In 2020, online worship went from a fringe novelty to a mass phenomenon. It’s definitely an option that’s here to stay and British Friends have now integrated one online worship group fully into the monthly meeting structure (has any other yearly meeting done this already?). It’ll be fascinating to see how this continues to develop.
I was remiss in sharing the March Quakers Today podcast, which looked at Quakers, Birds, and Justice. Friends have long been especially interested in the natural world. One of the interviewees is Rebecca Heider, who wrote A Quaker Guide to Birdwatching in last month’s issue of FJ.
She told her students how Quakers formed some of the first anti-slavery organizations in American history. How Quakers boycotted sugar, cotton and other goods produced through slave labor. She spoke about how Quakers lacked official clergy and advocated spiritual equality for men and women.
She did not mention that 19th-century slaveholding Quakers sometimes offered financial compensation to the enslaved people they freed. Or that, in 2022, British Quakers committed to make reparations for their past involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism.
Asked about this, Kali said in an interview that she knows not all Quakers were perfect, and that some owned slaves, but that her lesson was meant to give a contrast and a balance to the “overemphasis” on reparations coming from the left. She also noted that some Quakers have become “very left-leaning now.”
I’m glad the article does actually push back at some of the Fontanilla’s half-truths but it’s bad journalism to put the counter arguments near the end of the article where casual readers might miss them.
It’s even worse journalism to not have bothered to interview a Quaker historian. When profiling someone spewing inaccurate information, it’s common journalistic practice to let them go on for the first three or so paragraphs — enough time for them to incriminate themselves — and then bring in some experts to provide a series of quotes that will take down the preceding nonsense. Just a few minutes on the phone with a legit historian of early Quaker slaveholding and abolition — and some better pacing — would have made this a far better article. The mainstream press really needs to commit to practice aggressively fact-based reporting, even on throw-away profile articles like this, even if it risks being called woke.
As I’ve said many times before, there’s a lot of lot of things to be proud of in Quaker history but we’ve also gotten a lot of things wrong. Our positions on issues like slavery, native relations, and prison reform all have had mixed results. In the past it was common for Friends to over-emphasize and over-mythologize the good, as these modern-day non-Quakers continue to do. Nowadays some Friends over-emphasize the bad history, which also has its problems. I think it’s important to embrace both so we can understand how our traditions have led us to past discernments that were radically liberatory and also how our process has backfired on a number of issues.
I got to talk with frequent Friends Journal author John Andrew Gallery this week. His latest article for us explores a gospel model of parenthood. I most appreciated his take that many of the figures in the parables were not necessarily metaphorical fill-ins for God but faithful people already living in the power of the kingdom. I’ll be chewing on his take on the prodigal son’s forgiving father for awhile.
Pendle Hill’s The Seed podcast has a great interview with Adria Gulizia this week. Some good stuff. Here’s a sample: “Petitions and demands is how the world works. That’s how the political system works. That’s not how the religious Society of Friends is supposed to work. And yet, they felt like the stakes are too high to do things the Quaker way. ‘We can’t do it the Quaker way.’ ”
Really great article in The Verge about the cables that route internet traffic across the oceans and the people who keep them in repair. Well written, amazingly illustrated, with gripping personal stories.
Johan Maurer examines a classic Quaker dilemma from a new angle. Are we something unique and radical or are we just another brand of Christianity? Describing Britain Yearly Meeting, in particular, though it could describe many Liberal Quaker spaces:
In particular, Christian language and God language are often held at arm’s length. Quakers’ ethical discipleship (a.k.a. the “testimonies”) are held in high regard but are often described without reference to their Christian origins. The customs and folkways of meeting for worship and meeting for business are likewise faithfully maintained but their connections with what early Friends called “Gospel order” are often not emphasized.
This is one of those definitional conundrums that have no easy answers. For me personally, yes, I’m part of the larger church. I think pride is often at the root of some of our denials. Early Friends also experienced corrupted and hypocritical established churches but didn’t abandon the project so much as call for a renewal back to basic principles. The history of Friends is our institutions likewise getting frequently mired in insular thinking and moral corruption but being drawn back by prophetic figures calling us to do better. That said, the spark of the Quaker message is the call to listen to the inward Christ and that can easily be done (and is frequently done) by people outside the Quaker movement.
Windy Cooler, Ashley Wilcox, and Katie Breslin went through FGC-affiliated yearly meeting books of Faith and Practices and directories to find out what supports really exist for public ministers.
Friends who are called to be prophets can’t be neutral; they identify something which is wrong and speak out clearly against it. Those who reconcile are healers; they look for common ground on which contestants can meet, find agreement, and hopefully put the past behind them. Both roles are necessary; both are important aspects of Quaker witness.
Lampen argues that we are called to both of these forms of peacemaking but that they exist in a tension that often requires us to choose one at a time and he shares stories of reconciliation work he did in Northern Ireland.
I don’t think I ever mentioned that the April issue of Friends Journal is out. There’s a fun article comparing birdwatching to Quaker ministry. That’s the kind of claim that might normally make my eyes roll but the author, Rebecca Heider, makes it work! Also, a great episode of QuakerSpeak this week profiles the Ramallah Friends School and the community’s longterm Quaker witness under successive occupation by Ottoman, British, Lebanese, and now Israeli forces.
For the second time in ten years I didn’t feel the New Jersey earthquake. No one in my house felt this one, even though people further out from the epicenter did. I was on a rattling train during the 2011 earthquake and walked about ten miles toward home after the system was shut down (but don’t worry, it was a lovely day and I stopped at multiple hipster coffeehouse and even got a haircut in). Clouds held out for this week’s eclipse and the family got a good view.
My meeting hosted a fascinating talk last Sunday on efforts to support restored habitats for clams and oysters in New Jersey estuaries. These mollusks stabilize the shoreline, clean the waters, and make our shores more resilient to both climate change and the naturally sinking South Jersey landmass.
Friends Journal