In defense of Quaker media

January 3, 2019

I gath­er that the Quak­er Face­book group is going through one of its reg­u­lar debates about iden­ti­ty and tone and mod­er­a­tion. The prob­lem is Face­book. It is the most direct com­peti­tor of Quaker-produced media. Its algo­rithms and mod­er­a­tor tools are not designed for the kind of con­sid­ered, inclu­sive, Spirit-led, and non-reactive dis­course that is Quak­er style at its ide­al (yes, we blow it our­selves con­stant­ly but hope­ful­ly keep striving).

I post­ed there tonight sug­gest­ing that Friends con­sid­er a media diet that includes more Quak­er media — books and mag­a­zines and blogs and videos and in-real-life dis­cus­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties. I wor­ry that if Face­book groups become the most vis­i­ble style of Quak­er dia­logue, then we will have lost some­thing tru­ly precious.

This mes­sage isn’t new to long­time read­ers of Quak­er­Ran­ter. I extolled blog­ging as a hedge against Face­bookjust yes­ter­day and in August I wrote about some of the dia­logue prob­lems inher­ent in the Face­book mod­el.

I’ve been fig­ur­ing out Face­book strate­gies for Quak­er media since it opened up to non-students cir­ca 2006. I appre­ci­ate much of the atten­tion it’s pro­vid­ed over the years. Social media like YouTube has also been a use­ful plat­form for things like the Quak­er­s­peak projectdespite own­er Google’s spot­ty track record. But it’s becom­ing hard to deny that social media has reshaped the style of civ­il dis­course and troll­ish hack­ery, most­ly for the worse. I think it’s real­ly essen­tial that we become more con­scious of the sources of our dai­ly media diet.

Generational strategies for Quaker outreach

August 5, 2018

From Emi­ly Provance:

An under-45 com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, in con­trast, would most­ly involve social media (Face­book, Insta­gram, Twit­ter, pos­si­bly Tum­blr or Pin­ter­est). Arti­cles would be short and would con­tain most­ly con­tent direct­ly rel­e­vant to the read­er — or, if the con­tent were not direct­ly rel­e­vant, it would be single-story nar­ra­tives with an empha­sis on per­son­al impact. Announce­ments would come out through mes­sen­ger apps or text mes­sages, with a strong ele­ment of user con­trol about which announce­ments to receive and which not. Pho­tos and videos would be used frequently.

I’m always a bit wary of gen­er­a­tional deter­min­ism. I think gen­er­a­tional ideas are more like under­ly­ing trends that get more or less trac­tion over time. And Quak­er dig­i­tal out­reach in par­tic­u­lar has been a thing for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry now. But the under­ly­ing mes­sage — that some peo­ple need to be reached dig­i­tal­ly while oth­ers are still best served by print — is a sound one and I’m glad Emi­ly’s bring­ing it up.

But it’s still kind of sad that we still need to make this kind of argu­ment. I remem­ber hav­ing these dis­cus­sions around an FGC out­reach com­mit­tee table fif­teen years ago: sure­ly we’re all on board about the need for dig­i­tal out­reach in 2018?

The 45-Yard Line

QuakerSpeak DVDs for new visitors

February 22, 2018

So I’ll admit some­thing: although I’m the senior edi­tor of Friends Jour­nal, and the Quak­er­S­peak YouTube video series is a project of Friends Jour­nal, I’m still jeal­ous of the way it pro­vides a far supe­ri­or entrée to Quak­er thought and life. The way you get to know some­one with such imme­di­a­cy for ten min­utes or so is very powerful.

Every year, Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Jon Watts has put togeth­er DVDs with col­lec­tions of that sea­son’s videos. There’s a bit of irony in pay­ing for DVDs of free videos but the col­lec­tions are use­ful for shar­ing in meet­ing­house fel­low­ship rooms as part of First-day classes.

But this year’s DVD is spe­cial. It’s only eight videos and they’ve been curat­ed with a very spe­cif­ic audi­ence in mind: new­com­ers and first-time atten­ders. Because the entire DVD runs a bit under an hour, the per-disk price has been made low­er. Low enough hope­ful­ly, for Quak­er meet­ings to buy them in enough bulk that they can be giv­en out to atten­ders who come to visit.

Quak­er wor­ship is an alien con­cept to a lot of reli­gious seek­ers. And it’s very pos­si­ble to attend a Quak­er meet­ing and leave not know­ing much more about Friends’ beliefs and val­ues than a vis­i­tor had walk­ing in that morn­ing. Imag­ine hav­ing some­thing you could hand them to teach them more about the diver­si­ty and depth of Quak­er belief. That’s what these DVDs offer (and, if they’re from the cord-cutter gen­er­a­tion, they can always use the print­ed playlist to open YouTube on their phones).

