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)

Friends Journal hiring a staff writer

August 16, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Want to work with me? Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, the par­ent cor­po­ra­tion of Friends Jour­nal, Quak­er Speak, and Quak​er​.org, is look­ing for our first-ever staff writer 1. We’re look­ing for some­one with jour­nal­is­tic chops who is also famil­iar with the cir­cus that is the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

Friends Jour­nal will con­tin­ue to have arti­cles from every-day Friends shar­ing their min­istry and their view of Quak­er life. But with a staff writer we’ll be able to run more deeply report­ed and top­i­cal sto­ries. We’ve been com­mis­sion­ing these already. For exam­ple, in 2019 Erik Han­son report­ed on how a Quak­er school respond­ed to long-ago accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al abuse. When the coro­n­avirus lock­downs hit we com­mis­sioned a quick-turnaround sto­ry from Katie Bres­lin on how Quak­er meet­ings were respond­ing and anoth­er by Greg Woods on the then-novel con­cept of com­muning online. And for years we’ve con­duct­ed inter­views of inter­est­ing Friends who are either too busy to write or per­haps not nat­ur­al writ­ers. With only two of us in edi­to­r­i­al there have been so many times we have to say no to fab­u­lous inter­view pos­si­bil­i­ty. A staff writer will gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include these voic­es more often.

Here’s an excerpt from the job description:

Friends Pub­lish­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, a non­prof­it Quak­er mag­a­zine and web pub­lish­ing orga­ni­za­tion, seeks a staff writer to join our team. The Staff Writer will work remote­ly, though they may occa­sion­al­ly trav­el to FPC’s Philadel­phia office or oth­er loca­tions as need­ed for all-staff activ­i­ties or to cov­er sto­ries. Trav­el is like­ly to be less than 2 weeks per year. This posi­tion reports to the Senior Editor.

You can check out the jobs page for more. If you know any­one who might qual­i­fy, please please let them know. This real­ly is a remote-friendly position!


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Page not found — Friends Journal 

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The Nearness of God as Spirit

August 7, 2022
· Martin Kelley

I had a few min­utes before wor­ship at Crop­well Meet­ing this morn­ing and so turned to the book­case — a place you’ll often find me in in-between times at church­es of all sorts. There was a slim, dark vol­ume with no dis­cernible title on the spine, a mys­tery book. I pulled it out and it was a 1935 copy of Philadel­phia Faith and Prac­tice.

On the inside-front cov­er was the name of its orig­i­nal own­er, who had a sur­name famil­iar to any­one who has wan­dered the grave­yard out front. Near the begin­ning was a his­to­ry of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing which abrupt­ly end­ed in the ear­ly 1800s, just before the Great Schism. It’s as if his­to­ry end­ed there. Only the pub­li­ca­tion address let on to those in the know that this was the Ortho­dox Year­ly Meeting.

As I start­ed read­ing pas­sages I was struck by how well writ­ten it is. I don’t know why that should be sur­pris­ing as Philadel­phia Ortho­dox had Friends like Rufus Jones, Thomas Kel­ly, and Howard Brin­ton. I guess I wasn’t expect­ing the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion to be free of stilt­ed nine­teenth cen­tu­ry prose.

Here’s a pas­sage from the begin­ning of its “Wor­ship and Min­istry” sec­tion that spoke to me:

Our con­cep­tion of wor­ship is based on a deep-seated faith that God is Spir­it, as Christ taught at Jacob’s well, and that man, as spir­it, can respond to Him and enter into direct com­mu­nion and fel­low­ship with Him. This faith in the near­ness of God as Spir­it sprang out of a fresh and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of God in the lives of George Fox and the ear­ly Friends. They felt that they found Him as they walked in the fields or as they sat in the qui­et of their meet­ings and they arrived at an unwa­ver­ing cer­tain­ty of the real pres­ence of God in the lives of men, which gave them unusu­al inner strength and spir­i­tu­al power.

I appre­ci­ate that it clear­ly maps out how God and Humana inter­act, tying it with­out much arti­fice to a par­tic­u­lar pas­sage in the gospels. And then it gets real with the image of seek­ers walk­ing the fields look­ing to com­mune with God: such a human depic­tion. I’ll be check­ing out whether I have a copy of this F&P in my home library. It seems we’ll worth a read.

