Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal

A look at the generational shifts facing Friends.

I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals: Fac­ing the Chal­lenges of the New World, which exam­ines the cul­tur­al and gen­er­a­tional shifts hap­pen­ing with­in the Chris­t­ian Evan­gel­i­cal move­ment. At the bot­tom of this page is a handy chart that out­lines the gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in the­ol­o­gy, eccle­si­as­ti­cal par­a­digm, church poli­ty that he sees. When I first saw it I said “yes!” to almost each cat­e­go­ry, as it clear­ly hits at the gen­er­a­tional forces hit­ting Quakerism.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly many Friends in lead­er­ship posi­tions don’t real­ly under­stand the prob­lems fac­ing Quak­erism. Or: they do, but they don’t under­stand the larg­er shifts behind them and think that they just need to redou­ble their efforts using the old meth­ods and mod­els. The Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion in charge knows the chal­lenge is to reach out to seek­ers in their twen­ties or thir­ties, but they do this by devel­op­ing pro­grams that would have appealed to them when they were that age. The cur­rent crop of out­reach projects and peace ini­tia­tives are all very 1980 in style. There’s no recog­ni­tion that the sec­u­lar peace com­mu­ni­ty that drew seek­ers in twen­ty years ago no longer exists and that today’s seek­ers are look­ing for some­thing deep­er, some­thing more per­son­al and more real.

When younger Friends are includ­ed in the sur­veys and com­mit­tees, they tend to be either the unin­volved chil­dren of impor­tant Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion Quak­ers, or those thirty-something Friends that cul­tur­al­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly fit into the old­er par­a­digms. It’s fine that these two types of Friends are around, but nei­ther group chal­lenges Baby Boomer group-think. Out­spo­ken younger Friends often end up leav­ing the Soci­ety in frus­tra­tion after a few years.

It’s a shame. In my ten years attend­ing a down­town Philadel­phia Friends meet­ing, I eas­i­ly met a hun­dred young seek­ers. They most­ly cycled through, attend­ing for peri­ods rang­ing from a few months to a few years. I would often ask them why they stopped com­ing. Some­times they were just nice and said life was too busy, but of course that’s not a real answer: you make time for the things that are impor­tant and that feed you in some way. But oth­ers told me they found the meet­ing unwel­com­ing, or Friends too self-congratulatory or super­fi­cial, the com­mu­ni­ty more social than spir­i­tu­al. I went back to this meet­ing one First Day after a two year absence and it was depress­ing how it was all the same faces. This is not a knock on this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing, since the same dynam­ics are at work in most of the liberal-leaning meet­ings I’ve attend­ed, both in the FGC and FUM worlds – it’s a gen­er­a­tional cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. I have nev­er found the young Quak­er seek­er com­mu­ni­ty I know is out there, though I’ve glimpsed its indi­vid­ual faces a hun­dred times: always just out of reach, nev­er gelling into a movement.

I’m not sure what the answers are. Luck­i­ly it’s not my job to have answers: I leave that up to Christ and only con­cern myself with being as faith­ful a ser­vant to the Spir­it as I can be (this spirit-led lead­er­ship style is exact­ly one of the gen­er­a­tional shifts Web­ber talks about). I’ve been giv­en a clear mes­sage that my job is to stay with the Soci­ety of Friends, that I might be of use some­day. But there are a few pieces that I think will come out:

A re-examination of our roots, as Christians and as Friends

What babies were thrown out with the bath­wa­ter by turn-of-the-century Friends who embraced mod­ernism and ratio­nal­ism and turned their back on tra­di­tion­al tes­ti­monies? This will require chal­leng­ing some of the sacred myths of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. There are a lot that aren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly Quak­er and we need to start admit­ting to that. I’ve per­son­al­ly tak­en up plain dress and find the old state­ments on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny much deep­er and more mean­ing­ful than con­tem­po­rary ones. I’m a pro­fes­sion­al web­mas­ter and run a promi­nent paci­fist site, so it’s not like I’m stuck in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry; instead, I just think these old tes­ti­monies actu­al­ly speak to our con­di­tion in the twenty-first Century.

