Recently in youth Category

This week I received an email from a young seeker in the Philadelphia area who found my 2005 article "Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings" published in FGConnections. She's a former youth ministries leader from a Pentecostal tradition, strongly attracted to Friends beliefs but not quite fitting in with the local meetings she's been trying. Somewhere she found my article and asks if I have any insights.

The 2005 article was largely pessimistic, focused on the "committed, interesting and bold twenty-something Friends I knew ten years ago" who had left Friends and blaming "an institutional Quakerism that neglected them and its own future" but my hope paragraph was optimistic:

There is hope... A great people might possibly be gathered from the emergent church movement and the internet is full of amazing conversations from new Friends and seekers. There are pockets in our branch of Quakerism where older Friends have continued to mentor and encourage meaningful and integrated youth leadership, and some of my peers have hung on with me. Most hopefully, there's a whole new generation of twenty- something Friends on the scene with strong gifts that could be nurtured and harnessed.

Hard to imagine that only three years ago I was an isolated FGC staffer left to pursue outreach and youth ministry work on my own time by an institution indifferent to either pursuit. Both functions have become major staff programs, but I'm no longer involved, which is probably just as well, as neither program has decided to focus on the kind of work I had hoped it might. The more things change the more they stay the same, right? The most interesting work is still largely invisible.

Some of this work has been taken up by the new bloggers and by some sort of alt-network that seems to be congealing around all the blogs, Twitter networks, Facebook friendships, intervisitations and IM chats. Many of us associated with QuakerQuaker.org have some sort of regular correspondence or participation with the Emerging Church movement, we regularly highlight "amazing conversations" from new Friends and seekers and there's a lot of inter-generational work going on. We've got a name for it in Convergent Friends, which reflects in part that "we" aren't just the liberal Friends I imagined in 2005, but a wide swath of Friends from all the Quaker flavors.

But we end up with a problem that's become the central one for me and a lot of others: what can we tell a new seeker who should be able to find a home in real-world Friends but doesn't fit? I could point this week's correspondent to meetings and churches hundreds of miles from her house, or encourage her to start a blog, or compile a list of workshops or gatherings she might attend. But none of these are really satisfactory answers.   

Elsewhere:

Gathering in Light Wess sent an email around last night about a book review done by his PhD advisor Ryan Bolger that talks about tribe-style leadership and a new kind of church identity that uses the instant communication tools of the internet to forge a community that's not necessarily limited to locality. Bolger's and his research partner report that they see "emerging initiatives within traditional churches as the next horizon for the spread of emerging church practices in the United States." More links from Wess' article on emerging churches and denominations.

Over on One Quaker Take, Timothy is surprised to read a definition of "Convergent Friend" that sounds a lot like a certain flavor of West Coast liberal Quakerism. It doesn't seem so surprising for me as it comes from Gregg Koskela, a pastor at an Evangelical Friends church. It was five years ago this month that I went to a loud pizza shop in Philadelphia to attend a  "Meet-Up" of readers of emerging church blogs and realized I had more common ground with these younger Evangelicals than I would have ever thought:

Just about each of us at the table were coming from different theological starting points, but it's safe to say we are all "post" something or other. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our churches have been providing aren't working for us. We are all trying to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one another in our church communities. There's something about building relationships that are deeper, more down-to-earth and real. Perhaps it's finding a way to be less dogmatic at the same time that we're more disciplined. For Friends, that means questioning the contemporary cultural orthodoxy of liberal-think (getting beyond the cliched catch phrases borrowed from liberal Protestantism and sixties-style activism) while being less afraid of being pecularily Quaker.

Rich the Brooklyn Quaker was recently asking about early Friends views of atonement and heaven and hell and it's a great post, but so is Marshall Massey's comment about how later Friends altered the message in distinctly different ways. The different flavors of Friends have spent a lot of energy minimizing certain parts of the Quaker message and over-emphasizing others and maybe the truth lies in some of the nuances we long ago paved over.

I have a working theory that a movement of "Convergence" will feel suspiciously liberal in evangelical circles, suspiciously evangelical in liberal circles, and suspiciously worldly in Quaker conservative circles. But that's almost to be expected. The work to be done is different depending on where we're starting from.

I don't think Friends are alone in these kinds of matters. I see this phenomenon in other religious denominations--the post-Evangelicals I broke pizza with back in 2003 weren't Quakers. But Friends might have a better way out of the existential puzzles that arise. For we (generally) believe that our action should be motivated first and foremost by the direct instruction of the risen Christ working on us now. That means we can't rely on canned answers. What worked in the past might not work now. The faith is the same. But what needs to be done and what needs to be preached is very much a here-and-now kind of proposition.

I can't help but think of Howard Brinton. Back in the 1950s his generation managed a reunification of East Coast Quaker factions that had been warring for over a century. One way they did it was hanging out together and then redefining what it meant to be a Friend. In Friends for 300 Years, Brinton argued that tests for membership shouldn't look at one's beliefs or practices. It was a truce and I'm sure it made sense at the time: there was a fairly strong consensus on what Quakerism meant and the fights at the edges over details were distracting. Fifty years later, there's little consensus among Philadelphia Friends and even those in leadership positions are loathe to talk about faith or practice except in a kind of code. I can't think of a single Philadelphia Friend who publicly expresses Quaker belief with the clarity or passion of mid-century figures like Brinton, Thomas Kelly or Rufus Jones.

What worked in the past might not work now. What sounds like old hat to to us might be very liberating for others. Convergence isn't very new. It's just keeping ourselves from ossifying into our own human concepts and staying open to the direct Christ. It's finding a way to maintain that crazy balance between tradition and the inward light. Same as it ever was.

