Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

For those that might not have noticed, I have an arti­cle in the lat­est issue of the awkwardly-named FGCon­nec­tions: “Wit­ness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings.” Astute Quak­er Ranter read­ers will rec­og­nize it as a re-hashing of “The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” and its relat­ed pieces. Reac­tion has been quite inter­est­ing, with a lot of old­er Friends say­ing they relate to what I’ve said. It’s fun­ny how so many of us feel a sense of iso­la­tion from our own reli­gious institutions!

The Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

By Martin Kelley

What is it like to be a thirty-something Friend these days? Lone­ly and frus­trat­ing. At least half of the com­mit­ted, inter­est­ing and bold twenty-something Friends I knew ten years ago have left Quak­erism. This isn’t nor­mal youth­ful church-hopping and it’s not some char­ac­ter flaw of “Gen­er­a­tion X.” They’ve left because they were sim­ply tired of slam­ming their heads against the wall of an insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism that neglect­ed them and its own future.

I can cer­tain­ly relate. For the last decade, I’ve done ground-breaking work pub­li­ciz­ing non­vi­o­lence online. I’ve been pro­filed in the New York Times and invit­ed on nation­al talk radio shows, but the clerk of the peace com­mit­tee in my achingly-small month­ly meet­ing always for­gets that I have “some web­site” and I’ve nev­er been asked to speak to Friends about my work. I wouldn’t mind being over­looked if I saw oth­ers my age being rec­og­nized, but most of the amaz­ing min­istries I’ve known have been just as invisible.

It’s like this even at the small-scale lev­el. I’ve gone to count­less com­mit­tee meet­ings with ideas, enthu­si­asm and faith­ful­ness, only to real­ize (too late, usu­al­ly) that these are just the qual­i­ties these com­mit­tees don’t want. Through repeat­ed heart­break I’ve final­ly learned that if I feel like I’m crash­ing a par­ty when I try to get involved with some Quak­er cause, then it’s a sign that it’s time to get out of there! I’ve been in so many meet­ing­hous­es where I’ve been the only per­son with­in ten years of my age in either direc­tion that I’m gen­uine­ly star­tled when I’m in a room­ful of twenty- and thirty-somethings.

I recent­ly had lunch with one of the thir­tysome­thing Friends who have left. He had been drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change; he was still very com­mit­ted to both. But after orga­niz­ing actions for years, he con­clud­ed that the Friends in his meet­ing didn’t think the peace tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to a wit­ness that was so bold.

I wrote about this lunch con­ver­sa­tion on my web­site and before long anoth­er old Friend sur­faced. Eight years ago a wit­ness and action con­fer­ence inspired him to help launch a nation­al Quak­er youth vol­un­teer net­work. He put years of his life into this; his state­ments on the prob­lems and promis­es fac­ing Quak­er youth are still right on the mark. But after ear­ly excite­ment his sup­port evap­o­rat­ed and the project even­tu­al­ly fell apart in what he’s described as “a bit­ter and unsuc­cess­ful experience.”

The loss of Quak­er peers has hit close to home for me. When one close Friend learned my wife had left Quak­erism for anoth­er church after eleven years, all he could say was how pleased he was that she had final­ly found her spir­i­tu­al home; oth­ers gave sim­i­lar empty- sound­ing plat­i­tudes. I felt like say­ing to them “No, you dimwits, we’ve dri­ven away yet anoth­er Friend!” Each of these three lost Friends remain deeply com­mit­ted to the Spir­it and are now involved in oth­er reli­gious societies.

Young adults haven’t always been as invis­i­ble or unin­volved as they are now. A whole group of the Quak­er lead­ers cur­rent­ly in their fifties and six­ties were giv­en impor­tant jobs at Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions at very ten­der ages (often right out of col­lege). Also, there’s his­tor­i­cal prece­dent for this: George Fox was 24 when he began his pub­lic min­istry; Samuel Bow­nas was 20 when he was roused out of his meet­ing­house slum­ber to begin his remark­able min­istry; even Mar­garet Fell was still in her thir­ties when she was con­vinced. When the first gen­er­a­tion of Friends drew togeth­er a group of their most impor­tant elders and min­is­ters to address one of their many crises, the aver­age age of the gath­er­ing was 35. Younger Friends haven’t always been ghet­toized into Young

Audlt Friends only dorms, pro­grams, work­shops or committees.

There is hope. Some have start­ed notic­ing that young Friends who go into lead­er­ship train­ing pro­grams often dis­ap­pear soon after­wards. The pow­ers that be at Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence have final­ly start­ed talk­ing about “youth min­istry.” (Wel­come!). 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.

In the truest real­i­ty, our chrono­log­i­cal ages melt away in the ever-refreshing cur­rents of the Liv­ing Spir­it; we are all as chil­dren to a lov­ing God. Will Friends come togeth­er to remem­ber this before our reli­gious soci­ety los­es anoth­er generation?

Mar­tin Kel­ley is a mem­ber of Atlantic City Month­ly Meet­ing, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. He works for FGC as the web­mas­ter and book­store sec­re­tary. This arti­cle is writ­ten from his experience.