A ran­dom Google search while wait­ing for my fam­i­ly to pick me up from Crop­well turned up this 1922 edi­to­r­i­al in The Friend. This appar­ent­ly is the dis­cus­sion lead­ing up to the new F&P that sur­prised me!

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Mark Russ on vocal ministry

July 7, 2022
· Martin Kelley

On the Wood­brooke web­site, a new piece on vocal min­istry from British Friend Mark Russ. I like the warn­ing that what might look obvi­ous to a new­com­er might not be what they think:

From a non-Quaker per­spec­tive, a group of peo­ple sit­ting in a cir­cle in silence, with any­one able to stand and speak, might look very much like a ther­a­py group. We might then inter­pret the words spo­ken in this group as being main­ly per­son­al and to a large extend pri­vate. We might see the per­son speak­ing as unbur­den­ing them­selves, shar­ing some­thing they’ve per­haps nev­er shared before, and find­ing heal­ing through this shar­ing. These words are treat­ed as some­thing pre­cious, belong­ing to the indi­vid­ual who speaks, and are treat­ed with con­fi­den­tial­i­ty by oth­ers in the group.

For those want­i­ng more, the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal is all about vocal ministry.

Retro Quaker Vocal Ministry Flowchart

June 16, 2022
· Martin Kelley
“Speaking into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.
“Speak­ing into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.

Peo­ple have been com­ment­ing a lot on this chart Friends Jour­nal shared on social media last week. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the August 1991 issue, what I love most about it is its 1990s-era flow­chart design. What would it be today — some punchy info­graph­ic per­haps? We dove into the archives because this mon­th’s issue is all about Quak­er vocal min­istry and at least two of the fea­ture arti­cles men­tion these kinds of charts.

From Paul Buck­ley:

There is a fre­quent­ly repro­duced dia­gram that graph­i­cal­ly guides poten­tial speak­ers through a series of ques­tions they are to con­sid­er when they feel an urge to rise and speak. These exam­ine whether a poten­tial mes­sage is divine­ly inspired; whether it is intend­ed for the speak­er alone or for oth­ers present; and whether this is the right time and place to deliv­er it. These resources are all use­ful, but they only address one half of the act of vocal min­istry: one that is, by far, the small­er and per­haps less impor­tant por­tion. The oth­er part is the min­istry of lis­ten­ing, and we are all called to be lis­ten­ing ministers.

From Edna Whit­ti­er:

Since the begin­ning of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, writ­ten advices have guid­ed Friends. Year­ly meet­ings’ faith and prac­tice books, Pen­dle Hill pam­phlets on vocal min­istry, and indi­vid­ual month­ly meet­ings’ “Wel­come to Quak­er Wor­ship” hand­outs have guide­lines for speak­ing or not speak­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. In 2019, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence even pub­lished a poster of a cir­cle flow chart with guide­lines for deliv­er­ing a mes­sage dur­ing worship.

This ver­sion is below. Yes, it is very 2020’s info­graph­i­cal in design! (PDF; a sim­i­lar ver­sion was pro­duced for a Pen­dle Hill pam­phlet by FGC staff Bar­ry Cross­no and Brent Bill, PDF).

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But I link to the arti­cles because these kinds of when-to-speak kind of charts can always become prob­lem­at­ic. As Bet­sy Caz­den replied on Twit­ter: “The peo­ple who need it least will spend the full hour obsess­ing about the flow-chart and will nev­er speak. The peo­ple who need it most nev­er will.” Just a few weeks ago I was sit­ting on a bench in Crop­well (N.J.) Meet­ing test­ing and retest­ing my moti­va­tions and lead­ings to rise and give min­istry. I gave a final breath to stand up when I heard the “good morn­ing Friends” fol­lowed by the sounds of hands slap­ping on hands in rise-of-meeting hand­shakes. Over the years I have learned not spend my whole hour obsess­ing but had not real­ized this meet­ing’s wor­ship was only 45 minutes!

Fur­ther read­ing: An Expect­ed Mir­a­cle, a 2023 post about the (often unnec­es­sary) pres­sures of Quak­er ministry.

Updating as I find more

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Chest­nut Hill Meet­ing in Philadel­phia, Pa., cir­ca 2014.
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West­min­ster Meet­ing, in Lon­don, which in turn got it from a 2015 book by Zélie Gross, With a Ten­der Hand.

