Tag Archives ⇒ talk

YouTube star Jessica Kellgren-Fozard on her Quakerism

July 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Jes­si­ca Kellgren-Fozard is a dis­abled TV pre­sen­ter with 266,000+ fol­low­ers on YouTube. She’s also a life­long Friend from the UK. She’s just released a video in which she talks about her under­stand­ing of Quak­erism. It’s pret­ty good. She occa­sion­al­ly implies that some specif­i­cal­ly British pro­ce­dur­al process is intrin­sic to all Quak­ers but oth­er than that it all rings true, cer­tain­ly to her expe­ri­ence as a UK Friend.

I must admit that the world of YouTube stars is for­eign to me. This is essen­tial­ly a web­cam vlog post but the light­ing and hair and cos­tum­ing is metic­u­lous. Her notes include affil­i­ate links for the dress she’s wear­ing ($89 and yes, they ship inter­na­tion­al­ly), a 8 1/2 minute video tuto­r­i­al about curl­ing you hair in her vin­tage style (it has over 33,000 views). If you fol­low her on Insta­gram and Twit­ter you’ll soon have enough details on  lip­stick and shoe choic­es to be able to ful­ly cos­play her.

But don’t laugh too much, because in between the self pre­sen­ta­tion tips, Kellgren-Fozard tack­les real­ly hard sub­jects – grow­ing up gay in school, liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties – in ways that are approach­able and inti­mate, fun­ny and instruc­tive. And with a quar­ter mil­lion YouTube fol­low­ers, she’s reach­ing peo­ple with a mes­sage of kind­ness and inclu­sion and under­stand­ing that feels pret­ty Quak­er­ly to me. Mar­garet Fell liked her­self a red dress some­times and it’s easy to argue George Fox would be a YouTu­ber today.

Bonus:  Jes­si­ca Kellgren-Fozard will host a live Q&A chat on her Quak­erism this com­ing Mon­day. If I’m cal­cu­lat­ing my time­zones cor­rect­ly, it’ll be noon here on the U.S. East Coast. I plan to tune in.

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

Whassup Quaker Internet?

April 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The August issue of Friends Jour­nal will look at “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” I wrote an Editor’s Desk post with some ideas of top­ics I’d love to see and some queries:

  • Do we have a vision of what kind of Quak­erism we’re invit­ing peo­ple into?
  • Does grow­ing neces­si­tate cast­ing off or re-embracing var­i­ous Quak­er practices?
  • Can we point to spe­cif­ic and repro­ducible tasks that meet­ings have done that have led to growth?
  • Are there mod­els from oth­er church­es or social change move­ments that we could learn from?
  • What are the dan­gers of over-focusing on growth?
  • Is there real­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty that Quak­erism could become a mass movement?
  • What would our Quak­er expe­ri­ences look like if our num­bers rose even ten-fold?

One thing that’s miss­ing there is the inter­net. Yet one of the most com­mon things peo­ple want to talk about when we talk about grow­ing Friends is the inter­net. I think we’ve got­ten to the point at which we can’t just pin our hopes for future vital­i­ty of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends on the inter­net. It’s not a build-it-and-they-will come phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly now that so much of the inter­net’s atten­tion mech­a­nisms are dom­i­nat­ed by billion-dollar companies.

I went into the Friends Jour­nal archives to get a lit­tle per­spec­tive on Friends’ evolv­ing rela­tion­ship with elec­tron­ic media. The word “inter­net” first showed up near the end of 1992, in a short announce­ment of a new Quaker-themed list­serv. In 1993 there was a fan­tas­tic arti­cle on elec­tron­ic net­works, The Invis­i­ble Meet­ing­house. Writ­ten by Joel GAzis-SAx, it describes the Quak­er Elec­tron­ic Project as

an ongo­ing year­ly meet­ing that Friends around the world can join any time. It is, at once, a library, a meet­ing­house, a social cen­ter, and a bul­letin board. W e have cre­at­ed both a com­mu­ni­ty and a resource center…

Amaz­ing­ly, many of the peo­ple men­tioned in this arti­cle from 25 years ago are still active online.

The first “http” web address was pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal in a 1995 issue. In June 2001 the mag­a­zine announced its own web­site; the word “blog” debuted in 2004, “Face­book” in 2007, “Twit­ter” in 2011. Obvi­ous­ly, the inter­net is great for out­reach. But time check: we’ve been col­lec­tive­ly reach­ing out online for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry. Every orga­ni­za­tion has a web­site. Blogs and social media have become a set­tled tool in outreach.

Intro­duc­tions to the web and tech­niques and how-to’s have been done. But how do these var­i­ous media work togeth­er to advance our vis­i­bil­i­ty? What kind of expand­ed out­reach could hap­pen with a lit­tle more focus? How does any online project inte­grate with real-world activ­i­ty. I’m not naysay­ing the inter­net; obvi­ous­ly, I could give my answers to these ques­tions. But I’d like to know what oth­ers think about our Quak­er elec­tron­ic projects a quar­ter cen­tu­ry later?


Writing Opp: Going Viral with Quakerism (due 5/14) - Friends Journal

Writ­ing Opp: Going Viral with Quak­erism (due 5/14) — Friends Journal 

What’s the Quak­er mes­sage for today? How do we com­mu­ni­cate it and how do we share it? What…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Quakers acting badly

August 11, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Friends don’t have a par­tic­u­lar­ly good track record with regards to con­tro­ver­sy. There’s no rea­son we need to pre­tend to be talk­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly. We’ve had two major year­ly meet­ings break up in this sum­mer (meet Sierra-Cascades Year­ly Meet­ing and North Car­oli­na Fel­low­ship of Friends), with at least one more “at bat” for some future long hot summer.

Con­tro­ver­sies flare up in many places. Friend Sa’ed Atshan just broke his media silence to talk about the can­ce­la­tion of his talk at Friends’ Cen­tral School in Feb­ru­ary and the sub­se­quent walk-outs, fir­ings, and lit­i­ga­tions. The con­tro­ver­sy around Avis Wan­da McClinton’s dis­own­ment by Upper Dublin Meet­ing con­tin­ues to incense large num­bers of Philadel­phia Friends, with fuel to the fire com­ing from the role that the Undo­ing Racism Group does or doesn’t have in the year­ly meet­ing struc­ture. Last year a major­i­ty of Friends of col­or boy­cotted pub­lic events at the FGC Gath­er­ing over frus­tra­tion at the site selec­tion process and the under­ly­ing issues extend to oth­er Quak­er venues.

The most-commented recent arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal is “It Breaks My Heart” by Kate Pruitt from the online June/July issue. Many read­ers relat­ed to her sense of alien­ation and loss. Two com­ments that hit me the hard­est were:

Not all Friends are found in Quak­er Meet­ings. You’re bet­ter off with­out your meeting.

Gone now is the hope… of find­ing com­mu­ni­ty among Quak­ers. To be frank, why both­er? There’s plen­ty of bro­ken­ness right where I am.

And I get enough “Why I’m leav­ing Friends” man­i­festos in my email inbox every month that I could turn it into a reg­u­lar Friends Jour­nal column.

It seems to me that are a num­ber of under­ly­ing issues that tie these con­tro­ver­sies togeth­er. What do we do when a group of Friends starts act­ing in a man­ner that seems con­trary to our under­stand­ing of Quak­er tes­ti­monies and prac­tices? How do we bal­ance love and judge­ment when con­flict aris­es among us? When do we break out of Quak­er nice­ness? Maybe even more chal­leng­ing, how do we main­tain our integri­ty and account­abil­i­ty when con­tro­ver­sy breaks us into camps will­ing to engage in exag­ger­a­tion? And just what do we say when the out­side pub­lic only gets half the sto­ry or thinks that one side is speak­ing for all Friends?

So this is a plug for sub­mis­sions for Decem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal.  The theme is “Con­flict and Con­tro­ver­sy” and the sub­mis­sion dead­line is Sep­tem­ber 9. We’re not look­ing for blow-by-blow accounts of being mis­treat­ed, and we’re not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed (this time) in man­i­festos about Quak­er cul­tur­al norms. I’m less inter­est­ed in spe­cif­ic issues than I am the meta of dis­cern­ment: How do indi­vid­u­als or small groups of Friends move for­ward in the heat of con­tro­ver­sy. What do we do when the easy solu­tions have failed? How do we decide when it’s time to break out of Quak­er nice­ness to lay down some truth — or time to kick the dust off your san­dals and move along?


Write For Friends Journal - Submit Writing For Quaker Publication

Write For Friends Jour­nal — Sub­mit Writ­ing For Quak­er Publication 

Friends Jour­nal is an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine serv­ing the entire Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We wel­come arti­cles, poet­ry, art,…

Friends Journal Friends Journal