Tag Archives ⇒ story

How a Small Group of Quaker Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

July 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

One thing I love about the Friends move­ment is its abil­i­ty to live with­in the ten­sions of a being both a deeply spir­i­tu­al ascetic prac­tice and a strate­gi­cal­ly focused world-changing social action toolk­it. Some­times the two come togeth­er in won­der­ful ways. Quak­er­S­peak has a mini-documentary about the Earth Quak­er Action Team’s cam­paign to stop PNC Bank from financ­ing moun­tain­top removal mining:

George Lakey: So any way you look at it, this is an offense against the plan­et. It’s an offense against peo­ple. It’s where eco­nom­ic jus­tice and cli­mate jus­tice coin­cide. Let’s tack­le it.

Ingrid Lakey: This bank that had Quak­er roots, this bank that called itself the green­est bank in the busi­ness was in fact blow­ing up moun­tains to get coal which is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. So we thought, “that’s not cool! We can’t let that slide.” Call­ing on our own belief in our integri­ty, we decid­ed to call them out on it.

I myself could watch a whole video of George Lakey just laugh­ing. I’ve attend­ed a few EQAT actions over the years and wrote a per­son­al sto­ry about my par­tic­i­pa­tion in a pub­lic fast in 2013.

How a Small Group of Quak­er Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

Skeletons (not even) in the closet

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is a bit a gru­some sto­ry, though not as shock­ing at it should be. Louellen White, a researcher look­ing for bur­ial records of Native Amer­i­can chil­dren stum­bled on a Native Amer­i­can skull just sit­ting in a dis­play case of a old Philadel­phia meeting.

As White searched for grave­yard ledgers in the library — crammed with stuffed birds, cloth­ing, shells and books — she came upon the skull. Her legs wob­bled. And her stom­ach dropped. Arsenault-Cote offered advice and reas­sur­ance. “You’re out there look­ing for them, and now they’re show­ing them­selves to you,” she told White. “He’s been wait­ing a long time.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, Philadel­phia Quak­ers were “incon­sis­tent friends” to Indi­ans, engaged in the same col­o­niz­ing projects as oth­er faiths while see­ing them­selves as unique­ly able to edu­cate natives.

Incon­sis­tent is an apt word. Paula Palmer has been trac­ing the his­to­ry of Quak­er Indi­an Board­ing Schools: high-minded enter­pris­es that often for­ca­bly stripped her­itage from their pupils in ways that were as cul­tur­al­ly impe­r­i­al as they were unaware.

Byber­ry Meet­ing dates to the 1690s and the meet­ing­house grounds are full of abo­li­tion­ist his­to­ry. The skull was appar­ent­ly dug up in the mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry as part of a near­by canal project and is thought to have come to the meet­ing­house as part of a col­lec­tion from a shut­tered his­tor­i­cal soci­ety. Its pres­ence on the shelf rep­re­sents the atti­tudes of Friends many decades ago who thought noth­ing of plac­ing a Lenape skull in a case. There’s also the sad sub­text that the meet­ing library is said to be so unused that most of the meet­ing’s con­tem­po­rary mem­bers had no idea it was there. It’s a shame that it took an out­side researcher to notice the skele­tons in our dis­play case.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​4​8​3​0​7​2​5​7​1​.​h​tml

Quaker Abolitionist Benjamin Lay Remembered

May 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing has pub­lished a piece on the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of dis­owned sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er rab­bler­ouser Ben­jamin Lay

On Sat­ur­day, April 21, 2018, Abing­ton Month­ly Meet­ing unveiled a bur­ial stone for Sarah & Ben­jamin Lay. The event which fea­tured open­ing remarks by author Mar­cus Redik­er and local res­i­dent and Quak­er Avis Wan­da McClin­ton was fol­lowed by a gath­er­ing in the meet­ing­house in the man­ner of a Friends Memo­r­i­al Meeting.

