What Convergence means to Ohio Conservative

August 8, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Robin M’s recent post on a Con­ver­gent Friends def­i­n­i­tion has gar­nered a num­ber of fas­ci­nat­ing com­menters. The lat­est comes from Scott Sav­age, a well-known Con­ser­v­a­tive Friend (author of A Plain Life, pub­lish­er of the defunct Plain Mag­a­zine and light­en­ing rod for a recent cul­ture war skir­mish over homo­sex­u­al­i­ty at Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty). Sav­age’s com­ment on Robin’s blog fol­lows what we could call the “Cranky Con­ser­v­a­tive” tem­plate: gra­tu­itous swipes at Con­ser­v­a­tives in Iowa and North Car­oli­na, whole­sale dis­missal of oth­er Friends, mul­ti­ple affir­ma­tions of Christ, digs at the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, a recita­tion of past fail­ures of cross-branch com­mu­ni­ca­tion, then a shrug that seems to ask why he should stoop to our lev­el for dialogue.

Snore.

What makes my sleepy response espe­cial­ly strange is that except for the homo­sex­u­al­i­ty issue (yay for FLGBTQC!), I’m pret­ty close to Scot­t’s posi­tions. I wor­ry about the lib­er­al­iza­tion of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends, I get cranky about Chris­t­ian Friends who deny Christ in pub­lic, and I think a lot of Friends are miss­ing the boat on some core essen­tials. When I open my copy of Ohio’s 1968 dis­ci­pline and read its state­ment of faith (oops, sor­ry, “Intro­duc­tion”), I nod my head. As far as I’m aware I’m in uni­ty with all of Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tive’s prin­ci­ples of faith and prac­tice and if I signed up for their dis­tance mem­ber­ship I cer­tain­ly would­n’t be the most lib­er­al mem­ber of the year­ly meeting.

I’m actu­al­ly not sure about Scot­t’s year­ly meet­ing mem­ber­ship; I’m sim­ply answer­ing his ques­tion of why he and the oth­er Con­ser­v­a­tives who hold a strong con­cern for “the hedge” (a sep­a­ra­tion of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends from oth­er branch­es) might want to think about Con­ver­gence. Of all the remain­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive bod­ies, the hedge is arguably strongest in Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing and while parts of this apply to Con­ser­v­a­tives else­where — Iowa, North Car­oli­na and indi­vid­u­als embed­ded in non-Conservative year­ly meet­ings — the snares and oppor­tu­ni­ties are dif­fer­ent for them than they are for Ohioans.

Why Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tive should engage with Convergence:

  • If you have all the answers and don’t mind keep­ing them hid­den under the near­est bushel then Con­ver­gence means nothing.
  • But if you’re inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing Jesus and being a fish­er of men and women by shar­ing the good news… Well, then it’s use­ful to learn that there’s a grow­ing move­ment of Friends from out­side Con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles (how­ev­er defined) who are sens­ing there’s some­thing miss­ing and look­ing to tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism for answers.

Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tives have answers and this Con­ver­gence move­ment is pro­vid­ing a fresh oppor­tu­ni­ty to share them with the apos­tate Friends and with Chris­tians in oth­er denom­i­na­tions seek­ing out a more authen­tic rela­tion­ship with Christ. Engag­ing with Con­ver­gence does­n’t mean Ohio Friends have to change any­thing of their faith or prac­tice and it need­n’t be about “dia­logue”: sim­ply shar­ing the truth as you under­stand it is ministry.

Yes, there are snares involved in any true gospel min­istry; strik­ing the right bal­ance is always dif­fi­cult. As the car­pen­ter said, “nar­row is the way which lead­eth unto life”. We are beset on all sides by road­blocks that threat­en to lead us away from Christ’s lead­er­ship. Ohio Friends will need to be on guard that min­is­ters don’t suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion to water down their the­ol­o­gy for any fleet­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. This is a real dan­ger and it fre­quent­ly occurs but while I could tell eight years of great insid­er sto­ries from the halls of Philadel­phia, is that what we’re here to do?