A Desire to Grow

Too many Friends are hap­py with their nice cozy meet­ings. The meet­ings serve as fam­i­ly and as a sup­port group, and a real growth would dis­rupt our estab­lished pat­terns. If Quak­erism grew ten­fold over the next twen­ty years we’d have to build meet­ing­hous­es, have extra wor­ship, reor­ga­nize our com­mit­tees. Involved Friends would­n’t know all the oth­er involved Friends in their year­ly meet­ing. With more mem­bers we’d have to become more rig­or­ous and dis­ci­plined in our com­mit­tee meet­ings. Quak­erism would feel dif­fer­ent if it were ten times larg­er: how many of us would just feel uncom­fort­able with that. Many of our Meet­ings are ripe for growth, being in boom­ing sub­urbs or thriv­ing urban cen­ters, but year after year they stay small. Many sim­ply neglect and screw up out­reach or reli­gious edu­ca­tion efforts as a way of keep­ing the meet­ing at its cur­rent size and with its cur­rent character.

A more personally-involved, time-consuming commitment

Reli­gion in Amer­i­ca has become yet anoth­er con­sumer choice, an enter­tain­ment option for Sun­day morn­ing, and this par­a­digm is true with Friends. We com­plain how much time our Quak­er work takes up. We com­plain about clear­ness com­mit­tees or vision­ing groups that might take up a Sat­ur­day after­noon. A more involved Quak­erism would real­ize that the hour on First Day morn­ing is in many ways the least impor­tant time to our Soci­ety. Younger seek­ers are look­ing for con­nec­tions that are deep­er and that will require time. We can’t build a Soci­ety on the cheap. It’s not mon­ey we need to invest, but our hearts and time.

I recent­ly vis­it­ed a Meet­ing that was set­ting up its first adult reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­gram. When it came time to fig­ure out the for­mat, a weighty Friend declared that it could­n’t take place on the first Sun­day of the month because that was when the finance com­mit­tee met; the sec­ond Sun­day was out because of the mem­ber­ship care com­mit­tee; the third was out because of busi­ness meet­ing and so forth. It turned out that reli­gious edu­ca­tion could be squeezed into one 45-minute slot on the fourth Sun­day of every month. Here was a small strug­gling meet­ing in the mid­dle of an sym­pa­thet­ic urban neigh­bor­hood and they could­n’t spare even an hour a month on reli­gious edu­ca­tion or sub­stan­tive out­reach to new mem­bers. Mod­ern Friends should not exist to meet in committees.

A renewal of discipline and oversight

These are taboo words for many mod­ern Friends. But we’ve tak­en open-hearted tol­er­ance so far that we’ve for­got­ten who we are. What does it mean to be a Quak­er? Seek­ers are look­ing for answers. Friends have been able to pro­vide them with answers in the past: both ways to con­duct one­self in the world and ways to reach the divine. Many of us actu­al­ly yearn for more care, atten­tion and over­sight in our reli­gious lives and more con­nec­tion with others.

A confrontation of our ethnic and cultural bigotries

Too much of Quak­er cul­ture is still root­ed in elit­ist wealthy Philadel­phia Main Line “Wasp” cul­ture. For gen­er­a­tions of Friends, the Soci­ety became an eth­nic group you were born into. Too many Friends still care if your name is “Roberts,” “Jones,” “Lip­pen­cott,” “Thomas,” “Brin­ton.” A num­ber of nineteenth-century Quak­er lead­ers tried to make this a reli­gion of fam­i­ly fief­doms. There was a love of the world and an urge for to be respect­ed by the out­side world (the Epis­co­palians would­n’t let you into the coun­try clubs if you wore plain dress or got too excit­ed about religion).

