Visiting Petty Island

June 16, 2019

As a lover of maps, I’ve often be intrigued by the envi­rons  of the Delaware Riv­er. As the tides go up and down, the time­less­ness of the riv­er becomes a kind of gen­tle solace to the indus­tri­al­iza­tion along its banks. Nowhere is this more appar­ent than on the islands which some­how remain in its course. I’ve camped at Pea Patch Island down by Delaware and found a sur­pris­ing fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in its con­vo­lut­ed own­er­ship. But clos­er to my com­mute is Pet­ty Island, sit­ting along­side the New Jer­sey main­land a short dis­tance north of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Pet­ty Island is owned by the Cit­go oil com­pa­ny and until just a few months ago was still dot­ted with its oil tanks and a large marine car­go facil­i­ty. Satel­lite views still show this twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry indus­try. But in a very long and oftentimes-uncertain process it’s due to become part of New Jer­sey nat­ur­al lands and even­tu­al­ly to become a pre­serve. The pub­lic is gen­er­al­ly still not allowed on the island but there are occa­sion­al trips and on this past Sat­ur­day I got to tour the island.

We were very lucky to have Bob Shinn as our tour guide. He’s a walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia of the island and the state geopol­i­tics and waves of names and com­mer­cial uses it’s been through. He lit­er­al­ly wrote the entry on Pet­ty Island in the Philadel­phia Ency­clo­pe­dia. Not sur­pris­ing­ly there’s a lot of Quak­ers in the ear­ly record­ed his­to­ry and the deed between the first Quak­er own­er and three Lenape rep­re­sen­ta­tives is intact in the Haver­ford Col­lege col­lec­tions (this deed was also a major part of a talk by Lenape – set­tler his­to­ry giv­en by Jean Soder­lund a few months ago at Ran­co­cas Meet­ing (see also her book Lenape Coun­try)).

The ever-changing, never-settled his­to­ry of the island con­tin­ues with its name. Wikipedia, Google Maps, and — most impor­tant­ly — Bob Shinn call it “Pet­ty Island,” while the guard shack, wel­come sign, NJ Audubon Soci­ety, and New Jer­sey Nat­ur­al Lands Trust adds the pos­ses­sive to make it “Pet­ty’s Island.” The lat­ter is espe­cial­ly awkward-sounding to my ears, as South Jer­sey place names char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly drop the apos­tro­phes over time (for exam­ple, the riv­er land­ing named after Cap­tain George May is now the town of “Mays Landing.”)

Rem­nants of the indus­tri­al­iza­tion remain: the mas­sive three-story load­ing facil­i­ty has been kept to become the bones of a future vis­i­tors cen­ter; the adja­cent asphalt park­ing area has just been replant­ed as a mead­ow and is most­ly a lot of rocks and short blades of grass (with some Fowler’s toads!). We were lucky enough to be the first pub­lic group to be there since this had all been cleared away.

Bonus: I did­n’t real­ize till we were about to get in our cars that South Jer­sey Trails was also on the tour. He wrote it up too! If you look care­ful­ly, I’m in the back­ground of one of the shots, and now that I’m look­ing I think that’s him in some of mine.

Ministers, elders, and overseers

October 22, 2018

From Jnana Hod­son, a list­ing of three types of offices in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er meetings:

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Quak­er meet­ings rec­og­nized and nur­tured indi­vid­u­als who had spir­i­tu­al gifts as min­is­ters, elders, or over­seers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their ser­vice extend­ed over the entire congregation. 

Many Friends have dropped the term “over­seers” in recent years, out of con­cern for how the word is so asso­ci­at­ed with slav­ery. As I under­stand it, ear­ly Friends’ use of the word came from its use as an Eng­lish trans­la­tion for Episko­pos in the New Tes­ta­ment. They con­sid­ered them­selves to be re-establishing ear­ly Chris­t­ian mod­els. For exam­ple, Acts 20:28:

Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood. 

Bible trans­la­tions that were geared toward a Catholic audi­ence tend­ed to stick to Latinized words and went with “bish­op” over “over­seer.” Quak­ers wor­ried about the con­no­ta­tion of the word could pro­pose that we just start nam­ing bish­ops. It’s not as nut­ty as it might seem, as there are anabap­tist church­es who use the term to talk about roles with­in indi­vid­ual church­es. Of course, some­times name changes also mask changes in the­ol­o­gy and I noticed that some of the more lib­er­al Quak­er meet­ings dropped “over­seer” with a speed which they are not oth­er­wise known for. Friends today are a lot more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic than Friends were when our insti­tu­tions were set up — there are many good rea­sons for this in our his­to­ries. But I do hope we’re con­tin­u­ing to find ade­quate ways to notice and care for our members.
 
We need all three – and more

Friendly Fire: The Making of a Charismatic Quaker

September 19, 2018

A look at the Vine­yard Move­men­t’s Quak­er roots:

When it comes to Spirit-attentive wor­ship and min­istry, the Vine­yard man­i­fests Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in a way that is faith­ful to the Evan­gel­i­cal tra­di­tion, but tru­ly mys­ti­cal, and of course deeply Quak­er. They live out a Quak­erism many of today’s Amer­i­can Quak­ers, both Lib­er­al and Ortho­dox, would find laugh­able, back­wards. George Fox, on the oth­er hand, may get it.

