Philosophers Rediscovering Plainness and Integrity in an Always-Online World

August 12, 2026

08/12/202608/12/2026 · Martin Kelley

I love it when cultural essayists rediscover a core Quaker observation about plainness and human nature and give it a new name. Remember a few that’s ago when “normcore” became a thing?

Now we have “uni-context,” the idea that our online social lives bleed into all of our different networks (think: friends, work colleagues, romantic interests) so much that the networks have been flattened; the “context” has “collapsed” (there’s a whole Wikipedia post on this). The refinement of this idea into “uni-context” comes from Agnes Callard, a UChicago prof. Where once we could show different faces to different audiences, now everyone sees all.

First off, I’m not sure I really buy it from a cultural tech perspective. The original Facebook ideal of wide social graphs and public accounts feels like a dinosaur. I picked up this article from Jason Kottke, who notes that “blogs have global context.” Twenty years ago, yes, many of us were living very public online lives — or at least made an image of ourselves that was very accessible on blogs and in networks like the OG image-sharing network Flickr, which defaulted to public access.

I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Gen Z is mostly absent from public spaces like Facebook and usually keeps pretty locked-down accounts. The app that has come to define the 2020s is TikTok (and its clones), which is a highly performative space where most of us consume, not create. I had a great after-meeting talk with two younger Quakers this weekend about outreach. Most of their discussions happen on various Discords, networks so private you generally can’t even find out about particular “server” except through word of mouth. When I asked them how interested seekers were supposed to find local Friends if everything was locked down on private networks, one of them suggested there should be an email list. I’m glad I wasn’t drinking any coffee at that moment because I would have had a real-life spit take. My first Quaker organizing thirty years ago was putting together an email contact list first for YAFs in my area and then worldwide because I didn’t see anyone else doing it. Back then local YAF networks were invisible to outsiders because the web as we know it barely existed. One could argue that GenZ has reinvented the privacy but also invisibility of the 1990s.

But granting the “uni-context” conceit for argument, this is a big post of Quaker plainness. Yes there were mostly unwritten rules but if you open up an old copy of one of the *Books of Discipline* and turn to the plainness section, you’ll find that it focuses on intention. My favorite query asks if you dress in a way “calculated to please a vain and wanton mind.”

It is the Quaker concept of *intregrity* at play. Going back to root meanings, something that is integral cannot be broken into pieces without losing its identity. We should act and present ourselves in the same way in all context. Who we are should be who we are, whether at work, play, church, etc. Similarly our *yeas* should be *yeas* and our *nays* *nays* in all context so that we don’t need a special incantation of swearing to tell the absolute truth.

Of course our lives are complex. I’m a runner and I put on running gear when I go out, especially in the August heat. But I’m not doing that for a calculated reason but a practical one. And I often have a pre-run running shirt on when I log into a work Zoom call.

Anyway it’s sort of sad that so many Friends have consigned old Quaker practices to the dust heap. The ethics, if not the details, might be something philosophers are seeking today.

A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird

Once you learn what the “uni-context” is, you won’t stop seeing it everywhere

www.derekthompson.org

Finding the Sweet Harmony in Friends Worship

August 5, 2026

08/05/202608/07/2026 · Martin Kelley

I interview John Helding on the Quaker Talk podcast about “worship fluid” Quakerism.

The new issue of Friends Journal is up. I wrote the Among Friends intro this month, waxing lyrically on the “sonic landscape” of my meeting in August:

The sounds of our August silence are far from pure. Although the calls of red-shouldered hawks can be a bit harsh, hearing them reminds me that a family shares the trees of our burial ground. The crunch of the gravel in the driveway reassures me that one of our perpetual late-comers is about to join our fellowship. Not all the sounds are natural, of course. Once or twice in the hour someone will redline a motorcycle on the street outside, the whiny revs and gear changes drifting over to bounce inside our worship space. I usually try to tune out this sound, but sometimes I smile instead, knowing that someone is having fun on a hot summer day. I say a little prayer for their safety and wish them well.

I’ve also recorded a new episode of my author video podcast with John Helding, who wrote How Can I Keep from Singing? The Marvelous Mystery of Worship-Fluid Meetings. He tells a great story of going from a very died-in-the wool unprogrammed meeting to Lopez Island Worship Group (now full Quaker meeting) that scheduled monthly singing worship and worship sharing. I think I’m always going to prefer the model of sitting down quietly and waiting for the Holy Spirit but I do appreciate that it’s hard to build up a meeting culture that invites ministry. I’m happy that the worship sharing at Lopez Island helped uncork nascent ministry in the standard, open worship.

As I wrote a few years ago, I think ministry should be an expected miracle and not have quite so high a bar that people are intimidated from speaking. It takes practice to know when ministry is Spirit-led and maybe part of that practice is not always getting it right. I know some meetings face the opposite problem: ministry that is perhaps too frequent and too headstrong and inappropriate. But a Friends Meeting is a bit like a choir in that it is always needing creative renegotiation to find the sweet harmony. We are a chosen family that just shows up every week, with people experienced and new working and learning how to hold the body together.