Let me put my cards on the table: I don’t see much of Ohio effec­tive­ly min­is­ter­ing now. There’s too much of a kind of pride that bor­ders on obnox­ious­ness, that loves end­less­ly recit­ing why Iowa and North Car­oli­na aren’t Con­ser­v­a­tive and why no oth­er Friends are Friends, blah blah blah. It can get tire­some and legal­is­tic. I could point to plen­ty of online forums where it cross­es the line into detrac­tion. Char­i­ty and love are Chris­t­ian qual­i­ties too. Humil­i­ty and a sense of humor are com­pat­i­ble with tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism. How do we find a way to con­tin­ue safe­guard­ing Ohio’s pearls while shar­ing them wide­ly with the world. There are Ohio Friends doing this and while I dif­fer with Scott Sav­age on some social issues I con­sid­er tan­gen­tial (and he prob­a­bly does­n’t), I very much appre­ci­ate his hard work advanc­ing the under­stand­ing of Quak­erism and agree on more than I disagree.

But how do we find a way to be both Con­ser­v­a­tive and Evan­gel­i­cal? To mar­ry Truth with Love? To not only under­stand the truth but to know how, when and where to share it? I think Con­ver­gence can help Ohio think about deliv­ery of Truth and it can help bring seek­ers into the doors. When I rhetor­i­cal­ly asked last month what Con­ver­gent Friends might be con­verg­ing toward, the first answer that popped in my head was Ohio Friends with a sense of humor. I’m not sure it’s the most accu­rate def­i­n­i­tion but it reveals my own sym­pa­thies and I find it tempt­ing to think about what that would look like (hint: krak­en might be involved).

A reminder to every­one that I’ll be at Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive ses­sions in a few weeks to talk more about the oppor­tu­ni­ties for Ohio engage­ment with Con­ver­gence. Come round if you’re in the area.
Also check out Robin’s own response to Scott, up there on her own blog. It’s a mov­ing per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny to the pow­er and joy of cross-Quaker fel­low­ship and the spir­i­tu­al growth that can result.

Sexual assaults on campus then and now

August 4, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Back in the late 1980s when I was a Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty under­grad, sex­u­al assault did­n’t hap­pen. True story.

It will sur­prise no one to learn that I co-edited an alter­na­tive, “under­ground” week­ly junior and senior year. We called it the VACUUM, a name whose acronym changed every issue. Read­ing about an ear­ly “date rape” study in my fem­i­nist stud­ies class I extrap­o­lat­ed how many rapes should rea­son­ably be expect­ed to occur on a cam­pus of Vil­lanova’s size. I added a few anec­dotes from my all-male dorm expe­ri­ence and pub­lished it in the VACUUM. A short while lat­er some friends of mine who edit­ed the offi­cial stu­dent paper picked up the sto­ry and even cit­ed an anony­mous quo­ta­tion from me in what is prob­a­bly the only offi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion of the VAC­U­UM’s exis­tence in the V.U. archives.

Right around this time a female stu­dent brought her alle­ga­tions of an on-campus sex­u­al assault to the local police. Cam­pus offi­cials feigned sur­prise and pro­vid­ed the local media with par­rot­ed quotes: “In all my xyz years work­ing here I have nev­er ever heard of an alle­ga­tion of rape.” Chief of Secu­ri­ty, Dean of Stu­dents, etc., all deliv­ered the same line, clear­ly coached by a pub­lic rela­tions team, with only the years changed to reflect their cam­pus tenure. Thou­sands of stu­dents, dozens of years, hun­dreds of frat par­ties, tanker-fulls of cheap beer and not a hint of impropriety.
Last night I chanced on my alma mater’s web­site and saw a link right there on the home­page to an arti­cle mys­te­ri­ous titled Recent Cam­pus Inci­dent (gener­ic URL, prob­a­bly designed to dis­ap­pear soon). It doc­u­ment­ed an alleged assault on a female stu­dent by three mem­bers of the foot­ball team last month. The announce­ment reports that the Uni­ver­si­ty found them in vio­la­tion of the cam­pus’s Code of Con­duct and “rescind­ed the admis­sion of the three young men.”

