Tag Archives ⇒ support

UK Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

British Friends become first church in UK to pull invest­ments in com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from the occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine. From record­ing clerk Paul Parker:

As Quak­ers, we seek to live out our faith through every­day actions, includ­ing the choic­es we make about where to put our mon­ey. We believe strong­ly in the pow­er of legit­i­mate, non­vi­o­lent, demo­c­ra­t­ic tools such as moral­ly respon­si­ble invest­ment to realise pos­i­tive change in the world. We want to make sure our mon­ey and ener­gies are instead put into places which sup­port our com­mit­ments to peace, equal­i­ty and justice. 

As you’d might expect, there’s been back­lash. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has con­demned Britain Year­ly Meet­ing’s deci­sion as a “biased and petu­lant act.”.


Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine

Quak­ers will not prof­it from the occu­pa­tion of Palestine 

Quak­ers in Britain has today become the first church in the UK to announce it will not invest…

Quakers Quakers 

Kindertransport survivors call for routes to sanctuary for child refugees

November 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

At an 80th anniver­sary of the UK kinder­trans­port pro­gram (which we read about a few days ago), sur­vivors and Friends call for wider sup­port for today’s refugees and asy­lum seekers:

Helen Drew­ery, Head of Wit­ness and Wor­ship for Quak­ers in Britain, wel­com­ing all to Friends House, said, “We are pleased to be host­ing an event which hon­ours all those – includ­ing Quak­ers who put the Kinder­trans­port into effect. Their endeav­ours are being echoed today by near­ly 100 Quak­er meet­ings across Britain which have iden­ti­fied them­selves as Sanc­tu­ary Meet­ings and are sup­port­ing peo­ple who have fled from dan­ger in their home coun­tries. We are glad that these Meet­ings and the peo­ple they are sup­port­ing are rep­re­sent­ed at today’s event. We join them in press­ing for more safe passages.” 

http://​www​.ekkle​sia​.co​.uk/​n​o​d​e​/​2​7​200

Is this what people want?

August 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Don McCormick is back with this week’s Friends Jour­nal fea­ture. His Feb­ru­ary arti­cle, “Can Quak­erism Sur­vive,” sparked all sorts of con­ver­sa­tions and is now at 110 com­ments. Now he’s back with spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tions for Quak­er growth, inspired by megachurch church growth research and models.

When I read this, I asked myself if we Quak­ers are pro­vid­ing the equiv­a­lent of this type of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance. Do new­com­ers and oth­ers see us as meet­ing their spir­i­tu­al needs? If they do, do they see this right away, or does it take a while? To answer these ques­tions, I had to learn more about the “clear path­way” that the Reveal lit­er­a­ture described. Although Quak­erism has great wis­dom in the area of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance, at first it seemed that it was incon­sis­tent with the spir­i­tu­al guid­ance described in the survey.

When I’ve taught Quak­erism 101 class­es, I’ve try to explain the branch­es of Friends — and the schisms — not just as the­o­log­i­cal or cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non but as problem-solving pref­er­ences. What tools do we reach for in cri­sis? Do we go inward and recom­mit our­selves to dis­tinc­tive prac­tices that we’ve been slack­ing off on? Do we start read­ing groups and spir­i­tu­al friend­ship pro­grams to train each mem­ber to car­ry the work? Do we blame our Quak­er odd­i­ties and start using the lan­guage and litur­gi­cal mod­els of the more suc­cess­ful church­es near us? Do we set up com­mit­tees and pro­duce cur­ric­u­la to sup­port local efforts? Do we look to experts and craft nation­wide pro­grams and hire staff and prob­lem solve? I’m not sure these tools need to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, but in prac­tice I see most Quak­er bod­ies tend to reach for only one or two of these tools. And of course, the tools we chose large­ly deter­mine both the prob­lems we solve and the unin­tend­ed ones we create.