The dif­fer­ence between a curi­ous per­son vis­it­ing once and a reg­u­lar atten­der (and some­day mem­ber) is some­times just a bit of fol­lowup. I’m excit­ed to see if meet­ings take up this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I think Quak­er­S­peak has been the most impor­tant Quak­er out­reach pro­gram of recent times; this DVD is yet anoth­er way that we’re bridg­ing it with on-the-ground Quak­er meet­ings. Check it out.

Quak­er­S­peak DVDs

Ask Me Anything: Conservative and Liberal Friends?

February 22, 2017
Marl­bor­ough (Pa.) Friends meet­ing­house at dusk. c. 2006.

A few weeks ago, read­er James F. used my “Ask me any­thing!” page to won­der about two types of Friends:

I’ve read a lit­tle and watched var­i­ous videos about the Friends. My ques­tions are , is there a gulf between “con­ser­v­a­tive” friends and lib­er­al? As well as what defines the two gen­er­al­ly? I’m in Mary­land near D.C. Do Quak­ers who define them­selves as essen­tial­ly Chris­t­ian wor­ship with those who don’t iden­ti­fy as such?

Hi James, what a great ques­tion! I think many of us don’t ful­ly appre­ci­ate the con­fu­sion we sow when we casu­al­ly use these terms in our online dis­cus­sions. They can be use­ful rhetor­i­cal short­cuts but some­times I think we give them more weight than they deserve. I wor­ry that Friends some­times come off as more divid­ed along these lines than we real­ly are. Over the years I’ve noticed a cer­tain kind of rigid online seek­er who dis­sects the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions with such con­vic­tion that they’ll refused to even vis­it their near­est meet­ing because it’s not the right type. That’s so tragic.

What the terms don’t mean

The first and most com­mon prob­lem is that peo­ple don’t real­ize we’re using these terms in a specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er con­text. “Lib­er­al” and “Con­ser­v­a­tive” don’t refer to polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies. One can be a Con­ser­v­a­tive Friend and vote for lib­er­al or social­ist politi­cians, for example.

Adding to the com­pli­ca­tions is that these can be impre­cise terms. Quak­er bod­ies them­selves typ­i­cal­ly do not iden­ti­fy as either Lib­er­al or Con­ser­v­a­tive. While local con­gre­ga­tions often have their own unique char­ac­ter­is­tics, cul­ture, and style, noth­ing goes on the sign out front. Our region­al bod­ies, called year­ly meet­ings, are the high­est author­i­ty in Quak­erism but I can’t think of any that does­n’t span some diver­si­ty of theologies.

His­tor­i­cal­ly (and cur­rent­ly) we’ve had the sit­u­a­tion where a year­ly meet­ing will split into two sep­a­rate bod­ies. The caus­es can be com­plex; the­ol­o­gy is a piece, but demo­graph­ics and main­stream cul­tur­al shifts also play a huge role. In cen­turies past (and kind of ridicu­lous­ly, today still), both of the new­ly reor­ga­nized year­ly meet­ings were obsessed with keep­ing the name as a way to claim their legit­i­ma­cy. To tell them apart we’d append awk­ward and incom­plete labels, so in the past we had Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Hick­site) and Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing (Ortho­dox).

In the Unit­ed States, we have two places where year­ly meet­ings com­pete names and one side’s labelled appendage is “Con­ser­v­a­tive,” giv­ing us Iowa Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive) and North Car­oli­na Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive). Over time, both of these year­ly meet­ings have diver­si­fied to the point where they con­tain out­ward­ly Lib­er­al month­ly meet­ings. The name Con­ser­v­a­tive in the year­ly meet­ing title has become part­ly administrative.

A third year­ly meet­ing is usu­al­ly also includ­ed in the list of Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies. Present-day Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing once com­pet­ed with two oth­er Ohio Year­ly Meet­ings for the name but is the only one using it today. The name “Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive)” is still some­times seen, but it’s unnec­es­sary, not tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, and not used in the year­ly meeting’s for­mal cor­re­spon­dence. (You want to know more? The year­ly meet­ing’s clerk main­tains a web­site that goes amaz­ing­ly deep into the his­to­ry of Ohio Friends).

All that said, these three year­ly meet­ings have more than their share of tra­di­tion­al­ist Chris­t­ian Quak­er mem­bers. Ohio’s gath­er­ings have the high­est per­cent­age of plain dressing- and speaking- Friends around (though even there, they are a minor­i­ty). But oth­er year­ly meet­ings will have indi­vid­ual mem­bers and some­times whole month­ly meet­ings that could be accu­rate­ly described as Con­ser­v­a­tive Quaker.