 

 



17 thoughts on “Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

  1. Dear Mar­tin and everyone,
    I have desires about what I’d like the Quak­er church to be, but I think the key issue is con­nect­ing with G‑d. I hope that the changes I want to see would be the out­flow­ing of the mirac­u­lous Divine Holy pow­er. But that pow­er, G‑d’s Will, has to come first. Because with­out it we are dry, and locked in our human efforts. I have this idea that if we put G‑d first, wor­ship­ping and hon­our­ing and fol­low­ing the guid­ance that we receive, that will make us unit­ed. I think it’s not us who can fix the Quak­ers but only that G‑d will work through us if we can put Him before our own desires.
    I think there is a pearl of great price in the Quak­er tra­di­tion. I want to encour­age every­one with­in Quak­ers to engage with our tra­di­tion, to take it on and under­stand our­selves as inher­i­tors, to see how G‑d flows through our hun­dreds of years and into us. I feel the truth of the Quak­er expe­ri­ence is alive today as it has always been. Christ has come to teach His peo­ple Him­self. He is present in our meet­ings, present to teach and guide and trans­form us to live in His pat­tern, one change at a time, but with a pow­er way beyond our own. That is the Good News for me right now.
    So my mes­sage to the Quak­er church at large is: “Trust G‑d, learn to know G‑d and to con­nect with the church that He makes. Wor­ship G‑d, because there is noth­ing more impor­tant. Dare to con­nect with the his­to­ry of Quak­ers and the Church as a whole and lis­ten for how that same Christ is call­ing you.” I don’t know if this is a use­ful response to your request. Maybe there is some­thing more than that nec­es­sary. I won­der if all Quak­ers are doing this ful­ly already? In which case prob­a­bly I don’t under­stand what G‑d is doing with Quak­ers right now.
    I under­stand you were ask­ing for detailed sug­ges­tions about what we feel is nec­es­sary for Quak­ers to actu­al­ly live G‑d’s guid­ance, espe­cial­ly in learn­ing how not to alien­ate the awe­some tal­ent­ed peo­ple who come to us. I feel in Britain Year­ly Meet­ing that we are over­loaded with com­mit­tees and struc­tures and pro­grammes and that what I most want is to wor­ship with oth­er Friends, and to live obe­di­ent to G‑d. So I am just talk­ing about what I under­stand as the well­spring: fol­low Christ, wait in the Light he offers to illu­mi­nate you and str­erngth­en and com­fort you.
    But that’s not a very “rolling up sleeves” kind of mes­sage, so maybe not what you are ask­ing. Maybe it’s my kind of think­ing which cre­ates the prob­lem in Quak­ers? If each of us is attend­ing to Christ, trust­ing that He Him­self can teach every­one else who needs it the Quak­er under­stand­ing, that’s how the church gets frag­ment­ed and peo­ple get lost? But I can’t see anoth­er way to G‑d apart from by putting wor­ship first and trust­ing that He will lead us to the work that He needs doing.

  2. Friends,
    I agree with Alice. The begin­ning of all we are and do is our Cre­ator and Redeemer. Liv­ing in The Pres­ence and learn­ing to be obe­di­ent to the guid­ance giv­en are the foun­da­tion that will sup­port the great weight of what we are called to do.
    My sense of what is now need­ed involves the con­scious, will­ing accep­tance of and com­mit­ment to our assign­ment from our Lord. For each of us, there is a dif­fer­ent job. Some­where it is writ­ten that we are a body and the body has dif­fer­ent parts, each vital to the body.
    I am find­ing that the accep­tance and com­mit­ment requires a cor­re­spond­ing change in self-image. Some­one who may have always seen them­selves as a teacher may need to become a stu­dent, at least for a while, in order to car­ry out the task giv­en by the Spir­it. A per­pet­u­al “kid broth­er” or “kid sis­ter” may be called to become a spir­i­tu­al nur­tur­er and men­tor, and so on.
    The word that comes to mind is matu­ri­ty. Anoth­er word is humil­i­ty. Yet anoth­er is courage. The Lord charged Joshua to fear not, to be of good courage when he beheld a tremen­dous work ahead of him.
    How might this look as we roll up our sleeves? It might begin with com­mit­ment to lis­ten­ing first for the Spir­it’s guid­ance regard­ing one’s role here, now. It might include read­ing Samuel Bow­nas’ “A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Nec­es­sary for a Gospel Min­is­ter.” It might lead to sev­er­al Friends com­ing togeth­er to pray and lis­ten togeth­er, to seek to rec­og­nize one anoth­er’s roles. Some may decide to relo­cate in order to be in phys­i­cal prox­im­i­ty to oth­er Friends. Some may sell all they have and live the pil­grim life in trav­el­ing ministry.
    (One side thought here — I am not envi­sion­ing an offi­cial com­mit­tee or pro­gram. I am see­ing Friends drawn togeth­er in the Love of the Spirit.)
    When I con­sid­er all this, it can be, as some would say, “a hard word.” My expe­ri­ence has been that a grow­ing sense of the Love that is behind, around and through such life-changing devo­tion soft­ens the hard spots.