Abing­ton was the first Friends meet­ing I ever vis­it­ed and I’ve loved the sto­ry of Lay since the time I first stum­bled on it (even as a kid I was enough of a local his­to­ry nerd that I might have read of Lay’s antics before I ever met a Quak­er). I’m per­son­al­ly so hap­py to see him get this wider recog­ni­tion. The PYM piece is all-text but much of the grave mark­er cer­e­mo­ny has been post­ed to YouTube.

Developing a healing ministry

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’ve enjoyed John Jere­mi­ah Edminster’s com­ments over the years, which is one rea­son I was hap­pen to get the sub­mis­sion that became The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift. It starts with the sto­ry of hav­ing a gift of min­istry rec­og­nized but what I like even more is that he talks about his jour­ney explor­ing and devel­op­ing it. What’s sur­pris­ing is that is he’s far from a purist:

we went to week­end train­ing work­shops; we read the writ­ings of Chris­t­ian heal­ers; shaman­ic heal­ers; and prac­ti­tion­ers of Rei­ki, tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine, Ayurve­da, and home­opa­thy. I longed to be able to inspect people’s ether­ic and astral bod­ies, their chakras and mar­mas, with a diagnostician’s eye. So long as it involved no stray­ing from Christ, I aspired to know how to mobi­lize heal­ing virtues in plant spir­its, min­er­als, col­ors, and sounds, and how to rec­og­nize “holy” places.

Some of this reminds me of the won­der­ful work of the eighteen-century Friend Samuel Bow­nas, whose book A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Nec­es­sary to a Gospel Min­is­ter is full of very use­ful advice on min­istry and warn­ings about pit­falls — roman­tic attach­ments, undue politicization.


The Cost of a Healing Gift - Friends Journal

The Cost of a Heal­ing Gift — Friends Journal 

The dis­cov­ery of a gift for heal­ing is only the first step in a process of learn­ing and…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Painting for Worship

March 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I did­n’t know of Adri­an Mar­tinez before I was intro­duced to him in this Quak­er­S­peak video. He seems like quite a char­ac­ter (“art attack!”) but I’m intrigued at how his paint­ings have brought pri­mal Quak­er val­ues into unex­pect­ed spaces like the White House (not the occu­pant you might guess!) and cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. His sto­ry of a very specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er pic­ture being bought for a board­room hints at mes­sages Friends might still have for the world:

The paint­ing I did, Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I just knew was not some­thing that was going to get sold. It was not an eco­nom­ic deci­sion. It was a neces­si­ty to do, nonethe­less. When I did it, I had this big show and it was imme­di­ate­ly pur­chased. First one. And it’s inter­est­ing: where it went went was the board­room of an insur­ance agency. The man that owned the com­pa­ny bought the paint­ing because he said, “The rea­son I need this paint­ing, and I need it in the board­room, is because we need more of that in our business.”

Paint­ing for Worship

Authentic anecdotes

March 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I have some­thing of fas­ci­na­tion with the phe­nom­e­non of urban myths and mis­at­trib­uted quo­ta­tions. In the Jan­u­ary Friends Jour­nal I used the open­ing col­umn to track down “Live sim­ply so that oth­ers may sim­ply live,” a phrase that recurred in many of the arti­cles in the issue (the theme was Quak­er Lifestyles). Among Quak­ers, one of the more oft-told tales involves a mad prophet and his fair-haired noble protege…

It was late April on the north­ern moors and the win­ter had been espe­cial­ly harsh. Flow­ers were just start­ing to peek out of the ground as the farm­ers looked test­ed whether the soil was soft enough yet to plow. The noble­man dis­mount­ed his horse and asked the ham­let’s black­smith for directions.

It has been a long jour­ney. His ruf­fled silk shirt was dirty and full of the smells of a dozens of overnight acco­mo­da­tions in pig barns and lean-tos of the Eng­lish Mid­lands. His most-prized pos­ses­sion was spot­less, how­ev­er: the sil­ver sword giv­en him by his father, the admi­ral, last year on his eigh­teenth birth­day. It layed sheathed in its hand-stiched sheath.