A Google News search turns up that this has been exten­sive­ly cov­ered by the media with almost 500 hits. The Del­co Times reports that the 1990 Clery Act and its amend­ments have made uni­ver­si­ty cover-ups ille­gal and required reports and spe­cif­ic pro­to­cols for respond­ing to cam­pus crimes. The cur­rent media spot­light and long-standing fed­er­al laws cer­tain­ly account for much of Vil­lanova’s 2007 enlight­en­ment. What­ev­er the source of change, it’s nice to see. Even three play­ers from the beloved foot­ball team can get the boot (sor­ry, have their admis­sions rescind­ed) for crim­i­nal behav­ior. Bet­ter still, the uni­ver­si­ty can fess up to the crime and take some respon­si­bil­i­ty. The times, they have a’ changed.

Convergent Friends, a long definition

July 25, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Robin M posts this week about two Con­ver­gent Events hap­pen­ing in Cal­i­for­nia in the next month or two. And she also tries out a sim­pli­fied def­i­n­i­tion of Con­ver­gent Friends:

peo­ple who are engaged in the renew­al move­ment with­in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, across all the branch­es of Friends.

It sounds good but what does it mean? Specif­i­cal­ly: who isn’t for renew­al, at least on a the­o­ret­i­cal lev­el? There are lots of faith­ful, smart and lov­ing Friends out there advo­cat­ing renew­al who don’t fit my def­i­n­i­tion of Con­ver­gent (which is fine, I don’t think the whole RSoF should be Con­ver­gent, it’s a move­ment in the riv­er, not a dam).

When Robin coined the term at the start of 2006 it seemed to refer to gen­er­al trends in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends and the larg­er Chris­t­ian world, but it was also refer­ring to a spe­cif­ic (online) com­mu­ni­ty that had had a year or two of con­ver­sa­tion to shape itself and mod­el trust and account­abil­i­ty. Most impor­tant­ly we each were going out of our way to engage with Friends from oth­er Quak­er tra­di­tions and were each called on our own cul­tur­al assumptions.
The coined term implied an expe­ri­ence of sort. “Con­ver­gent” explic­it­ly ref­er­ences Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends (“Con-”) and the Emer­gent Church move­ment (“-ver­gent”). It seems to me like one needs to look at those two phe­nom­e­non and their rela­tion to one’s own under­stand­ing and expe­ri­ence of Quak­er life and com­mu­ni­ty before real­ly under­stand­ing what all the fuss has been about. That’s hap­pen­ing lots of places and it is not sim­ply a blog phenomenon.

Nowa­days I’m notic­ing a lot of Friends declar­ing them­selves Con­ver­gent after read­ing a blog post or two or attend­ing a work­shop. It’s becom­ing the term du jour for Friends who want to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from business-as-usual, Quakerism-as-usual. This fits Robin’s sim­pli­fied def­i­n­i­tion. But if that’s all it is and it becomes all-inclusive for inclu­siv­i­ty’s sake, then “Con­ver­gent” will drift away away from the roots of the con­ver­sa­tion that spawned it and turn into anoth­er buzz­word for “lib­er­al Quak­er.” This is start­ing to happen.

The term “Con­ver­gent Friends” is being picked up by Friends out­side the dozen or two blogs that spawned it and mov­ing into the wild – that’s great, but also means it’s def­i­n­i­tion is becom­ing a mov­ing tar­get. Peo­ple are grab­bing onto it to sum up their dreams, visions and frus­tra­tions but we’re almost cer­tain­ly not mean­ing the same thing by it. “Con­ver­gent Friends” implies that we’ve all arrived some­where togeth­er. I’ve often won­dered whether we should­n’t be talk­ing about “Con­verg­ing Friends,” a term that implies a par­al­lel set of move­ments and puts the rather impor­tant ele­phant square on the table: con­verg­ing toward what? What we mean by con­ver­gence depends on our start­ing point. My attempt at a label was the rather clunky conservative-leaning lib­er­al Friend, which is prob­a­bly what most of us in the lib­er­al Quak­er tra­di­tion are mean­ing by “Con­ver­gent.”

