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It was wild for me to read this sto­ry about hous­ing, race, and mon­ey in West Philadel­phia and real­ize it was­n’t just an arti­cle about my old block but my actu­al apart­ment. I lived upstairs in 1250 South 45th and Mar­garet Strothers was my land­la­dy. It was eas­i­ly my favorite apart­ment ever and it’s a shame to see that most of the row has been lev­eled for shit­ty stu­dent housing.

Windy Cool­er is back with the sec­ond of a mul­ti­part series based on inter­views with pub­lic Friends, this install­ment called “The Con­cerns of Pub­lic Min­istry” (see my take on part one). This one is about the pow­er dynam­ics that pub­lic min­is­ters face in insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism. Here’s one quote:

Resent­ment about pow­er imbal­ances and the sup­pres­sion of acknowl­edg­ing pow­er imbal­ances is at the heart of many pub­lic min­is­ters’ call to right rela­tion­ship, in fact: “What I thought was wrong with me was that I have lead­er­ship poten­tial. Being wrong, it turned out, was just lead­er­ship abil­i­ties. Noth­ing was wrong with me. “

This is a brave top­ic to cov­er and I’m glad Windy’s doing it.

Notably absent is much talk about faith in this. Where’s this call to lead­er­ship com­ing? What is it in ser­vice to? I sus­pect that if you asked this ques­tion of ris­ing lead­ers in Lib­er­al Friends you’d get all sorts of answers. That’s not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing. In the­o­log­i­cal­ly diverse meet­ings sec­u­lar­ized lan­guage is the lin­gua fran­ca. The Hick­site Quak­er move­ment was born in large part as a cri­tique of pow­er and this remains an easy con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion to turn to. I myself often look at Quak­er his­to­ry and cur­rent dynam­ics in a soci­o­log­i­cal way; it’s not a wrong frame­work, just incom­plete if left unmoored.

Per­son­al­ly I don’t think I could have made it through Friends this long with­out trust­ing in the inward Christ and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deep­en­ing my life in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er the­ol­o­gy. It’s help­ful con­text to read the jour­nals of old min­is­ters. The chal­lenges they faced aren’t always so very dif­fer­ent from those of the present day. George Fox was seri­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed and betrayed by the min­is­ters of his time until he had a vision and real­ized that this dis­ap­point­ment was lit­er­al­ly the les­son he was being taught. From one of the most famous pas­sages in his Jour­nal:

I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my con­di­tion. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy con­di­tion,” and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my con­di­tion, name­ly, that I might give him all the glo­ry; for all are con­clud­ed under sin, and shut up in unbe­lief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence who enlight­ens, and gives grace, and faith, and pow­er. Thus, when God doth work who shall let [i.e. hin­der] it? And this I knew experimentally.

Of course we should­n’t roman­ti­cize grief and dis­ap­point­ment. Some­times a soul-crushing dis­ap­point­ment is a les­son but some­times its just peo­ple doing shit­ty things. The old adage “what does­n’t kill you makes you stronger” over­looks the peo­ple left as road­kill in the first place. I talked about the “Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” a lot twen­ty years ago; it remains an open ques­tion if some of the ones who left were the smarter ones.¹

Also in my news feed is a post from Bri­an Dray­ton, “New wine, new wine­skins.” Bri­an uses very Chris­t­ian lan­guage and is talk­ing about cur­rent wars in the world, but it’s pos­si­ble to read much of this as a take on pub­lic ministry:

Thus, our response in our liv­ing and think­ing to the con­di­tions of today, leav­ened with His life with­in us, must be put in ves­sels that not only con­tain the new life, but enable it to keep work­ing and gain­ing in virtue, in active pow­er. These are ves­sels of thought, of col­lab­o­ra­tion, of pri­or­i­ties or val­u­a­tion, of hope and inten­tion, of method and of celebration.

In UK’s The Friend, Craig Bar­nett writes of false dichotomies between spir­i­tu­al and activist Friends and has wise thoughts on dis­cern­ment: “Most often, the Inward Guide seems to work by show­ing us not the ulti­mate des­ti­na­tion, but just the next step.”

At Friends jour­nal, Judith Apple­by writes about char­i­ta­ble giv­ing and Steven Davi­son has an ambi­tious piece tak­ing on the Quak­er covenant with cre­ation.

I had a great time talk­ing with Deb­bie Ram­sey about Dream Pro­tec­tors, her arti­cle in this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal. Even before we hit record we were chat­ting away like old friends, despite this being the first time we’ve nev­er talked. Even­tu­al­ly we had to stop our­selves just so I could hit record and start the inter­view. Deb­bie is a retired police detec­tive who works with youth in Bal­ti­more — it’s their career dreams she’s help­ing to pro­tect — but we talked about being open in all sorts of set­tings. One of her sto­ries in the arti­cle, which she retold in the inter­view, revolves around an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for min­istry that arose from a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger on a bench. She told me it felt like “the uni­verse want­ed me to be there” to have that talk. 

It felt very much in line with the mys­te­ri­ous prompt­ings I talked about last month so of course I had to explore that with her:

Mar­tin Kel­ley: I real­ly love the old Quak­er lin­go of oppor­tu­ni­ties. An oppor­tu­ni­ty is like this kind of worship-connection-love that hap­pened spon­ta­neous­ly when you run into some­one and real­ize there’s so much more that it’s going to hap­pen here. It’s just being open to these sorts of moments where we might find our­selves on a bench next to some­one and we’re sud­den­ly deep into con­nec­tion and min­istry. It’s hard to do this in our lives now. We’re always rush­ing about, but I do try to think that some­times I need to stop and have con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple right here and now.

Deb­o­rah B Ram­sey: Yes, yes. And then as we were depart­ing he said to me, “I want to take our con­ver­sa­tion back to my wife.” So on anoth­er dimen­sion, I was at his home. He lit­er­al­ly, on anoth­er lev­el, took me to his home. Phys­i­cal­ly, I was not there, but the spir­it, and the vibra­tion, and the rhythm, and the con­ver­sa­tion, and how we relat­ed to his wife what my words meant to him. Hope­ful­ly, they would give her some com­fort. So I feel like the non-tangibles: we don’t them enough cred­it. Often­times we invite 50 or 100 peo­ple, if there’s not a large crowd, then we’re feel like we’re not get­ting any­thing across. But who’s to say that she would not say some­thing about what her hus­band told her to some­one else — or either to her son! Is it the quan­ti­ty or the qual­i­ty? It’s easy to start a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one you’re in a rela­tion­ship with, but how about a stranger? As Quak­ers, can we be so curi­ous about one another’s con­di­tion that we would take — as you say an oppor­tu­ni­ty— to just take a look? As Quak­ers we have so much oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to con­di­tions, out of a gen­er­al con­cern and love. How can you go wrong with that?

Deb­o­rah B. Ram­sey: Guardians over Dreams. A Friends Jour­nal author chat.

Watch the full interview:

Windy Cool­er has a new arti­cle on the Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence web­site, What is a Quak­er Pub­lic Min­is­ter? Windy’s been research­ing the con­cept of pub­lic Friends this year, inter­view­ing peo­ple about their under­stand­ing and experiences. 

The star­tling lack of sup­port for many pub­lic min­is­ters as agents of cre­ativ­i­ty and growth is part­ly because many Friends are unfa­mil­iar with the term “pub­lic min­is­ter” and uncer­tain how to sup­port their work. Addi­tion­al­ly, a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tes­ti­mo­ny of equal­i­ty, which often leads comfort-seeking elders to crit­i­cize or “cut down” those who stand out among us (referred to as the “tall pop­pies” by Mar­ty Grundy in her 1999 Pen­dle Hill pam­phlet of the same name), caus­es many Friends attempt­ing pub­lic min­istry to encounter hos­til­i­ty or apa­thy in their local meet­ings. Even in cas­es where a faith and prac­tice doc­u­ment out­lines the prac­tice, it remains large­ly taboo in lib­er­al Quak­erism to seek a minute acknowl­edg­ing the gifts of min­istry, much less more sub­stan­tial support.

Windy inter­viewed me as part of her research. If “pub­lic Friend” means some­one who is vis­i­bly tak­ing on a teach­ing role for Friends, then I’ve been one since my mid-20s when I start­ed putting togeth­er mail­ing lists and web­sites orga­niz­ing young adult Friends (YAFs in Quak­er speak); this even­tu­al­ly branched out into blog­ging, host­ing a social net­work, lead­ing work­shops, and giv­ing talks now and then. The longe­tiv­i­ty gives it a cer­tain author­i­ty, I sup­pose, as have my pro­fes­sion­al roles with Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions (though of course on my blog I’m only speak­ing for myself).

But this belies just how inde­pen­dent, dare I say ranter­ish, this process has been. I know how pub­lic min­istry should work, but it has­n’t ever worked out that way for me. Even now, I don’t have a spe­cial des­ig­na­tion or sup­port for my vol­un­teer Quak­er work. 

I should note that I once had a brush with insti­tu­tion­al legit­i­ma­cy. When I applied for a grant from the Clarence and Lil­ly Pick­ett Endow­ment for Quak­er Lead­er­ship, they required a sup­port let­ter from my meet­ing and Atlantic City Area Meet­ing pro­vid­ed me with one. It was­n’t a record­ing minute, per se, and did­n’t come with any fol­lowup sup­port but it was some­thing. The Pick­ett fund specif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed younger Friends. It’s a small world so I know a lot of oth­er recip­i­ents and many had inter­est­ing sto­ries about going their meet­ings for sup­port let­ters. In ret­ro­spect, forc­ing a gen­er­a­tion of twenty-something active Quak­ers to get these let­ters might have been the Pick­ett fund’s most impor­tant lega­cy (it closed down in 2019).

Full dis­clo­sure and mea cul­pa to say that I’ve nev­er asked for for­mal meet­ing sup­port. I have a ten­den­cy to land at small, min­i­mal­ly orga­nized meet­ings that don’t have any expe­ri­ences of sup­port­ing min­istries. It always felt like it’d be too much of a push to ask an over­bur­dened small group to take on one more responsibility.

I know some larg­er Quak­er meet­ings have more for­mal sup­port struc­tures in place, with clear­ness and sup­port (some­times now called anchor) com­mit­tees sup­port­ing their pub­lic Friends. I’m a bit jeal­ous but also have been told by Friends in these posi­tions that they some­times still feel some­what rogueish and alone. Of course maybe this is just how it is. Did peo­ple like John Wool­man and Joshua Evans real­ly feel ful­ly sup­port­ed by their meet­ings as they trav­eled about? And did they have now-forgotten con­tem­po­raries who felt the “tall pop­pies” effect and elect­ed to stay home? Ben­jamin Lay comes to mind as some­one who had to min­is­ter with­out sup­port. Windy writes:

While it’s true that many of our famous his­toric pub­lic min­is­ters were dis­liked in their time and praised in ours as if they rep­re­sent our own actions, it is incon­ceiv­able that these lead­ers could have trav­eled, spo­ken, and effect­ed change in their quest for right rela­tion­ship with­out robust sup­port. It is some­thing of a mir­a­cle then that so many dynam­ic Friends today are attempt­ing to do just that out of love for who we are and can be and we are tread­ing water with all the faith in the world that the under­tow of the sta­tus quo will not over­come us.

FGC promis­es this to be the “first of four short essays in a series on pub­lic min­istry in the lib­er­al tra­di­tion.” Glad to see FGC explor­ing this work. In the ear­ly 2000s they did impor­tant work with the Trav­el­ing Min­istries Com­mit­tee¹, which did a lot to re-legitimate the idea of min­istry among Lib­er­al Friends. Windy also gives a shout-out to the he Quak­er Lead­er­ship Cen­ter, which I know is doing good work around these ques­tions too.

What is a Quak­er Pub­lic Minister?