Ukraine and the dilemmas of pacifism

May 12, 2022
· Martin Kelley

From Johan Maurer

But let’s say you and I have put all our eggs into the Jesus bas­ket. Aban­don­ing non­vi­o­lence is sim­ply not an option. What can we say that is dif­fer­ent from the cal­cu­la­tions of our peace-loving friends and neigh­bors who are cast­ing about for polit­i­cal solu­tions and com­pro­mis­es when evi­dence sug­gests that the aggres­sor is com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ed in what we think of him?

Quaker Spring 2022

May 10, 2022
· Martin Kelley

My friend Peter Blood asked me to get out infor­ma­tion on this year’s Quak­er Spring gath­er­ing, in Pough­keep­sie, N.Y., and online, at the end of June:

Are you famil­iar with Quak­er Spring? It’s an unusu­al gath­er­ing — open-hearted, min­i­mal advance pro­gram­ming. A jour­ney each time we gath­er. It would be won­der­ful if some of you are able & led to join us in per­son but we know it is a long way.  But, of course, it would also be won­der­ful to see some of you via Zoom!
In God’s lov­ing care,
Peter
for the Quak­er Spring Plan­ning Group

More infor­ma­tion at: quak​er​spring​.org/​2​0​2​2​-​g​a​t​h​e​r​ing

Philadelphia YM on pamphlet series archive

April 14, 2022
· Martin Kelley

I’ve already writ­ten about the dig­i­tal repub­li­ca­tion of the clas­sic William Penn Lec­ture series. But Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s post con­tained this great quote from Jim Rose:

Pen­dle Hill had a prac­tice of ask­ing week-long stu­dents to take on a job on Wednes­day after­noon. One week my task was to clean/dust and arrange the books in the Upmeads library and in the process I found, high on an upper shelf, a whole series of dusty pam­phlets called the William Penn Lec­tures. Inac­ces­si­ble? You bet. A few months lat­er I sojourned at Pen­dle Hill while my late wife was tak­ing a week-long course. Dur­ing that week I sat with my com­put­er and scanned the text of those pam­phlets. My intent was to make that body of lit­er­a­ture more acces­si­ble to Quak­ers and oth­ers through­out the world on the inter­net. And recent­ly that goal has been achieved. 

I know Jim well from his time on Friends Jour­nal’s board of trustees and mak­ing Quak­er archives acces­si­ble is a great pas­sion of his. He helped us tremen­dous­ly in get­ting old­er arti­cles indexed. That com­bined with the Haver­ford Col­lege Library’s dig­i­tal­iza­tion of every­thing going back to 1955 means we’re rel­a­tive­ly acces­si­ble.

Speak­ing of archives, it looks like I’ve been remiss shar­ing anoth­er amaz­ing resource: the Salem (NJ) Quar­ter Tape Archive. Start­ing in the late 1970s, peo­ple start­ed tap­ing long inter­views with Friends. They’ve sat gath­er­ing dust until they were pulled out an dig­i­tized. Reg­u­lar read­ers will know I’m a huge fan of Rachel Davis DuBois and her inter­view by Charles Crabbe Thomas (num­ber 13) is absolute gold.

William Penn Lecture Quaker archive now available

April 8, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Speak­ing of Bayard Rustin, the print­ed ver­sion of the 1948 speech that is the sub­ject of Car­los Figueroa’s recent Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is now avail­able as a free e‑book or PDF.

But not just that speech: Pen­dle Hill and Quak­er Heron Press recent­ly fin­ished dig­i­tiz­ing dozens of the William Penn/Seeking Faith­ful­ness lec­tures dat­ing back to 1916. It’s an amaz­ing col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing a who’s-who of twentieth-century Friends and friends-of-Friends.

A warn­ing that the selec­tions reflect the prej­u­dices of the day. As far as I can tell it took until the 1950s until lec­ture orga­niz­ers thought to invite a woman. And of course nam­ing your lec­ture after William Penn is seen as prob­lem­at­ic today giv­en his per­son­al involve­ment in human traf­fick­ing. Back then they could over­look that to claim he endeav­ored “to live out the laws of Christ in every thought, and word, and deed.” In 2016 the revived lec­ture series was renamed.