Today we too often con­fuse the cul­ture of those fam­i­lies with Quak­erism. The most obvi­ous exam­ple to me is the oft-repeated phrase: “Friends don’t believe in pros­e­ly­tiz­ing.” Wrong: we start­ed off as great speak­ers of the Truth, gain­ing num­bers in great quan­ti­ties. It was the old Quak­er fam­i­lies who start­ed fret­ting about new blood in the Soci­ety, for they saw birthright mem­ber­ship as more impor­tant than bap­tism by the Holy Spir­it. We’ve got a lot of bag­gage left over from this era, things we need to re-examine, includ­ing: our will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice Truth-telling in the name of polite­ness; an over-developed intel­lec­tu­al­ism that has become snob­bery against those with­out advanced school­ing; our taboo about being too loud or too “eth­nic” in Meeting.

Note that I haven’t specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned racial diver­si­ty. This is a piece of the work we need to do and I’m hap­py that many Friends are work­ing on it. But I think we’ll all agree that it will take more than a few African Amer­i­cans with grad­u­ate degrees to bring true diver­si­ty. The Lib­er­al branch of Friends spends a lot of time con­grat­u­lat­ing itself on being open, tol­er­ant and self-examining and yet as far as I can tell we’re the least ethnically-diverse branch of Amer­i­can Quak­ers (I’m pret­ty sure, any­one with cor­rob­o­ra­tion?). We need to re-examine and chal­lenge the unwrit­ten norms of Quak­er cul­ture that don’t arise from faith. When we have some­thing to offer besides upper-class lib­er­al­ism, we’ll find we can talk to a much wider selec­tion of seekers.

Can we do it?

Can we do these re-examinations with­out rip­ping our Soci­ety apart? I don’t know. I don’t think the age of Quak­er schisms is over, I just think we have a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline and church poli­ty that let us pre­tend the splits aren’t there. We just self-select our­selves into dif­fer­ent sub-groups. I’m not sure if this can con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly. Every week our Meet­ings for Wor­ship bring togeth­er peo­ple of rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent beliefs and non-beliefs. Instead of wor­ship, we have indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion in a group set­ting, where every­one is free to believe what they want to believe. This isn’t Friends’ style and it’s not sat­is­fy­ing to many of us. I know this state­ment may seem like sac­ri­lege to many Friends who val­ue tol­er­ance above all. But I don’t think I’m the only one who would rather wor­ship God than Silence, who longs for a deep­er reli­gious fel­low­ship than that found in most con­tem­po­rary Meet­ings. Quak­erism will change and Mod­ernism isn’t the end of history.

How open will we all be to this process? How hon­est will we get? Where will our Soci­ety end up? We’re not the only reli­gion in Amer­i­ca that is fac­ing these questions.

Tra­di­tion­al
Evangelicals

1950 – 1975

Prag­mat­ic
Evangelicals

1975 – 2000

Younger
Evangelicals

2000-

Theological
Commitment

Chris­tian­i­ty
as a ratio­nal worldview
Chris­tian­i­ty
as ther­a­py Answers needs
Chris­tian­i­ty
as a com­mu­ni­ty of faith.
Ancient/Reformation
Apolo­get­ics
Style
Evi­den­tial
Foundational
Chris­tian­i­ty
as meaning-giver
Experiential
Per­son­al Faith
Embrace
the metanarrative
Embod­ied apologetic
Com­mu­nal faith
Eccle­sial
Par­a­digm
Con­stan­tin­ian
Church
Civ­il Religion
Cul­tur­al­ly
sen­si­tive church
Mar­ket Driven
Mis­sion­al
Church
Counter cultural
Church
Style
Neigh­bour­hood
churches
Rural
Megachu­ruch
Suburban
Mar­ket targeted
Small
Church
Back to cities
Intercultural
Lead­er­ship
Style
Pas­tor
centred
Man­age­r­i­al
Model
CEO
Team
ministry
Priest­hood of all
Youth
Min­istry
Church-centred
programs
Out­reach
Programs
Week­end fun retreats
Prayer,
Bible Study, Wor­ship, Social Action
Edu­ca­tion
Sun­day
School
Infor­ma­tion centred
Tar­get
gen­er­a­tional groups and needs
Inter­gen­er­a­tional
for­ma­tion in community
Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty
Keep
the rules
Pros­per­i­ty
and success
Authen­tic
embodiment
Wor­ship
Tra­di­tion­al Con­tem­po­rary Con­ver­gence
Art
Restrained Art
as illustration
Incar­na­tion­al
embodiment
Evan­ge­lism
Mass
evangelism
Seek­er
Service
Process
evangelism
Activists
Begin­nings
of evan­gel­i­cal social action
Need-driving
social action (divorce groups, drug rehab
Rebuild
cities and neighborhoods

