Windy Cool­er has a new arti­cle on the Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence web­site, What is a Quak­er Pub­lic Min­is­ter? Windy’s been research­ing the con­cept of pub­lic Friends this year, inter­view­ing peo­ple about their under­stand­ing and experiences. 

The star­tling lack of sup­port for many pub­lic min­is­ters as agents of cre­ativ­i­ty and growth is part­ly because many Friends are unfa­mil­iar with the term “pub­lic min­is­ter” and uncer­tain how to sup­port their work. Addi­tion­al­ly, a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tes­ti­mo­ny of equal­i­ty, which often leads comfort-seeking elders to crit­i­cize or “cut down” those who stand out among us (referred to as the “tall pop­pies” by Mar­ty Grundy in her 1999 Pen­dle Hill pam­phlet of the same name), caus­es many Friends attempt­ing pub­lic min­istry to encounter hos­til­i­ty or apa­thy in their local meet­ings. Even in cas­es where a faith and prac­tice doc­u­ment out­lines the prac­tice, it remains large­ly taboo in lib­er­al Quak­erism to seek a minute acknowl­edg­ing the gifts of min­istry, much less more sub­stan­tial support.

Windy inter­viewed me as part of her research. If “pub­lic Friend” means some­one who is vis­i­bly tak­ing on a teach­ing role for Friends, then I’ve been one since my mid-20s when I start­ed putting togeth­er mail­ing lists and web­sites orga­niz­ing young adult Friends (YAFs in Quak­er speak); this even­tu­al­ly branched out into blog­ging, host­ing a social net­work, lead­ing work­shops, and giv­ing talks now and then. The longe­tiv­i­ty gives it a cer­tain author­i­ty, I sup­pose, as have my pro­fes­sion­al roles with Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions (though of course on my blog I’m only speak­ing for myself).

But this belies just how inde­pen­dent, dare I say ranter­ish, this process has been. I know how pub­lic min­istry should work, but it has­n’t ever worked out that way for me. Even now, I don’t have a spe­cial des­ig­na­tion or sup­port for my vol­un­teer Quak­er work. 

I should note that I once had a brush with insti­tu­tion­al legit­i­ma­cy. When I applied for a grant from the Clarence and Lil­ly Pick­ett Endow­ment for Quak­er Lead­er­ship, they required a sup­port let­ter from my meet­ing and Atlantic City Area Meet­ing pro­vid­ed me with one. It was­n’t a record­ing minute, per se, and did­n’t come with any fol­lowup sup­port but it was some­thing. The Pick­ett fund specif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed younger Friends. It’s a small world so I know a lot of oth­er recip­i­ents and many had inter­est­ing sto­ries about going their meet­ings for sup­port let­ters. In ret­ro­spect, forc­ing a gen­er­a­tion of twenty-something active Quak­ers to get these let­ters might have been the Pick­ett fund’s most impor­tant lega­cy (it closed down in 2019).

Full dis­clo­sure and mea cul­pa to say that I’ve nev­er asked for for­mal meet­ing sup­port. I have a ten­den­cy to land at small, min­i­mal­ly orga­nized meet­ings that don’t have any expe­ri­ences of sup­port­ing min­istries. It always felt like it’d be too much of a push to ask an over­bur­dened small group to take on one more responsibility.

I know some larg­er Quak­er meet­ings have more for­mal sup­port struc­tures in place, with clear­ness and sup­port (some­times now called anchor) com­mit­tees sup­port­ing their pub­lic Friends. I’m a bit jeal­ous but also have been told by Friends in these posi­tions that they some­times still feel some­what rogueish and alone. Of course maybe this is just how it is. Did peo­ple like John Wool­man and Joshua Evans real­ly feel ful­ly sup­port­ed by their meet­ings as they trav­eled about? And did they have now-forgotten con­tem­po­raries who felt the “tall pop­pies” effect and elect­ed to stay home? Ben­jamin Lay comes to mind as some­one who had to min­is­ter with­out sup­port. Windy writes:

While it’s true that many of our famous his­toric pub­lic min­is­ters were dis­liked in their time and praised in ours as if they rep­re­sent our own actions, it is incon­ceiv­able that these lead­ers could have trav­eled, spo­ken, and effect­ed change in their quest for right rela­tion­ship with­out robust sup­port. It is some­thing of a mir­a­cle then that so many dynam­ic Friends today are attempt­ing to do just that out of love for who we are and can be and we are tread­ing water with all the faith in the world that the under­tow of the sta­tus quo will not over­come us.

FGC promis­es this to be the “first of four short essays in a series on pub­lic min­istry in the lib­er­al tra­di­tion.” Glad to see FGC explor­ing this work. In the ear­ly 2000s they did impor­tant work with the Trav­el­ing Min­istries Com­mit­tee¹, which did a lot to re-legitimate the idea of min­istry among Lib­er­al Friends. Windy also gives a shout-out to the he Quak­er Lead­er­ship Cen­ter, which I know is doing good work around these ques­tions too.

1. It’s tru­ly bizarre how such an impor­tant project from only twen­ty years ago is vir­tu­al­ly invis­i­ble onlie. There’s an arti­cle in the Friends Jour­nal archives, but years of real­ly great arti­cles from FGCon­nec­tions got lost many web­site re-boots ago. Any­one research­ing this prob­a­bly would­n’t know where to look, out­side of some dusty box deep in the bow­els of an archive library. I only know to search archive​.org because I worked in FGC pub­li­ca­tions back in the day and was the one to actu­al­ly post these arti­cles to the website.