ing into the “oth­er UUA” would mean aban­don­ing most of the valu­able spir­i­tu­al wis­dom we have as a people.

I think there’s a need for the kind of strong lib­er­al Chris­tian­i­ty that Friends have prac­ticed for 350 years. There must be mil­lions of peo­ple parked on church bench­es every Sun­day morn­ing look­ing up at the pul­pit and think­ing to them­selves, “sure­ly this isn’t what Jesus was talk­ing about.” Look, we have Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians com­ing out against the war! And let’s face it, it’s only a mat­ter of time before “Emer­gent Chris­tians” real­ize how lame all that post-post can­dle wor­ship is and look for some­thing a lit­tle deep­er. The times are ripe for “Oppor­tu­ni­ties,” Friends. We have impor­tant knowl­edge to share about all this. It would be a shame if we kept quiet.

FGC Gathering Workshop

January 29, 2005
· Martin Kelley

This fall Zachary Moon and I put togeth­er a work­shop pro­pos­al for the 2005 Gath­er­ing, which has been approved: “Strangers to the Covenant” is the title and here’s the short description:

This is for young Friends who want to break into the pow­er of Quak­erism: it’s the stuff you did­n’t get in First Day School. We’ll con­nect with his­tor­i­cal Quak­ers whose pow­er­ful min­istry came in their teens and twen­ties and we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order togeth­er to build a move­ment that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quak­er his­to­ry to reclaim the pow­er of our tra­di­tion, to explore the liv­ing pow­er of the tes­ti­monies and our wit­ness in the world.

This was very much an “as way opens” process. At the 2004 Gath­er­ing I felt sad that there weren’t more work­shops that I’d like to attend. And obvi­ous­ly I have a long-standing con­cern to sup­port younger Friends. But I was­n’t sure if I had the skills to han­dle this. One piece of dis­cern­ment was lead­ing the Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing: I knew I would have most of the ses­sions under my belt by the time the work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line came around and I hoped I’d have a feel whether I actu­al­ly like lead­ing workshops!

The Med­ford expe­ri­ence was sur­pris­ing­ly good, even on weeks where I could have been bet­ter pre­pared. I learned a lot and gained con­fi­dence in “teach­ing” Quak­erism to Med­ford’s class of very weighty, expe­ri­enced Friends.

Still, the Gath­er­ing work­shop sub­mis­sion dead­line was loom­ing and I had no spe­cif­ic top­ic in mind. Julie, my wife, was get­ting a lit­tle sus­pi­cious whether the work­shop would hap­pen or not. I knew that the most impor­tant thing was attract­ing the right mix of eager, curi­ous par­tic­i­pants and that for me the top­ic was almost sec­ondary. Still: a focus and top­ic is impor­tant, yes.

The week before the dead­line, I attend­ed the FGC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee meet­ing in New Wind­sor, Mary­land, as a staff­per­son. In a lunchtime dis­cus­sion I learned that my friend Zachary Moon was also con­sid­er­ing lead­ing his first work­shop. As soon as we sat down and start­ed talk­ing it seemed like the obvi­ous thing to do. The dis­cern­ment to co-lead this took two a half sec­onds or so, but of course this quick process was built on the thought, prayer and dis­cern­ment both of us had already been giv­ing the mat­ter. I’ve found that when I’ve laid the ground­work for a deci­sion, things can often move supris­ing­ly quickly.

The work­shop has devel­oped dif­fer­ent­ly than I sus­pect­ed. The most sig­ni­cant piece is its age lim­i­ta­tion: it’s for high school and adult young Friends only, mean­ing it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion is lim­it­ed to 15 to 35 years olds. I’ve always been a lit­tle wor­ried about con­struct­ing youth ghet­tos but I think it will work in this case. I apol­o­gize in advance to those Quak­er Ranter read­ers who might like to take it but can’t because of age (I’m too old myself, after all!). There will be many oth­er chances to spend time at Gath­er­ing and Zachary and I are only a part of a shift that’s been hap­pen­ing at the FGC Gath­er­ing over the last few years.

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.

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.