I’m a Quaker from
South Jersey with a love of
outreach and ministry.
More bio and my contact information in my
about Martin
post. My other sites: QuakerQuaker.org, a
social networking site for Quaker bloggers and
MartinKelley.com, my
technology blog and freelance web services site.
Recently in howard_brinton Category
Quaker Storytelling as Religious Ed: how do you teach a religion that can't be defined?
Howard Brinton's Quaker Journals: Varieties of Religious Experience Among Friends
One of the more revolutionary transformations of American Quakerism in the twentieth century has been our understanding of the testimonies. In online discussions I find that many Friends think the "SPICE" testimonies date back from time immemorial. Not only are they relatively new, they're a different sort of creature from their predecessors.
I propose a little amendment to the modern Quaker testimonies. I think it’s time for a moratorium of the word “community” and the phrases “faith community” and “community of faith.” Through overuse, we Friends have stretched this phrase past its elasticity point and it’s snapped. It’s become a meaningless, abstract term used to disguise the fact that we’ve become afraid to articulate a shared faith. A recent yearly meeting newsletter used the word “community” 27 times but the word “God” only seven: what does it mean when a religious body stops talking about God?