What People Really Want from Church and Quaker Meeting

What Peo­ple Real­ly Want from Church and Quak­er Meeting 

Look­ing at suc­cess­ful church growth mod­els for ideas to grow our fellowship.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Money and the things we really value

July 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I think I’ve already shared that Friends Jour­nal is doing an issue on “Meet­ings and Mon­ey” in the fall. While I’ve heard from some poten­tial authors that they’re writ­ing some­thing, we haven’t actu­al­ly got­ten any­thing in-hand yet. We’re extend­ing the dead­line to Fri­day, 7/20. This is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to write for FJ.

How we spend mon­ey is often a telling indi­ca­tor of what val­ues we real­ly val­ue. Mon­ey is not just a mat­ter of finan­cial state­ments and invest­ment strate­gies. It’s chil­dren pro­gram. It’s local soup kitchens. It’s the town peace fair. It’s the acces­si­ble bath­room or hear­ing aid sys­tem. And how we dis­cuss and dis­cern and fight over mon­ey is often a test of our com­mit­ment to Quak­er values.

Here’s some of the spe­cif­ic issues we’ve brain­stormed for the issue.

Where does our mon­ey come from? A lot of Quak­er wealth is locked up in endow­ments start­ed by “dead Quak­er mon­ey” — wealth bequeathed by Quak­ers of cen­turies past.

Much of our Amer­i­can Quak­er for­tunes trace back to a large land grant giv­en in pay­ment for war debt. For the first cen­tu­ry or so, this wealth was aug­ment­ed by slave labor. Lat­er Quak­er enter­pris­es were aug­ment­ed by cap­i­tal from these ini­tial wealth sources.

In times past, there were well-known Quak­er fam­i­ly busi­ness­es and wealthy Quak­er indus­tri­al­ists. But Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism has changed: fam­i­lies rarely own medium- or large-scale busi­ness­es; they own stocks in firms run by a pro­fes­sion­al man­agers. If the abil­i­ty to run busi­ness­es based on Quak­er val­ues is over, is share­hold­er activism our clos­est analogue?

Many Friends now work in ser­vice fields. Fam­i­ly life has also changed, and the (large­ly female) free labor of one-income house­holds is no longer avail­able to sup­port Quak­er endeav­ors as read­i­ly. How have all of these changes affect­ed the finances of our denom­i­na­tion and the abil­i­ty to live out our val­ues in the workplace?

How do we sup­port our mem­bers? A per­son­al anec­dote: some years ago I unex­pect­ed­ly lost my job. It was touch and go for awhile whether we’d be able to keep up with mort­gage pay­ments; los­ing our house was a real pos­si­bil­i­ty. Mem­bers of a near­by non-Quaker church heard that there was a fam­i­ly in need and a few days lat­er a stranger showed up on our back porch with a dozen bags of gro­ceries and new win­ter coats for each of us. When my Friends meet­ing heard, I was told there was a com­mit­tee that I could apply to that would con­sid­er whether it might help.

Where does the mon­ey go? A activist Friend of mine use to point to the nice fur­nish­ings in our meet­ing­house and chuck­le about how many good things we could fund in the com­mu­ni­ty if we sold some of it off. Has your meet­ing liq­ui­dat­ed any of its prop­er­ty for com­mu­ni­ty service?

When we do find our­selves with extra funds from a bequest or wind­fall, where do we spend it? How do we bal­ance our needs (such as meet­ing­house ren­o­va­tions, schol­ar­ships for Quak­er stu­dents), and when and how do we give it to oth­ers in our community?

What can we let go of? There are a lot of meet­ing­hous­es in more rur­al areas that are most­ly emp­ty these days, even on First Day. Could we ever decide we don’t need all of these spaces? Could we con­sol­i­date? Or could we go fur­ther and sell our prop­er­ties and start meet­ing at a rent­ed space like a fire­hall or library once a week?

Who gets the meet­ing­house after a break-up? In the last few years we’ve seen three major year­ly meet­ings split apart, prompt­ing a whole mess of finan­cial dis­en­tan­gle­ment. What hap­pens to the prop­er­ties and sum­mer camps and endow­ments when this hap­pens? How fierce­ly are we will­ing to fight fel­low Friends over money?

What con­ver­sa­tions aren’t we hav­ing? Where do we invest our cor­po­rate sav­ings? Who decides how we spend mon­ey in our meetings?

Please feel free to share this with any Friend who might have inter­est­ing obser­va­tions about Friends’ atti­tudes toward finances!


Writing Opp: Meetings and Money (due 7/9)

Writ­ing Opp: Meet­ings and Mon­ey (due 7/9)

How do we spend mon­ey on our­selves? What is the role of mon­ey in our meet­ings? How do…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Ask Me Anything: How easy is it to become a Quaker?

April 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I have an Ask Me Any­thing request from read­er Ruby M:

Hel­lo! I’m study­ing The Friends Church for aca­d­e­m­ic pur­pos­es and I’d love to hear from some­one with first­hand expe­ri­ence. How easy is it to become a quak­er? Do you ever feel peo­ple treat you dif­fer­ent­ly because you’re a quak­er? Do you think there should be more rep­re­sen­ta­tion of quak­ers in the media? Thank you so much for your time. I’m very eager to hear back from you!

Since my expe­ri­ence is just one data point, I hope oth­ers will use the com­ment sec­tion below to add their stories.

I found becom­ing a Quak­er to be some­thing of a spi­ral process. I first walked into a Friends meet­ing­house at the age of 20 and only slow­ly took on an iden­ti­ty as a Friend. At each step of the process, I learned more clear­ly what that might mean and have strived to grow into deep­er faith­ful­ness. I didn’t for­mal­ly apply for mem­ber­ship until a decade or so after I became a reg­u­lar atten­der. This time lag is not unheard of but I don’t think it’s usu­al. It’s more of an insight into my own care­ful­ness and ret­i­cence about join­ing things than it is an indi­ca­tion of any­thing the meet­ings I attend­ed required. When I did final­ly apply for mem­ber­ship I was quite qual­i­fied and want­ed the clear­ness process to be exact­ing: again, this is an insight into my psyche!

Most peo­ple on the street don’t quite know what Quak­ers are so I can’t say I’m always treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. I guess see­ing more Quak­ers in the media would be help­ful, though giv­en our over­all small num­bers I sus­pect even our fleet­ing appear­ances in TV shows and movies are more than we might pro­por­tion­al­ly expect.

I’m inter­est­ed to hear how oth­er Friends would answer Ruby’s question.

 

Update: reader answers by email and commentary

Jes­si­ca F: I’ve want­ed to be a Quak­er since I learned about the Abo­li­tion­ists who helped with the Under­ground Rail­road and prison reform. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the movie Gen­tle Per­sua­sion pre­sent­ed Quak­ers as being against music so I became a Uni­tar­i­an instead. Even­tu­al­ly I learned that wasn’t true for many Quak­ers and I found that all of the val­ues I had devel­oped through the years were also Quak­er val­ues and so becom­ing a Quak­er gave me a sup­port sys­tem and a com­mu­ni­ty of like minds.

None of us is a volunteer

April 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sam Barnett-Cormack is a pro­lif­ic non-theist British Friend. His lat­est post, Doing It Our­selves, has some thoughts on com­mu­ni­ty dis­cern­ment that I find interesting.

Quak­erism “done right” is not “do it your­self” in either sense… No task is done by one per­son alone; it is always the work and respon­si­bil­i­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty, though we might not always clear­ly see the sup­port and assis­tance we are giv­en. Some would say that we are “upheld in prayer,” a term that does not speak to my expe­ri­ence, but we are cer­tain­ly upheld by the love and nur­ture of our com­mu­ni­ty – unless our com­mu­ni­ty is failing.

A chatty email newsletter

March 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over the years I’ve noticed var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­downs among Friends that have made me wor­ried. It’s often some­thing rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle. For exam­ple, I might be talk­ing to an active Philadel­phia Friend and be star­tled to real­ize they have no idea that a major year­ly meet­ing across the coun­try is break­ing apart. Or some­one will send me an arti­cle bemoan­ing the lack of some­thing that I know already exists.

I’m in this fun­ny posi­tion where I have a quar­ter cen­tu­ry of ran­dom Quak­er fac­toids in my head, have access to great data­bas­es (like instant search­es of Friends Jour­nal’s 60+ years of arti­cles), and have good Googling chops. When I’m in a dis­cus­sion with Friends face-to-face, I find I often have use­ful con­text. Some of it is his­tor­i­cal (I geek out on the Quak­er past) but some of it is just my lived mem­o­ry. I’ve been in and out of Quak­er offices for 27 years now. I’m enter­ing this weird phase of life in which I’ve been a pro­fes­sion­al Quak­er staffer longer than most of my contemporaries.

And ever since I was a kid, I’ve had this weird tal­ent to remem­ber things I read years ear­li­er. When the top­ic of clear­ness com­mit­tees recent­ly came up, I remem­bered that Deb­o­rah Haines had writ­ten a piece about Rachel Davis DuBois in the long-defunct FGCon­nec­tions newslet­ter (yes, groan­er of a name but it was a great pub­li­ca­tion in its hey­day). Thanks to Archive​.org I could resur­face the arti­cle and bring it to the discussions.

And so, I’ve been qui­et­ly been chang­ing the idea of Quak­er Ranter from a clas­sic old-school blog to a dai­ly email newslet­ter. I’ll still col­lect inter­est­ing Quak­er links, as I’ve been doing for years with Quak­erQuak­er. But now I’ll anno­tate them and give them con­text. If there’s a side sto­ry I think is inter­est­ing I’ll tell it. I have a long train com­mute and writ­ing fun and geeky things about Friends makes it interesting.

I think that some­thing like this could help bring Quak­er new­com­ers up to speed. Our insid­er lan­guage and unex­plained (and some­times dat­ed) world­views cre­ate an imped­i­ment for seek­ers. We kind of expect they’ll fig­ure out things that aren’t so obvi­ous. Learn­ing fac­toids and his­to­ries a day at a time can give them some con­text to under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing Sun­day morn­ing. If that’s not enough, I also have an Ask A Quak­er fea­ture where peo­ple new to Friends can ask ques­tions. I’ll be lib­er­al­ly pitch­ing Friends Jour­nal arti­cles and Quak­er­S­peak videos because I think we’re doing some of our best Quak­er media work, but I’m also all about spread­ing the love and will share many oth­er great resources and blogs.

As with all my projects I also hope to get peo­ple con­tribut­ing so it becomes a com­mu­ni­ty water­ing hole. If you want to get involved, the first step is to sign up for the free dai­ly email list. At some point, this will prob­a­bly out­grow the free tier of the email ser­vice I’m using, and I will start to have to pay to send the­see emails out. For those of you with a lit­tle extra to give, Quak­er Ranter Mem­ber­ship is a way to help off­set these costs.

And let your friends know about it! Just send them to quak​er​ran​ter​.org/​e​m​ail to sign up.

Chatting with Greg Woods

December 1, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day I had a nice video chat with my friend Greg Woods, whose arti­cle, Orga­niz­ing Young Adult Friends Online, appeared in Novem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal. Greg and I have been hav­ing vari­a­tions on this con­ver­sa­tion for years. Back in 2011, we worked togeth­er along­side Stephen Dot­son to put togeth­er a now-dated Young Adult Friends web­site (watch us eat in double-time in its pro­mo­tion­al video!). I believe it was the fourth YAF orga­niz­ing web­site I had built since the mid-90s. Greg is now putting togeth­er a net­work of Quak­er cam­pus min­istries. It’s one of those obvi­ous needs that I hope Friends will support.