  3. First off, Mar­tin, shame on me for not email­ing you right away to tell you I read your arti­cle! In that way, I am part of the “invis­i­bil­i­ty phe­nom­e­non” about which you and I have sim­i­lar con­cerns. If I had a tail, it would be between my legs right now… smile
    And yes, I had noticed the “rework­ing” of your post on the Lost Gen­er­a­tion. Nice to see you in print in a pub­li­ca­tion that goes to Quak­er Lud­dites and non-Luddites alike.
    But now to the ques­tions you ask:
    I’m mulling doing some­thing around Gifts and Men­tor­ship… It would be the pos­i­tive “rolling up the sleeves” response to the FGCon­nec­tions arti­cle. What do you all think? If we could get a mes­sage out to larg­er Quak­er­dom, what we want it to be?
    I’m wary to answer your ques­tions. Part of it is the “inter­net phe­nom­e­non” as it relates to a covenant com­mu­ni­ty. If you get 12 respons­es to your ques­tion, “What mes­sage do we [does God] want to get out to Friends?”, then can we dis­cern the lead­ings of the Spir­it across email and in blog posts? Per­haps. But to be clear: Are you ask­ing us to be part of that exper­i­ment? I don’t think that’s your inten­tion here.
    Also, you know that I believe in your min­istry, in your gifts; in your abil­i­ty to con­nect Friends, one to anoth­er, regard­less of age; and in your abil­i­ty to syn­the­size many ideas into a cohe­sive, rich, thought-provoking arti­cle. I’d want to tread light­ly on what­ev­er you (and oth­ers?) pull togeth­er, and instead be avail­able to you to read a draft, ask ques­tions to help you under­stand what it is that you or God wish to con­vey, and work with you to be faith­ful to your lead­ing and to the right use of your gifts in craft­ing the piece.
    Most impor­tant, I’d want to know:
    If YOU could get a mes­sage out to larg­er Quak­er­dom on behalf of God, what would it be? What would GOD want it to be?
    Isn’t this part of what you and I are reach­ing for…?
    Blessings,
    Liz, The Good Raised Up

  4. My answer is in three parts.
    The first is “Be not afraid.” I just read some­where recent­ly that Jesus spent a lot of time telling peo­ple this. So, to Friends every­where: Don’t be afraid to speak your spir­i­tu­al truths. Don’t be afraid to use the names for the Divine that are mean­ing­ful to you. Don’t be afraid of teenagers (espe­cial­ly if you are one). Don’t be afraid to say what you know and don’t know. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t be afraid to try old things that you heard were out­dat­ed, but are curi­ous about any­way. Don’t be afraid to say this isn’t work­ing, let’s stop now. Don’t be afraid to say hel­lo to some­one you don’t know. I seem to remem­ber Nel­son Man­dela quot­ing some­body that we are not so much afraid of how weak we are, but more afraid of being as amaz­ing as we real­ly are.
    The sec­ond is that we need to be real­ly artic­u­late and explic­it about teach­ing young peo­ple and new­com­ers and peo­ple who have been around a long time but are just now get­ting seri­ous about Quak­erism. It is not enough to say what we aren’t, what we don’t believe in. We have to work togeth­er to learn from our his­to­ry, our scrip­tures and our com­mu­ni­ty to dis­cern what are our core beliefs as a Month­ly Meet­ing espe­cial­ly and then as a Soci­ety, and then find ways to express them in con­crete lan­guage and exam­ples. It is not enough to tell peo­ple to just be qui­et and be open in meet­ing for wor­ship. The exam­ples giv­en in Steve Smith’s Pen­dle Hill pam­phlet “Quak­er in the Zen­do” and Dou­glas Steere’s book­let, “Where Words Come From” are artic­u­late expla­na­tions of what we do and why we do it. Steve had to prac­tice Bud­dhism for a while to be able to hear how George Fox gave very clear instruc­tions on how to wor­ship. Steere walks a beau­ti­ful­ly fine line of both draw­ing on a clear under­stand­ing that Christ is the source and being able to express it in non-exclusive lan­guage, of how to lis­ten to God, what to do in meet­ing for wor­ship and what per­son­al spir­i­tu­al prac­tices can pre­pare us for cor­po­rate worship.
    Learn­ing to teach what we do is a fur­ther lev­el of our own spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. We should all have to try it.
