Tag Archives ⇒ Canada

North American Quaker statistics 1937 – 2017

September 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

These are num­bers of Friends in Cana­da and the Unit­ed States (includ­ing Alas­ka, which was tal­lied sep­a­rate­ly pri­or to state­hood) com­piled from Friends World Com­mit­tee for Con­sul­ta­tion. I dug up these num­bers from three sources:

  • 1937, 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987 from Quak­ers World Wide: A His­to­ry of FWCC by Her­bert Hadley in 1991 (many thanks to FWC­C’s Robin Mohr for a scan of the rel­e­vant chart).
  • 1972, 1992 from Earl­ham School of Reli­gion’s The Present State of Quak­erism, 1995, archived here.
  • 2002 on from FWCC direct­ly. Note: Cur­rent 2017 map.

Friends in the U.S. and Canada:

  • 1937: 114,924
  • 1957: 122,663
  • 1967: 122,780
  • 1972: 121,380
  • 1977: 119,160
  • 1987: 109,732
  • 1992: 101,255
  • 2002: 92,786
  • 2012: 77,660
  • 2017: 81,392

Friends in Amer­i­c­as (North, Mid­dle South):

  • 1937: 122,166
  • 1957: 131,000
  • 1967: 129,200
  • 1977: 132,300
  • 1987: 139,200
  • 2017: 140,065

You could write a book about what these num­bers do and don’t mean. The most glar­ing omis­sion is that they don’t show the geo­graph­ic or the­o­log­i­cal shifts that took place over time. Mid­west­ern Friends have tak­en a dis­pro­por­tion­ate hit, for exam­ple, and many Philadelphia-area meet­ings are much small­er than they were a cen­tu­ry ago, while inde­pen­dent meet­ings in the West and/or adja­cent to col­leges grew like wild­flow­ers mid-century.

My hot take on this is that the reuni­fi­ca­tion work of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry gave Quak­ers a sol­id iden­ti­ty and coher­ent struc­ture. Howard Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years from 1952 is a remark­ably con­fi­dent doc­u­ment. In many areas, Friends became a socially-progressive, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry reli­gious move­ment that was attrac­tive to peo­ple tired of more creedal for­mu­la­tions; mixed-religious par­ents came look­ing for First-day school com­mu­ni­ty for their chil­dren. Quak­ers’ social jus­tice work was very vis­i­ble and attract­ed a num­ber of new peo­ple dur­ing the anti­war 1960s1 and the alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ty groundswell of the 1970s. These var­i­ous new­com­ers off­set the decline of what we might call “eth­nic” Friends in rur­al meet­ings through this period.

That mag­ic bal­ance of Quak­er cul­ture match­ing the zeit­geist of reli­gious seek­ers dis­ap­peared some­where back in the 1980s. We aren’t on fore­front of any cur­rent spir­i­tu­al trends. While there are bright spots and excep­tions 2, we’ve large­ly strug­gled with retain­ing new­com­ers in recent years. We’re los­ing our elders more quick­ly than we’re bring­ing in new peo­ple, hence the forty per­cent drop since the high water of 1987. The small 2017 uptick might be a good sign3 or it may be a sta­tis­ti­cal phan­tom.4 I’ll be curi­ous to see what the next cen­sus brings.

2023 Update: I seem to have mixed up some num­bers in my orig­i­nal 2018 post, with some dates in my chart includ­ing the num­ber of Friends in the U.S. and Cana­da and oth­er or Friends from all the Amer­i­c­as (with rough­ly 20,000 Friends apiece in Bolivia and Guatemala, the dif­fer­ence is sub­stan­tial). I’m redo­ing all of these num­bers; if you’re inter­est­ed in read­ing the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this, you can check it out in Archive​.org.

Young Adult Friends Conference in Wichita this Fifth Month

March 17, 2010
· Martin Kelley

I’ve been lucky enough to have two house­guests this week: Mic­ah Bales and Faith Kel­ley (no rela­tion). They’ve come up to the Philadel­phia area to help pub­li­cize a gath­er­ing of young adult Friends that will take place in Wichi­ta in a few months. Before they left, I got them to share their excite­ment for the con­fer­ence in front of my webcam.

