This Blog Begins – An Early Quaker Online Archive
I intend this informational blog to help others explore the thought and experience of early Quakers, chiefly before 1700, who knew, preached, and reflected on lives transformed and guided by God, who gathered them into a covenanted people.
Britain Yearly Meeting has decided to undertake a once-in-a-generation rewrite of its Faith and Practice
Regular revision and being open to new truths is part of who Quakers are as a religious society. Quakers compiled the first of these books of discipline in 1738. Since then, each new generation of Quakers has revised the book. A new revision may help it speak to younger Quakers and the wider world.
This possibility of this revision was the basis for the inaccurate and overblown clickbaity rhetoric last week that Quakers were giving up God. Rewriting these books of Faith and Practice is not uncommon. But it can be a big fraught. Who decides what is archaic? Who decides which parts of our Quaker experience are core and which are expendable? Add to this the longstanding Quaker distrust of creedal statements and there’s a strong incentive to include everybody’s experience. Inclusion can be an admirable goal in life and spirituality of course, but for a religious body defining itself it leads to lowest-common-denominationalism.
I’ve found it extremely rewarding to read older copies of Faith and Practice precisely because the sometimes-unfamiliar language opens up a spiritual connection that I’ve missed in the routine of contemporary life. The 1806 Philadelphia Book of Discipline has challenged me to reconcile its very different take on Quaker faith (where are the SPICES?) with my own. My understanding is that the first copies of Faith and Practice were essentially binders of the important minutes that had been passed by Friends over the first century of our existence; these minutes represented boundaries – on our participation on war, on our language of days and times, on our advices against gambling and taverns. This was a very different kind of document than our Faith and Practice’s today.
It would be a personal hell for me to sit on one of the rewriting committees. I like the margins and fringes of Quaker spirituality too much. I like people who have taken the time to think through their experiences and give words to it – phrases and ideas which might not fit the standard nomenclature. I like publishing and sharing the ideas of people who don’t necessarily agree.
These days more newcomers first find Friends through Wikipedia and YouTube and (often phenomenally inaccurate) online discussions. A few years ago I sat in a session of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in which we were discussion revising the section of Faith and Practice that had to do with monthly meeting reporting. I was a bit surprised that the Friends who rose to speak on the proposed new procedure all admitted being unaware of the process in the current edition. It seems as if Faith and Practice is often a imprecise snapshot of Quaker institutional life even to those of us who are deeply embedded.
And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’, and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.
When we say we are holding someone in the Light, it is wise to remember that holding is an action verb. Sometimes I confuse intercession prayer with placing a short order to a Spirit I treat as a personal complaint department. “You didn’t get my order right, God…she’s even sicker than before!” I love the way Quaker teachings humble me and help me work with love while waiting expectantly for God’s will to be done.
— Bonnie S. in a recent comment
The second post of a new blog, Musings of a Returning Quaker, was posted yesterday. In Your Hand in Front of Your Face, Josh Talbot connects the Gospel with the need for economic betterment:
Singing along with a hymn does not pay rent. Sitting in Silent Worship revitalizes your soul and connection to the Light. However, it does not lessen the burden of needing to eat. The question we must ask ourselves as people of faith is what can we do in order to bring these poor (literally) people back to church. From my perspective as a Hicksite Friend the answer is simple, to turn to the Quaker tradition of activism.
Longtime readers will know I struggle too with how Friends can those who don’t have the luxury of Sunday morning free time. I wrote about this in a December 2012 article in Friends Journal (the only feature I’ve written since becoming senior editor). I was looking back to a 11-month period in which I had worked the night shift in my local supermarket. I’m always glad to see a new Quaker blog and this one is promising.
https://quakerreturns.blogspot.com/2018/03/your-hand-in-front-of-your-face.html
Over the years I’ve noticed various communication breakdowns among Friends that have made me worried. It’s often something relatively little. For example, I might be talking to an active Philadelphia Friend and be startled to realize they have no idea that a major yearly meeting across the country is breaking apart. Or someone will send me an article bemoaning the lack of something that I know already exists.
I’m in this funny position where I have a quarter century of random Quaker factoids in my head, have access to great databases (like instant searches of Friends Journal’s 60+ years of articles), and have good Googling chops. When I’m in a discussion with Friends face-to-face, I find I often have useful context. Some of it is historical (I geek out on the Quaker past) but some of it is just my lived memory. I’ve been in and out of Quaker offices for 27 years now. I’m entering this weird phase of life in which I’ve been a professional Quaker staffer longer than most of my contemporaries.
And ever since I was a kid, I’ve had this weird talent to remember things I read years earlier. When the topic of clearness committees recently came up, I remembered that Deborah Haines had written a piece about Rachel Davis DuBois in the long-defunct FGConnections newsletter (yes, groaner of a name but it was a great publication in its heyday). Thanks to Archive.org I could resurface the article and bring it to the discussions.
And so, I’ve been quietly been changing the idea of Quaker Ranter from a classic old-school blog to a daily email newsletter. I’ll still collect interesting Quaker links, as I’ve been doing for years with QuakerQuaker. But now I’ll annotate them and give them context. If there’s a side story I think is interesting I’ll tell it. I have a long train commute and writing fun and geeky things about Friends makes it interesting.
I think that something like this could help bring Quaker newcomers up to speed. Our insider language and unexplained (and sometimes dated) worldviews create an impediment for seekers. We kind of expect they’ll figure out things that aren’t so obvious. Learning factoids and histories a day at a time can give them some context to understand what’s happening Sunday morning. If that’s not enough, I also have an Ask A Quaker feature where people new to Friends can ask questions. I’ll be liberally pitching Friends Journal articles and QuakerSpeak videos because I think we’re doing some of our best Quaker media work, but I’m also all about spreading the love and will share many other great resources and blogs.
As with all my projects I also hope to get people contributing so it becomes a community watering hole. If you want to get involved, the first step is to sign up for the free daily email list. At some point, this will probably outgrow the free tier of the email service I’m using, and I will start to have to pay to send thesee emails out. For those of you with a little extra to give, Quaker Ranter Membership is a way to help offset these costs.
And let your friends know about it! Just send them to quakerranter.org/email to sign up.
Rhonda Pfalzgraff-Carlson reads mainstream commentary on the book of Colossians and is disappointed. Why? They miss relationships and contexts that seem obvious from a Quaker perspective. A Quaker Lens Aids Biblical Interpretation
Even knowing that I’m coloring this interpretation through the use of a Quaker lens, I believe that a Quaker perspective can help the meaning of the Bible become more clear.
I must admit that I take claims that any denomination has some sort of special connection to the early church with a heaping spoonful of salt. But the early church was disorganized in a way that Friends can be.
RIP St Leonard
If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flameMagnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darkerHineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lordThere’s a lover in the story
But the story’s still the same
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flameThey’re lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darkerHineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flameIf you are the dealer, let me out of the game
If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame
You want it darkerHineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lordHineni
Hineni, hineni
Hineni
