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

Help keep the work going!

January 8, 2019

If you spend much time online you’ll know that there’s a lot of noise and bad infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net. This is true with Quak­er mate­r­i­al too. Every day I’m scan­ning the cor­ners of the net to find the blog posts, Red­dit threads, Quak­er mag­a­zines and main­stream cov­er­age of Friends and bring­ing it on Quak­erQuak­er and my Quak­er­Ran­ter Dai­ly Email.

Var­i­ous Jan­u­ary serv­er bills are com­ing due in the next week and the Pay­pal account is emp­ty. Between domain reg­is­tra­tions, serv­er bills, and the Ning ser­vice the site can often rack up over $50 in a giv­en month.

Please con­sid­er a one-time dona­tion at http://​pay​pal​.me/​m​a​r​t​i​n​k​e​l​ley or use the Quak­erQuak­er dona­tion page to set up a month­ly donation.

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.

A post shared by His­toric Charleston Foun­da­tion (@historiccharlestonfoundation) on

The Seed as Quaker metaphor

March 28, 2018

From Jnana Hod­son’s blog, a look at “The Seed” as a Quak­er metaphor:

Con­sid­er­ing today’s empha­sis on indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, plu­ral­i­ty, and per­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, I believe that return­ing to the metaphor of the Seed holds the most poten­tial for fer­tile spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment and guid­ance in our own era.

I find the evo­lu­tion of Quak­er metaphors fas­ci­nat­ing. Ear­ly Quak­er ser­mons and epis­tles were packed with bib­li­cal allu­sions. I grew up rel­a­tive­ly unchurched but I’ve tried to make up for it over the years. I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover using the One Year Bible plan (like a lot of peo­ple I sus­pect, it took me a lit­tle over two years) and have been part of dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tion­al Bible study groups. I try to look up ref­er­ences. But even with that I don’t catch half the ref­er­ences ear­ly ser­mons packed in.

John Wool­man lived a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions after the first Friends. We Quak­er remem­ber his Jour­nal for min­istry of its anti-slavery sen­ti­ments, final­ly becom­ing a con­sen­sus among Friends by the time of its pub­li­ca­tion in 1774. But oth­er reli­gious folks have read it for its lit­er­ary val­ue. Open a ran­dom page and Wool­man will have up to half a dozen metaphors for the Divine. It’s packed and rich and acces­si­ble. I find a kind of par­tic­u­lar Quak­er spir­i­tu­al truth in Wool­man’s rota­tion of metaphors: it implies that divin­i­ty is more than any spe­cif­ic words we try to stuff it into.

Late­ly Quak­er metaphors have tend­ed to become more ster­ile. I think we’re still wor­ried about specifics but instead of expand­ing our lan­guage we con­tract it into a kind of impen­e­tra­ble code. The “Light of Christ” becomes the “Inward Christ” then the “Inward Light” then “the Light” or “Spir­it.” We’re still echo­ing the Light metaphors packed into the Book of John but doing so in such a way that seems par­tic­u­lar­ly parochial to Friends and non-obvious to new­com­ers. A major New Tes­ta­ment theme is reduced to Quak­er lingo.

Jnana Hod­son’s prob­lem with “the seed” as metaphor is inter­est­ing: “ ‘seed,’ as such, has far few­er Bib­li­cal cita­tions than the cor­re­spond­ing com­ple­men­tary ‘light’ or ‘true’ and ‘truth’ do.” I’m not sure I ever noticed that. I like the seed, with its organ­ic con­no­ta­tions and promise of future growth.  But appar­ent­ly the few bib­li­cal allu­sions were rather sex­ist (spoil­er: it often meant semen) and lack­ing in bio­log­i­cal aware­ness. It feels like Friends are search­ing for neu­tral metaphors like “the seed” these days; we also have a lot of gath­er­ings around “weav­ing.” I cer­tain­ly don’t think we should be lim­it­ed to first cen­tu­ry images of divin­i­ty but I also don’t think we’ve quite fig­ured out how we can talk about the guid­ance we receive from the Inward Teacher.