Reddit Thread on Quakers and Generative AI Art

August 4, 2026

08/04/202608/06/2026 · Martin Kelley

An interesting Reddit thread on “Quakers and Generative AI Art” by user balsawoodspirit.

I encourage Friends to please remember that Generative AI art is produced unethically from AI models that scrape the work of real artists without consent or compensation. In the last few weeks, I have encountered two instances of Quakers using Generative AI as a part of their Outreach. This is deeply disturbing to me. There is no legitimate reason to use Generative AI Art. You can use open source images, you can hire artists, or you can make your own art. Or, use no art at all. Better that than to steal from artists and display art you hand no hand in making.

My Facebook feed is awash in terrible AI art accompanied by terrible AI-written feel-good stories, shared as much by Quakers as by any other demographic (my bad for still being on there, perhaps).

Quakerism is a spirituality that requires active participation. You can’t just nod off in the back (well, you can but you shouldn’t). Quaker communities have been lived experiences. As someone who works daily with writers, it’s stunning just how much AI has become a crutch for people. There are some very active writers in Quaker online spaces whose work is mostly AI. Is it for the social boost that comes from being ubiquitous?

A weird tangent but hear me out: if you read a lot of classic Quaker journals, there’s frequently stories from their teens in which the author consciously wrestles with plain dress. They talk about the lost friendships that came when they adopted a more uniform style and also about how hard it is to discern and navigate the inevitable voice of pride inside themselves (look at me, I’m plain!) with their legitimate wish and leading to be of use to the fellowship. That process of wrestling with ego is something that never ends for any of us, but especially not one of these ministers. Knowing when ministry is Spirit-led or ego-fed is a core competency for this work. In the end, the dress didn’t matter so much. But the “baby steps” of worrying about it was an early workout of those discernment muscles.

When we turn to AI we stop working those muscles and offload so much to the machine. Skipping the baby steps means we’re not necessarily going to be as practiced when important decisions need to be made. Let’s put out bad art if it means we’ll start learning how to put out more authentic art as we develop.

U.S, Quaker Colleges Responding to War in the 1940s

July 31, 2026

07/31/202608/06/2026 · Martin Kelley

From Sergei Grushko, a look at the choices of Quaker institutions in a time of war:

World War II presented a severe challenge for American colleges. But perhaps no group faced a more difficult dilemma than the institutions of higher education founded by Quakers. How could they reconcile a centuries-old witness to peace with the need to survive?

I didn’t know much of this history and never thought about the existential threats to higher education in the 1940s when campuses were largely emptied of their male students.

Quaker colleges in the USA during World War II

Political and cultural observations in light of Quaker discipleship.

blog.canyoubelieve.me

The Peaceable Kingdom Lost

June 30, 2026

06/30/202608/06/2026 · Martin Kelley

A story by Charles Fox of just a few of the massacres of Indigenous people in Pennsylvania in the late 1700s. While the Friends and Moravians often harbored endangered Susquehannock, their pacifism meant they were largely unable to stop the marauding Scots-Irish who were doing the killing.

As one historian wrote:

The frontier did collapse in late 1763. The surprise was that the armed mob that descended from the frontier into Lancaster — and then to Philadelphia in 1764 — were White frontiersmen. Everybody had expected it would be Indians.

Even more tragically, a few of the people who escaped the mobs ended up being slaughtered in later attacks. Much of the colonial government wasn’t Quaker in the latter half of the century, including some of William Penn’s descendants. Still, Friends today can wonder whether the high-minded promises of eternal friendship between Quakers and Indigenous Peoples were more hollow and aspirational than we’d like to admit. (Of course most of the Lenape and Susquehannock died from European-imported diseases, with every boatload of settlers bringing more death to the original inhabitants.)

The ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ Lost: A Friendship Found — ICT

The Conestoga massacres in Pennsylvania more than 250 years ago forever changed Native-White relations

ICT

Johan Maurer: Whose faith? Whose practice?

April 16, 2026

04/16/202608/06/2026 · Martin Kelley

Johan Maurer brings up a question in a post about what was the London Yearly Meeting’s book of Christian Faith and Practice. He asks whether our practices should be treated as models we’d expect other Christians to follow.

I suppose that in either case, Christian or Quaker, the prevailing assumption was that these books are for internal use among Friends. This is who we are, more or less. But what I like about the title Christian Faith and Practice is another interpretation entirely, one I have no permission or evidence to propose: this way of faith and life is not just for us; it’s recommended for all Christians.

I’d argue a strong yes to this. When I think about what ancient Quaker oddities might still be relevant, one of the questions I ask myself is whether we could argue that the whole church should also adopt the practice (however unlikely that might be in reality). If it’s just some Quaker canard, we can toss it into an antiquity dustbin. But if all Christians should be following the practice, then let’s set the example.