See also:

On Quak­er Ranter:

  • It Will Be There in Decline Our Entire Lives. There’s a gen­er­a­tion of young Chris­tians dis­il­lu­sioned by mod­ern church insti­tu­tion­al­ism who are writ­ing and blog­ging under the “post-modern” “emer­gent church” labels. Do Friends have any­thing to offer these wea­ried seek­ers except more of the same hashed out institutionalism?
  • Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?, my obser­va­tions from the Novem­ber 2003 “Indie Allies” meet-up.
  • Sodium-Free Friends, a post of mine urg­ing Friends to active­ly engage with our tra­di­tion and not just selec­tive­ly edit out a few words which makes Fox sound like a sev­en­teen cen­tu­ry Thich Nhat Hanh. “We poor humans are look­ing for ways to tran­scend the crap­pi­ness of our war- and consumer-obsessed world and Quak­erism has some­thing to say about that.”
  • Peace and Twenty-Somethings: are the Emer­gent Church seek­ers cre­at­ing the kinds of youth-led inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties that the peace move­ment inspired in the 1970s?

Elsewhere:

  • From Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west comes an emer­gent church” church plant­i­ng project called Sim­ple Church­es (since laid down, link is to archive). I love their intro: “As your peruse the links from this site please rec­og­nize that the Truth reflect­ed in essays are often writ­ten with a ‘prophet­ic edge’, that is sharp, non com­pro­mis­ing and some­times rad­i­cal per­spec­tive. We believe Truth can be received with­out ‘curs­ing the dark­ness’ and encour­age you to reflect upon find­ing the ‘can­dle’ to light, per­son­al­ly, as you apply what you hear the Lord speak­ing to you.”
  • The emer­gent church move­ment hit the New York Times in Feb­ru­ary 2004. Here’s a link to the arti­cle and my thoughts about it.
  • “Ortho­dox Twenty-Somethings,” a great arti­cle from TheOoze (now lost to a site redesign of theirs), and my intro to the arti­cle Want to under­stand us?
  • The blog­ger Punkmon­key talks about what a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith would look like and it sounds a lot like what I dream of: “a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith is a liv­ing breath­ing trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ty of faith will­ing to get messy while reach out to, and bring­ing in, those out­side the cur­rent community.”

10 thoughts on “Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal

  1. I looked at the chart. WOW. I did­n’t know I could res­onate so much with a move­ment in the church until now. As a friends pas­tor, I have iso­lat­ed in my desire to bring life to old school Quak­erism (paci­fism, social action, the inner light of Christ, etc.). I’m encouraged.