Inter­view with Faith Kel­ley & Mic­ah Bales, two of the orga­niz­ers of the upcom­ing young adult Friends con­fer­ence in Wichi­ta Kansas.

FAITH: This is an invi­ta­tion for a gath­er­ing for young adult Friends ages 18 – 35 from all the branch­es of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends from all across the con­ti­nent. It’s going to be in Wichi­ta Kansas from May 28 – 31. It’s a time to get togeth­er and learn about each oth­er, to hear each oth­er’s sto­ries and wor­ship togeth­er. We’re real­ly excit­ed by this oppor­tu­ni­ty to have peo­ple who have nev­er been to these before and to have peo­ple who have been to oth­er gath­er­ings to come back.
MICAH: A lot of the advance mate­r­i­al is already up online so you can get a good idea what this con­fer­ence is going to be about and to get a sense of how to pre­pare your­self for a gath­er­ing like this. We’ll be get­ting togeth­er with folks from all over the coun­try, Cana­da and Mex­i­co – we’re hop­ing a lot of His­pan­ic Friends show up and we’ve already trans­lat­ed the web­site into Span­ish. Reg­is­tra­tion is set up already; ear­ly reg­is­tra­tion goes until April 15. Air­fare to Wichi­ta is look­ing pret­ty good at the moment; if you reg­is­ter ear­ly you’re like­ly to get a fair­ly decent plane tick­et out.
FAITH: We’re hop­ing peo­ple will choose to car­pool togeth­er. So get orga­nized, reg­is­ter ear­ly and look at the advance mate­ri­als online. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
2010 Young Adult Friends Conference

Looking at North American Friends and theological hotspots

January 31, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Over on Friends Jour­nal site, some recent stats on Friends most­ly in the US and Cana­da. Writ­ten by Mar­garet Fras­er, the head of FWCC, a group that tries to unite the dif­fer­ent bod­ies of Friends, it’s a bit of cold water for most of us. Offi­cial num­bers are down in most places despite what­ev­er offi­cial opti­mism might exist. Favorite line: “Per­haps those who leave are noticed less.” I’m sure P.R. hacks in var­i­ous Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions are burn­ing the mid­night oil writ­ing response let­ters to the edi­tor spin­ning the num­bers to say things are look­ing up.

She points to a sad decline both in year­ly meet­ings affil­i­at­ed with Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and in those affil­i­at­ed with Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence. A curios­i­ty is that this decline is not seen in three of the four year­ly meet­ings that are dual affil­i­at­ed. These blend­ed year­ly meet­ings are going through var­i­ous degrees of iden­ti­ty cri­sis and hand-wringing over their sta­tus and yet their own mem­ber­ship num­bers are strong. Could it be that seri­ous the­o­log­i­cal wrestling and com­pli­cat­ed spir­i­tu­al iden­ti­ties cre­ate health­i­er reli­gious bod­ies than mono­cul­tur­al groupings?

The big news is in the south: “His­pan­ic Friends Church­es” in Mex­i­co and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca are boom­ing, with spillover in el Norte as work­ers move north to get jobs. There’s sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle inter­ac­tion between these newly-arrived Spanish-speaking Friends and the the old Main Line Quak­er estab­lish­ment (maybe not sur­pris­ing real­ly, but still sad). I’ll leave you with a chal­lenge Mar­garet gives readers:

One ques­tion that often puz­zles me is why so many His­pan­ic Friends
con­gre­ga­tions are meet­ing in church­es belong­ing to oth­er denominations.
I would love to see estab­lished Friends meet­ings with their own
prop­er­ty shar­ing space with His­pan­ic Friends. It would be an
oppor­tu­ni­ty to share growth and chal­lenges together.

The Left Wing Conspiracy Revealed by Non​vi​o​lence​.org

December 10, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Non​vi​o​lence​.org read­ers may not be aware that my per­son­al site has been the talk of the polit­i­cal inter­net for the last few days. Since post­ing an “account of get­ting a phone call from a CBS News pub­li­cist”, I’ve been linked to by a Who’s Who of blog­ging glit­er­at­ti: Won­kette, Instapun­dit, The Volokh Con­spir­a­cy, Lit­tle Green Foot­balls, Rather­Biased, etc. For a short time yes­ter­day, the sto­ry was a part of the second-ranked arti­cle on Tech­no­rati’s Pol­i­tics Atten­tion index.

