sex couple Posts

• Press story on how Quaker Mtg discovered & bought munitions detectors
  Today, three detectors - two bought by the Quakers for about $1,500 and a third donated as part of a deal with the manufacturer - are being used under U.N. auspices in Tajikistan. And Lenik, his fellow Quakers, and others are raising money to buy more.
  (tags: quaker quaker.witness)
• Robin M on Sojourners call to conversion
  If George Fox had lived in 1981, he might have written a sentence like that. I think this is where the RsoF at its best is headed again. We may or may not name the force ... “Christ.” We are nonetheless hearing the call to conversion.
  (tags: quaker quaker.vision quaker.convergent)
• Qr Street Jez looking at why we do outreach
  We are trying to help people know who and what we are, what we believe and where they might or might not fit in. In another sense, we have a sense that there are some answers here among our Quaker faith and it is important to share it.
  (tags: quaker quaker.outreach)
• New blog: Quaker Queeries, for dialog around sexual orientation issues
  Holding the tension that surrounds faith, religion, sexual orientation and sexual identity In The Light
  (tags: quaker quaker.blogs)
• Qr Funnel Tania on hidden sexual identities and integrity
  Because I am married to a man, the assumption is that I'm straight. This leads me to the awkward question: Am I violating our Testimony of Integrity by allowing people to believe something about me that isn't true?
  (tags: comment)
• Wanderer Gavin on Quaker dating
  I’ve been thinking, for a couple of years now, about a Young Adult Friends (YAF) workshop on Quaker romance. I was hoping this blog post might try to address some of the questions that come up for me about what it means to date as a Friend.
  (tags: quaker quaker.youth comment)
• Sheffield Craig on prophetic leadings and questionnaire Quakerism
  My understanding of discernment is that it is a process of seeking the will of God in a particular situation. Can this be done with a questionnaire?
  (tags: quaker quaker.clearness quaker.liberal comment)
• Brent Bill's leaked list of undesirable Pastoral Candidates
  Jesus: Has had popular times, but once his church grew to 5000 he managed to offend them all, and then this church dwindled down to twelve people. Seldom stays in one place very long. And, of course, he's single -- at his age, you have to wonder why.
  (tags: quaker.humor)
• QuakerRanter is NJ.com's Blog of the Day
  Martin Kelley is a Quaker who blogs about . . . being a Quaker. The South Jersey resident blogs at Quaker Ranter, his site on life in the religious movement that dates back to 17th century England.
  (tags: martin_kelley.feedback)

Go check out Mobtown Blues for a great post called All paths don't lead to the same mountain. that starts off about a talk by Brian McLaren, one of the emergent church's most prominent pastors, and goes on to talk about a recent Quaker outreach at a large East Coast liberal Friends meeting:

I was distressed to hear speaker after speaker extol Quakerism for what it is not: not oppressive, not judgemental, not elitism, not closed-minded, not fundamentalist, not doctrinaire... very few spoke of what makes the faith distinctive or spiritually powerful in its own right.

And then he delivers the punch line:

A couple of my friends, a same-sex couple who had expressed keen interest in exploring Quakerism were so appalled by the self-congratulatory smugness on display at that newcomers' breakfast, by the implicit condemnation of all of those other, "less evolved" faith traditions, that they never came back to the meeting.

He hits on so many true things here: that Quaker smugness, the claim we've transcended human biases, the negatively-stated identity.

Seekers try out a religious tradition because they think there might be some truth in its teachings. We do them a disservice when we meet them at the door with a watered-down gruel. And we do our meetings a disservice, as those seekers who have come looking for a positive Quakerism go elsewhere while the newcomers that do stay come because they liked the refugee religious attitude they were presented with.

The coincidence in all this is that last night Bill Samuel commented on the blog. Bill has been one of the most tireless Quaker outreach voices, most lately with Quakerinfo.com, but a few years ago he left Friends to worship at Cedar Ridge Community Church, an emergent church pastored by?.. Pastored by Brian McLaren. And he wrote that he knew other Friends who had left their meetings to join Cedar Ridge.

McLaren is good at articulating a positive vision of church, something Friends could once do too. I've visited one of Philadelphia's emergent churches a few times, though I'm not quite ready to join Bill as a "post-Quaker." Still, how many important once-Quakers and almost-Quakers have been lost with our fear of self-identity?

In this election, religious conservatives were able to craft a message making same-sex marriages look like an afront to apple pie and baseball and of course people voted against it. What if we could have somehow framed this election with the details of human suffering that these laws suggest?

Now available for the fashionable Bush-era bumper. Proceeds go to support the Nonviolence.org websites: