quaker heritage Posts

One of the blueprints for Quaker community is the "Epistle from the Elders at Balby" written in 1656 at the very infancy of the Friends movement by a gathering of leaders from Yorkshire and North Midlands, England.

It's the precursor to Faith and Practice, as it outlines the relationship between individuals and the meeting. If remembered at all today, it's for its postscript, a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians that warns readers not to treat this as a form to worship and to remain living in the light which is pure and holy. That postscript now starts off most liberal Quaker books of Faith and Practice.

But the Epistle itself is well worth dusting off. It addresses worship, ministry, marriage, and how to deal in meekness and love with those walking "disorderly." It talks of how to support families and take care of members who were imprisoned or in need. Some of it's language is a little stilted and there's some talk of the role of servants that most modern Friend would object to. But overall, it's a remarkably lucid, practical and relevant document. It's also short: just over two pages.

One of the things I hear again and again from Friends is the desire for a deeper community of faith. Younger Friends are especially drawn toward the so-called "New Monastic" movement of tight communal living. The Balby Epistle is a glimpse into how an earlier generation of Friends addressed some of these same concerns.

ONLINE EDITIONS OF THE EPISTLE AT BALBY:
Quaker Heritage Press: qhpress.org/texts/balby.html
Street Corner Society: strecorsoc.org/docs/balby.html
Wikisource: en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Epistle_from_the_Elders_at_Balby,_1656

DISCUSSIONS:
Brooklyn Quaker post & discussion (2005): brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2005/03/elders-at-balby.html

• Former Friend talks of Pagans, Quakers and a self-centered Christian identity
  While Quakerism is (still) Christian, it often comes over as a separate religion, a law unto itself in a sense. They talk primarily about the Quaker heritage, while the Christian character is not adequately covered.
  (tags: quaker quaker.liberal quaker.influences)
• One reader of CT article things Paganism is official Qr outreach effort
  The Quakers are finding a new strategy for church growth: Merge with paganism! From “Pagans find a sometimes uneasy home among Quakers”, referring to “a small but growing movement of Quakers who also identify as pagan.
  (tags: quaker quaker.outreach quaker.in)
• Mega Catholic church opens in Round Rock Texas
  (tags: catholic galante)
• Breakaway liberal Catholics claims closed churches=lost adherents
  FutureChurch, no study cited.
  (tags: catholic)

• The Friendly Funnel · Clearness
  I am, quite simply, being called to speak. I am being called to break the silence that smothers my Meeting with regards to non-heterosexual people, loves, sexuality, and even faith. I am being called to stand up and challenge heterosexism.
  (tags: comment)
• Rock & Roll Jr High Quakers (via QuakerQuaker.org)
  Evangelical Friends at California youth camp worship service rock to a praise song.
  (tags: quaker.video quaker.evangelical quaker.youth quaker)
• Ecstatic Scott on Quaking and Evangelicals
  Evangelical Friends have a heritage particularly rich with the Power and its workings because it wasn't only the early Quakers that quaked. For man the "born again" experience was often accompanied by manifestations of the Power.
  (tags: quaker quaker.evangelical quaker.liberal)
• Video: Philadelphia Quaker on life in interracial community in US South in 1950s
  Sue Angry lived in a pioneering interracial community in Georgia until gunfire and racist threats forced her to come north for shelter and support. (Follow link to related article).
  (tags: quaker.videos quaker.witness quaker.diversity quaker)

Just the quickest of posts to announce that Quaker Gatherings are now being covered on QuakerQuaker. Each event page tries to list all blog posts that refer to the event in question.

Past events covered: February's Young Adult Friends Gathering in New Jersey and FUM Board Meeting in Kenya, and the Quaker Heritage Day in Berkeley California last week. Upcoming events are FWCC Americas Meeting in Rhode Island (it includes a panel on Convergent Friends featuring Robin M and C Wess Daniels, May's Britain Yearly Meeting Sessions that will feature an official blog, and this summer's FGC Gathering whose damnably attractive advance program went up today.

I'm pretty excited by this development, which is really just a reflection of the growth of Quaker blogging. Too much of the public news from Quaker events has been barely-conceal boosterism, a publicity fluff piece for the sponsoring organization. In other words: dull and trite. The growing Quaker blog culture is very different from that of mainline Quaker institutions. There's a much greater transparency and openness and less of a sense that we have to identify and defend a particular Quaker tradition. We're much more willing to tell stories and wrestle with controversies.

Quaker events (at least in networked North America) are now being covered online in real time with more depth and opinion that we've previously seen. I think this is a good kick-in-the-pants for the bureaucratic dinosaurs of institutional Quakerism and an exciting opportunity for getting new voices and opinions heard.

As I see events unfolding in the Quakerosphere, I'll add more pages. They won't be limited to U.S. and British events except that we seem to be dominating this realm still. If too many events start being covered (which is only a matter of time) I'll have to figure out some way of breaking them down more.

C Wess Daniels has a good post following up the Quaker Heritage Day events last weekend in Berkeley. The featured speaker was Brian Drayton, a New England Friend in the liberal unprogrammed tradition who's been doing a lot of good work around reclaiming traditionally-minded Quaker ministry (at least that's how I'd pigeon-hole him from afar, I've never actually met him!).

Over on Beppeblog, a look at how liberal Quakerism is not alone in contemplating whether diversity undermines or enriches its sense of identity, purpose, and distinctiveness.

Earlham School of Religion received a grant to put a “digital library of Quaker texts online”:http://dqc.esr.earlham.edu/. The site seems to be down now, but it’s an exciting development.

The Kuennings (Quaker Heritage Press, Glenside Yearly Meeting) made the predictible “big fuss”:http://www.qhpress.org/catalog/esrdqc.html about the project—they do this whenever anyone works on about historical Quaker writings without their permission. As always they make good points about ESR’s project, and Earlham “appears to be listening”:http://esr.earlham.edu/dqc/faq.html.