In the NYTimes Opin­ion sec­tion, a fas­ci­nat­ing com­par­i­son of the lan­guage pol­i­tics of ear­ly Friends and today’s pro­noun expan­sion­ists. By Tere­sa M. Bejan:

Mod­ern prac­ti­tion­ers of pro­noun pol­i­tics can learn a thing or two from the ear­ly Quak­ers. Like today’s egal­i­tar­i­ans, the Quak­ers under­stood that what we say, as well as how we say it, can play a cru­cial part in cre­at­ing a more just and equal soci­ety. They, too, were sen­si­tive to the hum­ble pronoun’s abil­i­ty to rein­force hier­ar­chies by encod­ing invid­i­ous dis­tinc­tions into lan­guage itself.

Yet unlike the ear­ly Quak­ers, these mod­ern egal­i­tar­i­ans want to embrace, rather than resist, pro­nouns’ hon­orif­ic aspect, and thus to see trans‑, non­bi­na­ry and gen­derqueer peo­ple as equal­ly enti­tled to the “title” of their choosing.

Opin­ion | What Quak­ers Can Teach Us About the Pol­i­tics of Pro­nouns (Pub­lished 2019) 

In the 17th cen­tu­ry, they also sus­pect­ed that the rules of gram­mar stood between them and a society…

www​.nytimes​.com

I should note that while Bejan’s dis­cus­sion of Friends ends in Her­man Melville’s time, many of us are still very aware of how lan­guage can lib­er­ate and oppress. Friends Jour­nal uses the sin­gu­lar “they” upon author request, for example.

The one place we do have ten­sions is around hon­orifics. The Quak­er tes­ti­mo­ny has been clear against using them — in a man­ner Bevan describes as “lev­el­ing down” but there are instances in which hon­orifics have been used to lev­el up. The most com­mon occur­rence is the use of titles for Black cler­gy. I under­stand the argu­ments on both sides but in the end the rea­son we still talk about Mar­tin Luther King Jr. is his brav­ery, clear-sightedness, and stir­ring words. His doc­tor­ate degree con­tributed to his devel­op­ment I’m sure, but as Friends we know that his aca­d­e­m­ic record is not the source of his moral authority.

The March 2020 Friends Jour­nal will look at “Unnamed Quak­er Creeds.” The sub­mis­sion dead­line is Decem­ber 9. I’ve writ­ten up some of our thoughts on poten­tial arti­cle ideas and pub­lished it online at: https://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​u​n​n​a​m​e​d​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​r​e​e​ds/

Unpro­grammed Friends will often tell vis­i­tors we have no creeds or set prac­tices in wor­ship. Our wor­ship is spon­ta­neous, open-ended, and free to fol­low the unex­pect­ed prompt­ings of the Liv­ing Spir­it. But in prac­tice, this isn’t exact­ly true. There are all sorts of expec­ta­tions and unwrit­ten rules when we come togeth­er First-day morn­ings. Who can give min­istry? How long should a mes­sage go? What themes should it fol­low? What time does wor­ship end?

There are also unwrit­ten rules about our behav­ior and con­duct. What if we talk too loud­ly or share our beliefs too stren­u­ous­ly? Do our indi­vid­ual tastes in clothes, music, pol­i­tics fit the meet­ing? What are the divides between core Quak­er faith and option­al Quak­er culture?

The March issue is our chance to look at unwrit­ten rules and social con­for­mi­ties and ques­tion any that may be mak­ing our meet­ing spaces unfriend­ly to new­com­ers. What bound­aries do we need to make more explic­it? What prac­tices do we need to make less manda­to­ry? How do we need to change to be more acces­si­ble? And in what ways do new­com­ers feel they have to change to fit us?

Dif­fer­ent fla­vors of Friends have answered these ques­tions dif­fer­ent­ly. Pro­grammed Friends have more explic­it wor­ship struc­tures. They’re also more com­fort­able mak­ing creedal state­ments like the Rich­mond Dec­la­ra­tion of Faith. How have these tools helped ground the spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty? What new prob­lems have they per­haps created?

I’m hop­ing this issue will be espe­cial­ly help­ful for us all to think about includ­ing new vis­i­tors. And as always, the ideas we list here are just sug­ges­tions. We’re hap­py to read what­ev­er read­ers think about the issue of unnamed Quak­er creeds. Sub­mis­sions due Decem­ber 9, 2019.

Friends Jour­nal is look­ing for a new vol­un­teer poet­ry edi­tor. Basic details on the poet­ry edi­tor search can be found here: https://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​p​o​e​t​r​y​e​d​i​t​or/.

The work con­sists of sort­ing through new sub­mis­sions that come in via Sub­mit­table, the online sub­mis­sion ser­vice we use, and choos­ing two poems a month for the mag­a­zine and declin­ing the ones we won’t pub­lish. We esti­mate this takes 10 hours a month (though of course it depends on the thor­ough­ness of the edi­tor). The mag­a­zine has only had two poet­ry edi­tors in its his­to­ry and both have worked dif­fer­ent­ly. One liked talk­ing over poems with FJ edi­to­r­i­al staff while the oth­er was hap­py to make the call her­self, only ping­ing us when she want­ed a sec­ond opinion.

There’s more than an ambi­tious edi­tor might do like find­ing ways to encour­age more Friends to write and sub­mit poet­ry to us, or giv­ing help­ful feed­back to promis­ing poets even when we don’t pub­lish their work. Inter­est­ed peo­ple can con­tact me if they have more questions.