“Conservative Liberal Quakers” and not becoming a least-common-denominator, sentimental faith

Now my head is start­ing to throb … what label, what label? “Qui­etist”? “Quiet ranter”? The Cana­dian con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal party some years ago renamed itself the Pro­gres­sive Con­ser­v­a­tives — would that do?
A cute lit­tle demon is sit­ting on my left shoul­der, whis­per­ing “post-liberal” into my ear, and giggling.

Hey, thanks for the quote and link back to my fledg­ling blog. I was happy to read that you found some­thing of inter­est in the (lengthy) post regard­ing the Bible study sit­u­a­tion. Also — I’m one of those gay, lib­eral Friends, Chris­tians (that you men­tioned in your post), too.
Hey, I’ve been describ­ing myself as a “conservative-leaning lib­eral Friend” for a few years now. Sense-of-kinship back at ya!

Loved what you posted from Joe G’s blog. It speaks to my con­di­tion. I have another twist on the label ques­tion. For me it’s about prac­tice, not labels. Besides, labels are so not apophatic.

I’ve been giv­ing this ques­tion *way* too much thought while sit­ting through long, long meet­ings (work meet­ings, not Meet­ings for Wor­ship), and I think we should go with:
Refresh­ing Quak­ers
Wait, now! Don’t brush it off too quickly! There are many advan­tages you haven’t thought of yet: it’s as res­o­nant for up-to-date techno-pomo Friends as it could be for neo-traditionalists. It avoids the scary or over­bear­ing impli­ca­tions of “renewal” and “restora­tion,” while con­not­ing com­fort, sus­te­nance, new­ness, cool­ness (in both com­monly used senses), clean­li­ness, and nur­tu­rance. It implies a return to a past fresh­ness (par­don me while my fin­gers go on to type “the dear­est fresh­ness deep down things,” because a Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins quo­ta­tion is *always* a good thing), and that handy-dandy gerun­dive allows us to go on doing it world with­out end.
Refresh­ing Quak­ers. What sayest *thou*?
Melynda

I’ve often been tempted to call myself a “non-relativist Friend,” but it seems a bit too smug. Which it is. It’s also true.

Hi Carl,
Oh nice to see you vis­it­ing here. The Tilley hat… yes, well I don’t wear it because of my keen fash­ion sense… Ahem, cer­tainly not… I wear it because I’ve noticed that the plainer males in my yearly meet­ing often wear it (uncon­scious of any plain ref­er­ence it makes). I’m try­ing to live in my com­mu­nity and I’m try­ing to adopt what pieces I can find here. I can’t imag­ine either a broad brimmed felt hat or a Mao cap (sorry, a “Hut­terite boys cap”!) work­ing here in the big city. I still find I don’t want to be toooo plain.
“New Lights,” that’s inter­est­ing, though it’s another (per­haps unjustly) obscure ref­er­ence. Last week I was won­der­ing about “inde­pen­dent con­ser­v­a­tive.” I think the name is less impor­tant than the rela­tion­ship to others–the degree of inde­pen­dence and correspondence–which is why I want to read Betsy Cazden’s newly reprinted pam­phlet on “Fel­low­ships, Con­fer­ences and Asso­ci­a­tions” ($4) to see the promises and pit­falls of var­i­ous mod­els.
The plain dress focus has been some­thing of a sur­prise. At first it was sim­ply a “reposted email”:http://​www​.non​vi​o​lence​.org/​m​a​r​t​i​n​k​/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​0​0​0​0​8​0​.​php I had sent out to the list­serve set up after Lloyd Lee Wilson’s 2001 FGC Gath­er­ing work­shop. (For read­ers out there: Carl was a lively par­tic­i­pant in this work­shop and co-led an impromptu inter­est group on plain dress). When I got home from that Gath­er­ing and was think­ing about this lead­ing I felt toward plain dress, I hit Google and was sur­prised that there was almost noth­ing online about it. In almost no time, the plain dress became the most vis­ited part of the site. There are months where the plain dress sec­tion gets more hits than the Quaker Ranter home­page. This is a hunger for this dis­cus­sion out there.
I find that plain dress is a topic that opens up inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions about the rela­tion­ship between tra­di­tional and mod­ern Quak­erism. “Sim­plic­ity” doesn’t have the _frisson_ for comtem­po­rary Friends that “plain dress” does, and for good rea­son. The ancient tes­ti­mony was called “plain­ness” and it’s refor­mu­la­tion as “sim­plic­ity” was part of the twentieth-century the­o­log­i­cal shift I’m try­ing to high­light.
So much of the Quaker sim­plic­ity talk is as “dis­jointed from Quaker min­istry as Quaker peace activism is”:http://​www​.non​vi​o​lence​.org/​q​u​a​k​e​r​/​p​e​a​c​e​_​t​e​s​t​i​m​o​n​y​.​php. I’m not look­ing to reclaim Native Amer­i­can val­ues of stew­ard­ship. I’m not look­ing to build an envi­ron­men­tal plank for FCNL lob­by­ing. I don’t want to lec­ture Quak­ers on pop­u­la­tion con­trol. Those might be fine causes for Native Amer­i­cans, polit­i­cal junkies and peo­ple who can’t stand their older sib­lings, but I’m a Quaker. I want to frame my faith and my prac­tice in Quak­erism. The answer isn’t sim­ply broad­falls and braces but some­times these props invite the ques­tions that develop into the con­ver­sa­tions that solid­ify into the friend­ships. It’s an oppor­tu­nity for min­istry, one that works right now.
You know the other part though? I feel uncom­fort­able with the attempts to dress up good causes in Quaker lan­guage sim­ply to appeal to a Quaker audi­ence. My main web site Non​vi​o​lence​.org gets over a mil­lions vis­i­tors a year and there you will find my essay about “Eco­nom­ics and Sim­plic­ity”:http://​www​.non​vi​o​lence​.org/​i​s​s​u​e​s​/​e​c​o​n​o​m​i​c​s​.​php. Most of the sim­plic­ity stuff I write has a boil­er­plate eco-lefty feel (hon­estly: so does most of the Quaker Earth­care mate­r­ial I see). It’s all fine, it’s all good, these are gen­er­ally good causes, worth pro­mot­ing, which is why I do, even among Friends. But is it min­istry? For me it isn’t, or it isn’t the kind of min­istry I feel called to do explic­itly as a Friend. There’s some­thing in all this, some dis­tinc­tion I’m feel­ing. I have to think what it is.
For the record: yes, I’m a bicy­cle rider. I’m a vegan. I don’t wear leather. I go out of my way to buy locally from inde­pen­dent mer­chants. I believe in local com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions. When I do get in a car I drive back roads. I like local his­tory. I try to buy less pack­ag­ing and recy­cle the stuff I do pur­chase. I gar­den, I’ve started can­ning. I avoid sweat­shop labor. But why do all these things sound like bumper­stick­ers and cliches when I list them?
Again, good to see you, I’d be inter­ested to hear how you com­bine all this. I’m hav­ing occa­sional guest pieces here on Quaker Ranter, yours could be the next!?
Thy Friend,
Martin

