Tag Archives ⇒ friendsjournal

Quakerly competition?

February 13, 2019
· Martin Kelley

A quick update that we at Friends Jour­nal have extend­ed the dead­line for an upcom­ing issue on Friends and com­pe­ti­tion. It’s a real­ly inter­est­ing top­ic and I’d like to see some more arti­cles to choose from. In my “Edi­tor’s Desk” post try­ing to drum up writ­ing inter­est, I dug through the FJ archives to find pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions on the top­ic. I’ll excerpt a few here:

If you look back through Friends Jour­nal archives, you’ll find warn­ings against com­pet­i­tive behav­ior. In 1955 Bess B. Lane of Swarth­more (Pa.) Meet­ing wrote that schools should “Place empha­sis on coop­er­a­tion, shar­ing, rather than on com­pe­ti­tion” and won­dered if “com­pe­ti­tion is being over­stressed in our schools.” In 1972, Christo­pher H. Ander­son, then a senior at Wilm­ing­ton Col­lege, had stronger words. He con­trast­ed his Quak­er edu­ca­tion with pub­lic schools, which he said “breed a social con­for­mi­ty, an intel­lec­tu­al bland­ness and a repug­nant spir­it of competition.”

If you know any­one who is inter­est­ed in the top­ic, please for­ward this along!


Friendly Competition? Writing deadline extended to Feb 25

Friend­ly Com­pe­ti­tion? Writ­ing dead­line extend­ed to Feb 25 

Learn more about writ­ing for our May issue on competition.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

A 12-step program for world peace

February 12, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Bob Dock­horn, my pre­de­ces­sor as Friends Jour­nal senior edi­tor, has been doing a lot of writ­ing since he’s retired and one of his big projects involves a vision of a world free of its addic­tion to vio­lence. Some­where in the process he lost a step (there’s only 11).

Hav­ing been raised a Friend, I assume a hope­ful stance toward the future. Unlike many oth­ers, we gen­er­al­ly pre­sume that the human world is not meant to be adver­sar­i­al. Even deci­sion mak­ing by vot­ing is reject­ed among Friends as unnec­es­sar­i­ly con­fronta­tion­al. Friends par­tic­i­pate in local and nation­al elec­tions, but often with mis­giv­ings since these con­tests, law­mak­ing, and even courts can be set­tings in which priv­i­lege is pre­served and fought for.

One evening a few years ago, as I sat in silence at Southamp­ton (Pa.) Meet­ing, my atten­tion turned to a 12-Step poster on the wall, left behind by a Nar­cotics Anony­mous group that meets week­ly in our space. As I stared at it, I expe­ri­enced a flash of insight — that our entire cul­ture is addict­ed to com­pe­ti­tion and violence. 

I appre­ci­ate how the steps start sim­ply (“Clear One’s Pre­sump­tions,” “Access Mul­ti­ple Sources of Infor­ma­tion”) and then build into pro­pos­als that seem pie-in-the-sky “(Trans­form Mil­i­tary Insti­tu­tions,” “Imple­ment World Gov­ern­ment”), espe­cial­ly with cur­rent world trends. But that’s the nature of a jour­ney: it starts with steps but main­tains vision toward a destination.


Eleven Steps toward an Enduring World

Eleven Steps toward an Endur­ing World 

A fierce­ly ide­al­is­tic vision of a human­i­ty cured of its addic­tion to vio­lence and war.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a num­ber of Black Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tors have shared heart­break­ing sto­ries of not feel­ing wel­come in Quak­er cir­cles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a ques­tion mark to the end of its title — “A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends?” The choice of punc­tu­a­tion hints at a cer­tain weari­ness — are we real­ly still ask­ing this? — along with the sug­ges­tion that maybe many Friends are con­tent enough with the sta­tus quo that they might sim­ply answer “no” to a call for diversity. 


Page not found - Friends Journal

Page not found — Friends Journal 

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Humor in Religion

December 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m a lit­tle ner­vous solic­it­ing Quak­er humor but it’s become part of my job descrip­tion… Friends Jour­nal is devot­ing a whole issue to “Humor in Reli­gion” next April. The writ­ing dead­line is Jan­u­ary 7. A fright­ful­ly seri­ous list of things we’re look­ing for is below.


Writing Opp: Humor in Religion (due Jan 7)

Writ­ing Opp: Humor in Reli­gion (due Jan 7) 

Mag­a­zine ISO legit fun­ny Quak­er joke, apply here.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

A Space for Doubt

December 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Fea­tures on Friends Jour­nal this week, Jeff Rasley’s arti­cle on “stealth wor­shipers” and reli­gious doubt in the pro­fes­sion­al clergy:

Because I went to sem­i­nary, I came to know quite a few Chris­t­ian min­is­ters. As an attor­ney, I rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al church­es and Chris­t­ian min­is­ters in legal mat­ters. Sev­er­al min­is­ters of Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions and two Catholic priests came clean with me about their per­son­al beliefs. I dis­cov­ered that when they were not “on,” many pas­tors would admit to the same doubts about the dog­mas and super­sti­tions of their church­es as I had about mine. 

