Why they left the Quakers

February 1, 2024

Here’s a sober­ing fac­toid: one of the more Googled search terms bring­ing peo­ple to Friends Jour­nal is “Why I left the Quakers.”

They find two things. The first match is a 22-year-old arti­cle from Jack Pow­el­son, “Why I am Leav­ing Quak­ers.” He notes the polit­i­cal diver­si­ty of the Quak­ers he joined in the 1940s and bemoans that “over the years, unpro­grammed Quak­ers have nar­rowed their views”:

Back in 1943, as many Repub­li­cans sat in the bench­es as Democ­rats, and meet­ing was a place for the spir­i­tu­al enrich­ment of per­sons of all polit­i­cal beliefs; even sol­diers in uni­form came to meet­ing. If the spir­it of the 1940s exist­ed now, right-to-lifers might today sit next to pro-choicers, each being equal­ly blessed in the eyes of God. With the spir­i­tu­al under-girding of the meet­ing, dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal beliefs would be advo­cat­ed in sec­u­lar organizations.

I think it worth­while to note that when Jack wrote his own obit­u­ary(!), he still iden­ti­fied as a Friend. This is not atyp­i­cal. I can quick­ly think of a half-dozen peo­ple who have pub­licly left Quak­ers but are still active in Quak­er social media spaces. I’m real­ly grate­ful for that, as many of them are per­son­al friends, men­tors, and inspi­ra­tions and I appre­ci­ate their per­spec­tive on the Quak­er dra­mas of the day. Quak­er spir­i­tu­al prin­ci­ples aren’t real­ly that unique and it’s quite pos­si­ble to fol­low them out­side of Quak­er reli­gious bod­ies and these nom­i­nal­ly ex-Quakers show how this can be done.

The sec­ond FJ arti­cle that those search­ing for “why I left Quak­ers” turn up is Bet­sy Blake’s 2013 “Quak­erism Left Me.” I’m a big Bet­sy Blake fan and worked on her as edi­tor on this arti­cle. I know it was brave to write and that she got some seri­ous push­back after pub­li­ca­tion. She too was talk­ing of polarization:

We knew we would be affect­ed by a divi­sive­ness that we did not expe­ri­ence and found con­trary to the for­give­ness and peace­mak­ing that we were being taught. Though younger, we did sym­pa­thize. We too had dealt with con­flicts, fights, bul­ly­ing, and pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests. We knew enough to know that there was pas­sion and gen­uine care among the adults, mixed in with some­thing that was telling them to cut off their broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ.

Bet­sy of course was­n’t declar­ing that she her­self was leav­ing. The polar­iza­tions she spoke of soon led to schisms in both the Indi­ana year­ly meet­ing of her youth and the North Car­oli­na (FUM) of her teen years. I don’t know Bet­sy’s for­mal mem­ber­ship sta­tus nowa­days but she’s active on Quak­er social media. (Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, she designs web­sites nowa­days and offers a tem­plate for Quak­er meet­ings that looks great. I would total­ly rec­om­mend her if you’re look­ing to revamp your site!)


Anoth­er data point in all this might be George Amoss Jr.’s recent blog post, “Leav­ing Lib­er­al Quak­erism: What Love Would Have Me Do.”

George talks about by the “exac­er­bat­ed” “self-righteousness” he’s encountered:

The prox­i­mate cause of that alien­ation is the adop­tion among Lib­er­al Friends of sociopo­lit­i­cal ide­olo­gies that I find reduc­tive, dis­hon­est, divi­sive, and destruc­tive, lead­ing even to the defense of vio­lent crime. But that, at least in its cur­rent extreme form, is a recent devel­op­ment, facil­i­tat­ed by the fun­da­men­tal unsound­ness of con­tem­po­rary beliefs.

Friends are a big, messy group of peo­ple with all sorts of opin­ions. While we can agree on broad prin­ci­ples (racism bad, peace good), it’s rare to devel­op a real sense of uni­ty on either analy­sis or strat­e­gy. We should of course thresh out issues; inter­est sub-groups of like-minded indi­vid­u­als can build momen­tum and do a lot of good with­in both our reli­gious soci­ety and in the greater world. If we can tol­er­ate this messy diver­si­ty in our meet­ings, then our shared com­mu­ni­ty can be great incu­ba­tors for some­thing more rad­i­cal than itself. With time and spir­i­tu­al dis­cern­ment the rad­i­cal posi­tion can become main­stream among Friends. 