It was five years ago this week that I sat down and wrote about a cool new movement I had been reading about. It would have been Jordan Cooper's blog that turned me onto Robert E Webber's The Younger Evangelicals, a look at generational shifts among American Evangelicals. I found it simultaneously disorienting and shocking that I actually identified with most of the trends Webber outlined. Here I was, still a young'ish Friend attending one of the most liberal Friends meetings in the country (Central Philadelphia) and working for the very organization whose initials (FGC) are international shorthand for hippy-dippy liberal Quakerism, yet I was nodding my head and laughing out loud at just about everything Webber said. Although he most likely never walked into a meetinghouse, he clearly explained the generational dynamics running through Quaker culture and I finished the book with a better understanding of why so much of our youth organizing and outreach was floundering on issues of tokenism and feel-good-ism.

My post, originally titled  "The Younger Evangelicals and the Younger Quakers,"  (here it is in its original context) started off as a book review but quickly became a Quaker vision manifesto. The section heads alone ticked off the work to be done:

• A re-examination of our roots, as Christians and as Friends
• A desire to grow
• A more personally-involved, time-consuming commitment
• A renewal of discipline and oversight
• A confrontation of our ethnic and cultural bigotries

When I wrote this, there wasn't much you could call Quaker blogging (Lynn Gazis-Sachs was an exception), and when I googled variations on "quakers" and "emerging church" nothing much came up. It's not surprising that there wasn't much of an initial response.

It took about two years for the post to find its audience and responses started coming from both liberal and evangelical Quaker circles. In retrospect, it's fair to say that the QuakerQuaker community gathered around this essay (here's Robin M's account of first reading it) and it's follow-up We're All Ranters Now (Wess talking about it). Five years after I postd it, we have a cadre of bloggers and readers who regularly gather around the QuakerQuaker water cooler to talk about Quaker vision. We're getting pieces published in all the major Quaker publications, we're asked to lead worships and we've got a catchy name in "Convergent Friends."

And yet?

All of this is still a small demographic scattered all around. If I wanted to have a good two-hour caffeine-fueled bull session about the future of Friends at some local coffeeshop this afternoon, I can't think of anyone even vaguely local who I could call up. A few years ago I started commuting pretty regularly to a meeting that did a good job at the Christian/Friends-awareness/roots stuff but not the discipline/oversight or desire-to-grow end of things. I've drifted away the last few months because I realized I didn't have any personal friends there and it was mostly an hour-drive, hour-worship, hour-drive back home kind of experience.

My main cadre five years ago were fellow staffers at FGC. A few years ago commissioned surveys indicated that potential donors would respond favorably to talk about youth, outreach and race stereotyping and even though these were some of the concerns I had been awkwardly raising for years, Development made clear it didn't want me around anymore. The most exciting outreach programs I worked on was a database that would collect the names and addresses of isolated Friends. It was quietly dropped a few months after I left (why not, the final donor report had been filed). The new muchly-hyped $100,000 program for outreach has this for its seekers page and follows the typical FGC pattern, which is to sprinkle a few rotating tokens in with a retreat center full of potential donors to talk about Important Topics. (For those who care, I would have continued building the isolated Friends database, mapped it for hot spots and coordinated with the youth ministry committee to send teams for extended stays to help plant worship groups. How cool would that be? Another opportunity lost.)

So where do we go?

I'm really sad to say we're still largely on our own. According to actuarial tables, I've recently crossed my life's halfway point and here I am still referencing generational change. How I wish I could honestly say that I could get involved with any committee in my yearly meeting and get to work on the issues raised in "Younger Evangelicals and Younger Quakers". Someone recently sent me an email thread between members of an outreach committee for another large East Coast yearly meeting and they were debating whether the internet was an appropriate place to do outreach work--in 2008?!? Britain Yearly Meeting has a beautifully produced new outreach website but I don't see one convinced young Friend profiled and it's post-faith emphasis is downright depressing (an involved youngish American Friend looked at it and reminded me that despite occassional attention, smart young seekers serious about Quakerism aren't anyone's target audience, here in the US or apparently in Britain).

A number of interesting "Covergent" minded Friends have an insider/outsider relationship with institutional Quakerism. Independent worship groups popping up and more are being talked about (I won't blow your cover guys!). I've seen Friends try to be more officially involved and it's not always good: a bunch of younger Quaker bloggers have disappeared after getting named onto Important Committees, their online presence reduced to inside jokes on Facebook with their other newly-insider pals.

What do we need to do:

• We need to be public figures;
• We need to reach real people and connect ourselves;
• We need to stress the whole package: Quaker roots, outreach, personal involvement and not let ourselves get too distracted by hyped projects that only promise one piece of the puzzle.

Here's my to-do list:

• CONVERGENT OCTOBER: Wess Daniels has talked about everyone doing some outreach and networking around the "convergent" theme next month. I'll try to arrange some Philly area meet-up and talk about some practical organizing issues on my blog.
  
• LOCAL MEETUPS: I still think that FGC's isolated Friends registry was one of its better ideas. Screw them, we'll start one ourselves. I commit to making one. Email me if you're interested;
• LOCAL FRIENDS: I commit to finding half a dozen serious Quaker buddies in the drivable area to ground myself enough to be able to tip my toe back into the institutional miasma when led (thanks to Micah B who stressed some of this in a recent visit).
• PUBLIC FIGURES: I've let my blog deteriorate into too much of a "life stream," all the pictures and twitter messages all clogging up the more Quaker material. You'll notice it's been redesigned. The right bar has the "life stream" stuff, which can be bettered viewed and commented on on my Tumbler page, Tumbld Rants. I'll try to keep the main blog (and its RSS feed) more seriously minded.