  2. Hi Kevin,
    I’m just sit­ting here with some goose­bumps. Did you read my piece on “post-liberals and post-evangelicals”:/martink/postliberals_postevangelicals.php? Here I am, a Philadel­phia Quak­er about to co-lead a Chris­tian­i­ty work­shop (“Strangers to the Covenant”:https://​www​.quak​er​ran​ter​.org/​s​t​r​a​n​g​e​r​s​_​t​o​_​t​h​e​_​c​o​v​e​n​a​nt/) for high school­ers and young adults at the Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Gath­er­ing, head­quar­ters of flaky lib­er­al Quak­erism. And here you are teach­ing young adults ‘old school Quak­erism’ at First Friends Can­ton? And yet it sound­ing like maybe we’re not so far apart? Encour­aged? Oh yea! I’m not sure where this old tired reli­gion is going but there’s a lot of us ask­ing a lot of good ques­tions. Christ may not be through with us yet!
    Hey, do you know C Wess Daniels of “Gath­er­ing in Light”:http://​gath​eringin​light​.blogspot​.com blog, he’s a fel­low Ohio EFI’er now at Fuller, doing a lot of inter­est­ing stuff mix­ing up old school Quak­erism with Emer­gent Church the­ol­o­gy. And to com­plete the cir­cle, he blogged recent­ly about “meet­ing Zac Moon”:http://​gath​eringin​light​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​5​/​0​6​/​s​o​m​e​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​t​h​o​u​g​h​t​s​.​h​tml, my co-leader for the Strangers workshop.

  3. Hey Mar­tin,
    I want to say thank you for your amaz­ing set of links. Com­ments like the above, along with the new col­umn on the Ranter home page, con­tin­ue to amaze and enlight­en me. Here I am slog­ging away in my own lit­tle Meet­ing, with lit­tle glimpses here and there of what “this old tired reli­gion” could real­ly be and then you come along and broad­en my hori­zons. What’s a girl to do? Some­times I feel like I will nev­er be able to keep up with the gale force winds of the Spir­it and the great peo­ple to be gath­ered and some­times I feel just clear enough to keep my eyes on the prize and hold on. Just to mix a few metaphors.
    Any­way, keep up the good work.

  4. I’m just an atten­der with an eclec­tic back­ground. I came to Friends because I believe Jesus was a mor­tal man, still son of God and Mes­si­ah. I think the the­ol­o­gy aris­ing from this pre-Nicene doc­trine holds the key to peace in Pales­tine, and there­fore in this series of US wars. But no one will lis­ten. Got any ideas?

  5. I am the Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent of Iowa Year­ly Meet­ing. This web­site just land­ed on my com­put­er today, the day before my annu­al address for the Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sion. I don’t believe it was an acci­dent. Much of the words, phras­es and ideas speak to the frus­tra­tions that I sense and see in our Friends Church­es. I just returned from four inten­sive days at FUM Gen­er­al Board Meet­ings. We did not seem to reach any help­ful con­clu­sions and we remain divid­ed on cer­tain issues with FGC/FUM dual­ly affil­i­at­ed Year­ly Meet­ings. While we debate, argue, cry and attempt to coerce, the young peo­ple move on and out. It is phe­nom­e­non­aly drain­ing, spir­i­tu­al­ly, physcial­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. Feed me some more info, I am obvi­ous­ly need­ing to tap into a new source of information.

