Philly/South Jersey locals might want to come to Cropwell Meeting this Sunday to meet “John Woolman” on a religious visit to the meeting.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Yearly Archives ⇒ 2025
Cropwell Quakers Claire Flourish examines a Quaker anti-trans campaign
March 11, 2025
Fascinating and disturbing account of an outspoken Quaker* UK anti-trans activist who has started a video podcast interviewing prominent Friends. Most of the episodes have nothing to do with gender and sexuality but some do.
The asterisk up is there because the podcaster apparently renounced their membership in the Society of Friends when Britain Yearly Meeting passed a minute on trans inclusion. I appreciate someone disagreeing with a yearly meeting resolution and even staying in the fold despite the opposition. But when an affirming minute that doesn’t actually affect you (just your ideology) is such a burden that you leave… well then the question is why you would put such effort into a podcast of your ex-religion. it doesn’t seem like a project borne in good faith.
Claire does a great job bringing the receipts and explaining the context (the details of which I haven’t been following).
Clare Flourish Nilay Patel on why blogs are still great
March 11, 2025
The Verge’s Decoder turns the table on its host, Nilay Patel, to talk about blogs. I often appreciate Patel’s take on the modern web. And while I run a few websites, I appreciate his joke that The Verge is “the last website on earth.” There was a certain kind of website back in the day that you’d visit directly to see what they were saying. Their reporters were funny and snarky and opinionated and even when I disagreed with their take, I was usually glad I had taken the time to read it. There’s a few individual bloggers like that left, folks like Jason Kottke and John Gruber, but few sites still like The Verge, in my opinion. So much of the conversation today happens on social media, where it’s fractured (Mastodon? Facebook? Threads? Bluesky?) and ephemeral.
About a year ago, The Verge went for a more old-school blogging model, based on appealing to people visiting the site directly rather than Google algorithms. I’m glad they did that.
There’s also good stuff in her about brands: “But you know what? All the celebrities still want to be on the cover of magazines. They want the validation that the big brand, the institution, can provide. And there’s a reason for that because the brand stands for more than just an individual opinion — or at least at its best it does.” I think that’s true for my work with Friends Journal. Anyone can write something and post it anywhere, yet there still seems to be a yearning for a place that’s still a common-ground watering hole, a conversation-starter.
NASA’s Eyes
March 11, 2025
Very cool interactive site from NASA showing planets, asteroids, etc.
Reading: George Fox – the First Quaker Socialist?
March 11, 2025
Graham Taylor with a well-cited article on the proto-socialism of early Friends. There’s a bit of anachronistic thinking going on here, which he admits to. But it’s also the case that a lot of Quaker history is viewed through the lens of later Quakers and often ignores what was happening outside of Quakerism at the time. This can lead to bad histories. I’m not sure I buy some of Taylor’s arguments but it’s a good exercise and Fox certainly did talk about economics as part of his call for justice.
Remind Me Why We Have Troops in Niger?
March 11, 2025
Where Do We Find Our Hope?
March 11, 2025
December’s Friends Journal is online and looks at Spiritual Optimism vs. Spiritual Pessimism.
> Has there ever been an age in human history in which we could be purely optimistic or purely pessimistic? Quaker founder George Fox wrote that his ministry arose “when all my hopes in [preachers and experienced people] were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do.” He famously found inspiration, guidance, and courage in “one, even Christ Jesus,” who could speak to his condition. What keeps us going today in a world always ready to implode or blossom?