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Quaker

As the blog name implies, I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends, known colloquially as Quakers. Many of my blog posts deal with issues of our society and its interactions with the larger world.

Important Posts:
The Lost Quaker Generation (2003)
Peace and Twenty-Somethings (2003)
We’re All Ranters Now (2003)
Passing the Faith, Planet of the Quaker Style (2004)
Quaker Testimonies (2004)
Hey, Who Am I To Decide Anything? (2007)
The Biggest Most Vibranty Most Outreachiest Program Ever (2010)
Getting a Horse to Drink (on Philadelphia YM) (2010)
Tell Them All This But Don’t Expect Them to Listen (2010)

Were Friends part of Obama’s Evolution?

May 10th, 2012
by Martin Kelley.
1 comment

Pres­i­dent Obama’s been attribut­ing some of his so-called “evo­lu­tion” on same-sex mar­riage to his daugh­ters. As he told ABC’s Robin Roberts:

You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose par­ents are same-sex cou­ples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sit­ting around the din­ner table, and we’re talk­ing about their friends and their par­ents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that some­how their friends’ par­ents would be treated dif­fer­ently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.

So where do Obama’s daughter’s inde­pen­dent friends come from? Like most tweens the like­li­est answer is school–in their case, Sid­well Friends. It’s not unlikely that the “evo­lu­tion” owed some­thing to the Quaker envi­ron­ment there.

Most elite Quaker schools have only a token base of Quaker stu­dents and teach­ers, so we can’t assume that Malia and Sasha’s friends are Friends. Like many outward-facing Quaker insti­tu­tions, mod­ern Friends schools’ strongest claim to Quak­erism is the val­ues and dis­cern­ment tech­niques they share with the wider world. They con­sciously trans­mit a style and ped­a­gogy and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of open­ness and diver­sity. Of course the Obama kids are going to rub up against non-traditional mar­riages at a East Coast Quaker school. And no one should be sur­prised if they bring a lit­tle of that back home when the school bus drops them off at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.

NYTimes: Obama Girls Influ­ence the Pres­i­dent — Again
Pres­i­dent Obama often uses his daugh­ters, Malia and Sasha, as object lessons in explain­ing his rea­son­ing behind impor­tant pol­icy positions.

Future of Quaker media at Pendle Hill next month

Apr 27th, 2012
by Martin Kelley.
16 comments

I’m part of a dis­cus­sion at the Pen­dle Hill con­fer­ence cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia next month. Everyone’s invited. It’s a rare chance to really bring a lot of dif­fer­ent read­ers and media pro­duc­ers (offi­cial and DIY) together into the same room to map out where Quaker media is headed. If you’re a pas­sion­ate reader or think that Quaker pub­li­ca­tions are vital to our spir­i­tual move­ment, then do try to make it out.

Youtube, Twit­ter, pod­casts, blogs, books. Where’s it all going and who’s doing it? How does it tie back to Quak­erism? What does it mean for Friends and our insti­tu­tions? Join pan­elists Charles Mar­tin, Gabriel Ehri and Mar­tin Kel­ley, along with Quaker pub­lish­ers and writ­ers from around the world, and read­ers and media enthu­si­asts, for a wide-ranging dis­cus­sion about the future of Quaker media.

We will begin with some wor­ship at 7.00pm If you’d like a deli­cious Pen­dle Hill din­ner before­hand please reply to the Face­book event wall (see http://​on​.fb​.me/​q​u​a​k​e​r​m​e​dia). Din­ner is at 6.00pm and will cost $12.50

This is part of this year’s Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions con­fer­ence. QUIP has been hav­ing to re-imagine its role over the last ten years as so many of its anchor pub­lish­ers and book­stores have closed. I have a big con­cern that a lot of online Quaker mate­r­ial is being pro­duced by non-Quakers and/or in ways that aren’t really rooted in typ­i­cal Quaker processes. Maybe we can talk about that some at Pen­dle Hill.

Missionary zeal vs international fellowship

Apr 13th, 2012
by Martin Kelley.
No comments yet

On a late lunch, just fin­ished “Con­flict­ing Views on For­eign Mis­sions: The Mis­sion Board of Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing of Freinds in the 1920s” by Tesuko Toda from the Fall 2011 issue of Quaker His­tory.

Sounds like a page turner, right? But it’s inter­est­ing his­tory that’s still res­onat­ing. Toda’s piece sheds light on a gen­er­a­tional sea change that hap­pened among the evangelical-leaning sub­set of Philadel­phia Friends (a minor­ity of the Ortho­dox yearly meeting):

When the story begins, Friends inter­ested in mis­sion work have to orga­nize inde­pen­dent of the yearly meet­ing. Over time they come into the fold but it’s right when younger Friends are giv­ing up the idea of bring­ing Chris­tian­ity to the hea­thens for the idea of inter­na­tional fel­low­ship (a sim­i­lar atti­tude change was hap­pen­ing through­out Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions).  Toda writes:

Young Philadel­phian Friends did sup­port for­eign mis­sions, but did not sup­port con­ven­tional ones. Actu­ally, none of them approved of for­eign mis­sions aimed at con­ver­sion. Although some pointed out the advan­tages of Friends mis­sions, no one insisted on denom­i­na­tional mis­sions. What kind of for­eign mis­sions did young Philadel­phia Friends think was suit­able for the new era (the 1920s), then? The first point to be noted is that young Philadel­phia Friends unan­i­mously had a neg­a­tive view of tra­di­tional missionaries.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth in the group but it finally fun­nelled its ener­gies into the still-new Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee. The AFSC had been set up to sup­port con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in World War I and there was no expec­tion that it might con­tinue after the war. That it did was because it bet­ter rep­re­sented the inter­na­tion fel­low­ship model.

