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)

Sowing seeds

April 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Mike Far­ley looks at Quak­er sto­ries of East­er and the dif­fi­cul­ties of dis­tract­ing the Holy Spirit:

I am at least as sus­cep­ti­ble as any­one I know to self-deception and wish­ful think­ing, to being untrue to myself and to God, and to look­ing out­side myself, at the exter­nal aspects of thought and prac­tice among peo­ple of faith, try­ing to dis­tract myself from the work of the Spir­it in my heart. But it is less easy to dis­tract the Holy Spir­it, and so I have been called back again and again to these uncom­fort­able, at times down­right dan­ger­ous, places, out in the salt­marsh­es of the heart.

The sow­ing of seeds

Whassup Quaker Internet?

April 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The August issue of Friends Jour­nal will look at “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” I wrote an Editor’s Desk post with some ideas of top­ics I’d love to see and some queries:

  • Do we have a vision of what kind of Quak­erism we’re invit­ing peo­ple into?
  • Does grow­ing neces­si­tate cast­ing off or re-embracing var­i­ous Quak­er practices?
  • Can we point to spe­cif­ic and repro­ducible tasks that meet­ings have done that have led to growth?
  • Are there mod­els from oth­er church­es or social change move­ments that we could learn from?
  • What are the dan­gers of over-focusing on growth?
  • Is there real­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty that Quak­erism could become a mass movement?
  • What would our Quak­er expe­ri­ences look like if our num­bers rose even ten-fold?

One thing that’s miss­ing there is the inter­net. Yet one of the most com­mon things peo­ple want to talk about when we talk about grow­ing Friends is the inter­net. I think we’ve got­ten to the point at which we can’t just pin our hopes for future vital­i­ty of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends on the inter­net. It’s not a build-it-and-they-will come phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly now that so much of the inter­net’s atten­tion mech­a­nisms are dom­i­nat­ed by billion-dollar companies.

I went into the Friends Jour­nal archives to get a lit­tle per­spec­tive on Friends’ evolv­ing rela­tion­ship with elec­tron­ic media. The word “inter­net” first showed up near the end of 1992, in a short announce­ment of a new Quaker-themed list­serv. In 1993 there was a fan­tas­tic arti­cle on elec­tron­ic net­works, The Invis­i­ble Meet­ing­house. Writ­ten by Joel GAzis-SAx, it describes the Quak­er Elec­tron­ic Project as

an ongo­ing year­ly meet­ing that Friends around the world can join any time. It is, at once, a library, a meet­ing­house, a social cen­ter, and a bul­letin board. W e have cre­at­ed both a com­mu­ni­ty and a resource center…

Amaz­ing­ly, many of the peo­ple men­tioned in this arti­cle from 25 years ago are still active online.

The first “http” web address was pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal in a 1995 issue. In June 2001 the mag­a­zine announced its own web­site; the word “blog” debuted in 2004, “Face­book” in 2007, “Twit­ter” in 2011. Obvi­ous­ly, the inter­net is great for out­reach. But time check: we’ve been col­lec­tive­ly reach­ing out online for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry. Every orga­ni­za­tion has a web­site. Blogs and social media have become a set­tled tool in outreach.

Intro­duc­tions to the web and tech­niques and how-to’s have been done. But how do these var­i­ous media work togeth­er to advance our vis­i­bil­i­ty? What kind of expand­ed out­reach could hap­pen with a lit­tle more focus? How does any online project inte­grate with real-world activ­i­ty. I’m not naysay­ing the inter­net; obvi­ous­ly, I could give my answers to these ques­tions. But I’d like to know what oth­ers think about our Quak­er elec­tron­ic projects a quar­ter cen­tu­ry later?


Just a moment...

Just a moment… 

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

Belief, Faith, and “That of God”

April 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Long-time Quak­er blog­ger Mark Wut­ka won­ders if we’ve inad­ver­tent­ly brought back in a doc­tri­nal state­ment with our easy response to the ques­tion of Quak­er belief:

Do Friends today have faith and trust in ‘that of God’ in every per­son? Are we striv­ing to answer ‘that of God’ in oth­ers, and do we have the faith that doing so may even­tu­al­ly bring them away from evil? I ask this because much of the dis­course today seems to ignore this.

“That of God in every­one” is one of those phras­es that many traditional-leaning Friends have found a bit prob­lem­at­ic over the years. Quak­er co-founder George Fox used it, but spar­ing­ly. It does­n’t even appear in his Jour­nal. If you were look­ing for an “ele­va­tor pitch” of his beliefs, I would go with his spir­i­tu­al open­ing that there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to our con­di­tion. The most well-argued (per­haps over-argued) expose of “that of God” as a latter-day Quak­er over­lay came from Lewis Ben­son’s famous essay from 1970, ‘That of God in Every Man” — What Did George Fox Mean by It?

In the sec­ond half of the piece Mark asks whether our belief of that of God leads us to act dif­fer­ent­ly in the polit­i­cal sphere. He strug­gles with this, as do I, and as do pre­sum­ably all of us. I wor­ry par­tic­u­lar­ly about judg­ing the way Friends act; when­ev­er I see some­one share a hard truth, I know I’ll quick­ly see some­one else cri­tique them for being too divi­sive, too “unQuak­er­ly.”

Jesus famous­ly over­turned the mon­ey chang­ers and Ben­jamin Lay spilled pig blood in year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. Maybe the only guide we have is the active Guide. Maybe our order­ly walk­ing will look alter­na­tive­ly meek or divi­sive depend­ing on the cues we’re giv­en. And maybe we’ll be mis­un­der­stood even as we’re being the most faithful.

Mark fin­ish­es:

For now, I am striv­ing to walk in the Light as best I can and man­i­fest the fruit of the Spir­it in my inter­ac­tions with people


Belief, Faith, and "That of God"

Belief, Faith, and “That of God” 

One of the dif­fi­cul­ties I have with the ques­tion “What do Quak­ers believe?” is that it makes an…

earofthesoul.blogspot.com earofthe​soul​.blogspot​.com

Spring and healing

April 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I was just fill­ing out my work log for March and had for­got­ten just how crazy the weath­er here in the U.S. North­east had been, with suc­ces­sive waves of nor’easters dump­ing mas­sive amounts of snow on us. It made for some great kid pic­tures but it added quite a bit of chaos to work schedules.

So it seems kind of amaz­ing there’s an April issue of Friends Jour­nal. But there is and it’s a good one I think: we look at heal­ing. The cov­er of new tree leaves back­lit by spring­time sun is sea­son­al but it also reflects the top­ic and our mood after a win­try late winter.


Just a moment...

Just a moment… 

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

Quakers and Mental Health

March 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Well this one hits home for me. The new Quak­er­S­peak talks to Ore­gon social work­er Melody George in the top­ic of Quak­ers and Men­tal Health:

I real­ly see men­tal diver­si­ty as a gift to a com­mu­ni­ty, and that the folks that I serve and that I’ve worked with are very resilient. If they tell you their sto­ries about how they’ve got­ten through their trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions and what’s helped them to keep going, faith is a huge part of that. And we have a lot to learn from their strength and resilience.

My fam­i­ly has had very avoid­able and out-of-nowhere con­flicts at two reli­gious spaces — one a Friends meet­ing and the oth­er a Pres­by­ter­ian church — over easy acco­mo­da­tions for my son Fran­cis. It seems like many of the dynam­ics that we’ve seen are not dis­sim­i­lar to those that keep oth­ers out of meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Who are we will­ing to adapt for? Is com­fort and famil­iar­i­ty our main goal?

Melody also wrote for Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Imag­in­ing a Trauma-informed Quak­er Com­mu­ni­ty.

The Seed as Quaker metaphor

March 28, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son’s blog, a look at “The Seed” as a Quak­er metaphor:

Con­sid­er­ing today’s empha­sis on indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, plu­ral­i­ty, and per­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, I believe that return­ing to the metaphor of the Seed holds the most poten­tial for fer­tile spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment and guid­ance in our own era.

I find the evo­lu­tion of Quak­er metaphors fas­ci­nat­ing. Ear­ly Quak­er ser­mons and epis­tles were packed with bib­li­cal allu­sions. I grew up rel­a­tive­ly unchurched but I’ve tried to make up for it over the years. I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover using the One Year Bible plan (like a lot of peo­ple I sus­pect, it took me a lit­tle over two years) and have been part of dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tion­al Bible study groups. I try to look up ref­er­ences. But even with that I don’t catch half the ref­er­ences ear­ly ser­mons packed in.

John Wool­man lived a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions after the first Friends. We Quak­er remem­ber his Jour­nal for min­istry of its anti-slavery sen­ti­ments, final­ly becom­ing a con­sen­sus among Friends by the time of its pub­li­ca­tion in 1774. But oth­er reli­gious folks have read it for its lit­er­ary val­ue. Open a ran­dom page and Wool­man will have up to half a dozen metaphors for the Divine. It’s packed and rich and acces­si­ble. I find a kind of par­tic­u­lar Quak­er spir­i­tu­al truth in Wool­man’s rota­tion of metaphors: it implies that divin­i­ty is more than any spe­cif­ic words we try to stuff it into.

Late­ly Quak­er metaphors have tend­ed to become more ster­ile. I think we’re still wor­ried about specifics but instead of expand­ing our lan­guage we con­tract it into a kind of impen­e­tra­ble code. The “Light of Christ” becomes the “Inward Christ” then the “Inward Light” then “the Light” or “Spir­it.” We’re still echo­ing the Light metaphors packed into the Book of John but doing so in such a way that seems par­tic­u­lar­ly parochial to Friends and non-obvious to new­com­ers. A major New Tes­ta­ment theme is reduced to Quak­er lingo.