    Third, on a very prac­ti­cal lev­el, I think we need to give young peo­ple real work to do, not just a good time, among Friends. I think the rea­son so many elder­ly Friends in my Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing are so attached to the insti­tu­tions we have is that they built them. They poured the con­crete, they built the cab­ins, they gave and raised the mon­ey to buy the land and pay the direc­tors. It’s not that there isn’t still work to be done, it’s that we don’t do it our­selves any­more. And so young peo­ple are not devel­op­ing either the prac­ti­cal skills or the emo­tion­al attach­ment to take care of the amaz­ing insti­tu­tions that we have.
    I won­der if the word “men­tor­ing” is too vague for most peo­ple to under­stand what is meant. I am cur­rent­ly all hot for the word “appren­tic­ing.” Appar­ent­ly, once upon a time, it was one of the main duties of a Quak­er [or any oth­er con­sci­en­tious] par­ent to arrange for their child to learn a trade from anoth­er Friend. To make sure that they learned prac­ti­cal skills in an eth­i­cal envi­ron­ment. Yes, edu­ca­tion­al and employ­ment prac­tices have changed. But the need for young peo­ple to learn prac­ti­cal ways of run­ning Quak­er insti­tu­tions has not. On one lev­el, we may all be chil­dren in the eyes of God. On the oth­er hand, some of us have more expe­ri­ence than oth­ers and should be asked to share it.
    What if the senior mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty, the clerks of our com­mit­tees, were assigned, with good thought giv­en to the pair­ings, an appren­tice — a younger Friend who would work with the old­er Friend, learn­ing the ropes of the trade, the way the Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing finan­cial records are kept, the way the nom­i­nat­ing process works, the way the arrange­ments and pas­toral care and chil­dren’s pro­grams all work. This should be seen as a nor­mal part of a young per­son­’s devel­op­ment, and per­haps they would be appren­ticed to a new senior or “mas­ter” (in the sense of a mas­ter car­pen­ter or mas­ter mason) every year or so, as way opened and the young per­son­’s spir­i­tu­al gifts became more appar­ent. There would also have to be an open­ness of the seniors to learn, maybe new com­put­er­ized reg­is­tra­tion process­es or how to pro­vide pas­toral care through text mes­sag­ing or just a fresh way of think­ing, and to giv­ing the appren­tices increas­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty, includ­ing the right to fail some­times. Note: this will work best if it is not the par­ent of the young per­son who is teach­ing him or her. Also, it is more work to teach as you go along than to do it all your­self. But this is an invest­ment we have to make, not because young peo­ple are just a resource to be har­vest­ed, or because it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty and their need, and because we are all parts of the body of Christ, and the Truth will not be found if we exclude a whole seg­ment of our com­mu­ni­ty from participating.
    I hear too many old­er Friends com­plain­ing that they are over­bur­dened, too busy, too stretched. And I hear younger Friends com­plain­ing that there’s noth­ing for them to do. Which gets back to not being afraid.
    For old­er Friends, don’t be afraid to expect the junior year­ly meet­ing clerks to come to the Finance Com­mit­tee meet­ing. Don’t be afraid to hold young peo­ple account­able to their high­est abil­i­ties. Don’t be afraid of the com­plain­ing – and there will be some, but I think that it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ents and teach­ers and elders of all ages to suck it up and hear the com­plaints and be real­ly clear that if we don’t all work togeth­er, we will not have a Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Do be pre­pared to take the time to explain, not sev­en times, but sev­en­ty times sev­en, every year. Do try to lis­ten to the ques­tions, even beyond the words.
    For younger Friends, don’t be afraid to come and ask ques­tions. Don’t be afraid to assert your right to know how the Year­ly or Month­ly Meeting’s mon­ey is spent. Don’t be afraid to ask the clerk of a com­mit­tee you’re inter­est­ed in to tell you how they do their work. Do be pre­pared that in order to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, you will have to do some bor­ing, nitty-gritty, hard work. Do be pre­pared to for­give the old­er folks for not know­ing how to teach well – they are learn­ing on the job, too, since many of them did not get well taught and they may not have a lot of good exam­ples to fol­low. Do try to lis­ten first and ask ques­tions second.
    For every­one, remem­ber to ask for Divine assis­tance. To trust. To for­give. To turn the oth­er cheek. To cheer­ful­ly walk into the lion’s den. To look for joy and seren­i­ty and courage in com­mu­ni­ty and in nature and in self.