  6. Hi Ron: the most star­tling obser­va­tion in all of this blog­ging has been just how unex­pect­ed­ly sim­i­lar many of these issues are across the Quak­er bound­aries. Here I am, an East Coast lib­er­al Quak­er (even if not exact­ly a main­stream one) talk­ing about the issues I’m see­ing and you’re read­ing it as an super­in­ten­dent of Mid­west­ern Friends Church­es and think­ing it sounds famil­iar. This irony is part of the rea­son some of us have been band­ing togeth­er under the “Con­ver­gent Friends” label. This four-year-old essay can be seen as an ear­ly post in that move­ment. My lat­est thoughts “are here”:https://​www​.quak​er​ran​ter​.org/​c​o​n​v​e​r​g​e​n​t​_​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​_​a​_​l​o​n​g​_​d​e​f​i​n​i​t​i​o​n​.​php
    Check out “ConvergentFriends.org”:www.convergentfriends.org (from a EFI sem­i­nary stu­dent) and col­lect­ed “Con­ver­gent post”:http://​quak​erquak​er​.org/​c​o​n​v​e​r​g​e​n​t​_​q​u​a​k​e​rs/ at Quak­erQuak­er for more. Also: I returned to this essay in an arti­cle in the Octo­ber 2006 issue of _Friends Journal_ focus­ing on the future of Friends. If you have a copy around you’ll see an updat­ed ver­sion of these ideas.
    I real­ly don’t know how to resolve the real issues involved in the dual affil­i­a­tion debate. I do know that Chris­t­ian love, ten­der­ness and patience need to be part of the solu­tion. The integri­ty through which we move through this thick­et is per­haps more impor­tant than the places we all end up. I had the luck to attend Great Plains Year­ly Meet­ing last year, a body that almost should­n’t exist giv­en it’s dif­fer­ences and found it fas­ci­nat­ing and instruc­tive to see how they held togeth­er, giv­ing and bend­ing much like a fam­i­ly, moti­vat­ed by some clear desire to move for­ward togeth­er as a body despite the per­son­al costs.
    The only oth­er thing I’d say is that I know a lot of younger Friends who are excit­ed about inter-visitation, delv­ing into Quak­er roots and seri­ous­ly engag­ing with oth­er types of Friends. Johan Mau­r­er “recent­ly likened them”:http://​johan​pdx​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​7​/​0​7​/​f​u​m​-​r​e​t​r​e​a​t​-​w​h​a​t​-​d​i​d​-​w​e​-​a​c​c​o​m​p​l​i​s​h​.​h​tml (us) to scu­ba divers pass­ing qui­et­ly under­neath the estab­lish­ment struc­tures. While gen­er­al board meet­ings fuss and fight the old bat­tles over turf, the more inter­est­ing sto­ry is play­ing out over din­ner tables, blogs and vis­its. Some of the young Friends have moved out and are gone for good (I’ve called it “the Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion”:https://​www​.quak​er​ran​ter​.org/​t​h​e​_​l​o​s​t​_​q​u​a​k​e​r​_​g​e​n​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​.​php) but oth­ers are there, keep­ing in touch, wait­ing and watching.
    Thanks for post­ing here, Ron. I’ve been hap­py and grate­ful to see you engag­ing with blogs.
    Your Friend, Martin

  7. Hi Mar­tin,
    Thanks for such a can­did assess­ment of the Friends​.My hus­band & I are very new to Quakerism.We both have been on staff at evang/charismatic church for 5 years and Chris­tians for years, and it seems the Lord has turned us into Quak­ers :)We live in South­ern CA,so we have had no expo­sure to Quak­ers at all or their beliefs (truly,the oat­meal box is about it.) We recent­ly read a book by Frank Vio­la called “Reimag­in­ing Church” we loved it & my hus­band said “wait a second,this sounds like way the Quak­ers have been doing church for years!” We then have been hunger­ly eat­ing up any­thing we can find on the Friends.I found the Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers & what the Lord has shown us com­plete­ly lines up in every way (Dis­aplines etc.)Which made us cry with joy to find like-minded folks out there.We have been hav­ing a group of 30 some­things and their kids for the last year in peo­ple’s hous­es. My hus­band Joel has a huge pas­sion for street evan­ge­lism & has been lead­ing a home­less out​reach​.To us,Quakerism has it all,intimacy with Jesus,community,amazing works,beautiful his­to­ry etc. & we want to share it! Peo­ple in SoCal would be so open to it,if they just knew about it.Problem is,there are no Con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers any­where near us.There’s a big Evan­gel­i­cal Quak­er church about 25 miles away,but we are con­vinced that evangelical/pastoral Quak­erism is not us-we are com­ing out of that (the pas­toral part for sure)How does one (or two)become a Quaker?We feel we ARE Quakers,but we haven’t gone to a meeting.I’ve tried con­tact­ing the Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing but I haven’t heard any­thing back.We don’t want to be “rebels” and buck the way things are done by Quakers,but my sense is to be a part of it we may get bogged down by some of the stuff you wrote about.Our expe­ri­ences in our church have def­i­nite­ly drilled those points home.We could be folks who “scuba-dive” under­neath all of that stuff,but we would like to be affil­i­at­ed somehow.Sorry this is such a crazy-long email! You just seem like some­one who can help us in some way.We feel such a fire for what God wants to do here we don’t want to get dis­cour­aged by folks that would think we were out there 🙂 Thanks so much for lis­ten­ing & for shar­ing what you see.
    Mai­ta & Joel Jones (& our 4 kiddos)

