Earlham college profesor and Quaker author Michael Birkel decided to reach across religious divides by simply talking to his neighbors, a project which came to span the United States: Reading the Qur’an as a Quaker
What is it like to read someone else’s scripture? I think it’s quite possible that it can change you in ways that I can’t predict for any reader, except to say that it will make your life richer.
In addition to the QuakerSpeak video there’s also a book of Birkel’s project, Qu’ran in Conversation.
From Gregg Koselka, a post that rewards reading a few times: Risking Community
When I look around, there is still so much hurt that needs to be processed. There are still real differences in philosophy about how to build community. Some see how much needs to radically change so that those who have been marginalized can truly be safe and have agency, and so want to go slowly to build it correctly. Some see the damage having no community can bring, and want to do what they can to build something as safely as possible. I hate that these differences are still causing damage to our relationships and our communities. I don’t have a solution.
I appreciate the way he tries to understand the flip sides of community and institutionalism; perhaps schism could be seen as the moment they can no longer be negotiated. As pastor of one of the “most institutional of institutional churches for 15 years,” he was in the center of the centrifugal forces that tore apart both Northwest Yearly Meeting as a whole and indivisible Friends churches within it. From a distance of 3000 miles and 150 years of diverging Quaker history, I’m not in a position to say whether things could have gone differently or whether individuals always acted in their best ways but I can appreciate that it there must have been a lot of impossible choices and no-good answers as polarization gave way to disintegration.
Rhonda Pfaltzgraff-Carlson is back with another reflection on light and truth and love, Why Quakers Inspire Social Change. It’s a good reminder that change also needs to come from within and that the Light is also meant for us:
If Friends can see new truth from the Light as coming in love, we will be emboldened to act on our leadings and live lives worthy of our callings. We will also be more open to conflict in our meetings and yearly meetings.
UK Friend Craig Barnett describes changes in Friends in evolutionary terms. It’s a bit of a “On the one hand/On the other hand” argument that points out the strengths of both Quaker tradition and Quaker innovation. I want my have my cake and eat it too, to both honor the divine and work toward radical neighborliness here on Earth using techniques bootstrapped on classic Quaker insights. Craig lays out where we are:
This evolutionary change towards a pluralist and post-Christian movement is not straightforwardly better or worse. It has certainly been a useful adaptation for enabling many people to find a home in a spiritually welcoming community, while at the same time producing a loss of shared religious experience and language
Once a month I’m doing flashbacks to past eras in my blog.
One Year Ago: November 2016
A year ago the shock to the system was Trump’s election. One reaction of mine was a promise to blog more; I set up the system but I’m still not as frictionless about it as I’d like.
Waking Up to President Trump: We do not get to choose our era or the challenges it throws at us. Only someone with historical amnesia would say this is unprecedented in our history. The enslavement of millions and the genocide of millions more are dark stains indelibly soaked into the very founding of the nation. But much will change, particularly our naivity and false optimism in an inevitable forward progress of our national story.
Five Years Ago: November 2012
Five years ago I wrote about how I had been blogging for fifteen years. Do the math: it’s now 20 frigging years since I started blogging.
Fifteen Years of Blogging: I keep double-checking the math but it keeps adding up. In November 1997 I added a feature to my two-year-old peace website. I called this new entity Nonviolence Web Upfront and updated it weekly with original features and curated links to the best online pacifist writing. I wrote a retrospective of the “early blogging days” in 2005 that talks about how it came about and gives some context about the proto-blogs happening back in 1997.
Ten Years Ago: November 2007
Freelancing and working the overnight shift at Shoprite, I wondered if my Quakerness was hopelessly useless to my new circumstances.
Who are we part one (just what pamphlet do I give the tattooed ex-con?): I love the fellow who gave the message and I appreciated his ministry. But the whole time I wondered how this would sound to people I know now, like the friendly but hot-tempered Puerto Rican ex-con less than a year out of a eight-year stint in federal prison, now working two eight hour shifts at almost-minimum wage jobs and trying to stay out of trouble. How does the theory of our theology fit into a code of conduct that doesn’t start off assuming middle class norms.