  5. Robin, your thoughts and writ­ings on appren­tic­ing and on giv­ing young(er) Friends “real work to do” intrigue me.
    I’ve already giv­en some thought to “teach­ing clerk­ing while clerk­ing” (but that post won’t be ready for some time, unless Way opens and Spir­it speaks a bit loud­er to me… smile), plus I lit­er­al­ly just had a vis­it with a Friend who works in devel­op­ment for a cer­tain Friends organization.
    He shared a sto­ry with me that over the past year, in prepa­ra­tion for the clerk of the Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee to step down, the incom­ing clerk has been involved in all the con­fer­ence calls, all the emails, all the agenda-setting dis­cus­sions so that she will be well ground­ed in the work of the com­mit­tee. She’ll know more about its nat­ur­al cycle, its inter­con­nect­ed­ness to the larg­er orga­ni­za­tion, and its rel­e­vance to oth­er com­mit­tees with­in the orga­ni­za­tion as well. Makes a whole lot of sense to me to pre­pare incom­ing clerks this way!
    Regard­ing Friends and “real work,” a hand­ful of expe­ri­enced Friends in the month­ly meet­ing have said that ever since the Meet­ing­house was acquired and an addi­tion was built, there has been no large project around which the meet­ing could bond. That was near­ly 15 years ago appar­ent­ly. I don’t think it’s only young(er) Friends who need to put “hands to work; hearts to God.” I think old­er Friends need that fellowship-through-labor as well.
    Blessings,
    Liz, The Good Raised Up