  8. I am the last of an unbro­ken line of Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca that goes back 350 years. My direct ances­tors migrat­ed West from New Jer­sey with the open­ing of the “wilder­ness” of North East Ohio. My ances­tors remained fol­low­ers of the Quak­er Faith, but the Faith evolved dur­ing the rise of Mid-West Evan­gel­i­cals. My Father grad­u­at­ed from Cleve­land Bible Col­lege and spent his life as an Evan­gel­i­cal Pas­tor with var­i­ous Friends church­es in Ohio and Michigan.
    In spite of this back­ground, I grew up hav­ing very lit­tle aware­ness of the roots of that faith. I saw very lit­tle dif­fer­ence between our Church and oth­er Evan­gel­i­cal denom­i­na­tions and I grew to iden­ti­fy God as a very crit­i­cal Father who hand­ed out severe pun­ish­ment but lacked an inter­est in nur­tur­ing such an imper­fect soul such as I. Along with many oth­er young peo­ple in the 60’s, I left home to attend Col­lege and among oth­er things, I left God back at home. I went through the phas­es that many Baby Boomer’s were expe­ri­enc­ing; try­ing to “find myself”, look­ing for answers in New Age Reli­gions and feel­ing spir­i­tu­al­ly lost.
    In the 80’s I began to research the his­to­ry of my Fam­i­ly and as a result I became exposed to the ear­ly teach­ings that my Ances­tors brought with them from Eng­land. I came across Quak­er writ­ings, such as the jour­nal of John Wool­man, a dis­tant rel­a­tive, and I was thrilled and amazed at his moral strength and com­mit­ment to fol­low­ing the “inner light” with such con­sis­ten­cy through­out his life. Even in those very ear­ly days of our Nation, they had a deep under­stand­ing of social and moral prin­ci­ples that are still out of reach of most of America.
    I have tried grasp a vision of a mod­ern move­ment that would reflect the faith of the ear­ly Quak­ers, so I appre­ci­ate the chal­lenges that your express relat­ing to heal­ing the var­i­ous schisms and achiev­ing this goal. It is encour­ag­ing that oth­ers are out there hav­ing these same thoughts and desires to build a lega­cy of Quak­er ideals.

    1. Jesus makes week­ly vis­its. Some­times we may not notice him. He may be there in the back. We might be too busy recap­ping the morn­ing’s NPR com­men­tary or get­ting lost in the weeds pars­ing out ancient Ara­ma­ic gram­mar that we think is sup­posed to mean some­thing. But he’s there. Some­times he spends the whole hour qui­et­ly hold­ing one of our griev­ing mem­bers. Some­times he taps us on the shoul­der to notice the sun­light on one anoth­er’s faces. And some­times he push­es one of us out of our seats to stand up and min­is­ter the good news in his name. It’s all good. 

      George Fox? Would he real­ly be wel­come any­where? He was a rab­ble rouser. His job was to make us uncom­fort­able, to get us out of our lan­guor and point to the pres­ence, right here right now, of that one that can speak to our con­di­tion. I don’t think he would ever be sat­is­fied and for good rea­son. I’d love to see him stride in wear­ing his leather breech­es but it would be pandemonium!

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