Hi Craig,
Not only luck­ily for you but luck­ily for us, I sus­pect. I’m glad you and your part­ner have come to Friends. New Gar­den has always impressed me as a meet­ing. I laughed when your min­is­ter called to place a book order a few years ago and iden­ti­fied him­self as that “hireling at New Gar­den.” He said it with just the right mix of ironic mirth and his­tor­i­cal self-awareness and it made me want to hop the next bus to North Car­olina. I hope I meet you at next year’s “Quaker Gath­er­ing Con­fer­ence in Blacksburg”:www.fgcquaker.org/gathering; it should be pretty easy to find me in the Gath­er­ing store.

This is a really inter­est­ing page and I’m glad I found it! I have been attend­ing a lib­eral friends meet­ing and it is a won­der­ful group of peo­ple. Some­times I won­der, though, if we are TOO open and tol­er­ant to the point that we sim­ply exist to be a nice group of polit­i­cally and socially active (in the social jus­tice sense) peo­ple that gets together peri­od­i­cally. I think it impor­tant to remem­ber the Chris­t­ian roots of the Friends and am glad that there are Friends out there of the same persuasion.

Hi Kevin-Douglas! It’s so good to hear from you, I’ve thought about you quite a bit since I first heard that Rus­sell was ill, you both have been in my prayers. I’m grate­ful to hear that the min­istry stirs. I think quiet­ness in wor­ship is not an indi­ca­tion of a spir­i­tual desert; indeed, some of the most pow­er­ful min­is­ters I’ve known rarely speak in meet­ing. But when they stand, my heart leaps for joy (yep) and I just sit back with a con­tented assur­ance that I know these Friends have a con­fi­dence in the Source of what they’re about to say! I think re-establishing a sense of the min­istry is our most impor­tant task now, espe­cially for YAFs like you (ha, I’m two years over the FGC def­i­n­i­tion!). You have seen the “workshop”:/quaker/strangers/ Zachary and I are doing, right?!

Thanks to Liz’s recent post, I just found this thread for the first time. And won­der­ful to read Carl Magruder’s thought­ful and thought-provoking elder­ing.
Com­ing in mid-stream, I was reminded of a recent post here on Quaker Ranter by Rich Accetta-Evans on the “What’s God Got to Do with It?” thread:
“I hope in time to tell the story of an “open­ing” I received… Christ told me inwardly that “I am not the leader of a fac­tion”. I took that to mean that in order to fol­low him I should not act like a mem­ber of a fac­tion.“
One of the things I appre­ci­ate about (what lit­tle I know of) Bud­dhism is its con­stant reminder that these things are only con­cepts, not the “thing itself.” What mat­ters are the expe­ri­ences.
The true gift, to me, of Martin’s min­istry through Quaker Ranter is the open­ing of a space for peo­ple to have these con­ver­sa­tions about their expe­ri­ences. What’s won­der­ful is how the con­ver­sa­tion fre­quently focuses on how peo­ple approach nam­ing their self-understanding, and then their sub­se­quent expe­ri­ence of how well — or not — that self-understanding relates back to the local and wider Quaker com­mu­ni­ties. And, again to me, that wider com­mu­nity def­i­nitely includes this one and the sim­i­lar blogs.