I start­ed map­ping out a lib­er­al plan for Con­ver­gent Friends a cou­ple of years before the term was coined and it still sum­ma­rizes many of my hopes and con­cerns. The only thing I might add now is a para­graph about how we’ll have to work both inside and out­side of nor­mal Quak­er chan­nels to effect this change (Johan Mau­r­er recent­ly wrote an inter­est­ing post that includ­ed the won­der­ful descrip­tion of “the love­ly sub­ver­sives who ignore struc­tures and com­mu­ni­cate on a pure­ly per­son­al basis between the camps via blogs, vis­i­ta­tion, and oth­er means” and com­pared us to SCUBA divers (“ScubaQuake​.org” anyone?).

Robin’s inclu­sive def­i­n­i­tion of “renew­al” def­i­nite­ly speaks to some­thing. Infor­mal renew­al net­works are spring­ing up all over North Amer­i­ca. Many branch­es of Friends are involved. There are themes I’m see­ing in lots of these places: a strong youth or next-generation focus; a reliance on the inter­net; a curios­i­ty about “oth­er” Friends tra­di­tions; a desire to get back to roots in the sim­ple min­istry of Jesus. What­ev­er label or labels this new revival might take on is less impor­tant than the Spir­it behind it.

But is every hope for renew­al “Con­ver­gent”? I don’t think so. At the end of the day the path for us is nar­row and is giv­en, not cho­sen. At the end of day — and begin­ning and mid­dle — the work is to fol­low the Holy Spir­it’s guid­ance in “real time.” Def­i­n­i­tions and care­ful­ly select­ed words slough away as mere notions. The newest mes­sage is just the old­est mes­sage repack­aged. Let’s not get too caught up in our own hip verbage, lec­ture invi­ta­tions and glo­ri­ous atten­tion that we for­get that there there is one, even Christ Jesus who can speak to our con­di­tion, that He Him­self has come to teach, and that our mes­sage is to share the good news he’s giv­en us. The Tempter is ready to dis­tract us, to puff us up so we think we are the mes­sage, that we own the mes­sage, or that the mes­sage depends on our flow­ery words deliv­ered from podi­ums. We must stay on guard, hum­bled, low and pray­ing to be kept from the temp­ta­tions that sur­round even the most well-meaning renew­al attempts. It is our faith­ful­ness to the free gospel min­istry that will ulti­mate­ly deter­mine the fate of our work.

Julie’s church in the news

July 13, 2007
· Martin Kelley

The Philadel­phia Inquir­er wrote an arti­cle on Julie’s tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic church this week and even pro­duced a video that gives you a feel of the wor­ship. Because of the two lit­tle ones we try to alter­nate between her church and Friends meet­ing on First Day morn­ings (though my crazy work sched­ule over the past few months have pre­clud­ed even this). I’m in no dan­ger of becom­ing the “Catholic Ranter” any­time soon (sor­ry Julie!) but I do appre­ci­ate the rev­er­ence and sense of pur­pose which Mater Ecclessians bring to wor­ship and even I have cul­ture shock when I go to a norvus ordo mass these days. Com­men­tary on the Inquir­er piece cour­tesy Father Zuhls­dorf. That blog and the Closed Cafe­te­ria are favorites around here. Here’s a few pic­tures of us at the church fol­low­ing baptisms.

PS: I wish the Catholic Church as a whole were more open-minded when it comes to LGBT issues. That said, the ser­mons on the issue I’ve heard at Mater Eccle­si­ae have gone out of their way to empha­size char­i­ty. That said, I’ve occa­sion­al­ly heard some under the breath com­ments by parish­ioners that weren’t so char­i­ta­ble. Yet anoth­er rea­son to stay the Quak­er Ranter.

A Quaker model for emergence?

June 28, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Robin M over at What Canst Thou Say? has been hang­ing out with emer­gent church folks recent­ly and reports back in a few posts. It’s def­i­nite­ly worth read­ing, as is some of what’s been com­ing out of the last week’s youth gath­er­ing at Bar­nesville (includ­ing Mic­ah Bales report) and the annu­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends gath­er­ing near Lan­cast­er Pa., which I’ve heard bits and pieces about on var­i­ous Face­book pages.

