Author Archives ⇒ Martin Kelley

The Doctrine of Discovery, white guilt, and Friends

November 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er starts with “it’s com­pli­cat­ed” and goes on from there. A pas­sage I find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is his expla­na­tion of why look­ing at large-scale state-level atroc­i­ties like the steal­ing of native land or the kid­nap­ping of mil­lions of Africans is not just some­thing to be done out of guilt:

Whether you believe in an intel­li­gent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wag­n­er’s ideas) or a more imper­son­al mech­a­nism of demon­ic evil (Wal­ter Wink), we should­n’t pre­tend that such nodes just go away. Their evil per­sists. The basis for apol­o­gy and repen­tance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to con­duct spir­i­tu­al war­fare against the demons of racism and oppres­sion and false wit­ness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can con­duct our future stew­ard­ship — and make our pub­lic invest­ments— in free­dom and mutu­al regard. 

I’m drawn to the old notion of “The Tempter” as a force that leads us to do what’s per­son­al­ly reward­ing rather than moral­ly just. I think it explains a lot of inter­nal strug­gles I’ve faced, even in sim­ple wit­ness­es. As Johan says, these mas­sive injus­tices can’t just be undone but they need to be rec­og­nized for the immen­si­ty of their scale. I’ve also seen this weird way in which pro­gres­sive whites can blithe­ly dis­re­gard Native Amer­i­can per­spec­tives on these issues. Lis­ten­ing more and wait­ing for com­pli­cat­ed answers seems essen­tial in my opinion.

Anoth­er good deep-dive for Friends inter­est­ed in this is Bet­sy Caz­den’s Friends Jour­nal 2006 arti­cle, Quak­er Mon­ey, Old Mon­ey, and White Priv­i­lege. It’s one I turn to every so often to remind myself of some of our monied Quak­er norms. Johan gives a pass to William Penn but I think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that his colo­nial ambi­tions were deeply enmeshed in at least three dif­fer­ent wars and con­ve­nient­ly served the polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions of two empires, the per­fect storm of an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a group of paci­fist idealists.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​i​t​s​.​h​tml

The freedom to seek sanctuary

November 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Lucy Dun­can at the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Commitee:

What if, instead of char­ac­ter­iz­ing folks seek­ing home as “threats” or “invaders,” we under­stood them to be our neigh­bors, that our futures are inter­locked and that how they are treat­ed is con­nect­ed to the well-being of us all? What if we under­stood love as not con­strained by bor­ders or walls, but abun­dant, and that car­ing for one anoth­er and those most vio­lat­ed by sys­temic oppres­sion is the path­way toward lib­er­a­tion for us all? What if we, as peo­ple of con­science and faith, greet­ed the migrants at the bor­der as our broth­ers, sis­ters, and kin, opened our homes and com­mu­ni­ties to them, and greet­ed them as resource­ful con­trib­u­tors to fig­ur­ing out the plan­e­tary threats we cur­rent­ly face together? 

https://​www​.afsc​.org/​b​l​o​g​s​/​a​c​t​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​f​a​i​t​h​/​f​r​e​e​d​o​m​-​t​o​-​s​e​e​k​-​s​a​n​c​t​u​a​r​y​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​p​e​r​s​p​e​c​t​i​v​e​-​m​i​g​r​a​n​t​-​c​a​r​a​van

Origins of the Check-In (Quakers)

October 31, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on Medi­um, con­sul­tant Jim Ral­ley looks to Quak­ers for the ori­gins of the facil­i­ta­tor’s check-in:

The ‘check-in’ is a fun­da­men­tal ele­ment in the reper­toire of a facil­i­ta­tor. There’s no bet­ter way to start a ses­sion and get every­one present, and there’s no faster way to dis­cov­er what’s going on under the sur­face of a group. It’s such a sim­ple an effec­tive process tool that I fig­ured it must have a rich and well-documented his­to­ry. But it’s proved quite tricky to research, part­ly because its name is shared with the hotel and air­line indus­tries, but part­ly also, I sus­pect, because of its simplicity.

Where to start? With such a basic human process, the line through his­to­ry will sure­ly be tan­gled and con­fused. But, for the sake of start­ing some­where, I’ll start with the Quakers. 

