Upcoming FJ submission: “Quaker Spaces”

April 4, 2016

I’ve been mean­ing to get more into the habit of shar­ing upcom­ing Friends Jour­nal issue themes. We start­ed focus­ing on themed issues back around 2012 as a way to bring some diver­si­ty to our sub­ject mat­ter and help encour­age Friends to talk about top­ics that weren’t as regularly-covered.

One of the Greenwich, N.J., Meetinghouses.

One of the Green­wich, N.J., meet­ing­hous­es, Sept 2009

The next issue we’re look­ing to fill is a top­ic I find inter­est­ing: Quak­er Spaces. I’ve joked inter­nal­ly that we could call it “Meet­ing­house Porn,” and while we already have some beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions lined up, I think there’s a real chance at juicy Quak­er the­ol­o­gy in this issue as well.

One of my pet the­o­ries is that since we down­play creeds, we talk the­ol­o­gy in the minu­tia of our meet­ing­hous­es. Not offi­cial­ly of course — our wor­ship spaces are neu­tral, uncon­se­crat­ed, emp­ty build­ings. But as Helen Kobek wrote in our March issue on “Dis­abil­i­ties and Inclu­sion,” we all need phys­i­cal accom­mo­da­tions and these pro­vide tem­plates to express our val­ues. Ear­li­er Friends expressed a the­ol­o­gy that dis­trust­ed forms by devel­op­ing an archi­tec­tur­al style devoid of cross­es, steeples. The clas­sic meet­ing­house looks like a barn, the most down-to-early hum­ble archi­tec­tur­al form a north­ern Eng­lish sheep­herders could imagine.

But the­olo­gies shift. As Friends assim­i­lat­ed, some start­ed tak­ing on oth­er forms and Methodist-like meet­ing­house (even some­times dar­ing­ly called church­es) start­ed pop­ping up. Mod­ern meet­ing­hous­es might have big plate glass win­dows look­ing out over a for­est, a nod to our con­tem­po­rary wor­ship of nature or they might be in a con­vert­ed house in a down-and-out neigh­bor­hood to show our love of social justice.

Top photo is a framed picture of the Lancaster U.K. Meetinghouse from the early 20th century--long benches lined up end to end, balcony. By the time of my visit, there were cushioned independent chairs arranged in a circle.
Top pho­to is of a framed pic­ture of the Lan­cast­er UK Meet­ing­house from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry – long bench­es lined up the length of the space. By the time of my vis­it in 2003, the bal­cony was gone and the few remain­ing bench­es were rel­e­gat­ed to an out­er ring out­side of cush­ioned chairs arranged in a cir­cle sur­round­ing a round table with flow­ers and copies of Faith and Prac­tice.

But it’s not just the out­sides where the­ol­o­gy shows up. All of the clas­sic North­east­ern U.S. meet­ing­hous­es had rows of bench­es fac­ing for­ward, with ele­vat­ed fenc­ing bench­es reserved for the Quak­er elders. A theologically-infused dis­trust of this mod­el has led many a meet­ing to rearrange the pews into a more cir­cu­lar arrange­ment. Some­times some­one will sneak some­thing into the mid­dle of the space — flow­ers, or a Bible or hym­nal — as if in recog­ni­tion that they don’t find the empti­ness of the Quak­er form suf­fi­cient. If asked, most of these deci­sions will be explained away in a light-hearted man­ner but it’s hard for me to believe there isn’t at least an uncon­scious nod to the­ol­o­gy in some of the choices.

I’d love to hear sto­ries of Friends nego­ti­at­ing the meet­ing space. Has the desire to build or move a meet­ing­house solid­i­fied or divid­ed your meet­ing? Do you share the space with oth­er groups, or rent it out dur­ing the week? If so, how have you decid­ed on the groups that can use it? Have you bick­ered over the details of a space. Here in the North­east, there are many tales of meet­ings com­ing close to schism over the ques­tion of replac­ing ancient horse­hair bench cush­ions, but I’m sure there are con­sid­er­a­tions and debates to be had over the form of fold­ing chairs.

You can find out more about sub­mit­ting to this or any oth­er upcom­ing issue our the Friends Jour­nal Sub­mis­sions page. Oth­er upcom­ing issues are “Cross­ing Cul­tures” and “Social Media and Technology.”

Aug 2016: Quaker Spaces

What do our archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or design, and meet­ing­house loca­tions say about our the­ol­o­gy and our work in the world? Quak­ers don’t con­se­crate our wor­ship spaces but there’s a strong pull of nos­tal­gia that brings peo­ple into our his­toric build­ings and an unde­ni­able ener­gy to inno­v­a­tive Quak­er spaces. How do our phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions keep us ground­ed or keep us from shar­ing the “Quak­er gospel” more wide­ly? Sub­mis­sions due 5/2/2016.

Torching Meetinghouses Ctd.

