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.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
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Friends Journal Quakerspeisungen and an Oscar Schindler connection
November 13, 2018
This week marks the hundred-year anniversary of the end of the “Great War,” World War I, branded as the war to end all wars. Our annual commemoration of the armistice in the U.S. largely went by the wayside in 1954 when Congress changed the name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Instead of marking the end of a horrific war that literally consumed much of European resources and people for years in trenches that never moved, we now spend the day filling lectures with cliches of military service.
But the hundred year anniversary also means we can start remembering the aftermath of the war. The First World War set up the second. We largely think of the mistakes and half-efforts of the victorious powers but Quakers were part of more righteous storyline:
Even more food was sent by American Quakers under the leadership of Herbert Hoover, providing daily meals for 60,0000 starving Berliners for five years. The Germans labelled this massive effort, Quakerspeisungen: “Quaker Feedings.” It saved thousands of lives, including those of the family of Oscar Schindler who famously went on to help 700 Jews to escape the gas chambers at Auschwitz in the Second World War. Schindler’s sisters spent six months recuperating with the Hall family and one even attended Thirsk Grammar School for a term.
Friends Journal Bonuses: Quaker work in Germany in the 1920s and 30s was the subject ofQuakers in Germany during and after the World Wars from 2010. Relief efforts in Spain were part of a more recent story that tied it to present-day refugee assistance in Gota de Leche.
https://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/17207689.heroic-quakers-and-a-fascinating-link-between-oscar-schindler-and-thirsk/?ref=twtrec
North American Quaker statistics 1937 – 2017
September 17, 2018
These are numbers of Friends in Canada and the United States (including Alaska, which was tallied separately prior to statehood) compiled from Friends World Committee for Consultation. I dug up these numbers from three sources:
- 1937, 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987 from Quakers World Wide: A History of FWCC by Herbert Hadley in 1991 (many thanks to FWCC’s Robin Mohr for a scan of the relevant chart).
- 1972, 1992 from Earlham School of Religion’s The Present State of Quakerism, 1995, archived here.
- 2002 on from FWCC directly. Note: Current 2017 map.
Friends in the U.S. and Canada:
- 1937: 114,924
- 1957: 122,663
- 1967: 122,780
- 1972: 121,380
- 1977: 119,160
- 1987: 109,732
- 1992: 101,255
- 2002: 92,786
- 2012: 77,660
- 2017: 81,392
Friends in Americas (North, Middle South):
- 1937: 122,166
- 1957: 131,000
- 1967: 129,200
- 1977: 132,300
- 1987: 139,200
- 2017: 140,065
You could write a book about what these numbers do and don’t mean. The most glaring omission is that they don’t show the geographic or theological shifts that took place over time. Midwestern Friends have taken a disproportionate hit, for example, and many Philadelphia-area meetings are much smaller than they were a century ago, while independent meetings in the West and/or adjacent to colleges grew like wildflowers mid-century.
My hot take on this is that the reunification work of the early 20th century gave Quakers a solid identity and coherent structure. Howard Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years from 1952 is a remarkably confident document. In many areas, Friends became a socially-progressive, participatory religious movement that was attractive to people tired of more creedal formulations; mixed-religious parents came looking for First-day school community for their children. Quakers’ social justice work was very visible and attracted a number of new people during the antiwar 1960s1 and the alternative community groundswell of the 1970s. These various newcomers offset the decline of what we might call “ethnic” Friends in rural meetings through this period.
That magic balance of Quaker culture matching the zeitgeist of religious seekers disappeared somewhere back in the 1980s. We aren’t on forefront of any current spiritual trends. While there are bright spots and exceptions 2, we’ve largely struggled with retaining newcomers in recent years. We’re losing our elders more quickly than we’re bringing in new people, hence the forty percent drop since the high water of 1987. The small 2017 uptick might be a good sign3 or it may be a statistical phantom.4 I’ll be curious to see what the next census brings.
2023 Update: I seem to have mixed up some numbers in my original 2018 post, with some dates in my chart including the number of Friends in the U.S. and Canada and other or Friends from all the Americas (with roughly 20,000 Friends apiece in Bolivia and Guatemala, the difference is substantial). I’m redoing all of these numbers; if you’re interested in reading the original version of this, you can check it out in Archive.org.
Emily Provance: An Application of Cultural Theory
August 23, 2018
Interesting application of business theory to different types of Quaker cultures:
Did you identify the culture type of your Quaker faith community — more specifically, the portion of that community where you spend the most time? It’s possible that yours might be a pretty even tie between two culture types, but it’s less helpful if you say “we’re not really any of these.” Identify one or two that seem relevant and work with it for a few minutes here. Nobody’s looking over your shoulder.
I’m particularly intrigued by her placement of the children’s program culture outside of the ones she assigns her meeting. I’ve met teens who grew up embedded in Quaker youth culture who are surprised when they hit adulthood and realize that they don’t connect with any of the adult activities. Back in the day I was part of Young Adult Friends programs that were partly attempts to continue that Young Friends culture in place in a twenty-something context. Acknowledging that there are sometimes fundamental cultural differences at work seems like a good start. Also, don’t miss Emily’s piece in the current Friends Journal, The Grief and the Promised Land.
Navigating Differences: An Application of Cultural Theory
Isaac Smith: Good soil
August 23, 2018
An observation on the soil of God’s work — us:
For many of us, our predicament today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw closer to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many obligations, so many distractions. We can be led astray, sometimes without even knowing it. The founder of our movement, George Fox, once said that “whatever ye are addicted to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trouble you, then he gets advantage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addicted to many things: not just, say, alcohol or gambling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves.
Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow ourselves to be instruments of peace, reconciliation, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempting in those times to get defensive or look toward others. I’ve found the old Quaker take on “The Tempter” to be personally very useful. I’ve learned to question and go inward whenever I feel too much pride in something or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work.
Good soil
Becoming a Quaker Minister
August 16, 2018
I love the gentle, deliberate way Stephanie talks in her QuakerSpeak videos. In this week’s she talks about Quake ministry:
Joining up in that includes making my particular gifts and skills available and not needing it to be about me or accomplishment, but about seeking to really be a part of what God is trying to make happen with and through me and others, and to rejoice in that.
Alastair McIntosh interviewed
July 30, 2018
High Profiles magazine has published a nice interview with Alastair McIntosh, a Quaker academic, author, and activist. It’s not all about his Quakerism but then it’s nice to see someone using it as a just a piece of their identity. I love seeing our roots laid out in the same sentence as a critique of the Murdoch press, etc.
The North is the part of England to which the radicals retreated under Norman violence, and I suspect that’s part of why the more radical side of England comes out there. Quakerism developed mainly in the north and west of England and I suspect that nonconformity comes out of that radical spirit – which needs to be rekindled, not in ways manipulated by the Murdoch press or the Conservative Party or Ukip but much more in the way that William Blake understood, of connecting with the spirit of the land.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that we ran a nice piece by McIntosh in the February issue of Friends Journal. He talked about Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk with Quaker roots. Again, our spirituality in context.
A New Quakerism
July 30, 2018
A cynic might file this under “hope springs eternal”:
A phrase that keeps coming to mind is “a new Quakerism,” and oddly enough, I’ve been hearing other Friends unknowingly echo this phrase back to me. It seems to me that many Friends, even those who consider themselves “convinced,” are hungry for more than what the Society has to offer.
Of course it’s part of our tradition that it needs to be forever reborn. You can’t recycle sermons or use the prop of your university learning as a crutch. We are never to know what might happen when worship starts, since the idea is that it’s directly led in the moment by Christ. It’s also a part of our tradition that forms are forever calcifying and that we need to remember why we’re here and who’s brought us together. Glad to see the work continue.