Jnana Hod­son’s prob­lem with “the seed” as metaphor is inter­est­ing: “ ‘seed,’ as such, has far few­er Bib­li­cal cita­tions than the cor­re­spond­ing com­ple­men­tary ‘light’ or ‘true’ and ‘truth’ do.” I’m not sure I ever noticed that. I like the seed, with its organ­ic con­no­ta­tions and promise of future growth.  But appar­ent­ly the few bib­li­cal allu­sions were rather sex­ist (spoil­er: it often meant semen) and lack­ing in bio­log­i­cal aware­ness. It feels like Friends are search­ing for neu­tral metaphors like “the seed” these days; we also have a lot of gath­er­ings around “weav­ing.” I cer­tain­ly don’t think we should be lim­it­ed to first cen­tu­ry images of divin­i­ty but I also don’t think we’ve quite fig­ured out how we can talk about the guid­ance we receive from the Inward Teacher.

The Seed, ini­tial­ly, is the most prob­lem­at­ic of the three cen­tral Quak­er metaphors

Hope in the Middle East

March 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

As the March Friends Jour­nal theme of Quak­ers and the Holy Land comes to a close, this week’s fea­tured arti­cle is one with hope. Sandy Rea shares sto­ries of teach­ing in var­i­ous parts of the Mid­dle East with his wife Stephanie Judson:

I fell in love with Lebanon: with the peo­ple, the sound of the lan­guage, the tastes of the food, and smells of the spices. Views to the Lebanon moun­tains from Beirut’s sea­side boule­vards and rooftops are entic­ing. Moun­tain vil­lages have pre­served their charm by keep­ing old­er homes with the blonde stone and red tile roofs. The hard-working and earnest teach­ers and the smart, business-minded shop own­ers are always glad to see for­eign­ers. There is an indus­tri­ous­ness, resilience, and pride in the Lebanese that con­tribute to the repeat­ed ris­ings from so many destruc­tions of the city.

Sandy also gives us his­to­ries of times in which Chris­tians, Mus­lims, and Jews have lived togeth­er in peace. It is pos­si­ble. Today Sandy is clerk of the Mid­dle East Col­lab­o­ra­tive of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, which is work­ing  on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the region.


Just a moment...

Just a moment… 

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

Ask Me Anything: Do Quakers celebrate Easter and if so, how?

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A ques­tion From Jes­si­ca F about Friends and Easter.

On the face of it, this is an easy ques­tion. Ear­ly Friends were loath to rec­og­nize any litur­gi­cal prac­tices and they were lower‑p puri­tan­i­cal about any­thing that smacked of pagan­ism. Famous­ly, they didn’t use the com­mon names of the week or months because many of them referred to non-Christian deities, like Thor and Janus.

They were espe­cial­ly grumpy about any­thing that smacked of latter-day syn­cretism. Many of the church hol­i­days were seen as pagan fes­ti­vals with a super­fi­cial Chris­t­ian over­lay. I’ll be the first to admit they could get kind of obnox­ious this way. Wikipedia explains some of this attitude:

Oth­er Protes­tant groups took a dif­fer­ent atti­tude, with most Anabap­tists, Quak­ers, Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ists and Pres­by­ter­ian Puri­tans regard­ing such fes­ti­vals as an abom­i­na­tion. The Puri­tan rejec­tion of East­er tra­di­tions was (and is) based part­ly upon their inter­pre­ta­tion of 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14 – 16 and part­ly upon a more gen­er­al belief that, if a reli­gious prac­tice or cel­e­bra­tion is not actu­al­ly writ­ten in the Chris­t­ian Bible, then that practice/celebration must be a lat­er devel­op­ment and can­not be con­sid­ered an authen­tic part of Chris­t­ian prac­tice or belief — so at best sim­ply unnec­es­sary, at worst actu­al­ly sinful.

In Latin, East­er is called Pascha, a ref­er­ence to the Jew­ish Passover fes­ti­val. But in Eng­land, Pascha took place in the month the old Eng­lish called Ēostre after a god­dess whose fes­ti­val was cel­e­brat­ed in that month. This made it dou­bly hard for Eng­lish Protes­tant groups that want­ed to cleanse Chris­tian­i­ty of “popish” or “pagan” influ­ences. So for right or wrong, they ignored it like they did the day the world calls Christmas.

Sym­bol­i­cal­ly, Quak­ers love the idea of East­er. One of George Fox’s most key open­ings was that“Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self!” The idea that Jesus rose again and is with us is pret­ty cen­tral to tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs.

These days East­er is large­ly cel­e­brat­ed by Friends stand­ing up on Sun­day to break the silence of wor­ship with nos­tal­gic sto­ries of East­ers in their pre-Quaker youth. Some­times they’ll admit to hav­ing attend­ed a East­er ser­vice at anoth­er church before com­ing to meet­ing that morn­ing. If you’re real­ly lucky, you’ll get min­istry about flow­ers or hats.