I’m dropping in for a day at this year’s FGC Gathering at Haverford College. I’ll be there Monday, July 1. I’ve picked a morning workshop that allows one-day drop-ins but after that finishes I have no plans other than wandering around and talking with people. Look for me if you’re there and drop me a line at martink@friendsjournal.org if you want to set up a meeting time.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Category Archives ⇒ Quaker
As the blog name implies, I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends, known colloquially as Quakers. Many of my blog posts deal with issues of our society and its interactions with the larger world. I generally only include my own posts in this list. I share many many Quaker links in my Links Blog category and on QuakerQuaker.
Important Posts:
The Lost Quaker Generation (2003)
Peace and Twenty-Somethings (2003)
We’re All Ranters Now (2003)
Passing the Faith, Planet of the Quaker Style (2004)
Quaker Testimonies (2004)
Hey, Who Am I To Decide Anything? (2007)
The Biggest Most Vibranty Most Outreachiest Program Ever (2010)
Getting a Horse to Drink (on Philadelphia YM) (2010)
Tell Them All This But Don’t Expect Them to Listen (2010)
New Book: Who Turned on the Light?
June 11, 2024
Congratulations to my friend Chris Stern, whose memoir is finally available. From the description:
Finding and paying attention to the Inner Voice of Love, he demonstrates how this journey has led him to look at the world and those around him differently, with more compassion and commonality. Christopher points us toward ways to overcome the divisions and hurts that divide us and to find a practical everyday faith that can help us to navigate a way toward Hope and Healing.
Chris has written many times for Friends Journal. He has a great QuakerSpeak video about understanding Quaker faith through George Fox’s Journal. He also came to my meeting last year to talk about the center of Quaker faith. He plans on having a live author talk Thursday at this year’s FGC Gathering (July 4).
Back to Jesus
June 5, 2024
Kevin-Douglas Olive, in Friendly Bible Study and Jesus my Friend, talks reconciling with the story of Jesus because of a meeting Bible study:
So who is this Jesus? The Jesus I know is the one who asks his followers “Who do you say that I am?” The Jesus I am trying to follow is the one who tells me to DO what he says and I am his friend (hence the name of Quakers — Friends). He is the radical rabbi or prophet who turned convention upside down and on whose teachings a new world religion was formed (for better or worse). Through Jesus’ life and death, gone is the need for sacrifice — it’s been done. Gone is the need to appease God, Jesus’ life and death does that. These ancient Jewish and pagan notions of god(s) and our relationship to the Divine were made obsolete. If we enter into the Life of Jesus, there will be certain fruits of the spirit which will manifest through our walk in the Light.
I’m old enough to remember K‑D as the pranksterish young adult Christian Friend delighting in confounding the Liberal Quakes at the FGC Gathering and then later, in 2008, as someone trying to start some sort of Convergent Friends presence in Baltimore. I’m glad he’s been continuing to follow the light and that the Bible study has been beneficial. If you want more, there’s a 2017 QuakerSpeak interview, How I Became a Quaker.
It’s also good hear in this post that Baltimore’s Homewood Meeting is attracting lots of new people under 40. I’ve been noticing that at my (tiny) meeting (a few weeks ago a few of the older Friends were off traveling and I looked around and realized the median age was something like 28). I’m hearing similar stories elsewhere. All anecdotes but I’m starting to wonder if Quakerism is having a bit of a moment.
pilgrimstranger.blogspot.comQuakers’ War Problem
June 1, 2024
A lot of modern-day Quakers like to think that Quakers have in all places and all times been clearly against all wars (see this recent Reddit thread for evidence). JW at Places to Go blog tells some of the stories that go against this myth.
Enough Quakers had qualms about pacifism in the face of these two great evils that Meetings wrestled with both members who chose to serve and fight against them, and the orthodoxy enshrined against fighting. What I found most heart warming was the Meetings who welcomed back their veterans with love and understanding and forgiveness. What I found disappointing was those Meetings which stripped those veterans of membership.