I might have upset some folks with these obser­va­tions. In all aspects of life you’ll find peo­ple who are very attached to labels. That’s what the com­ment sec­tion is for.

The meanings of the terms

For­mal iden­ti­ties aside, there are good rea­sons we use the con­cept of Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­erism. They denote a gen­er­al approach to the world and a way of incor­po­rat­ing our his­to­ry, our Chris­t­ian her­itage, our under­stand­ing of the role of Christ in our dis­cern­ment, and the for­mat and pace of our group deci­sion making.

But at the same time there’s all sorts of diver­si­ty and per­son­al and local his­to­ries involved. It’s hard to talk about any of this in con­crete terms with­out dis­solv­ing into foot­notes and qual­i­fi­ca­tions and long dis­cours­es about the dif­fer­ences between var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal sub-movements with­in Friends (queue awe­some 16000-word his­to­ry).

Many of us com­fort­ably span both worlds. In writ­ing, I some­times try to escape the weight of the most overused labels by sub­sti­tut­ing more gener­ic terms, like tra­di­tion­al Friends or Christ-centered Friends. These terms also get prob­lem­at­ic if you scratch at them too hard. Reminder: God is the Word and our lan­guage is by def­i­n­i­tion limiting.

If you like the soci­ol­o­gy of such things, Isabel Pen­raeth wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Under­stand­ing Our­selves, Respect­ing the Dif­fer­ences. More recent­ly in FJ a Philadel­phia Friend, John Andrew Gallery, vis­it­ed Ohio Friends and talked about the spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends in Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing Gath­er­ing and Quak­er Spring. Much of the dis­cus­sion around the mod­ern phrase Con­ver­gent Friends and the threads on Quak­erQuak­er has focused on those who span a Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­er worldview.

The dis­tinc­tion between Con­ser­v­a­tives and Lib­er­als can become quite evi­dent when you observe how Friends con­duct a busi­ness meet­ing or how they present them­selves. It’s all too easy to veer into car­i­ca­ture here but Lib­er­al Friends are prone to rein­ven­tions and the use of impre­cise sec­u­lar lan­guage, while­Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends are attached to estab­lished process­es and can be unwel­com­ing to change that might dis­rupt inter­nal unity.

But even these brief obser­va­tions are impre­cise and can mask sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar tal­ents and stum­bling blocks. We all of us are humans, after all. The Inward Christ is always avail­able to instruct and com­fort, just as we are all bro­ken and prone to act impul­sive­ly against that advice.

Worshipping?

Final­ly, pret­ty much all Friends will wor­ship with any­one. Most local con­gre­ga­tions have their own dis­tinct fla­vor. There are some in which the min­istry is large­ly Chris­t­ian, with a Quaker-infused expla­na­tion of a para­ble or gospel, while there are oth­ers where you’ll rarely hear Christ men­tioned. You should try out dif­fer­ent meet­ings and see which ones feed your soul. Be ready to find nur­tu­rance in unex­pect­ed places. God may instruct us to serve any­where with no notice, as he did the Good Samar­i­tan. Christ isn’t bound by any of our sil­ly words.

Thanks to James for the question!

Do you have a ques­tion on anoth­er Quak­er top­ic? Check out the Ask Me Any­thing! page.

Recovering the past through photos

June 1, 2015

2015 looks like it’s shap­ing up to be the year that online cloud pho­to ser­vices all take a giant leapt for­ward. Just in the last few months alone, I’ve gone and dug up my ten-plus year pho­to archive from a rarely accessed back­up dri­ve (some 72 GB of files) and uploaded it to three dif­fer­ent pho­to services.

First it was Drop­box, whose Carousel app promised to change every­thing. For $10/month, I can have all of the dig­i­tized pho­tos I’ve ever tak­en all togeth­er. It changed how I access past events. Back in the day I might have tak­en 20 pic­tures and post­ed 2 to Flickr. The oth­er 18 were for all intents inac­ces­si­ble to me — on the back­up dri­ve that sits in a dusty draw­er in my desk. Now I could look up some event on my pub­lic Flickr, remem­ber the date, then head to Dropbox/Carousel to look through every­thing I took that day — all on my phone. Some­times I’d even share the whole roll from that event to folks who were there.

But this was a two-step process. Flickr itself had boost­ed its stor­age space last year but it wasn’t until recent­ly that they revealed a new Cam­era Roll and uploader that made this all work more seam­less­ly. So all my pho­tos again went up there. Now I didn’t have to jug­gle between two apps.

Last week, Google final­ly (final­ly!) broke its pho­tos from Google+ and the rem­nants of Picasa to give them their own home. It’s even more fab­u­lous than Flickr and Drop­box, in that its search is so good as to feel like mag­ic. Peo­ple, places, and image sub­jects all can be accessed with the search speed that Google is known for. And this ser­vice is free and uploads old videos.