A hack from CBS News called me to say they were doing a pro­gram on an issue that’s cen­tral to Nonviolence.org’s man­date: con­sci­en­tious resis­tance to mil­i­tary ser­vice. After look­ing over the mate­r­i­al, I thought the inter­views of resisters who have fled to Cana­da would be inter­est­ing to my read­ers and so wrote a short entry on it. Think­ing it all a lit­tle fun­ny that a pub­li­cist would care about Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I men­tioned the inci­dent in the “Sto­ries of Non​vi​o​lence​.org” sec­tion of my per­son­al site. One by one the lead­ing polit­i­cal sites of the blo­gos­phere have run the sto­ry as fur­ther proof of the vast left-wing main­stream media con­spir­a­cy. It’s rather fun­ny actually.

I have to won­der is who’s kid­ding who with all this feigned out­rage? For those miss­ing the irony gene: the Non​vi​o​lence​.org Pay­Pal account cur­rent­ly has a bal­ance $6.18, the bulk of which comes from the last dona­tion – $5.00 back on Novem­ber 20th. My cor­ner of the left wing con­spir­a­cy is fund­ed by the vast per­son­al wealth I accu­mu­late as a book­store clerk.

Won­ket­te’s pages adver­tise “spon­sor­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties,” she’s a recent cov­er girl on New York Times Mag­a­zine, her hus­band is an edi­tor at New York mag­a­zine and in Octo­ber she cashed out her blog­ging fame for a $275,000 advance for her first nov­el (“It’s not Brid­get Jones does Wash­ing­ton, it’s Nick Horn­by does pol­i­tics”: good grief). Eugene Volokh has clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court (for San­dra Day O’Con­nor), teach­es law at UCLA and just had a big op-ed in the Times. Instapun­dit’s Glenn Reynolds teach­es law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, has served on White House advi­so­ry pan­els, and is a paid cor­re­spon­dent for MSNBC. Yet he, like the oth­ers, calls a two minute phone call “recruit­ing”?

I’m begin­ning to think the real inter­est comes from the fact that this top tier of blog­gers is total­ly in bed (lit­er­al­ly) with the MSM. Their income comes from their con­nec­tions with media and polit­i­cal pow­er. Their carefully-crafted fas­cade of snark­ish inde­pen­dence would crum­ble if their phone logs were made pub­lic. They’re not real­ly blog­ging in their paja­mas, folks.

By men­tion­ing the exis­tance of blog pub­li­cists, I’ve threat­ened to blow their cov­er. Pay no atten­tion to the men behind the cur­tains: my social gaffe was in pub­licly admit­ting that the main­stream media courts polit­i­cal blogs. Kudos to jour­nal­ist Derek Rose on admit­ting the practice:

But why should­n’t a news orga­ni­za­tion’s pub­lic­i­ty depart­ment court blog­gers? As a MSM mem­ber, I get emails from TV flacks all the time pro­mot­ing their scoops. From ABC, for exam­ple, I’ve received emails regard­ing a tape they got of the Belt­way sniper’s call to the Rockville police; Bar­bara Wal­ters’ Hillary Clin­ton inter­view; and their ‘Azzam the Amer­i­can’ video … as well as a Rush Lim­baugh drug laun­der­ing sto­ry that nev­er panned out. I even got atten­tion from pub­li­cists when I was work­ing for a news­pa­per that did­n’t have a 20th of the cir­cu­la­tion of Instapundit…

Rose aside, there’s incred­i­ble dis­tor­tion in the “report­ing,” a term I have to use very loose­ly. Won­kette says “Kel­ley claims that a CBS min­ion put the screws to him to post some­thing about a ’60 Min­utes’ pack­age on con­sci­en­tious objec­tors” yet all read­ers have to do is fol­low the link to see I nev­er said any­thing like that. Why do the cream of blog­gers feel like a posse of self-absorbed sev­enth graders? When I start­ed Non​vi​o​lence​.org back in 1995, I thought the brave new polit­i­cal world of the inter­net might be All the Pres­i­den­t’s Men. Boy was I wrong: it turns it’s just Heathers. God help us.