  6. Hi all,
    What great com­ments. Very help­ful. A num­ber of the peo­ple who read the _Connections_ arti­cle have sought me out by phone or email and it’s inter­est­ing just how sup­port­ive they’ve been. Even more inter­est­ing was the wide demo­graph­ic who nod­ded in recog­ni­tion. The issues we’re talk­ing about are ulti­mate­ly ones that are fac­ing our whole reli­gious soci­ety, not just one nar­row age range.
    The oth­er part that Friends have lift­ed up so elo­quent­ly in the com­ments is that God real­ly needs to be involved in all this. Left to my own intel­lect I’m very good at dis­sect­ing soci­o­log­i­cal trends. I have a essentially-completed post on men­tor­ship (I’m sure Liz and Robin would drop every­thing to com­ment on it!) but I haven’t post­ed it because it feels too ana­lyt­i­cal. In wor­ship last First Day, there was some amaz­ing min­istry that spoke issues of men­tor­ship and it became clear to me that this might be merged in a way that would speak more clear­ly to what might be on God’s agen­da for us. Now whether I have any time to write this??…

  7. One more thing, briefly this time. The RSoF is fac­ing a peri­od when Friends will gen­er­al­ly be less afflu­ent than the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions. There will be a lot more rolling up our sleeves to get things done, because there will be less mon­ey to pay for things. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a loss, it is an opportunity…

  8. Mar­tin, you write:
    I have a essentially-completed post on men­tor­ship … but I haven’t post­ed it because it feels too analytical.
    I don’t know how ana­lyt­i­cal my own posts come across to read­ers, but I do know that when I myself feel too ana­lyt­i­cal, it often means I am not shar­ing my own sto­ry, from my own experience.
    I don’t know if this holds true for you or not, but I felt a qui­et nudge to lift this point up…
    Blessings,
    Liz, The Good Raised Up

  9. Mar­tin — hel­lo! One side of me says “This is a great min­istry, rais­ing cru­cial ques­tions that Friends need to address”; anoth­er side says, “Not anoth­er cycle of recrim­i­na­tions that will sim­ply illu­mi­nate our decline with­out empow­er­ing us to faith­ful­ness.” Your per­sis­tence and the qual­i­ty of the com­ments above give me some new hope. I referred to your post­ing and these com­ments, and put some of my own mixed reflec­tions, on my “Can you Believe?” page.

  10. Hi Johan: Well cer­tain­ly we need to avoid too much in the recrim­i­na­tion depart­ment. Isn’t this the eter­nal bal­anc­ing act of more prophet­ic min­istry: doom and hope, doom and hope! I sus­pect that any par­tic­u­lar arti­cle has to focus on one side of the equa­tion, with inti­ma­tions of the oth­er as intro and exit.
    In many ways I feel I’ve played out the “lost gen­er­a­tion” theme. I’ve said what I have to say and shared the expe­ri­ences I’ve had. It’s time for oth­er peo­ple to blow that trum­pet. I don’t think I would have writ­ten anoth­er essay like that for Quak­er Ranter and I don’t think I would have writ­ten just that type of essay for a youth audience.

  11. Hel­lo Mar­tin and Friends,
    Thank you all for this won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion. It fills me with hope and excite­ment for the future of our Reli­gious Society.
    First off, I want to say that Robin’s ideas about Young Friend appren­tice­ship are very excit­ing to me. I think they should be devel­oped and exper­i­ment­ed with.
    Next, I would like to respond to Mar­t­in’s ques­tion about “get­ting a mes­sage out” by say­ing that for me, this mes­sage would be inex­tri­ca­bly linked to our rela­tion­ship to the testimonies.
    Two arti­cles that have inspired me and shaped my think­ing about these issues in the past cou­ple of days have been Mar­ty Grundy’s CHALLENGE TO FRIENDS (http://​www​.fgc​quak​er​.org/​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​/​s​p​r​i​n​g​0​5​/​c​h​a​l​l​e​n​g​e​_​t​o​_​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​_​g​r​u​n​d​y​.​htm), and Bruce Bir­chard’s SPEAKING TRUTH WITH POWER (http://​www​.fgc​quak​er​.org/​l​i​b​r​a​r​y​/​p​e​a​c​e​/​b​b​t​a​l​k​-06 – 12-03.html). If you have not read these arti­cles, you should. They are worth the read.
    In his arti­cle, Friend Mar­ty reminds us that in the ear­ly days, Friends had no offi­cial mem­ber­ship; one became a Friend and was rec­og­nized as a Friend by his or her adher­ance to the three ear­li­est tes­ti­monies: the refusal to pay tithes to the Church of Eng­land, the refusal to do “hat hon­or,” and the refusal to take oaths. If a per­son prac­ticed these tes­ti­monies in his or her life – along with reg­u­lar atten­dance at Meet­ing for Wor­ship of course – then he or she was a Friend.
    In his arti­cle, Friend Bruce sug­gests that the under­stand­ing that ear­ly Friends had of the tes­ti­monies was con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent than the under­stand­ing that we mod­ern Friends have of them. Often, when asked by non-Friends, “What do Quak­ers believe,” we mod­ern Friends will respond some­thing like, “Well, Quak­ers don’t believe in creeds, so dif­fer­ent Quak­ers have dif­fer­ent the­olo­gies, but we have these things called tes­ti­monies, which are things that most of us have agreed over time are things that are good (holy, lov­ing, Chris­t­ian etc.) to do – things like non-violence, sim­plic­i­ty, speak­ing plain and hon­est truth, etc.”
    Based on Friend Bruce’s expla­na­tion of the ear­ly Quak­er under­stand­ing of the tes­ti­monies, how­ev­er, it seems that the response to “What do Quak­ers believe?” would have been very dif­fer­ent. It would have sound­ed some­thing more like this: “Quak­er faith is based less on what we believe than on what we have expe­ri­enced: name­ly, the all-powerful and all-consuming Love of God. And when one’s life has been trans­formed by this love, there are cer­tain things one can­not do: one can­not lie, one can­not kill, one can­not own a gross excess of mate­r­i­al goods, etc.” The tes­ti­monies then, are not a bunch of things that Friends have decid­ed over time are good to do or to believe, the tes­ti­monies are what hap­pens when one’s life is trans­formed by Christ’s love.
    It is in this con­text that I think we should remem­ber to not get so hung up or afraid of our Reli­gious Soci­ety “dri­ving away,” young Friends. It is not the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends that has come to teach the world’s peo­ple, but rather Christ him­self. When we as indi­vid­u­als faith­ful­ly prac­tice our tes­ti­monies as did ear­ly Friends, peo­ple will see their fruit in our lives and will nat­u­ral­ly want to emulate.
    I have to say Mar­tin, that I feel you may be miss­ing the point when you write: “When one close Friend learned my wife had left Quak­erism for anoth­er church after eleven years, all he could say was how pleased he was that she had final­ly found her spir­i­tu­al home…I felt like say­ing to them ‘No, you dimwits, we’ve dri­ven away yet anoth­er Friend!’ ” By sug­gest­ing that we are “dri­ving peo­ple away” from the Soci­ety of Friends, you imply that it is our respon­si­b­li­ty in the first place to draw peo­ple into the Soci­ety of Friends. It is not. Our respon­si­b­li­ty is to draw our­selves and our broth­ers and sis­ters into the love of Christ. Inas­much as our tes­ti­monies as Friends help us to do that, they are valu­able. Apart from that, they are noth­ing. If and when Julie finds Friends tes­ti­monies help­ful in draw­ing her near­er to Christ, she will take them up. If she does­n’t find them help­ful to her right now in her walk with Christ, then it is no great tragedy that she isn’t a prac­tic­ing Quaker.
    In short, we don’t need to strive hard­er to do Quak­erism bet­ter, we need to open up and let Christ do us bet­ter. Alice is right – what we need is to get in touch with God. When we get in touch with God, our lives will be trans­formed. When our lives are trans­formed, our tes­ti­monies will nat­u­ral­ly flow from them. When our tes­ti­monies flow from our trans­formed lives they will speak to the con­di­tion of our trou­bled world.

