Tag Archives ⇒ cool

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

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More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen­house – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868. The lives of Quak­ers and enslaved peo­ple have been inter­twined from the ear­li­est days of the Amer­i­can colonies. The Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends (Quak­ers) were out­spo­ken oppo­nents of slav­ery and the slave trade begin­ning in the late 17th cen­tu­ry. In 1758, the Friends in Lon­don issued an unequiv­o­cal denun­ci­a­tion of the slave trade, and lat­er that year, the Philadel­phia Meet­ing moved past its warn­ing against trad­ing in slaves, now propos­ing that Friends who held slaves should set them free. Quak­erism came to South Car­oli­na in the 1670s, and a Meet­ing was estab­lished in Charleston by 1682. The Quak­er pop­u­la­tion in South Car­oli­na peaked by 1800 and suf­fered dra­mat­ic decline there­after as Quak­ers migrat­ed to slave-free Ohio. By 1822 only a weak Charleston Meet­ing remained, and it too ceased to exist by the time of the Civ­il War. A hand­ful of Quak­er women remained in Charleston after the Civ­il War, car­ing for new­ly freed peo­ple dur­ing the Recon­struc­tion peri­od. Per­haps one of those women dis­trib­uted this pam­phlet to those peo­ple still resid­ing in the kitchen house after eman­ci­pa­tion. Did she offer them com­fort, hope, a way out? Was it pur­pose­ful­ly hid­den in the walls or car­ried there by rodents? We will nev­er know… but the pres­ence of Quak­er lit­er­a­ture is a tan­ta­liz­ing glimpse into the lives and con­vic­tions of the peo­ple liv­ing here in 1868.

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Autopsy of a Deceased Church

July 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From a book review by Macken­zie Mor­gan on the Quak­er Out­reach site:

Often church­es that fail to reflect their chang­ing local com­mu­ni­ty die off in a gen­er­a­tion or two. Implic­it bias has been a point of dis­cus­sion in some year­ly meet­ings in recent years, and this is related.

In fact, a Friend once told me they’d been asked, “can we tar­get these Face­book ads only to peo­ple who are just like us?”

Actu­al­ly, Face­book can cre­ate what they call looka­like audi­ences. It’s very cool and very creepy at the same time. It’s part of the suite of fine-grain tar­get­ing tools that’s let­ting polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­dists and lifestyle-focused com­pa­nies con­trol our media con­sump­tion at the social feed lev­el and rein­force liked-minded group­think. Atten­tion silos are dan­ger­ous for our democ­ra­cy and they’re no good for our church­es. If the Quak­er good news has any mean­ing left in it, it has to be wide­ly applic­a­ble out­side of our cul­tur­al, style bubbles.

Autop­sy of a Deceased Church

QuakerSpeak on old Quaker records

July 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I must admit to lov­ing old libraries and geek­ing out on his­to­ries. In this week’s install­ment of Quak­er­S­peak, Mary Crauderu­eff, cura­tor at Haver­ford College’s Quak­er Col­lec­tion, talks about some of the favorite parts of her work:

You have things like mem­ber­ship records, mar­riage records, and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates. You have min­utes of the busi­ness meet­ings and you have com­mit­tee min­utes. Oth­er cool things that we have are deeds for meet­ings and meet­ing­hous­es. Peo­ple will some­times come to var­i­ous Quak­er archives and say, “Our meet­ing is in this dis­pute with the town­ship. We need to find the orig­i­nal deed to the meet­ing­house and we think that you have it. Can we look at it?” 

http://​Quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​i​c​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​l​i​b​r​a​ry/

The Quaker-Methodist Connection

March 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Quaker-Methodist Connection

Dur­ing the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, rela­tions between Quak­ers and Methodists were cool in prin­ci­ple, but rather warmer in prac­tice. John Wes­ley, being the good Angli­can church­man, was high­ly crit­i­cal of the sec­tar­i­an dimen­sions of the Quak­er faith, espe­cial­ly its form of wor­ship, its rejec­tion of the sacra­ments, its qui­etism, and its will­ing accep­tance of women as ministers.

Hammonton Food Trucks

June 12, 2015
· Martin Kelley

From the first Ham­mon­ton Food Truck Fes­ti­val. Cool stuff but the lines are way too long for a sin­gle par­ent with four antsy kids.

One of our friends said the line waits were up to 1.5 hrs. I could just about have jumped on the express­way to Philly, got­ten some Fed­er­al Donuts, and made it back in that time. I like that Ham­mon­ton has made then edges of a hip­ster map but this is a bit sil­ly. We end­ed up get­ting frozen treats at the Wawa around the corner.

Beth Kantor on the G+ Nonprofit Brand pages:

November 9, 2011
· Martin Kelley

“I’m try­ing to avoid being seduced by Shiny Object Syn­drome. It makes non­prof­its and indi­vid­u­als to adopt the lat­est cool social tool based on peer pres­sure, buzz, or a strange desire to be one of the first. It can also dis­tract you from your pri­or­i­ty to do list.”

Seems sen­si­ble advice.