Buying my Personality in a Store

September 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A guest piece by Amanda

Orig­i­nal­ly post­ed as a com­ment to “My Exper­i­ments with Plain­ness”, Aman­da’s sto­ry deserves its own post: “I’ve noticed that I’m becom­ing real­ly attached to my clothes. As I was grim­ly and method­i­cal­ly culling my clos­et, a whiny, des­per­ate voice in my head piped up, and I began to have a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with myself… [A] reser­va­tion I have is that plain dress­ing may just be anoth­er way of telegraph­ing the image I want the world to have of me. Only instead of that mes­sage being ‘I am cool and wor­thy of your atten­tion and envy’ the mes­sage might be ‘I’m so hoooooly’.”

Hi there!

I am 21, and the only mem­ber of my fam­i­ly who attends meet­ings of Friends. (I am not a Friend yet, being young to the whole expe­ri­ence, and an ex-catholic, and hav­ing wan­dered for sev­er­al years in strange paths!! 🙂 How­ev­er, I am tak­ing it very seri­ous­ly, and read­ing all I can get my hands on. I feel a strong call towards plain dress, and have gone through fits and starts of it spon­ta­neous­ly, even as a Catholic child. At 12, I decid­ed I would no longer wear colours in imi­ta­tion of all the siants habits I saw in my books, and my friends and I (I grew up in rur­al Cana­da, home­schooled, the old­est of 11 kids, an anar­chon­ism to begin with) tried sewing our own clothes our­selves, praire dress­es and pinafores. 

When I was 14, we moved to the States, to the sub­urbs, away from our uber-traditional Catholic enclave, and I began to nor­mal­ize myself out of the “home­school­er uni­form” (its own sort of plain dress — those ter­ri­ble jumpers with ankle socks and can­vas sneak­ers! Ack!) and into main­stream fash­ion, where I’ve been solid­ly entrenched ever since, espe­cial­ly since mov­ing to NYC.

I am now in the process of purg­ing a lot of my stuff, and seek­ing a sim­pler way of liv­ing. I quit smok­ing, and have decid­ed that drink­ing as a recre­ation­al activ­i­ty is out unless it’s an orga­nized event. This may become more strict in time, but I have to ease into it a lit­tle bit. I got rid of sev­er­al bags of clothes and a bunch of house­hold items I was hoard­ing “just in case I might need them some­day”. Clas­sic. A lot of things have pre­cip­i­tat­ed this, but one of them is my absolute hor­ror at how I’ve gone from mak­ing $12,000 a year to near­ly $30,000, and I still am sav­ing no mon­ey at all, nor am I mak­ing any last­ing purchase/investments, etc…I’m just spend­ing it on vain and use­less things. I’ve noticed as well, that I’m start­ing to have more and more big-salary fan­ta­sis­es, and recre­ation­al­ly go to stare in shop win­dows at clothes, not just to appre­ci­ate the asthet­ic val­ue of some of the most gor­geous gar­ments in the world (after all, this is Man­hat­tan) but also to drool and cov­et. I found, while exam­in­ing my con­cience, that it was­n’t even the thing — the piece of cloth­ing that I want­ed, and it was­n’t a sim­ple desire to have some­thing pret­ty. I saw myself link­ing these clothes and things to my self worth and future hap­pi­ness. You know:

“Once I am thin and rich enough to wear this, I will be hap­py. I will be so hap­py. So very hap­py. Every­thing will be per­fect, and my hair will always be straight, and I will have my teeth veneered, and I will have a hand­some man who wor­ships the ground I walk on, and three bright-eyed chil­dren who appear only on Sun­day morn­ings to snug­gle with me in my California-king-sized bed with the white crisp sheets, while I lan­guid­ly smile at their frol­ic­ing and plan to buy them a gold­en retriev­er pup­py lat­er that after­noon as I stroll through an antique fair and buy a vin­tage wick­er bird cage, which I will fill with finch­es and hang from my sun-drenched porch in my sec­ond house in the south of France, and I be hap­py. So hap­py. So very hap­py, if I am only thin and rich enough to wear those clothes.”

