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)
If all goes smoothly on the technical front, tomorrow I’ll be interviewing Doug Bennett for Friends Journal. In this month’s feature article, he argues that the Quaker controversies over homosexuality could be an opportunity to bring us closer together. Reply below with a question for Doug (<20 words) and we might use it for the interview!
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President Obama’s been attributing some of his so-called “evolution” on same-sex marriage to his daughters. As he told ABC’s Robin Roberts:
You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table, and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.
So where do Obama’s daughter’s independent friends come from? Like most tweens the likeliest answer is school – in their case, Sidwell Friends. It’s not unlikely that the “evolution” owed something to the Quaker environment there.
Most elite Quaker schools have only a token base of Quaker students and teachers, so we can’t assume that Malia and Sasha’s friends are Friends. Like many outward-facing Quaker institutions, modern Friends schools’ strongest claim to Quakerism is the values and discernment techniques they share with the wider world. They consciously transmit a style and pedagogy and create an environment of openness and diversity. Of course the Obama kids are going to rub up against non-traditional marriages at a East Coast Quaker school. And no one should be surprised if they bring a little of that back home when the school bus drops them off at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
NYTimes: Obama Girls Influence the President — Again
President Obama often uses his daughters, Malia and Sasha, as object lessons in explaining his reasoning behind important policy positions.
I’m part of a discussion at the Pendle Hill conference center outside Philadelphia next month. Everyone’s invited. It’s a rare chance to really bring a lot of different readers and media producers (official and DIY) together into the same room to map out where Quaker media is headed. If you’re a passionate reader or think that Quaker publications are vital to our spiritual movement, then do try to make it out.
Youtube, Twitter, podcasts, blogs, books. Where’s it all going and who’s doing it? How does it tie back to Quakerism? What does it mean for Friends and our institutions? Join panelists Charles Martin, Gabriel Ehri and Martin Kelley, along with Quaker publishers and writers from around the world, and readers and media enthusiasts, for a wide-ranging discussion about the future of Quaker media.
We will begin with some worship at 7.00pm If you’d like a delicious Pendle Hill dinner beforehand please reply to the Facebook event wall (see http://on.fb.me/quakermedia). Dinner is at 6.00pm and will cost $12.50
This is part of this year’s Quakers Uniting in Publications conference. QUIP has been having to re-imagine its role over the last ten years as so many of its anchor publishers and bookstores have closed. I have a big concern that a lot of online Quaker material is being produced by non-Quakers and/or in ways that aren’t really rooted in typical Quaker processes. Maybe we can talk about that some at Pendle Hill.
On a late lunch, just finished “Conflicting Views on Foreign Missions: The Mission Board of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Freinds in the 1920s” by Tesuko Toda from the Fall 2011 issue of Quaker History.
Sounds like a page turner, right? But it’s interesting history that’s still resonating. Toda’s piece sheds light on a generational sea change that happened among the evangelical-leaning subset of Philadelphia Friends (a minority of the Orthodox yearly meeting):
When the story begins, Friends interested in mission work have to organize independent of the yearly meeting. Over time they come into the fold but it’s right when younger Friends are giving up the idea of bringing Christianity to the heathens for the idea of international fellowship (a similar attitude change was happening throughout Protestant denominations). Toda writes:
Young Philadelphian Friends did support foreign missions, but did not support conventional ones. Actually, none of them approved of foreign missions aimed at conversion. Although some pointed out the advantages of Friends missions, no one insisted on denominational missions. What kind of foreign missions did young Philadelphia Friends think was suitable for the new era (the 1920s), then? The first point to be noted is that young Philadelphia Friends unanimously had a negative view of traditional missionaries.
There’s a lot of back-and-forth in the group but it finally funnelled its energies into the still-new American Friends Service Committee. The AFSC had been set up to support conscientious objectors in World War I and there was no expection that it might continue after the war. That it did was because it better represented the internation fellowship model.
I’m not going to write a full review but those of you interested in the sociological history of that kind of bold, “let’s change the world” energy in Friends should look it up, as should those curious about how generational shifts sometimes play out in yearly meeting politics.
Of course, that is not the part of the story that motivates me. I am not seeking to be abused and betrayed, let down by my best friends and hunted by those in power. I may recognize the necessity of suffering, but by no means do I seek it out. I think most of us gravitate towards the triumphant victory and joy of Jesus\’ resurrection
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From Callid Keefe-Perry, a vlog entry on the apparent discrepancy between what Friends think they want to be doing (outreach) versus what they think makes for a healthy meeting (deep worship), as indicated by a just-released survey from Friends General Conference, the umbrella organization for many of North America’s Liberal Friends.