I want to stress that I don't want anyone to quit their meeting or anything. I'm just finding myself that I need a lot more than business-as-usual. I need people I can call lower-case friends, I need personal accountability, I need people willing to really look at what we need to do to be responsive to God's call. Some day maybe there will be an established local meeting somewhere where I can find all of that. Until then we need to build up our networks.

Like a lot of my big idea vision essays, I see this one doesn't talk much about God. Let me stress that coming under His direction is what this is all about. Meetings don't exist for us. They faciliate our work in becoming a people of God. Most of the inward-focused work that make up most of Quaker work is self-defeating. Jesus didn't do much work in the temple and didn't spend much time at the rabbi conventions. He was out on the street, hanging out with the "bad" elements, sharing the good news one person at a time. We have to find ways to support one another in a new wave of grounded evangelism. Let's see where we can all get in the next five years!

One of the things I liked about my old Quaker job is that I occasionally had a moment in between all of the staff meetings (and meetings about staff meetings, and meetings about meetings about staff meetings, I kid you not) to take interesting calls and emails from Friends wanting to talk about the state of Friends in their area: how to start a worship group if no Friends existed, how to revitalize a local Meeting, how to work through some growing pains or cultural conflicts. I've thought about replicating that on the blog, and halfway through responding to one of tonight's emails I realized I was practically writing a blog post. So here it is. Please feel free to add your own responses to this Friend in the comments.

Dear Martin
I have read that Meetings that are silent for long periods of time often wither away. But I can't remember where I read that, or if the observation has facts to back it up. Do you know of any source where I can look this up?
Thanks,
CC

Dear CC,
I can't think of any specific source for that observation. It is sometimes used as an argument against waiting worship, a prelude to the introduction of some sort of programming. While it's true that too much silence can be a warning sign, I suspect that Meetings that talk too much are probably also just as likely to wither away (at least to Inward Christ that often seems to speak in whispers). I think the determining factor is less decibel level but attention to the workings of the Holy Spirit.

One of the main roles of ministry is to teach. Another is to remind us to keep turning to God. Another is to remind us that we live by higher standards than the default required by the secular world in which we live. If the Friends community is fulfilling these functions through some other channel than ministry in meeting for worship then the Meeting's probably healthy even if it is quiet.

Unfortunately there are plenty of Meetings are too silent on all fronts. This means that the young and the newcomers will have a hard time getting brought into the spiritual life of Friends. Once upon a time the Meeting annually reviewed the state of its ministry as part of its queries to Quarterly and Yearly Meetings, which gave neighboring Friends opportunities to provide assistance, advise or even ministers. The practice of written answers to queries have been dropped by most Friends but the possibility of appealing to other Quaker bodies is still a definite possibility.
Your Friend, Martin

Robin M posts this week about two Convergent Events happening in California in the next month or two. And she also tries out a simplified definition of Convergent Friends:

people who are engaged in the renewal movement within the Religious Society of Friends, across all the branches of Friends.

It sounds good but what does it mean? Specifically: who isn't for renewal, at least on a theoretical level? There are lots of faithful, smart and loving Friends out there advocating renewal who don't fit my definition of Convergent (which is fine, I don't think the whole RSoF should be Convergent, it's a movement in the river, not a dam).

When Robin coined the term at the start of 2006 it seemed to refer to general trends in the Religious Society of Friends and the larger Christian world, but it was also referring to a specific (online) community that had had a year or two of conversation to shape itself and model trust and accountability. Most importantly we each were going out of our way to engage with Friends from other Quaker traditions and were each called on our own cultural assumptions.

The coined term implied an experience of sort. "Convergent" explicitly references Conservative Friends ("Con-") and the Emergent Church movement ("-vergent"). It seems to me like one needs to look at those two phenomenon and their relation to one's own understanding and experience of Quaker life and community before really understanding what all the fuss has been about. That's happening lots of places and it is not simply a blog phenomenon.

Nowadays I'm noticing a lot of Friends declaring themselves Convergent after reading a blog post or two or attending a workshop. It's becoming the term du jour for Friends who want to differentiate themselves from business-as-usual, Quakerism-as-usual. This fits Robin's simplified definition. But if that's all it is and it becomes all-inclusive for inclusivity's sake, then "Convergent" will drift away away from the roots of the conversation that spawned it and turn into another buzzword for "liberal Quaker." This is starting to happen.

The term "Convergent Friends" is being picked up by Friends outside the dozen or two blogs that spawned it and moving into the wild--that's great, but also means it's definition is becoming a moving target. People are grabbing onto it to sum up their dreams, visions and frustrations but we're almost certainly not meaning the same thing by it. "Convergent Friends" implies that we've all arrived somewhere together. I've often wondered whether we shouldn't be talking about "Converging Friends," a term that implies a parallel set of movements and puts the rather important elephant square on the table: converging toward what? What we mean by convergence depends on our starting point. My attempt at a label was the rather clunky conservative-leaning liberal Friend, which is probably what most of us in the liberal Quaker tradition are meaning by "Convergent."

I started mapping out a liberal plan for Convergent Friends a couple of years before the term was coined and it still summarizes many of my hopes and concerns. The only thing I might add now is a paragraph about how we'll have to work both inside and outside of normal Quaker channels to effect this change (Johan Maurer recently wrote an interesting post that included the wonderful description of "the lovely subversives who ignore structures and communicate on a purely personal basis between the camps via blogs, visitation, and other means" and compared us to SCUBA divers ("ScubaQuake.org" anyone?).