I real­ly, real­ly woke up one after­noon to find myself stand­ing on 5th Ave and 59th street, on my lunch break, star­ing in a win­dow, and hav­ing that fan­ta­sy with absolute­ly no inter­nal iron­ic monolouge at all. At all. 

It com­plet­ley pan­icked me. 

I’ve noti­cied that I’m becom­ing real­ly attatched to my clothes. As I was grim­ly and method­i­cal­ly culling my clos­et, a whiney, des­per­ate voice in my head piped up, and I began to have a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with myself. 

“You can’t get rid of so many of your cool clothes. The clothes are you, they’re a huge part of who you are.”

“Wait,” the oth­er voice in my head, the stern one, said (I am a schiz­o­phrenic and so am I) “You are say­ing that I am what I wear. That’s sup­posed to make me want to keep them? Do you even hear what you’re saying?”

The first voice was total­ly backtracking. 

“No, no, no, I did­n’t mean you were your clothes, or that you were only worth as much as your clothes, why do you always have to be so lit­er­al? I meant that your clothes tell peo­ple about you, about who you are and what you believe in. They’re an out­side sign of who you are.”

“Ah.” said the sec­ond voice, rather sar­cas­ti­cal­ly, I thought, “So we’d rather have peo­ple learn every­thing they need to know about us by our clothes, instead of hav­ing them take the time to get to know us from expe­ri­ence of us.”

“Well, that’s all very well!” said the first voice. “That’s nice in an ide­al world. But the truth is, the sad truth is, most peo­ple won’t take the time to get to know you if you don’t seem cool.”

“Wow.” said the sec­ond voice. “Wow. This has noth­ing to do with fash­ion, does it? This total­ly has to do with your infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex, dat­ing back to about sec­ond grade, does­n’t it?”

At this point the first voice began to suck its thumb, and I real­ized to my hor­ror that the sec­ond voice was right. It’s always right.

“Fash­ion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.” ~Quentin Crisp

I’ve actu­al­ly begun buy­ing my per­son­al­i­ty in a store, and telling myself that it’s okay because I’m buy­ing it in a thrift store. I know from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that the right head­scarf or pair of vin­tage shoes, or fun­ny t‑shirt will sud­den­ly raise the val­ue of my social cur­ren­cy off the charts. And I’m becom­ing real­ly depen­dent on that, to the point where I’ve start­ed to actu­al­ly feel anx­i­ety around my “style” and my clothes. I iron­i­cal­ly played the role of fash­ion police for a boy at a par­ty who was mock­ing me for being from Williams­burg, and although I was kid­ding around when I exco­ri­at­ed him for his American-Eagle shorts and surfer-boy hair, it struck me, I’m spout­ing all these “rules” as if I’m mock­ing them, but I actu­al­ly live by them, don’t I? 

And I’ve increas­ing­ly begun to obey them out of fear instead of out of a love of neat clothes or a sense of aes­thet­ic. I have cool­er clothes than ever, and suden­ly I have a need to make more mon­ey so that I can keep look­ing cool, and keep fit­ting in, and keep prov­ing to every­one, most of all myself, that I should be invit­ed to Angel­i­ca’s birth­day par­ty because the whole rest of the class is and it’s not fair…oh wait. That was sec­ond grade. 

Ben­jamin Franklin wrote: “Mon­ey nev­er made a man hap­py yet, nor will it. There is noth­ing in its nature to pro­duce hap­pi­ness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its fill­ing a vac­u­um, it makes one. If it sat­is­fies one want, it dou­bles and tre­bles that want anoth­er way.”

This seems like a huge cliche, but you know, the more I think about it, the more it seems that the mod­ern hor­ror of clich­es may have less to do with a love of orig­i­nal­i­ty than with a fear of the truth.

So those are the moti­va­tions — that much is worked out. But the prac­tice of it is hard. Was I expe­ri­en­ce­ing a gen­uine call­ing to plain dress as a child, or did I just read too much “Lit­tle House”? (Is there such a thing as too much “Lit­tle House”?) And now, am I just a costume-loving poser?