The black­smith point­ed the for­eign­er to the path that crossed the dark moors toward the hill­side of Judge Fel­l’s estate. The manor house was the de fac­to head­quar­ters of the new cult that was scan­dal­iz­ing the King­dom, the Chil­dren of the Light. A short ten minute walk and our trav­el­er was face-to-face with the man he had come so far to see.

A long tum­ble of rehersed speach­es came out of the young man’s mouth as George Fox war­i­ly sized him up. The young William Penn want­ed to join the move­ment. Fox knew it would be a coup for the Chil­dren of the Light. Pen­n’s father was one of the wealth­i­est men in Eng­land and the fam­i­ly mon­ey could buy pro­tec­tion, fame, and land in the new colonies.

But Penn was­n’t quite ready. He had that sword. It would be a grave dis­re­spect to his father to leave it or give it away. “Friend George, what can I do?” The wise Fox knew that Penn was led to join. With a lit­tle encour­age­ment, it was a mat­ter of time the new appren­tice adopt­ed their paci­fist prin­ci­ples. Fox cleared his throat and answered: “Wear thy sword as long as thee can, young William.” Before tears could well in each man’s eyes they turned their atten­tion to logis­tics of a preach­ing trip to Lon­don. On their way out a few days lat­er, Penn qui­et­ly slipped back into a black­smith shop and gave away his sword. By the time they left the York­shire, farm­ers were work­ing the spring soil with their new sil­ver plowshares.

It is a beau­ti­ful sto­ry (which I’ve made even more melo­dra­mat­ic, because why not). Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s also fake.

Both George Fox and William Penn left behind dozens of vol­umes of writ­ings and mem­oirs. Their friend­ship was one of the most sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships for each of them. Sure­ly such a foun­da­tion­al sto­ry would have made it to print. Paul Buck­ley tracked down the sto­ry in “Time To Lay Down William Penn’s Sword” in the Decem­ber 2003 Friends Jour­nal.

The sword sto­ry is fake but it is also some­how true. Buck­ley calls it a “authen­tic anec­dote.” Every year Friends Jour­nal gets otherwise-wonderful essays whose nar­ra­tive turns on the sto­ry of William Pen­n’s sword. We can’t run them with­out cor­rec­tion so it falls on me to tell authors that the scene nev­er took place. Occa­sion­al­ly I’m told it does­n’t mat­ter that it’s not true.

What is the deep­er myth inside our beloved tall tales? First: they depend on the celebri­ty sta­tus of their char­ac­ters. If I sub­sti­tut­ed more obscure ear­ly Friends in the sword sto­ry — George White­head ask­ing Solomon Eccles, say — I doubt it would be as com­pelling or get repeat­ed as often.

Fame is an odd draw for modern-day Friends. There’s a baker’s-dozen of famous-enough Friends upon which we graft these sorts of sto­ries — John Wool­man, Lucre­tia Mott, Elias Hicks, Joseph John Gur­ney and his sis­ter Eliz­a­beth Fry. Chang­ing celebri­ty Quak­er’ sto­ries began ear­ly: edi­tors chopped out the embar­ras­ing bits of recently-departed Friends’ jour­nals. Dreams would get snipped out. George Fox’s accounts of mirac­u­lous heal­ings dis­ap­pear with his first edi­tor, pre­sum­ably wor­ried they would sound too wild

It’s prob­a­bly no coin­ci­dence that the Penn/Fox sto­ry dates back to the moment when Amer­i­can Friends split. The denom­i­na­tion’s ori­gin sto­ry was frac­tur­ing. Paul Buck­ley thinks the sword sto­ry pre­fig­ured the tol­er­ance and for­bear­ance of the Hick­site Friends. Philadelphia-area Friends healed that par­tic­u­lar wound almost three-quarters of a cen­tu­ry ago. What does it say about us today that this tale is still so pop­u­lar? Relat­ed read­ing, I tracked down anoth­er authen­tic anec­dote in 2016, “Bring peo­ple to Christ / Leave them there.”