I’ve left a com­ment on the post with miss­ing links. I’ll leave a ver­sion of it here. Reg­u­lar read­ers will pre­dict that I’ll start with Rachel Davis DuBois, the New Jersey-born Friend who put togeth­er racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion groups in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. She lat­er turned some of the process into “Dia­logue Groups” in the mid-1960s and trav­eled the U.S. teach­ing them; these evolved into mod­ern Quak­er wor­ship shar­ing and clear­ness com­mit­tees.

Those late-60s process­es were picked up by the younger Friends, who (no sur­prise) were also into anti­war activism and com­mu­ni­tar­i­an pol­i­tics. They were cod­i­fied and sec­u­lar­ized by the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety, which start­ed in Philadel­phia in the ear­ly 70s but had com­mu­ni­ties all over the West­ern world. Much of their work was focused on train­ing peo­ple in their style of group process and a lot of our facil­i­ta­tor tools these days are dis­sem­i­nat­ed MNS tools. Many MNS’ers were involved with Quak­ers and many more fil­tered back into the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends in lat­er years.

A lot of this rel­a­tive­ly recent his­to­ry has been for­got­ten. Many Quak­ers will tell you these things all date from the very start of the Friends move­ment. There’s def­i­nite­ly through-lines and echos and inspi­ra­tions through our his­to­ry but I’d love to see us appre­ci­ate Rachel Davis DuBois and the peo­ple who made some very use­ful adap­ta­tions that have helped Quak­ers con­tin­ue to evolve and (almost) thrive.

In the New Yorker, an article on atheism leads with a Daniel Seeger’s 1965 Supreme Court case

October 30, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A review of two books on athe­ism starts with the take of Dan Seeger, who’s land­mark Supreme Court case extend­ed the right to con­sci­en­tious objec­tor sta­tus to agnos­tics and atheists:

Daniel Seeger was twenty-one when he wrote to his local draft board to say, “I have con­clud­ed that war, from the prac­ti­cal stand­point, is futile and self-defeating, and from the more impor­tant moral stand­point, it is uneth­i­cal.” Some time lat­er, he received the Unit­ed States Selec­tive Ser­vice System’s Form 150, ask­ing him to detail his objec­tions to mil­i­tary ser­vice. It took him a few days to reply, because he had no answer for the form’s first ques­tion: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” Unsat­is­fied with the two avail­able options — “Yes” and “No” — Seeger final­ly decid­ed to draw and check a third box: “See attached pages.”

Seeger’s vic­to­ry helped mark a turn­ing point for a minor­i­ty that had once been denied so much as the right to tes­ti­fy in court, even in their own defense. Athe­ists, long dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by civ­il author­i­ties and derid­ed by their fellow-citizens, were sud­den­ly eli­gi­ble for some of the exemp­tions and pro­tec­tions that had pre­vi­ous­ly been restrict­ed to believers. 

Daniel Seeger has writ­ten for and been fea­tured in the pages of Friends Jour­nal many times over the ensu­ing decades but last year he wrote a great fea­ture for us about the court case, An AFSC Defense of the Rights of Con­science. A tip of the hat to Car­ol Holmes Alpern for send­ing this New York­er arti­cle way!

https://​www​.newyork​er​.com/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​2​0​1​8​/​1​0​/​2​9​/​w​h​y​-​a​r​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​s​-​s​t​i​l​l​-​u​n​c​o​m​f​o​r​t​a​b​l​e​-​w​i​t​h​-​a​t​h​e​ism

Letter of condolence from Friends General Conference

October 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

FGC’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee is meet­ing this week­end and wrote a let­ter of con­do­lences to Pitts­burgh’s Tree of Life Syn­a­gogue, site of the recent shooting

We are deeply sad­dened by the bru­tal slay­ing and injuries to mem­bers of your com­mu­ni­ty and the law enforce­ment offi­cers who inter­vened in the attack on your con­gre­ga­tion on Saturday.
That this vio­la­tion occurred dur­ing your wor­ship togeth­er is espe­cial­ly dis­tress­ing to us. We stand unit­ed with all peo­ple of faith in pray­ing for every­one affected. 

You can read the full piece on Facebook

Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion is also shar­ing their Prin­ci­ples for Gun Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion back­grounder, a doc­u­ment that I wish was­n’t new­ly rel­e­vant every oth­er week.