Decem­ber’s issue is on Chris­tian­i­ty and there are opin­ions on var­i­ous sides of the issue but Rasley’s piece gets right to a core strength of Lib­er­al Quak­erism: its abil­i­ty to so eas­i­ly invite and engage with those unsure of their beliefs. Because of fam­i­ly, I get to a lot of non-Quaker ser­vices a lot and won­der how many of the peo­ple around me aren’t fol­low­ing their church’s teach­ings on var­i­ous issues. One way of order­ing Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions is to see if they pre­fer a tidy and pure but small con­gre­ga­tion or a messy big tent come-as-you-are congregation.

It seems like Quak­ers are tak­ing some­thing of a dif­fer­ent path: come but fol­low your own integri­ty and engage in the way that hon­ors what­ev­er lev­el of truth has been giv­en you. It’s a pret­ty pow­er­ful stance, though of course it gives us our own spe­cial set of headaches when it comes time to speak­ing in a col­lec­tive voice.


A Space for Doubt

A Space for Doubt 

When reli­gious ser­vices are stripped of doc­tri­nal claims, doubters and skep­tics can par­tic­i­pate with greater integrity.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Genesis: Outer Space and Inner Light, by

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

John A. Mina­han has writ­ten this week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, a nice­ly paced explo­ration that touch­es on per­son­al mem­oir, human mile­stones, cul­tur­al mem­o­ry, and the Book of Genesis:

Now the astro­nauts had used that same rhetor­i­cal strat­e­gy but on a plan­e­tary and even inter­plan­e­tary scale. Speak­ing the words of Gen­e­sis, they sent a mes­sage of heal­ing to a wound­ed world; they expressed a cer­tain cos­mic humil­i­ty about our place in the uni­verse; and, most of all, they shared good­will, jaw-dropping in its sim­plic­i­ty, with “all of you on the good earth.” A moral and exis­ten­tial vision took hold of me in that moment and has nev­er let go. Though I couldn’t have artic­u­lat­ed it as such then, it was a real­iza­tion of orig­i­nal goodness. 


Genesis: Outer Space and Inner Light

Gen­e­sis: Out­er Space and Inner Light 

Out­er space and Inner Light

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The gray wave that wasn’t

November 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Back in March, Friends Jour­nal and the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion co-hosted an online dis­cus­sion with six Quak­er can­di­dates for con­gres­sion­al seats. The idea and coor­di­na­tion came from the awe­some Greg Woods. I went to see just how high the 2018 “gray wave” had crested.

Spoil­ers: no wave. Four of the can­di­dates didn’t make it out of the pri­maries and a fifth was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in a long-shot can­di­da­cy. The one can­di­date to win major-party pri­ma­ry was the awe­some Shaw­na Roberts1 of Bar­nesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, peo­ple I know and it was a lot of fun to fol­low her cam­paign. Her twit­ter feed has been a hoot:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Shaw­na only got about 30 per­cent of the vote yes­ter­day. This elec­tion was not kind to Democ­rats in rur­al dis­tricts like south­east Ohio’s 6 and she was run­ning against an incum­bent. From my van­tage point 30 per­cent seems pret­ty good, though as my sev­enth grade math teacher used to intone in his weary bari­tone, close only counts in horse­shoes and hand grenades. 2 Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Wash­ing­ton win had me hop­ing against the odds. I’d love to see her con­tin­ue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updat­ed Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics page. For any­one won­der­ing about Quak­er politi­cians, Paul Buck­ley had a nice overview of our com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to vot­ing a few years ago.


2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

2018 Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Web Pan­el (Updat­ed Nov 2018) 

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Looking outside the meetinghouse (FJ call for submissions)

November 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Let me give a plug that Friends Jour­nal is look­ing for arti­cles on the top­ic of “Out­side the Meet­ing­house” for the March issue. The dead­line is a lit­tle over a month away. Here’s a lit­tle bit of my write-up for it, as a teaser:

There is a long his­to­ry of Friends preach­ing and wit­ness­ing out­side of the con­fines of the meet­ing­house. George Fox’s Jour­nal is full of uncon­ven­tion­al wor­ship­ing; he had a par­tic­u­lar pen­chant for preach­ing from any bit of high ground he could find, like a tree or rock out­crop­ping. His con­tem­po­rary James Nay­lor is most remem­bered for re-enacting Jesus’s Palm Sun­day entry into Jerusalem by dra­mat­i­cal­ly rid­ing a horse down a main road into Bris­tol. Modern-day Friends con­tin­ue to find uncon­ven­tion­al places to worship… 

Also, I’ve just set up a form to get on the email noti­fi­ca­tion list to get pinged when top­ic write-ups get post­ed. It’s very low-volume, as we only write these once a month. There’s only two sub­scribers. For the time being, I’m just keep­ing the emails in a list and send­ing per­son­al­ized emails.


Writing Opp: Outside the Meetinghouse (due 12/10)

Writ­ing Opp: Out­side the Meet­ing­house (due 12/10)

Infor­ma­tion about our upcom­ing March 2019 issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house.” Fea­ture sub­mis­sions are due Decem­ber 10, 2018.

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