The Mak­ing of a Charis­mat­ic Quaker

Is this what people want?

August 13, 2018

Don McCormick is back with this week’s Friends Jour­nal fea­ture. His Feb­ru­ary arti­cle, “Can Quak­erism Sur­vive,” sparked all sorts of con­ver­sa­tions and is now at 110 com­ments. Now he’s back with spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tions for Quak­er growth, inspired by megachurch church growth research and models.

When I read this, I asked myself if we Quak­ers are pro­vid­ing the equiv­a­lent of this type of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance. Do new­com­ers and oth­ers see us as meet­ing their spir­i­tu­al needs? If they do, do they see this right away, or does it take a while? To answer these ques­tions, I had to learn more about the “clear path­way” that the Reveal lit­er­a­ture described. Although Quak­erism has great wis­dom in the area of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance, at first it seemed that it was incon­sis­tent with the spir­i­tu­al guid­ance described in the survey.

When I’ve taught Quak­erism 101 class­es, I’ve try to explain the branch­es of Friends — and the schisms — not just as the­o­log­i­cal or cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non but as problem-solving pref­er­ences. What tools do we reach for in cri­sis? Do we go inward and recom­mit our­selves to dis­tinc­tive prac­tices that we’ve been slack­ing off on? Do we start read­ing groups and spir­i­tu­al friend­ship pro­grams to train each mem­ber to car­ry the work? Do we blame our Quak­er odd­i­ties and start using the lan­guage and litur­gi­cal mod­els of the more suc­cess­ful church­es near us? Do we set up com­mit­tees and pro­duce cur­ric­u­la to sup­port local efforts? Do we look to experts and craft nation­wide pro­grams and hire staff and prob­lem solve? I’m not sure these tools need to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, but in prac­tice I see most Quak­er bod­ies tend to reach for only one or two of these tools. And of course, the tools we chose large­ly deter­mine both the prob­lems we solve and the unin­tend­ed ones we create.

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018

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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A New Quakerism

July 30, 2018

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

Portland, Oregon high school ditching controversial ‘Quakers’ mascot

May 9, 2018

On the list of reli­gious prob­lems, the use of “Quak­er” by non-Friends is more mys­tery than prob­lem. There’s the multi­na­tion­al giant Quak­er Oats Com­pa­ny of course, peri­od­i­cal­ly mak­ing tone deaf state­ment with its name. Friends of a cer­tain age might remem­ber 1989’s rebrand­ed Pop­eye the Quak­er Man and every eigh­teen months the laugh-out-loud Quak­er Oats threat­ens to sue us sto­ry goes re-viral on Face­book (the page is undat­ed and so always feels new; the inci­dent is at least 15 years old).

There are also var­i­ous schools who brand their sports teams with the Quak­er name. But a Port­land, Ore­gon, news sta­tion says that list is get­ting a bit small­er: Franklin High School ditch­ing con­tro­ver­sial ‘Quak­ers’ mascot

An assis­tant prin­ci­pal and anoth­er teacher told FOX 12 they shift­ed away from brand­ing the school as “Quak­ers” sev­er­al years ago. Sev­er­al stu­dents also said they don’t know much about who Quak­ers are or the reli­gion. Sev­er­al seemed to think Ben­jamin Franklin, who the school is named after, was a Quak­er. Franklin was not a Quak­er. FOX 12 also spoke to Kel­ly McCur­dy, who put three chil­dren through Franklin High. He said he believes the dis­trict is mak­ing a mis­take and eras­ing tra­di­tion. “I think it’s sil­ly, per­son­al­ly,” McCur­dy said. “It’s not racial­ly insensitive.”

It seems that the Fox affil­i­ate went out of its way to find a cranky per­son to deplore a point no one was mak­ing. Of course it’s not racial­ly insen­si­tive. But these appro­pri­at­ed names are always… well, weird. No pub­lic school would call them­selves The Jews or The Mus­lims or The Catholics or any­thing else smelling of reli­gion. It’s a sign of how dis­missed Friends are as a actu­al liv­ing reli­gious move­ment and denom­i­na­tion that our nick­name is con­sid­ered fair game. We must turn to the local news­pa­per to get the real back­ground:

Lisa Zuni­ga told the board that in 2014 she met Mia Pisano, a fel­low Franklin High par­ent who is a mem­ber of the Quak­er faith, and the pair start­ed an effort to change the name. The name, they argued, vio­lat­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. The dis­trict, they said, should nev­er com­man­deer a reli­gious sym­bol or con­no­ta­tion for a mas­cot. Despite inter­est in the name change, Zuni­ga said, par­ents met stiff resis­tance from the dis­trict. It was hard to even get any­one to explain what the process would be to bring about a name change, she said.

https://​www​.ore​gonlive​.com/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​s​f​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​p​o​r​t​l​a​n​d​_​s​c​h​o​o​l​_​b​o​a​r​d​_​f​i​n​d​s​_​q​u​.​h​tml

http://​www​.kptv​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​3​8​1​4​5​8​3​3​/​f​r​a​n​k​l​i​n​-​h​i​g​h​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​d​i​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​n​t​r​o​v​e​r​s​i​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​m​a​s​cot