How many skeletons might remain buried? Possibly thousands, according to archaeologists, but no one knows. Historical maps are unclear on the cemeteries’ boundaries, but numerous histories portray the grounds as used first by Quakers and then by the poor, whose numbers increased along with the size of the city.

They quote the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting general secretary, who had heard nothing about this. The article also cites a 1880s article in Friends Intelligencer, the predecessor to Friends Journal.

https://www.philly.com/arts/schuylkill-yards-quaker-cemeteries-philadelphia-history-brandywine-drexel-20190502.html

Daniel Seeger was twenty-one when he wrote to his local draft board to say, “I have concluded that war, from the practical standpoint, is futile and self-defeating, and from the more important moral standpoint, it is unethical.” Some time later, he received the United States Selective Service System’s Form 150, asking him to detail his objections to military service. It took him a few days to reply, because he had no answer for the form’s first question: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?” Unsatisfied with the two available options—“Yes” and “No”—Seeger finally decided to draw and check a third box: “See attached pages.”

Seeger’s victory helped mark a turning point for a minority that had once been denied so much as the right to testify in court, even in their own defense. Atheists, long discriminated against by civil authorities and derided by their fellow-citizens, were suddenly eligible for some of the exemptions and protections that had previously been restricted to believers.

Daniel Seeger has written for and been featured in the pages of Friends Journal many times over the ensuing decades but last year he wrote a great feature for us about the court case, An AFSC Defense of the Rights of Conscience. A tip of the hat to Carol Holmes Alpern for sending this New Yorker article way!

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/why-are-americans-still-uncomfortable-with-atheism

How did Friends come to do so well? The standard story is a variant on the Puritan one: Quakers became wealthy by working diligently; extending their experimental approach to religion to invent new industrial technologies; trading honestly (thereby attracting customers); making productive use of transatlantic kinship networks; and living frugally, without money-drains like drinking or gambling, thereby freeing up money for savings, investment, and philanthropic giving to Quaker-run institutions. All of that may be true, but is at best partial. The unspoken “rest of the story” has two pieces: land and slaves.

I’m sure I’ve read this article before (I unconsciously summarized it this past May) but I think it’s an important discussion to rethink every so often.

Quaker Money, Old Money, and White Privilege — Friends Journal

“As a birthright Friend, she really knew her antiques.” This comment opened a testimony to the life of…

Friends Journal

Friends Meeting of San Antonio finds the policy of the present administration of separating children from their families at the border to be shameful and contrary to American values. Further, using the Gospel to claim that “God has ordained” such actions is appalling to us as a people of faith.

A few years ago Friends Journal ran an article on the border humanitarian crisis, co-written by one of San Antonio’s clerks, so we’ve added this weekend’s statement to the article for context.

Convergence

UPDATE June 2018: “In response to the continuing administration policy of separating asylum-seeking parents from their children, as…

Friends Journal

We can use any number of descriptors that do not sound so haughty and nearsighted. I think we should continually lift up some key pieces of vocabulary that really do make the Quaker way distinctive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add others: “that of God in every person”; “the Inner Light”; “continuing revelation”; “discernment”; “sense of the meeting”; “rightly led and rightly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice within”; “way opening”; “clerking”; “query”; “worship sharing”; “expectant waiting”; “centering down”; “Quaker decision making”; “Quaker tradition”; “faith and practice”; “seeking clearness”; “Quaker testimonies”; and of course, “meeting for worship.”

Longtime FJ readers will remember a much-discussed 2008 article by Hoopes, “Young Families and Quakerism: Will the Center Hold?” It certain spoke to my condition as a parent struggling with family life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard realities facing many Quaker parents of young children today. They are frequently exhausted and frazzled from attending to their children’s needs in addition to their own all week long. They desperately need a break from their own children, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked—or expected—to serve as First-day school teachers or childcare providers. Hence, their experience of meeting is not one of replenishment, but of further depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadelphia Friends took the 2008 article to heart.

Selling Quakerism — Friends Journal

The Mission–Market Tension Inherent in Quaker Values

Friends Journal

Now we have another headline chaser. The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary more or less reads Jenkins’s piece aloud on his radio show (hat-tip havedanson on the Quakers subreddit). He lightly skips over the fact that Jenkins isn’t Quaker and admits to limited experience of Quaker worship. The SBTS president, Albert Mohler, repeatedly calls the Guardian article a “news report” even though it is clearly labeled as an opinion piece. If any publicity is good publicity then it’s good that non-Friends like Jenkins and now Mohler are talking about the decision-making process of a Quaker yearly meeting, but this is stupid piled on stupid.

From a media perspective, I get it: Mohler has a daily 24-minute podcast to fill. He has interns who scan buzzy news items. They rearrange the text with interstitials like “he continues, and I quote” and “he goes on to say” so that Mohler can spend five minutes reading an article without sounding like he’s just reading an article. But seriously, how does the president of a major seminary have such disregard for anything approaching academic rigor? Also: how much regurgitated junk is on the internet simply because people need to fill time? The Quaker caution about giving ministry just because you’re paid to give ministry and it’s time to give ministry seems apt in this case.

Monday, May 14, 2018

Ariel Eure and Layla Helwa allege the Quaker school violated their civil rights by suspending and terminating them last year for supporting student protests to permit the Palestinian professor [Sa’ed Atshan] to speak. Additionally, they claim school administrators conducted a smear campaign after they were fired.

Friends Journalcovered the incident last year, as did multiple news outlets. It also came up in an interview I had with Sa’ed Atshan a few months ago. When we contacted Friends’ Central to fact-check Sa’ed’s account, the school couldn’t point to any inaccuracies but still said “we disagree with the fact pattern, including the timeframe, as described.” I still not sure what that’s even supposed to mean.

https://www.philly.com/philly/education/fired-friends-central-teachers-sue-palestinian-professor-saed-atshan-invite-20180508.html

http://www.phillyvoice.com/fired-teachers-sue-quaker-school-discrimination-defamation/

The Quakers’ lack of ceremony and liturgical clutter gives them a point from which to view the no man’s land between faith and non-faith that is the “new religiosity”. A dwindling 40% of Britons claim to believe in some form of God, while a third say they are atheists

The piece is sure to get everyone’s dander up. It feels to me as if Jenkins is chasing the headline to advance his own argument without regard to how his statement might polarize Friends. But this is one of the rarer instances in which it’s worth digging through the comments on this one; some are better than the article itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/04/quakers-dropping-god?CMP=share_btn_fb