What was a time when you rebelled and why?

August 15, 2023

The August Quak­ers Today pod­cast dropped Tues­day morn­ing. It’s a nice mix, with an inter­view with Quak­er hunter Tim­o­thy Tarkel­ly, an excerpt from Erin Wilson’s recent Quak­er­S­peak on LGBTQ inclu­sion, and an inter­view with “Jol­lyQuak­er” Mark Russ, who’s build­ing great buzz for his new book, Quak­er Shaped Chris­tian­i­ty (check out the FJ review by William Shet­ter).

Friends of Color in a time of Covid and BLM

July 18, 2020

Vanes­sa Julye in how some Friends of Col­or are wor­ship­ping in the midst of Coro­n­avirus and increased racial strug­gles fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd:

In the midst of such despair and tur­moil, our col­lec­tive trau­ma, exhaus­tion, sad­ness, and anger have increased. Friends of Col­or are find­ing it hard­er to be in pre­dom­i­nant­ly White envi­ron­ments includ­ing our Quak­er meetings.

It’s time to flip our meetinghouses. Again

June 23, 2020

From Kath­leen Wooten:

What if rather than say­ing “when we get back to in-person wor­ship we will do these things again” – we just assumed this video gath­er­ing is the new way to “do church”, for at least a year or more? What is the rush to get back to what was? Is this a time for inno­va­tion and exper­i­men­ta­tion? Can we just relax and lean into a word that is being reshaped around us, and be respon­sive and accept this as the new tool for these times?

Can this be a time we rethink our assumptions of Quaker worship?

March 28, 2020

From Kath­leen Wooten:

Now we are in a very strange time.  Meet­ings that in the past took months to dis­cern whether or not to rearrange their bench­es have jumped into online spaces and are cre­at­ing whole new wor­ship expe­ri­ences, with new shapes and methods.

I too have been won­der­ing whether this extend­ed peri­od of virtual-only wor­ship will help us rethink the form of our Quak­er wor­ship. A lot of soci­etal changes over the last few decades has made the clas­sic Quak­er Sun­day morn­ing wor­ship less acces­si­ble to peo­ple who might be seek­ing the insights of the Quak­er way. Sud­den­ly now there is a wealth of ways to con­nect with Friends remote­ly. It will be inter­est­ing to see how that changes things.

What is a Quaker Book of Faith and Practice?

June 20, 2019

Thomas Hamm is one of the most lit­er­ary Quak­er­S­peak inter­vie­wees — you could prob­a­bly take his raw tran­script and pub­lish it as a Friends Jour­nal arti­cle. But it’s good to have a YouTube-accessible expla­na­tion of one of the only for­mal com­pendi­ums of belief and prac­tices that we creed-adverse Friends pro­duce. It’s also fas­ci­nat­ing to learn how the pur­pose and struc­ture of Faith and Prac­tice has dif­fered over time, geog­ra­phy, and theology.

What do Quak­ers believe? How do we prac­tice our faith? The best place to look for the answers might be in a book of faith and prac­tice. Here’s what they are and how they evolved over time.

What is a Quak­er Book of Faith and Practice?

George Fox Speaking

April 2, 2019

At some point 18 months ago, we at Friends Jour­nal decid­ed that a future issue would revolve around humor. I remem­ber feel­ing a lump in my stom­ach at the time. I’ve learned to stop and poll my moti­va­tions before mak­ing a Quaker-related joke — not to see if it’s fun­ny, but to make sure that at least most Quak­ers might think it’s fun­ny. Well, that humor issue is out and avail­able online. Many of the fea­tures talk about humor but the first fea­ture actu­al­ly aims for humor itself. Don McCormick imag­ines Quak­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ures brought into modern-day cable news pro­gram­ming as they describe some of our rather odd customs.

George gives the cam­era a steely-TV-anchorman-type look and says, “Hel­lo, this is the evening edi­tion of Fox News. George Fox speak­ing. For our first sto­ry, let’s turn to Will ‘the Quill’ Penn at the sports desk.”

“Good evening,” says Will. “Well, it’s half-time over at Sier­ra Friends Center’s out­door bas­ket­ball court, and the Wool­man Wom­bats are bat­tling it out with the Quak­er Oafs. Both teams just com­plet­ed the league’s required work­shops on non­vi­o­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the Alter­na­tives to Vio­lence Project. The score at half-time is zero to zero. We have some footage from the sec­ond quarter.” 

Liberty of the Spirit

March 28, 2019

Every once in awhile a Quak­er­S­peak video comes along that reminds me why I was blown away when I first got to know Quak­ers. Ayesha Imani talks about the first time she wor­shiped with Friends: 

I thought I had wan­dered into a group of peo­ple who actu­al­ly believed that God was able to speak direct­ly to them. I remem­ber say­ing, “Oh my God, this is Pen­te­cost!” I couldn’t believe that these peo­ple think God is actu­al­ly gll­l­l­l­lo­ing to speak to them! I’m down for this. This is where I belong. 

Most of the Quak­ers read­ing this can prob­a­bly guess where this is going – she pret­ty quick­ly got a les­son in the unwrit­ten norms against exu­ber­ance at many Quak­er meet­ings, the rules that pre­vent many expres­sions of wor­ship. Ayesha’s Black and many of the stric­tures on behav­ior are pret­ty middle-class white. But a lot of this isn’t real­ly about race. I’ve been led to do some very non-ordinary things at uptight Quak­er meet­ings and feel­ing incred­i­bly self-conscious over it. When I came to Friends, I loved the idea of the rad­i­cal spon­te­nae­ity of our wor­ship (any­one can min­is­ter any­time!) and the life it called us to but in prac­tice we often are crea­tures of habit, to our detri­ment. I love Ayesha’s talk of “exper­i­ment­ing with free­dom” and the “lib­er­ty of the spir­it.” I real­ize my sto­ries of non-ordinariness are all over a decade old. I wish I felt more of that lib­er­ty again.

How Does Cul­ture Influ­ence Quak­er Worship?