Craig Bar­nett, in his Tran­si­tion Quak­ers blog, talks about the future of Quak­erism in the UK. Here’s a snip­pet but go read the whole thing:

There is like­ly to be an even larg­er num­ber of peo­ple whose most reg­u­lar engage­ment with oth­er Quak­ers is online, per­haps sup­ple­ment­ed by retreats, camps or oth­er in-person events. There will almost cer­tain­ly be a broad range of Quak­er activist groups and net­works focussed on par­tic­u­lar con­cerns such as the cli­mate emer­gency, migra­tion and peace. Along­side this, I antic­i­pate a greater diver­si­ty of forms of Quak­er prac­tice, belong­ing and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, with most Friends hav­ing a much loos­er con­nec­tion to area meet­ings and Britain Year­ly Meet­ing as a whole. In oth­er words it looks much more like a move­ment than one mono­lith­ic organisation.

I think a lot of this is rel­e­vant to Friends in North Amer­i­ca and not only because of some shared cul­ture. For bet­ter or worse, the inter­net is decou­pling spir­i­tu­al­i­ty from geog­ra­phy. Blogs and mag­a­zines, pod­casts and YouTube chan­nels are all acces­si­ble from any­where. Covid taught us all how to use Zoom and the con­tin­ued avail­abil­i­ty of online wor­ship have led iso­lat­ed Friends (or Friends frus­trat­ed by local, in-person options) to wor­ship from anywhere.

I’m intrigued by Craig’s anal­o­gy to the orga­ni­za­tion and of west­ern Bud­dhism though I think we still need to focus on local wor­ship. Part­ly because of the inter­net, peo­ple are seek­ing in-person, live com­mu­ni­ties but we have to be ready to receive them. Craig talks about the need to pro­vide reli­gious edu­ca­tion — to be able to answer what we believe — and sup­port for fam­i­lies and children.

The Future of British Quakerism 

I have just returned from The Future of British Quak­erism con­fer­ence, organ­ised by Quak­ers in Britain and Woodbrooke…

tran​si​tion​quak​er​.blogspot​.com