It sound like some­thing’s in the air. I wish I could sit in live in some of these con­ver­sa­tions but just got more dis­ap­point­ing news on the job front so I’ll con­tin­ue to be more-or-less home­bound for the fore­see­able future. Out to pas­ture, that’s me! (I’m say­ing that with a smile on my face, try­ing not to be tooooo whiny!)

Robin’s post has got me think­ing again about emer­gent church issues. My own dab­bling in emer­gent blogs and meet-ups only goes so far before I turn back. I real­ly appre­ci­ate its analy­sis and cri­tique of con­tem­po­rary Chris­tian­i­ty and Amer­i­can cul­ture but I rarely find it artic­u­lat­ing a com­pelling way forward.

I don’t want to mere­ly shoe­horn some appro­pri­at­ed Catholic rit­u­als into wor­ship. And pic­tures of emer­gent events often feel like adults doing vaca­tion bible school. I won­der if it’s the “gestalt” issue again (via Lloyd Lee Wil­son et al), the prob­lem of try­ing to get from here to there in an ad hoc man­ner that gets us to an mish­mash of not quite here and not quite there. I want to find a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty where faith and prac­tice have some deep con­nec­tion. My wife Julie went off to tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism, which cer­tain­ly has the uni­ty of form and faith going for it, while I’m most drawn to Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends. It’s not a tra­di­tion’s age which is the defin­ing fac­tor (Zoroas­tri­an­ism any­one?) so much as its inter­nal log­ic. Con­se­quent­ly I’m not inter­est­ed in a Quak­erism (or Chris­tian­i­ty) that’s mere­ly nos­tal­gic or legal­is­tic about sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry forms but one that’s a liv­ing, breath­ing com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing both in its time and in the eter­ni­ty of God.

I’ve won­dered if Friends have some­thing to give the emer­gent church: a tra­di­tion that’s been emer­gent for three hun­dred years and that’s main­tained more or less reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dence with that 2000 year old emer­gent church. We Friends have made our own mess­es and fall­en down as many times as we’ve soared but there’s a Quak­er vision we have (or almost have) that could point a way for­ward for emer­gent Chris­tians of all stripes. There’s cer­tain­ly a min­istry there, per­haps Robin’s and per­haps not mine, but someone’s.

Else­where:

  • Indi­ana Friend Brent Bill start­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing new blog last week after a rather con­tentious meet­ing on the future of Friends lead­er­ship. Friends in Fel­low­ship is try­ing to map out a vision and mod­el for a pas­toral Friends fel­low­ship that embod­ies Emer­gent Church leader Bri­an McLaren’s idea of a “gen­er­ous ortho­doxy.” Inter­est­ing stuff that echos a lot of the “Con­ver­gent Friends” con­ver­sa­tion (here, here, and here) and mir­rors some of the dynam­ics that have been going on with­in lib­er­al Friends. The Quak­erQuak­er con­ver­sa­tion has thus far been most intense among evan­gel­i­cal and lib­er­al Friends, with mid­dle Amer­i­can “FUM” Friends most­ly sit­ting it out so it’s great to see some con­nec­tions being made there. Read “Friends in Fel­low­ship” back­wards, old­est post to newest and don’t miss the com­ments as Brent is mod­el­ing a real­ly good back and forth process with by answer­ing com­ments with thought­ful posts.
  • Famous­ly unapolo­get­i­cal­ly lib­er­al Friend Chuck Fager has some inter­est­ing cor­re­spon­dence over on A Friend­ly Let­ter about some of the ele­phants in the Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing clos­et. Inter­est­ing and con­tentious both, as one might expect from Chuck. Well worth a read, there’s plen­ty there you won’t find any­where else.
  • Final­ly, have I gushed about how fab­u­lous the new’ish Con​ser​v​a​tive​Friend​.org web­site is? Oh yes, I have, but that’s okay. Vis­it it again anyway.