I do see some Friends nowa­days try­ing to press for more ide­o­log­i­cal con­for­mi­ty than actu­al­ly exists. The ever-interesting and chal­leng­ing Adria Gulizia has a long com­ment on George’s Amos post about try­ing to rec­on­cile Quak­er beliefs with an antiracism state­ment being con­sid­ered by New York Year­ly Meet­ing. She con­cludes: “But what some of us have learned is that, while the stakes could not be high­er, it is not in vic­to­ry but in the strug­gle itself that we find our bless­ing, that in fac­ing our reck­on­ing with faith and courage, we may be strength­ened and deep­ened and trans­formed, not just as indi­vid­u­als but as a peo­ple of faith.” 

I hope we can con­tin­ue to respect the diver­si­ty and messi­ness of Lib­er­al Friends.

As I see it, the pur­pose of Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty is the spir­i­tu­al and com­mu­ni­ty part of our work. Our spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal lan­guages and analy­ses will evolve and change every decade or so; what I hope will remain con­stant is our desire for truth, our reliance on the Holy Spir­it for guid­ance, and our gen­uine love of neigh­bors in all their con­tra­dic­tions and messi­ness. In 2006 Paul Buck­ley wrote The Temp­ta­tion to Do Some­thing: A Qui­etist Per­spec­tive, that I think speaks to some of this.

I do hope George Amoss finds a way to stay engaged with Friends. 

Thanks!

January 30, 2024

A big thank-you to all the Quak­er Ranter fans who donat­ed last week to get the web­sites back up. Two non­prof­it jobs and four kids mean web bills are not always near the top of the fam­i­ly’s must-pay jug­gle of expens­es. The web­sites should be good for anoth­er few months. If any­one missed on on the fund appeal, you can always click on the sup­port link to help keep the lights on.

Links

January 30, 2024

Wan­na work with me? Friends Jour­nal is look­ing for a part-time, paid intern to work on Quak­ers Today pod­cast. You’ll get to work most direct­ly with its most excel­lent host, Peter­son Toscano. Learn more at Friend​sjour​nal​.org/​job.

It was wild for me to read this sto­ry about hous­ing, race, and mon­ey in West Philadel­phia and real­ize it was­n’t just an arti­cle about my old block but my actu­al apart­ment. I lived upstairs in 1250 South 45th and Mar­garet Strothers was my land­la­dy. It was eas­i­ly my favorite apart­ment ever and it’s a shame to see that most of the row has been lev­eled for shit­ty stu­dent housing.

Faith and Public Ministry

December 29, 2023

Windy Cool­er is back with the sec­ond of a mul­ti­part series based on inter­views with pub­lic Friends, this install­ment called “The Con­cerns of Pub­lic Min­istry” (see my take on part one). This one is about the pow­er dynam­ics that pub­lic min­is­ters face in insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism. Here’s one quote:

Resent­ment about pow­er imbal­ances and the sup­pres­sion of acknowl­edg­ing pow­er imbal­ances is at the heart of many pub­lic min­is­ters’ call to right rela­tion­ship, in fact: “What I thought was wrong with me was that I have lead­er­ship poten­tial. Being wrong, it turned out, was just lead­er­ship abil­i­ties. Noth­ing was wrong with me. “

This is a brave top­ic to cov­er and I’m glad Windy’s doing it.

Notably absent is much talk about faith in this. Where’s this call to lead­er­ship com­ing? What is it in ser­vice to? I sus­pect that if you asked this ques­tion of ris­ing lead­ers in Lib­er­al Friends you’d get all sorts of answers. That’s not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing. In the­o­log­i­cal­ly diverse meet­ings sec­u­lar­ized lan­guage is the lin­gua fran­ca. The Hick­site Quak­er move­ment was born in large part as a cri­tique of pow­er and this remains an easy con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion to turn to. I myself often look at Quak­er his­to­ry and cur­rent dynam­ics in a soci­o­log­i­cal way; it’s not a wrong frame­work, just incom­plete if left unmoored.

