Tag Archives ⇒ admit

TV wars

June 25, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Hav­ing start­ed out my blog­ging life as a writer on non­vi­o­lence, I must admit it’s hard to real­ly respond to this week’s mil­i­tary actions with the grav­i­ty they deserve. Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions like AFSC and FCNL are speak­ing out, as they must (“We must act now” and “You can’t bomb your way to peace”) but I can’t get over just how much the­ater this all is. Pres­i­dent Trump gave Iran advance warn­ing of the incom­ing bunker bombs, plen­ty of time for Iran to get its stock­piles of near-weapons-grade mate­r­i­al out of har­m’s way. When Iran retal­i­at­ed with mis­siles against U.S. bases in Qatar, they too gave advance warn­ing, giv­ing the U.S. anti-missile defens­es the heads-up need­ed to defend and destroy the incom­ing barrage.

In reports, Trump is said to have decid­ed on the Iran attack in part because he felt Israel was get­ting such “good press” for its attacks against Iran (not sur­pris­ing­ly, he fix­ates on Fox News cov­er­age, which was all-in for Netanyahu’s attacks). U.S. mil­i­tary intel­li­gence says the attacks on For­do, Iran’s pri­ma­ry nuclear-enrichment site, only delayed a pos­si­ble cre­ation of a nuclear weapon by months. Why gen­er­ate such ill-will for such a tem­po­rary advantage?

Of course, would we even be in this mess if Trump had­n’t scut­tled the hard-won nego­ti­a­tions of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal frame­work. Even at the time it seemed like Trump was most­ly act­ing out of jeal­ousy that a long-term solu­tion had been the result of his pre­de­ces­sor’s work. There does­n’t seem to be any over­ar­ch­ing log­ic to any of this. It’s all for the TV cov­er­age (the rest of the world’s lead­ers seem to have fig­ured this out). Is there a real­ly an end-game to Israel assas­si­nat­ing so much of Iran­ian lead­er­ship, includ­ing some of the very peo­ple who were nego­ti­at­ing deals? And in the midst of this, a real solu­tion to the Pales­tin­ian — Israel con­flict seems fur­ther away than ever.

Peace­ful con­duct is the best way to set up peace­ful res­o­lu­tions. Iran has always been a coun­try with poten­tial. Encour­ag­ing it to give up nuclear and ter­ror­is­tic ambi­tions, promis­ing it last­ing safe­ty, and slow­ly inte­grat­ing it back into the world econ­o­my is real­ly a win-win for all sides. So why all this the­ater? What’s the end plan any­way? Or is that such a naive thing to even ask in 2025?

QuakerSpeak on old Quaker records

July 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I must admit to lov­ing old libraries and geek­ing out on his­to­ries. In this week’s install­ment of Quak­er­S­peak, Mary Crauderu­eff, cura­tor at Haver­ford College’s Quak­er Col­lec­tion, talks about some of the favorite parts of her work:

You have things like mem­ber­ship records, mar­riage records, and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates. You have min­utes of the busi­ness meet­ings and you have com­mit­tee min­utes. Oth­er cool things that we have are deeds for meet­ings and meet­ing­hous­es. Peo­ple will some­times come to var­i­ous Quak­er archives and say, “Our meet­ing is in this dis­pute with the town­ship. We need to find the orig­i­nal deed to the meet­ing­house and we think that you have it. Can we look at it?” 

http://​Quak​er​s​peak​.com/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​i​c​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​l​i​b​r​a​ry/

Review of Traditional Quaker Christianity

April 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Patri­cia Dall­mann reviews a 2004 book by Friends of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing, Tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty:

Though Tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty is intend­ed to con­vey the tra­di­tion among Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends, it may find read­ers among Lib­er­als and Evan­gel­i­cals. Should anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of Quak­ers come forth and under­take the restora­tion of “the des­o­la­tions of many gen­er­a­tions,” they could find this book a resource for build­ing up a Quak­er Chris­t­ian society.

I must admit that after spend­ing my work days read­ing man­u­scripts and my com­mutes read­ing blog posts, the enjoy­ment of books has got­ten a bit squeezed out. This looks like a use­ful one to try to fit it. Friend Mar­ty Grundy reviewed this title for Friends Jour­nal a few years ago. After post­ing the link to Patri­ci­a’s post, Macken­zie remind­ed me that Quak­er Faith and Pod­cast has also been going through the book in recent episodes.

https://​patradall​mann​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​0​5​/​r​e​v​i​e​w​-​o​f​-​t​r​a​d​i​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​i​ty/

Ask Me Anything: Do Quakers celebrate Easter and if so, how?

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A ques­tion From Jes­si­ca F about Friends and Easter.

On the face of it, this is an easy ques­tion. Ear­ly Friends were loath to rec­og­nize any litur­gi­cal prac­tices and they were lower‑p puri­tan­i­cal about any­thing that smacked of pagan­ism. Famous­ly, they didn’t use the com­mon names of the week or months because many of them referred to non-Christian deities, like Thor and Janus.

They were espe­cial­ly grumpy about any­thing that smacked of latter-day syn­cretism. Many of the church hol­i­days were seen as pagan fes­ti­vals with a super­fi­cial Chris­t­ian over­lay. I’ll be the first to admit they could get kind of obnox­ious this way. Wikipedia explains some of this attitude:

Oth­er Protes­tant groups took a dif­fer­ent atti­tude, with most Anabap­tists, Quak­ers, Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ists and Pres­by­ter­ian Puri­tans regard­ing such fes­ti­vals as an abom­i­na­tion. The Puri­tan rejec­tion of East­er tra­di­tions was (and is) based part­ly upon their inter­pre­ta­tion of 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14 – 16 and part­ly upon a more gen­er­al belief that, if a reli­gious prac­tice or cel­e­bra­tion is not actu­al­ly writ­ten in the Chris­t­ian Bible, then that practice/celebration must be a lat­er devel­op­ment and can­not be con­sid­ered an authen­tic part of Chris­t­ian prac­tice or belief — so at best sim­ply unnec­es­sary, at worst actu­al­ly sinful.

In Latin, East­er is called Pascha, a ref­er­ence to the Jew­ish Passover fes­ti­val. But in Eng­land, Pascha took place in the month the old Eng­lish called Ēostre after a god­dess whose fes­ti­val was cel­e­brat­ed in that month. This made it dou­bly hard for Eng­lish Protes­tant groups that want­ed to cleanse Chris­tian­i­ty of “popish” or “pagan” influ­ences. So for right or wrong, they ignored it like they did the day the world calls Christmas.

Sym­bol­i­cal­ly, Quak­ers love the idea of East­er. One of George Fox’s most key open­ings was that“Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self!” The idea that Jesus rose again and is with us is pret­ty cen­tral to tra­di­tion­al Quak­er beliefs.

These days East­er is large­ly cel­e­brat­ed by Friends stand­ing up on Sun­day to break the silence of wor­ship with nos­tal­gic sto­ries of East­ers in their pre-Quaker youth. Some­times they’ll admit to hav­ing attend­ed a East­er ser­vice at anoth­er church before com­ing to meet­ing that morn­ing. If you’re real­ly lucky, you’ll get min­istry about flow­ers or hats.

A Quaker Lens Aids Biblical Interpretation

March 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Rhon­da Pfalzgraff-Carlson reads main­stream com­men­tary on the book of Colos­sians and is dis­ap­point­ed. Why? They miss rela­tion­ships and con­texts that seem obvi­ous from a Quak­er per­spec­tive. A Quak­er Lens Aids Bib­li­cal Interpretation

Even know­ing that I’m col­or­ing this inter­pre­ta­tion through the use of a Quak­er lens, I believe that a Quak­er per­spec­tive can help the mean­ing of the Bible become more clear.

I must admit that I take claims that any denom­i­na­tion has some sort of spe­cial con­nec­tion to the ear­ly church with a heap­ing spoon­ful of salt. But the ear­ly church was dis­or­ga­nized in a way that Friends can be.

Extended summers and jobs old and new

October 5, 2005
· Martin Kelley
Bicycle riders

Theo and I on the old bike this sum­mer. More pho­tos

Last Thurs­day my Francis-inspired pater­ni­ty leave end­ed – two weeks paid for by my employ­er, two weeks or so of vaca­tion time. It was good to have off though I must admit I spent more time cor­ralling two-year old Theo than I did gaz­ing into new­born Fran­cis’s eyes. I hearti­ly rec­om­mend tak­ing Sep­tem­bers off. One of my more enjoy­able tasks was the almost-daily bicy­cle rides with Theo. Some­times we went across town to the lake and it’s play­ground, Theo going up and down the slides over and over again until night­time threat­ened and I had to insist on com­ing home. Oth­er times we took long rides to local attrac­tions such as last post’s Blue Hole. The bike so sym­bol­ized our spe­cial time togeth­er that it seems almost prop­er that it was stolen from the train sta­tion on that first day of com­mut­ing, appar­ent­ly the lat­est vic­tim of my South Jer­sey town’s bike theft ring. When I walked in the door that evening, Theo came run­ning yelling “diya-di-cal!” but there was noth­ing I could do. Sum­mer’s over kid.

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