Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

What is and isn’t Quaker, hunting edition

August 14, 2023
· Martin Kelley

On the face of it, it may be kind of weird for a veg­an like me to like an arti­cle about hunt­ing (much less pub­lish a recipe for squir­rel quiche) but any­one who brings in Thomas Clark­son to talk about Quak­er cul­tur­al val­ues is some­one I’ll lis­ten to.

[Clark­son’s] con­tem­po­raries were blind­ed by tra­di­tion and nev­er stopped to ask, “how far are they allow­able?” amidst con­cerns of human con­duct. Even the phras­ing “how far are they allow­able” sug­gests a lim­it. Per­haps hunt­ing is an allow­able and accept­able way of life up to a cer­tain point: that point being need­less vio­lence and danger.
Allowable Diversions
Allow­able Diversions 

A Friend explores the moral­i­ty of hunting.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

The “loudmouth New York Quaker Jew” who’s a second-gen Hiroshima survivor

August 8, 2023
· Martin Kelley

A sur­pris­ing twist in this sto­ry: Leslie Sus­san’s father was a U.S. film­mak­er who blamed his fatal ill­ness on the atom bombs that fell on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. I like her attitude:

Being Quak­er hasn’t made me any less Jew­ish. Ever since I was a young teen, basi­cal­ly, my atti­tude toward being Jew­ish has been that I will nev­er argue with a Jew who says I’m not Jew­ish and I will nev­er deny to a goy that I’m Jewish.

Her father documented the devastation at Nagasaki and Hiroshima — now she's considered an honorary second-generation survivor
Her father doc­u­ment­ed the dev­as­ta­tion at Nagasa­ki and Hiroshi­ma — now she’s con­sid­ered an hon­orary second-generation survivor 

Leslie Sus­san’s father was a film­mak­er who blamed his fatal ill­ness on the atom bombs that fell on…

The Forward The Forward 

Belong behave believe

July 2, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Kei­th B on Red­dit:

Recent­ly I came across the Believe/Behave/Belong mod­el, which was new to me, as was the amount of hand-wringing about it in main­stream church​es​.In British Quak­er Meet­ings the pref­er­ence seems to be: belong, behave, and the belief will take care of itself.

In the U.S. Quak­er con­text, I’ve long attrib­uted the belong-first mod­el to the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Friends who bro­kered a peace between the fac­tions in East Coast Friends 1and affect­ed a reunion with­in the most of the largest East Coast year­ly meet­ings, while also influ­enc­ing a West Coast Bean­ite move­ment that stressed agree­able­ness and prac­tice over theology.

Howard Brin­ton was one of the fig­ures who brought it alto­geth­er. He thought mem­ber­ship was a func­tion of feel­ing like you belonged in the com­mu­ni­ty, he more-or-less invent­ed the mod­ern tes­ti­monies (aka “SPICES”), and focused on Quak­er process as the glue that holds us togeth­er. It was a pow­er­ful refor­mu­la­tion that realigned and reded­i­cat­ed mod­ern lib­er­al Quakerism.

But focus­ing on belong­ing­ness does make it hard to state what we col­lec­tive­ly believe, as one can belong to a meet­ing while hold­ing spir­i­tu­al beliefs uncon­nect­ed to any his­tor­i­cal Quak­er beliefs. I think that’s why we rely so much on con­ver­sa­tions, like the ones we have on blogs and Reddit.

I recent­ly got into a bit of a Face­book ruf­fle over a region­al Quak­er body that put an AI chat­bot on its web­site (and then post­ed an arti­cle full of glar­ing fac­tu­al inac­cu­ra­cies, since delet­ed). It seems to me that AI cir­cum­vents the need to have per­son­al dis­cus­sions. I’d like to encour­age more Friends, and new Friends, and Quaker-curious seek­ers to talk and debate and syn­the­size and then talk, debate, and syn­the­size again. No one’s going to set­tle the answers. The belong-behave-belief mod­el only works if we keep active­ly ques­tion­ing one another.

