George Lakey on going out into the world

October 30, 2020

A brand new video from Quak­er­S­peak inter­views George Lakey on the Choose Democ­ra­cy project.

There are many Friends involved in Choose Democ­ra­cy but it’s very con­scious­ly not a Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion (the word does­n’t even appear on its web­site). So it’s inter­est­ing to hear George share the way his faith and democ­ra­cy activism intersects:

I’m remind­ed of ear­ly Friends who loved to go to mar­ket squares on busy mar­ket­ing days and stand on a box or stand on some­thing, and preach the gospel as they under­stood it. And they attract­ed many peo­ple to become Quak­ers through doing that, includ­ing peo­ple who ini­tial­ly thought they were talk­ing rub­bish. So it’s that going out, it’s that not expect­ing peo­ple to come to us but instead tak­ing that offen­sive– it’s a mark of the growth of ear­ly Quak­erism and will be a mark of the growth of today’s Quak­erism if we’re will­ing to go out. 

Faithfully Translating the Bible

July 18, 2019

Quak­er­S­peak inter­views Quak­er trans­la­tor Sarah Ruden!

If you think of the Bible as a rule­book, then you’re going to fight about it, because it’s about allo­ca­tion of pow­er, and the inter­preter is always claim­ing pow­er by say­ing, “the Bible says you can do this, and you must not do that.” Well, Quak­ers do not like to think that way.

Faith­ful­ly Trans­lat­ing the Bible

Twitter thread of the day

May 31, 2019

So this happened:

So yeah, THAT Lin-Manuel Miran­da. I’m going to have Moana songs in my head all day now. See the line where the sky meets THE sea? It calls ME, And no one KNOOOOOWWS, how far it GOOOEEES. (okay, it sounds bet­ter when my 8yo daugh­ter sings along in the car).

Nicole Cliffe is a for­mer athe­ist turned Chris­t­ian (but AFAIK, not Quak­er (yet)) who told her con­ver­sion sto­ry in Chris­tian­i­ty Today a few years ago. One of her claims to fame is co-founding The Toast, which stop pub­lish­ing in 2016 but still has some­one pay­ing for the web serv­er.

And in case Lin-Manuel swings by, he should know that his­to­ry geek Quak­er hip hop is a thing.

Are Quakers Christian?

April 15, 2019

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?

Transcript of Ashley Wilcox’s message at Guilford

April 14, 2019

The talks was on “Quak­ers and the Prophet­ic Tradition”:

When Quak­ers talk about the prophet­ic tra­di­tion, we tend to go back to ear­ly Friends, but I am going to go back to Jeremiah. 

https://​www​.ash​leymwilcox​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​1​9​/​4​/​1​4​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​p​r​o​p​h​e​t​i​c​-​t​r​a​d​i​t​ion

Liberty of the Spirit

March 28, 2019

Every once in awhile a Quak­er­S­peak video comes along that reminds me why I was blown away when I first got to know Quak­ers. Ayesha Imani talks about the first time she wor­shiped with Friends: 

I thought I had wan­dered into a group of peo­ple who actu­al­ly believed that God was able to speak direct­ly to them. I remem­ber say­ing, “Oh my God, this is Pen­te­cost!” I couldn’t believe that these peo­ple think God is actu­al­ly gll­l­l­l­lo­ing to speak to them! I’m down for this. This is where I belong. 

Most of the Quak­ers read­ing this can prob­a­bly guess where this is going – she pret­ty quick­ly got a les­son in the unwrit­ten norms against exu­ber­ance at many Quak­er meet­ings, the rules that pre­vent many expres­sions of wor­ship. Ayesha’s Black and many of the stric­tures on behav­ior are pret­ty middle-class white. But a lot of this isn’t real­ly about race. I’ve been led to do some very non-ordinary things at uptight Quak­er meet­ings and feel­ing incred­i­bly self-conscious over it. When I came to Friends, I loved the idea of the rad­i­cal spon­te­nae­ity of our wor­ship (any­one can min­is­ter any­time!) and the life it called us to but in prac­tice we often are crea­tures of habit, to our detri­ment. I love Ayesha’s talk of “exper­i­ment­ing with free­dom” and the “lib­er­ty of the spir­it.” I real­ize my sto­ries of non-ordinariness are all over a decade old. I wish I felt more of that lib­er­ty again.

How Does Cul­ture Influ­ence Quak­er Worship?

Top 10 Quakers in fiction

January 9, 2019

Although the title gives poten­tial read­ers the impres­sion that this is yet anoth­er click-bait lis­ti­cle, the arti­cle is by a Quak­er nov­el­ist and starts with nice obser­va­tions about Friends and creativity:

In the light of our high ideals, it can be hard for indi­vid­ual Quak­ers not to feel inad­e­quate. I cer­tain­ly do. We’re exhort­ed to “let our lives speak”, and I often feel like my life doesn’t have much to say. But I am a writer. As a com­mu­ni­ty that lis­tens patient­ly for the truth, Quak­ers pro­vide a unique place for cre­ativ­i­ty. The faith that can sit through hours of Meet­ing – through bore­dom, frus­tra­tion, dis­trac­tion – is the same thing that keeps me going when I’m strug­gling for my next idea. We wor­ship in silence, but we’re wait­ing for words, which some­how gives me faith that, if I wait in front of a blank page for long enough, the right sto­ry will come. 

https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​b​o​o​k​s​/​2​0​1​9​/​j​a​n​/​0​9​/​t​o​p​-​1​0​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​i​n​-​f​i​c​t​i​o​n​?​C​M​P​=​t​w​t​_gu