religious movements Posts

Robin wrote a little about the New Monastic movement in a plug for the Pendle Hill workshop I'm doing with Wess Daniels this Fall.

Here's my working theory: I think Liberal Friends have a good claim to inventing the "new monastic" movement thirty years ago in the form of Movement for a New Society, a network of peace and anti-nuclear activists based in Philadelphia that codified a kind of "secular Quaker" decision-making process and trained thousands of people from around the world in a kind of engaged drop-out lifestyle that featured low-cost communal living arrangements in poor neighborhoods with part-time jobs that gave them flexibility to work as full-time community activists. There are few activist campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s that weren't touched by the MNS style and a less-ideological, more lived-in MNS culture survives today in borderline neighborhoods in Philadelphia and other cities. The high-profile new monastics rarely seem to give any props to Quakers or MNS, but I'd be willing to bet if you sat in on any of their meetings the process would be much more inspired by MNS than Robert's Rules of Order or any fifteen century monastic rule that might be cited.

For a decade I lived in West Philly in what I called "the ruins of the Movement for a New Society." The formal structure of MNS had disbanded but many of its institutions carried on in a kind of lived-in way. I worked at the remaining publishing house, New Society Publishers, lived in a land-trusted West Philly coop house, and was fed from the old neighborhood food coop and occasionally dropped in or helped out with Training for Change, a revived training center started by MNS-co-founder (and Central Philadelphia Meeting-member) George Lakey It was a tight neighborhood, with strong cross-connections, and it was able to absorb related movements with different styles (e.g., a strong anarchist scene that grew in the late 1980s). I don't think it's coincidence that some of the Philly emergent church projects started in West Philly and is strong in the neighborhoods that have become the new ersatz West Philly as the actual neighborhood has gentrified.

So some questions I'll be wrestling with over the next six months and will bring to Pendle Hill:

• Why haven't more of us in the Religious Society of Friends adopted this engaged lifestyle?
• Why haven't we been good at articulating it all this time?
• Why did the formal structure of the Quaker-ish "new monasticism" not survive the 1980s?
• Why don't we have any younger leaders of the Quaker monasticism? Why do we need others to remind us of our own recent tradition?
• In what ways are some Friends (and some fellow travelers) still living out the "Old New Monastic" experience, just without the hype and without the buzz?

It's entirely possible that the "new monasticism" isn't sustainable. At the very least Friends' experiences with it should be studied to see what happened. Is West Philly what the new monasticism looks like thirty years later? The biggest differences between now and the heyday of the Movement for a New Society is 1) the Internet's ability to organize and stay in touch in completely different ways; and 2) the power of the major Evangelical publishing houses that are hyping the new kids.

I'll be looking at myself as well. After ten years, I felt I needed a change. I'm now in the "real world"--semi suburban freestanding house, nuclear family. The old new West Philly monasticism, like the "new monasticism" seems optimized for hip twenty-something suburban kids who romanticized the gritty city. People of other demographics often fit in, but still it was never very scalable and for many not very sustainable. How do we bring these concerns out to a world where there are suburbs, families, etc?

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• Wess on two (Possible) Roles of Religion In A Global World
  The abstractions within modern globalized religious movements.
  (tags: comment)
• Help wanted. « The Quaker Agitator
  The Quaker Agitator is looking for help writing a small grant. Any Ranter readers able to lend a hand?
  (tags: comment)
• Paul L thinks Orwell's got us pegged
  "Socialism" draws with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England."
  (tags: quaker quaker.liberal comment)
• LizOpp on the different kinds of pride
  That said, there is a quiet pride that lends itself to being low, and then there is another sort of pride that lends itself to being high, to pushing God out of our lives because we mistakenly take up the belief that there is no more room.
  (tags: quaker quaker.ministry)

Robin M posts this week about two Convergent Events happening in California in the next month or two. And she also tries out a simplified definition of Convergent Friends:

people who are engaged in the renewal movement within the Religious Society of Friends, across all the branches of Friends.

It sounds good but what does it mean? Specifically: who isn't for renewal, at least on a theoretical level? There are lots of faithful, smart and loving Friends out there advocating renewal who don't fit my definition of Convergent (which is fine, I don't think the whole RSoF should be Convergent, it's a movement in the river, not a dam).

When Robin coined the term at the start of 2006 it seemed to refer to general trends in the Religious Society of Friends and the larger Christian world, but it was also referring to a specific (online) community that had had a year or two of conversation to shape itself and model trust and accountability. Most importantly we each were going out of our way to engage with Friends from other Quaker traditions and were each called on our own cultural assumptions.

The coined term implied an experience of sort. "Convergent" explicitly references Conservative Friends ("Con-") and the Emergent Church movement ("-vergent"). It seems to me like one needs to look at those two phenomenon and their relation to one's own understanding and experience of Quaker life and community before really understanding what all the fuss has been about. That's happening lots of places and it is not simply a blog phenomenon.

Nowadays I'm noticing a lot of Friends declaring themselves Convergent after reading a blog post or two or attending a workshop. It's becoming the term du jour for Friends who want to differentiate themselves from business-as-usual, Quakerism-as-usual. This fits Robin's simplified definition. But if that's all it is and it becomes all-inclusive for inclusivity's sake, then "Convergent" will drift away away from the roots of the conversation that spawned it and turn into another buzzword for "liberal Quaker." This is starting to happen.