Robin's inclusive definition of "renewal" definitely speaks to something. Informal renewal networks are springing up all over North America. Many branches of Friends are involved. There are themes I'm seeing in lots of these places: a strong youth or next-generation focus; a reliance on the internet; a curiosity about "other" Friends traditions; a desire to get back to roots in the simple ministry of Jesus. Whatever label or labels this new revival might take on is less important than the Spirit behind it.

But is every hope for renewal "Convergent"? I don't think so. At the end of the day the path for us is narrow and is given, not chosen. At the end of day--and beginning and middle--the work is to follow the Holy Spirit's guidance in "real time." Definitions and carefully selected words slough away as mere notions. The newest message is just the oldest message repackaged. Let's not get too caught up in our own hip verbage, lecture invitations and glorious attention that we forget that there there is one, even Christ Jesus who can speak to our condition, that He Himself has come to teach, and that our message is to share the good news he's given us. The Tempter is ready to distract us, to puff us up so we think we are the message, that we own the message, or that the message depends on our flowery words delivered from podiums. We must stay on guard, humbled, low and praying to be kept from the temptations that surround even the most well-meaning renewal attempts. It is our faithfulness to the free gospel ministry that will ultimately determine the fate of our work.

The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here's some pictures, the first of those long-remembered tall stone walls and the rest of the beautiful chapel:

It was a silent retreat--for us at least. There were three talks about Teresa of Avila given by Father Tim Byerley, who also works with the Collegium Center, a kind of religious education outreach project for young adult Catholics in South Jersey (I mentioned it a few months ago as a model of young adult youth outreach that Friends might want to consider). Much of what Teresa has to say about prayer is universal and very applicable to Friends, though I have to admit I started spacing out by around the fourth mansion of the Interior Castle (I've never been good with numbered religious steps!).

I'm in no danger of following my wife Julie's journey from Friends to Catholicism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gathered group committed to a spirituality. The idea of religious life as self-abnegation is an important one for all Christians in an age where me-ism has become the secular state religion and I hope to return to it in the near future.

In early February I'm leading a young adult workshop up at New York Yearly Meeting's Powell 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 (registration form) 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!).

An amazing thing has happened in the last two years: we've got Friends from the corners of Quakerism sharing our similarities and differences, our frustrations and dreams through Quaker blogs. Disenchanted Friends who have longed for deeper conversation and consolation when things are hard at their local meeting have built a network of Friends who understand. When our generation is settling down to write our memoirs -- our Quaker journals -- a lot of us will have to have at least one chapter about becoming involved in the Quaker blogging community.

A guest piece by Evan Welkin

Shortly after finishing my second year at Guilford College, I set out to understand what brought me there. During the stressful process of deciding which college to attend, I felt a strong but slightly mysterious urge to explore Quakerism in my undergraduate years. Two years later, this same urge led me to buy a motorcycle, learn to ride it, and set out in a spiritual journey up the Eastern seaboard visiting Quaker meetings. While Guilford had excited and even irritated my curiosity about the workings of Quakerism, I knew little about how Quakers were over a large area of the country. I wanted to find out how Quakers worked as a group across a wide area of the country, and if I could learn how to be a leader within that community.

A workshop led by Zachary Moon and Martin Kelley at the 2005 FGC Gathering of Friends

This is for Young Friends who want to break into the power of Quakerism: it’s the stuff you didn’t get in First Day School. Connecting with historical Quakers whose powerful ministry came in their teens and twenties, we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order together to build a movement that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quaker history to reclaim the power of our tradition, to explore the living testimonies and our witness in the world. (P/T)

For those that might not have noticed, I have an article in the latest issue of the awkwardly-named FGConnections: Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings. Astute Quaker Ranter readers will recognize it as a re-hashing of The Lost Quaker Generation and its related pieces. Reaction has been quite interesting, with a lot of older Friends saying they relate to what I've said. It's funny how so many of us feel a sense of isolation from our own religious institutions!

I've been asked to write a piece for another publication. I'm mulling doing something around Gifts and Mentorship, built around some of the observations in It's my Language Now. It would be the positive "rolling up the sleeves" response to the FGConnections article. What do you all think? If we could get a message out to larger Quakerdom, what we want it to be?

A Guest Piece from 'Quakerspeak' Claire Reddy.

"As young Friends move through high school and enter the [young] adult world, there is often a general lack of communication between young Friends and adults in Meetings, as if there’s some tension about it... As the only active young Friend at my school (I'm sort of the 'token' Quaker around), I usually do not have anyone to talk to about my spiritual findings and leadings. As I have continued to develop spiritually, I find more and more I need other Friends to talk who are familiar with my struggles."

I was given permission to pass along this data from the FGC-sponsored Youth Ministry Consultation that took place Third Month. A number of goals and projects had been brainstormed beforehand. The thirty-or-so participants at the Consultation were each given ten stars, which they were asked to put next to the projects they thought should be pursued. Every star acted as a vote that there was one person interested in that topic. The stars were coded to indicate the age range of the voter: High-Schooler, Adult Young Friend (18-37 years old) and older Friends.

From the excellent religious journalism site The Revealer is Scott Korb's review of the new book by the National Survey of Youth and Religion (I talked about the survey a month ago). It's an great review, made better by the friendly disagreement in the commentary. But what struck me was his use of the terms "therapeutic individualism" and "moralistic therapeutic deism."

The authors first identify the social contexts in which adolescents live and believe, starting with a discussion of therapeutic individualism, a set of assumptions and commitments that "powerfully defines everyday moral and relational codes and boundaries in the United States." Personal experience is what shapes our notions of truth, and truth is found nowhere else but in happiness and positive self-esteem. In religious terms, according to teenagers, God cares that each teenager is happy and that each teenager has high self-esteem. Morality has nothing to do with authority, mutual obligations, or sacrifice.

But we're not talking about the teenagers here, are we? The review hints that this is the condition of the adults too, only we're better at couching it in more convincingly religious-sounding language. Did I say I attended two days of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sessions this weekend? More to come.

I like to rant. I like to break down Quaker sociology. But often I'm quiet about simply testifying to how Christ's love comforts me, guides me, elders me.

Here's an email from Danny, a new friend who I met at last week's FGC-sponsored "Youth Ministries Consultation." I liked his observations and asked if I could share this on the blog. I'm glad he said yes, since it's a good perspective on where one convinced 19 year old Friend is at.

Update: Here's Danny's new blog, Riding the Whale

One has to applaud the sheer honesty of the group of leading Quakers who have recently proposed turning the grounds of Philadelphia's historic Arch Street Meetinghouse into a retirement home. It makes perfect sense. Arch Street is the host for our annual sessions, where the average age is surely over 70. Why not institutionalize the yearly meeting reality?

This past weekend I took part in a "Youth Ministries Consultation" sponsored by Friends General Conference. Thirty Friends, most under the age of 35, came together to talk about their experience of Quakerism.

Just stumbled on the website of the National Study of Youth and Religion.

This fall Zachary Moon and I put together a workshop proposal for the 2005 Gathering, which has been approved: Strangers to the Covenant is the title and here's the short description:

This is for young Friends who want to break into the power of Quakerism: it's the stuff you didn't get in First Day School. We'll connect with historical Quakers whose powerful ministry came in their teens and twenties and we'll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order together to build a movement that rocked the world. We'll mine Quaker history to reclaim the power of our tradition, to explore the living power of the testimonies and our witness in the world.

A few weeks ago I got a bulk email from a prominent sixty-something Friend, who wrote that a programmed New Age practice popular in our branch of Quakerism over the last few years has been a "crucial spiritual experience for a great many of the best of our young adult Friends to whom [Liberal Friends] must look for its future" and that they represented the "rising generation of dedicated young adult Friends." Really? I thought I'd share a sampling of emails and posts I've gotten over just the last couple of days.

Jordan Cooper has been summarizing a new book by Reggie McNeil called "The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church." There are some interesting observations about Gen-Xers. I'd say that the only thing more worrisome than young believers being ignored is young believers suddently being noticed (more on this--much more--soon).

Incremental vs. Prophetic

Since I've written a lot about young adult minstry among Quakers I feel obligated to post the address of a new Yahoo group about the topic, focused on high school youth. I really don't feel led to contribute. No one there is looking at root causes for the crisis in youth retention. The suggestions for improvement offered so far are incremental when what's wrong is fundamental: deep-rooted institutional ageism and a fear of a robust and challenging prophetic ministry. There is hope for youth ministry among liberal Friends but I don't think it will come from this quarter. Still, it's worth checking out and some Quaker Ranter readers might want to join in the discussion.

How did Liberal Friends get to the place where many of our our younger members consider the sweat lodge ceremony to be the high point of their Quaker experience? The sweat lodge has given a generation of younger Friends an opportunity to commune with the divine in a way that their meetings do not. It has given them mentorship and leadership experiences which they do not receive from the older Friends establishment. I want to get to the point where younger Friends look at the sweat and wonder why they'd want to spend a week at a Quaker event playing Indian when they could be diving deeper into their own faith tradition.

Colleen Carroll's book The New Faithful is an attempt to examine the religious phenomenon of Christian theological "orthodoxy" among current twenty and thirty-somethings. We purchased this book out of a sense of longing to hear the stories of fellow young Christians sympathetic to the issues we face. We opened The New Faithful eager to hear the voice of someone in our age bracket crying from the rooftops. But her book is hardly unproblematic: she weakened the book when she decided to make it a Republican-Party calling card...

Now reading with Julie. The author is Colleen Carroll, a journalist in her late twenties. Another "Emergent Church" book, it focuses on Catholic renewal. Discovered via Orthodox Twenty-Somethings, a review in TheOoze.

Review/Thoughts By Julie & Martin

Colleen Carroll's book The New Faithful is an attempt to examine the religious phenomenon of Christian theological "orthodoxy" among current twenty and thirty-somethings. Her goal is to consider two groups: the young evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic devout. Considering that this demographic is virtually invisible to the religious and social establishments dominated predominantly by white, upper middle class/upper class Baby Boomers, Carroll's book represents a welcome and refreshing endeavor.

We purchased this book because we longing to hear stories of fellow young Christians sympathetic to the issues we face as two theologically conservative, post-liberal twenty/thirty-somethings. In an age dedicated to progress, openness, post-modernism, subjectivism, and, of course, metaphor, we're often written off as reactionaries, as if simply believing something too much is a form of violence or bigotry. We find we often have a lot more in common with those of other faiths who also take care to root themselves in their tradition.

We opened The New Faithful eager to hear the voice of someone in our age bracket crying from the rooftops, "There IS objective truth, and there are young people who believe his name is Jesus!" In this sense, Carroll's book has served as a reassurance that this demographic does, in fact, exist. But her book is hardly unproblematic.