July 9, 2012

Appar­ent­ly Mic­ah Bales was­n’t call­ing for twenty-something Friends to engage in a reign of ter­ror, of kerosene and match­es. He was engag­ing in some­thing called he calls metaphor. Mic­ah reminds us that the liv­ing church needs to be able to ask questions:

A liv­ing, breath­ing com­mu­ni­ty can­not be per­fect in this sense. True life is found in dynam­ic ten­sion. Liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties change and grow; they repro­duce them­selves in a diverse array of shapes and sizes, suit­ed to their own times and places.

I myself would have avoid­ed the burn-baby-burn pose, even rhetor­i­cal­ly, if only because I’ve had too much per­son­al expe­ri­ence of Quak­ers who com­plete­ly lack a sense of irony. But it’s cer­tain­ly not with­out prece­dent for Friends to chal­lenge our con­nec­tion to mate­r­i­al space (Mic­ah aint’ got noth­ing on Ben­jamin Lay!). This cri­tique is why we call them meet­ing­hous­es, not church­es, and it’s why their most promi­nent archi­tec­tur­al style in the Delaware Val­ley resem­bles noth­ing so much as a barn – the most gener­ic of open struc­tures in the eyes of the farm­ers who built them.

There have been some good reac­tions among the com­men­taries on Mic­ah’s post. Isabel P. wrote from the per­spec­tive of a “spir­i­tu­al vagabond”:

For those of us with no meet­ing­hous­es, who wan­der from place to place try­ing to find a home for our wor­ship groups, this sort of hyper­bole (metaphor though it may be) is just painful. Is tra­di­tion and her­itage real­ly such an awful weight? Try being a spir­i­tu­al vagabond …

Else­where, Macken­zie paints the pic­ture of a not-atypical wealthy East Coast meet­ing that focus­es on structure:

The meet­ing room is larg­er than need­ed for how few peo­ple show up week­ly (about 70 on a “good” day, while the room can hold about 250). The cam­pus is larg­er than the par­tic­i­pants are will­ing to put in the sweat equi­ty to main­tain. You’d think work­ing togeth­er to main­tain it would go under the cat­e­go­ry of build­ing com­mu­ni­ty, which our First Day School claims is a tes­ti­mo­ny. Instead, the bud­get must be ever-expanded to hire some­one else to fix things up, rather than have any­one get their hands dirty. Nev­er mind that the meet­ing is run­ning on endow­ments from long-dead Friends as it is. So much paid main­te­nance puts a strain on the bud­get, mak­ing for per­sis­tent calls for more money.

Fur­ther down in that same thread, Tri­cia shares the heart­felt thank-you notes of Philadelphia-area Occu­py activists who found refuge in Quak­er struc­tures:

Dear­est Quak­er Friends, Thank you for har­bor­ing us in a safe place in your park­ing lot. We appre­ci­ate it, in sol­i­dar­i­ty — the 99%.

I’m so grate­ful that you opened your hearts and your space to us. (cat­a­stro­phe avert­ed!) I want to be a Quak­er. Love and Peace, Barbara.

There have also been some obnox­ious reac­tions, all too-typical dis­missals cit­ing some supposedly-inherent inabil­i­ty of younger Friends to be trust­ed in dis­cern­ment or lead­er­ship. Of course our own tra­di­tion proves this wrong. When we talk about Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, the start­ing point for Friends of all fla­vors is an essay writ­ten by a twenty-eight year old. When George Fox had his famous open­ing that “there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy con­di­tion,” he was a twenty-three years old talk­ing about a son-of-God that nev­er left what Friends would call his “young adult” years. William Penn co-founded his first Quak­er colony at age 33, and even old Mar­garet Fell earned her nick­name “the moth­er of Quak­erism” for the orga­niz­ing work she began at age thirty-eight. By counter-example, I’m sure we find some old­er Friends who lack some­thing in the dis­cern­ment or self-control depart­ment. The moral of the exam­ples: age is not the most impor­tant fac­tor in Quak­er spir­i­tu­al discernment.

Now I want to turn back to the meet­ing­house ques­tion and put things in a bit of per­spec­tive. There are prob­a­bly only five or six dozen unpro­grammed meet­ings in North Amer­i­ca that are so large they could­n’t sim­ply squeeze into the near­est vol­un­teer fire hall. If calami­ty struck the meet­ing­house, the great major­i­ty of our con­gre­ga­tions could take a quick phone poll of mem­bers to deter­mine who has the largest liv­ing room and relo­cate there the fol­low­ing First Day. Yes, of course it’s nice to pro­vide space to the occa­sion­al pro­test­ers (and local yoga group, bat­tered wom­en’s shel­ter etc.), but it’s fair to ask if this is what we’re called to do with this time and mon­ey. There would be cer­tain oppor­tu­ni­ties gained if a month­ly meet­ing sold or long-term leased its prop­er­ty and re-established itself as a net­work of house church­es. I don’t think it’s nec­es­sar­i­ly a good option for most meet­ings but it would be an intrigu­ing exper­i­ment. And it’s def­i­nite­ly worth imagining.

Should We Torch Our Meetinghouses?

July 6, 2012

Burn­ing down the meet­ing­house is a metaphor for the true free­dom that we find when we renounce all the things that we put before God. What would it look like for younger Friends to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for lead­er­ship with­in our Year­ly Meet­ings, not wait­ing for per­mis­sion or validation?