Per­son­al­ly I don’t think I could have made it through Friends this long with­out trust­ing in the inward Christ and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deep­en­ing my life in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er the­ol­o­gy. It’s help­ful con­text to read the jour­nals of old min­is­ters. The chal­lenges they faced aren’t always so very dif­fer­ent from those of the present day. George Fox was seri­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed and betrayed by the min­is­ters of his time until he had a vision and real­ized that this dis­ap­point­ment was lit­er­al­ly the les­son he was being taught. From one of the most famous pas­sages in his Jour­nal:

I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my con­di­tion. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy con­di­tion,” and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my con­di­tion, name­ly, that I might give him all the glo­ry; for all are con­clud­ed under sin, and shut up in unbe­lief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence who enlight­ens, and gives grace, and faith, and pow­er. Thus, when God doth work who shall let [i.e. hin­der] it? And this I knew experimentally.

Of course we should­n’t roman­ti­cize grief and dis­ap­point­ment. Some­times a soul-crushing dis­ap­point­ment is a les­son but some­times its just peo­ple doing shit­ty things. The old adage “what does­n’t kill you makes you stronger” over­looks the peo­ple left as road­kill in the first place. I talked about the “Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” a lot twen­ty years ago; it remains an open ques­tion if some of the ones who left were the smarter ones.1

Also in my news feed is a post from Bri­an Dray­ton, “New wine, new wine­skins.” Bri­an uses very Chris­t­ian lan­guage and is talk­ing about cur­rent wars in the world, but it’s pos­si­ble to read much of this as a take on pub­lic ministry:

Thus, our response in our liv­ing and think­ing to the con­di­tions of today, leav­ened with His life with­in us, must be put in ves­sels that not only con­tain the new life, but enable it to keep work­ing and gain­ing in virtue, in active pow­er. These are ves­sels of thought, of col­lab­o­ra­tion, of pri­or­i­ties or val­u­a­tion, of hope and inten­tion, of method and of celebration.

Year-end list

December 29, 2023

We’ve done the year-end num­bers at Friends Jour­nal and have the list of the top-five most-read arti­cles this year. This stats are for the web­site of course — no way to tell what arti­cles peo­ple might be skip­ping past in the print issues — but since we have more online read­ers than print sub­scribers these days, it’s a fair count. Inter­est­ing to see that Olivia Chalk­ley’s “Young Adults Want What Ear­ly Friends Had” took the top spot. I think that’s because it com­bines three top­ics that peo­ple love to read about: the bound­aries of Quak­er beliefs; what’s hap­pen­ing with young Quak­ers; sto­ries of beloved Quak­er institutions. 

Anoth­er peren­ni­al favorite top­ic among Friends is mem­ber­ship and FJ is look­ing for arti­cles on that for next May’s issue. Good chance that 2024’s most-read list might have some­thing from this issue. If you or any­one you know might want to write for it, read our Edi­tor’s Desk call for sub­mis­sions.

Links

December 14, 2023

In UK’s The Friend, Craig Bar­nett writes of false dichotomies between spir­i­tu­al and activist Friends and has wise thoughts on dis­cern­ment: “Most often, the Inward Guide seems to work by show­ing us not the ulti­mate des­ti­na­tion, but just the next step.”

At Friends jour­nal, Judith Apple­by writes about char­i­ta­ble giv­ing and Steven Davi­son has an ambi­tious piece tak­ing on the Quak­er covenant with cre­ation.

Guarding Dreams, Making Opportunities

December 6, 2023

I had a great time talk­ing with Deb­bie Ram­sey about Dream Pro­tec­tors, her arti­cle in this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal. Even before we hit record we were chat­ting away like old friends, despite this being the first time we’ve nev­er talked. Even­tu­al­ly we had to stop our­selves just so I could hit record and start the inter­view. Deb­bie is a retired police detec­tive who works with youth in Bal­ti­more — it’s their career dreams she’s help­ing to pro­tect — but we talked about being open in all sorts of set­tings. One of her sto­ries in the arti­cle, which she retold in the inter­view, revolves around an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for min­istry that arose from a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger on a bench. She told me it felt like “the uni­verse want­ed me to be there” to have that talk. 

