Tag Archives ⇒ Christ

Late September links

September 23, 2023
· Martin Kelley

On Friends Jour­nal, an account from Bruce Bir­chard of Cen­tral Philadel­phia Meet­ing’s response to a sense that wor­ship had got­ten too chat­ty. They want­ed to effect a “spir­i­tu­al ground­ing of Friends wor­ship” and so for­mal­ly record­ed eight min­is­ters and asked them to pre­pare ser­mons for semi-programmed wor­ship ses­sions. Oh wait, this is Cen­tral Philly, HQ of Lib­er­al U.S. Quak­er insti­tu­tion­al­ism, so they could­n’t call them min­is­ters or ser­mons, and while they repeat­ed­ly call it a pro­gram they go out of their way to insist this isn’t any kind of pro­gram­ming. You can read their eight pre­pared ser­mons… *checks notes* eight pre­pared mes­sages here. They’re good, and well worth reading.

Also on FJ, Greg Woods and Jen New­man fin­ish off Sep­tem­ber fea­tures’s with an arti­cle about their work on voca­tion­al dis­cern­ment for young adult Friends.

Work­ing on some arti­cles on Quak­er tes­ti­monies and re-reading Antho­ny Manousos’s 2009 blog post, “How Howard Brin­ton Invent­ed SPICE, the Quak­er Tes­ti­monies,” and Paul Buck­ley’s 2012 talk, “The Ori­gin of the SPICES.” Both gems.

Sad to read of the pass­ing of Mariellen Gilpin in What Canst Thou Say? She was a con­sis­tent­ly thought­ful writer on Quak­er mys­ti­cism, min­istry, and elder­ship for many decades.

A new Quak­er­S­peak this week: Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty on the Road: Five Years of Quak­er RV Liv­ing, an inter­view with Bet­sey Kenworthy.

Are Quakers Christian?

April 15, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son takes on one of the trick­i­er ques­tions of mod­ern lib­er­al Quakerism:

I am going to make a bold apol­o­gy for a clar­i­fied lib­er­al Quak­er iden­ti­ty that retains its roots and recov­ers wor­ship in the spir­it of Christ, but yet releas­es us from the ortho­dox Chris­t­ian pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that no longer speak to so many unpro­grammed Friends. 

Are Quak­ers Christian?

Brian Drayton: One cost of our theological diversity

February 11, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Respond­ing to arti­cles in the Decem­ber Friends Journal:

Rather I am aware that a cer­tain lev­el of fel­low­ship or com­pan­ion­ship is miss­ing. It can take a life­time, I find, to explore the impli­ca­tions and mean­ing of the gospel life, to expe­ri­ence such a renew­ing of the mind that one can grow into the life of Christ, see and learn to hon­or the Sophia of God, the Logos in its appear­ing in humans, and in cre­ation, and in our­selves in our mea­sure. Fel­low­ship with oth­ers who are fol­low­ing that same path ( a path “tra­di­tion­al­ly held by Friends”) is nour­ish­ing, stim­u­lat­ing, and educa­tive in, well, par­tic­u­lar ways. Fel­low­ship with earnest seek­ers who under­stand their paths dif­fer­ent­ly is also pre­cious, and indeed nec­es­sary — but not the same. 

One cost of our the­o­log­i­cal diversity

Evangelistic malpractice

February 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er on start­ing fresh in a cor­ner of the Quak­er world:

I was grate­ful that the “who” ques­tion was there — tes­ti­fy­ing that we are not cen­tered on our­selves, duti­ful­ly inven­to­ry­ing our Quak­er mark­ers. For me, evan­ge­lism (pay­ing urgent atten­tion to the “who”) puts all those oth­er tes­ti­monies in per­spec­tive. All those tes­ti­monies are “signs and won­ders,” qual­i­ties of the Light by which we as the Body of Christ par­tic­i­pate in mak­ing Jesus visible. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​t​i​c​-​m​a​l​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​e​.​h​tml

Quakerism of the Future

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er lifts up a 1974 pub­li­ca­tion by John Yungblut:

Grant­ed, as a deep stu­dent of Carl Gus­tav Jung and Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin, Yung­blut’s def­i­n­i­tions of those three adjec­tives may not have exact­ly been old-school. This par­tic­u­lar­ly goes for his reflec­tions on the word “evan­gel­i­cal.” But the dynam­ic con­ver­sa­tion among these qual­i­ties — dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions and all — may be vital if Friends are to grow in use­ful­ness to the Body of Christ, and to those who’ve not yet been convinced. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​0​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​i​s​m​-​o​f​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​.​h​tml

A New Quakerism

July 30, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A cyn­ic might file this under “hope springs eternal”:

A phrase that keeps com­ing to mind is “a new Quak­erism,” and odd­ly enough, I’ve been hear­ing oth­er Friends unknow­ing­ly echo this phrase back to me. It seems to me that many Friends, even those who con­sid­er them­selves “con­vinced,” are hun­gry for more than what the Soci­ety has to offer.

Of course it’s part of our tra­di­tion that it needs to be for­ev­er reborn. You can’t recy­cle ser­mons or use the prop of your uni­ver­si­ty learn­ing as a crutch. We are nev­er to know what might hap­pen when wor­ship starts, since the idea is that it’s direct­ly led in the moment by Christ. It’s also a part of our tra­di­tion that forms are for­ev­er cal­ci­fy­ing and that we need to remem­ber why we’re here and who’s brought us togeth­er. Glad to see the work continue.

A New Quakerism

Developing a healing ministry

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’ve enjoyed John Jere­mi­ah Edminster’s com­ments over the years, which is one rea­son I was hap­pen to get the sub­mis­sion that became The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift. It starts with the sto­ry of hav­ing a gift of min­istry rec­og­nized but what I like even more is that he talks about his jour­ney explor­ing and devel­op­ing it. What’s sur­pris­ing is that is he’s far from a purist:

we went to week­end train­ing work­shops; we read the writ­ings of Chris­t­ian heal­ers; shaman­ic heal­ers; and prac­ti­tion­ers of Rei­ki, tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine, Ayurve­da, and home­opa­thy. I longed to be able to inspect people’s ether­ic and astral bod­ies, their chakras and mar­mas, with a diagnostician’s eye. So long as it involved no stray­ing from Christ, I aspired to know how to mobi­lize heal­ing virtues in plant spir­its, min­er­als, col­ors, and sounds, and how to rec­og­nize “holy” places.

Some of this reminds me of the won­der­ful work of the eighteen-century Friend Samuel Bow­nas, whose book A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Nec­es­sary to a Gospel Min­is­ter is full of very use­ful advice on min­istry and warn­ings about pit­falls — roman­tic attach­ments, undue politicization.


The Cost of a Healing Gift - Friends Journal

The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift — Friends Journal 

The dis­cov­ery of a gift for heal­ing is only the first step in a process of learn­ing and…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 
April 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Where­as the young man hereto­fore has been giv­en to be some­thing wild, he of late years was become more somber, it was pro­posed by friends to the young man and woman: 
Whether he did believe yet was the truth which we pro­fessed and walked in accord­ing to our mea­sure — fur­ther shew­ing that if wee did not walk in the truth accord­ing to our mea­sure giv­en us, we were but a com­mu­ni­ty of men and women, and not a Church of Christ. 

— Query for 1689 mar­riage clearness