The Seed, ini­tial­ly, is the most prob­lem­at­ic of the three cen­tral Quak­er metaphors

Mixing Quakers & Politics

March 19, 2018

Greg Woods is the pri­ma­ry mover behind this Thurs­day’s live pan­el of Quak­er con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates. He’s writ­ten a new post about it, Quak­ers & Pol­i­tics Do Mix (in the 2018 Midterms)

This year’s elec­tion feel dif­fer­ent than pre­vi­ous years. Peo­ple are ready to do some­thing besides just vot­ing. Many are run­ning for office in record num­bers, for exam­ple: Sci­en­tists and Women.Another pop­u­la­tion that is run­ning in, per­haps, record num­bers in 2018: Quakers!

He’s added a lot of inter­est­ing con­tex­tu­al links to arti­cles about the new types of can­di­dates we’re see­ing in the 2018 election.

To make sure you get the lat­est infor­ma­tion on the live pan­el, sign up for the live web pan­el’s Face­book event. And join us at 3pm ET for our live web pan­el. We’ll also be con­tin­u­ing to update the Friends Jour­nal announce­ment page.

Ask Me Anything: Conservative and Liberal Friends?

February 22, 2017
Marl­bor­ough (Pa.) Friends meet­ing­house at dusk. c. 2006.

A few weeks ago, read­er James F. used my “Ask me any­thing!” page to won­der about two types of Friends:

I’ve read a lit­tle and watched var­i­ous videos about the Friends. My ques­tions are , is there a gulf between “con­ser­v­a­tive” friends and lib­er­al? As well as what defines the two gen­er­al­ly? I’m in Mary­land near D.C. Do Quak­ers who define them­selves as essen­tial­ly Chris­t­ian wor­ship with those who don’t iden­ti­fy as such?

Hi James, what a great ques­tion! I think many of us don’t ful­ly appre­ci­ate the con­fu­sion we sow when we casu­al­ly use these terms in our online dis­cus­sions. They can be use­ful rhetor­i­cal short­cuts but some­times I think we give them more weight than they deserve. I wor­ry that Friends some­times come off as more divid­ed along these lines than we real­ly are. Over the years I’ve noticed a cer­tain kind of rigid online seek­er who dis­sects the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions with such con­vic­tion that they’ll refused to even vis­it their near­est meet­ing because it’s not the right type. That’s so tragic.

What the terms don’t mean

The first and most com­mon prob­lem is that peo­ple don’t real­ize we’re using these terms in a specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er con­text. “Lib­er­al” and “Con­ser­v­a­tive” don’t refer to polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies. One can be a Con­ser­v­a­tive Friend and vote for lib­er­al or social­ist politi­cians, for example.

Adding to the com­pli­ca­tions is that these can be impre­cise terms. Quak­er bod­ies them­selves typ­i­cal­ly do not iden­ti­fy as either Lib­er­al or Con­ser­v­a­tive. While local con­gre­ga­tions often have their own unique char­ac­ter­is­tics, cul­ture, and style, noth­ing goes on the sign out front. Our region­al bod­ies, called year­ly meet­ings, are the high­est author­i­ty in Quak­erism but I can’t think of any that does­n’t span some diver­si­ty of theologies.

His­tor­i­cal­ly (and cur­rent­ly) we’ve had the sit­u­a­tion where a year­ly meet­ing will split into two sep­a­rate bod­ies. The caus­es can be com­plex; the­ol­o­gy is a piece, but demo­graph­ics and main­stream cul­tur­al shifts also play a huge role. In cen­turies past (and kind of ridicu­lous­ly, today still), both of the new­ly reor­ga­nized year­ly meet­ings were obsessed with keep­ing the name as a way to claim their legit­i­ma­cy. To tell them apart we’d append awk­ward and incom­plete labels, so in the past we had Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Hick­site) and Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Ortho­dox).

In the Unit­ed States, we have two places where year­ly meet­ings com­pete names and one side’s labelled appendage is “Con­ser­v­a­tive,” giv­ing us Iowa Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive) and North Car­oli­na Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive). Over time, both of these year­ly meet­ings have diver­si­fied to the point where they con­tain out­ward­ly Lib­er­al month­ly meet­ings. The name Con­ser­v­a­tive in the year­ly meet­ing title has become part­ly administrative.