Theo (identified by his baby nickname, "Skoochie") in a backpack as we scout for Christmas trees, December 2003.
Screen­shot of Theo (iden­ti­fied by his baby nick­name, “Skoochie”) and Julie, Decem­ber 2003.

I’m con­stant­ly sur­prised how just how emo­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful an old pho­to or video can be (I waxed lyri­cal­ly about this in Nos­tal­gia Comes Ear­ly, writ­ten just before our last fam­i­ly vaca­tion). This week­end I found a short clip from 2003 of my wife car­ry­ing our new­born in a back­pack and cit­ing how many times he had wok­en us up the night before. At the end she joked that she could guilt trip him in years to come by show­ing this video to him. Now the clip is some­thing I can find, load, and play in a few sec­onds right from my ever-present phone.

So what I’ve noticed is this quick access to unshared pho­tos is chang­ing the nature of my cell­phone photo-taking. I’m tak­ing pic­tures that I nev­er intend to share but that give me an estab­lish­ing shot for a par­tic­u­lar event: signs, dri­ve­way entrances, maps. Now that I have unlim­it­ed stor­age and a cam­era always with­in reach, I can use it as a quick log of even the most quo­tid­i­an life events (MG Siegler recent­ly wrote about The Pow­er of the Screen­shot, which is anoth­er way that quick and ubiq­ui­tous pho­to access is chang­ing how and what we save.) With GPS coor­di­nates and pre­cise times, it’s espe­cial­ly use­ful. But the most pro­found effect is not the activ­i­ty log­ging, but still the emo­tions release unlock­ing all-but-lost mem­o­ries: remem­ber­ing long-ago day trips and vis­its with old friends.

Visual storytelling through animated gifs and Vine

June 27, 2013

NPR’s Plan­et Mon­ey recent­ly ran an arti­cle on glass recy­cling, How A Used Bot­tle Becomes A New Bot­tle, In 6 Gifs. The Gif part is what intrigued me. A “gif” is a tightly-compressed image for­mat file that web design­ers leaned on a lot back in the days of low band­width. It’s espe­cial­ly good for designs with a few dis­creet col­ors, such as cor­po­rate logos or sim­ple car­toons. It also sup­ports a kind of prim­i­tive ani­ma­tion that was com­plete­ly overused in the late 90s to give web­pages fly­ing uni­corns and spin­ning globes.

Ani­mat­ed gifs have grown up. They make up half the posts on Tum­blr. They are often derived from fun­ny scenes in movies and come with humor­ous cap­tions. The Plan­et Mon­ey piece uses them for sto­ry­telling: text is illus­trat­ed by six gifs show­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the recy­cling process. The move­ment helps tell the sto­ry – indeed most of the shots would be visu­al­ly unin­ter­est­ing if they were static.

The short loops reminds me of Vine, the six-second video ser­vice from Twit­ter which I’ve used a lot for sil­ly kid antics. They can also tell a sim­ple sto­ry (they’re par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed to repet­i­tive kid antics: up the steps, down the slide, up the steps, down the slide, up…).

In my work with Friends Jour­nal I’ve done some 7 – 12 minute video inter­views with off-site authors using Google Hang­outs, which essen­tial­ly just records the video con­ver­sa­tion. It’s fine for what we use it for, but the qual­i­ty depends a lot on the equip­ment on the oth­er end. If the band­width is low or the web­cam poor qual­i­ty, it will show, and there are few options for post-production edit­ing. But hon­est­ly, this is why I use Hang­outs: a short web-only inter­view won’t turn into a week­long project.

Pro­duc­ing high-quality video requires con­trol­ling all of the equip­ment, shoot­ing ten times more footage than you think you’ll need, and then hours of work con­dens­ing and edit­ing it down to a sto­ry. And after all this it’s pos­si­ble you’ll end up with some­thing that does­n’t get many views. Few Youtube users actu­al­ly watch videos all the way through to the end, drift­ing away to oth­er inter­net dis­trac­tions in the first few minutes.

I like the com­bi­na­tion of the sim­ple short video clips (whether Vine or ani­mat­ed gif) wed­ded to words. My last post here was the very light-weight sto­ry about a sum­mer after­noon project. Yes­ter­day, I tried again, shoot­ing a short ani­mat­ed gif of Tibetan monks vis­it­ing a local meet­ing­house. I don’t think it real­ly worked. They’re con­struct­ing a sand man­dala grain-by-grain. The small move­ments of their fun­nel sticks as sand drops is so small that a reg­u­lar sta­t­ic pho­to would suf­fice. But I’ll keep exper­i­ment­ing with the form.