The other day I had lunch with an old friend of mine, a thirty-something Quaker very involved in nation-wide pacifist organizing. I had lost touch with him after he entered a federal jail for participating in a Plowshares action but he’s been out for a few years and is now living in Philly.
We talked about a lot of stuff over lunch, some of it just movement gossip. But we also talked about spirituality. He has left the Society of Friends and has become re-involved in his parents’ religious traditions. It didn’t sound like this decision had to do with any new religious revelation that involved a shift of theology. He simply became frustrated at the lack of Quaker seriousness.
It’s a different kind of frustration than the one I feel but I wonder if it’s not all connected. He was drawn to Friends because of their mysticism and their passion for nonviolent social change. It was this combination that has helped power his social action witness over the years. It would seem like his serious, faithful work would be just what Friends would like to see in their thirty-something members but alas, it’s not so. He didn’t feel supported in his Plowshares action by his Meeting.
He concluded that the Friends in his Meeting didn’t think the Peace Testimony could actually inspire us to be so bold. He said two of his Quaker heroes were John Woolman and Mary Dyer but realized that the passion of witness that drove them wasn’t appreciated by today’s peace and social concerns committees. The radical mysticism that is supposed to drive Friends’ practice and actions have been replaced by a blandness that felt threatened by someone who could choose to spend years in jail for his witness.
I can relate to his disappointment. I worry about what kinds of actions are being done in the name of the Peace Testimony, which has lost most of its historic meaning and power among contemporary Friends. It’s invoked most often now by secularized, safe committees that use a rationalist approach to their decision-making, meant to appeal to others (including non-Friends) based solely on the merits of the arguments. NPR activism, you might say. Religion isn’t brought up, except in the rather weak formulations that Friends are “a community of faith” or believe there is “that of God in everyone” (whatever these phrases mean). That we are led to act based on instructions from the Holy Spirit directly is too off the deep end for many Friends, yet the peace testimony is fundamentally a testimony to our faith in God’s power over humanity, our surrender to the will of Christ entering our hearts with instructions which demand our obedience.
But back to my friend, the ex-Friend. I feel like he’s just another eroded-away grain of sand in the delta of Quaker decline. He’s yet another Friend that Quakerism can’t afford to loose, but which Quakerism has lost. No one’s mourning the fact that he’s lost, no one has barely noticed. Knowing Friends, the few that have noticed have probably not spent any time reaching out to him to ask why or see if things could change and they probably defend their inaction with self-congratulatory pap about how Friends don’t proselytize and look how liberal we are that we say nothing when Friends leave.
God!, this is terrible. I know of DOZENS of friends in my generation who have drifted away from or decisively left the Society of Friends because it wasn’t fulfilling its promise or its hype. No one in leadership positions in Quakerism is talking about this lost generation. I know of very few thirty-something Friends who are involved nowadays and very very few of them are the kind of passionate, mystical, obedient-to-the-Spirit servants that Quakerism needs to bring some life back into it. A whole generation is lost – my fellow thirty-somethings – and now I see the passionate twenty-somethings I know starting to leave. Yet this exodus is one-by-one and goes largely unremarked and unnoticed (but then I’ve already posted about this: It will be in decline our entire lives).
Update 10/2005
I feel like I should add an addendum to all this. As I’ve spoken with more Friends of all generations, I’ve noticed that the attention to younger Friends is cyclical. There’s a thirty-year cycle of snubbing younger Friends (by which I mean Friends under 40). Back in the 1970s, all twenty-year-old with a pulse could get recognition and support from Quaker meetings; I know a lot of Friends of that generation who were given tremendous opportunities despite little experience. A decade later the doors had started to close but a hard-working faithful Friend in their early twenties could still be recognized. By the time my generation came along, you could be a whirlwind of great ideas and energy and still be shut out of all opportunities to serve the Religious Society of Friends.
The good news is that I think things are starting to change. There’s still a long way to go but a thaw is upon us. In some ways this is inevitable: much of the current leadership of Quaker institutions is retiring. Even more, I think they’re starting to realize it. There are problems, most notably tokenism — almost all of the younger Friends being lifted up now are the children of prominent “committee Friends.” The biggest problem is that a few dozen years of lax religious education and “roll your own Quakerism” means that many of the members of the younger generation can’t even be considered spiritual Quakers. Our meetinghouses are seen as a place to meet other cool, progressive young hipsters, while spirituality is sought from other sources. We’re going to be spending decades untangling all this and we’re not going to have the seasoned Friends of my generation to help bridge the gaps.
Related Reading
- After my friend Chris posted below I wrote a follow-up essay, Passing the Faith, Planet of the Quakers Style.
- Many older Friends hope that a resurgence of the peace movement might come along and bring younger Friends in. In Peace and Twenty-Somethings I look at the generational strains in the peace movement.
- Beckey Phipps conducted a series of interviews that touched on many of these issues and published it in FGConnections. FGC Religious Education: Lessons for the 21st Century asks many of the right questions. My favorite line: “It is the most amazing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quaker] leadership programs – they’ve disappeared.”