The term "Convergent Friends" is being picked up by Friends outside the dozen or two blogs that spawned it and moving into the wild--that's great, but also means it's definition is becoming a moving target. People are grabbing onto it to sum up their dreams, visions and frustrations but we're almost certainly not meaning the same thing by it. "Convergent Friends" implies that we've all arrived somewhere together. I've often wondered whether we shouldn't be talking about "Converging Friends," a term that implies a parallel set of movements and puts the rather important elephant square on the table: converging toward what? What we mean by convergence depends on our starting point. My attempt at a label was the rather clunky conservative-leaning liberal Friend, which is probably what most of us in the liberal Quaker tradition are meaning by "Convergent."

I started mapping out a liberal plan for Convergent Friends a couple of years before the term was coined and it still summarizes many of my hopes and concerns. The only thing I might add now is a paragraph about how we'll have to work both inside and outside of normal Quaker channels to effect this change (Johan Maurer recently wrote an interesting post that included the wonderful description of "the lovely subversives who ignore structures and communicate on a purely personal basis between the camps via blogs, visitation, and other means" and compared us to SCUBA divers ("ScubaQuake.org" anyone?).

Robin's inclusive definition of "renewal" definitely speaks to something. Informal renewal networks are springing up all over North America. Many branches of Friends are involved. There are themes I'm seeing in lots of these places: a strong youth or next-generation focus; a reliance on the internet; a curiosity about "other" Friends traditions; a desire to get back to roots in the simple ministry of Jesus. Whatever label or labels this new revival might take on is less important than the Spirit behind it.

But is every hope for renewal "Convergent"? I don't think so. At the end of the day the path for us is narrow and is given, not chosen. At the end of day--and beginning and middle--the work is to follow the Holy Spirit's guidance in "real time." Definitions and carefully selected words slough away as mere notions. The newest message is just the oldest message repackaged. Let's not get too caught up in our own hip verbage, lecture invitations and glorious attention that we forget that there there is one, even Christ Jesus who can speak to our condition, that He Himself has come to teach, and that our message is to share the good news he's given us. The Tempter is ready to distract us, to puff us up so we think we are the message, that we own the message, or that the message depends on our flowery words delivered from podiums. We must stay on guard, humbled, low and praying to be kept from the temptations that surround even the most well-meaning renewal attempts. It is our faithfulness to the free gospel ministry that will ultimately determine the fate of our work.

On Saturday, November 26, 2005 four members of Christian peacemakers Teams were abducted in iraq. On March 20th the body of American Quaker Tom Fox was found; on March 23rd, the remaining three hostages were freed by U.S. and British military forces.

Here at Nonviolence.org, we have always been impressed and highly supportive of the deep witness of the Christian peacemakers Teams. Their members have represented the best in both the peace and Christian movements, consistently putting themselves in danger to witness the gospel of peace. Not content to write letters or stand on pickett lines in safe western capitals, they go to the frontlines of violence and proclaim a radical alternative.

While we can be grateful for the release of the three remaining hostages, we should continue to remember the 43 foreign hostages still being held in iraq and the 10-30 iraqis reportedly taken hostage each and every day. As iraq slips into full-scale civil war we must also organize against the war-mongerers, both foreign and internal and finde ways of standing alongside those iraqis who want nothing more than peace and freedom.

Here's links to recent articles on the situation.

Memorials to Tom Fox

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Resources

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And a personal note from Nonviolence.org's Martin Kelley: I myself am a Christian and Quaker and one of our folks, Tom Fox, of Langley Hill (Virginia) Friends Meeting is among the hostages. I don't know Tom personally but over the last few days I've learned we have many Friends in common and they have all testified to his deep committment to peace. Some of the links above are more explicitly Quaker than most things I post to Nonviolence.org, but they give perspective on why Tom and his companions would see putting themselves in danger as an act of religious service. I am grateful for Tom's current witness in iraq--yes, even as a hostage--but I certainly hope he soon comes back to his family and community and that the attention and witness of these four men's ordeal helps to bring the news of peace to streets and halls of Baghdad, Washington, London and Ottawa.

Action Step:
If you have a blog or website, you can add a feed of that will include the latest Nonviolence.org-compiled links. Simply add this javascript to the sidebar of your site:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://app.feeddigest.com/digest3/QYXDYFQVGJ.js"><noscript><a href="http://app.feeddigest.com/digest3/QYXDYFQVGJ.html">Click for &quot;Christian peacemaker Watch&quot;.</a> By <a href="http://www.feeddigest.com/">Feed Digest</a></noscript></script>

(An earlier problem with the javascript not working properly has been repaired).

Quaker Storytelling as Religious Ed: how do you teach a religion that can't be defined?

Howard Brinton's Quaker Journals: Varieties of Religious Experience Among Friends

This past week I've been wondering whether the best description of my spiritual state is a "conservative liberal Quaker," i.e., someone in the "liberal" branch of Friends who holds "conservative" values (I mean these terms in their theological sense, as descriptive terms that refer to well-defined historical movements). Is there a small-scale "conservative liberal" movement starting up?

I think it's fair to say that internet search engines have changed how many of us explore social and religious movements. There is now easy access to information on wonderfully quirky subjects. Let the Superbowl viewers have their overproduced commercials and calculated controversy: the net generation doesn't need them. TV viewership among young adults is dropping rapidly. People with websites and blogs are sharing their stories and the search engines are finding them. Here is a taste of the search phrases people are using to find Martin Kelley Quaker Ranter.