Twenty Years Ago: November 1997
Four years before 9/11, I was asking how we could break the cycle of terrorism.
How Come the U.S. Trains All the Terrorists?: It would seem a simple case of U.S. militarism coming home to roost, but it is not so simple and it is not uncommon. Follow most trails of terrorism and you’ll find United States government funding somewhere in the recent past.
Marlborough (Pa.) Friends meetinghouse at dusk. c. 2006.
A few weeks ago, reader James F. used my “Ask me anything!” page to wonder about two types of Friends:
I’ve read a little and watched various videos about the Friends. My questions are , is there a gulf between “conservative” friends and liberal? As well as what defines the two generally? I’m in Maryland near D.C. Do Quakers who define themselves as essentially Christian worship with those who don’t identify as such?
Hi James, what a great question! I think many of us don’t fully appreciate the confusion we sow when we casually use these terms in our online discussions. They can be useful rhetorical shortcuts but sometimes I think we give them more weight than they deserve. I worry that Friends sometimes come off as more divided along these lines than we really are. Over the years I’ve noticed a certain kind of rigid online seeker who dissects theological discussions with such conviction that they’ll refused to even visit their nearest meeting because it’s not the right type. That’s so tragic.
What the terms don’t mean
The first and most common problem is that people don’t realize we’re using these terms in a specifically Quaker context. “Liberal” and “Conservative” don’t refer to political ideologies. One can be a Conservative Friend and vote for liberal or socialist politicians, for example.
Adding to the complications is that these can be imprecise terms. Quaker bodies themselves typically do not identify as either Liberal or Conservative. While local congregations often have their own unique characteristics, culture, and style, nothing goes on the sign out front. Our regional bodies, called yearly meetings, are the highest authority in Quakerism but I can’t think of any that doesn’t span some diversity of theologies.
Historically (and currently) we’ve had the situation where a yearly meeting will split into two separate bodies. The causes can be complex; theology is a piece, but demographics and mainstream cultural shifts also play a huge role. In centuries past (and kind of ridiculously, today still), both of the newly reorganized yearly meetings were obsessed with keeping the name as a way to claim their legitimacy. To tell them apart we’d append awkward and incomplete labels, so in the past we had Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Orthodox).
In the United States, we have two places where yearly meetings compete names and one side’s labelled appendage is “Conservative,” giving us Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) and North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative). Over time, both of these yearly meetings have diversified to the point where they contain outwardly Liberal monthly meetings. The name Conservative in the yearly meeting title has become partly administrative.
A third yearly meeting is usually also included in the list of Conservative bodies. Present-day Ohio Yearly Meeting once competed with two other Ohio Yearly Meetings for the name but is the only one using it today. The name “Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative)” is still sometimes seen, but it’s unnecessary, not technically correct, and not used in the yearly meeting’s formal correspondence. (You want to know more? The yearly meeting’s clerk maintains a website that goes amazingly deep into the history of Ohio Friends).
All that said, these three yearly meetings have more than their share of traditionalist Christian Quaker members. Ohio’s gatherings have the highest percentage of plain dressing- and speaking- Friends around (though even there, they are a minority). But other yearly meetings will have individual members and sometimes whole monthly meetings that could be accurately described as Conservative Quaker.
I might have upset some folks with these observations. In all aspects of life you’ll find people who are very attached to labels. That’s what the comment section is for.
The meanings of the terms
Formal identities aside, there are good reasons we use the concept of Liberal and Conservative Quakerism. They denote a general approach to the world and a way of incorporating our history, our Christian heritage, our understanding of the role of Christ in our discernment, and the format and pace of our group decision making.
But at the same time there’s all sorts of diversity and personal and local histories involved. It’s hard to talk about any of this in concrete terms without dissolving into footnotes and qualifications and long discourses about the differences between various historical sub-movements within Friends (queue awesome 16000-word history).
Many of us comfortably span both worlds. In writing, I sometimes try to escape the weight of the most overused labels by substituting more generic terms, like traditional Friends or Christ-centered Friends. These terms also get problematic if you scratch at them too hard. Reminder: God is the Word and our language is by definition limiting.