  12. Some great com­ments here, I appre­ci­ate the time and thought every­one has tak­en. My think­ing’s now head­ing towards a pre­vi­ous ques­tion of Friend Mar­tin — what’s the fifty year plan for Quak­ers? I think that is meshed into the ques­tion of what do we think G‑d is try­ing to tell Quak­ers as a body, and it’s a way for me of con­cen­trat­ing on the Light lead­ing us rather than what trou­bles us about where we are.
    I always feel struck when I reread your com­ments, Friend Mar­tin, about how poor lib­er­al Friends are at out­reach. I think the Quak­er under­stand­ing has pre­cious gems to offer in this time when the whole Earth is under such great threat of cli­mate change dev­as­ta­tion and war. I am learn­ing to trust the pow­er of trans­form­ing love to lead me. I hope to feel ever more strong­ly a sense of accom­pa­ni­ment in Christ’s work of call­ing the world’s peo­ple home to live in the life-sustaining soci­ety His pow­er enables. So my vision of fifty-years-time Quak­ers is a radi­ant, joy­ful and res­olute peo­ple liv­ing in G‑d’s pow­er and able to com­mu­ni­cate it to those in need.

  13. Hel­lo Friends,
    I like this fifty year plan ques­tion. It makes a lot of sense I think in terms of look­ing at what we CAN do, what God is lead­ing us to do, rather than on our present trou­bles. Good call.
    This ques­tion also speaks to me, I think, because I have had what seem to be some very strong lead­ings late­ly about how I am called to live the tes­ti­monies, and how I see our Reli­gious Soci­ety liv­ing our tes­ti­monies as a cor­po­rate body over the long term.
    The most rad­i­cal of these lead­ings con­cerns the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny. As we have been liv­ing for some time now in a peri­od of great war and unrest, a peri­od when our coun­try is agres­sive­ly pro­mot­ing its pol­i­cy of premp­tive war­fare and mil­i­tary enforce­ment of its ver­sion of “free­dom” around the world, I have been feel­ing more and more that I am not faith­ful­ly liv­ing our tes­ti­mo­ny of peace.
    As we hear more hor­ror sto­ries on the news of the atroc­i­ties of war in the Mid­dle East, in Cen­tral Asia, and else­where, many of us find our­selves ask­ing the ques­tion, “Why?” Why is it that such ter­ri­ble things, such unlov­ing and vio­lent things are being done by our gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary in our name and the name of our counttry?
    Then one day in Meet­ing for Wor­ship, the answer struck me like a (non-violent and appro­pri­ate­ly Quak­er) kick in the head. The rea­son our gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary are doing these things is that by sub­mit­ting to our gov­ern­men­t’s war tax­es every year, you and I are pay­ing them to do these things.
    Now of course, this isn’t a new idea. The his­toric peace church­es have been attempt­ing to open up legal path­ways to war tax resis­tance for decades (cen­turies?) now. It just has­n’t worked.
    Well here’s where I think the fifty-year-plan comes in. I believe that the refusal to par­tic­i­pate with our tax dol­lars in war and mil­i­tary aggres­sion should be just as essen­tial a part of our wit­ness to Christ’s love as our refusal to par­tic­i­pate with our bod­ies. Before con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to mil­i­tary ser­vice was a legal option to paci­fists, many of our Amish, Men­non­ite, Brethren, and Quak­er broth­ers will­ing­ly went to jail rather than betray their wit­ness. I believe the time has come to do the same thing con­cern­ing war taxes.
    There are about 130,000 Amish, 160,000 Brethren, 400,000 Menon­ites and 300,000 Quak­ers liv­ing in the Unit­ed States. That makes approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 to 1.6 mil­lion Amer­i­can mem­bers of his­toric peace church­es. What if next April, the IRS got tax forms from even half of these Amer­i­cans say­ing sim­ply, “I con­sci­en­tious­ly object to fis­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion in war of any kind.” What if these Amer­i­cans will­ing took on the con­se­quences of their civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, going to jail en masse when arrest­ed, using pub­lic trans­porta­tion when their vehi­cles were repos­sessed, liv­ing in their church­es and meet­ing­hous­es when their homes were seized? What would hap­pen? What sort of renewed wit­ness and pas­sion could be sparked among us?
    None of this, of course, could be rushed into. All of it would require a mas­sive clear­ness process, rad­i­cal dia­logue and co-operation with­in our Reli­gious Soci­ety and between our peace church tra­di­tions. Finan­cial struc­tures would need to be set up in order for wit­ness­ing Chris­tians to live while their accounts were frozen by the gov­ern­ment. Com­mu­ni­ty child care struc­tures would have to be set up to ensure that chil­dren were well and lov­ing­ly cared for if par­ents should be arrest­ed. Per­haps some sort of sys­tem could be set up to redi­rect the mon­ey being with­held for war tax­es to char­i­ties and social ser­vice organizations.
    A move­ment of this scale would require quite a bit of time, plan­ning, hard work, tons of prayer and lots of love. But what could hap­pen if we did it?
    Do Friends think it could be in store for us some­where in the next 50 years?

  14. Dear Ryan,
    Just for the record, I was not nec­es­sar­i­ly dri­ven from “Friends Tes­ti­monies” (what­ev­er they hap­pen to be is anoth­er ques­tion entire­ly), and per­haps not even from Quak­erism as I under­stand it. In the end I was dri­ven away from Quak­erism – and in this sense I’m talk­ing large­ly about lib­er­al, unpro­grammed Quak­erism such as we see in the FGC world – AS IT IS NOW PRACTICED and under­stood by most Friends. In the sense that much of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism, for bet­ter or for worse, is God­less (“non­the­ist Friends,” etc.) and cer­tain­ly there exists a hos­til­i­tiy (at worst) or ambiva­lence (at best) to Chris­tian­i­ty (and there­fore tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism), I could no longer remain with­in Quak­erism. My pri­or­i­ty was when I left and now con­tin­ues to be to wor­ship God in Jesus Christ, in a com­mu­ni­ty that espoused and sup­port­ed this gen­er­al view, and in my esti­ma­tion this was unnec­es­sar­i­ly dif­fi­cult if not near­ly impos­si­ble among lib­er­al Friends.
    So when Mar­tin says that I was dri­ven away by Friends, I actu­al­ly think this is an apt descrip­tion of what hap­pened in a mil­lion ways. I was dri­ven away by what mod­ern lib­er­al Quak­erism has come to, and the wishy-washiness, the luke-warmness, of too many of its mem­bers. PERHAPS if I had been able to find a meet­ing where “real­ly” being a Quak­er and being a Chris­t­ian was ok life would have worked out dif­fer­ent­ly, but I have not found a meet­ing like this yet in any part of the US I have vis­it­ed, nor have I found it abroad. There­fore I have con­clud­ed that such a meet­ing is a very, very, very rare and unusu­al thing. (Truth­ful­ly I sus­pect that it does not exist.) I have been for­tu­nate that I have found a non-wishy-washy tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic church that I am now a mem­ber of. Hav­ing seen what I have in the Quak­er world (and not entire­ly dis­sim­i­lar sorts of luke-warmness in the Catholic world) I am very grate­ful and do not take Mater Eccle­si­ae for grant­ed. I am grate­ful for the teach­ings of the Catholic Church and the fact that it is unashamed to pro­claim them. I very much missed this in Quak­erism as there was very, very lit­tle any­one could even agree on – not even the exis­tence of the Almighty who we were sup­posed to be wor­ship­ping. Yikes!
    I do not want to speak for Mar­tin here, but I sus­pect that what he was say­ing when he relayed the bit about the F/friend (who hap­pened to be on our mar­riage over­sight com­mit­tee, btw) who was glad I found my own way was this. We have heard very lit­tle regret or remorse for the fact that I have left Quak­erism, but alot of sen­ti­ment which has implied that one reli­gion or denom­i­na­tion is as good as the next. The impor­tant part for such peo­ple is that the “fit” between the indi­vid­ual and the Faith is good. For them, Quak­erism is no dif­fer­ent or more spe­cial or truth­ful than any­thing else.
    Aside from that, it just felt pret­ty crap­py that after eleven years or so as a com­mit­ted Friend no one so much as bat­ted an eye­lash when I left. It felt real­ly odd.
    God bless,
    Julie