Being God’s Hands

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A sweet inter­view this week over on Quak­er­S­peak, an inter­view with Carter Nash:

I believe that peo­ple will respond to love, because I believe peo­ple respond to God. And if God is love, that is what peo­ple will respond to, is love. I think that’s the key to a lot of things and to a lot of prob­lems in the world, because if we tru­ly believe in God and we tru­ly believe that God is love as we were taught, and we act on that – and I believe that we are God’s hands here – then every­thing we do needs to be root­ed in love.

http://​quak​er​s​peak​.com/​b​e​i​n​g​-​g​o​d​s​-​h​a​n​ds/

Upcoming Friends Journal themes

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week we unveiled the next slate of themes for Friends Jour­nal, one which takes us all the way through the end of 2020 (I can’t get over how much fur­ther away this feels than the cal­en­dar says it is). This is the sixth round of themes since we intro­duced the for­mat back in the begin­ning of 2012. We’ve kept the pat­tern the same – nine themed issues a year, with two non-themed issues for more eclec­tic mate­r­i­al we get (

Before 2012, the mix had been flipped for years: two annu­al spe­cial issues, with the rest a catch-all from the incom­ing sub­mis­sion slush pile. I feel that more fre­quent themes have helped us steer clear of the rut of repeat­ing the same arti­cles on a too-frequent basis. We’re also see­ing more arti­cles con­scious­ly writ­ten for us (as opposed to be shopped around to var­i­ous pro­gres­sive pub­li­ca­tions). Most impor­tant­ly from an edi­to­r­i­al per­spec­tive, the process  also forces us to reach out to peo­ple, direct­ly and on social media, to encour­age them to write. One of my never-ending, never- reach­able goals, is to always be encour­ag­ing new voic­es in the mag­a­zine. This is one tool to help get there.

We’ve already start­ed get­ting feed­back from indi­vid­u­als that their favorite cause isn’t cov­ered in this lat­est list. I’m okay with that. We don’t cov­er every­thing every round. Core con­cerns of Friends get cov­ered on a reg­u­lar basis in the non-themed issues. Some authors are also real­ly cre­ative in find­ing a hook to bring their cause into seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed top­ic. Also, I think we’ve cov­ered all of the major top­ics in the last sev­en years — some­times mul­ti­ple times — and those arti­cles are still be read and shared and com­ment­ed on.

Many of these themes come from read­er sug­ges­tions. Oth­ers come from more ran­dom con­ver­sa­tions we have. One of my favorite this time is the issue on Gam­bling. That was inspired one late-January 2018 morn­ing when a new Friend called in to ask us if we had any arti­cles on the top­ic. Appar­ent­ly, she had been chas­tised at meet­ing that week­end for sug­gest­ing there should be a prize for who­ev­er guessed the cor­rect num­ber of valen­tine can­dy hearts in a jar. She want­ed to under­stand the Quak­er tes­ti­monies. Much to my sur­prise there had­n’t been much in recent Friends Jour­nal arti­cles. I ran­dom­ly asked on Face­book whether we had “essen­tial­ly dropped” our tes­ti­mo­ny on gam­bling. The resul­tant Face­book thread quick­ly made it obvi­ous that Friends have an issue-worthy amount of feel­ings on the topic.

Have fun look­ing over the list. If you have sug­ges­tions, let me know (I will write them down and remem­ber). If you want to encour­age peo­ple to write, please please do. Also, send me a mes­sage if you want to get on a month­ly email list in which I pro­mote an upcom­ing writ­ing dead­line. The next com­ing up in for March’s issue, Out­side the Meet­ing­house.


Just a moment...

Just a moment… 

www.friendsjournal.org www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org

Quakerism of the Future

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er lifts up a 1974 pub­li­ca­tion by John Yungblut:

Grant­ed, as a deep stu­dent of Carl Gus­tav Jung and Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin, Yung­blut’s def­i­n­i­tions of those three adjec­tives may not have exact­ly been old-school. This par­tic­u­lar­ly goes for his reflec­tions on the word “evan­gel­i­cal.” But the dynam­ic con­ver­sa­tion among these qual­i­ties — dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions and all — may be vital if Friends are to grow in use­ful­ness to the Body of Christ, and to those who’ve not yet been convinced. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​0​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​i​s​m​-​o​f​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​.​h​tml