Brian Drayton: One cost of our theological diversity

February 11, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Respond­ing to arti­cles in the Decem­ber Friends Journal:

Rather I am aware that a cer­tain lev­el of fel­low­ship or com­pan­ion­ship is miss­ing. It can take a life­time, I find, to explore the impli­ca­tions and mean­ing of the gospel life, to expe­ri­ence such a renew­ing of the mind that one can grow into the life of Christ, see and learn to hon­or the Sophia of God, the Logos in its appear­ing in humans, and in cre­ation, and in our­selves in our mea­sure. Fel­low­ship with oth­ers who are fol­low­ing that same path ( a path “tra­di­tion­al­ly held by Friends”) is nour­ish­ing, stim­u­lat­ing, and educa­tive in, well, par­tic­u­lar ways. Fel­low­ship with earnest seek­ers who under­stand their paths dif­fer­ent­ly is also pre­cious, and indeed nec­es­sary — but not the same. 

One cost of our the­o­log­i­cal diversity

A what-if

February 10, 2019
· Martin Kelley

An alter­na­tive his­to­ry star­ring John Woolman

That might have gone dif­fer­ent­ly if White­field had encoun­tered some­one like Wool­man — some­one whose imag­i­na­tion was shaped by the gospel and the Gold­en Rule rather than the brute banal­i­ty of Whitefield’s actu­al, real-world scheme. 

An alter­nate his­to­ry and an alter­nate future

Evangelistic malpractice

February 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er on start­ing fresh in a cor­ner of the Quak­er world:

I was grate­ful that the “who” ques­tion was there — tes­ti­fy­ing that we are not cen­tered on our­selves, duti­ful­ly inven­to­ry­ing our Quak­er mark­ers. For me, evan­ge­lism (pay­ing urgent atten­tion to the “who”) puts all those oth­er tes­ti­monies in per­spec­tive. All those tes­ti­monies are “signs and won­ders,” qual­i­ties of the Light by which we as the Body of Christ par­tic­i­pate in mak­ing Jesus visible. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​t​i​c​-​m​a​l​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​e​.​h​tml

Keeping cradle Quakers

February 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Rhi­an­non Grant asks: what’s the oppo­site of a Rumspringa?

So my ques­tions for Quak­ers are: How do you ensure that adults are trust­ed to be adults even if they are under 30? How do you make sure that peo­ple are giv­en oppor­tu­ni­ties to take respon­si­bil­i­ty with­out feel­ing that they must per­form espe­cial­ly well because they are rep­re­sent­ing a whole demographic? 

Here in the U.S., the trick to get­ting on nation­al com­mit­tees while young (at least when I was try­ing it in my 20s) was hav­ing a well-known mom. As some­one who kept knock­ing and kept get­ting turned away it blew me away when I heard Quaker-famous off­spring com­plain how they were always being asked to serve on com­mit­tees. But then I real­ized it was the same tok­eniz­ing phe­nom­e­non, just in reverse.

So our work isn’t just look­ing around a room and tick­ing off demo­graph­ic box­es, but real­ly dig­ging deep­er and see­ing if we’re rep­re­sen­ta­tive of multi-dimensional diver­si­ties. And if we’re not, the prob­lem isn’t just that we aren’t diverse (diver­si­ty is a fine val­ue in and of itself but ulti­mate­ly just a crude tool) but that we have unex­am­ined cul­tur­al prac­tices and selec­tion sys­tems that are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly turn­ing away peo­ple from com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion and service.

Keep­ing cra­dle Quak­ers by mak­ing room to lean in?

Poking pigs?

February 6, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Bucks Coun­ty, Pa., Friend Nor­val Reece has a piece on fake and real news, with a great line from his mother:

Polls and ana­lysts con­firm a grow­ing trend for peo­ple to tune in almost exclu­sive­ly to those news sources which rein­force their own opin­ions and con­demn the oth­ers — regard­less of qual­i­ty, the use of facts, opin­ion, bias, and mis­in­for­ma­tion. Experts call this “source bias.” My straight-talking Quak­er moth­er referred to it as “peo­ple try­ing to sell you a pig in a poke” — peo­ple try­ing to con­vince you of a point of view by giv­ing you lim­it­ed or false infor­ma­tion, try­ing to sell you a pig in a bag when you can’t see it or exam­ine it. Com­mu­nist coun­tries and dic­ta­tor­ships are mas­ters at this. 

https://​www​.buckscoun​ty​couri​er​times​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​9​0​2​0​3​/​f​a​i​t​h​-​f​r​e​e​d​o​m​-​o​f​-​p​r​e​s​s​-​e​s​s​e​n​t​i​a​l​-​t​o​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​acy

Is Quaker Culture an Obstacle to Faith?

February 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Isaac Smith:

I have tend­ed to describe this shift in under­stand­ing as the moment when Quak­erism “clicked” for me — when it ceased to be just the weird sub­cul­ture I grew up in, and more a mat­ter of con­vic­tion. Prac­tices that I ignored or nev­er quite under­stood, like mak­ing group deci­sions with­out tak­ing a vote, now made sense, because they were borne out of an attempt to make Christ the present teacher in all affairs. 

Isaac’s piece stems in part from the Decem­ber Friends Jour­nal, on Quak­ers and Chris­tian­i­ty. A large per­cent­age of the sub­mis­sions we received for the issue had remark­ably sim­i­lar per­son­al sto­ries: peo­ple had grown up in a restric­tive reli­gious tra­di­tion and come to Lib­er­al Friends because of its open­ness to spir­i­tu­al seek­ing. If any­thing they were hos­tile to Chris­tian­i­ty and dis­tinc­tive Quak­er pecu­liar­i­ties when they joined but over time they slow­ly shift­ed, often after get­ting to know ground­ed elder Friends. Now they qui­et­ly iden­ti­fied as Chris­t­ian Friends.

We could have print­ed a whole issue of (most­ly) con­vinced Lib­er­al Friends who had redis­cov­ered Chris­tian­i­ty. Instead we picked a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple for the print edi­tion and pub­lished the rest as part of our our extend­ed online edi­tion; you can read it all at the online con­tents. Although Isaac’s sto­ry is dif­fer­ent (he grew up as a Friend) it shares a sim­i­lar trajectory.

(Issac also has some ques­tions about Quak­er pub­lish­ing, with a link to a great 2009 blog post from Johan Mau­r­er. I feel I should talk about this issue too but that’ll take a bit more pon­der­ing on my part).

Is Quak­er Cul­ture an Obsta­cle to Faith?

‘My ministry is the jokes and kittens’ | The Friend

January 31, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Friend edi­tor Joseph Jones inter­views best-selling Quak­er author Brid­get Collins. One of my favorite part is the bal­ance between dis­ci­pline and wait­ing inspiration:

On a day-to-day basis my biggest strug­gle – if I’m find­ing it hard to find the words – is over whether I need to wait for inspi­ra­tion to come, or whether I’m just being lazy and under­pre­pared. Whether I’m let­ting fear or pro­cras­ti­na­tion stop me. The Quak­er method has a lot to say to that. You know, you wait in silence and if it doesn’t come then it doesn’t come. But also you have to be dis­ci­plined, and pre­pared, for that to work 

https://​the​friend​.org/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​m​y​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​r​y​-​i​s​-​t​h​e​-​j​o​k​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​k​i​t​t​ens