The book started off great: Carroll's writing style not only held our attention but was also insightful. We identified with much of what she was relating. So much so, in fact, that we found ourselves underling paragraph after paragraph:

These young adults are not perpetual seekers. They are committed to a religious world view that grounds their lives and shapes their morality. They are not lukewarm believers or passionate dissenters. When they are embracing a faith tradition or deepening their commitment to it, they want to do so wholeheartedly or not at all. When they are attracted to tradition in worship or in spirituality, they want to understand the underlying reality of that tradition and use it to transform their lives. That sense of commitment and total acceptance of orthodoxy sets them apart from many of their peers and fellow believers who share their affection for the trappings of religious tradition but reject its theological and moral roots. p. 11

Not far into the book, however, an annoying tendency soon became manifest. It appeared as if Carroll has a rule of not talking to anyone who isn�t an Ivy League graduate with Tom Cruise looks and a stock broker past. A remarkable number of interviewees were described as having movie star features. They were from elite colleges. They were the trend-setters of the future.

At the first repetition of this formula, we thought she had probably written the book too fast and gotten careless with a repeated assertion. At the second repetition we grumbled that she needed a good copyeditor. By the third time, we concluded she just had major class insecurities and needed to spend a little one-on-one time with therapist.

Finally, we began to suspect something else was at work. Many of these interviewees worked, lived, and worshipped in the Washinton DC area. Carroll's focus on the uniqueness of her subjects as persons with innate leadership potential began to feel more and more like a promotion for a Future Leaders of America banquet. As we read on, it became more than obvious that she was writing this book for a particular audience. What we originally took to be sloppy journalism appeared more and more to be political talking-points. The first rule of interviews is to repeat the same points over and over so that the journalists will transmit the message you want. Why was a professional journalist writing on Gen-X relgious movements sounding so much like a politician?

Halfway through the book we finally decided to google "Colleen Carroll," found her website and learned that our suspicions were confirmed. After the book came out she was invited to a number of speaking engagements sponsored by conservative Repubican Party politicians. She was well-received and before long got one of the most coveted jobs a twenty-something reporter could hope for: speechwriter to the President himself, George W. Bush.

A certain amount of congratulations are in order: this is quite a feather-in-the-cap for an ambitious journalist. Unfortunately though, she weakened the book when she decided to make it a Republican-Party calling card. More than that, the book itself is a compromise. Carroll cannot be trusted because her scholarship is not real. She not only began with a premise and sought out to prove it; she intentionally rejected any phenomena that failed to serve her agenda.

While the book brilliantly critiques Baby Boomer liberals, it gives Boomer conservatives a free pass. There's nothing in this book that would upset a politically powerful, middle-aged conservative like Attorney General John Ashcroft. Just the opposite: this is a cooing love song promising that his spiritual and political offspring are resurging: good-looking, trend-setting, righteous conservatives are taking back the college campuses from the peace and justice Catholics at the Newman Center. Nor does the book take on the incestuous amplification and group-think inherent in many religious institutions. Sadly, Carroll steers clear of any issue that might divide the old conservatives from the new ones.

The book could have been more. When Carroll writes about the problems of Baby Boomer liberal othodoxy in contemporary religious life, she's fantastic. She has good observations and writes with wit and humor. As we're both politically liberal (or perhaps more accurately, post-liberal), we enjoyed this tremendously and would love to recommend this as a book that attempts to correct what we see as the over-reach and thoughtlessness that's overcome religious liberalism in the past few generations. But this audience would most likely see the uncritical conservative political agenda and dismiss Carroll's entire thesis. (Julie would actually still recommend the book, with the caveats she lists at the end of this review.)

It's instructive to compare this book to Robert Webber's The Younger Evangelicals (see my bookstore review here) which contrasts the three twentieth-century generations, showing that the new conservatism is often a knowing and sophisticated reappropriation of religious practices or attitudes that have been lost or de-emphasized. Webber's twenty-somethings don't fit neatly into old left/right, conservative/liberal political stereotypes, but instead bring a new perspectives on faithfulness, issue advocacy and self-identity.

How we longed to see Carroll turn her observant gaze on examples that flew in the face of picture-perfect, white, upper-middle class, Christian traditionalists. The voice of a sincere, devout gay Catholic who was traditionalist in everything but his sexual orientation, for example. Or some D.C.-area activist who took his cue from Pope John Paul II and was outspokenly anti-war and critical of Presidential appeals to Christians to support the Iraq War. Or someone who worked on the street to build ties of understandings between Christians and Muslims as a way to defuse the "War on Terror" rhetoric. We could list dozens of examples like these, of individuals who are theologically conservative, but not necessarily politically conservative. It is apparent to us, as witnesses to this on a daily basis, that all too often theological liberals feel that they must also be politically liberal, and vice versa. This is not always the case. This is a major issue for many young Christians, and a divisive issue generationally. But Carroll wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole--it's simply too controversial. And besides, it would be too messy, it would spoil her neat and tidy thesis.

We're still only two-thirds of the way through the book. We've read reviews that it picks up again later. She's on EWTN tonight (March 11) & we're really looking forward to seeing it. Despite our reservations, we really like a lot of what she's saying. It's just that we wish she had said so much more. She tries so hard not to alienate politicaly-conservative Boomers that she backs off a lot of important issues just as she's about to say something interesting. It's fine if she's a Republican, but why does she consistently insist that the conservative religious orthodoxy has to line up so perfectly with the conservative political powers that be?

More to come as we continue reading the book....