Callid says:
there’s a disconnect between deep worship as a mark of health, and outreach as the most important thing to do. We try as people to make things happen that are beyond our control. If we really attended to deep worship, if we attended to rooting our communies in a sense of discipleship and discipline, then outreach and care for community, and leading by example would come from that. Those things are fruits; their root is living in the presence, living in gospel order. I’m concerned that in the hustle and bustle of outreach and making things work we might miss that still small voice. [Loose transcript, lightly edited]
There is much we can do to promote community awareness of Friends (aka “outreach”), but I suspect the greatest effect of our efforts is internal – raising our own consciousness about how to be visible and welcoming. Friends are always getting free publicity (just this morning I finished Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot, whose final pages are practically an ad for our religious society, and there’s the seeker-producing mill of the Belief-o-Matic Quiz). What if visibility isn’t our biggest problem? Callid’s post reminds me of something that Robin Mohr said when I interviewed her “Eight Questions on Convergent Friends” for Friends Journal:
Though it may be different in other places, San Francisco always had people visiting; there was no shortage of new visitors. The key was getting them to come back… I don’t think the Convergent Friends movement is necessarily going to solve our outreach issues, but it can absolutely change the retention rate.
Worship at the Medford (N.J.) Meeting started this morning with queries for the upcoming “Salt and Light” gathering of world Friends. Medford is sending a delegate to the Kenyan event, and in preparation they’re reading the queries from the Salt and Light material during the month of March, along with some passages from the Gospel of Mark(“Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.” http://bible.us/Mark9.49.KJV). I spoke in worship to a recent omission of salt.
A Saturday ritual in the household is morning pancakes. One of the boys likes chocolate chips in his pancakes; another likes vanilla chips; I myself like blueberries. What all the pancakes have in common is salt: just one and half t‑spoons in the mixing bowl is enough to transform the batter.
A few Saturdays ago I forgot the salt. The results looked like pancakes but when we bit into them we knew they weren’t right. Rather than give them up, we poured them extra-heavy with syrup. Enough syrup masked the bland tastelessness of the pancakes – the empty form of these almost pancakes – and allowed us to eat it.
How many of the religious bodies descended from Mark’s early gospel have masked our saltlessness (or a fear of it) with extra heapings of syrup? Certainly, the current fashion for charismatic preachers and praise rock bands can act as a kind of masking syrup. But there’s all sorts of ways of compensating for missing salt.
As Jon Watts and Maggie Harrison have been reminding us though the http://www.clotheyourselfinrighteousness.com project, early Friends opted for spiritual nakedness: people gathering without props or distractions, one-on-one and together waiting for the Holy Spirit to lift up and gather the worship. The salt is the Living Spirit, here to guide, direct, comfort and scold. In the quiet of a Friends meeting you’ve either got it or you don’t. We’re working without nets and there’s not much room to hide. The question facing the participants in Kenya – and the gatherers in every Friends meetinghouse and church in the world – is whether we have the salt.
There are many types of masking syrup. Even once-radical Friends have found ways to sidestep the salt question, pre-empting the empty nakedness of our worship with causes, busy-ness, historical festishism, etc. When Friends gather in Kenya, I hope they will ask one another about the salt, the Living Spirit. Maybe they can bring back a re-appreciation of nakedness. For the good news is that Jesus is always ready to bring salt to the simplest of meals: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (http://bible.us/Rev3.20.KJV).
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Welcome to the World Conference of Friends 2012 Website
The largest worldwide conference of Friends since 1967 comes together from 17 – 25 April 2012 in Kenya. The theme is Being Salt and Light — Friends living the Kingdom of God in a broken world. One thous…
On the blogs, Robin Mohr wrote about Friends leadership and vision and the “Nakedness/You’re Not a Quaker” responses continue with two more follow-up’s among this week’s Editor Picks. Elsewhere, the Modern Quakers and Clothing project has been collecting some great personal stories. And on a housekeeping note, donations for QuakerQuaker have been pretty light lately; please consider helping out.
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Naked Leadership? [QuakerQuaker This Week, 2/26/12] — QuakerQuaker
Naked Leadership?
On the blogs, Robin Mohr wrote about Friends leadership and vision and the Nakedness/You’re Not a Quaker responses continue with two more f…