  15. I had a hard time pick­ing out a rea­son­ably brief quotable part of Ryan’s orig­i­nal com­ment. I was deeply moved by the whole thing. But here, this part:
    “Quak­er faith is based less on what we believe than on what we have expe­ri­enced: name­ly, the all-powerful and all-consuming Love of God. And when one’s life has been trans­formed by this love, there are cer­tain things one can­not do: one can­not lie, one can­not kill, one can­not own a gross excess of mate­r­i­al goods, etc.” The tes­ti­monies then, are not a bunch of things that Friends have decid­ed over time are good to do or to believe, the tes­ti­monies are what hap­pens when one’s life is trans­formed by Christ’s love.”
    This artic­u­lates my own rev­e­la­tion about why Quak­erism is pow­er­ful. At its root, it is Chris­tian­i­ty dis­tilled to its pure essence. It is still sim­ply lis­ten­ing to Christ who is come to teach peo­ple him­self. I’m open to hear­ing this as “God who speaks in our hearts when we are will­ing to lis­ten.” I’m not con­vinced that it is Jesus per­son­al­ly who speaks to me, but God speaks to me of the ways of Jesus. This is my cur­rent under­stand­ing, and it is still unfold­ing. A local church has a Gra­cie Allen quote hang­ing from their bal­cony: “Nev­er place a peri­od where God has placed a com­ma. God is still speaking, ”
    The rad­i­cal thing I envi­sion for the RSoF is that we will see how these tes­ti­monies are so linked — that it is the excess of mate­r­i­al goods and the lust for ever more mate­r­i­al goods and social priv­i­leges that dri­ves us — yes, us too — to war, to pay­ing for war, to destroy­ing our Earth and our fel­low crea­tures. What are the sac­ri­fices of our qual­i­ty of liv­ing that we, North Amer­i­can Quak­ers, will be will­ing to make in order to live in the pow­er that takes away the occa­sion of all wars?
    If we are unwill­ing to pay for war, are we unwill­ing to pay for fos­sil fuels? Are we will­ing to live with­out the ben­e­fit of pri­vate­ly owned auto­mo­biles? Are we will­ing to live our lives in the small­er cir­cles (geo­graph­i­cal­ly and social­ly) that a car-free sytem would require? Are we will­ing to focus more local­ly, to start with the peo­ple and places where we live, to vis­it the wid­ows and orphans that we see and know, to com­fort the afflict­ed among us that we don’t actu­al­ly know now? Are we will­ing to live a pur­er life, to be more blame­less, to keep our­selves unspot­ted from the world?
    Will they know us by our love, and by our adher­ence to our own testimonies?

  16. Dear Julie,
    Unless I’m read­ing some­thing wrong you are Mar­t­in’s wife and there­fore a res­i­dent of South Jer­sey. I’d like to invite you and Mar­tin to come vis­it my MM: http://​www​.nyym​.org/​m​a​n​a​s​q​u​an/
    We are the south­ern­most meet­ing with­in NYYM and might be described as con­ser­v­a­tive hick­site. I had not expe­ri­enced the “God­less­ness” in mod­ern Quak­erism until I ven­tured beyond my MM. The absence of twenty/thirty some­thing Quak­ers does still exist though. Why this is I don’t real­ly know. My guess is a lack of out­reach and vision.
    Matthew

  17. Hi Julie,
    I com­plete­ly under­stand that it would have felt strange and crap­py to have no one react when you left the Soci­ety after eleven years. I can’t imag­ine how a com­mu­ni­ty of faith could behave that way. I’m sorry.
    The oth­er part thtough, the impli­ca­tion that “one reli­gion or denom­i­na­tion is as good as the next,” or that “Quak­erism is no dif­fer­ent or more spe­cial or truth­ful than any­thing else,” I would respond, “Well, yes and no.”
    The way I under­stand it, Jesus taught us that there is only one True Reli­gion, and that is the reli­gion of Love. He did not teach us to be Quak­ers or Catholics or Bap­tists or Pres­by­te­ri­ans or Uni­tar­i­ans. He taught us to love God and love one anoth­er. For me, Quak­eris­m’s reminder that the Holy Spir­it (the Light of Christ, the Love of God) is direct­ly acces­si­ble to me at all times and is always capa­ble of trans­form­ing my life, com­bined with the prac­ti­cal proof of God’s love that I find in silent wor­ship, helps me to bet­ter love God and love my neighbor.
    If you find that you gain more pow­er to love God and your nieigh­bor through the Catholic litur­gy, then by all means I would say that for you, Catholocism is the bet­ter denom­i­na­tion. That does­n’t mean that I think Catholocism is more true than Quak­erism, just that I believe you when you say that Catholocism speaks bet­ter to your condition.
    Love,
    Ryan

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