I myself am very much a pacifist. I have faith that the spirit of Christ will always provide a third way between violence and surrender. Is this trust warranted? Backed by political science or history? Probably not. My faith is the faith of a child, which my religious tradition tells me is a millstone I should be ready to carry.
But I’m also a human who watches horrors happening all over the globe. I don’t pretend to know any secret prayer that will stop Russian aggression against Ukraine, much less the indiscriminate terror of Hamas or the mass slaughter being carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces. I can share my faith in the Prince of Peace with my fellow humans but I can’t insist that they not struggle with it.
The modern history of the Quaker peace testimony was shaped in part by the need for members of the historic peace churches to pass the qualifications for U.S. conscientious objection laws during the World Wars (though if I’m not mistaken Friends helped draft those qualifications). For CO status one needs to have a sincere religious beliefs against all wars, context notwithstanding. I was trained as a CO counselor many many years ago and this was an important point to get across (some of this strictness has changed over the years and I’m no expert in current regulations). Purity is a hard standard in the real world when our consciences are pricked by the injustice we see.
I’ve written about the peace testimony many times, of course, most recently for Friends Journal (“Wrestling with the Peace Testimony”) and on this blog (“Presenting on the Peace Testimony”).
Matt Rosen: Quaker Membership and Convincement
May 23, 2024
Also interviewed this month: Matt Rosen, whose distinctions between membership and convincement seem spot-on to our condition today. Matt’s also part of a group of British young adults planning a very grounded conference. The Friend profiled the organizers recently.
Steven Dale Davison: Challenges and Gifts in Quaker Meetings
May 23, 2024
Steven was *that guy* when he joined Friends, combative and judgy about other people’s ministry. In retrospect, he wishes his meeting’s clearness committee had laid down the line when he joined. Even after talking with him I’m a little skeptical and hope they saw something in his initial arrogance that was ready to be overturned by Quaker experience.
What does it mean to be a member of a Quaker meeting?
May 2, 2024
Friends Journal’s May issue on “Membership” is out. In my opening column I talk about some of the different types of members, official and unofficial:
As the clerk of a small meeting, I find myself frequently juggling these multiple categories of membership. When we had plumbing issues a few months ago, there were lots of emails with a core half-dozen regulars who I can depend on to help with logistics and contacts with local contractors (this group is so consistent that when I go to send a message to one, my email program asks me if I want to include all the others).
When there’s an event coming up, the email list expands to include a small group of recent newcomers who make it to worship a few times a month. Every so often I look over this list to see if there’s someone who’s dropped away, and I’ll take a minute to write them a special email asking how they are and inviting them to attend. I would hate for a semi-regular to drop away and think we hadn’t noticed.
There’s also a wide constellation of people who attend once in a proverbial blue moon. Some are members of nearby meetings who occasionally hit us up for a change of pace. Others are local history buffs who will come to hear a particular speaker but make sure to come early because they like their once-a-year Quaker worship. Few of these visitors will ever become regulars but they probably know someone who might, and their word-of-mouth recommendation could help connect a new seeker with our small band.
When it’s time to send out the annual fundraising appeal, I’ll reach out to another, rather special class of members, those at a distance, many of whom I’ve never met. They might hail from one of the founding families of the meeting; perhaps they grew up there themselves and have fond memories. It might be easy to forget about these members but that would be a mistake, as they remind us of the long line of faithful servants who have kept this special community going in the past.
“A Membership That Is Ever Flowing”
I even give a shoutout to the red-shouldered hawk family living in one of our sycamore trees.
Looking back in the archives, we’ve been putting out an issue on membership every four years: Membership and the Generation Gap in 2012, Almost Quaker in 2016, Membership and Friends in 2020. I’m actually surprised at the clockwork precision of our issues, but there’s a good reason we keep coming back to it. The definition of who “we” are is an essential part of our self-identification as Friends. Pretty much everything we do (or fail to do) reflects our implicit assumptions about who’s in and who’s out. Many, perhaps most, of the debates that roil Friends have membership as an element.
Links
May 2, 2024
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.