Update: On Face­book, Melin­da Wen­ner Bradley says that she’s been shar­ing this Belong-Behave-Believe “great rever­sal” in out­reach work­shops and pre­sen­ta­tions and that the idea comes from Diana But­ler Bass’s Chris­tian­i­ty After Reli­gion (here’s a 2012 video of her pre­sent­ing on the book).

Quaker reflections on simplicity

June 30, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Eileen Kinch:

As fol­low­ers of Christ, we have been com­mand­ed to seek first the King­dom of God. Sim­plic­i­ty is set­ting aside any­thing that gets in the way of seek­ing the King­dom. The Book of Dis­ci­pline of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing states: ‘The call … is to aban­don those things that clut­ter [our lives] and to press toward the goal unham­pered. This is true simplicity.’

Five things Friday roundup: Quaker reflections on simplicity | Anabaptist World
Five things Fri­day roundup: Quak­er reflec­tions on sim­plic­i­ty | Anabap­tist World 

Men­non­ites and Friends (Quak­ers) are dif­fer­ent groups with dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al and the­o­log­i­cal his­to­ries. Yet these groups have some…

Anabaptist World Anabap­tist World 

As the pho­to cred­it states, this was one of my pic­tures – way back from the 2009 Con­ser­v­a­tive Gath­er­ing at the Lam­peter Meet­ing­house near Lan­cast­er, Pa.

Functional theology

May 26, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Johan’s book group is read­ing an old lec­ture by Jones, The Nature and Func­tions of the Light in the Thought of George Fox and he reflects on the approach:

Can­by exem­pli­fies a typ­i­cal Quak­er approach to the­ol­o­gy: it’s often func­tion­al. He does­n’t spend time defin­ing “light,” he finds the dis­tinc­tion between “nat­ur­al light” and the Light of Christ unhelp­ful; he does­n’t cling to or gen­er­ate doc­trines. Instead, he describes how the Light of Christ actu­al­ly seems to work in our lives.

Source

I appre­ci­ate Johan’s dis­tinc­tion of func­tion­al the­ol­o­gy here. Every so often my wife will ask me what I think about some spe­cif­ic point of doc­trine, say the nature of Christ. As a Catholic, ana­lyt­i­cal thinker, and reli­gion nerd, this is the kind of thing she nat­u­ral­ly pon­ders, but I rarely give her a very sat­is­fac­to­ry response. I often know the “right” answer accord­ing to tra­di­tion­al ortho­dox Chris­t­ian creeds and I’m always curi­ous what oth­ers make of ques­tions like these, but what I myself believe is shaped and large­ly bound­ed by my own expe­ri­ences of Christ work­ing in my life. I’m adding Jones’s arti­cle to my read­ing list.

The Friendly Mennonite

May 8, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Nathan Per­rin: “When my Quak­er friends heard I was going to Chicagoland to min­is­ter at Lom­bard (Illi­nois) Men­non­ite Church, they asked sev­er­al ques­tions. One ques­tion that they asked was whether or not I renounced Quak­erism by tak­ing this call­ing. The brief, less com­plex answer is: No.”

The friendly Mennonite | Mennonite Church USA
The friend­ly Men­non­ite | Men­non­ite Church USA 

This blog post is part of the “I choose to be Men­non­ite because …” series. See the call…

Mennonite Church USA Men­non­ite Church USA 

Testimonies and scandals

May 5, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Bri­an Dray­ton: “An essen­tial fact to med­i­tate upon is that regard­less of what we say, the way we act, the way we are, is “our tes­ti­mo­ny to the whole world.” In that con­nec­tion, what are we show­ing, and what can we show, about what we believe about the foun­da­tions of our activities?”

Testimony and scandal
Tes­ti­mo­ny and scandal 

Dear Friend: The con­cern under which I write leads me to con­sid­er two words, tes­ti­mo­ny and scan­dal, and…

Amor vincat Amor vincat