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)

“Quakerism has ruined me for other faith experiences”

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Great tweet­storm by life­long Friend Susan­na Williams on why she left Quak­ers and why she remains so attached to Quakers:

Quak­erism has ruined me for oth­er faith experiences- I was empow­ered from an ear­ly age to have a direct & per­son­al rela­tion­ship with God, to give vocal min­istry (as I first did when I was 12), to dive into silent worship.

Where are the new Quak­er meet­ing plants? Where are the din­ner wor­ship groups? Where is the con­nec­tion with the Spir­it? Where is the space for Friends to encounter and share authen­tic faith journeys?

This reminds me of some of the themes I wrote about in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion (turn­ing fif­teen this year) and 2013’s Quak­erism Left Me by Bet­sy Blake. Should the kind of Friends com­mu­ni­ty Susan­na’s look­ing for real­ly be all that rare? Click on the link to read the 10-part story.


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Does our continued existence matter?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m always hap­py when Johan Mau­r­er wades into an online dis­cus­sion, as he can often gives a steady­ing long-term view of pan­ics. He’s jumped in with per­spec­tive on the viral arti­cle of the week, Don McCormick­’s Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? from the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal.

Johan reminds us that alarms about the future of Quak­erism has long been ring­ing and draws on Joshua Brown’s warn­ings about New York Year­ly Meet­ing from 30 years ago! Lest we chalk all this up an inces­sant alarmism, Johan gives some stats about that year­ly meet­ing. Uh-oh:

7,070 (in 1955)
5,124 (in 1985)
3,241 (in 2015)

But Johan goes beyond that to ask some ques­tions that we real­ly need to sit with. For exam­ple, he asks:

Giv­en that we are a micro­scop­ic per­cent­age of the world Chris­t­ian move­ment, do we have an inflat­ed sense of our own impor­tance? Or, to put it more pos­i­tive­ly, could we rest con­tent­ed that our influ­ence on Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship will last beyond our insti­tu­tion­al survival?

This is a must-read blog for any­one any­where on the Quak­er spectrum

The Quaker movement: decline and persistence
The Quak­er move­ment: decline and persistence 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er discipleship.

blog.canyoubelieve.me blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me

QuakerSpeak DVDs for new visitors

February 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So I’ll admit some­thing: although I’m the senior edi­tor of Friends Jour­nal, and the Quak­er­S­peak YouTube video series is a project of Friends Jour­nal, I’m still jeal­ous of the way it pro­vides a far supe­ri­or entrée to Quak­er thought and life. The way you get to know some­one with such imme­di­a­cy for ten min­utes or so is very powerful.

Every year, Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er Jon Watts has put togeth­er DVDs with col­lec­tions of that sea­son’s videos. There’s a bit of irony in pay­ing for DVDs of free videos but the col­lec­tions are use­ful for shar­ing in meet­ing­house fel­low­ship rooms as part of First-day classes.

But this year’s DVD is spe­cial. It’s only eight videos and they’ve been curat­ed with a very spe­cif­ic audi­ence in mind: new­com­ers and first-time atten­ders. Because the entire DVD runs a bit under an hour, the per-disk price has been made low­er. Low enough hope­ful­ly, for Quak­er meet­ings to buy them in enough bulk that they can be giv­en out to atten­ders who come to visit.

Quak­er wor­ship is an alien con­cept to a lot of reli­gious seek­ers. And it’s very pos­si­ble to attend a Quak­er meet­ing and leave not know­ing much more about Friends’ beliefs and val­ues than a vis­i­tor had walk­ing in that morn­ing. Imag­ine hav­ing some­thing you could hand them to teach them more about the diver­si­ty and depth of Quak­er belief. That’s what these DVDs offer (and, if they’re from the cord-cutter gen­er­a­tion, they can always use the print­ed playlist to open YouTube on their phones).

The dif­fer­ence between a curi­ous per­son vis­it­ing once and a reg­u­lar atten­der (and some­day mem­ber) is some­times just a bit of fol­lowup. I’m excit­ed to see if meet­ings take up this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I think Quak­er­S­peak has been the most impor­tant Quak­er out­reach pro­gram of recent times; this DVD is yet anoth­er way that we’re bridg­ing it with on-the-ground Quak­er meet­ings. Check it out.

http://​www​.quak​er​s​peak​.com/​d​vd/

Frederick Douglass’s Fight Against Scientific Racism

February 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

We should­n’t be sur­prised that there’s a Quak­er con­nec­tion: Samuel George Mor­ton was raised as a Friend and edu­cat­ed at the Quak­er West­town board­ing school. A gen­er­a­tion lat­er, Friend Hen­ry W God­dard coined the word “moron” in now-discredited pseudoscience.