It felt very much in line with the mys­te­ri­ous prompt­ings I talked about last month so of course I had to explore that with her:

Mar­tin Kel­ley: I real­ly love the old Quak­er lin­go of oppor­tu­ni­ties. An oppor­tu­ni­ty is like this kind of worship-connection-love that hap­pened spon­ta­neous­ly when you run into some­one and real­ize there’s so much more that it’s going to hap­pen here. It’s just being open to these sorts of moments where we might find our­selves on a bench next to some­one and we’re sud­den­ly deep into con­nec­tion and min­istry. It’s hard to do this in our lives now. We’re always rush­ing about, but I do try to think that some­times I need to stop and have con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple right here and now.

Deb­o­rah B Ram­seyYes, yes. And then as we were depart­ing he said to me, “I want to take our con­ver­sa­tion back to my wife.” So on anoth­er dimen­sion, I was at his home. He lit­er­al­ly, on anoth­er lev­el, took me to his home. Phys­i­cal­ly, I was not there, but the spir­it, and the vibra­tion, and the rhythm, and the con­ver­sa­tion, and how we relat­ed to his wife what my words meant to him. Hope­ful­ly, they would give her some com­fort. So I feel like the non-tangibles: we don’t them enough cred­it. Often­times we invite 50 or 100 peo­ple, if there’s not a large crowd, then we’re feel like we’re not get­ting any­thing across. But who’s to say that she would not say some­thing about what her hus­band told her to some­one else — or either to her son! Is it the quan­ti­ty or the qual­i­ty? It’s easy to start a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one you’re in a rela­tion­ship with, but how about a stranger? As Quak­ers, can we be so curi­ous about one another’s con­di­tion that we would take — as you say an oppor­tu­ni­ty— to just take a look? As Quak­ers we have so much oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to con­di­tions, out of a gen­er­al con­cern and love. How can you go wrong with that?

Deb­o­rah B. Ram­sey: Guardians over Dreams. A Friends Jour­nal author chat.

Watch the full interview:

Early December Links

December 5, 2023

NPR inter­viewed Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can Quak­er Sa’ed Atshan. He talks about the three stu­dents recent­ly shot last month in New Hamp­shire, two of whom he men­tored, and also Quak­er wor­ship. Very thought­ful and well done.

Quak­er Stud­ies has a spe­cial issue out on John Wool­man. I’ve writ­ten about this well-known Friend, many times, nat­u­ral­ly, includ­ing a three part series back in 2006, but it’s great to have aca­d­e­mics share the lat­est takes. As guest edi­tor Jon Ker­sh­n­er writes in his intro­duc­tion, “The fresh ground cul­ti­vat­ed by these authors demon­strates that there is much still to say about Wool­man.” Best of all, this is open access! I think it’s real­ly trag­ic that so much good aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing today is com­plete­ly inac­ces­si­ble and I’m not sure why, as I don’t think the authors are get­ting much of the mon­ey. I hope new aca­d­e­m­ic pub­lish­ing mod­els start to win out, as it’s impor­tant for lay Friends to think about his­to­ry in a more thought­ful way. I’m a big stan, as the kids say, of Jean Soder­lund, and am devour­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to this spe­cial edi­tion.

I looovvee Goldie’s, the Philly Israeli-American veg­an falafel mini-chain, so I’m not just appalled but per­son­al­ly upset that some pro-Palestinian pro­test­ers accused its own­ers of geno­cide. Once again peo­ple: it is pos­si­ble to be against vio­lence on all sides and also to not scape­goat any side. It sounds like own­er Michael Solomonov’s response has been mut­ed and under­stand­ing: good for him. I do hope this dies down. Pro­test­ers on all sides say stu­pid things in the heat of the moment and it sounds like they were there for less than four min­utes. Can we move on?

Also, chef’s kiss to the writer of The Inquir­er head­line, Berks Coun­ty woman named Time’s 2023 Per­son of the Year.