@Jim: thanks, I hadn’t seen that. MNS process was certainly a big influence
in the West Philly anarchist circle I was tangentially involved with about a
decade ago.

One of the interesting things about MNS is that it contained so many strains-
it could be written from the angles of
• feminist,
• anarchist, pacifist,
• organizational-training,
• organizing,
• intentional community
theory/practice (among others), and EACH paper would have something valid and interesting to say.

Hi Gene: I mostly agree with you on the theological level, though in practice MNS brought together a lot of people and helped them shape a new lifestyle that was more committed to justice. There’s a lot of good people doing good in the world. Surely that’s worth something. Some of them followed the influence back to Friends, which has had benefits and drawbacks.

One of the NSP book distributors used to describe us as “the religious publishers without a religion.” As I got less involved in the “MNS ruins” and more involved with organized Friends, the challenge for me was to see the disconnects. It wasn’t always obvious: a lot of Quaker process is more “functionally atheististic” than we might care to admit. “Secular consensus” isn’t always all that different than the Quaker “sense of meeting.”

One reason I’ve brought up MNS in relationship with the New Monastic Movement is that for all it’s talk, the new kids often don’t feel very religious to me. It seems more lifestyle-related, with the church talk being a safe language to talk about a kind of social justice, alt-hippy lifestyle. Some of it is fad, and shadows without substance. As with most “emergent church” I’m less interested in its answers than the questions it’s asking: I think a lot of these people would be interested in us if we would actually start sharing the core Friends message more openly.

I realize monastics saw love of neighbor as evidence of love of God (e.g. “Saint” Benedict’s “Treat every guest as if he were Christ, or Theresa of Avila “Interior Castle” V:3:8), but the love of God comes first. MNS and today’s Quaker organizations seem to not only put the cart before the horse (the cart: love of neighbor, is important), but the horse (God) isn’t even being looked for.

That is the reason for MNS’s demise. It was build on sand (“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” Matthew 7:26).

@Micah: Ever since I heard of it, I’ve thought the “Friends of Jesus” folks in Wichita were interesting. Maybe these scenes naturally fizzle out. They’re great growing opportunities for the people in them and they’re members often continue to play guiding/leadership roles throughout their lives.

Essential reading is Swarthmore historian Jerry Frost’s 2000 talk at the FGC Gathering. Although FGC has purged its site of a lot of its old content, Frost’s talk is still there. Here’s a piece:

None of these [modern leadership] Friends is a birthright FGC Friend and most either converted or became fellow travelers as adults. Most received their religious educations at non-Quaker institutions. By and large they write pamphlets rather than books and devotional literature rather than systematic analysis of theological or ethical issues. Those few Friends who are interested in theology go to Earlham School of Religion where they learn to use words left out of PYM’s discipline. By and large, FGC Friends are not much interested and, therefore, have been only slightly influenced by post-liberal major theological emphases. Even when our history should have made us major players in new theological developments, such as feminist theology, Friends have been consumers rather than shapers.

And here we are, nine years later being consumers: Claiborne is this year’s big speaker at FGC. It should be Chris Parker celebrating the ten year anniversary of the Quaker Peace and Social Witness network. As we all know QPSW brought thousands of people to the Society of Friends, challenged and re-energized meetings throughout the country and overwhelmed Earlham School of Religion, which had to partner with Pendle Hill and Swarthmore College to open a new East Coast campus led by Jerry Frost (dragged kicking and screaming out of retirement). Joining Chris on stage is his protege at QPSW, Shane Claiborne of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (Kensington Preparative Meeting), who discovered QPSW while attending a Philly-area evangelical college and helped forge links between Friends and a new group of Evangelicals concerned about social justice issues. This group has dubbed itself the “New Convergent Quaker” movement, much to the consternation of QuakerQuaker editor Martin Kelley.

You ask why we don’t have any younger leaders of the Quaker monasticism. If you mean “contemporary” rather than younger, I would say that we have had leaders in the very recent past who modeled what a Quaker new-monastic movement might look like. My family and other Friends founded the Friends of Jesus community in Wichita, which for more than a decade lived and worked among the poor, black community in Wichita. Most Friends, while either praising or questioning the community, did not want to actually get involved directly. The community eventually fizzled out, with no one new joining the group.

I don’t think that this phenomenon is particularly unique. If you look around the MASSIVE Evangelical world, there are very few individuals who are actually taking up a radical life of discipleship. As with any “scene,” most would like to pose and talk about how radical they intend to be — or better yet, about how un-radical others are! Despite the intense buzz around Shane Claiborne, there are still relatively few new monastics — incredibly few when you consider the size of the US Evangelical community.

Now, the Evangelicals do have clear leader-figures. They have Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo, as well as TJ Jakes and Rick Warren. Evangelicals are far more comfortable with people having clear positions of leadership in their community. I don’t believe post-WWII Quakers are. So our present-day leaders are generally covert. If they aren’t writers, wielding scholarly influence that many Quakers feel comfortable respecting, then our leaders are largely unnoticed, even as they do the work of the Kingdom in our midst. I don’t blame you for missing them; we don’t really advertise their existence.

I would suggest that a part of our difficulty taking leadership in the world is our entrenched refusal to acknowledge the authority of leaders in our own communities. It’s impossible for me to imagine the Shane Claiborne phenomenon occuring among Friends. Shane would have been eldered long ago for a variety of reasons. I think if he were a Friend, we would probably suspect him of being too full of himself and snipe him accordingly.

Do movements need individual leaders? Are Friends ready to embrace individual leaders? What might Friends leadership look like in the 21st century?

In friendship,

Micah Bales
http://valiantforthetruth.blogspot.com
http://lambswar.blogspot.com