Opinion | Frederick Douglass’s Fight Against Scientific Racism (Published 2018)

Opin­ion | Fred­er­ick Douglass’s Fight Against Sci­en­tif­ic Racism (Pub­lished 2018) 

He under­stood that the ends to which sci­ence could be used were for­ev­er bound up with the moral…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

Wait, a new Quaker blog, what retroness is this?

February 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

And just as we’re talk­ing about the con­tin­ued down­ward entropy of blog­ging, here’s a new Quak­er blog. Isaac Smith of Fred­er­ick (Md.) Meet­ing (and Twit­ter) has the first post in a time-limited, “pop-up” blog. He’s call­ing it “The Anar­chy of the Ranters.” I’ll over­look the sim­i­lar­i­ty to this blog’s name in the hope that the peo­ple who have been drop­ping com­ments on mine since 2004 ask­ing about the dif­fer­ence between Quak­ers and Ranters will start both­er­ing him now.

The first post is “Defen­sive­ness as a The­o­log­i­cal Prob­lem for Friends,” a good blog­ging debut.

The ques­tion of who belongs in the church, which has always been of cen­tral impor­tance, is what’s at stake here, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is often being answered in ways that are hurt­ful and alien­at­ing — the oppo­site of what the gospel promises.

November Flashbacks

November 4, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Once a month I’m doing flash­backs to past eras in my blog. 

One Year Ago: November 2016

A year ago the shock to the sys­tem was Trump’s elec­tion. One reac­tion of mine was a promise to blog more; I set up the sys­tem but I’m still not as fric­tion­less about it as I’d like. 

Wak­ing Up to Pres­i­dent Trump: We do not get to choose our era or the chal­lenges it throws at us. Only some­one with his­tor­i­cal amne­sia would say this is unprece­dent­ed in our his­to­ry. The enslave­ment of mil­lions and the geno­cide of mil­lions more are dark stains indeli­bly soaked into the very found­ing of the nation. But much will change, par­tic­u­lar­ly our naiv­i­ty and false opti­mism in an inevitable for­ward progress of our nation­al story. 

Five Years Ago: November 2012

Five years ago I wrote about how I had been blog­ging for fif­teen years. Do the math: it’s now 20 frig­ging years since I start­ed blogging.

Fif­teen Years of Blog­ging: I keep double-checking the math but it keeps adding up. In Novem­ber 1997 I added a fea­ture to my two-year-old peace web­site. I called this new enti­ty Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront and updat­ed it week­ly with orig­i­nal fea­tures and curat­ed links to the best online paci­fist writ­ing. I wrote a ret­ro­spec­tive of the “ear­ly blog­ging days” in 2005 that talks about how it came about and gives some con­text about the proto-blogs hap­pen­ing back in 1997. 

Ten Years Ago: November 2007

Free­lanc­ing and work­ing the overnight shift at Shoprite, I won­dered if my Quak­er­ness was hope­less­ly use­less to my new circumstances.

Who are we part one (just what pam­phlet do I give the tat­tooed ex-con?): I love the fel­low who gave the mes­sage and I appre­ci­at­ed his min­istry. But the whole time I won­dered how this would sound to peo­ple I know now, like the friend­ly but hot-tempered Puer­to Rican ex-con less than a year out of a eight-year stint in fed­er­al prison, now work­ing two eight hour shifts at almost-minimum wage jobs and try­ing to stay out of trou­ble. How does the the­o­ry of our the­ol­o­gy fit into a code of con­duct that doesn’t start off assum­ing mid­dle class norms. 

Twenty Years Ago: November 1997

Four years before 9/11, I was ask­ing how we could break the cycle of terrorism.

How Come the U.S. Trains All the Ter­ror­ists?: It would seem a sim­ple case of U.S. mil­i­tarism com­ing home to roost, but it is not so sim­ple and it is not uncom­mon. Fol­low most trails of ter­ror­ism and you’ll find Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment fund­ing some­where in the recent past.