I feel a bizarre attrac­tion to head-covering as well, though I recoil with my whole post-feminist self from those pas­sages in the bible. I don’t think I believe in sub­mis­sion to any­body. In fact, I’m not sure even God wants me sub­mis­sive ‑I feel he wants my co-operation.

“I will not now call you ser­vants: for the ser­vant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things what­so­ev­er I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.” John 15:15

Anoth­er reser­va­tion I have is that plain dress­ing may just be anoth­er way of telegraph­ing the image I want the world to have of me. Only instead of that mes­sage being “I am cool and wor­thy of your atten­tion and envy” the mes­sage might be “I’m so hoooooly”. Or, per­haps more pos­i­tive­ly, it might be a mes­sage that is “wit­ness” — a con­cept I am strug­gling with on its own — what if I make mis­takes and my wit­ness is mis­tak­en, etc.

My com­pro­mise was to get rid of all the clothes I’d bought just for atten­tion, all the clothes I was keep­ing for pure­ly sen­ti­men­tal rea­sons, every­thing that did­n’t fit, or match with any­thing else, etc. And to be hon­est, that just pared it down to where I can actu­al­ly fit all my clothes in my 1 clos­et and dress­er, a feat hereto­fore unknown to me. Also, a big part of this move was to start tak­ing care of my clothes, some­thing I’ve nev­er done. I’ve made an active dici­pline of some­thing as sim­ple as hang­ing up my clothes each night, as an act of respect and grat­i­tude. It occured to me that when I am so for­tu­nate as to have many poses­sions, it seems extreme­ly wrong that I should mis­treat them the way I’ve been doing. 

Wow. For­get plain dress, plain speech is going to be an even big­ger prob­lem. I’ve writ­ten a novel.

* blush *

Any­how, it is won­der­ful to see it dis­cussed, some­times I feel like I’m just nuts. I mean, I know I’m nuts, but I don’t like feel­ing that way. 🙂

in friend­ship,
Amanda

Conscientious Objection, After You’re In

April 30, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Here’s a web­site of “Jere­my Hinz­man, a U.S. Army sol­dier who became a a con­sci­en­tious objector”:http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/faq.html in the course of his ser­vice. His appli­ca­tions denied, he moved to Cana­da and is seek­ing polit­i­cal asy­lum there.
I find I can under­stand the issues all too well. In only a slightly-parallel uni­verse, I’d be in iraq myself instead of pub­lish­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org. My father, a vet­er­an who fought in the South Pacif­ic in World War II, real­ly want­ed me to join the U.S. Navy and attend the Naval Acad­e­my at Annapo­lis. For quite some time, I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered it. I am attract­ed to the idea of ser­vice and duty and putting in hard work for some­thing I believe in.
Hinz­man’s sto­ry is get­ting a lot of main­stream cov­er­age, I sus­pect because the “escape to Cana­da” angle has so many Vietnam-era echoes that res­onate with that gen­er­a­tion. I wish Hinz­man would flesh out his web­site sto­ry though. His Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions leaves out some impor­tant details that could real­ly make the sto­ry – why did he join the Army in the first place, what were some of the expe­ri­ences that led him to rethink his duty, etc. I’d rec­om­mend Jeff Pater­son­’s “Gulf War Refusenik”:http://jeff.paterson.net/ site, which includes lots of sto­ries includ­ing his own:
bq. “What am I going to do with my life?” has always been huge ques­tion of youth, and today in the wake of the hor­ror and tragedy of New York Sep­tem­ber 11th this ques­tion has increased impor­tance for mil­lions of young peo­ple. No one who has seen the images will ever for­get… If I had­n’t spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peas­ants who dared to strug­gle against “Amer­i­can inter­ests” in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Sal­vador, and Guatemala… Faced with this real­i­ty, I began the process of becom­ing un-American-meaning that the inter­ests of the peo­ple of the world began to weigh heav­ier than my self-interest. I real­ized that the world did not need or want anoth­er U.S. troop…
There are bound to be more sto­ries all the time of service-people who find a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty when they land on for­eign shores. How many will rethink their rela­tion­ship to the U.S. mil­i­tary. How many will fol­low Pater­son­’s exam­ple of becom­ing “un-American”?