---

Note: Julie would recommend the book, but with serious reservations. Her reason: There are NO other books that she considers worthwhile out there that are attempting to describe this phenomena. Her reservations: 1. Carroll's scholarship is awful. No, it's actually painful it's so bad. She doesn't even quote studies themselves. She was obviously too lazy to read the actual studies so instead read, for example, Time Magazine's synopsis of a study and so instead quoted that. She also quotes highly questionable sources. Also, her sample is not at all adequate. This leads to point #2: Carroll seems to have race and class issues and they stick out like a sore thumb in the book. It would've been cool to hear from a few African-American Catholics and the struggles they face in the Church, for example. And hey, what about some homely people too?! Not all of us Catholic traditionalists look like fashion models. And 3. Carroll, in my humble opinion, compromised the very endeavor she undertook because, while The New Faithful is really an extended opinion piece, she tried to make it look as if it was academically responsible (or at least quasi-scholarly), and it is not. The point: take The New Faithful with a grain of salt. Realize that yes, likely the phenomenon of Christian orthodoxy among the young is probably legitimate, but that her picture of it is not. She makes good points, it is an interesting read, and it may be foundational for future writers on this topic. For that, Julie would like to thank Colleen Carroll for being so perceptive and for taking the time to write the book.

One of the pieces I helped put online in my role of FGC webmaster is FGC Religious Education: Lessons for the 21st Century, by Beckey Phipps. It's definitely worth a read. It's comprised of interviews of three Friends:

Ernie Buscemi: "It is the most amazing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quaker] leadership programs--they've disappeared. I see the same thing [happening] as a woman and person of color, we are doing something wrong."

Marty Grundy: "Our branch [of Friends] has discarded the tools by which earlier Friends' practices were formed. We've lost our understanding of what it is that we are about."

Arthur Larrabee: "We need to tap into God's energy and God's joy. Early Friends had that energy, they had a vision, they had the connection with the inward Christ, a source of infinite energy power and joy."

While I wish this could be extended a bit (e.g., why not ask the 'kids' themselves where they've gone), at least these are the right questions.

There's that famous scene in the 1968 movie "Planet of the Apes" when our astronaut protagonist Charlton Heston realizes that the spaceship that brought him to the land where apes rule didn't travel in space but in time. He's escaping the primate theocracy, heading north along the coast, when he rounds a corner to see the charred ruin remains of the Statue of Liberty lying in the sand. He falls to his knees and screams out "YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!" He realizes that it was his own people who had destroyed everything they loved with their inattention and pettiness.

Yesterday my old friend Chris Parker posted a comment to "The Lost Quaker Generation" essay where he wondered if "the Quaker community has lost its vitality" (scroll down to third entry). I first met Chris at a 1997 conference in Burlington NJ for "Quaker Volunteer Service, Training, & Witness". I had been excited by the prospect of a group of people deepening and exploring the roots of Quaker witness and wasn't disappointed with the conversations and new friendships. Chris a recent MDiv from the Earlham School of Religion now now working at the AFSC; he left the conference passionate about helping to create something new. While working with the AFSC, he started pulling together a national Quaker network of volunteer opportunities. This was a ministry, pure and simple, from one of the more active, visionary and hardworking twenty-something Friends I've known. But frustrations mounted, support evaporated. As I remember even his monthly meeting couldn't unify around supporting this ministry. The project eventually fell apart as our email correspondence grew sketchy.

A month or so ago I got an email from Chris with his new address, a yoga retreat center in New England. I responded back with personal news but also with regrets that Quakerism had apparently lost him. Part of his comments from yesterday:

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. 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.

He's right of course: Kripalu undoubtedly touches more spiritual lives than unprogrammed Quakerism. But the real lesson is that Kripalu knows what a gem they have in Chris: they've given him the kind of responsibilities and encouragement that Quakers didn't.

Chris was one of those involved Friends I had hoped to grow old with. I had imagined us running into each other in half a dozen committees over the next fifty years. We could have gone on backpacking trips together, invited each other to our kids' weddings, had catch-up lunches at Quaker conferences, consoled each other through grief, thought about how to "transmit our faith" to the next generation of Friends. Chris Parker was worth more to Quakerism than any number of outreach initiatives or peace networks. Chris was the real deal: a committed, impassioned Friend. And now he's one of Quakerism's scarred and rusted statues, tributes to what could have been.

He put his story up on a website way back when. I'm just going to extensively quote it here:

I feel an urgency about this project because it has come to me that Quakers are about to be needed by the larger culture. Underneath the ills we face as a nation is a spiritual problem of violence and dominance over other people and life. Friends have a tradition that presents an alternative. The essential gem of Quakerism is the knowledge that each person is part of the divine, that we need to treat everybody as equal and sacred. While I am comfortable with more witness than Friends usually muster, I do believe that faith is more easily caught than taught. Service has been an experience where many are exposed to Quakers, with the opportunity to inspire and bring transformations.

But the Society of Friends is not in great shape. Friends are unfocused and tired. Often young adult Friends are missing. I have listened jealously to an ear-lier generation tell how AFSC workcamps formed them and taught them how to be leaders. While Quakerism is very good for seekers, my generation seems to need an experience given to them, which is a different energy. My friends from Brethren Volunteer Service were inspired and equipped for a life of commitment they probably wouldn't have otherwise choosen.

My inspirations have assembled slowly over the last six years. I went to Earlham School of Religion to prepare to be of service. There I was inspired by friends who had participated in Brethern Volunteer Service. At the same time I worked as Assistant Director of a peer counseling program where I watched the teens blossom and transform when trusted with the opportunity to help others and have a real impact.

Can Quakerism survive if we can't keep Friends like this?