Hi Martin. Great post. I did dig in to a few of your points, however, in a post I made to my own blog! Not being too savvy yet about all the techie aspects of blogging, I’ve just found out how the trackback works – by ticking off that little box in my typepad posting window, and then seeing that it pings your site and shows up on your blog in the “trackback” section. Cool! Thanks for writing these thoughtful, challenging posts.
Kenneth
Well, I’m one of these thirty somethings that has drifted away. I’m sure each of us has our own story. I did try to help organize, but that turned out to be a bitter and unsuccessful experience. A long story for another time
There are a lot of different forces at work. Some of them a simply what happens when you gather humans together. Ever run across a book by Ken Wilbur, called Boomerites? It’s a lament over narcissm of the mid-life crowd. Thirty somethings are up against the cultural phenominon that is a lot bigger than Quakerism.
But the spirit flows in many directions and if the Quaker community has lost it’s vitality or doesn’t work for some people, there are other places there. Holding on too tightly to Quakerism is to hold on to a human creation.
I am now living and working at Kripalu yoga center, a place that many call a spiritual home. We have 60,000 people on our mailing list, of whom about 68% have come here as a guest. There are about 30,000 unprogrammed Quakers.
When I converted from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship to Christ, I discovered that I seemed to have much in common with the early Quakers. I was reading various texts on Quakerism and was flabbergasted at some of the beliefs and experiences I had in common with the writers.
But modern Quakerism seems like a whole different story. I have encountered two modern Quaker groups and heard precious little from them about being led by the Holy Spirit or even about Christ. I admire several of modern Quakers’ activist efforts, but they’re just efforts if not led by the Power of God!
Not finding a Quaker congregation I felt comfortable with, I have become entrenched in my local Methodist congregation. They’re not perfect; no congregation is. But at least they know Who leads.
I sympathise very much with Rita Tiefert – I find that I agree in theological matters with the early Quakers and that in turn leads to peace concerns, but these days so many Friends deny Christ his proper place as leader of the Society.
If a person is not being led by Christ, what’s the point in “fighting for peace”, or for anything for that matter?
The most important thing is the relationship with Jesus Christ and if that’s not there to begin with, little else matters.
One has to know why he or she is working for peace in the first place.
It’s sometimes difficult to remain respectful to the individual persons who call themselves liberal Quakers while at the same time letting the world know the proper place of Jesus Christ in our Society.
Today it seems as though the very mention of the Lord’s name is offensive to some Friends, and as though those of us who keep alive the love of Jesus Christ are looked upon as “misinformed” at best, and stupid or oldfashioned at worst. It’s extremely disheartening and has caused many people who would otherwise be attracted to Quakerism to turn to more thoroughly Christian groups such as the Methodists and Episcopalians.
So in short, I agree with Rita – there’s little point in having a Quakerism without Christ. It’s too easy to get lost if people don’t even know who’s leading them!
People move on. What leads Quakers or any human group to suppose that they’re unique? I once led a small group of Quakers at a retreat in N.C. I asked them if anyone ever had a feeling that there might be something better than Quakers.
Most people were emphatic in their denial (ultra tribalistic?) One young lady nodded her head vigorously. She was looking!
Me too! I sojourn with Quakers because they’re the best (for me) available at the moment. But God has all kinds of surprises for us.
Many Quakers are supposed to join at 20, go somewhere else later. It’s a journey; it’s nothing like yours— or anybody elses for that matter.
Wake up! Realize that Quakers are not as different as they would like to be. Strengths? yes! weaknesses? yes! God has different things in mind of us, ole buddy. Maybe even for you.
Hi Larry,
It’s great to see someone finding this two year old post and (perhaps) reviving the conversation.
You’re very right of course about the tribal nature of many Friends groups. Our approach is not meaningful because we’ve named it, codified it, institutionalized it and set up a dozen committees to oversee it. The Quaker path of the Christian highway is meaningful only in the way it’s a true way to God and that truth is truth only if it transcends us and our names for it.
That said, it is the job of Friends to be true to ourselves and to God’s call. We are the inheritors of a tradition that does have some important (if not unique) insights. I don’t think God is done with us. Which means its our responsibility to keep this thing going once we’re gone: to inspire, lift up and celebrate the ever-changing renewal and rebirth that is the next generation.
Looking back at this after two year’s time I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s not just “those Quaker’s” job to make sure we’re following our path, it’s “us Quaker’s” job. Whenever we’re gathered together, in whatever group we’re in, it is us who are the Quakers and we are Quakers not because the sign outside says we are but because we are devoted to following the call of the inward Christ. There are times when we should stop thinking of ourselves as sojourners, to come out of the desert into the city, to share the good news we’ve been given and to polish up the outward temple so it shines forth anew. It will start getting smudgy right away but that’s a lesson for us: we’re all living in human time but as people of faith it’s our job to point the way to God’s eternal time.
I’m simply one person lifting up one concern. The faithfulness lies in continuing in prayer for greater discernment, in waiting for those times when the Spirit indicates it is right to bring the concern to the larger body, in being patient even when the concern is not taken up (in the knowledge that a true concern won’t die or go away), and in being bold when the time to speak has come.