Quaker publications meeting (QUIP) in Indiana

April 28, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions, bet­ter known as “QUIP,” is a col­lec­tion of 50 Quak­er pub­lish­ers, book­sellers and authors com­mit­ted to the “min­istry of the writ­ten word.” I often think of QUIP as a sup­port group of sorts for those of us who real­ly believe that pub­lish­ing can make a dif­fer­ence. It’s also one of those places where dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends come togeth­er to work and tell sto­ries. QUIP ses­sions strike a nice bal­ance between work and unstruc­tured time. It has its own nice cul­ture of friend­li­ness and coop­er­a­tion that are the real rea­son many of us go every year.

Quakers Uniting in Publications annual meeting in Richmond Indiana 2004.
Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions annu­al meet­ing in Rich­mond Indi­ana 2004.
The theme of the 2004 annu­al ses­sion was “New Ways to Reach Our Mar­kets in a Chang­ing World” and our guest pre­sen­ters were pub­li­cists Doug and Kate Ban­dos of KSB Pro­mo­tions: http://​www​.ksbpro​mo​tions​.com
The Evans House, built 1855: Gur­neyite high style back in the day… It’s now the home of the Quak­er Hill Con­fer­ence Cen­ter, where we met. The Gur­neyites evolved into Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and I had some good con­ver­sa­tions with Friends about some of the vision­ing FUM is doing. Pret­ty inter­est­ing stuff, like many Friends they too are try­ing to fig­ure out how to wres­tle more ful­ly with Quak­er tradition. 
Our hosts were the staff of “Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. The FUM cam­pus in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, is very pret­ty in April, with flow­ers and the crabap­ple trees 
Even pret­tier is the refor­ested trail down to the White­wa­ter Riv­er Falls. 
We wouldn’t be Quak­ers if we didn’t have lots of meet­ings. Left: QUIP clerks Lucy Dun­can, Bar­bara Mays, Eliz­a­beth Cave. 
Philip Arnold from the Quak­er Book­shop in Lon­don, Ann Rap­er of North Car­olina YM (FUM) pub­li­ca­tions com­mit­tee and Liz Yeats, a for­mer FGC employ­ee and long­time QUIP stal­wart (Ann and Liz are also both board mem­bers of “Friends Journal). 
QUIP meet­ings are real­ly all about the con­ver­sa­tions in between ses­sions. Bar­bara Mays of Friends Unit­ed Press talks with the new FUM web­mas­ter Cur­tis Her­mann (who lat­er showed me the secret FUM cof­fee sup­ply and chat­ted about col­lar­less shirt vendors). 
Mar­jorie Ewbank holds up QUIP’s “Quak­er Tapestry”:http://www.Quaker-tapestry.co.uk pan­el, which should be fin­ished by the end of the century. 
Oblig­a­tory pic­ture of Simon, some­times referred to as the “QUIP baby“since his par­ents met at an annu­al QUIP meeting. 
A field trip to the Levi Cof­fin house in Foun­tain City. Run entire­ly by very ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers, it’s the only home still stand­ing of Levi and Catharine Cof­fin, Friends who helped thou­sands of escaped slaves get to Cana­da through the Under­ground Railroad. 
How many cam­eras does it take to make a group shot? That’s Trish Carn (the UK’s Quak­er Month­ly), Antho­ny Manousos (West­ern US’s Friends Bul­letin) and our very gra­cious photo-taker (who I think might be Ann’s son?). 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing char­ac­ter par excel­lence. Sal­ly spent part of the week­end chal­leng­ing me about my plain dress­ing — okay, polite­ly ask­ing me a ques­tion and then fol­low­ing up my answer with her opin­ions. Sal­ly also brought along a par­o­dy she once put togeth­er, a fly­er for an orga­ni­za­tion called some­thing like “The Soci­ety of Sen­ti­men­tal Friends” for all those who want to be Quak­er because their great great grand­par­ents were Quak­er and they like antiques like old musty meetinghouses. 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (2)
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (3)
Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz in front of the falls. I think Friends Gen­eral Con­fer­ence should put in a nature trail near our office too (I vote for bull­doz­ing the “Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Center”).