Context and observations arising from my Nonviolence.org post, Where is the grassroots contemporary nonviolence movement? A comparison of 1970s peace culture with today's emergent church culture, with observations and cautions for contemporary Quaker peace networks.

Over on Nonviolence.org, I've posted something I originally started writing for my personal site: Where is the grassroots contemporary nonviolence movement?. It asks why there's no the kind of young, grassroots culture around peace like the networks that I see "elsewhere on the net."

The piece speaks for itself but there is one point of context and a few observations to make. The first is that the grassroots culture I was thinking of when I wrote the piece was the "emergent church," "young evangelical" movement. Thirty years ago the kids I've met at Circle of Hope, a Philadelphia "emergent church" loosely affiliated with the Brethren could easily have been at a Movement for New Society* training: the culture, the interests, the demographics are all strikingly similar.

(MNS was a national but West Philly-centered network of group houses, publications, and organizing that forged the identities of many of the twenty-somethings who participated; Nonviolence.org is arguably a third-generation descendant of MNS, via New Society Publishers where I worked for six years).

The observation for Friends is that retro-organizing like the relatively-new "Pendle Hill Peace Network" [website URL long since dropped & picked up by spammer] will have a really hard time acting as any sort of outreach project to twenty-somethings (a main goal according to a talk given my monthly meeting by its director). The grassroots peace-centric communities that were thriving when the Network sponsors were in their twenties don't exist anymore. Rather predictably, the photographs of the next two dozen speakers for the Pendle Hill Peacebuilding Forum series show only one who might be under forty (maybe, and she's from an exotic locale which is why she gets in). I'm glad that a generation of sixty-something Quaker activists are guaranteed steady employment, but don't any Quaker institutions think there's one American activist under forty worth listening to?

I think the best description of this phenomenon comes from the military. They call it "incestuous amplification" and define it as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lockstep agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation." I suspect that peace activists are so worried about their own relevancy that they have a hard time recognizing new peers or changed circumstances.

These numbers and the lack of speaker diversity explain why I rarely even bother with Quaker peace conferences anymore. I wouldn't mind being overlooked in my peace ministry if I saw other activists my age being recognized. But I can't take my invisibility as feedback since it's clearly not about me or my work. The homogeneity of the speakers lists at most conferences sends a clear message that younger people aren't wanted except as passive audience members clapping for the inspiring fifty- to seventy-somethings on stage. How much of current retro peace organizing is just self-stroking Boomer fantasy?

The in-group incestuousness has created a generation gap of relevancy. When institutions and movements become myopic, they become irrelevant to those locked outside. We have to go elsewhere to build our identities.

The internet is one place to go. From there it's clear that the institutional projects don't have the "buzz," i.e., the support and excitment, that the Gen-X led projects do. The internet alone won't save us: there's only so much culture one can build online and computer-mediated discussions favor argumentation, rationality, and ideological correctness. But it's one of the few venues open to outsiders without cash or institutional clout.

But what about the content of a twenty-first century twenty-something peace movement?

Many of today's twenty-something Quakers were raised up as secular peace activists. Our religious education programs often de-emphasize controversial issues of faith and belief to focus on the peace testimony as the unifying Quaker value. Going to protests is literally part of the curriculum of many Young Friends programs. Even more of a problem, older Friends are often afraid to share their faith plainly and fully with younger Friends on a one-on-one basis. The practice of personal and Meeting-based spritual mentorship that once transmitted Friends values between generations is very under-utilized today.

Almost all of these Friends stop participating in Quakerism as they enter their twenties, coming back only occasionally for reunion-type gatherings. Many of these lapsed Friends are out exploring alternative spiritual traditions that more clearly articulate a faith that can give meaning and purpose to social action. I have friends in this lost Quaker generation that are going to Buddhist temples, practicing yoga spirituality, building sweat lodges and joining evangelical or Roman Catholic churches. Will they really be won back with another lecture series? What would happen if we Friends started articulating the deep faith roots of our own peace testimony? What if we started testifying to one another about that great Power that's taken away occasion for war, what if our testimony became a witness to our faith?

Why are a lot of the more thoughtful under-40s going to alternative churches and what are they hoping to find there?

Don't get me wrong: I hope these new peace initiatives do well and help to build a thriving twenty-something activist scene again. It's just that for fifteen years I've seen a sucession of projects aimed at twenty-somethings come and go, failing to ignite sustaining interest. I worry that things won't change until sponsoring organizations seriously start including younger people in the decision-making process from their inception and start recognizing that our focus might be radically different.

---

Postscript

The idea of younger Friends actually taking leadership and starting a major peace initiative is not theoretical. My Nonviolence.org project is Google's top-ranked source for "nonviolence" and "Iraq anti-war" organizing, with thousands of visitors every day (over a million a year). It's been operating continuously since 1995, bringing up-to-date news and commentary about the peace movement, winning awards and getting write-ups in the top national papers. It is largely self-funded through my sucession of Quaker day jobs.

UPDATE: The Pendle Hill Peace Network was laid down in late 2005. The cited reason was "budgetary constraints," an empty excuse that sidesteps any responsibility for examining vision, inclusion or implimentation. It's forum is now an advertising stage for "free mature porn pics." It's very sad and there's no joy in saying "I told you so."

I share some observations about the different way institutional and outsider Friends use the internet in How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net.

Observations on the first Philadelphia Indie Allies Meetup. "Just about each of us at the table were coming from different theological starting points, but it's safe to say we are all 'post' something or other. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our churches have been providing aren't working for us. We are all trying to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one another in our church communities."

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 live).

---

Update 10/05

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 and 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 will be retired or in the graves ten years from now and 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 sons & daughters 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."