A third year­ly meet­ing is usu­al­ly also includ­ed in the list of Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies. Present-day Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing once com­pet­ed with two oth­er Ohio Year­ly Meet­ings for the name but is the only one using it today. The name “Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive)” is still some­times seen, but it’s unnec­es­sary, not tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, and not used in the year­ly meeting’s for­mal cor­re­spon­dence. (You want to know more? The year­ly meet­ing’s clerk main­tains a web­site that goes amaz­ing­ly deep into the his­to­ry of Ohio Friends).

All that said, these three year­ly meet­ings have more than their share of tra­di­tion­al­ist Chris­t­ian Quak­er mem­bers. Ohio’s gath­er­ings have the high­est per­cent­age of plain dressing- and speaking- Friends around (though even there, they are a minor­i­ty). But oth­er year­ly meet­ings will have indi­vid­ual mem­bers and some­times whole month­ly meet­ings that could be accu­rate­ly described as Con­ser­v­a­tive Quaker.

I might have upset some folks with these obser­va­tions. In all aspects of life you’ll find peo­ple who are very attached to labels. That’s what the com­ment sec­tion is for.

The meanings of the terms

For­mal iden­ti­ties aside, there are good rea­sons we use the con­cept of Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­erism. They denote a gen­er­al approach to the world and a way of incor­po­rat­ing our his­to­ry, our Chris­t­ian her­itage, our under­stand­ing of the role of Christ in our dis­cern­ment, and the for­mat and pace of our group deci­sion making.

But at the same time there’s all sorts of diver­si­ty and per­son­al and local his­to­ries involved. It’s hard to talk about any of this in con­crete terms with­out dis­solv­ing into foot­notes and qual­i­fi­ca­tions and long dis­cours­es about the dif­fer­ences between var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal sub-movements with­in Friends (queue awe­some 16000-word his­to­ry).

Many of us com­fort­ably span both worlds. In writ­ing, I some­times try to escape the weight of the most overused labels by sub­sti­tut­ing more gener­ic terms, like tra­di­tion­al Friends or Christ-centered Friends. These terms also get prob­lem­at­ic if you scratch at them too hard. Reminder: God is the Word and our lan­guage is by def­i­n­i­tion limiting.

If you like the soci­ol­o­gy of such things, Isabel Pen­raeth wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Under­stand­ing Our­selves, Respect­ing the Dif­fer­ences. More recent­ly in FJ a Philadel­phia Friend, John Andrew Gallery, vis­it­ed Ohio Friends and talked about the spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends in Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing Gath­er­ing and Quak­er Spring. Much of the dis­cus­sion around the mod­ern phrase Con­ver­gent Friends and the threads on Quak­erQuak­er has focused on those who span a Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­er worldview.

The dis­tinc­tion between Con­ser­v­a­tives and Lib­er­als can become quite evi­dent when you observe how Friends con­duct a busi­ness meet­ing or how they present them­selves. It’s all too easy to veer into car­i­ca­ture here but Lib­er­al Friends are prone to rein­ven­tions and the use of impre­cise sec­u­lar lan­guage, while­Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends are attached to estab­lished process­es and can be unwel­com­ing to change that might dis­rupt inter­nal unity.

But even these brief obser­va­tions are impre­cise and can mask sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar tal­ents and stum­bling blocks. We all of us are humans, after all. The Inward Christ is always avail­able to instruct and com­fort, just as we are all bro­ken and prone to act impul­sive­ly against that advice.

Worshipping?

Final­ly, pret­ty much all Friends will wor­ship with any­one. Most local con­gre­ga­tions have their own dis­tinct fla­vor. There are some in which the min­istry is large­ly Chris­t­ian, with a Quaker-infused expla­na­tion of a para­ble or gospel, while there are oth­ers where you’ll rarely hear Christ men­tioned. You should try out dif­fer­ent meet­ings and see which ones feed your soul. Be ready to find nur­tu­rance in unex­pect­ed places. God may instruct us to serve any­where with no notice, as he did the Good Samar­i­tan. Christ isn’t bound by any of our sil­ly words.

Thanks to James for the question!

Do you have a ques­tion on anoth­er Quak­er top­ic? Check out the Ask Me Any­thing! page.