If you like the sociology of such things, Isabel Penraeth wrote a fascinating article in Friends Journal a few years ago, Understanding Ourselves, Respecting the Differences. More recently in FJ a Philadelphia Friend, John Andrew Gallery, visited Ohio Friends and talked about the spiritual refreshment of Conservative Friends in Ohio Yearly Meeting Gathering and Quaker Spring. Much of the discussion around the modern phrase Convergent Friends and the threads on QuakerQuaker has focused on those who span a Liberal and Conservative Quaker worldview.
The distinction between Conservatives and Liberals can become quite evident when you observe how Friends conduct a business meeting or how they present themselves. It’s all too easy to veer into caricature here but Liberal Friends are prone to reinventions and the use of imprecise secular language, whileConservative Friends are attached to established processes and can be unwelcoming to change that might disrupt internal unity.
But even these brief observations are imprecise and can mask surprisingly similar talents and stumbling blocks. We all of us are humans, after all. The Inward Christ is always available to instruct and comfort, just as we are all broken and prone to act impulsively against that advice.
Worshipping?
Finally, pretty much all Friends will worship with anyone. Most local congregations have their own distinct flavor. There are some in which the ministry is largely Christian, with a Quaker-infused explanation of a parable or gospel, while there are others where you’ll rarely hear Christ mentioned. You should try out different meetings and see which ones feed your soul. Be ready to find nurturance in unexpected places. God may instruct us to serve anywhere with no notice, as he did the Good Samaritan. Christ isn’t bound by any of our silly words.
Thanks to James for the question!
Do you have a question on another Quaker topic? Check out the Ask Me Anything! page.
Back in November I started a blog post that ran out of umph and stayed in my drafts. At time time I was reacting to the progressive debates about safety pins as a symbol but it seems we’re are in another round of self-questioning, this time around the Women’s March and other initiatives. As I find myself frequently saying, we need lots of different kinds of people organizing in lots of different styles. So maybe this blog posts’s time has come again.
Maybe this is just another stages of grief but I’ve been noticing a number of online discussions in which progressives are shutting down other progressives for not being progressive enough. Every time I see a positive post, I can predict there’s going to be about three enthusiastic “yes!” comments, followed by a 500-word comment explaining why the idea isn’t radical enough.
Folks, we’ve got bigger problems than trying to figure out who’s the most woke person on our Facebook feed.
Successful social change movements are always a spectrum of more or less politically-correct and radical voices. It’s like a chord in music: strings vibrating on different frequencies sound better together. Sometimes in politics you need the crazy radicals to stir things up and sometimes you need the too-cautious liberals to legitimize the protest message.
Some years ago I was part of an campaign in Philly that targeted what many of us felt was a propaganda push around Columbus Day. An attempt by all of the concerned activists to come together predictably went nowhere. There were too many differences in style and tactics and language and culture. But that breakdown in coordination allowed each subculture to pick a tactic that worked best for them.
The Quakers did their visible agitprop leading and got detained. The anarchists made creative posters and set off surreptitious stink devices. Some anonymous pranksters sent out fake press releases to disrupt media coverage. The resultant news coverage focused on the sheer diversity of the protests.
If protest had indeed come from a single group following a single tactic, the dissent would have been buried in the fourth paragraph of the coverage. But the creativity made it the focus of the coverage. Diversity of tactics works. Mistakes will be made. Some progressives will be clueless – maybe even some of the ones considering themselves the most woke. It’s okay. We’ll learn as we go along. We might laugh at how we used to think wearing safety pins was effective – or we might wonder why we ever thought it was meaningless symbol. Whatever happens, let’s just encourage witness wherever and whenever it’s happening. Let’s be gentler on each other.
My choice, from an early age, has been to engage in social change from the ground up, using the power of organized nonviolence. A distrust of the political process was firmly in place by the time I was 15. As a daughter of Quakers I pledged my allegiance not to a flag or a nation state but to humankind, the two often having little to do with each other.
transitionquaker.blogspot.com