I like Thomas Clarkson’s historical account of Friends particularly because he’s not writing for a Quaker audience. I get the feeling he’s holding our practices up for scrutiny, as if to say that maybe everyone should be following them and indeed, his pacifism and abolitionism were greatly influenced by the Friends he met in his work.

Of course this witness to other Christians sort of falls apart if we don’t consider ourselves Christian. If online discourse is any indication, there are large numbers of Quakers who are rather oblivious that almost all of our Quaker identity has a biblical basis (selective, of course, and also interpreted, debated and changing). Quakerism is seen as something that just randomly popped up in the world. None of the early Friends would have thought that.

Whose faith? Whose practice? (part one)

Political and cultural observations in light of Quaker discipleship.

blog.canyoubelieve.me

Cesar Chavez and me

March 19, 2026

03/19/202603/19/2026 · Martin Kelley

Wow, so stunned to read the reports of Cesar Chavez abusing young girls and raping United Farm Worker VP Dolores Huerta.

In the mid-80s I was one of the many idealistic college kids who interned with the UFW for a summer. I got to hang out with him a number of times. His son-in-law ran the NYC-based media campaign and Cesar would come for planning meetings but also to visit his daughter and grandkids. She made great cheese enchiladas and all of us would talk late into the night as he told stories.

I do remember thinking — and asking — why the sainted VP Dolores Huerta never actually seemed all that involved, at least not to the point of ever coming East that summer to participate in NYC-based media strategy meetings. It was explained she was needed back in California.¹ I never met her. I remember not being surprised at all that she didn’t ascend to the UFW presidency when Cesar died. It went instead to the son-in-law who had led our office.

My direct supervisor was a schlub and sexist pig. He was always making inappropriately suggestive comments to the young female interns, which they universally laughed off. They were all smart, confident women with futures who weren’t going to be put off by him. I was the only male intern that summer and he put me in shitty assignments, pressuring me to drop out. I assume I was seen as competition and indeed I did start dating a fellow intern (the only reason I put up with his behavior and made it through the summer). I see he’s still with the UFW, now listed as first vice president, which is not at all inspiring.

It was perhaps the most dysfunctional office culture I’ve ever seen. The union’s influence had obviously declined since the heady days of RFK marching with Cesar in huge rallies. They seemed to jump from fad to fad hoping to recapture attention. That year direct marketing was all the rage in business circles and the UFW was jumping in with both feet. We would spend hours in meetings setting unrealistic expectations, then break our own guidelines to “meet” them. I’d be called out for trying to do things the way we had agreed. I remember wondering if any of the office work I did that summer actually made a jot of difference. Helping to organize East Coast appearances of Cesar was definitely the highlight of the summer — well, that and the girlfriend and getting to hang out in New York City all the time.

I do have to wonder now if some of the dysfunction and sexism in the office was ultimately related to Cesar’s repeated molestation of children.² Did he foster a culture in which we laughed off bad behavior and didn’t question poor management?

Tim Gee tracks down Ann Lee’s Quaker connection

March 17, 2026

03/17/202603/18/2026 · Martin Kelley

I always love a little sleuthing and all the better if it argues against some poorly researched report that made its way to Wikipedia.

The claim is that Shaker leader Ann Lee was born a Quaker. The Wikipedia entry says: “Her parents were members of a distinct branch of the Society of Friends (a sect of Quakers) and too poor to afford their children even the rudiments of education.” The source of this is given in the citation: a 1879 encyclopedia article, a copy of which is hosted on Wikisource: “Her parents were members of a distinct branch of the society of Friends, and too poor to afford their children even the rudiments of education.” A source for this claim was never given in the encyclopedia, though later on it does reference Frederick William Evans, a much later Shaker figure.

That is the Tim Gee compiles five pieces of evidence that together feel very convincing.

There are of course influences but that’s to be expected. Every religious movement of the Second Great Awakening had some relationship to Quakers. The Methodists, Mormons, Holiness, Adventists all have some connections. When you tour the “1652 Country” area of England, where George Fox first brought Quakers together, you’ll keep running into signs about John Wesley doing the same for Methodists a century later, and here in South Jersey where I live a whole slew of Quakers became Methodists in the early 1800s. At least one early Mormon evangelist in Ohio essentially went from Quaker town to Quaker town trying to recruit people. The Quaker defense of female leadership and the principle that women can preach obviously rubbed off on the Shakers and other movements.

The idea that the British colonies in America were some pure land where we could reinvent a primitive Christianity was a powerful meme (if you will) at the time and certainly drew Ann Lee to cross over and plant a religious movement here. But Ann Lee picked one of the least Quaker areas to plant her community and drew early members from New England millennialist revivalists. She definitely wanted to build something distinct from Friends.

Just a moment…

Quaker Ranter

A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley