Comments on: Selling Quakerism to The Kids

By: Gavin Weld White

Gavin Weld White — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 23:56:26 +0000

I'm glad to have found this article, as well as the comment-stream. I grew up in Vermont, attending Meeting until about age nine, and now I'm living in Portland, Oregon, and attending with the mystics and the hippies (grinning). Here's a twenty-six–year–old who is getting involved in the life of the Meeting and feeling welcome in the process. It helps, perhaps, that I understand that there is no authority but God to tell me not to. I think that a key part of any "lack of ministry" in any group is the fundamental human timidity on the subject of which Nelson Mandela quoted Marianne Williamson ("Our Deepest Fear"). But I'm not going to talk about the non-existence of something that seems to me to exist. Here in Portland, those of us who are between the ages of 18 and 35, those of us who still feel young — and the significant others of that whole group — have been getting together during social hour each week, having monthly potlucks, and talking about how we might be of service to the Meeting. There has been particular interest in serving the next batch of up-and-coming Friends, those in their teenage years, as they discover adulthood. Maybe this is us becoming the elders. It is heartening to know that we are not alone in doing so, and that there are Friends like you out there growing elder with me. I'm be curious to hear more about what, in particular, other young(ish) Friends are doing to age themselves well.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:20:34 +0000

Rock on, RW.

By: RW Spryszak

RW Spryszak — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:07:57 +0000

I'm an "older Quaker" who has no fear of conflict. While there are many roads to God, remember that George Fox read the Bible, not the Gita; and that it isn't George Fox who "speaks to your condition," it is God who does that. So you may enjoy your sweat lodges and eastern mysticism and the joyful hubris of youth that will lead us all to a rebirth and yadda yadda yadda, and I will not be the one to call down another Friend's concern be it too "liberal" or too "conservative" - that would be improper... But what I have witnessed is that people amongst the Friends who move out of the Christian gestalt don't last. We would love to have them last, but they burn out because they don't share the same foundings that Quakerism is based on. To say that you are looking for "that of God in everyone," it helps to actually believe in God. And I have no fear of stating it. Consider this minority voice merely "speaking truth to power" then. Smiles to you.

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 11:09:52 +0000

Hi Melynda: East Coast Quakers provincial? Huh. Surely you jest?!? (Yes, that's an ironic "huh," Friends.) That small slice of visibility is often even smaller than the geography would indicate. Most younger Friends who I see lifted up for leadership are the children of involved Friends. On one governing committee I know of, just about all the under-35 representatives have a parent on the board. This cultural nepotism isn't limited to just one or two organizations and it's not just an old Quaker family kind of thing. Picking someone's kid is easy, they come with premade credentials. It's tied up with our contemporary unease at even naming ministries. I've talked about a lot of this over at my "Emergent Church":/quaker/emerging_church.php piece, where I look at what we need to work on to be really to welcome the great people still to be gathered.

By: Melynda Huskey

Melynda Huskey — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 00:27:33 +0000

Something that really jumped out at me (and not in a pleasant way) in the piece you quoted, Martin, was the notion that "a great many" of our future leaders are to be found among the small slice of young Quakers who are able to travel regularly to FGC gatherings and who choose to attend sweat lodges while there. There's a provinciality about those assumptions that pinches me. I'd like to think that poor or geographically distant or otherwise occupied young people who may already be weighty Friends might have a chance of rising to service in our Society without that particular experience. I'd like to think that we don't yet know who will be raised up to lead us, and that the Spirit may descend unexpectedly on someone(s) who will amaze us all. . . Melynda

By: Amanda

Amanda — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:38:36 +0000

Hi guys -
I didn’t mean that I thought Martin was making an us-them statement at all. I’m sorry if I came across that way! I meant to re-affirm a truth that I know all three of us have at heart,becuase I know how quickly devisiveness can spring up, and I know from personal experience how easily I can allow my (justified!) frustrations about “the other generation” cloud an important issue. The very fact that older friends can be so touchy and so quick to sniff out the least bit of resentment and dismiss it as anger and divisiveness leads me to believe that we need to be very strict in examining ourselves for pride and about responding with what may seem like an absurd amount of understanding, tolerance and compassion.
I see that older Quakers have a terrible fear of conflict- what makes them so afraid? I feel as if the some of the answers to these problem might lie in discovering the roots of those fears and finding way to lay them to rest. The other answers lie in being fearless in our challenges of convention. If they’ve already drawn the line in the sand, then we need to keep rubbing it out.
I know that I haven’t even begun the struggle — and that you two, and others, have been butting your head against the walls for years. I feel profoundly driven to take advantage of the fact that I’m not discouraged — yet — mostly because I know it is bound to happen eventually.
I know the changes may be slow and hard won — and I want to thank you both for all that I know you’ve done for the cause of a true and vital Quaker faith.
If I tend to speechify a bit, it is more directed at these teens and early-twenty somethings that I hear everyone mourning, and not at people like Martin at all. If we really so unsatisfied, then we need to take some responsibility to change it and not just grumble. Martin has done this — soldiering on, writing his websites, teaching, inspiring who-knows how many people like myself to at least begin to THINK about these issues. Julie has begun that yahoo group for people of faith looking to rediscover some of the joys of simplicity and plainness and who-knows what other services in the name of faith. The question is, what am I going to do? What are the rest of us going to do?
I’m not sure yet, but I know it’s got to be done with love and tenderness, along with stubborness and fire. In my brief experience, it seems that Quakers have the potential to unite these two opposites in a truly remarkable way.
And Martin — Thee is a good man, Charlie Brown.

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 01:35:03 +0000

Hi Amanda, thanks for the advice, you're right of course that it shouldn't be us vs. them. I do worry that I've been disappointed so many times that I'll grow too cynical to see when the situation might have changed. I've met plenty of Friends who are busy raising the rallying call of decades-old debates, so busy fighting old wars that they've failed to notice the issue has been more or less resolved. But I also sometimes feel like Charlie Brown. You know how Lucy always holds the football for him to kick and then always pulls it away at the last moment? Good old Chuck knows it will happen again but he lets himself be conjoled into trusting one more time. And one more time he goes flying through the air to crash on his back. I spend quite a bit of energy trying to convince institutional Quakers that people like you exist. Even presented with physical evidence many Quaker leaders continue to softpedal Quakerism and sell youth ministry short. I'll be glad when I see an authentic sharing of responsibility across generational lines. Maybe things are starting to shift. But I haven't seen substantial changes yet. And I can't stop worrying when we'll next go hurtling through the air.

By: Julie Heiland

Julie Heiland — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 00:57:10 +0000

Hi Amanda, I don't think that Martin was making this out as an "us-them" thing. I spent about eleven years among liberal Quakers in various parts of the country (predominantly in South Jersey) and can attest to the fact that there ARE some SERIOUS generational problems that are alive and well. It is my opinion that just because someone points out ageist bigotry, this does not mean that they WANT to draw a line in the sand. I think often it means the line has already been drawn. Again, this is my experience and my opinion--you may have your own. It is also my opinion that as younger people (I'm 28) we have so often been told by older generations--particularly the Boomers--that we should make nice and stop being "divisive". In my case, whether I was angry or not, I was not infrequently perceived as such, and among liberal Friends anger is practically synonymous with violence. (Julie rolls her eyes.) My sense of things is that often the various "make nice" directives to younger, less powerful Friends come packaged in passive-aggressive ways and we must carefully unwrap these "packages" in order to find out what's really going on. Usually there's a tremendous fear of conflict (read: don't rock the boat--our "community" is too delicate and cannot withstand too much questioning), among other things. So, in the light of my own experience of condescending comments, I will not say to you, "You just wait--you'll see what I mean when you're a little older." (Snicker snicker.) Yuck. But I will thank you for your advice to be patient and loving, and advise you to be careful whose "eldering" you choose to take to heart.