Embed­ded Link

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Google + Non­prof­it Brand Pages
Why does Google +  launch new stuff when I’m on a book dead­line!!   The long await­ed brand pages on Google + are here.    I put a post out on Google + 

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Teaching Quakerism again

October 5, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Quakerism 101 classes at Moorestown Meeting NJGet­ting right back on the horse, I’m teach­ing Quak­erism 101 at Moorestown NJ Meet­ing Wednes­day evenings start­ing in a few weeks. The orig­i­nal plan was for the most excel­lent Thomas Swain to lead it but he’s become rather busy after being tapped to be year­ly meet­ing clerk (God bless ‘im). He’ll be there for the first ses­sion, I’ll be on my own for the rest. A rather small group has signed up so it should be nice and intimate.

For the last year I’ve been pon­der­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties of using mid-week reli­gious edu­ca­tion and wor­ship as a form of out­reach. Emer­gent Church types love small group oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side of the Sun­day morn­ing time slot and it seems that mid-week wor­ship is one of those old on-the-verge-of-death Quak­er tra­di­tions that might be worth revi­tal­iz­ing and recast­ing in an Emergent-friendly format.

Last Spring I spent a few months reg­u­lar­ly attend­ing one of the few sur­viv­ing mid-week wor­ships in the area and I found it intrigu­ing and full of pos­si­bil­i­ties but nev­er felt led to do more. It seemed that atten­ders came and went each week with­out con­nect­ing deeply to one anoth­er or get­ting any seri­ous ground­ing in Quakerism.

Reflect­ing on the gen­e­sis of a strong Philadel­phia young adult group in the mid-1990s, it seemed like the ide­al recipe would look some­thing like this:

  • 6pm: reg­u­lar reli­gious ed time, not super-formal but real and pastoral-based. This would be an open, non-judgemental time where atten­ders would be free to share spir­i­tu­al insights but they would also learn the ortho­dox Quak­er take on the issue or con­cern (Bar­clay essentially).
  • 7pm: mid-week wor­ship, unprogrammed
  • 8pm: unof­fi­cial but reg­u­lar hang-out time, peo­ple going in groups to local din­ers, etc.

Unpro­grammed wor­ship just isn’t enough (just when y’all thought I was a dyed-in-the-plain-cloth Wilbu­rite…). Peo­ple do need time to be able to ask ques­tions and explore spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in a more struc­tured way. Those of us led to teach­ing need to be will­ing to say “this is the Quak­er take on this issue” even if our answer would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pass con­sen­sus in a Friends meeting.

Peo­ple also need time to social­ize. We live in an atom­ized soci­ety and the brunt of this iso­la­tion is borne by young adults start­ing careers in unfa­mil­iar cities and towns: Quak­er meet­ing can act as a place to plug into a social net­work and pro­vide real com­mu­ni­ty. It’s dif­fer­ent from enter­tain­ment, but rather identity-building. How do we shift think­ing from “those Quak­ers are cool” to “I’m a Quak­er and I’m cool” in such a way that these new Friends under­stand that there are chal­lenges and dis­ci­plines involved in tak­ing on this new role.

Per­haps the three parts to the mid-week wor­ship mod­el is head, spir­it and heart; what­ev­er labels you give it we need to think about feed­ing and nur­tur­ing the whole seek­er and to chal­lenge them to more than just silence. This is cer­tain­ly a com­mon mod­el. When Peg­gy Sen­ger Par­sons and Alivia Biko came to the FGC Gath­er­ing and shared Free­dom Friends wor­ship with us it had some of this feel. For awhile I tagged along with Julie to what’s now called The Col­legium Cen­ter which is a Sun­day night Catholic mass/religious ed/diner three-some that was always packed and that pro­duced at least one cou­ple (good friends of ours now!).

I don’t know why I share all this now, except to put the idea in oth­er peo­ple’s heads too. The four weeks of Wednes­day night reli­gious ed at Moorestown might have some­thing of this feel; it will be inter­est­ing to see.

For those inter­est­ed in cur­ricu­lum details, I’m bas­ing it on Michael Birkel’s Silence and Wit­ness: the Quak­er Tra­di­tion (Orbis, 2004. $16.00). Michael’s tried to pull togeth­er a good gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to Friends, some­thing sure­ly need­ed by Friends today (much as I respect Howard Brin­ton’s Friends for 300 Years it’s get­ting old in the tooth and speaks more to the issues of mid-century Friends than us). Can Silence and Wit­ness anchor a Quak­erism 101 course? We’ll see.

As sup­ple­men­tary mate­r­i­al I’m using Thomas Ham­m’s Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2003, $45), Ben Pink-Dandelion’s Con­vinced Quak­erism: 2003 Wal­ton Lec­ture (South­east­ern Year­ly Meet­ing Wal­ton Lec­ture, 2003, $4.00), Mar­ty Grundy’s Quak­er Trea­sure (Bea­con Hill Friends House Weed Lec­ture, 2002, $4.00) and the class Bill Tabor pam­phlet Four Doors to Quak­er Wor­ship (Pen­dle Hill, 1992, $5.00). Atten­tive read­ers will see echos from my pre­vi­ous Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing.