Tag Archives ⇒ USD

Christian revival among liberal Friends

August 15, 2007
· Martin Kelley

There’s an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion in the com­ments from my last post about “Con­ver­gent Friends and Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tives” and one of the more inter­est­ing comes from a com­menter named Diane. My reply to her got longer and longer and filled with more and more links till it makes more sense to make it its own post. First, Diane’s question:

I don’t know if I’m “con­ver­gent,” (prob­a­bly not) but I have been involved with the emerg­ing church for sev­er­al years and with Quak­erism for a decade. I also am aware of the house church move­ment, but my expe­ri­ence of it is that is is very tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed to Quak­erism. I real­ly, real­ly hope and pray that Chris­t­ian revival is com­ing to lib­er­al Friends, but per­son­al­ly I have not seen that phe­nom­e­nom. Where do you see it most? Do you see it more as com­mit­ment to Christ or as more peo­ple being Christ curi­ous, to use Robin’s phrase?

As I wrote recent­ly I think con­ver­gence is more of a trend than an iden­ti­ty and I’m not sure whether it makes sense to fuss about who’s con­ver­gent or not. As with any ques­tion involv­ing lib­er­al Friends, whether there’s “Chris­t­ian revival” going on depends on what what you mean by the term. I think more lib­er­al Friends have become com­fort­able label­ing them­selves as Christ curi­ous; it has become more accept­able to iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian than it was a decade or two ago; a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of younger Friends are very recep­tive to Chris­t­ian mes­sages, the Bible and tra­di­tion­al Quak­er tes­ti­monies than they were.

These are indi­vid­ual respons­es, how­ev­er. Turn­ing to col­lec­tive Quak­er bod­ies there are few if any beliefs or prac­tices left that lib­er­al Friends would­n’t allow under the Quak­er ban­ner if they came wrapped in Quak­erese from a well-connected Friend; the social tes­ti­monies stand in as the uni­fy­ing agent; it’s still con­sid­ered an argu­ment stop­per to say that any prof­fered def­i­n­i­tion would exclude someone.

I’d argue that lib­er­al Quak­erism is becom­ing ever more lib­er­al (and less dis­tinc­tive­ly Quak­er) at the same time that many of those in influ­ence are becom­ing more Chris­t­ian. It’s a very pro­scribed Chris­tian­i­ty: cod­ed, ten­ta­tive and most of all indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. It’s okay for a lib­er­al Friend to believe what­ev­er they want to believe as long as they don’t believe too much. Whether the qui­et influ­ence of the ris­ing gen­er­a­tion of conservative-friendly lead­er­ship is enough to hold a Quak­er cen­ter in the cen­trifuge that is lib­er­al Quak­erism is the $60,000 ques­tion. I think the lead­er­ship has an inflat­ed sense of its own influ­ence but I’m watch­ing the exper­i­ment. I wish it well but I’m skep­ti­cal and wor­ry that it’s built on sand.

Some of the Christ-curious lib­er­al Friends are form­ing small wor­ship groups and some of these are seek­ing out recog­ni­tion from Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies. It’s an aching­ly small move­ment but it shows a desire to be cor­po­rate­ly Quak­er and not just indi­vid­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly Quak­er. With the inter­net tra­di­tion­al Quak­er view­points are only a Google search away; sites like Bill Samuel’s “Quakerinfo.com”:www.quakerinfo.com and blogs like Mar­shall Massey’s are break­ing down stereo­types and doing a lot of invalu­able edu­cat­ing (and I could name a lot more). It’s pos­si­ble to imag­ine all this cook­ing down to a third wave of tra­di­tion­al­ist renew­al. Ohio Year­ly Meeting-led ini­tia­tives like the Chris­t­ian Friends Con­fer­ence and All Con­ser­v­a­tive Gath­er­ings are steps in the right direc­tion but any real change is going to have to pull togeth­er mul­ti­ple trends, one of which might or might not be Convergence.

Our role in this future is not to be strate­gists play­ing Quak­er pol­i­tics but ser­vants ready to lay down our iden­ti­ties and pre­con­cep­tions to fol­low the prompt­ings of the Inward Christ into what­ev­er ter­ri­to­ry we’re called to:

From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his dis­ci­ples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suf­fer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, say­ing, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his dis­ci­ples, If any man will come after me, let him deny him­self, and take up his cross, and fol­low me. Matthew 16:21 – 28.

On shoestrings and keepin’ on

May 30, 2007
· Martin Kelley

There’s some inter­est­ing follow-up on the Cindy Shee­han “res­ig­na­tion” (see yes­ter­day’s post). One fel­low I cor­re­spond­ed with years ago gave a dona­tion then sent an email urg­ing us not to fall into despair. It’s hard.
Go beyond Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty fronts like MoveOne and you’ll find the most of the peace move­ment is a ridicu­lous­ly shoe­string oper­a­tion. Nonviolence.org’s four month “ChipIn” fundrais­ing cam­paign raised $50 per month but the sac­ri­fice isn’t just short-term – just try apply­ing for a main­stream job with a resume chock full of social change work!
Michael Westmoreland-White over on the Lev­ellers blog talks about “keep­ing going through the despair”:http://levellers.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/needed-for-long-haul-peacemaking-a-spirituality-of-nonviolence/:
bq. This is a cau­tion­ary tale for the rest of us, includ­ing myself. Out­rage, right­eous indig­na­tion, anger, pub­lic grief, are all valid reac­tions to war and human rights abus­es, but they will get us only so far. They may strain mar­riages and fam­i­ly life. They may lead to speech and action that is not in the spir­it of non­vi­o­lence and active peace­mak­ing. And, since impe­ri­al­ist mil­i­tarism is a sys­tem (bib­li­cal­ly speak­ing, a Pow­er), it will resist change for the good. Work for jus­tice and peace over the long haul requires spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline, requires deep roots in a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of non­vi­o­lence, includ­ing cul­ti­vat­ing the virtue of patience.
Michael’s answer is specif­i­cal­ly Chris­t­ian but I think his advice to step back and attend to the roots of our activism is wise despite one’s motivations.
Shee­han’s retire­ment did­n’t stop her from “talk­ing with Amy Good­man on Democ­ra­cy Now this morning”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/30/1343232. She talks about cash-starved peace activists and con­trasts them with the tens of mil­lions pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates are rais­ing, most of which will go to big media TV net­works for ads. Shee­han says we need more than just an anti­war movement:
bq. Like, end­ing the Viet­nam War was major, but peo­ple left the move­ment. It was an anti­war move­ment. They didn’t stay com­mit­ted to true and last­ing peace. And that’s what we real­ly have to do.
More Cindy Shee­han read­ing across the blo­gos­phere avail­able via “Google”:http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=cindy+sheehan&btnG=Search+Blogs and “Technorati”:http://technorati.com/tag/cindy+sheehan.
And for those look­ing for a lit­tle good news check out the brand new site for the “Glob­al Net­work for Nonviolence”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/. I designed it for them as part of my “free­lance design work”:http://www.martinkelley.com but it’s been a joy and a lot of fun to be work­ing more close­ly with a good group of inter­na­tion­al activists again. Their “non­vi­o­lence links”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/links.php page includes sites for some real­ly com­mit­ted grass­roots peace­mak­ers. This long-term peace work may not give us head­lines in the New York Times but it’s touched mil­lions over the years. If human­i­ty is ever going to grow into the kind of cul­ture of peace Shee­han dreams of then we’ll need a lot more won­der­ful projects like these.

Cindy Sheehan “resigns”: It’s up to us now

May 29, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Poor Cindy Shee­han, the famous anti-war mom who camped out­side Bush’s Craw­ford Texas home fol­low­ing the death of her son in Iraq. News comes today that she’s all but “resigned from the protest movement”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070529/ap_on_re_us/cindy_sheehan. She post­ed the fol­low­ing “on her Dai­ly Kos blog”:http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/28/12530/1525
bq. The first con­clu­sion is that I was the dar­ling of the so-called left as long as I lim­it­ed my protests to George Bush and the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Of course, I was slan­dered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty… How­ev­er, when I start­ed to hold the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to the same stan­dards that I held the Repub­li­can Par­ty, sup­port for my cause start­ed to erode and the “left” start­ed label­ing me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid atten­tion to me when I said that the issue of peace and peo­ple dying for no rea­son is not a mat­ter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”
The sad truth is that she was used. Much of the pow­er and mon­ey in the anti-war move­ment comes from Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty con­nec­tions. Her trag­ic sto­ry, soc­cer mom looks and artic­u­late ide­al­ism made her a nat­ur­al poster girl for an anti-Bush move­ment that has nev­er real­ly been as anti-war as it’s claimed.
Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats had all the infor­ma­tion they need­ed in 2002 to expose Pres­i­dent Bush’s out­landish claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruc­tion. But they “autho­rized his war of aggres­sion anyway”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution. More recent­ly, Amer­i­cans gave them a land­slide vote of con­fi­dence in last Novem­ber’s elec­tions but still they step back from insist­ing on an Iraq pull-out. The Non​vi​o​lence​.org archives are full of denun­ci­a­tions of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton’s repeat­ed mis­sile attacks on places like the Sudan and Afghanistan; before rein­vent­ing him­self as a earth-toned eco can­di­date, Al Gore posi­tioned him­self as the pro-war hawk of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.
Anti-war activists need to build alliances and real change will need to involve insid­ers of both major Amer­i­can polit­i­cal par­ties. But as long as the move­ment is fueled with polit­i­cal mon­ey it will be behold­en to those inter­ests and will ulti­mate­ly defer to back-room Cap­i­tal Hill deal-making.
I feel for Cindy. She’s been on a pub­lic­i­ty roller coast­er these past few years. I hope she finds the rest she needs to re-ground her­self. Defeat­ing war is the work of a life­time and it’s the work of a move­ment. Shee­han’s wit­ness has touched peo­ple she’ll nev­er meet. It’s made a dif­fer­ence. She’s a woman of remark­able courage who’s point­ing out the pup­pet strings she’s cut­ting as she steps off the stage. Hats off to you Cindy.

Nonviolence.org’s fundrais­ing cam­paign ends in a few hours. In four months we’ve raised $150 which does­n’t even cov­er that peri­od’s serv­er costs. This project cel­e­brates its twelfth year this fall and accu­rate­ly “exposed the weapons of mass destruc­tion hoaxes”:http://www.nonviolence.org/weapons_of_mass_destruction/ in real time as they were being thrust on a gullible Con­gress. Cindy signed off:
bq. Good-bye Amer­i­ca …you are not the coun­try that I love and I final­ly real­ized no mat­ter how much I sac­ri­fice, I can’t make you be that coun­try unless you want it. It’s up to you now.
Some­times I real­ly have to unite with that sentiment.

Hey who am I to decide anything

April 9, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Over on Non­the­ist Friends web­site, there’s an arti­cle look­ing back at ten years of FGC Gath­er­ing work­shops on their con­cern. There was also a post some­where on the blo­gos­phere (sor­ry I don’t remem­ber where) by a Pagan Friend excit­ed that this year’s Gath­er­ing would have a work­shop focused on their concerns.

It’s kind of inter­est­ing to look at the process by which new the­olo­gies are being added into Lib­er­al Quak­erism at an ever-increasing rate.

  • Mem­ber­ship of indi­vid­u­als in meet­ings. There are hun­dreds of meet­ings in lib­er­al Quak­erism that range all over the the­o­log­i­cal map. Add to that the wide­spread agree­ment that the­o­log­i­cal uni­ty with the meet­ing is not required and just about any­one believ­ing any­thing could be admit­ted some­where (or “grand­fa­thered in” as a birthright member).
  • A work­shop at the Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Gath­er­ing and espe­cial­ly a reg­u­lar work­shop at suc­ces­sive Gath­er­ings. Yet as the very informed com­ments on a post a few years ago showed, the­ol­o­gy is not some­thing the plan­ning work­shop com­mit­tee is allowed to look at and at least one pro­po­nent of a new the­ol­o­gy has got­ten them­selves on the decid­ing com­mit­tee. The Gath­er­ing is essen­tial­ly built on the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al Chau­taqua mod­el and FGC is per­fect­ly hap­py to spon­sor work­shops that are in appar­ent con­flict with its own mis­sion statement.
  • An arti­cle pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal. When the the Quak­er Sweat Lodge was strug­gling to claim legit­i­ma­cy it all but changed its name to the “Quak­er Sweat Lodge as fea­tured in the Feb­ru­ary 2002 Friends Jour­nal.” It’s a good mag­a­zine’s job to pub­lish arti­cles that make peo­ple think and a smart mag­a­zine will know that arti­cles that pro­voke a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy is good for cir­cu­la­tion. I very much doubt the edi­to­r­i­al team at the Jour­nal con­sid­ers its agree­ment to pub­lish to be an inoc­u­la­tion against critique.
  • A web­site and list­serv. Fif­teen dol­lars at GoDad​dy​.com and you’ve got the web address of your dreams. Yahoo Group is free.

There are prob­a­bly oth­er mech­a­nisms of legit­i­ma­cy. My point is not to give com­pre­hen­sive guide­lines to would-be cam­paign­ers. I sim­ply want to note that none of the actors in these deci­sions is con­scious­ly think­ing “hey, I think I’ll expand the def­i­n­i­tion of lib­er­al Quak­er the­ol­o­gy today.” In fact I expect they’re most­ly pass­ing the buck, think­ing “hey, who am I to decide any­thing like that.”

None of these decision-making process­es are meant to serve as tools to dis­miss oppo­si­tion. The orga­ni­za­tions involved are not hand­ing out Impri­maturs and would be quite hor­ri­fied if they real­ized their agree­ments were being seen that way. Amy Clark, a com­menter on my last post, on this sum­mer’s reunion and camp for the once-young mem­bers of Young Friends North Amer­i­ca, had a very inter­est­ing comment:

I agree that YFNA has become FGC: those pre­vi­ous­ly involved in YFNA have tak­en lead­er­ship with FGC … with both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive results. Well … now we have a chance to look at the lega­cy we are cre­at­ing: do we like it?

I have the feel­ing that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of lib­er­al Quak­er lead­er­ship does­n’t quite believe it’s lead­ing lib­er­al Quak­erism. By “lead­er­ship” I don’t mean the small skim of the pro­fes­sion­al Quak­er bureau­cra­cy (whose mem­bers can get _too_ self-inflated on the lead­er­ship issue) but the com­mit­tees, clerks and vol­un­teers that get most of the work done from the local to nation­al lev­els. We are the inher­i­tors of a proud and some­times fool­ish tra­di­tion and our actions are shap­ing its future but I don’t think we real­ly know that. I have no clever solu­tion to the issues I’ve out­lined here but I think becom­ing con­scious that we’re cre­at­ing our own lega­cy is an impor­tant first step.

Teaching Quakerism again

October 5, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Quakerism 101 classes at Moorestown Meeting NJGet­ting right back on the horse, I’m teach­ing Quak­erism 101 at Moorestown NJ Meet­ing Wednes­day evenings start­ing in a few weeks. The orig­i­nal plan was for the most excel­lent Thomas Swain to lead it but he’s become rather busy after being tapped to be year­ly meet­ing clerk (God bless ‘im). He’ll be there for the first ses­sion, I’ll be on my own for the rest. A rather small group has signed up so it should be nice and intimate.

For the last year I’ve been pon­der­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties of using mid-week reli­gious edu­ca­tion and wor­ship as a form of out­reach. Emer­gent Church types love small group oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side of the Sun­day morn­ing time slot and it seems that mid-week wor­ship is one of those old on-the-verge-of-death Quak­er tra­di­tions that might be worth revi­tal­iz­ing and recast­ing in an Emergent-friendly format.

Last Spring I spent a few months reg­u­lar­ly attend­ing one of the few sur­viv­ing mid-week wor­ships in the area and I found it intrigu­ing and full of pos­si­bil­i­ties but nev­er felt led to do more. It seemed that atten­ders came and went each week with­out con­nect­ing deeply to one anoth­er or get­ting any seri­ous ground­ing in Quakerism.

Reflect­ing on the gen­e­sis of a strong Philadel­phia young adult group in the mid-1990s, it seemed like the ide­al recipe would look some­thing like this:

  • 6pm: reg­u­lar reli­gious ed time, not super-formal but real and pastoral-based. This would be an open, non-judgemental time where atten­ders would be free to share spir­i­tu­al insights but they would also learn the ortho­dox Quak­er take on the issue or con­cern (Bar­clay essentially).
  • 7pm: mid-week wor­ship, unprogrammed
  • 8pm: unof­fi­cial but reg­u­lar hang-out time, peo­ple going in groups to local din­ers, etc.

Unpro­grammed wor­ship just isn’t enough (just when y’all thought I was a dyed-in-the-plain-cloth Wilbu­rite…). Peo­ple do need time to be able to ask ques­tions and explore spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in a more struc­tured way. Those of us led to teach­ing need to be will­ing to say “this is the Quak­er take on this issue” even if our answer would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pass con­sen­sus in a Friends meeting.

Peo­ple also need time to social­ize. We live in an atom­ized soci­ety and the brunt of this iso­la­tion is borne by young adults start­ing careers in unfa­mil­iar cities and towns: Quak­er meet­ing can act as a place to plug into a social net­work and pro­vide real com­mu­ni­ty. It’s dif­fer­ent from enter­tain­ment, but rather identity-building. How do we shift think­ing from “those Quak­ers are cool” to “I’m a Quak­er and I’m cool” in such a way that these new Friends under­stand that there are chal­lenges and dis­ci­plines involved in tak­ing on this new role.

Per­haps the three parts to the mid-week wor­ship mod­el is head, spir­it and heart; what­ev­er labels you give it we need to think about feed­ing and nur­tur­ing the whole seek­er and to chal­lenge them to more than just silence. This is cer­tain­ly a com­mon mod­el. When Peg­gy Sen­ger Par­sons and Alivia Biko came to the FGC Gath­er­ing and shared Free­dom Friends wor­ship with us it had some of this feel. For awhile I tagged along with Julie to what’s now called The Col­legium Cen­ter which is a Sun­day night Catholic mass/religious ed/diner three-some that was always packed and that pro­duced at least one cou­ple (good friends of ours now!).

I don’t know why I share all this now, except to put the idea in oth­er peo­ple’s heads too. The four weeks of Wednes­day night reli­gious ed at Moorestown might have some­thing of this feel; it will be inter­est­ing to see.

For those inter­est­ed in cur­ricu­lum details, I’m bas­ing it on Michael Birkel’s Silence and Wit­ness: the Quak­er Tra­di­tion (Orbis, 2004. $16.00). Michael’s tried to pull togeth­er a good gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to Friends, some­thing sure­ly need­ed by Friends today (much as I respect Howard Brin­ton’s Friends for 300 Years it’s get­ting old in the tooth and speaks more to the issues of mid-century Friends than us). Can Silence and Wit­ness anchor a Quak­erism 101 course? We’ll see.

As sup­ple­men­tary mate­r­i­al I’m using Thomas Ham­m’s Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2003, $45), Ben Pink-Dandelion’s Con­vinced Quak­erism: 2003 Wal­ton Lec­ture (South­east­ern Year­ly Meet­ing Wal­ton Lec­ture, 2003, $4.00), Mar­ty Grundy’s Quak­er Trea­sure (Bea­con Hill Friends House Weed Lec­ture, 2002, $4.00) and the class Bill Tabor pam­phlet Four Doors to Quak­er Wor­ship (Pen­dle Hill, 1992, $5.00). Atten­tive read­ers will see echos from my pre­vi­ous Quak­erism 101 class at Med­ford Meet­ing.

Reading John Woolman 3: The Isolated Saint

August 17, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Read­ing John Wool­man Series:
1: The Pub­lic Life of a Pri­vate Man
2: The Last Safe Quaker
3: The Iso­lat­ed Saint

It’s said that John Wool­man re-wrote his Jour­nal three times in an effort to excise it of as many “I” ref­er­ences as pos­si­ble. As David Sox writes in Johh Wool­man Quin­tes­sen­tial Quak­er, “only on lim­it­ed occa­sion do we glimpse Wool­man as a son, a father and a hus­band.” Wool­man would­n’t have been a very good blog­ger. Quot­ing myself from my intro­duc­tion to Quak­er blogs:

blogs give us a unique way of shar­ing our lives — how our Quak­erism inter­sects with the day-to-day deci­sions that make up faith­ful liv­ing. Quak­er blogs give us a chance to get to know like-minded Friends that are sep­a­rat­ed by geog­ra­phy or arti­fi­cial the­o­log­i­cal bound­aries and they give us a way of talk­ing to and with the insti­tu­tions that make up our faith community.

I’ve read many great Wool­man sto­ries over the years and as I read the Jour­nal I eager­ly antic­i­pat­ed read­ing the orig­i­nal account. It’s that same excite­ment I get when walk­ing the streets of an icon­ic land­scape for the first time: walk­ing through Lon­don, say, know­ing that Big Ben is right around the next cor­ner. But Wool­man kept let­ting me down.

One of the AWOL sto­ries is his arrival in Lon­don. The Jour­nal’s account:

On the 8th of Sixth Month, 1772, we land­ed at Lon­don, and I went straight­way to the Year­ly Meet­ing of min­is­ters and elders, which had been gath­ered, I sup­pose, about half an hour. In this meet­ing my mind was humbly contrite.

But set the scene. He had just spent five weeks cross­ing the Atlantic in steer­age among the pigs (he does­n’t actu­al­ly spec­i­fy his non-human bunk­mates). He famous­ly went out of his way to wear clothes that show dirt because they show dirt. He went straight­away: no record of a bath or change of clothes. Sto­ries abound about his recep­tion, and while are some of dubi­ous ori­gin, there are first hand accounts of his being shunned by the British min­is­ters and elders. The best and most dubi­ous sto­ry is the theme of anoth­er post.

I trust that Wool­man was hon­est­ly aim­ing for meek­ness when he omit­ted the most inter­est­ing sto­ries of his life. But with­out the con­text of a lived life he becomes an ahis­tor­i­cal fig­ure, an icon of good­ness divorced from the minu­ti­ae of the dai­ly grind. Two hun­dred and thir­ty years of Quak­er hagiog­ra­phy and latter-day appeals to Wool­man’s author­i­ty have turned the tai­lor of Mount Hol­ly into the oth­er­world­ly Quak­er saint but the process start­ed at John’s hands himself.

Were his strug­gles mere­ly inte­ri­or? When I look to my own min­istry, I find the call to dis­cern­ment to be the clear­est part of the work. I need to work to be ever more recep­tive to even the most unex­pect­ed prompt­ing from the Inward Christ and I need to con­stant­ly prac­tice humil­i­ty, love and for­give­ness. But the prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions are hard­er. For years respectibil­i­ty was an issue; rel­a­tive pover­ty con­tin­ues to be one. It is ask­ing a lot of my wife to leave respon­si­bil­i­ty for our two small boys for even a long weekend.

How did Wool­man bal­ance fam­i­ly life and min­istry? What did wife Sarah think? And just what was his role in the sea-change that was the the “Ref­or­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism” (to use Jack Mari­et­ta’s phrase) that for­ev­er altered Amer­i­can Friends’ rela­tion­ship with the world and set the stage for the schisms of the next century.

We also lose the con­text of Wool­man’s com­pa­tri­ots. Some are named as trav­el­ing com­pan­ions but the col­or­ful char­ac­ters go unmen­tioned. What did he think of the street-theater antics of Ben­jamin Lay, the Abbie Hoff­man of Philadel­phia Quak­ers. The most widely-told tale is of Lay walk­ing into Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, open­ing up a cloak to reveal mil­i­tary uni­form under­neath, and declar­ing that slave-made prod­ucts were prod­ucts of war, plunged a sword into a hollowed-out Bible full of pig’s blood, splat­ter­ing Friends sit­ting nearby.

What role did Wool­man play in the larg­er anti-slavery awak­en­ing hap­pen­ing at the time? It’s hard to tell just read­ing his Jour­nal. How can we find ways to repli­cate his kind of faith­ful­ness and wit­ness today? Again, his Jour­nal does­n’t give much clue.

Picked up today in the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Library:

PYM Librar­i­an Rita Var­ley remind­ed me today they mail books any­where in the US for a mod­est fee and a $50/year sub­scrip­tion. It’s a great deal and a great ser­vice, espe­cial­ly for iso­lat­ed Friends. The PYM cat­a­log is online too!

What is this QuakerQuaker thing?

March 29, 2006
· Martin Kelley

There’s been some head-scratching going on about Quak­erQuak­er over the last few weeks. In the ser­vice of trans­paren­cy I’ve post­ed my con­trib­u­tor guide­lines on the “About Quak­erQuak­er page”. Here they are:

Post should be explic­it­ly Quak­er: Any thought­ful posts from any branch of Friends that wres­tles in some way with what it means to be a Quak­er is fair game. While we all have our own issues that con­nect deeply with our under­stand­ing of our faith, the Blog­watch only seems to work if it keeps focused on Quak­erism, on how we our faith and lives inter­act. Back when this was just a links list on my per­son­al site I would get com­plaints when I added some­thing that seemed relat­ed to my under­stand­ing of Quak­erism but that was­n’t specif­i­cal­ly writ­ten from a Quak­er stand­point (when we want to make this kind of link we should do so on our per­son­al blogs where we can put it in bet­ter context).

Post should be time­ly: I’ve billed Quak­erQuak­er as “a guide to the Quak­er con­ver­sa­tion” and links should go to recently-written arti­cles with strong voic­es. We’re not try­ing to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive list of Quak­er web­sites, so no link­ing to orga­ni­za­tion­al home­pages. While most links should go to blog posts, it’s fine to include good arti­cles from Quak­er pub­li­ca­tions. A link to some­thing like a press release or new book announce­ment should only be made if it’s extra­or­di­nary. Remem­ber that Quak­erQuak­er posts will only appear on the main site for a few days (if the ini­tial set­up goes well I can start work on some ideas to giave a more time­less ele­ment to the site).

Post should be Inter­est­ing: Don’t book­mark every­thing you find. If the post feels pre­dictable or snoozy, just ignore it (even if the writer or top­ic is impor­tant). The Quak­er blog­gers all have their audi­ences and we don’t need to high­light every post of every blog­ger. Only make the link if the post speaks out to you in some way (it’s quite pos­si­ble that one of the oth­er con­trib­u­tors will pick up, find­ing some­thing you didn’t and high­light­ing it in their descrip­tion). That said, the posts you link to don’t have to be mas­ter­pieces; they can have gram­mat­i­cal and log­i­cal mis­takes. What’s impor­tant is that there’s some idea in there that’s inter­est­ing. It might be a good dis­ci­pline for each of us not to add our the posts from our own per­son­al blogs but to let one of the oth­er con­trib­u­tors do it for us.

That’s it. While there are some vague assump­tions in all this about the role of tra­di­tion and com­mu­ni­ty, dis­ci­pline and indi­vid­u­al­ism, there’s noth­ing about the­ol­o­gy or who gets linked. This is a pub­li­ca­tion, with some­thing of an edi­to­r­i­al voice in that I’ve cho­sen who gets to add links and asked them to be sub­jec­tive, but its very mel­low and I’ve been hap­py to see con­trib­u­tors range far afield. Google tells us that this is one of 18.7 mil­lion “Quak­er” web­sites and $10/month will get you your own so let’s not do too much navel-gazing about what’s linked or not linked. If you don’t find it inter­est­ing, there are plen­ty of non-subjective Quak­er blogs lists out there. I do lis­ten to feed­back and am always twid­dling with the site so feel free to send email to me at mar​tinkel​ley​.com/​c​o​n​t​act.

“Food for Fire” workshop at Powell House

December 27, 2005
· Martin Kelley

In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary I’m lead­ing a young adult work­shop up at New York Year­ly Meet­ing’sPow­ell House. I don’t have any desire to get into the “spir­i­tu­al work­shop cir­cuit,” but I was asked and it seemed like an oppor­tu­ni­ty to gath­er some inter­est­ing folks to talk about what we hunger for. The work­shop is called “Food for Fire: Break­ing into the Pow­er of Quak­erism” (already regret­ting the “break­ing in” metaphor – should­n’t it be “bro­ken in by?”).

I hope that some of the extend­ed Quak­er Ranter fam­i­ly will be able to make it out. This could be a kind of Mid-Atlantic/New Eng­land gath­er­ing of what­ev­er this of infor­mal movement/network is. Because this is a work­shop mod­el I am expect­ed to impart knowl­edge but while I’ll come with an worked-out agen­da, I’m hap­py to loosen and/or toss it aside if need­ed. The work­shop description:

Many of the clas­sic themes of Quak­erism speak to the con­di­tion of a world wracked by con­sumerism, war, big­otry and envi­ron­men­tal dis­re­gard. Friends have a his­to­ry of unit­ing truth and love and turn­ing it into action. We’ll reach into the Quak­er attic to dust off gospel order, plain liv­ing, trav­el­ing min­istry, prophet­ic wit­ness; we’ll try them on and see how they fit into our expe­ri­ences of the liv­ing Spir­it. There will be plen­ty of time to share sto­ries in small groups and togeth­er. How are our month­ly meet­ings doing rec­og­niz­ing the gifts of min­istry and ser­vice among younger Friends? How are Friends doing spread­ing the good news of the Quak­er way? There is a great peo­ple to be gath­ered still but how can we enter into the faith­ful­ness required? Jesus came up the fish­er­men and said “Come, fol­low me;” what would we do if we got that call? Like any pro­grammed Quak­er event the work­shop is real­ly an excuse to assem­ble Friends togeth­er in prayer and faith­ful­ness to God. The most impor­tant thing we could do this week­end is build friend­ships: friend­ships of sup­port, mutu­al account­abil­i­ty, and peer men­tor­ship. Friends from all branch­es of Quak­erism wel­come, as are the newest of seekers.

The price is $180 for the week­end but if that’s a bur­den then try to get your meet­ing to pay – I sus­pect they’ll be hap­py to see that you’re show­ing an inter­est in Quak­erism. I’ll be dri­ving up from South Jer­sey and will prob­a­bly be able to pick up folks from Philly & New York. Email me if you have or need a ride from oth­er points and I’ll try to con­nect you with oth­er travelers.

If you’re too old or too impa­tient to wait for Sec­ond Month to roll around, pick up Bri­an Dray­ton’s new book On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Min­istry and read that instead. Yes, I plugged it five days ago and yes, my pay­check comes from the pub­lish­er – but I’ve now now read the first chap­ter and it real­ly is that good. Read­ing it feels like putting that soon-to-be-favorite pop album on the turntable for the first time. Where were you when you first heard Sgt Pep­pers? (for the YAFs in the audi­ence: yes I’m being sil­ly with the Bea­t­les ref­er­ence; if you remem­ber first putting that album on a turntable in 1967 then this isn’t your workshop!).