I’m not going to write a full review but those of you inter­ested in the soci­o­log­i­cal his­tory of that kind of bold, “let’s change the world” energy in Friends should look it up, as should those curi­ous about how gen­er­a­tional shifts some­times play out in yearly meet­ing politics.

Resurrection with the Cross and Rabbi

Apr 11th, 2012
by Martin Kelley.
6 comments

A nice post from Micah Bales on the neces­sity of not just the cross, but res­ur­rec­tion as well:

Of course, [the per­se­cu­tion and betrayal] is not the part of the story that moti­vates me. I am not seek­ing to be abused and betrayed, let down by my best friends and hunted by those in power. I may rec­og­nize the neces­sity of suf­fer­ing, but by no means do I seek it out. I think most of us grav­i­tate towards the tri­umphant vic­tory and joy of Jesus’ resurrection.

It seems to me there are three essen­tial com­po­nents to the Jesus biog­ra­phy: the teacher, the mar­tyr and the res­ur­rected Spirit. When we dis­miss or dis­count one piece, we limit our under­stand­ing and moti­va­tion to act.

The first part of the Jesus puz­zle is the min­istry of Jesus. This is the most palat­able to reli­gious lib­er­als. This is Jesus the wise rabbi, the activist, the social change agent who may or may not have any claim of divin­ity to him. This Jesus gave the inspir­ing speech of the Ser­mon on the Mount, the one who saved the wed­ding party with the water-to-wine trick, who had a folksy para­ble for every occa­sion. With­out this Jesus we both loose sight of the need for the humil­ity of the Beat­i­tudes and for­get our respon­si­bil­ity to the eco­nom­i­cally and spir­i­tu­ally poor. Just about all of our tes­ti­monies come from the Ser­mon on the Mount: it’s our guide for what the King­dom on Earth should look like.

The sec­ond Jesus was the Jesus of the cross, the mar­tyr who  went will­ingly to his death. Stop and think: he knew what was com­ing and he kept fol­low­ing his fate. This is the Jesus who inspires us to act in the face of over­whelm­ing odds. Friends and our anabap­tist brethren are fond of urg­ing one another to “take up the cross” in our own lives, even if that makes us mis­un­der­stood or unpop­u­lar. When early Friends tried to dis­cern the lead­ings of the Holy Spirit, one of the tests of a course of an action was not want­ing to do it. With­out Jesus of the cross we double-guess any inex­plic­a­ble lead­ings we’re given and run from the impossible.

But life isn’t just drunken par­ties and tor­tured deaths. The final Jesus was the res­ur­rected one, the son of God come back to tell us there is more after this life, who stays with us through the mir­a­cle of con­tin­ual Pen­te­cost. There’s more to life than our phys­i­cal world. This Jesus is essen­tial for us mys­ti­cal unpro­grammed Friends: this is the Mes­sen­ger come knock­ing on the doors of our heart to admon­ish and guide us. When we sit in silence on First Day, this is the Jesus we wait upon; he is the Light to whom the first Friends testified.

How can we hold all each of the aspects of tthe Guide and Com­forter together in our spir­i­tual life and with our reli­gious community?

Outreach as Retention

Apr 9th, 2012
by Martin Kelley.
1 comment

From Cal­lid Keefe-Perry, a vlog entry on the appar­ent dis­crep­ancy between what Friends think they want to be doing (out­reach) ver­sus what they think makes for a healthy meet­ing (deep wor­ship), as indi­cated by a just-released sur­vey from Friends Gen­eral Con­fer­ence, the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion for many of North America’s Lib­eral Friends.


Cal­lid says:

there’s a dis­con­nect between deep wor­ship as a mark of health, and out­reach as the most impor­tant thing to do. We try as peo­ple to make things hap­pen that are beyond our control. If we really attended to deep wor­ship, if we attended to root­ing our com­mu­nies in a sense of dis­ci­ple­ship and dis­ci­pline, then out­reach and care for com­mu­nity, and lead­ing by exam­ple would come from that. Those things are fruits; their root is liv­ing in the pres­ence, liv­ing in gospel order. I’m con­cerned that in the hus­tle and bus­tle of out­reach and mak­ing things work we might miss that still small voice. [Loose tran­script, lightly edited]

There is much we can do to pro­mote com­mu­nity aware­ness of Friends (aka “out­reach”), but I sus­pect the great­est effect of our efforts is internal–raising our own con­scious­ness about how to be vis­i­ble and welcoming. Friends are always get­ting free pub­lic­ity (just this morn­ing I fin­ished Jef­frey Eugenides’s The Mar­riage Plot, whose final pages are prac­ti­cally an ad for our reli­gious soci­ety, and there’s the seeker-producing mill of the Belief-o-Matic Quiz). What if vis­i­bil­ity isn’t our biggest prob­lem? Callid’s post reminds me of some­thing that Robin Mohr said when I inter­viewed her “Eight Ques­tions on Con­ver­gent Friends” for Friends Jour­nal:

Though it may be dif­fer­ent in other places, San Fran­cisco always had peo­ple vis­it­ing; there was no short­age of new vis­i­tors. The key was get­ting them to come back… I don’t think the Con­ver­gent Friends move­ment is nec­es­sar­ily going to solve our out­reach issues, but it can absolutely change the reten­tion rate.

What if we thought of out­reach as a reten­tion issue? How would it relate to the “deep wor­ship” the survey-takers lifted up?
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